The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 171. Aggressive By Nature？｜ Richard Tremblay

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

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00:00:42.100 Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be

00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to the JBP podcast, season four,

00:00:56.540 episode 25 with Richard Tremblay. I'm Michaela Peterson. Richard Tremblay and Jordan Peterson

00:01:02.200 spoke on April 7th, 2021, and discussed Richard's research with physical aggression and juvenile

00:01:07.700 delinquency, what surprised him of his findings, risk factors that lead to aggressive behavior in

00:01:14.260 adults, experimental interventions with mothers to decrease aggression in children, the biology of

00:01:20.660 aggression, what compelled him to do the research, and more. Dr. Richard Tremblay is a Canadian child

00:01:26.720 psychologist and professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, and psychology at the University of

00:01:31.300 Montreal, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Child Development. His research has focused on the

00:01:37.640 development of aggressive behavior in children and the potential for early intervention programs

00:01:42.520 to reduce the chances of children turning to crime in adulthood. In 2017, he received the Stockholm

00:01:49.140 Prize in Criminology for his work studying delinquency in children, making him the first

00:01:53.720 Canadian to receive this prize. I hope you enjoy this episode. I'd like to tell you guys about Headspace.

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00:03:56.880 Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to talk today with Dr. Richard Tremblay, Emeritus Professor of

00:04:20.360 Pediatrics and Psychology at the University of Montreal and Emeritus Professor of Public Health

00:04:25.860 at University College Dublin in Ireland. I've known Richard for a long time, since the

00:04:32.040 mid-80s. I worked with him in Montreal for a number of years, along with my supervisor,

00:04:38.540 Robert Peel. I worked on alcoholism and aggression at that time, mostly, and I did get to know Richard

00:04:46.400 quite well. He was a pronounced influence on my scientific thinking, especially in relationship

00:04:53.300 to subjects like childhood aggression, adult antisocial behavior and criminality, and

00:04:59.280 alcohol and drug abuse. And Richard dominated, I would say, the social science research world in

00:05:07.040 Quebec for 30 years, attracting a massively disproportionate share of research funding

00:05:14.000 because of the quality of his longitudinal studies. Those are long-term studies following people over

00:05:19.740 decades. Very, very clinical studies. Very, very, very difficult to administer and to design and to

00:05:25.500 implement and to fund and to write up and to analyze. Extremely complex work. And I think you can make a

00:05:33.300 reasonable case that, well, his work on aggression is certainly among the most profound and unexpected

00:05:41.760 of the last 50 years. In Montreal, he conducted, and elsewhere, he conducted a program of both

00:05:50.780 longitudinal and experimental studies on physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development from

00:05:55.480 conception to adulthood. Although his main focus is on the development and the prevention of chronic

00:06:00.780 physical aggression. So that goes, in some sense, to the heart of criminology. He's an officer of the

00:06:06.180 Order of Canada, which is roughly equivalent to a Canadian knighthood, a fellow of the Royal Society

00:06:11.440 of Canada and of the Academy of Experimental Criminology. In 2017, he won the Stockholm Prize in

00:06:19.180 criminology for his research on the developmental origins of violent behavior. And I was hoping to talk

00:06:27.040 to Richard today, particularly because the issue of aggression, and more specifically, male aggression,

00:06:32.660 is extraordinarily popular, let's say, a popular media topic. But the level of general knowledge about

00:06:43.600 the scientific, about scientific research into aggression and the conclusions of that research,

00:06:49.600 it's not disseminated well at all. And people are unreasonably misinformed about what aggression is and

00:06:57.800 how it emerges and how it might be controlled and how it manifests itself in families and what the

00:07:04.160 implications of that are for social policy and all of those things. And so I'm hoping today with

00:07:08.940 Richard that we can shed some light on all of this. And that's the purpose of the discussion.

00:07:15.120 So I'm going to start by talking about some of the topics addressed in a 1999 scientific paper that

00:07:21.860 Richard authored, along with a sequence of co-authors, called The Search for the Age of Onset of Physical

00:07:30.220 Aggression. Rousseau, a philosopher who assumed that people were naturally good but corrupted by the

00:07:37.480 social order, and Bandura, who championed the idea of social learning, a psychologist, revisited.

00:07:44.360 Rousseau and Bandura revisited.

00:07:46.000 Richard starts by pointing out that studies of aggression often fail to separate physical

00:07:56.820 aggression from verbal aggression, indirect aggression, microaggressions, let's say, relational

00:08:05.040 aggression, opposition, competition, and other so-called externalizing behaviors. So maybe you

00:08:12.300 could start by commenting about on that, Richard, because one of the key features of your work is

00:08:18.300 the specificity of your definitions. And we need to know about the reason for that.

00:08:24.420 Yes. Well, when I started doing research, I was doing research on juvenile delinquency, essentially,

00:08:37.900 the general problem of juvenile delinquency. I did my PhD thesis on this. And I was brought

00:08:51.540 on to study physical aggression because it appeared to be a narrower type of problem, easier to study

00:09:06.040 than simply juvenile delinquency. And as I worked on that problem of aggression, I realized that people

00:09:18.120 were using the word aggression to mean all sorts of things. And I sort of slowly zoomed in on the physical

00:09:30.500 aggression research, thinking that it would be much simpler to study. And I did that in part because I was

00:09:42.080 interested in looking at the early signs of problems with physical aggression. And when you start looking at

00:09:53.760 young children, very young children, you become amazed to see how frequently they physically aggress each other.

00:10:05.980 And they are much less sophisticated than elementary school children or adolescents or adults. So the action is

00:10:18.740 really on into physical aggression. And as we measured the physical aggression in early childhood and

00:10:31.200 developmentally over time, it became very obvious that what we were all thinking that aggression

00:10:43.680 increased with age and sort of peaked in adolescence, late adolescence. We showed that physical

00:10:56.960 aggression was at its peak in terms of frequency around age, between age two and age three.

00:11:08.880 We were looking at in daycare centers. And I finally discovered that the place in the world where you're most at risk

00:11:23.440 of being physically aggressed is in a daycare center when you're between age two and age three. The amount of physical

00:11:33.440 aggressions is incredible. Of course, they are not well coordinated, and they are not very strong. So the damage is not the same

00:11:47.440 damage as a physical fight when you look at adolescence. But the frequency of physical aggression

00:11:57.440 is clearly there. And to a certain extent, it changed my way of looking at this problem of aggression

00:12:12.400 aggression throughout development from very early childhood until adulthood.

00:12:22.400 Okay, so you adopted a narrow focus to begin with, and you concentrated on physical aggression. And if I remember correctly, and please do correct me,

00:12:32.400 the markers were so the even more basic markers and measurable markers were kicks, hits, bites, and steals. Is that correct?

00:12:42.400 Yes, exactly.

00:12:44.400 Okay, so now one of the problems that scientific researchers in the field of psychology have is that they try to investigate

00:12:52.400 terms that people often use descriptively, like anxiety. But a scientific category needs to be only what it is and nothing else.

00:13:00.400 Only what it is and nothing else. And so it has to be, it's a particular kind of category. If you say anxiety to someone,

00:13:07.400 you usually surround that with an explanatory framework so that the person can understand what you're talking about.

00:13:13.400 So you don't have to be that precise in your use of the word anxiety. But if you're trying to measure it in a repeatable way,

00:13:20.400 then you have to zero in on something that is essentially as close to one thing as you can manage, and that's narrow.

00:13:26.400 And you picked kicks, hits, fights, and steals. And I would say that is observable.

00:13:33.400 But it also, I think, and probably not by accident, gets to the heart of what people are really concerned about

00:13:39.400 when they talk about male criminality and aggression. Because the biggest sociocultural and personal impact

00:13:46.400 of criminal behavior, or maybe the most emotionally violent part of it is the physical violence aspect.

00:13:53.400 And that seems central. Is that fair?

00:13:55.400 Yes, yes, yes, it is. Whether it's war or being physically aggressed by a neighbor, it creates more damage, and it's a threat to your life.

00:14:15.400 Yes, so, okay, so it's useful to simplify it, so that it could be measured and observed.

00:14:22.400 But it was also a move that allowed you to get right to the heart of what was important about antisocial behavior

00:14:27.400 and criminal behavior and so forth.

00:14:28.400 Exactly.

00:14:29.400 And, okay, okay, so, and then you, it's so easy to jump over these things, even in your papers, because these ideas are revolutionary in a sense that isn't immediately obvious

00:14:43.400 in the cautious manner in which they're couched. Because people do assume, for example, that children learn aggression,

00:14:49.400 and that, and as you pointed out, that aggression is much more common, say, among adolescent males, or young adult males. But even much to your surprise, that isn't what you found.

00:15:01.400 So I would like to ask you two questions about that. Like, why do you think you were surprised? What had you gone in there expecting?

00:15:08.400 And how does this violate the assumptions that people, including scientists, generally make about aggression?

00:15:14.400 Well, you cited Rousseau and Bandura. The research on aggression made me realize that their perspective on we are born good,

00:15:35.400 and it's your environment that makes you bad, and it's your environment that makes you bad didn't work when you were looking at one of the worst things you call bad is physical aggression.

00:15:50.400 Because we were following children from essentially birth, and the children that we were following then, they're now in their 40s, and we are still following them.

00:16:07.400 We showed that between birth and adulthood, the time at which you use physical aggression against others most often is between two and three.

00:16:26.400 And the reason it's not at one or six months, it's because by the time you're two and three, you're much more able to aggress others in terms of you can run, you can hit, you can kick.

00:16:45.400 Well, as you don't see that at six months, but these behaviors are clearly there at the start.

00:16:54.400 And as we followed the children over time up to adulthood, we saw very clearly that the frequency of physical aggression was going on, was dropping.

00:17:13.400 There was less and less frequency of physical aggression up to adulthood.

00:17:23.400 So the idea that we learn from our environment to aggress doesn't fit the data at all.

00:17:36.400 It's rather, with time, we learn not to physically aggress because everybody, even those who were physically aggressing very often, with time, the frequency decreases.

00:17:55.400 There is more damage if you get hit by an adolescence than by a two-year-old.

00:18:03.400 But in terms of frequency, we learn not to use physical aggression as we get older.

00:18:13.400 Okay, so we might say that this constitutes a delayed victory for the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

00:18:19.400 Exactly.

00:18:20.400 And from the inventor of the original sin.

00:18:35.400 The idea of the original sin comes from the saint, what's his name?

00:18:50.400 He lived in Rome.

00:18:56.400 It's okay, we'll find it.

00:19:03.400 Anyway, this saint describes, he says, I want to find when I started to commit sins.

00:19:21.400 And he says, I went to see the children, very young children, and I can see that I started to sin very early in life.

00:19:31.400 I beat my parents, I hit everybody.

00:19:36.400 And so this idea has been there for a long time.

00:19:41.400 But there has been this big resistance to believe that we are born to live like animals, and that with time, we learn to live in a civil society.

00:19:56.400 Okay, so do you have any sense, Richard, of why that resistance manifested itself?

00:20:04.400 And I would also say it continues to, because it seems to me that the default view that people are good, especially children, innately,

00:20:13.400 and that they're corrupted by exposure to bad models and by society, I would say that's the default view.

00:20:20.400 And it's certainly the default view on the left end of the political spectrum.

00:20:24.400 So why do you think that that became so dominant if the data, even the observational data, was there thousands of years ago, let's say, and certainly is there in the scientific literature now?

00:20:38.400 Yes, well, I guess it's a normal reaction of humans to not to accept that from an evolutionary perspective, we are animals that have sort of learned to live together in a

00:21:07.400 in a more sophisticated way than monkeys and chimpanzees.

00:21:17.400 But it's very clear that if we take a Darwinian perspective to evolution, it makes a lot of sense.

00:21:27.400 Darwin was also one of those who said at one point, I am looking at the way my children behave, and it's clear that my children are using physical aggression within the first year of life.

00:21:49.400 And he was a very careful observer.

00:21:51.400 And he was a very careful observer.

00:21:53.400 He was.

00:21:54.400 And he wrote quite a lot about the behavior of his children, and it inspired him in terms of understanding human development.

00:22:10.400 Okay, so back to back to Hobbes, he's sort of the antithesis of Rousseau.

00:22:14.400 And Hobbes believed that in the state of nature, life would be nasty, brutish and short, and that it was only socialization that made us civilized.

00:22:22.400 And your data essentially support that viewpoint, except it's more complex, because Rousseau wins to some degree, because you've tracked out three developmental pathways.

00:22:33.400 So, although, on average, young children are more aggressive than older children and adolescents, if you look, your research and others indicates that if you look at the population of young children, all children are not equally violent.

00:22:49.400 And so, maybe you could walk us through that.

00:22:52.400 Yes.

00:22:53.400 Yes.

00:22:54.400 Yes, there are important differences between children.

00:22:58.400 Those who are most aggressive, use physical aggression most often early in life, are, I don't have the data in front of me, but it's not much more than 20%, 25%.

00:23:20.400 And a lot of children are not using physical aggression.

00:23:25.400 And there is the difference between males and females.

00:23:30.400 We get similar developmental trajectories, but essentially most girls do not use physical aggression. 0.90

00:23:43.400 Okay, so your data, the data I reviewed this morning suggested that about 30% of children use very little aggression to begin with.

00:23:52.400 Yes.

00:23:53.400 50% use some, and about 17% are quite aggressive, and they stay that way.

00:24:00.400 They tend to stay that way.

00:24:02.400 They remain relatively high to the others, but they decrease with time.

00:24:11.400 Right.

00:24:12.400 The frequency decreases with time.

00:24:13.400 So, right.

00:24:14.400 So, those who are likely to be aggressive in adolescence were also likely to be aggressive as children, but all children, including the aggressive children, tend towards less aggression as they mature.

00:24:25.400 Yes, yes.

00:24:26.400 But also, again, it's useful to repeat this.

00:24:30.400 So, 30% show very little aggression across the board, right from childhood onward.

00:24:35.400 50% are in the mixed group, using aggression sometimes when they're children, but that declines precipitously as they age.

00:24:42.400 And then there's 17%, they decline as well, but the population of aggressive adolescents is disproportionately drawn from those children who were exceptionally aggressive in their earliest infancy.

00:24:57.400 Yes.

00:24:58.400 Okay.

00:24:59.400 And they're, okay, so then let's focus on the ones that were particularly aggressive.

00:25:03.400 So, Rousseau wins a bit, because there's a substantial proportion of children who just don't use aggression at all as a strategy.

00:25:09.400 So, it's a mixed, it's a mixed model.

00:25:12.400 And so, the people, the aggressive individuals, the biggest risk factor I think you identified for being in the more aggressive category, the most aggressive category was gender, sex.

00:25:28.400 So, if you're a boy, it's much more probable.

00:25:31.400 And I think the odds were two to one.

00:25:33.400 Is that correct?

00:25:34.400 Approximately that?

00:25:35.400 I don't remember exactly, but if you've looked at it this morning, you must be closer, close to that.

00:25:46.400 Yeah, and then you showed, okay, so it was, they were more likely to be male, and then there were other important contributors as well.

00:25:56.400 They were more likely, for example, to have mothers who did not complete their high school education.

00:26:02.400 That was the next, the next most important risk factor.

00:26:07.400 What other risk factors for that early aggression did you identify?

00:26:12.400 Well, in most of the studies, we are showing that a lot of the characteristics of the boys who have problems are characteristics related to their mothers having problems.

00:26:37.400 Both psychological and social problems.

00:26:50.400 And I've, I've, I've called that the Hydra problem in the sense that girls who have adjustment problems are likely to have children and especially boys who will have important problems.

00:27:15.400 And what do you mean by adjustment problems, if you're going to characterize what you've observed about the mothers who are more likely to have aggressive boys in particular, and also to not control it as well as they develop.

00:27:29.400 Yeah.

00:27:30.400 How would you describe a typical mother?

00:27:32.400 Well, girls, girls who fail in school, girls who have emotional problems, girls in the, all, everything that we've measured, for example, in terms of problems with smoking,

00:27:59.400 with drugs, almost every problem that you can mention, there is a tendency for girls who have these problems to have children and especially boys who will have difficulty.

00:28:21.400 It's not only difficulties with physical aggression, but their children will have more problems in social adjustment, in succeeding in school.

00:28:37.400 And so over time, it's been, it's become quite clear to me that if we want to help children in terms of their development and high risk children.

00:28:52.400 The best strategy is to support, to give support to girls early on who have adjustment problems in the school system, because they are the best predictors of boys who will have the problems that we are talking about.

00:29:18.400 So there is this intergenerational problem.

00:29:28.400 Girls are more involved in helping their children grow up than males. 0.88

00:29:35.400 But also, it's related to what's happening during pregnancy.

00:29:44.400 So if you have a girl who, during pregnancy, is smoking, taking drugs, using alcohol, it's quite clear from simply a medical, biological perspective that this child's brain will be affected in a negative way.

00:30:08.400 And that child will have much more difficulty controlling himself.

00:30:15.400 And that's quite clear, it's relatively clear that the boys will suffer from that perspective more than the baby girls.

00:30:30.400 But the baby girls will reproduce the same type of problems that their mother had. 1.00

00:30:42.400 So then, so that hypothetically, then the aggression problem among the boys will occur among the daughters of the girls you're talking about a generation later.

00:30:52.400 You said it's transmitted intergenerationally, so girls that you're talking about have girls and they don't do well either, even though it's not so manifest in aggression, but maybe their children are also at risk.

00:31:05.400 That's right.

00:31:06.400 That's right.

00:31:07.400 And that's the multi-generational aspect.

00:31:08.400 Yeah.

00:31:09.400 Okay, so pregnancy is crucial, and you talked about some of the behaviors that can compromise fetal development.

00:31:19.400 And of those behaviors, is there a rank order of catastrophe?

00:31:23.400 So for example, I feel alcohol is extremely toxic during pregnancy, particularly at certain key moments.

00:31:31.400 There's a period when the hippocampus develops, if I remember correctly.

00:31:34.400 And if you drink on that day or that week, then that's likely to produce longstanding cognitive problems.

00:31:40.400 So there are critical periods.

00:31:42.400 Alcohol use during pregnancy, smoking, are those the major risk factors for pregnancy trouble?

00:31:50.400 Or what other factors are relevant?

00:31:52.400 Well, there's also some mental health problems in terms of, for example, depression.

00:32:02.400 We haven't measured everything, but most of the emotional behavioral problems that individuals have are likely to affect

00:32:19.400 the next generation.

00:32:24.400 And because mothers are the ones who are getting pregnant, what they do during pregnancy is going to affect 0.99

00:32:36.400 the development of their child's brain.

00:32:40.400 And that will affect how well they adjust to their environment after birth.

00:32:48.400 So do you think that whatever neurological impairment emerges as a consequence of less than optimal pregnancy increases the proclivity

00:33:02.400 for aggression per se or decreases the probability that the child will be able to learn to control it?

00:33:08.400 Is there any data on that?

00:33:12.400 No, it's a hard distinction to make.

00:33:14.400 Yeah.

00:33:15.400 No, it's a very hard distinction.

00:33:17.400 No, there's not clear data on that.

00:33:23.400 I think the approach to getting closer to understanding exactly what's happening is when we are using a prevention approach, an experiment in terms of prevention.

00:33:47.400 And maybe it's time to introduce this approach.

00:33:52.400 Part of the studies that I've been doing are longitudinal studies where we simply follow thousands of families from pregnancy until the children's adult life.

00:34:08.400 But a more interesting approach is, but more difficult, is experimental interventions.

00:34:20.400 So in those experimental interventions, researchers think up of a way of treating the problem, of preventing the problem.

00:34:35.400 And so we do an experiment.

00:34:36.400 And there have been very nice experiments that have been done on helping young women who have behavior problems, emotional problems, and become pregnant in helping them, supporting them during pregnancy and after birth.

00:34:59.400 So that we can see to what extent we can help their children adjust better to their environment.

00:35:12.400 And David Orwell in the United States has been doing what I think are the best studies on the experimental studies on helping high risk girls.

00:35:30.400 And the results, he's been doing this for at least 25 quarter of a century.

00:35:38.400 And so we have data on the outcome, the long-term outcome for the children.

00:35:45.400 And it's very clear that giving support to young pregnant women who have behavior, mental health problems, is helping their children in the long run to adjust much better to their environment.

00:36:06.400 And interestingly, the latest data that I've seen is showing that it's helping the baby girls more than helping the baby boys.

00:36:20.400 So it may take at least two generations to be able to help the boys that would have major problems if their mothers were not being helped.

00:36:36.100 So what is it that, what does the support that's offered to these mothers that works, consist of?

00:36:45.300 What needs, what needs to be done?

00:36:47.260 And you also mentioned young women.

00:36:48.720 So is one of the risk factors as well, age of mother at birth?

00:36:53.740 Yes.

00:36:54.180 Well, yes.

00:36:55.440 Age of mother at birth has traditionally been an indicator that there is a problem.

00:37:03.900 I mean, what about marital status?

00:37:07.340 I mean, there's a huge body of literature, and again, correct me if I'm not up to date on this, indicating that on average, children without fathers, stable fathers, do much worse across a whole variety of indices than children with stable fathers.

00:37:23.340 And now, you could make a couple of cases for that.

00:37:25.820 You could say that maybe the women that you're talking about are less likely to attract a stable partner, and so it isn't actually the presence of the man that's the determining factor.

00:37:37.900 It's the fact that instability is more likely in a relationship if the young mother is unstable herself.

00:37:45.140 What do you think about, and you're not seeing a role for fathers precisely in the developmental trajectory of aggression, so what do you, how do you comprehend the fatherlessness literature and the literature you're discussing?

00:38:01.320 How do they fit together or not?

00:38:03.120 Well, part of the problem is assortative mating, and there's very interesting data coming out from, I think it's in Sweden,

00:38:18.200 at least one of the Scandinavian countries where it's very clear, because they have access to the data from the whole population, the data is pretty good, and there's clearly assortative mating among people who have psychological problems.

00:38:44.880 Okay, so you'll have to define that for everyone.

00:38:48.020 Assortative mating means that you are mating with a mate that has some of the same characteristics as you have.

00:39:02.060 So, if we are talking, say, for mental illness, if girls who have mental illness problems are more likely to have children with men who have mental illness problems.

00:39:21.540 So, do you suppose that's a consequence of access across hierarchies?

00:39:28.740 So, if you're put into a socioeconomic rung in part because of your impaired mental ability, let's say, either cognitively or with regards to mental disorder,

00:39:40.500 that the people that you're exposed to and likely to initiate a relationship are much more likely to be drawn from that strata.

00:39:47.040 Yes, well, yeah, there is assortative mating related to the social class that you are in.

00:39:58.180 So, people tend to mate with people from the same social class, but within a social class, there appears to be also assertive mating for having problems.

00:40:14.280 And to a certain extent, it makes sense that if you're mentally, you have mental health problems, you are not attractive to someone who doesn't have problems.

00:40:31.740 So, people who don't have mental health problems tend to mate with people who don't have mental health problems, and those who have mental health problems tend to mate with, I mean, this is not, we're talking about probabilities here.

00:40:52.940 Right, right, right. So, it becomes very difficult to parse apart the biological influences and the influences of impaired physical health and the sociological and family environment influences.

00:41:06.440 Yes.

00:41:06.900 What do you see as the role of, as the beneficial or harmful role of fathers in the upbringing of children in relationship to violence?

00:41:20.480 Well, there is certainly the model in the sense that if the parents, the father or the mother, are using physical aggression with the children and are using physical aggression among themselves,

00:41:45.560 it's very hard for a child to learn not to use physical aggression.

00:41:50.840 So, there is a modeling.

00:41:54.680 Right, well, so is it modeling of the aggression or is it failure to model the inhibition of aggression?

00:42:00.320 Well, it seems in some sense more likely, because the thing about aggression, especially at the level that you study, is it's not that sophisticated in some sense.

00:42:10.780 It's not that hard to learn to hit. It's sort of there. What's hard to learn is to implement a, like, if you want someone's toy, you want to play with their toy and you're little,

00:42:20.420 you can hit them and take it, or you can figure out a more sophisticated strategy so that you can both play together.

00:42:26.060 But that's actually hard, and that, in principle, would take modeling and proper reinforcement and all of that.

00:42:32.060 And so, part of this, I think, is a model of simplicity versus sophistication.

00:42:37.660 Yes.

00:42:37.940 And then, we talked about this years ago, too, and I'd like to know how your thoughts have stayed the same or changed over time.

00:42:44.840 Do you think that the children who are becoming, that children, as they become less aggressive, are inhibiting their aggression,

00:42:52.520 or do you think they're integrating it into more sophisticated behaviors?

00:42:57.680 Well, yeah. I think it's both. It's both in the sense that from a cognitive perspective, as we develop, we become cognitively more sophisticated,

00:43:21.020 and we understand the consequences of these behaviors. If you hit and you get hit, and with time, you learn that you won't get hit as often if you're not hitting.

00:43:39.140 So, and there is that control over yourself, and there are the models.

00:43:52.240 So, I don't think it's one or the other. It's a number of factors that bring you to understand and to be able to control your behavior and not use aggression and use more sophisticated ways.

00:44:18.940 When you see parents who have been successful in bringing their more aggressive child's aggression under control developmentally,

00:44:30.400 have you developed any insight into the nature of the disciplinary strategies they're using?

00:44:35.980 Because I was looking at the outcome studies, the intervention outcome studies today before we talked,

00:44:42.080 and I thought, what happens in families that are functioning well when a child manifests in aggressive behavior?

00:44:50.660 What sort of disciplinary strategies are implemented to encourage that child, let's say, to use his words instead of hitting, or something like that?

00:45:02.300 And in my observations of parents who don't know what they're doing with their children,

00:45:06.400 they're often left completely adrift when their child manifests in aggressive behavior.

00:45:11.500 They seem to have absolutely no idea about how to respond to that in a way that makes it less likely in the future.

00:45:17.640 Or sometimes they even covertly reinforce it.

00:45:21.460 So, are the micro-analysis of disciplinary strategies there yet, or is it still vague and unknown?

00:45:29.280 Well, there are efforts at looking at that, but from my perspective, this area, this is so complex.

00:45:47.860 There are so many factors that are involved that it's very hard to dissect in the way that would be satisfying to answer the questions that you are asking.

00:46:10.200 Let's come back to the experimental interventions.

00:46:15.140 The experimental interventions with pregnant women who appear to be at risk because they have behavior problems,

00:46:28.960 they have mental health problems.

00:46:31.860 The work that David Oles has been doing, the interventions last from early pregnancy

00:46:41.780 until the child's second year of life.

00:46:47.040 It visits, it's home visitation by nurses.

00:46:53.180 And these interventions with these women have, you look 20 years down the line,

00:47:03.660 and their girls are adapting much better than the control group girls that didn't get these two years of intervention.

00:47:14.620 So, what we can see from these experiments is that it's possible to change the life of the children of these girls that had adjustment problems.

00:47:34.880 But getting at exactly what was done within these two years, there is a general push towards, let's do everything we can to help them.

00:47:53.900 And it's clear that it works, there is something, it doesn't tell us the minute details of what happened in the brain of the child or during pregnancy.

00:48:09.120 It's telling us these interventions will save us money and will help part of individuals who have problems in the long run.

00:48:25.200 So, what do the interventions consist of?

00:48:27.480 So, what would a girl who was a pregnant girl who was enrolled in one of these programs expect?

00:48:34.520 What would she receive as a consequence of the intervention?

00:48:37.380 Well, she will receive from the nurse visits at home, and the nurse will counsel her into everything that she has to decide

00:48:55.480 in terms of the quality of what she eats during pregnancy and in the interaction she has with other people.

00:49:03.900 Well, everything that's difficult for them, she can share with the nurse, and the nurse will help solve the problem.

00:49:17.240 Well, it sounds like the provision of a grandmother, like a competent grandmother in some sense.

00:49:23.900 Yes, a mother, yeah, it's not like psychotherapy where you follow exactly the way the person is thinking.

00:49:38.140 It's more of a – and these nurses, with time, learn to deal with these different problems. 0.99

00:49:49.880 There is another approach, which could be done at the same time as the nurse home visitation program.

00:50:03.380 I think that stopping at age 2 is too early, and I've been pushing for getting another type of intervention,

00:50:21.060 at least from age 2, because we know that age 2 is the time when the children have physical aggression – the more – for physical aggression.

00:50:36.700 They have – their problems are at the top at age 2, and so the other approach that could be a good complement is daycare, quality daycare.

00:50:51.120 And the experiments that have been done with daycare, quality daycare, are showing very long-term effects also on the children.

00:51:03.740 I think the best approach that has not been tried yet is to use the nurse home visitation jointly with the daycare, quality daycare interventions.

00:51:25.580 The quality daycare interventions have shown that high-quality daycare has long-term effects and even intergenerational long-term effects.

00:51:43.260 And positive effects.

00:51:44.780 Yeah, positive effects.

00:51:46.280 Okay, so let me ask you a couple of questions about that, because that's interesting in and of itself.

00:51:51.140 Yes.

00:51:51.480 Do you think that daycare has particularly positive effects on the kids from mothers whose maternal behavior is impaired? 1.00

00:52:03.740 So in Head Start, one of the hypotheses about why Head Start, the wide-scale anti-poverty initiative in the U.S.,

00:52:13.720 one of the reasons that it had the successful outcomes it did have, which included less high school dropout,

00:52:20.680 and fewer teen pregnancies and fewer teen pregnancies and less arrests, if I remember correctly, although no impact on cognitive development.

00:52:28.260 Part of the theory about why that worked was that children in particularly bad families, let's say, particularly impaired families,

00:52:36.180 got out of those families to some degree when they were put in a different maternal, so to speak, maternal setting.

00:52:43.560 So is it removal, or is it something that's being added?

00:52:47.560 And do you see the benefit of daycare across the spectrum of children, or is it specific to the more at-risk kids?

00:52:54.840 Well, the best results, long-term results, comes from Jim Eckman's analysis of the data for the second generation.

00:53:09.500 So it's clear that the high-quality, it was the high-scope intervention that was done in Michigan,

00:53:20.140 shows that the children who were in this high-quality daycare compared to a control group were better off as they became adults,

00:53:34.540 but also their own children, compared to the children of those who did not go to the daycare, were much better off.

00:53:46.600 Okay, so what are the elements that characterize high-quality daycare, and at what ages and for how long?

00:53:52.320 Yeah, well, the good quality daycare helps the children learn in terms of interest, social behavior, of interacting,

00:54:09.120 but also in terms of cognitive development.

00:54:12.660 It's clear, I've been thinking recently, looking at the impact of the COVID-19,

00:54:22.180 that we are going to put a lot of money on helping old people die later. 0.97

00:54:33.640 There's the baby boomers are going to be in the daycare homes soon, and there's going to be a lot of people in the daycare.

00:54:45.820 And what happened during the epidemic will sort of push us to put more resources into helping old people in daycare centers,

00:55:00.640 in centers for, yeah, it's sort of daycare centers for them.

00:55:07.160 Right.

00:55:07.340 But we have all these children that need daycare, and quality daycare is equivalent to the school system.

00:55:20.200 And it's amazing that we are not providing free daycare in the same way that we're providing free kindergarten

00:55:33.200 and free elementary school and free high school.

00:55:38.560 Children are at their best in terms of learning during the preschool years.

00:55:46.920 And so we should be investing massively into getting all children into high-quality daycare.

00:55:58.520 That will provide, they will be better prepared to benefit from elementary school and from high school and from university.

00:56:08.240 It's really amazing that our societies have not, are not providing free quality education from essentially birth onwards.

00:56:23.200 And we know from the research on cognitive development that the years where our brains are more open to learning is during the early years.

00:56:42.080 So let me ask you a couple of questions about that.

00:56:45.140 I mean, there are factors, obviously, that stand in the way.

00:56:49.200 I mean, I worked in the daycare business for a while when I was very young and developing standards for daycare in Alberta.

00:56:56.800 The younger the children, the higher the ratio of teachers to children necessary, right?

00:57:02.920 So if you have two-year-olds in daycare, you need something approximating one teacher per three two-year-olds.

00:57:10.960 And so it becomes expensive very rapidly.

00:57:13.940 If you want a qualified teacher, you need to spend $40,000 a year, let's say, to have someone with university education.

00:57:22.820 And divided by three, that's $15,000.

00:57:25.360 And then you can double that for the infrastructure.

00:57:27.920 So it's about $30,000 per child per year at that level for quality daycare.

00:57:34.440 And certainly that's so much money that many people would not be able to afford that if it was there, you know, if they had, especially if they had a couple of kids.

00:57:44.240 And so do you, so that's part of the reason it doesn't happen, I presume.

00:57:49.160 And then the question also arises is whether children who are coming from families who are intact and, let's say, psychologically healthy, to the degree that that's possible,

00:58:04.480 is there an additional benefit for those children to be placed in daycare?

00:58:09.300 Or is this something that's more specifically appropriate for the children who are at risk, for that 17%, let's say, who are developmentally, who are aggressive and who also have family structure that isn't optimal?

00:58:23.260 Yeah, well, it's the work by Ekman is showing that it's the cost benefit analysis is in favor of doing this for the children who have, who need more support.

00:58:42.900 Yeah, well, I think I read recently that it's $350,000 a year to keep someone in prison.

00:58:49.880 Yeah, it's possible.

00:58:52.040 So it's extraordinarily expensive in any case, and maybe that figure is wrong.

00:58:55.820 But your point is that, well, there's deferred costs if those early interventions don't occur.

00:59:01.500 And so it's not a savings.

00:59:03.360 Yeah.

00:59:03.960 So, I mean, if you put together the home visitation to high-risk pregnant women, and that, I mean, pregnant women, they go and see doctors.

00:59:18.220 They go when they become pregnant, and it's easy to identify who needs help and who doesn't need help.

00:59:28.040 So that's...

00:59:29.640 So how would you identify them?

00:59:32.000 Well, the characteristics that we've identified in terms of schooling, physical and mental health problem...

00:59:45.580 Okay, so a competent physician should be able to determine that without too much trouble.

00:59:50.160 It's not very easy to identify.

00:59:52.220 And so if you give them that nurse home visitation program, then, and once the baby is born,

01:00:07.480 if you, if the baby has access to daycare, and access to daycare until kindergarten.

01:00:19.640 And then we did an experiment where we provided support to parents of aggressive children, aggressive kindergarten children.

01:00:34.240 This is another prevention experiment where we randomly allocated support to the parents,

01:00:42.480 home visits to the parents, support to the teacher, and social skills training with peers that are highly pro-social.

01:00:53.940 So we created groups where you have the most pro-social kids, and you put the least pro-social kids, one in a small group,

01:01:04.680 and they become friends with them, the pro-social kids help the less pro-social kids.

01:01:13.080 And we've shown that it prevents delinquency, it prevents criminal behavior in adulthood.

01:01:20.820 So if you put these different interventions together from, essentially, the start of pregnancy up to the end of elementary school,

01:01:37.520 you will save a lot of money.

01:01:40.520 You will help a lot of people and prevent a lot of misery in our, in our societies.

01:01:53.480 You grouped pro-social children in kindergarten with anti-social children.

01:01:59.580 So more pro-social children in the group.

01:02:02.200 And I'd like to know two things.

01:02:04.820 How did you formulate the groups?

01:02:07.220 Like, how did you encourage the children to, to, uh, initiate friendships within that group?

01:02:13.280 And were you concerned at that point that the pro-social kids would be inclined towards more violence

01:02:20.760 as a consequence of being exposed to the violent kids?

01:02:23.700 Because I remember Joan McCord's work, um, and they seem to indicate, the longitudinal study in, um, in Somerville, Massachusetts,

01:02:32.760 seemed to indicate that grouping anti-social kids together was a very bad idea.

01:02:38.960 That they, that made them, so prisons, for example, are a great place to make people even more violent,

01:02:43.820 uh, which is something that should also be stressed.

01:02:46.360 It's not a wise intervention to group anti-social people together.

01:02:50.220 Okay, so you made these groups.

01:02:51.620 How did you encourage the children to, to make friendships?

01:02:54.720 Well, yeah, we, we did not expect that that would happen.

01:03:03.320 Uh, what, what we did is we put one, um, I think it's one or two, I don't remember exactly,

01:03:12.860 in a group of four or five.

01:03:15.440 And the aim of the, the grouping was to learn social skills.

01:03:24.920 I mean, it was sort of a, a class where you learned pro-social skills.

01:03:30.620 Like what?

01:03:31.300 What would constitute something you could teach?

01:03:33.380 And these were four-year-old kids, basically?

01:03:35.540 Three or four?

01:03:36.280 No, no, no, they were in elementary school.

01:03:38.600 Oh, so they're old.

01:03:39.380 Oh, they're old.

01:03:39.960 They were seven.

01:03:41.500 Oh, okay, okay.

01:03:42.600 So, so, so, so they have a bit more sophistication at that point.

01:03:45.920 And what, what sort of skills were they taught?

01:03:47.680 Well, it's the usual social skill of how you get someone to enter a group, how you help

01:03:57.360 others, what you do when there's this problem or, or that problem.

01:04:01.900 So it's relatively, it's the social skills, uh, work that has been done since the 1960s.

01:04:10.280 Okay, so do you think it was the social skills training or the friendships that developed

01:04:14.900 that socialized the kids?

01:04:16.500 Yeah, we, we did not, our aim was not to, that they would become friends.

01:04:22.200 Right, right.

01:04:22.980 Uh, our aim was that they would learn the social skills.

01:04:26.100 And if, if, if there are good models, uh, then it's easier to, to learn, uh, rather than

01:04:33.140 having a group of non-pro-social skills trying to learn together.

01:04:38.860 It's, that's very hard.

01:04:40.900 Uh, it's only afterwards that we discovered, um, that, uh, two, three years later, uh, the,

01:04:51.780 the children who had problems, who participated in these groups had more pro-social friends

01:05:01.100 two, three years later.

01:05:03.060 It's not necessarily, it's, it's not necessarily, they were friends with the ones within the

01:05:10.600 group.

01:05:10.940 It's possible, but they, probably their behavior changed and they were more acceptable by the

01:05:21.300 pro-social kids, uh, than, than those who continued to aggress.

01:05:26.560 I remember when we worked together that, um, one of the things I learned was that the kids

01:05:34.620 were aggressive at age two, and then most of them were socialized by the age of four.

01:05:38.560 And if they weren't, part of what happened was that it was difficult for the kids who

01:05:43.840 maintained their two-year-old level of aggression at four or something approximating it to make

01:05:49.000 friends.

01:05:50.240 And so then they got further isolated and that seemed to be, because, so that model is

01:05:56.320 something like, well, your parents are obviously a very important source of socialization.

01:06:00.740 You've been indicating that with mothers in particular, but as children age and become

01:06:06.040 more socially sophisticated, their peers become an increasingly important source of socialization.

01:06:12.880 And the reciprocity that is necessary between peers is a very important part of the socialization

01:06:19.160 of pro-social behavior.

01:06:21.140 And so you're aggressive at four like you were at two.

01:06:24.000 You, none of the sophisticated four-year-olds will play with you because of that.

01:06:27.280 So you're alienated and isolated and they continue to develop and you stay where you

01:06:33.120 were and maybe get also angry and bitter and so forth as you're excluded.

01:06:38.100 And is that, is that still a reasonable way of looking at it?

01:06:40.800 Yeah.

01:06:41.220 Yeah.

01:06:41.420 That's exactly what appears to be happening.

01:06:44.340 Um, okay.

01:06:46.080 And so your intervention perhaps slow, stop that from happening.

01:06:51.740 So, so, so, so, so comprehensively, you got them back into the play track and yes.

01:06:59.840 Yeah.

01:07:00.000 Okay.

01:07:00.140 So there's another implication of your research.

01:07:02.000 I'd like to briefly discuss and, and, and then we'll, we'll continue with the main track.

01:07:06.920 There's a tremendous amount of noise, I would say in the popular culture at the moment about

01:07:14.240 the structure of human social organizations, critic critiques of human social organizations.

01:07:19.780 So we, we tend to exist in hierarchies that are oriented towards a particular task or goal

01:07:25.860 or around a profession, et cetera.

01:07:28.900 And, and the criticism is something like hierarchies are tyrannical in their central nature and

01:07:36.880 they're predicated on power and little else.

01:07:39.640 And yet, and if that was true, what I would expect to find as a consequence of your research

01:07:44.760 was that the proportion of children who use aggression as a strategy, even initially when

01:07:51.120 they're two would be much higher.

01:07:52.760 Like if power is actually the force that moves you up social hierarchies, then the deep

01:07:58.900 default, uh, mode of interaction should be force.

01:08:02.900 But your research indicates that the force, the ability to use force is there in the beginning,

01:08:08.180 but that it isn't overwhelmingly widely dispersed.

01:08:14.020 And even more importantly, as children are socialized into these hierarchies, they become

01:08:19.020 much less aggressive rather than more.

01:08:21.560 And so to me, that's a, that's a fatal blow to theories that posit that sophisticated hierarchical

01:08:28.420 organizations are likely to be dominated by those people who do nothing but exercise power.

01:08:34.780 And I don't, I'd like your opinion about all of that, or at least some of it.

01:08:42.140 I guess it depends on how you define power.

01:08:46.680 Um, the, uh, well, I would say I exert power on you when I'm, I'm compelling you to do something

01:08:55.540 you wouldn't do voluntarily.

01:08:56.720 Yeah.

01:08:57.220 Yeah.

01:08:57.580 But in, in early childhood, it's physical aggression.

01:09:02.600 Um, and I, I think that as we become more sophisticated, what we learn in early childhood is to talk,

01:09:13.680 is to interact and convince people by what you say.

01:09:19.040 Uh, so it becomes very verbal rather than, than, than physical.

01:09:24.960 Well, we learn to dance too.

01:09:26.540 I mean, one of the things you learn if you're a successful child is how to take turns.

01:09:31.060 Yes, yes, yeah.

01:09:33.280 And, and that's an unbelievably important scaffold for, for, well, for conversation, for example,

01:09:39.200 but certainly for shared games and, and cooperative activity.

01:09:43.160 Yes, yes.

01:09:44.540 And it's the children that can't do that and that default to aggression that don't do well.

01:09:49.520 Yes.

01:09:49.940 Um, and, and I, I guess there are so many things that go wrong with those who.

01:10:01.060 Can not adjust to, to the group.

01:10:04.440 That it's not one thing.

01:10:06.460 It's a number of things that prevents them from, um, getting on with others and getting the others to accept them in, in their group.

01:10:21.080 And, and so they become rejected and the rejected are the ones that aggress, uh, the others.

01:10:29.780 Uh, and, and to some extent, some, uh, have pleasure in being rejected.

01:10:35.700 They provoke others and they're happy if the others get mad.

01:10:40.380 Yeah, well, they'll, they'll, look, kids will default to whatever strategy provides them with any attention whatsoever.

01:10:46.660 Yes.

01:10:46.920 And if they can't do it in a sophisticated way, they're going to do it in an unsophisticated way.

01:10:50.860 Yes, exactly.

01:10:52.860 So, and they can occupy that niche and, and get whatever, um, attention is left over as a consequence of that.

01:10:59.160 I mean, I don't think there's anything that a child finds more intolerable than being absolutely ignored.

01:11:05.960 Exactly.

01:11:07.540 I agree.

01:11:08.920 Okay.

01:11:09.520 So, um, how is your work being received broadly?

01:11:14.980 And what, I mean, you won this award from the, uh, uh, you won the Stockholm prize, the 2000, oh, it was St. Augustine, by the way.

01:11:22.180 Yes.

01:11:22.900 It was St. Augustine.

01:11:23.900 So, yeah, I, uh, was looking for it.

01:11:29.380 So you, you won this 2017 Stockholm prize in criminology and the Scandinavians have done a tremendous amount of long-term high quality work on criminology and aggression and all of that.

01:11:40.600 So you're obviously receiving a fair bit of attention from your peers.

01:11:44.640 How has your work been received broadly among sociologists and all of the other members of disciplines that are, that are, that have some focus on criminality and aggression?

01:11:56.060 Yes.

01:11:56.660 Well, I, you know, I was surprised when I, uh, heard that I was getting the, uh, the Stockholm prize.

01:12:06.340 Um, the Stockholm prize is, um, the Stockholm prize is given by an international, it's sort of the equivalent of, it, it's meant to be the equivalent of the Nobel prize for, uh, for criminology.

01:12:19.400 Uh, and I'm not a criminologist, uh, uh, uh, I was trained as an educational psychologist, um, and I was surprised that they gave me this prize because, uh, criminology has been, is, I mean, it's closer to sociology.

01:12:42.940 It's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's a social science, more social than psychology is, um, right.

01:12:52.920 So it's concentrating on group determinants of behavior, economic factors and, and, and, and social factors rather than intrinsic psychological factors at the level of the individual.

01:13:03.760 Yes, yes, exactly.

01:13:05.040 And so, um, the idea that we are, uh, we, we are born good and it's the environment that makes us bad is, is more the way criminologists would look at life than the fact that we, we have, we are born to survive in the jungle.

01:13:32.720 And so, um, and the environment makes us adapt and adjust to, uh, uh, a less violent environment.

01:13:42.580 I was, I was surprised that, um, I was getting the, the award because my, my work has been more, uh, uh, psychological and to a certain extent, uh, criticizing the, the perspective that, um,

01:14:02.720 uh, we are, uh, uh, society, um, is, is, is not, uh, making us bad, but, um, but, um, but by and large making us better.

01:14:18.740 Yes.

01:14:19.980 Um, uh, and, uh, I guess that there is clearly in criminology, uh, um, people are recognizing,

01:14:32.720 more and more, um, um, the, the psychological perspectives, uh, of human, uh, development and there is clearly an openness to the type of work that we have been doing, uh, both in terms of the experimental work.

01:14:54.340 Uh, it's very hard for people to, um, um, say that, uh, this is only words.

01:15:03.220 When you do an experiment, you have a control group and you show the long-term effects, uh, of, of these interventions.

01:15:14.340 Well, I also think it's, it's harder to, um, what, avoid what the data is indicating if the data results have also come as a surprise to the researcher.

01:15:27.100 I mean, you said, and I mean, that's been my experience constantly as a research psychologist is that I find out things that not only did I not expect that I really didn't like.

01:15:36.740 Yeah.

01:15:37.380 And, but those are much more compelling.

01:15:39.500 And so you came in at this with a Rousseauian viewpoint, essentially.

01:15:43.660 And, but what you saw convinced you that that wasn't an appropriate, uh, perceptual frame, let's say.

01:15:53.280 And, and so, so it's good to see that the, the criminologists have been open to this and, and what has been the consequence of that?

01:16:00.260 And what do you think the most trenchant remaining criticisms of your approach and your theorizing are?

01:16:07.180 Like, where are the weaknesses in what you're doing as far as you're concerned?

01:16:12.720 Um, well, the, I think the most important weakness is not, not being able to do experiments that are still, that are much bigger.

01:16:30.260 Than, uh, the experiments that, that we have done.

01:16:33.460 It's, it's hard to do these, uh, experiments, did, uh, randomized controlled trials.

01:16:41.860 I don't think there's any more difficult psychological research endeavor than, um, experimental interventions.

01:16:49.100 I mean, the hurdles are immense.

01:16:51.300 It's impossible to get subjects.

01:16:53.120 There's, there's ethical concerns of, of a multitude of sorts.

01:16:56.880 It's unbelievably expensive.

01:16:58.260 It's time consuming.

01:16:59.360 It's hard.

01:17:00.860 It takes years before you generate data to publish.

01:17:04.280 Um, there's a high probability that your intervention is going to fail.

01:17:07.560 You need an entire bureaucracy to run it that has to be maintained over years.

01:17:11.700 It's so difficult.

01:17:13.080 I'm amazed that anyone ever does it.

01:17:15.460 Yeah.

01:17:15.960 Well, I've, um, over the years, I've, uh, tried many times, uh, to convince, uh, I, I managed to convince one very rich person.

01:17:29.340 I was a rich man to support, uh, uh, and to, to, to, to support the work that we were doing.

01:17:38.140 And it's in his, his, his environment that convinced, uh, over time, uh, made, made so much trouble that we had to drop it, um, to, to drop this, uh, this research.

01:17:52.840 Not because he didn't want it, but he, one morning he said, Richard, I don't get the support from the people around me.

01:18:03.380 And, um, and I can't go on with this.

01:18:06.300 Uh, they, they are making my life too difficult.

01:18:09.020 And so we stopped.

01:18:10.220 What kind of obstacles did he run into as a consequence of supporting your research?

01:18:15.360 Well, it was mainly the opinion, uh, of the people around him.

01:18:20.360 Um, he's a billionaire.

01:18:23.320 Uh, a lot of people want his money.

01:18:25.880 Uh, and, um, he was telling me, let's go, let's do it.

01:18:32.920 Um, but after a while, uh, he said, I'm getting too much negative, uh, comments about, about what you're doing.

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01:22:17.360 And what are the objections?

01:22:20.440 Is it focused on the idea that, the unpalatable idea that there is a biology of aggression, let's say, or that it's early onset and innate in people?

01:22:30.100 Or, like, I'm very curious about this because I see these sorts of hypothetically ethical objections to scientific endeavor popping up more and more frequently everywhere.

01:22:41.480 And it doesn't surprise me because the fact that we were ever able to do genuine scientific research at all is a complete bloody miracle.

01:22:49.740 I mean, it's only been around for 300 years and it's only happened once.

01:22:53.980 So, we don't know the preconditions.

01:22:56.440 But what are the obstacles that he faced and you faced, let's say, as a consequence of your critics?

01:23:03.540 Well, the consequences are that, for me, are that I think we have the means to advance knowledge.

01:23:20.440 So, it's like medicine, but we don't have the support from the research agencies don't have enough money to support these interventions.

01:23:40.060 So, you either get the money from someone who's very rich, who wants to change the world, or you get support from the Ministry of Education, from the Ministry of Health.

01:23:53.860 And each time I've sort of almost got it, got the support, it was taken away for political reasons.

01:24:14.120 And the political reasons are what?

01:24:16.220 What's the objection?

01:24:17.600 What is it that's...

01:24:19.260 I mean, we should also point out that you were radically successful at acquiring research funds compared to other research scientists.

01:24:26.620 And, I mean, that also is a testament to your skill as an administrator and a communicator, as well as a researcher,

01:24:34.640 because it's very rare that those three things come together, because they're all very difficult.

01:24:39.200 So, you've had success, but what's driving opposition?

01:24:42.840 And also, has that got worse in recent years?

01:24:45.320 What's been your experience over the last while?

01:24:47.480 Well, over the last year with the pandemic, we appear to be having more success.

01:24:55.680 There is...

01:24:56.880 The Quebec government has been putting in a lot of money in research in terms of helping to see what's coming.

01:25:11.820 And hopefully, we will put in, we will be able to put in some experiments.

01:25:21.220 But I guess the biggest handicap is that governments, and I think it's like that everywhere,

01:25:34.180 are not really ready to experiment.

01:25:41.520 If you think of the education of children, we should constantly be experimenting, measuring...

01:25:52.660 That's what the faculties of education should have been doing for the last 50 years.

01:25:56.120 Yes.

01:25:56.380 And they've done virtually none of it.

01:25:58.660 No.

01:25:59.320 And that's my, I guess, my biggest frustration.

01:26:05.380 It's...

01:26:05.900 Yeah, I can't believe we don't have technologies to teach children to read in six months by now.

01:26:10.840 I mean...

01:26:11.280 Yes.

01:26:11.860 Yeah.

01:26:12.280 It's just, it's appalling.

01:26:13.940 I'm also curious about the degree to which you've run into philosophical opposition because of the anti-Rousseauian, let's say, nature,

01:26:23.200 or the partial anti-Rousseauian nature of your research, because it does push against the general consensus of the time.

01:26:32.180 Yeah.

01:26:32.360 Well, from the criminology and social, that, and the social sciences in general, that was the main criticism in the sense that the social sciences are more based on a Rousseauian approach to understanding who we are

01:27:00.440 than the biological science and the psychology from a biological perspective.

01:27:12.800 But I guess part of that, as you know well, is personality of the people who go into different fields.

01:27:25.800 We go into a field where we feel at ease with the way the majority are thinking, and it's very hard to change the way people think.

01:27:40.960 And I guess...

01:27:41.560 Well, that's why we need science and research and experiments, because we're so hard to teach that we need the data to be, and to be hit over the head with it repeatedly before we can alter our presuppositions.

01:27:51.800 Yeah.

01:27:52.800 Yeah.

01:27:53.800 But what you said earlier in our conversation is that it's relatively rare that you find something that is sort of opposite to what you think, and you accept it.

01:28:15.800 And you say, oh, I had not thought things were like that.

01:28:23.720 No, you have to train graduate students for like five years before they can do that.

01:28:27.660 Yeah.

01:28:28.040 Before they get convinced that that's when you actually know you've discovered something.

01:28:32.580 This is surprising.

01:28:33.660 I'd rather it go away, but I can't make it go away.

01:28:37.220 Despite my wishes, maybe it's true.

01:28:39.760 Yeah.

01:28:41.320 But it's so satisfying when you sort of look back and you say, I was going that way, and look where I'm completely the opposite of where I thought I should be going.

01:28:56.920 And people need to understand that that is satisfying.

01:29:02.220 It's satisfying to say, I was wrong.

01:29:06.580 That's crazy.

01:29:07.760 The way I was looking at things is the wrong way.

01:29:15.500 And so I think that's what science provides.

01:29:19.880 If you're doing science not to confirm what you think, but doing science to learn new things and understand things that you did not understand before.

01:29:35.720 Well, one of the things that shaped the way I think, I guess there were two things.

01:29:41.500 One was the realization, and that was partly as a consequence of being exposed to Joan McCord's work in Somerville, because that was an early intervention program for antisocial behavior and other at-risk behaviors that made things worse.

01:29:58.500 Much to her surprise, her continual personal surprise, I mean, that shaped the entirety of her career, that because they did a broad scale intervention with at-risk kids.

01:30:10.500 And yet the outcome showed that the experimental group did worse on almost every outcome measure.

01:30:16.520 And the conclusion was that they sent the kids out of the city to summer camp together.

01:30:21.600 And that seemed to be a fatal error, essentially, grouping them together made them much more prone to aggression, but also all sorts of mental illnesses.

01:30:30.340 And so it was evident whenever you talked to Dr. McCord, how shocked she was that that had occurred. 0.98

01:30:37.180 And she spent a lot of her time after that telling social scientists, look, don't be so sure that your stupid intervention is going to produce the results that you wish it would. 0.99

01:30:50.580 The world is a lot more complicated than that. 0.91

01:30:52.600 And so once you start to understand that your a priori axiom might do a tremendous amount of damage if it is allowed untrammeled access to the broader culture, it tends to make you much more conservative as a research designer and thinker.

01:31:09.240 And that should, you know, it's very difficult and scary to have one of your axioms violated because you have to do a lot of reconsideration.

01:31:18.400 But it's also very frightening to know that you could be an agent of catastrophe despite your well-meaning efforts.

01:31:25.480 And that's actually the most likely outcome when you do a social science intervention because it's very hard to make things better and it's really easy to make them worse.

01:31:35.460 So you also showed that you've also delved into the biology of this and in a variety of interesting ways.

01:31:43.340 There's the basic biology and so maybe we could talk a little bit about the biology of aggressive behavior and its dysregulation.

01:31:52.380 So I'll start that off and I've been very attracted by the behavioral neuroscientists, Panksepp and Jeffrey Gray, Yak Panksepp and Jeffrey Gray particularly.

01:32:02.980 And they've basically shown that we have modules, neuropsychological modules, neurophysiological modules for our basic emotions and motivations and fear and surprise and disgust and play for that matter, hunger, sex drive, defensive aggression, predatory aggression,

01:32:26.760 which I think is more what you're studying, is that aggression in the service of an aim rather than defensive aggression.

01:32:34.400 And so these modules are there right from the beginning.

01:32:40.200 They manifest themselves in individually different ways and then they're brought under control or integrated as people develop.

01:32:46.860 What do you see as key to the biological understanding of the kinds of aggression itself, but also of the kinds of differences in aggression that you're studying?

01:32:57.520 I must admit that I have not been focused on the biological dimensions, except once I understood about epigenetics, I sort of turned to look at the importance of epigenetics.

01:33:24.960 And so you were interested in the intergenerational transmission or of aggressive behavior.

01:33:31.900 And is that what led you?

01:33:33.020 And we should also define epigenetics, let everybody know what that signifies and what you were exploring.

01:33:38.740 Yeah.

01:33:40.260 Well, I guess it was around 2004.

01:33:46.420 I was part of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research that Fraser Mustard had created, where we were a committee on human development.

01:34:01.920 And one of our guests was Moisey Schiff from McGill University, a biologist who was working on epigenetics with Michael...

01:34:21.920 I'm not...

01:34:25.920 Rudder?

01:34:26.300 No, with Michael Meany here at McGill University.

01:34:33.480 And Moisey, there was a group of geneticists.

01:34:39.320 That group of geneticists was working on human development.

01:34:48.960 And so Moisey came and showed us the mechanism, the epigenetic mechanisms of mothering, that rats that are well licked at birth, their brains are changed.

01:35:12.820 Sometimes it has an impact on gene expression and they live alone.

01:35:20.300 Yeah, well, if they're licked, they're cared for.

01:35:22.120 It's really important.

01:35:23.120 Yeah, that's right.

01:35:23.240 It's not a trivial behavior.

01:35:24.740 It's the focus of maternal love and competence in rats.

01:35:29.240 So, I mean, people often don't understand how relevant animal research can be.

01:35:33.600 And this is...

01:35:34.240 I mean, who studies licking in rats?

01:35:36.040 It's like, no, no, you don't understand.

01:35:38.100 This is a key component of social interaction and protection.

01:35:42.680 And it signifies the existence of a relatively benevolent environment.

01:35:46.960 Exactly.

01:35:48.000 Yeah.

01:35:48.480 And so these rats were living longer.

01:35:54.860 So licking had a long-term impact on the lives of these pups.

01:36:03.380 And I remember that was 2004.

01:36:07.180 And most of the geneticists around the table were saying, this is incredible.

01:36:16.160 And they were sort of not really accepting the explanation that Moishi was giving of facilitating gene expression and influencing brain development.

01:36:37.500 Yeah.

01:36:37.720 So let's stop there and take that a part of a minute because this is quite remarkable.

01:36:41.120 So, look, one of the things that can happen when you're exposed to a new environment is that you can acquire new information.

01:36:48.320 And you learn.

01:36:49.220 But another thing that can happen is the environment can turn on one set of genes that are relevant to neural development or another set.

01:36:57.980 And so it's as if, in some sense, that your genes contain a tremendous amount of not expressed potential.

01:37:04.420 And then you enter an environment and that set of potentials relevant to that environment turns on.

01:37:10.740 And it's reminiscent to me of the platonic theory that all knowledge is remembering, in some sense,

01:37:16.800 is that we have this massive store of potential residing inside our biological apparatus, coded at the genetic level.

01:37:24.060 But that's not necessarily turned on because of the environments that we inhabit or don't inhabit.

01:37:32.240 Okay.

01:37:32.580 So you put rats in a benevolent environment, rat pups in a benevolent environment,

01:37:36.380 and that turns on a certain set of genetic codes that alters, well, things as fundamental as their lifespan.

01:37:43.940 And so what's the epi in epigenetics there?

01:37:46.660 It's the environmental impact on the genetic structure.

01:37:50.420 Yes.

01:37:50.880 And sometimes that can be transmissible, which is also revolutionary.

01:37:54.380 Yes.

01:37:54.940 Yes.

01:37:55.540 Yeah.

01:37:55.980 And it's been shown with humans.

01:38:01.200 So I invited Moshe to work with us.

01:38:10.440 And so we've been doing epigenetic studies of the children that we are following.

01:38:25.540 And we've been showing that the children who are sort of chronic aggressives have, we see differences in epigenetic expression.

01:38:42.060 So we've done that with a small sample of boys in our sample.

01:38:49.600 And the results have been confirmed in a larger longitudinal study in Great Britain, where they've shown that the quality of mothering is impacting gene expression in early childhood

01:39:14.780 and has long-term consequences on behavior during early adulthood.

01:39:21.740 Now, in this paper that was published in Nature, it's an interview with you.

01:39:26.980 It talks about Suomi's research.

01:39:30.080 Yeah.

01:39:30.560 DNA difference in DNA methylation patterns between nurtured monkeys and those separated from their mothers.

01:39:38.720 Yes.

01:39:39.060 And Suomi's research indicates that postnatal adversity, so that be maternal disruption in the maternal bond, affects more than 4,000 genes.

01:39:52.660 It's one-fifth of the genome, and that it tends to cluster in certain chromosomal regions.

01:39:57.340 And also that it alters expression of a gene that Suomi's group had linked to the function of serotonin, which is like the conductor of the entire neurological symphony, a very, very crucially important neurotransmitter.

01:40:13.580 And so you also, you ran a parallel research pathway with Suomi as well.

01:40:21.200 And was that related to the one that you did, that you ran with Moishe?

01:40:23.860 Yeah.

01:40:24.380 Yeah.

01:40:24.720 Suomi was part of the committee of the CIHR committee where Moishe came to give us a talk.

01:40:34.380 And we decided because Steve Suomi's work has been, they were separating the babies from their mothers at birth.

01:40:45.040 Right.

01:40:45.260 So it's a very dramatic intervention.

01:40:47.120 Yeah.

01:40:47.640 That was, it has been done.

01:40:51.600 It's Harlow that started this work in the, I guess, the 19, late 1950s, early 1960s.

01:40:59.080 He studied, he had the famous studies with the cloth-covered wire pseudo-mothers and the wire mothers. 0.99

01:41:05.760 Yeah.

01:41:06.040 So it was all about the attachment of the child to the mother.

01:41:11.920 So the brains of these monkeys had been saved.

01:41:17.000 And so Steve Suomi said, well, let's look at the epigenetic differences for these monkeys that were separated at birth and those who weren't separated.

01:41:31.480 So it's, it's, it's a wonderful way of showing that separation from your mother at birth has behavioral consequences, but it also has important consequences on gene expression in your brain.

01:41:53.040 Right.

01:41:53.700 So it's even, in some sense, it's even more fundamentally important.

01:41:56.960 And so do you, do you think, do you think that the, the disruption of the mother-child relationship that you see in the families that fail to inhibit the expression of aggression, do you think that that's akin to maternal deprivation?

01:42:13.380 It's, it's just a lesser, I mean, you can imagine a continuum of, of maternal care with absolute separation at one end and perfect bonding at the other.

01:42:22.180 There's going to be a continuum and more impaired mothers have a, have a less, um, the, the, the disruption in the behavior is akin to partial, to partial separation from the mother. 0.53

01:42:36.100 It's something like that.

01:42:37.060 I mean, psycho, psychoanalysts, psychologists have always made much of the necessity of the Eric Erickson, for example, as well of the absolute necessity of that initial bond.

01:42:49.100 And that, and that's associated with, well, with really basic behaviors, touch, play, like fundamental behaviors.

01:42:56.580 And you see, for example, studies showing that, I remember these studies of mothers breastfeeding, um, depressed and non-depressed mothers breastfeeding.

01:43:06.520 And the videos were sped up and you could see the non-depressed mothers and the baby who was breastfeeding in this kind of dance where one would move and then the other would move and the, and then the mother would move.

01:43:18.180 And there's this synchrony and reciprocity already emerging in the course of breastfeeding that was disrupted among the depressed mothers and their children.

01:43:27.280 And, and, and, and so you can trace the development of that reciprocity back way, way to the beginning.

01:43:33.300 And I, you know, I think it definitely manifests itself in, in the highly social structuring of such things, such primordial things as feeding might also be a reason why it's the mother's behavior.

01:43:45.740 That's so crucial in the, in the early stages, because she's so integrally involved in that early reciprocity.

01:43:51.900 Yes. And so that's after birth, but you can imagine that even during pregnancy, you have these different effects on what the mother is living is affecting the development of the brain of the child in utero.

01:44:13.220 Yeah. Well, you wonder if like, if the postnatal environment is harsher, let's say, and less welcoming, are the epigenetic transformations producing preparation for existence in a much more Hobbesian world?

01:44:28.060 Yes. Well, that's one, that's one hypothesis that, that you, your brain is prepared to survive in a very tough world compared to others who had a more gentle environment during pregnancy.

01:44:49.060 Right. So the assumption would be that, in some sense, the assumption that your biology is making is that perhaps the reason the mother's behavior is altered in a negative way is because she is genuinely in a negative environment.

01:45:04.800 That is a harsher environment. And so aggression, perhaps in a harsher environment, is associated with a higher probability of, of, of survival.

01:45:15.740 But you, but you, you did indicate, we talked about this just a trifle. You don't have evidence suggesting though, that the more aggressive kids are doing better in their group of, of rejected children, let's say, because I always wonder, is there a parallel hierarchy? There's obviously a hierarchy in prison.

01:45:35.800 Yes. And so if, if, if you look at men in prison, what is it that the men who are doing better are doing? Are they the more violent criminals? Are they the more aggressive people? Or is it even in prisons? Does reciprocity?

01:45:50.780 I mean, obviously, I mean, obviously, if you have a gang, loyalty is still rewarded, and you're going to be looked on very badly if you don't maintain the integrity of your gang. There's a certain risk. That's, that's what, that's the socialized violent pattern, as opposed to the just chaotic violent pattern.

01:46:12.360 Do you, do you, do you think it's a developmental mechanism gone astray that the epigenetic transformation constitutes, or is it, is it a parallel form of adaptation?

01:46:21.040 Well, I, I don't know. It's, there's all these very nice things that need to be studied and, and understood.

01:46:37.720 So it's, for, for those who are interested in psychology, there's a lot of interesting research that needs to be done in the future.

01:46:54.880 And so, let's, let's, maybe we can, we can close this off with a bit of discussion about the, the career of a psychological researcher.

01:47:04.200 It's, it's, it's not something that people know a lot about.

01:47:07.880 I mean, what's, what, how, how would you evaluate your career?

01:47:16.200 Has it been, has it been what you wanted it to be, and why?

01:47:20.520 What, what, what's been compelling and interesting about it?

01:47:23.400 Yeah.

01:47:24.200 And who should consider such a thing, such a career?

01:47:27.040 Well, you know, people ask me if, if I'm still working, if I'm retired, and my answer is, I cannot retire, I've never worked.

01:47:44.100 It's, it's, I, I think my whole, when I look at my whole career, I've had fun doing what I, I, I was doing.

01:47:56.260 And I would never have imagined doing what I did from, from year to year.

01:48:04.600 I, I, I could not have predicted what, what was coming.

01:48:11.560 I started my career in, in prisons, working with, with prisoners.

01:48:19.100 And over time, I, I then worked with juvenile delinquents.

01:48:24.340 And then I went to work with preschool children.

01:48:31.000 And then, and when you say worked, what did you, what do you mean?

01:48:34.440 What were you doing at that time?

01:48:36.460 Um, with, uh, I, I work with mentally ill offenders. 0.98

01:48:40.760 I was, uh, uh, psychologist who was, uh, trying to treat these people.

01:48:47.800 A clinical, you're working as a clinical psychologist.

01:48:49.480 Well, yeah.

01:48:50.320 Counselor.

01:48:50.800 I was, I was an educational psychologist in, uh, in, uh, a unit, uh, of, uh, mental, mentally

01:49:01.160 ill offenders.

01:49:02.220 And then I worked with juvenile delinquents.

01:49:05.620 And eventually I went to do my PhD and did my PhD on the treatment of, uh, juvenile delinquents.

01:49:15.260 Uh, and it's, over time, I sort of went further and further in terms of, uh, I started research

01:49:23.460 on, on kindergarten children and following them over time.

01:49:27.880 And what do you think tilted you, Richard, what do you think tilted you in the research

01:49:32.420 direction?

01:49:33.500 I mean, you were practicing as a counselor, essentially, and I assume that you found that

01:49:37.700 engaging and, and meaningful.

01:49:39.540 I, although I might be wrong, maybe you were looking for something else, but there was something

01:49:42.980 in the research domain that, that attracted your attention and your interest.

01:49:47.140 What do you think it was?

01:49:49.500 Um, I, I, um, the first research I did was, uh, at the bachelor level, um, in physical education.

01:50:02.900 I did a bachelor in physical education and, um, I simply loved doing.

01:50:12.980 The research I was doing on the flexibility in yoga, um, but the pleasure, uh, of doing

01:50:22.960 something where you control and, and you check and, and you're not sure, uh, uh, and you

01:50:31.680 finally get data and you analyze the data.

01:50:35.000 Um, you know, it's like, I remember there's a rush in data analysis.

01:50:39.300 That's like, like pulling the, the, the handle on a slot machine.

01:50:43.280 You know, you put all these months of effort into setting up these experiments and then

01:50:47.480 you do an analysis and you wait, you know, in 30 seconds, you're going to find out whether

01:50:51.980 this was a complete bloody catastrophic waste of time or whether you've actually hit gold.

01:50:57.140 And there's something I'm, you know, I mean, I found statistics pretty dry when I was looking

01:51:01.880 at other people's data or when I was, you know, going through the mechanics of learning

01:51:05.840 it, but once it was being applied to data sets I had generated, I couldn't get enough

01:51:09.920 of the analytic tools.

01:51:11.180 And there is a real, and I mean, I love doing counseling and clinical work, but there was

01:51:15.420 something really engaging and compelling about the research.

01:51:18.260 Yeah.

01:51:19.440 And I find that planning the research is, is interesting.

01:51:25.000 I, I love writing grant proposals, um, because in writing, in writing a proposal and trying

01:51:35.200 to convince others to give you money, to do something you have to review the literature

01:51:43.760 very well, and you sort of understand, you, you start understanding, uh, this idea that

01:51:52.700 you have in your head much better.

01:51:54.520 Uh, so the whole process, uh, of thinking about a problem, submitting a proposal, doing the

01:52:05.040 uh, collection of data, analyzing the data and writing up the papers, it, these are all different

01:52:14.680 things that are extremely interesting to do in themselves and putting all that together.

01:52:23.600 Um, uh, I mean, 40 years has gone like this, uh, because you're sort of immersed into

01:52:34.920 this, uh, this work, uh, and, uh…

01:52:38.560 There's something wonderful about having the opportunity to really devote time to specifying

01:52:43.680 and unpacking a complex problem.

01:52:45.560 Yeah.

01:52:46.560 It's something I really love, I love doing collectively, too, with the people like you,

01:52:51.280 that I had the pleasure to work with across time, you know, we could, we could focus on

01:52:54.920 a problem that was philosophically compelling.

01:52:57.560 I mean, when we started this discussion with, like, well, are, are human beings innately

01:53:02.640 aggressive, or does society make them that way?

01:53:05.540 Well, you know, that's a major philosophical problem.

01:53:08.160 It's like, okay, well, we can, and then you sit down with your colleagues and you generate

01:53:12.460 a bunch of ideas about, uh, like a whole plethora of hypotheses about what might be the

01:53:18.120 case and what not, and that's fun, too, because that blows you out of your ideological

01:53:22.120 presuppositions if you have a good group of people, and you make much more detailed, you

01:53:26.960 generate much more detailed ideas, and so that hypothesis-generating part of the process,

01:53:32.780 which is not well-specified and almost never talked about methodologically, that's really

01:53:37.420 exciting.

01:53:38.020 So you get people together, they've all read, it was, one of the things that was so fun

01:53:42.500 about working with you and Bob is that you both had encyclopedic knowledge of literatures

01:53:48.320 that weren't overlapping, and so, and, and I brought my own knowledge to bear on this

01:53:53.440 subject, and the, the, the interactions between us and, well, many other people that we both

01:53:59.740 worked with expands the whole universe of conceptualization at the hypothesis level, and then you have the

01:54:06.840 ability to find out if you're actually wrong, which is such a privilege, because that's the

01:54:11.760 problem with philosophy in some sense, is you, you can never be shown to be wrong, whereas

01:54:16.460 science will show you, and then you can do something that's maybe a bit better as a

01:54:20.120 consequence.

01:54:21.980 Yes, yeah, exactly.

01:54:23.580 It is a ridiculously exciting endeavor, despite the, despite the obstacles and the difficulty

01:54:29.360 in getting published and so forth, but that's all built into it, too, that, in a way that's

01:54:33.680 necessary, so, and you do have the, the, the possibility of producing some permanent alteration

01:54:43.220 in human knowledge. You know, I think that it, it, it definitely seems to me that the research

01:54:49.420 that you've done is of broad philosophical interest. It's like, well, look, first of all,

01:54:54.780 most people aren't that aggressive right from the beginning, so aggression, it's certainly

01:54:59.640 not the expression of aggression that we're primarily selected for. However, there is a subset,

01:55:04.800 and, and they, and it tends to be pretty stable in that subset, and, but those are people who

01:55:11.000 have generally suffered impairments in their primary relationships, fundamental impairments

01:55:16.320 in their primary relationships. So it's actually a deviation from the human norm, although an

01:55:20.920 important one, rather than something that's central to the optimal pathway of human development.

01:55:26.700 And then you have the, the, uh, exquisite pleasure of perhaps addressing that, and learning from

01:55:33.100 your, uh, your attempts to address in a way that also pulls you, in some sense, out of

01:55:37.900 the political, right? Because it becomes so pragmatic and so practical, although also still

01:55:43.400 philosophically interesting. You, you, you can, you can specify it at a level of detail that

01:55:49.080 makes the political irrelevant. And that's actually when you know you've specified it at the right

01:55:54.020 level of detail. It's like, well, no, your, your ideology isn't going to provide an answer

01:55:57.900 here. It might provide a hypothesis, but that's all. And so, you know, you know, you've

01:56:03.100 and it's also extremely, uh, entertaining to, uh, mentor people along that developmental

01:56:09.520 pathway and to watch them learn to think. And, and it's a very complicated and, and all

01:56:16.080 consuming process that research, that of being a research scientist. So, so is there anything,

01:56:23.640 is there anything that we missed that's really relevant? Oh yes, there is. I wanted to ask you

01:56:29.260 about sex differences in aggression. So there's a, the, the, the, the physical aggression

01:56:36.000 tends to be more common among males. Okay. So what you've studied boys and girls, we need

01:56:41.300 to talk about the girls. So let, uh, I'm opening the floor. Tell, let's, let's talk about

01:56:47.640 girls aggression. Well, uh, girls are, uh, use more indirect aggression, uh, than physical 1.00

01:56:59.520 aggression, uh, compared to, uh, to boys. Uh, and I mean, it makes, it makes sense in the,

01:57:09.060 uh, from a biological perspective, from a physical perspective, girls are, are less, um, able to, 1.00

01:57:18.420 to win a physical fight, uh, than, than boys. Um, so, so there is this indirect, uh, aggression.

01:57:31.800 And I guess similarly to boys, the girls who are, uh, more aggressive compared to the other girls 0.97

01:57:44.000 and more hyperactive. So there is aggression and hyperactivity. Those are the girls that have

01:57:53.760 in the long run, the more, uh, problems. They aggressive, aggressive in the sense of indirect,

01:58:07.260 indirect aggression. Yeah. Can you take that apart a bit? What, what, what kind of,

01:58:11.780 you have markers for physical aggression, hitting, kicking, biting, stealing. What are the markers for

01:58:15.940 indirect? Okay. The markers for, um, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's talking to some, talking about someone,

01:58:26.060 uh, and telling how bad that person is, uh, you know, it's the, the indirect aggression of, uh,

01:58:37.680 is more doing things behind the back of others. Essentially. So it's, it's sub subversive,

01:58:45.940 reputation destruction. Yeah. Essentially. That's, that's, that's. Which seems to scale quite

01:58:51.820 well in online environments. Yeah, uh, I guess so. Um, so, um, girls who are more in indirect 0.92

01:59:04.940 aggression prone and are at the same time hyperactive are the ones who will have much,

01:59:15.780 more problems in life and are likely to be the mothers who are the, the ones who will be less 1.00

01:59:25.880 successful, uh, with their children. Right. So it's, so there's no evidence that it's a good

01:59:31.480 strategy. No. It doesn't seem to be producing a desirable outcome. No. Uh, I, I suspect that, um,

01:59:39.620 um, and, and in saying this, I realized that we haven't looked at that, um, that the intelligence

01:59:50.240 must play a role in, in this, in the sense that the more intelligent they are, uh, probably the more

02:00:00.620 successful they are. Um, but, but the girls in general, the girls who have in, uh, childhood,

02:00:10.460 uh, are hyperactive and are also, um, tend to aggress others from an indirect way.

02:00:22.920 And how, how early can you see that? Because it requires a certain degree of verbal ability

02:00:27.500 or, or do you see young girls like dragging one playmate away from another to, to, as a

02:00:33.360 form of indirect aggression, say that would be more behavioral measure. How early can you

02:00:37.160 detect that? Well, we, we've done it from kindergarten. Um, and it's, it's based on, uh, it's based on

02:00:48.200 report teacher reports. Um, and I guess we've done it also in, in daycare. Um, but, uh, the long-term

02:00:57.800 data that we have comes from, uh, teacher reports on these behaviors. So we should do a little sideways

02:01:06.020 move there too. I mean, you know, there are various ways you can derive data, direct observation.

02:01:12.880 You can get peer reports of children talking about their peers. You can get reports from

02:01:18.000 parents, mothers or fathers or mothers and fathers, and you can get teacher reports. And my, my memory

02:01:24.500 is that of those of that category, forget direct observation for a minute, the teacher reports tend

02:01:30.460 to be reasonably accurate because teachers are familiar with a wide range of children's behavior.

02:01:35.960 So they are somewhat better at comparing children, whereas parents have a much narrower exposure.

02:01:41.600 Is that, is that, is that still stand up? Yes, yes, exactly. Uh, and I mean, it's, it's an important,

02:01:48.600 uh, finding that kindergarten teachers can identify both boys and girls who will have long-term problems.

02:02:02.480 Right. So we, we need to rely on what the kindergarten teachers are telling us about the behavior of the

02:02:11.240 children because those behaviors are good predictors of having problems in the long run. And so we need to do

02:02:21.240 interventions early at the end of, uh, uh, kindergarten and in first grade that are based on these teacher reports.

02:02:35.240 Uh, the, the, the teachers are really very reliable in, in terms of identifying early, early, early diagnosis. So, so to speak.

02:02:47.360 Yes. Of long-term problems.

02:02:49.760 Richard, are the girls who are more likely to use indirect aggression? Are they specifically the mothers who are most likely to give rise to aggressive boys?

02:02:59.240 Or, or, or is it, is it more general, um, what lack of optimal function, something like that? Or how specific it is, is it to the proclivity for aggression?

02:03:11.240 Well, um, we, we have, uh, data, um, up to age 40 in terms of how successful, uh, these children, uh,

02:03:29.240 became as adults and the teacher reports, uh, of, uh, these behaviors, hyperactivity and aggression are very good predictors of how much money people will have in terms of, uh, of, of win on the job market, uh, when they are in their forties.

02:03:56.240 Right. So that's hierarchical position in the socioeconomic pyramid, essentially.

02:04:00.940 Yeah.

02:04:01.100 And do you remember the effect sizes just out of curiosity? What, what kind of correlations are you managing to produce between the teacher reports of kindergarten behavior and, and outcomes at 40?

02:04:12.180 Um, I, I cannot remember, uh, that.

02:04:16.040 Okay. Well, the fact that they're significant at all is, is dead relevant because that's a, that's a huge gap in time.

02:04:22.240 Yeah. And I mean, the only thing I can think of that would be that stable perhaps would be the incidence of aggressive behavior because it tends to be really stable, but also general cognitive ability because it tends to be extremely stable as well.

02:04:34.400 Yeah. So hyperactivity, uh, impulsivity, aggression in kindergarten, those who are really not in relatively good control are at high risk of failing in school and failing for, for the rest of their lives.

02:04:55.900 And this tells us that we can, we can rely on teacher reports and we should use that to give services, uh, to children early on.

02:05:10.540 And, and our experimental work has shown that, that if, if you rely on these assessment and you give support to these high risk children in early elementary school, it will change their lives.

02:05:27.120 And it's not being done systematically enough.

02:05:32.180 We, we sort of wait, wait, wait.

02:05:34.320 It's interesting, you know, cause I, I talked to Bjorn Lomborg a while back and he's put together multiple teams of economists to rank order world problems, serious world problems by the potential return on investment in spending money to solve them.

02:05:51.280 And frequently what comes up at the top of the list are interventions in early childhood to increase early childhood health, health, particularly, uh, nutrition, et cetera.

02:06:03.980 It's a, it's a, the ROI is return on investment is like 250 to one.

02:06:08.760 It's remarkable, but you're saying something quite similar, which is, you know, this is, this is an intelligent plan.

02:06:14.980 And it would be so nice to see public policy increasingly informed by a combination in some sense of science and economics.

02:06:23.240 Right.

02:06:23.640 And, and you could also see that that could produce, at least in some cases, consensus across ideological barriers.

02:06:30.840 It's like, well, really, you, if you're conservative, you really want more criminal adolescents and young males, probably not, you know, anything to reduce violent criminality seems to be a plus.

02:06:43.180 If you're on the left side of the spectrum, you think, well, those are disenfranchised people, uh, mothers and, and, and those families.

02:06:51.240 And so devoting resources to the amelioration of that problem seems to be ethically demanded, not just justified.

02:06:58.400 And so, well, hopefully that's the purpose of public education, right?

02:07:03.740 Is that we can make this information as broadly known as possible that, and so maybe I'll sum it up a bit and you can add anything you want.

02:07:11.580 And so your research has indicated that, um, aggression, which, especially physical aggression, hitting, kicking, biting, stealing, um, is not precisely species typical behavior because most children, young children, don't engage in that except sporadically.

02:07:30.040 There is a population that does it more, uh, uh, uh, regularly and predictably with greater frequency.

02:07:38.120 They tend to come from disturbed maternal environments.

02:07:42.120 Um, there are interventions that can ameliorate that.

02:07:45.540 They're cost effective from a return on investment point of view, and they have broad positive effects.

02:07:51.900 The effects of the, um, suboptimal maternal environments are, uh, are, uh, what would you call it?

02:08:01.400 They're wide-ranging.

02:08:02.660 You see the detrimental effects of a disturbed maternal environment across a wide range of behaviors, including propensity to violence.

02:08:10.400 There's a multi-generational proclivity, and that's all accompanied by biological changes that are quite profound,

02:08:16.960 and that also may have multi-generational consequences.

02:08:20.980 That, and then I'd add to that the gender difference, uh, that, that there are patterns of aggression that characterize males more particularly,

02:08:29.100 although some females, and, and patterns that characterize females, although also some males.

02:08:34.140 And the ones, and the, and the, and it also seems to be easier to ameliorate the, uh, tendency towards aggression in girls than it does in boys.

02:08:44.940 That's, that seems to be about, that seems to be a reasonable coverage of, cover of what we've, of what we've talked about.

02:08:52.060 Anything that you want to add to that, or that you think people should know that we haven't talked about, that you know about?

02:08:57.820 Yeah, well, I think we've covered, uh, most of it.

02:09:01.980 Um, I, there's nothing that, um, I can think of that we've missed, although we probably missed a few things, but I can't think about it.

02:09:19.140 No doubt.

02:09:19.940 Well, thank you very much for talking to me today, and, and for walking through this.

02:09:24.860 I hope people, I presume, I expect that people will find it extremely interesting, and illuminating, and surprising, and practically useful, and also, I would say, hopefully, inspiring.

02:09:38.560 You know, it's, it's so nice to hear you talk about what you've discovered, and why it's relevant, but also that engaging in the process of learning all of this,

02:09:49.180 has been, um, deeply meaningful philosophically and practically, and that, that you can speak of excitement with your, about your research career, and about the people that you've mentored,

02:10:02.020 and the entire process ranging across all of the elements of the scientific process, and that you view that in retrospect as, well, that you're still doing it, first of all, because you love it,

02:10:12.360 and in retrospect, you think it was a wonderful way to spend your life, and so, hooray for all of that, and, you know, you, despite,

02:10:19.900 and this is something that's very positive, too, is despite the counter-cultural, um, what would you say, results of your research,

02:10:30.320 you've actually been remarkably successful at gaining research money on a compared, on a comparative basis, and of publishing,

02:10:38.340 and, like, you could get this out there. The scientific endeavor is robust enough so that even findings that don't run in the direction that people might like do tend to be generated and,

02:10:51.940 and published and discussed and have an impact over time. No reason for cynicism or undo cynicism.

02:10:58.580 Yeah, I agree. I agree. The world is open to, uh, new ideas and, and change. It just takes time, and it's a pity that we, uh, we don't have a few centuries to live.

02:11:18.580 We have to sort of count on the next generation, uh, to continue the work, and from my perspective, we've had so many great students, uh, that are doing, um,

02:11:35.580 exceptional work, uh, and, uh, the future, to me, looks very bright in terms of the advancement of, of the science of human behavior.

02:11:50.860 We've come from a long way. Uh, there's a long tradition, uh, behind us, uh, but, uh, there's an exciting future.

02:12:01.300 Um, I hope I'll continue to see part of it. And, and you've been, uh, Jordan, you've, uh, played, uh, an important role in, uh, in, in this, uh, path towards, uh, uh, convincing people that research is an important, uh,

02:12:25.300 very important way of ameliorating the life of humans.

02:12:33.020 So let's, let's close with one practical, um, issue. If you were going to recommend to a young person what they should study to prepare to be a research, a psychological researcher, a clinical psychological researcher of, of your type,

02:12:50.460 what, what, what's, what, what should they do at the bachelor's level? Let's say what, what's the right preparation?

02:12:56.600 And then let's walk through the process, bachelor, master's, PhD, postdoc, because people don't know that. And so what, what do you look for in a student at the,

02:13:06.860 if you're looking for a master's level student, what should have they done in their bachelor's degree?

02:13:11.040 Um, unfortunately, we are not, we are not working with, uh, students at the bachelor's, uh, at the bachelor level. Um,

02:13:26.380 um, probably because, uh, I haven't been teaching for, uh, for the past, uh, 25 years. And so I'm not in contact with, uh,

02:13:39.180 with, with bachelor level students, but from what I can, um, I can say from my own experience and interacting with some of the younger students, it's,

02:13:56.060 it's, I guess they have to be passionate and at the same time, ready to work very hard, uh, to, um, clarify, uh,

02:14:09.180 how you go about understanding, uh, what you want to, to understand. Uh, so you need, it's, it's almost.

02:14:21.280 You need both of those. You need the interest and the discipline.

02:14:23.840 I guess it's, it's like that in every discipline, even a hockey player or a football player.

02:14:30.220 It is if you want to be successful.

02:14:31.960 Yeah.

02:14:32.460 Yeah.

02:14:32.660 You need to be interested because.

02:14:34.260 You have to want to, and at the same time, you have to take the time and, uh, and like investing yourself.

02:14:45.540 Thanks again, Richard.

02:14:46.860 I, it's much appreciated and it's really good to see you again and to talk to you.

02:14:50.920 It's been far too long.

02:14:52.180 It's, I don't think we've seen each other for 20 years.

02:14:55.120 Maybe it's a long time.

02:14:56.460 At least.

02:14:57.260 Yeah.

02:14:57.740 Yeah.

02:14:58.000 You were a very young man then.

02:15:00.980 Yes.

02:15:01.980 Yes.

02:15:02.620 Yes.

02:15:03.060 It was, it was back in the late nineties, I think.

02:15:05.780 Like that, uh, that was the last time I spent time with you in Montreal.

02:15:09.420 So yeah, it's a long time ago.

02:15:11.740 So, well, I learned a tremendous amount working with you and from your research and, and it's

02:15:16.680 been extremely, um, engaging and useful.

02:15:20.080 And I hope everyone who's listening has found this useful and, and, and interesting.

02:15:26.300 So thanks again.

02:15:27.520 And you, you haven't lost your passion.

02:15:30.640 No, no, no, no, no, it's still there.

02:15:34.620 So thank God for that.

02:15:37.260 Great.

02:15:37.940 Well, keep it, Jordan.

02:15:39.480 It's a wonderful passion.

02:15:50.080 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 27, 2021

171. Aggressive By Nature？｜ Richard Tremblay

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 27, 2021

171. Aggressive By Nature？ ｜ Richard Tremblay

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

171. Aggressive By Nature？｜ Richard Tremblay