The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Psychologist on Dating Advice, Hookup Culture, and Foster Care ｜ Rob Henderson EP 207

00:00:00.000 One thing that I try to stress in my book is that academic ability is necessary but not sufficient to do well in school.

00:00:07.800 So in other words, you can have a really bright little kid, but if they are mired in squalor and chaos and neglect, that potential will never reveal itself.

00:00:16.620 I did a PhD in psychology at the University of Cambridge, graduated a couple of years ago.

00:00:21.060 And as a result, luxury beliefs.

00:00:22.520 You know, these are the things that I'm kind of known for, the credentials.

00:00:24.560 But before all of this, my life was a lot different.

00:00:26.660 I never knew my father. My mother would have visitors coming in and out of the apartment at all hours of the day and night, trading favors for drugs.

00:00:33.580 I try to remember, you know, that I'm very much this kind of statistical anomaly.

00:00:37.120 I'm not convinced that even if you had put my friends in private school, amazing parents, everything, that they would have necessarily gone on to college.

00:00:44.980 But had they been raised in a different environment with different values, you know, the two friends who went to prison probably wouldn't have gone to prison.

00:00:51.200 My one friend who was shot probably wouldn't have gotten shot.

00:00:52.960 So I don't know how much we can raise the ceiling as far as enhancing social mobility,

00:00:56.440 but I think we could raise the floor as far as how far down a lot of these guys fall.

00:01:04.240 Rob Henderson, welcome back to my podcast.

00:01:06.980 Thanks, Michaela. Great to be here.

00:01:08.480 So since we last spoke, you have published a book, Troubled.

00:01:14.060 How's that going?

00:01:15.480 It's going well.

00:01:16.920 I remember last time I spoke with you on the podcast,

00:01:20.140 I was in the midst of writing it this was like late 2021 and at that time I was you know I was

00:01:29.580 also in the middle of a PhD program and running some other side projects and so I was plagued

00:01:34.360 with a lot of self-doubt my attention was spread pretty thin and you know writing a memoir is

00:01:40.040 always difficult regardless of what's going on in your life I think but um no the reception has

00:01:46.180 been uh great it's been well received uh it's made multiple national bestseller lists um and

00:01:54.360 been well reviewed in multiple different outlets and uh no i've just been really uh really happy

00:02:00.060 with with how it's been been going and um you know a lot of those a lot of those doubts have

00:02:05.660 sort of dissipated so okay well that's fantastic so i wanted to start off this episode by getting

00:02:10.540 into some of the stuff you discuss in the book. I can see why you wrote a memoir. There was plenty

00:02:16.620 to write about. And I thought the way you outlined how you got interested in psychology from what you

00:02:24.220 went through was interesting. So I want to cover that. So you talked a bit about, well, let's start

00:02:30.100 off with anyone who isn't familiar with you. Can you give a bit of a background about who you are

00:02:35.000 and what it is you do? Yeah, well, right now, I am a full-time writer on Substack,

00:02:41.120 columnist at the Boston Globe, and an author now. But I did a PhD in psychology at the University

00:02:49.740 of Cambridge, graduated a couple of years ago. Before that, I did my undergrad in psychology at

00:02:56.000 Yale. And so these are the things that I'm kind of known for, the credentials. But before all of

00:03:01.480 this, my life was a lot different. You know, the most of the book just covers my unusual trajectory

00:03:08.380 into higher education and and beyond. So I was born in Los Angeles and never knew my father.

00:03:18.600 My mother and I, we lived in a car for a while. We were homeless for a time. Eventually, we settled

00:03:24.920 in this slum apartment in LA and when I was three my mother eventually just became very addicted to

00:03:33.060 drugs. Some neighbors noticed the extreme neglect that was going on and called the police and they

00:03:41.740 came and saw the kind of squalor that we were living in where my mother would have visitors

00:03:46.440 coming in and out of the apartment at all hours of the day and night trading favors for drugs and

00:03:51.760 And so the police came and then, you know, some social workers came and eventually I

00:03:57.940 was placed into the foster care system in L.A. where I spent the next five years moving

00:04:03.480 through seven different foster homes all throughout Los Angeles County.

00:04:07.560 And I described some of those experiences in the early chapters of the book.

00:04:11.700 And eventually I was adopted just before my eighth birthday and moved in with this couple.

00:04:21.760 this man, this woman, and their daughter, they became my adoptive family. And we settled in this

00:04:29.180 blue-collar town in Northern California called Red Bluff, this kind of dusty, working-class town.

00:04:35.960 And I didn't know this at the time, but I was kind of adopted into this community at an unusual

00:04:42.720 point, I think, in American history. So this was the late 90s. And I sort of had this front row

00:04:48.620 seat into witnessing the ongoing kind of fragmentation of working-class families across

00:04:54.420 the U.S. and probably, you know, in the Western world at large.

00:04:59.380 So my adoptive parents divorced about 18 months after the adoption.

00:05:05.440 Oh, my gosh.

00:05:06.820 Which was really, I mean, you know, by this point, I was, how old was I at this point?

00:05:10.300 I was nine years old.

00:05:11.740 And, you know, the divorce, it was difficult.

00:05:15.120 But, you know, I figured, okay, I still have my mom and my dad.

00:05:18.620 But then my father, my adoptive father, subsequently stopped speaking with me after the divorce.

00:05:24.120 And so this was really hard on me.

00:05:26.300 Rob, this is so bad.

00:05:28.380 I know.

00:05:29.080 It's so bad.

00:05:30.660 Yeah.

00:05:31.440 And so at nine years old, by this point, I'm being raised by my adoptive mom, single mom.

00:05:37.420 We moved into this duplex.

00:05:40.780 My mom was working full time, you know, trying to make ends meet.

00:05:44.700 I was kind of this latchkey kid where I'd walked home to and from school and made a lot of other

00:05:51.820 friends who were kind of troublemakers and miscreants. And these kids, too, came from

00:05:56.420 single-parent homes or broken families or homes. You know, I had one friend who was raised by his

00:06:02.480 grandmother because his mom was addicted to drugs and his dad was in prison. A lot of friends raised

00:06:07.520 by single moms with, you know, very, very little adult oversight. And so what do little

00:06:14.980 boys do when they don't have much supervision? You know, they get together. And so what would

00:06:19.720 we do? We would smoke cigarettes, nine years old, you know, we started smoking cigarettes,

00:06:24.460 drinking tequila. I actually tell a story in the book about I started drinking beer in the

00:06:29.380 foster homes when I was five, and then moved on to the harder stuff at nine. And then,

00:06:34.640 You know, I had friends who had older cousins who could hook us up with, like, generic Vicodin or weed or pills or what have you.

00:06:43.240 Sometimes we just go to the gas station down the street and buy some cold medicine.

00:06:46.800 And if you drink enough cold medicine, you'll start to feel funny.

00:06:49.360 And we learned that.

00:06:51.800 And, you know, there's a lot more to this which we can get into.

00:06:56.320 But I can fast forward just, you know, when I was 17, I barely graduated high school, like a C-minus average, just sort of, you know, bottom third of my class.

00:07:08.580 And I knew I wasn't in a position to go to college, so I enlisted in the Air Force.

00:07:16.040 And from there, you know, there were some missteps and some hiccups along the way, but I did manage to become something resembling a mature adult.

00:07:26.320 And then went on to Yale on the GI Bill and, you know, onward from there.

00:07:32.220 But it's funny.

00:07:33.080 So my mother, my birth mother, she was from Seoul, from South Korea.

00:07:39.060 And she came to the U.S. as a young woman.

00:07:42.400 And she was her father.

00:07:45.580 My grandfather sent her here to study.

00:07:47.800 But she was in L.A.

00:07:49.500 And I think she got here in like the early 80s, maybe the late 70s, and started partying.

00:07:54.660 And, you know, I think there were moments where she tried to stop and, you know, eventually that life did consume her.

00:08:02.500 So she was deported back to South Korea when I was in the foster care system in L.A.

00:08:08.620 And I was an American citizen born in L.A.

00:08:11.340 So I stayed. She left.

00:08:13.220 No one knew where my father was.

00:08:15.380 So some forensic psychologist asked her, you know, where's this boy's father?

00:08:20.920 You're not in a position to care for him.

00:08:22.440 and she said she had no idea who my father was um and about two years ago um it was about a year

00:08:30.760 and a half two years ago I took this 23andMe genetic ancestry test and I'd never like known

00:08:36.660 like that my father's side of my background you know so I was like oh my mother's Korean I don't

00:08:42.160 know the other side I'm like oh mixed race Asian something like that and I learned that my father

00:08:46.240 uh was hispanic uh so he had ancestry from mexico and from spain and uh and when i took this test

00:08:53.160 you know my first thought was i wish i'd known this when i was applying to college

00:08:56.180 you know i'm hispanic that would have been really you know it ended up working fine but that would

00:09:00.260 have been useful that would have been useful information so um you know i i took that test

00:09:07.860 i saw the results and um yeah it was like overnight i went from this like white adjacent

00:09:12.900 Asian American to an underrepresented minority. And, uh, you know, that's, um, you know, like

00:09:21.700 that, that was, that was a, an interesting piece of information for me. And I don't know if it

00:09:26.320 gives me any like additional protection now that I can say that I'm Hispanic. I don't think it

00:09:29.240 really does, but I still trot it out. Yeah, I know. Fair enough. Use, use whatever you can use.

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00:09:47.800 scroll around or go to fullerhealth.com or check the link in the description or pinned comment

00:09:55.000 it's there look at this packaging it glistens how extra is this can i do this without ripping

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00:10:12.380 below but please reduce your damage from alcohol if you drink because it's silly not to there's a

00:10:18.900 money back guarantee it really works um i hope you're enjoying this episode wow okay so so this

00:10:26.320 is why your book is called troubled so how did you how did you get out of i mean a lot of people

00:10:32.820 that grow up with that kind of trouble don't escape it so how did you manage to escape it

00:10:41.440 were there things you read or what changed your mind did you notice that there was something

00:10:46.460 better like how did you get out of that um you know there's always that question of nature and

00:10:51.060 nurture um you know I studied psychology and a lot of people who are interested in

00:10:57.180 you know cognitive psychology and psychometrics and those kinds of things of course there's

00:11:01.340 There is, you know, there is kind of a genetic component to academic ability and intelligence and those kinds of things. But one thing that I try to stress in my book is that academic ability is necessary but not sufficient to do well in school.

00:11:19.240 so in other words you can have a really bright little kid but if they are mired in squalor and

00:11:25.540 chaos and neglect um that potential will never reveal itself right now that's not the same thing

00:11:31.200 as saying every kid is special and every kid is a genius if you just put them in the right

00:11:34.800 environment i'm just saying that if you do have a kid who is a genius but they're in the wrong

00:11:39.360 environment you'll never see that genius or whatever i'm not calling myself a genius but

00:11:42.460 know what i mean like the the the ability um express itself yeah and so when i was in my final

00:11:49.540 foster home uh this was the seventh foster home i lived in in la um i was doing so badly in school

00:11:56.620 partially because i was changing homes all the time and changing school districts changing schools

00:12:01.080 so you can imagine like i i didn't know how to read by this point you know i was in second grade

00:12:05.720 I didn't know how to read. And so my social worker and the teacher, they spoke with each other,

00:12:14.420 my foster mother. So eventually they sent a psychologist over to test me to see if I had

00:12:19.700 a learning disability. And I took an IQ test and I scored. So I have the results now. So after I

00:12:26.660 became an adult, my adoptive mother gave me this like very thick file, all these documents from

00:12:30.620 my time in the system. And I'm looking at my results and I scored below average overall.

00:12:34.840 I scored way below. I scored like, I don't know what it was, like a 78 or something on the verbal

00:12:38.580 section, which is like, you know, more than a standard deviation below average. And so, you

00:12:44.620 know, I'm looking at these results and overall it was like, you know, it was below average,

00:12:48.660 but not wildly so. So they just sort of kept me in the same class. They didn't put me in like a

00:12:52.240 special needs class, but quite obviously like the reason why my scores were what they were is

00:12:57.400 because no one was reading to me at home. I had no reason to be motivated to try in school.

00:13:02.820 um i can't believe that they gave you an iq test being like what what could the other problem be

00:13:08.520 like maybe it's him yeah yeah well that's wow yeah just in in the foster care system why did

00:13:15.400 you end up is that normal for a foster care kid to get switched that many times or is that

00:13:20.660 extremely unfortunate well or both it's both so usually what happens in for kids in foster care

00:13:28.820 is that someone from the family of origin eventually re-enters the picture. So it could

00:13:34.480 be, you know, a lot of these kids are placed in care and they're raised by single moms, but then

00:13:37.860 the mom, often it's drug addiction or mental illness or something, or mental illness brought

00:13:41.760 on as a result of drug addiction. But a lot of these kids, they go into the system, maybe the

00:13:47.020 mother sobers up, re-enters and says, okay, I can take care of the kid. Or maybe the father suddenly

00:13:51.140 appears or an aunt or a grandmother, someone eventually says, okay, you know, I'll take

00:13:55.940 custody of the child. But, um, in my case, that wasn't a possibility. Um, and so the way that

00:14:03.580 this foster system has been set up is so that, you know, if, if a child lives with one foster

00:14:10.980 family for too long, um, and then, you know, the mother comes back and says, oh, I can care for the

00:14:16.160 child, but the child's been living with this foster family for one year or two years, this

00:14:19.340 can create issues around loyalty, attachment, and the child would be reluctant to leave,

00:14:24.920 right because now they've been with this other family for two years why would they go back to

00:14:27.920 their mom and so the system has uh organized itself such that the kid never stays in one

00:14:35.340 place for too long so this is on purpose it's on purpose yeah so they put a kid in one home

00:14:40.200 maybe six months hopefully not longer than a year then another home then another home and the idea

00:14:45.760 here is so that attachment never forms so that when if and when the family returns the child

00:14:51.940 will be perfectly happy to go back um but in my case that was never going to happen right and so

00:14:58.300 i should have actually been placed into the um i should have been placed for adoption much sooner

00:15:03.640 but you know the la county foster system is so overburdened and stressed that like no one actually

00:15:08.940 carefully read my file and recognized that that was you know i that i was never going to be

00:15:14.120 returned with my mother so yeah and this is this is happening to a lot of kids even today

00:15:18.320 that's horrifying yeah oh that's terrible yeah okay okay so we were talking yeah that's terrible

00:15:26.580 i didn't realize that was how the foster care system worked yeah yeah and it's it's probably

00:15:32.260 at least as bad if not worse i mean it was bad when i was going through it in the 90s

00:15:37.460 um but i recently read uh this article in npr which stated that the number of foster kids who

00:15:46.140 have entered the system, um, as a result of parental drug use has doubled, uh, since the

00:15:50.720 year 2000. So basically since roughly the time that I left the foster care system, it's actually

00:15:55.440 like become worse and more overburdened and more kids. And this is like, in part, as a result of

00:15:59.960 the opioid crisis, just more kids, um, you know, being, uh, taken from their parents.

00:16:04.980 I thought, and it's not like I had done any research into this at all, but I, I guess I

00:16:09.880 assumed that kids that were put into the foster care system were put in there while they were

00:16:15.740 also on an adoption list so as like an interim period until somebody wanted to adopt them that's

00:16:20.960 not it no no no because again like a lot of these kids they um you know there's there's no reason

00:16:26.800 to put them up for adoption because the of the possibility that someone from their family will

00:16:31.320 take custody um that's usually the main idea um but no that's you know that's only the case for

00:16:38.760 someone who steps in and recognizes that that's not going to happen and then they um you know

00:16:45.160 take the steps necessary to put the kid into the adoption system, which is what happened with me.

00:16:51.120 So at some point in my final foster home, in my seventh home, I had to see a child psychiatrist.

00:17:00.000 And this is just like sort of court mandated. Every so often, the foster kid just has to get

00:17:03.440 a mental health checkup. But this doctor that I saw, like carefully read my file and saw, oh,

00:17:09.420 like there's no parent for this kid. And then he wrote like a sternly worded letter to the state

00:17:14.120 suggesting that I needed to be put in uh put up for adoption and then like I was adopted like six

00:17:18.860 months after that so wow yeah life in the hands of the government that's horrifying yeah yeah

00:17:24.100 exactly that's what it is yeah okay wow so anyway we're talking about how you you got out of that

00:17:31.360 you enlisted in the army air force air force air force but what what happened like what happened

00:17:38.340 to all your friends in high school do you know yeah um did any of them kind of make it out too

00:17:44.760 not not really um so one thing that i i try to do with troubled is

00:17:55.900 so there's there's multiple ways you can read this one would be this there is this sort of

00:18:01.220 conventional like bootstraps narrative of oh there was this kid and he was in foster care

00:18:07.740 and he grew up poor and, and then he just turned his life around and became very successful. And

00:18:13.120 that's, that is, you know, that's a reasonable reading. That is what happened. But I wanted

00:18:16.000 to also describe the lives of my friends and to tell the reader that, that, that my outcome is

00:18:22.980 not the typical outcome and it's not an outcome you can expect for most kids who grew up that way.

00:18:28.160 And so I had five close friends in high school growing up. Um, and yeah, so I had two friends

00:18:36.140 raised by single moms, one friend raised by a single dad, another friend, I mentioned, he was

00:18:40.780 raised by his grandmother. And this is like a very common picture of what families look like now in

00:18:46.320 working class and in poor environments now. And so, you know, I do this kind of epilogue thing

00:18:53.260 at the end of the book where I describe how, you know, one or two of my friends went to prison.

00:18:58.740 I had another friend who was shot to death. I had another friend who he worked kind of menial

00:19:05.800 jobs for a while and he was kind of like in and out of community college eventually he joined the

00:19:10.440 air force just like i had and then he kind of you know he did six years and then went back to his

00:19:16.160 old life and he's okay but he's still like not doing he's not flourishing and and that is kind

00:19:22.740 of like the typical outcome of someone even if they join the military and get out they do kind

00:19:26.940 of return and revert back to old habits and live the life that they were living before although

00:19:31.980 perhaps not you know the bad habits aren't aren't quite as as pronounced um and so you know i'm i'm

00:19:39.260 the only one who like went to college or university i'm you know i'm i'm uh try i try to remember you

00:19:45.480 know that i'm very much this kind of statistical anomaly and that you know toward the end i think

00:19:53.540 in the final chapter i try to you know make sense a little bit of how social mobility how how we

00:20:01.100 should be thinking about it and I'm I'm not entirely convinced so I mentioned I barely

00:20:08.920 graduated high school and I was by far the most academically oriented of all my friends

00:20:14.420 I was the only one who read books for pleasure I would practice the math exercises in the textbook

00:20:20.800 for fun I wouldn't do the homework and I wouldn't like actually do the things they asked me to but

00:20:24.920 if something interested me I would start like playing around with it or reading or just

00:20:29.780 you know engaging with the teacher sometimes none of my friends did anything like that

00:20:35.340 so I'm not convinced that even if you had put my friends in the most well-resourced you know

00:20:42.920 private school amazing parents everything that they would have necessarily gone on to college

00:20:49.380 I'm skeptical that that path is the right one for everyone but I do think that had they been

00:20:56.720 raised in a different environment with different values with different role models um and incentives

00:21:03.640 around them that you know the two friends who went to prison probably wouldn't have gone to prison

00:21:07.180 my one friend who was shot probably wouldn't have gotten shot right so i don't know how much we can

00:21:10.880 raise the ceiling as far as you know enhancing social mobility but i think we could raise the

00:21:16.200 floor as far as how far down a lot of these guys fall okay let's talk about jd vance for a bit

00:21:21.980 sure so we are um are you familiar with him i actually i don't know if this is embarrassing

00:21:27.540 or not i hadn't heard of him until uh trump mentioned him so what do you think of him

00:21:33.240 what do you think of his book um yeah i've met with jd vance a couple of times um very brief

00:21:42.160 conversations and yeah came away very impressed with him um he's obviously a very smart person

00:21:48.180 just listen to him and speak with him. And he was also helpful for me in the early stages when I

00:21:57.460 was writing Troubled. So yeah, I have this story behind my connection with him. I wrote this

00:22:04.500 New York Times op-ed in 2018, which was like a very sort of brief summary of my life and some

00:22:11.740 of the lessons that I had learned. And that was published in 2018. And then JD's wife contacted

00:22:19.020 me saying that she had read it. And then she connected me with JD. Oh, cool. Yeah. And so,

00:22:25.500 yeah, I spoke with him for a while. And he gave me some advice. Because by that point,

00:22:29.840 literary agents were contacting me about as a result of that op ed asking me if I wanted to

00:22:33.280 write a book. JD gave me some writing advice, some advice and sort of navigating the publishing

00:22:37.620 system um and then yeah he was kind enough he and his wife were both kind enough to read my book

00:22:41.800 jd offered a very nice um blurb and endorsement of troubled and wow yeah i mean he's he's just a

00:22:50.080 rare figure in american life where you can start you know as as as poor as you can be um in the u.s

00:22:59.760 in very rough circumstances in rural Ohio, and then through, you know, fortune and effort and

00:23:09.060 so on, you know, he joined the Marines and went on to Ohio State and then went to Yale Law School,

00:23:14.000 and, you know, he made a, he had a successful business career. And so, you know, it is a very

00:23:19.200 kind of classic American story. And, you know, for those reasons, you know, for, on a personal

00:23:26.480 level i like him but then i think also just what what he represents in a way of it's nice to just

00:23:32.020 have a non-geriatric boomer on a major party ticket i think he's he's the first millennial

00:23:39.740 on a major party ticket he's 39 he's young he's got a wife and young kids and you know there is

00:23:45.260 that kind of youthful yeah aura around him that you don't get from someone like trump or and

00:23:50.020 definitely someone like biden yeah so no it's exciting yeah yeah and his book is great too

00:23:55.460 Like I do, I do recommend Hillbilly LG. Yeah, I read that years before I wrote Troubled. And, and that was one of the books that one in this other book that I had read by another young person educated by Tara Westover. Yeah, those two books did get me sort of slowly on the path of thinking, okay, you know, these two young people who had very difficult lives, wrote these amazing books, maybe I could do something like that.

00:24:21.660 um and that's really cool yeah yeah that's very cool okay i want to get i want to get into

00:24:27.700 psychology a bit oh but first before we do that you filmed a course for peterson academy i did

00:24:32.800 yeah and we just showed you the trailer what did you think uh you know when you when you

00:24:38.100 suggested we watch the trailer i was nervous you know i'm like i'm gonna be embarrassed you know

00:24:43.440 it's always hard you know for me at least to watch myself on camera but as soon as you started

00:24:46.560 playing i'm like whoa this is really good you know like this is uh you know i wanted to share

00:24:50.940 right away. Um, and yeah, the style, the cinematography, the music, um, I think I

00:24:57.900 mentioned, uh, you know, it sounded like it was scored by Hans Zimmer. Like I watched some of

00:25:01.120 the other trailers. It looks, um, yeah, it looks, uh, uh, cinematic in the quality. So yeah, I'll

00:25:07.200 be one of the first to sign up for it. I'm glad you liked it. Your course I've seen, I haven't

00:25:12.460 watched the whole course. This is like eight hours of content. I haven't, I haven't done it,

00:25:16.680 but we've watched a lot of your course. Your course is really good. It's really good. Psychology

00:25:20.720 of status yeah psychology of social status and yeah yeah they yeah did six lectures and

00:25:27.320 yeah I mean it's a naturally interesting topic I love psychology you know I love sort of delving

00:25:32.540 into this topic I think that in polite society we try to shy away from this idea of prestige and

00:25:38.240 being well regarded by other people and this is a topic that psychologists like to study and delve

00:25:43.660 into and so I figured okay let's let's let's surface some of this and yeah it was it was a

00:25:48.160 lot of fun teaching that course okay good well we're glad to have you on board so that that was

00:25:53.680 great it was great uh so okay for your psychology background i want to ask you some relationship

00:25:58.600 questions what's your perspective on the rise of non-traditional relationship models do you think

00:26:03.500 that people are moving towards polyamory or is that just one subsect of society what are your

00:26:08.440 views on that you know i i saw this article in the new yorker like six months ago maybe and it

00:26:15.020 said something like, you know, oh, the rise of poly. I read the whole article. Not once did they

00:26:20.140 cite a single statistic. It was like citing like TV shows and Netflix and movies and books. You

00:26:25.520 know, there was that the memoir by the they call it the Park Slope mom who wrote about her experiences

00:26:30.300 in a poly marriage. But I'm like, where's the data? You know, I'm a psychologist. I'm a social

00:26:34.320 scientist. I want to know, like, what does the survey data say? Are there sort of shifts in the

00:26:37.560 trend lines over time? Generationally, are there any differences? I haven't seen anything like

00:26:42.120 that i saw one i saw one poll maybe a year and a half ago which did suggest among zoomers gen z

00:26:47.960 that some of them are more open to this but i don't know like i don't know if this is just a

00:26:53.100 fad if it's fleeting um yeah at least among the young people i interact with it doesn't really

00:27:00.720 seem it seems like a subculture and maybe it's always been that way that kind of subculture

00:27:05.040 we're only now we're just hearing more about it most young people it seems to me do still want a

00:27:09.840 kind of conventional relationship you know pair bond as the evolutionary psychologists call it

00:27:16.160 one person who they're committed to and who they know is committed to them um are there are there

00:27:22.440 any statistics that's showing for a subset of people non-monogamous relationships work or is

00:27:29.020 that just what some non-monogamous people say i'm not familiar with any stats on on on that question

00:27:35.600 of what are the predictors of a successful non-monogamous relationship. My guess is that

00:27:40.380 for, there probably are, you know, the human variation is, you know, fascinating and complex,

00:27:45.220 and I'm sure there are people who can make it work. I know at least one couple who seems to at

00:27:52.920 least be making, you know, a go of it and seems like it's working for them. But for those types

00:27:59.340 of people, they are psychologically atypical. You know, they're on the tail ends of multiple

00:28:05.040 bell curves. They tend to be very smart, you know, IQ, in terms of IQ, they tend to be

00:28:10.820 conscientious, high impulse control, well-educated. Conscientious, really? Yeah, you know,

00:28:18.260 high in resources, so sort of educated, high socioeconomic status. And I think for those

00:28:25.560 types of people, they can navigate the complexities of multiple relationships and side marriages

00:28:31.540 or side relationships in their marriage. But I think for most people who don't score highly

00:28:40.780 on all of those things and who aren't particularly high in socioeconomic status and so forth,

00:28:46.440 you know, it can be jealousy and betrayal and all of those feelings that arise. I think that's

00:28:52.220 very hard that's hard to deal with for anyone but if you are an unusual person you can find a way

00:28:58.160 maybe to make that work but I just don't like you know to me you know I coined this term luxury

00:29:02.880 beliefs which I think you and I talked about last time this to me is kind of a luxury belief where

00:29:06.400 if you are you know very well off very well educated you have money you have all these

00:29:10.900 things going for you then you can kind of experiment and do I think it's the same thing

00:29:14.080 with drug use there are people who can experiment with drugs and enjoy it and it won't completely

00:29:21.820 destroy their lives but a lot of those people more and more of them it seems suggest well all

00:29:27.780 of us should do drugs we should all shoot up heroin and you know decriminalize all hard drugs

00:29:32.920 and so on because they in you know in this kind of self-centered way think well i can do it so

00:29:38.700 anyone can do it and that's just not the case yeah so you think decriminalization is a bad idea

00:29:44.100 oh yeah yeah yeah of hard drugs marijuana it's kind of tricky because it's already like

00:29:49.060 you know de facto decriminalized in like most states de jure in many states so um but yeah i

00:29:55.840 mean i think the idea of of decriminalizing like crack and heroin and meth and all those things

00:30:00.600 that would be a huge mistake and in fact oregon recently learned this right in 2020 oregon

00:30:05.320 decriminalized all drugs in the wake of the defund the police movement and then overdoses

00:30:10.020 skyrocketed um deaths as a result of drug use um you know they the a lot of the cities a lot of

00:30:16.840 parts of portland became these kind of open-air drug dens and a couple of months ago they recently

00:30:23.100 reintroduced legislation to recriminalize drug use so it was a failed it was a failed experiment

00:30:27.740 it sounds nice on paper but uh but it doesn't work okay that's interesting i feel like my view

00:30:33.920 on that's changed i think originally i probably had the naive view that kind of let people do

00:30:39.960 whatever they want they'll be fine less government is better yeah but that that is me coming from

00:30:45.620 like my perspective without understanding you know what somebody else would do in that type

00:30:50.420 of situation but yeah I feel like Vancouver went through something similar right or at least

00:30:55.740 amounts of drugs have been decriminalized I think in Vancouver I don't know if you're familiar with

00:31:00.420 this and Vancouver's a mess okay so I guess I guess it doesn't work yeah yeah I mean some of

00:31:06.300 the proponents they point to Portugal and some other isolated cases where it where it can work

00:31:12.040 But, you know, I think there are sort of cultural differences, policy differences, all kinds of things that are going on there that, you know, yeah, it doesn't it doesn't really seem to be effective, you know, because either way, people are going to suffer, whether you if you criminalize drugs, yes, people are going to be arrested, people are going to be harassed by law enforcement and so on.

00:31:30.840 But if you decriminalize it, you're just going to increase the number of people who, you know, do enough drugs to the point where they destroy everything around them and and end up dead on the street.

00:31:40.040 So it's, you know, which which bad choice do we want?

00:31:43.140 Right. Which bad outcomes?

00:31:44.460 Yeah. Yeah.

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00:33:10.000 and in the pinned comment. Enjoy the rest of this episode. Okay, so do you think the red pill view

00:33:15.900 that men are polyamorous, is that just a lie brought on by like some hopeful men that want

00:33:22.040 that maybe or think they want that yeah because i feel like there are people that they're like yes

00:33:26.300 to you know go back in time and these high value men they had multiple wives and it worked and

00:33:32.260 that's how we're supposed to be as men is that just that's just not true so so i you know you

00:33:37.560 mentioned earlier like is there data on the poly thing so i remember this wasn't on if you're in a

00:33:41.300 poly relationship but the question was this is from yougov would you be okay or open to a poly

00:33:48.220 relationship and most people were against it but the group that was uh most in favor of it uh were

00:33:54.080 were men and especially young men and so that to me like that was like perfectly intuitive i posted

00:33:59.380 it on twitter and people were like yeah like no no shit like yeah i know um but the question i think

00:34:05.920 um it's complicated you know i i i take this kind of you know a sweeping view of human history um

00:34:15.020 You know, I studied a lot of evolutionary psychology in in in grad school. And, you know, this is like a very sort of potted, summarized version of human evolution. But our ancestors, like the closest ancestors that we had with with chimpanzees about six billion years ago, they were most likely their mating systems were probably quite similar to chimpanzees, where you do have this kind of like dominant male who does most of the mating with most of the females.

00:34:43.700 And some of the other males can kind of get in there sometimes, but it's usually one dominant male who gets most of the copulations.

00:34:49.880 At some point, as we evolved into Homo sapiens and we became these sort of nomadic hunter-gatherer bands where we would sort of settle in one place and then hunt the animals and fish and sort of like dry up all the resources and move on to the next place and so on.

00:35:05.480 During this period, humans became monogamous, more or less.

00:35:12.000 Ah, okay.

00:35:12.720 Part of the reason for this seems to be that it's very hard for one man to recruit lots of wives when they can't stockpile resources, and also because in order to successfully hunt large animals, you need the cooperation of your male allies, and if you're sleeping with all of the women, then they're not going to, like, you know, it just becomes harder.

00:35:32.780 it's a coordination problem and so the kind of implicit agreement among men was like okay well

00:35:38.340 we have to hunt animals we there were often at war with other sort of nearby uh bands and

00:35:42.500 coalitions of hunter-gatherers and so the implicit agreement was like okay like it was almost like

00:35:47.620 romantic communism of like everyone gets one you know and i'm speaking that makes sense though

00:35:52.740 that definitely makes sense so at a certain point about 12 000 years ago there was the rise of

00:35:57.100 agriculture um the agricultural revolution where suddenly we could have sort of stationary

00:36:01.160 communities we built sort of civilizations city-states and so on we could stay in one

00:36:05.700 place and we didn't have to move around so much and this gave rise to kings and pharaohs and

00:36:11.520 fiefdoms and powerful people powerful men in particular were able to amass large armies and

00:36:18.180 create situations where they could stockpile like lots of resources and thereby obtain a lot of

00:36:25.940 wives um and so when these like red pill guys say like oh this is the natural thing of like you know

00:36:33.280 you get lots of wives and that's just how things have always been there this is like a blip in

00:36:37.180 human evolutionary history because if you think about homo sapiens we've been roughly in like the

00:36:41.600 current modern version of homo sapien form for about three three hundred thousand years and of

00:36:47.280 that three hundred thousand years about ninety seven percent of it was lived like we humans were

00:36:52.460 living in roughly monogamous societies now occasionally these hunter-gatherer groups

00:36:56.600 sometimes like the one of the more high status guys might get two wives but not much more than

00:37:01.060 that um usually it was just one but for you know 12 000 of those 300 000 years um yeah there there

00:37:08.000 were sort of these uh i guess now we might call them poly or something of like kings and pharaohs

00:37:12.980 and emperors lots of concubines and and mistresses and so on um but that is uh a blip in terms of

00:37:19.900 evolutionary history uh and then at a certain point um roughly 2 000 years ago with the rise

00:37:26.660 of christianity and so i'm talking about in the western world um monogamy sort of became reinforced

00:37:32.480 um and and sort of re-entered uh sort of western culture as the norm all this is to say that like

00:37:39.260 as human beings we have been like mostly monogamous with exceptions right like if you

00:37:43.060 look at the ethnographies of anthropologists who visit um modern hunter-gatherer communities in

00:37:49.400 parts of africa and south america like you know they have the same kind of relationship complexities

00:37:55.460 and betrayals and you know like people will get married but there's sometimes philandering

00:37:59.600 sometimes cheating some of these kinds of things but they still have marriage this is what i find

00:38:03.960 interesting is that is interesting independent like independent in multiple cultures marriage

00:38:08.160 arose as a norm right it's not like marriage started somewhere and spread through it was

00:38:12.180 sort of independently this idea of a man and a woman coming together committing to one another

00:38:15.900 raising children together this is um more or less a human universal yeah that's good yeah yeah that

00:38:24.760 feels right yeah uh let's talk about psychopaths for a sec sure uh are there anything is there any

00:38:30.380 recommendations you have for young women in how to identify psychopathic men oh right um

00:38:37.680 how to identify psychopathic men you know it's funny like if you if you read the research on

00:38:43.980 on psychopaths and narcissists and people who score highly on the dark triad or the dark tetrad

00:38:48.580 traits they're kind of um you know disturbing in a way because uh we they're not they're sort of

00:38:56.340 superficially appealing in many ways especially narcissists but psychopaths too um and it's almost

00:39:01.480 like if someone is like too charming or too magnetic in a way that's almost in itself a sign

00:39:08.220 that they're that they may be high on those kinds of traits um so if you like them too much yeah

00:39:14.980 yeah yeah exactly there was an interesting study uh a few years ago which found that so they

00:39:20.220 basically showed participants images of people making facial expressions and asked them uh

00:39:26.500 which of these faces appears to be most authentic to you most genuine in terms of its emotional

00:39:31.960 expression and they found that and the people who were making these expressions the images that

00:39:38.040 these participants were seeing, the researchers collected their scores on the dark triad and found

00:39:43.840 that participants rated faces to be the most genuine, the faces of people who scored highly

00:39:49.240 on dark triad traits. And in other words, the people who were probably less authentic were

00:39:56.300 rated as the most authentic in terms of their facial expressions. And often people who are

00:40:01.360 high on these kinds of traits, they know that there are certain kinds of expressions they can

00:40:06.680 make that are charismatic or they sort of over exaggerate to look particularly genuine in order

00:40:12.400 to win people over um you know there are so if you look at um like qualitative interviews of actual

00:40:19.060 psychopaths um when they're sort of you know after they've committed a crime or something and

00:40:24.420 they're interviewed by by police or or forensic psychologists they'll uh reveal how you know

00:40:31.480 early on in their life they kind of recognize that they didn't feel emotions the way that other

00:40:34.980 people did and some of them will say things like so I learned how to mimic emotions by watching

00:40:41.280 movies so they'll watch a movie observe what sadness looks like some actress or something

00:40:47.320 crying then they would go to the mirror in their bathroom or something and then like try to like

00:40:52.720 make that same face and interestingly I think they're almost like the reason why they are often

00:40:58.040 viewed as more genuine is because actors already exaggerate just a little bit for the viewer for

00:41:04.580 the camera and then the psychopath is exaggerating the emotions of an exaggeration right like they're

00:41:09.460 imitating an imitation and so it becomes even more of an exaggeration and i think that may be

00:41:14.020 why um so yeah all of this is to say that i think like if someone is a little too their personality

00:41:19.080 is a little too strong and too magnetic and charismatic that could be uh uh one marker and

00:41:24.120 then the other is like you could sort of pay attention to their close relationships um have

00:41:28.960 they had any serious relationships in the past romantically what are their relationship like

00:41:34.240 with their friends, with their family, with their parents. And often you'll find that people who are

00:41:39.980 psychopathically oriented have a lot of difficulty with maintaining prolonged social relationships.

00:41:47.500 They often have difficulty in their professional life. They can't stay in one job for too long.

00:41:54.660 They're often very, like I mentioned, charismatic at first, but the longer you get to know them,

00:41:59.260 the less likable they become over time.

00:42:01.880 terrifying yeah yeah i wonder if that's something that you also as a female just kind of need to

00:42:09.720 learn eventually because i i mean there are stats behind that like young women have a harder time

00:42:15.900 with that right it's harder to identify for them maybe you just have to get older well is it i

00:42:21.440 don't know if it's harder to identify for them or is it more so that more attractive yeah more

00:42:26.640 attract and and it's harder to i think like um uh inhibit that attract attraction whereas once

00:42:32.940 you have some experience you recognize those signs and you realize okay like i know that like

00:42:36.480 this guy seems interesting but maybe it's you know this probably wouldn't go anywhere and i think

00:42:40.680 like guys have this too right almost with like you know like like with with women who have like

00:42:45.520 narcissistic traits or other kinds of like person like sort of score highly on various personality

00:42:50.460 conditions that men too can find you know certain kinds of women very alluring and then over time

00:42:55.620 they you know they kind of learn to recognize those signs too um but yeah i mean i i like

00:43:01.660 a good friend of mine a psychologist said that uh in any good drama almost all of the characters

00:43:08.200 have a personality disorder and i think it's it's true right there's something so interesting about

00:43:12.980 watching it but once you sort of invite it into your life yeah yeah that's hectic yes yeah that's

00:43:18.840 a good word succession yes yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah perfect okay for uh advice what advice would

00:43:27.860 you give to someone struggling with dating in the modern world where do you start um i mean okay i

00:43:35.400 guess it would i'll give some general advice i was going to ask it male female but just generally i

00:43:40.160 think you know we live in a world where i mean of course we're image driven sort of evolutionarily

00:43:46.980 speaking, we are looking for signs of, you know, physical attractiveness. But, you know, it seems

00:43:50.940 to be sort of more pronounced now in the era of internet and social media and so on. So I think

00:43:55.500 a very easy sort of first pass is to just physically try to look pretty good. And a lot of

00:44:00.760 guys will ask me for advice. And I'm like, you know, you could start with just like going to the

00:44:05.140 gym, getting a haircut, getting some clothes that fit, you know, sort of very basic things. You know,

00:44:10.140 you want all the wind blowing at your back, you know, don't introduce more obstacles than you have

00:44:14.880 to um so yeah i think physical appearance you know basic basic um fitness and those kinds of things

00:44:21.040 um what else uh you know if try to try to like go into social activities and hobbies

00:44:31.140 and situations where you'll be around people who have the same kinds of interests as you

00:44:37.940 essentially right so if you like working out you can do crossfit if you like reading join book

00:44:42.580 clubs i just saw this study pretty recently that one of the um like strongest and this is like you

00:44:49.200 know maybe not exactly what we're optimizing for but one of the strongest predictors of what's

00:44:52.540 called um um i think it's so no no i'm sorry the number of number of sex partners that a person

00:45:01.500 has had highly correlates with extroversion and so you know we're not trying to um you know like

00:45:07.760 okay that's what you want but that does suggest that like if you are interested in sort of

00:45:12.500 putting yourself in a position where someone might be romantically interested in you,

00:45:17.340 even if you aren't naturally an extrovert, I think sort of putting yourself in more social

00:45:21.320 environments, that in itself will get you sort of part of the way there. Your odds of meeting a

00:45:27.800 romantic partner are essentially zero if you're sitting at home with your phone, but they go up

00:45:32.060 to whatever, 0.1% just by going outside, right? Like, you know, just sort of putting yourself in

00:45:36.700 more social situations, make some friends. I think a lot of, so I'll speak more from the male

00:45:41.480 perspective i think a lot of guys you know they're like oh i just need to get a girlfriend i just

00:45:44.480 need and i i want to learn how to talk to girls and what i'll tell them is you don't need to learn

00:45:50.300 how to talk to girls you need to learn how to talk to people first right and so like go out and just

00:45:55.960 have conversations like don't be uh shy withdrawn person even if that's how you naturally are try to

00:46:02.740 push against that and whatever have conversations with your uber driver with whatever customer

00:46:08.940 service people with your friends like if you have friends um talk to them more often call them up

00:46:14.880 just sort of exercise that muscle of being social being um uh sort of aware and and engaged with the

00:46:23.180 people around you and that sort of over time will just you can uh transition that ability into once

00:46:30.880 you meet someone who you might find interesting you'll be able to talk to them and not stress out

00:46:35.320 about it do you think there are ways for people who are naturally because i mean that's a personality

00:46:40.640 trait right you can just naturally be introverted are there ways that people can train extroversion

00:46:46.400 just by communicating with other people is it always going to be painful for those people or

00:46:50.700 are they eventually going to get more extroverted how does that work um that's interesting so

00:46:55.400 that's that that particular trait seems to be pretty stable across the lifespan so some of the

00:47:01.540 other big five traits you know like like uh people tend to become more agreeable over time

00:47:05.980 through their lifespan they tend to be a little bit less neurotic over time a little bit less

00:47:10.180 open um but for extroversion my understanding is it kind of stays stable i think like once you sort

00:47:15.120 of reach maybe middle age or older it does kind of decline somewhat um but i think at the individual

00:47:21.940 level right because these this is sort of based on like broad aggregate statistics of large groups

00:47:25.860 of people but at the individual level you as a person i think you can find unless you're like

00:47:30.120 really really introverted I think you could probably find ways to train yourself out of it

00:47:35.700 and almost look at it like so there have been multiple studies on this on this topic of

00:47:42.360 extroversion how do people feel how do introverts feel when you tell them in like a research

00:47:47.680 situation to behave like an extrovert yeah yeah and every single study I've ever seen and there

00:47:53.120 have been multiple on this this is a replicated finding introverts who behave in an extroverted

00:47:57.760 way when you ask them in advance so before they go out into the social scene or go talk to people

00:48:04.280 you ask them to forecast how they'll feel how do you think you'll feel when we ask you to go out

00:48:08.860 and do that and they always say I'm just gonna it's gonna suck like I don't want to do this like

00:48:12.220 but you know I signed up for the study so I'll do it so they predict it's gonna suck but then they

00:48:18.220 go out and actually talk to people and behave in an extroverted way start a conversation with a

00:48:22.920 stranger or have an interaction with someone and then when you ask them how did you enjoy it they

00:48:28.620 always enjoy it more than they expect um interesting and this is true obviously for

00:48:33.460 extroverts when you ask extroverts to behave in an extroverted way they're always pretty happy

00:48:37.160 when you ask introverts to behave in an extroverted way they are always pretty happy to always as

00:48:42.000 strong but most of the time pretty happy happier especially than they predict and i think this you

00:48:46.680 know this makes sense right like we are social creatures who evolved to be around people and

00:48:53.140 even the idea of like the modern idea of privacy which i'm a fan of um even that like didn't really

00:48:58.440 exist until very recently in in history um where you know if you look at um small-scale traditional

00:49:05.040 societies there's like almost no privacy like everyone knows what everyone else is up to yeah

00:49:08.920 and we kind of evolved in that kind of environment so um that suggests that um you can view

00:49:16.440 extroversion and sociality as similar I think for most people as going to the gym

00:49:23.500 even if you know like even for people who have a routine and they know they like working out

00:49:28.500 there's always that little bit of like do I really want to do this today like maybe I'll skip tomorrow

00:49:32.000 but then you do and you always feel better about it and I think over time you can sort of train

00:49:35.880 yourself to think about being social in that way like okay this is going to be a little awkward

00:49:39.760 but then you do it and you know you're going to feel good so so just just go for it have you taken

00:49:44.140 a personality test yeah i took uh i took understanding myself yeah yeah yeah and i

00:49:48.700 took another one pretty recently and yeah yeah so i've taken uh two tests were they both big five

00:49:55.220 they're both big five yeah and one of them other one there's a hexaco model oh yeah okay honesty

00:50:01.500 humility and then it was like the old school like myers-briggs stuff and like enneagrams and all

00:50:06.740 these other like you know kind of weird personality things but oh i need to take the hexaco one i

00:50:10.780 haven't i've been true to my dad's and i know that his doesn't have honesty and humility in there i

00:50:16.360 remember i i tweeted something about the hexaco model and your dad he was a little skeptical i

00:50:20.760 think he's less skeptical now oh really yeah i don't i don't want people to i could be wrong

00:50:24.720 i could be wrong here but i believe we had a conversation recently where he said yeah

00:50:28.740 we are missing the uh because kind of the dark triad doesn't come out as easily in his big five

00:50:34.160 model right yeah he said anyway yeah on the big five the dark triad it it's inversely correlated

00:50:39.980 with agreeableness so disagreeable people are usually pretty high on the dark triad but then

00:50:44.380 yeah the hexagon model the honesty humility factor is is even more uh uh highly correlated

00:50:51.720 inversely so if you're very high on honesty and humility um you're low on dark triad if you're

00:50:56.760 high on dark triad you're low on those two traits honesty humility so people just lie on that though

00:51:01.100 or like you can't can't you just trick it uh well like you could like in theory yes but

00:51:08.620 people don't seem to do that i think um you know because i remember i had this conversation with uh

00:51:14.300 with a professor who studies narcissism and i asked like why wouldn't narcissists just like lie

00:51:17.720 and and his response was like they they like knowing that they're this way and i think a lot

00:51:23.340 of people in the dark track kind of they don't want to be thought of as honest they're like

00:51:26.500 honesty is for suckers you know like they like to say like yeah i'm not i'm not a humble honest

00:51:30.080 person i'm i'm uh i'm a realist you know i've met people like that or they're they're uh proud

00:51:36.400 at the fact that they're good at manipulating yeah i was like that's not something to be proud

00:51:41.060 of and they think of them they think that they are the realists and that everyone is out

00:51:45.340 manipulating other people and that everyone else is lying they think that you're the liar for not

00:51:50.320 scoring high on on dark triad or scoring low or high on honesty humility right like they think

00:51:54.940 that they're the ones who are being honest when they do these tests wow yeah so it's it's interesting

00:52:00.260 yeah how do we know who's right we know we know on a soul level i think we know yeah yeah wow

00:52:07.460 crazy people are crazy okay what was the what was the strangest thing for you uh about leaving

00:52:14.440 kind of like the blue collar well like troubled situation you were in and going somewhere like

00:52:19.900 cambridge was that a bit of a shock yeah i mean it's funny so uh people kind of think of you as

00:52:26.640 like the last thing that you were or like the last thing you did. And so by the time I got to

00:52:31.560 Cambridge, you know, I was in grad school doing a PhD and like, you know, the conversations would

00:52:37.440 kind of arise. And one of the first questions is like, where did you do undergrad? And I did

00:52:43.220 undergrad at Yale. And so people just assumed like, oh, you're like, you know, you were groomed

00:52:47.740 to go to Cambridge. But then when I was at Yale, that was really the culture shock was going from

00:52:53.980 the military into yale and you know i spent two chapters dwelling at length on the culture shock

00:53:01.660 i had um at yale it was it was a little bit of a culture shock at cambridge as well but um

00:53:07.220 you know after after doing undergrad it was less so so yeah it was it was tough i mean

00:53:12.900 for a lot of reasons it was it was difficult academically um you know i was a horrible high

00:53:18.840 school student. You know, I went to this college and all the other students, many of them have been

00:53:27.240 training their whole lives to go to a place like that. They went to private schools, private tutors,

00:53:31.300 everything going for them. And the coursework was actually quite rigorous. You know, a lot of people

00:53:38.960 when they study psychology, they think of it as like this, I don't know, like this kind of

00:53:44.060 abstract, unserious, like, oh, people just sort of navel-gazing or something. But psychology,

00:53:49.480 especially if you do, like, research methods and statistics and sort of empirical stuff,

00:53:53.500 it can get pretty dense. And, you know, I was taking neuroscience courses, too. And so that

00:53:59.860 first semester, that first year, academically, I struggled a lot until I sort of found my footing.

00:54:05.340 And, you know, and this is another, you know, to go back to the earlier point, that just because

00:54:08.920 you have the intrinsic ability, if it's not nurtured and cultivated properly, the person

00:54:14.080 can still struggle and have setbacks. And then there was the cultural component of, you know,

00:54:19.720 like the students and a lot of the professors and administrators and grad students, they just

00:54:24.440 had so little familiarity with the people who they claimed to care about, marginalized people,

00:54:31.800 poor people uh prison inmates so on and so forth where you know they just like they've never they've

00:54:40.380 never had a 15-minute conversation with someone who doesn't have a bachelor's degree they just

00:54:43.500 have no idea like what life is like outside of that environment so interacting with people like

00:54:48.440 that over and over where yeah like decriminalizing drugs or defunding the police and these kinds of

00:54:52.800 ideas decarceration just release all the prisoners like you know it's it's not um what is it like

00:54:59.500 they're they're in prison and it just makes them worse criminals or something like it was just a

00:55:06.920 lot of sort of naivete um that I had to get used to and yeah but over time I was able to sort of

00:55:13.620 find my my footing and find friends and stuff but yeah that first year was really rough yeah

00:55:17.780 did people argue with you yeah is that what you did I lost friends I lost friends or like friends

00:55:24.520 in quotes because um you know so i entered yale in 2015 and that was kind of like the start of

00:55:32.720 like when whatever political correctness or wokeness started to spill out of the universities

00:55:37.820 and so yeah i would yeah argue with students about like i mean so for example i grew up thinking like

00:55:45.860 the word word racism just meant like um mistreating people based on the color of their skin

00:55:49.960 or their ethnicity yeah and then suddenly I get to Yale and racism got like got like redefined

00:55:56.480 through verbal trickery into like what did they say like power plus prejudice or some basically

00:56:02.040 like only white people can be racist yeah yeah and I was like whoa this is a new one uh okay and

00:56:07.320 then like I tried multiple times to get people to explain this to me because it didn't really

00:56:11.580 make sense and then you know people just get got upset with me for if you even question these

00:56:16.100 things often you know people they didn't learn how to defend their views um because everyone around

00:56:22.400 them agrees with them and so once someone does it like activates this like thread and i oh okay well

00:56:27.880 we can't talk to you anymore so wow yeah i went to university slightly before that i quit though

00:56:34.080 i was at concordia just like no-name university in montreal and it was woke in 2000 i think it

00:56:40.760 was 2012 it was already woke so i kind of entered into that um it was an art school okay so it kind

00:56:45.920 i think it got infiltrated first and montreal's in rough shape right now but it was woke so i was

00:56:50.540 taking um i was taking classics and then i was suddenly in the classics course through a feminist

00:56:55.800 lens okay i was like that's not what i signed up for it was like homer i was studying homer

00:57:00.520 through a feminist perspective and i was like what what is this and i had to leave that university

00:57:06.480 because it was so bad it was crazy my psychology courses were terrible too like my the psychology

00:57:12.540 professor i think part of the reason i was like we need an online university where like

00:57:15.820 things are taught properly my psychology professor told us rats weren't social creatures because they

00:57:22.020 lived in cages i'm not even joking that was my first year psychology class that i had to travel

00:57:27.960 like an hour to it was like what you know like a dungeon wow it's like oh i mean like okay so you

00:57:33.360 put a human in a cage and oh humans are like that's that's that's crazy yeah yeah i mean it

00:57:38.140 wasn't just like the wokeness that i saw even like so like to give an example of something weird

00:57:43.480 and peculiar that wasn't really like woke or political in any way i remember in one of my

00:57:49.520 psychology classes we learned of this study where um you know so it was a moral psychology course

00:57:56.860 and it was about sort of cultural differences in moral psychology people's intuitions about

00:58:02.360 right and wrong and one of the scenarios in the study that was presented to participants was this

00:58:07.460 case of incest of between a brother and sister is this wrong and this was like a almost a universal

00:58:13.720 where in uh like countries like India and Brazil and in the U.S. kind of universally people said

00:58:19.760 that this was wrong there was one exception one group were more they were more likely to say

00:58:24.580 incest was okay versus not okay and these were students at elite universities and when I learned

00:58:30.040 I read this study which was done in the 90s and so you know this is 20 years later I'm at Yale and

00:58:35.920 And so I decided to just, like, ask classmates and friends.

00:58:38.320 I'm like, yeah.

00:58:39.420 So I told them, like, I read the scenario or just, like, recall it from memory of just, you know, this brother and sister who are interested in each other.

00:58:45.520 No chance of pregnancy, but they're, you know, they're romantically attracted.

00:58:49.200 And most students said, yes.

00:58:50.800 Like, they said, like, this, you know, no one's getting hurt.

00:58:53.020 Yeah.

00:58:53.480 No one's suffering.

00:58:56.080 And they both want to do it.

00:58:57.780 Why not?

00:58:58.520 And I'm like, whoa.

00:58:59.680 Like, okay.

00:59:00.720 Like, it's so obvious that this is not okay.

00:59:02.940 but um it was this very sort of individualistic if it feels good do it if no one's getting hurt

00:59:08.480 that kind of thing um yeah yeah just a very different kind of uh like like moral uh vision

00:59:16.720 i guess than i was used to you know that's interesting so would that be classified as a

00:59:21.880 luxury belief i don't i don't know if i classified as luxury belief but i do think it's it's like

00:59:26.900 the the type of person who would say that that's okay would also almost certainly say that things

00:59:31.940 like poly um or or drug use or like anything that if you want to do it and at least at the surface

00:59:38.480 level without doing any kind of in-depth analysis if you know things kind of everyone's consenting

00:59:43.540 and everyone's okay and everyone feels like you know they're enjoying it then don't interfere

00:59:46.880 um it's sort of tied in with the undergirding like luxury belief uh proclivity yeah interesting

00:59:54.800 yeah i feel like i was definitely more like that when i was younger i think so too like i like i

00:59:59.880 definitely I definitely was but it's naive yeah yeah that's I think that's one thing that like

01:00:06.940 older people don't do a great job of doing is sort of challenging that kind of naivete because I felt

01:00:14.600 that way too when I was younger and a lot of the kind of conventions and um enduring principles and

01:00:24.180 norms over time yeah people forget like why they're there and how to defend them in the first

01:00:29.140 place and you know young people come along and we think that we know everything and um you know it

01:00:34.760 takes it takes a while i think to sort of mature out of it or the universe has to wallop you a

01:00:40.180 bunch of times until you learn you're like okay i know nothing yeah that's good okay do you own do

01:00:47.340 you know anything about how hookup culture because i know a lot of especially gen z's because it's

01:00:53.540 gotten worse it was already bad enough when i was in university and i know it's gotten worse

01:00:57.240 do you know the long-term impacts of that of hookup culture i think my sense is that it's

01:01:03.240 actually declining um okay that's my sense too but is it possible that i mean you know the statistics

01:01:08.700 but is it possible that we're just in an echo chamber of like hope um no i well or people

01:01:15.620 more against it now so i think we're both millennials and i remember uh when i was

01:01:24.140 younger and this is just anecdotal i don't know the statistics on this but this is just

01:01:28.380 maybe helps to illuminate this pattern we may be seeing is like 10 15 years ago people would hang

01:01:35.900 out right like do you want to hang out do you want to like whatever like go to this and thing and

01:01:41.600 and just go for hangs and then the hang would turn into a hookup i'm noticing more and more

01:01:46.880 zoomers will refer to um like they'll talk about dates like they'll actually say i went on a date

01:01:54.060 or like i went yeah i'm gonna go on a date or will you go on a date with me and this seems to

01:01:58.560 actually be coming back a little bit again just sort of observational anecdotal but i remember

01:02:04.600 there was this like reluctance like calling something a date felt like weird or awkward or

01:02:09.100 icky or something uh 15 years ago and now it's like yeah you go on a date like hookups are the

01:02:15.460 thing that that's kind of like not cool now or just kind of like weird or cringe or something

01:02:19.580 and all that being said like I do yeah it does seem like a lot a lot more young people just

01:02:26.980 aren't doing anything like they're just not having sex at all and you've probably seen some of these

01:02:30.780 stats like the sex recession and this kind of stuff so you know something weird I think is

01:02:35.340 is happening where some people I think are trying to like revive some version of monogamous dating

01:02:40.820 and others are just sort of checking it all together and there's always going to be like

01:02:44.660 a very small percentage of the population that would score high on, you know, what psychologists

01:02:49.620 call like the socio-sexual inventory, which basically is just how promiscuous you are.

01:02:54.680 And they'll just sort of, you know, there's like 10% of the population that is like extremely

01:03:00.160 high on this trait and for both men and women.

01:03:02.760 And most of the promiscuity actually takes place among that group.

01:03:07.000 And everyone else sort of mistakenly believes that that's happening everywhere.

01:03:10.780 But it's really just like that 10% of the population hooking up with each other.

01:03:14.660 um and so uh yeah the hookup thing yeah it's it's um it seems to be waning a little bit uh i know

01:03:24.900 more young people seem to be abandoning the apps a lot of them are like frustrated with them uh but

01:03:30.840 i think a lot of them are just like having trouble because there's there's not a lot of alternatives

01:03:34.480 either so yeah yeah i know i've been trying to think about what the alternative is i guess people

01:03:40.540 figured out that the apps didn't really work a lot of childless you know women yeah started

01:03:46.820 experiencing unhappiness and telling people about it like i like i remember growing up

01:03:51.220 and i was definitely told and i don't think people are told this anymore but i was definitely told

01:03:55.560 that you could have kids until you were like i don't know 45 or 50 like like old and it was

01:04:01.980 i think that was before these women who didn't have kids reached that age and then realized

01:04:08.940 they couldn't and then told everybody else about it yeah so i feel like the the lies kind of

01:04:13.840 unfolded like i think celebrities are talking about how oh i you know i was one of those people

01:04:18.240 that was told i could have kids when i was 45 and i can't so maybe that's part of the reason

01:04:22.540 it's going away is because people are realizing it's a lie yeah yeah yeah it's it's i think we're

01:04:27.220 like starting to like the younger generation they're kind of witnessing sort of like older

01:04:32.460 millennials who went through this because like yeah like hookup culture was huge and it was

01:04:38.120 sort of praise like if you go back and read articles in places like the atlantic in like

01:04:42.140 2010 it was like hookup culture is great for women hookup culture is great for everyone we all win

01:04:47.320 like you know why do we need to be so committed to this old outdated model of relationships and

01:04:52.980 so i just wrote this post on my sub stack about how you know people believe that we have evolved

01:05:03.460 sort of beyond arranged matchmaking and the argument i made in this essay was that universities

01:05:09.880 are essentially like the new matchmaking systems um you know they basically sort people you know

01:05:18.360 okay so so i gave this thought experiment in the essay where i said you know imagine there's a

01:05:22.300 an upper middle class older married couple they have an 18 year old kid who and they want to

01:05:27.120 identify suitable partners. And so they ask potential suitors, okay, we want you to tell us

01:05:35.260 to take an IQ test and tell us your score. We want you to go out and gather recommendation letters.

01:05:40.140 We want you to write a personal statement about your background and your values. We want you to

01:05:45.120 give us the financial statement of your parents so that we know how much money they make,

01:05:48.400 so on and so forth. And now you have a pool of all of this information. And now you know,

01:05:53.200 okay, you can put your kid with these other young people based on these, you know, this

01:05:56.720 information. And then from there, they can kind of figure it out. And that's basically what college

01:06:01.000 is. Most people don't actually meet their spouse in college or university. But by going to a place

01:06:07.100 like that, you know, you become a part of this strata of society where you go to college, then

01:06:14.080 you go into this kind of white collar job where almost everyone around you and everyone you ever

01:06:17.480 interact with has a college degree. And you enter this kind of refined dating pool over time. And

01:06:22.800 then if you go on to grad school, this continues to occur. So there's this stat that I share there

01:06:28.880 where if your highest level of education is a high school diploma, your likelihood of marrying

01:06:33.960 someone with a college degree is only 9%. But if you have a college degree, your likelihood of

01:06:39.840 marrying someone with a college degree is 65%. And that study was done in 2005. My guess is it's

01:06:45.440 even higher now. And social scientists call this assortative mating, where people tend to pair with

01:06:52.320 individuals who are similar to themselves along sort of educational lines, but also sort of

01:06:56.380 political lines and personality and so on. And so, yeah, I think a lot of young people,

01:07:03.020 actually, no one tells them this, right? Like everyone thinks, oh, college is to get a degree,

01:07:06.740 college is to study, college is to prepare for my career. But you're also in this, you're in a

01:07:11.340 unique environment that will never be replicated again, where you're literally around tons of other

01:07:16.840 young people, same age as you, you know, roughly the same academic level, same interests, all these

01:07:22.040 things and a lot of young people will tell me they're shocked you know they graduate college

01:07:26.260 go into the workforce and they tell me like they're they're shocked at like how their dating

01:07:30.980 pool has dramatically shrunk right because now you're in a you're at work you're in an organization

01:07:35.480 where like you have like older bosses everyone around like most of the time everyone's older

01:07:38.860 than you right when you you're fresh out of college and you have your first job and you're

01:07:42.420 not around lots of interesting young people potential partners and so toward the end I

01:07:47.540 suggest you know if you're a young person reading this that like you know that's like think think

01:07:52.260 harder about that about like when you're in college about like finding someone more serious

01:07:55.620 in that kind of environment that's smart yeah i i never understood the value of private i went to

01:08:00.820 a public school and it was a mess i went to a whole bunch of different public schools and they

01:08:04.480 were all messes and i didn't i kind of had this negative view about private school like why would

01:08:09.120 anyone pay that much money to put their kid in a private school and then i grew up and i went went

01:08:14.560 to university and i met a couple of people that had been in private school and i realized that

01:08:18.820 their friends were different than my friends in public school and i was like oh i get it like

01:08:24.820 maybe part of the reason people parents put their kids in private school so they're surrounded by

01:08:29.460 these other kids that are from richer families that have these different experiences i had never

01:08:34.040 thought about that as a kid i was just like why would you spend that much money on a school what

01:08:39.000 does that matter but it is that social group is so important i didn't think about that with

01:08:43.340 university because usually i'm like it's a bad idea it's not going to get you a job and i still

01:08:47.000 think it's a bad idea for the most part but that that is interesting that you take yourself out of

01:08:52.660 wherever you're in and put yourself in a different i guess status situation yeah you're not you're

01:08:57.300 not really paying well maybe okay maybe you're paying for an education but yeah you're really

01:09:00.380 paying for yourself or for your kid to be around uh you know potentially more um you know attractive

01:09:09.520 and people who will basically give rise to, like, healthy grandchildren,

01:09:15.700 form long-term relationships, put them in a situation

01:09:18.180 where the grandkids can be successful, that kind of thing.

01:09:20.920 So I think there is something to that.

01:09:23.660 I don't know if parents consciously have that thought,

01:09:25.620 but, like, probably some of them do, yeah.

01:09:27.660 I think people who put their kids in private schools do.

01:09:30.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:09:31.660 I think. I don't know.

01:09:33.480 That's what I've thought anyway.

01:09:35.040 I have, like, my daughter's in a private school now,

01:09:36.860 i was like i wouldn't if now that i can afford it like i get it the kids here are different than

01:09:41.720 the kids in public school i've seen that yeah yeah sneaky okay that okay i can get behind that

01:09:47.500 for for university i guess maybe maybe well rob thank you for coming on yeah thanks for having me

01:09:54.480 yeah this has been great yeah that was fun thanks for trekking over here and i would recommend this

01:09:58.620 i'm going to link it in the description and everything troubled rob henderson depressing

01:10:04.040 but but like but wild and you should no but i mean people should be aware of

01:10:11.280 that that other human beings experience that kind of thing yeah and and like there are i mean we

01:10:17.000 dwelled on some of the impressive parts but there are some there are moments of levity and humor and

01:10:21.320 some other things in there but um you know the first the early chapters are pretty pretty rough

01:10:26.380 going i will say so well congratulations and thank you for coming on again thanks mikaela

01:10:34.040 Yeah.

01:10:35.420 Yeah.

01:10:37.800 Yeah.

01:10:38.400 Yeah.

01:10:39.140 Yeah.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - July 31, 2024

Psychologist on Dating Advice, Hookup Culture, and Foster Care ｜ Rob Henderson EP 207

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