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David, this is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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You're David Pinsoff.

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I'm your Dave Petrozuski.

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This is Evolution, this is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast, Actual Evolutionary

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Psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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Uh today we have Jen Bird Craven.

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She is uh at the intersection scientifically of the mind and the endocrine system, and that

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is uh what we talked about today.

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Yeah, we talked all about the nuances of stress and cortisol and what it

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does to the mind and body and the evolutionary origins of stress, its functions.

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Um, this was a big learning experience for me.

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I feel like I learned a lot about how stress works, how the endocrine system works.

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Yeah.

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Why do we need an endocrine system?

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Why do we need a brain?

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Why do we have stress?

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Why is it bad?

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Why does it feel bad?

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Is it all bad?

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Uh all these things.

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And yeah, I I certainly learned a lot too.

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I feel like this is some of these episodes we are experts, and some I feel like we're we're

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bumbling uh idiots.

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And I actually really enjoy the latter category because I learn a lot and I feel like this

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was that latter category for me at least.

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Totally.

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Yeah, it was great to just expand my knowledge on a hugely important topic, which is

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stress.

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So if you feel stressed or not at all, um uh and if you have uh opinions about

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stress or know somebody who is stressed or wants to be less stressed, or

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does anybody want to be more stressed?

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Uh maybe maybe some people.

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They're just too chill and they gotta figure out.

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Actually, I wanted to ask I wanted to ask Jen.

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Jen, if you're listening, I forgot to wanted to ask you, is there anybody who doesn't have

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stress?

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Like like there's people who are born without pain.

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I wonder if there's people who are born without stress, and I wonder what that does.

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Yeah, that would be fascinating to look at.

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Yeah, I've no idea.

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Well we can circle back to that.

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Maybe we can have Jen back on and we're work we can get somebody in the comments saying, I

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don't have stress, and here's what my life is like.

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Yeah.

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Well, kick back, relax, um, avoid activating your stress response and enjoy this

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episode with Jet Bird Craven.

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Is as I understand it, you study not only psychology, but something called the

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endocrine system.

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I do.

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Um, we really haven't had uh an endocrine person on.

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We've we've sort of touched on it very lightly, but what is that and

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why do we have it instead of just a brain?

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Right.

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Um, that's a great question, actually.

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Um, so the endocrine system is is super old.

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Um, we share it with, you know, um almost all other um vertebrates um and things like that.

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And um it, you know, it essentially works alongside neurotransmitters and things like

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that to motivate our behavior.

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Um, and so I'm interested in, you know, sort of what motivates us and how can we sort of

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assess that.

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Um, and the endocrine system is a beautiful system to be able to tell us what organisms are

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prioritizing in the moment.

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Um, and it's also a ton easier to measure than um brain activity um and things like that.

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So do you feel like people who study the mind from a

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computational perspective overlook the motivation and embodiment

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element?

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Because I've noticed as we sort of have technology and computing technology,

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it really emphasizes the information processing part of the picture.

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But then it all almost makes everything else feel like magic.

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Right.

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Is that have you noticed this at all or felt come up against this?

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I have a little bit, particularly in like in reviews um and things like that.

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Um when we send things to more general journals, um, it's you know it come it comes up and

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uh and also just even in teaching and things like that too with other, you know, students

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um and that sort of thing.

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So um and it is really, you know, sort of, you know, people don't uh in my opinion, I'm

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biased, um, but they don't pay enough attention to these, you know, sort of older systems

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that are informing these newer information processing systems.

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So we're taking a brain-centric perspective, and really the endocrine system got there

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first in a way.

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Maybe as a way of putting it.

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Okay.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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Absolutely.

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That's interesting.

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I mean, I have a a a a deeper question.

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It's okay if you don't know the the answer to it, but it seems like a brain naively would

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be enough.

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Like if you need to motivate behavior, you have neurons, they're connected to our muscles,

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they're connected to our hearts, they're connected to our lungs.

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Um, they can send a message to say, Hey, get going.

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Uh, you know, make the heart go faster, make the muscles tense up, get out of that

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situation.

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Seems like the brain is enough.

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Why do why do you need this whole complicated endocrine system.

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Yeah, that's a that's a great question actually.

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And you know, it's important to remember that a lot of this starts in the brain.

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And so like, you know, the hypothalamus, pituitary glands, and things like that, you know,

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we tend to think of like puberty is a great example.

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We tend to think of puberty on the level of the gonads, right?

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That's not what's happening.

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It's the pituitary that's signaling down to the gonads to start producing, you know, their

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stuff.

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And so I think that you know having it integrated with the limbic system and uh things like

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that allows you to, you know, sort of be more flexible in your behavior, perhaps.

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Um, but it's also you remember brains are expensive, right?

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Um, and so if we could sort of, you know, have this on a you know, sort of um more simple

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level, um then that might, you know, sort of solve the problem without having to recruit um

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the brain.

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It's really when we, you know, sort of run up against challenges that we can't, you know,

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sort of just operate on the autonomic nervous system anyway that we then start recruiting

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higher, higher processes.

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Can I ask too, like, you know, if I think about from the perspective of development,

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development is a chemical soup process where genes are contingently orchestrating

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the building of stuff.

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Um, is is it that, you know, the the brain is sort of

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neurochemical and can change the structure?

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So, like, you know, if electricity is in the right place at the right time, that can cause

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chemical changes and structural changes.

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But is the idea that the endocrine system is sort of like analogous

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to development, that it can do a better job of continuing

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development, right?

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Like, I mean, I think people I have a I even I have a cartoonish view of development as

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like, you know, once you're uh a certain once you're sort of an adult, you're done

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developing, but that's not an adaptationist way to think about the contingent

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building of the phenotype.

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Is is that is that also true that the endocrine system is sort of this

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ontagenetic developmental chemical building process?

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Is that a a metaphor that's appropriate or not?

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Yeah, I think so.

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And you know, it stimulates gene expression or not, can silence genes and

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that sort of thing.

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And so even, you know, prenatally, one of the system that I'm most familiar with and I work

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with the most is the HBA axis, right?

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And so that can actually, you know, modify based on mother's stress levels, can modify

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fetuses, um, you know, gene expression in a number of different areas, um, metabolism, um,

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you know, um, just you know, essential stress response um and things like that.

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And then that process just sort of continues across development.

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Um, obviously, you know, with puberty being sort of this massive reorganization and you

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know, sort of sensitive period of that, then you have, you know, um a lot of these um

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endocrine systems sort of recruiting higher level processes um to be able to is coordinate

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behavior and you know adapt.

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Yeah.

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Stress sounds really interesting and I'm sure we're going to get into that.

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I have another dumb question, um, which maybe again like to with David's

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caveat of like if if if we don't, if this is a a too big question, but why do we have

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puberty?

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Like why, why don't we just build um The adults.

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Why do we have extended childhood?

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Yeah, that's a great question.

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You know, and humans are unique in that we have a period of childhood that the other

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apes don't have.

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They just go from infancy to juvenile period to adulthood adulthood.

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And then you also have, you know, adolescence is unique among humans, and

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particularly, you know, that growth period and things like that.

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And so I think that, you know, just drawing from like Barry Boggan's work um and some other

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things, childhood essentially is a feeding adaptation, right?

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Um and to be able to, you know, sort of um free mother up from lactation

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um and things like that, that frees her up to produce other offspring.

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And then you sort of outsource um that, you know, care of that little, you know, immature

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to, you know, um fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, others in their community, and

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that sort of thing.

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And during that time, they're learning about the social environment.

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And humans are, as you guys know, just incredibly complex.

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And our culture and you know, even social groups change so quickly from generation to

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generation that you can't really have a system that's very static.

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And, you know, from the beginning, you need to have a system that's plastic and able to

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sort of modify these neural neural systems according to the appropriate

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context.

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So is it is it that building sort of a complete sexually

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mature adult right at childhood would be too costly in terms of energy?

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And that if you're a baby, you want to be as uh as you don't want to be

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too demanding of your uh parents' time and energy.

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And if you had complicated sexual equipment to maintain, that would just be an extra drain

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on your family.

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And you want to try to be as cost effective as possible in this early period and save that

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energy intensive sexual maturation for later when you have uh perhaps

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accumulated more embodied capital and you are able to make those expenditures.

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Is that right basically the idea?

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Yeah, that's essentially the idea.

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And then it also allows for learning.

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It allows for, you know, sort of fine-tuning these systems to the particular cultural

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context, not only learning about technology, but learning about people, how they work, you

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know, who's aligned with who.

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You know, kids start tracking status and things like that.

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And there's some evidence to suggest that that is better, you know, sort of fine tuned

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under the protective umbrella of parents and others, um, versus you know sort

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of getting right to it.

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You might get it wrong.

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And particularly because you know our groups are are so incredibly complex socially.

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And from a biological perspective, the idea of a morph, which is like a subtype or a

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version of a body, I guess is sort of the broadest way.

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So I guess the idea is that we have age morphs and is it that

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we're Are there, I mean, I mean obviously there's like you know

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developmental morphs where there's like a butterfly and a chrysalis and a caterpillar

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before the butterfly.

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Um, are our age morphs weird um compared to other species?

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They are, they're very weird.

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Um, and that we, you know, we have a new a number of unique life history factors.

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So, you know, I mentioned childhood and adolescence.

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We also have menopause.

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So we have you know women living two, three decades longer, um, you know, past their um

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reproductive um periods.

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What is what is that about?

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You know, um, what is that for?

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And if you understand childhood in in a unique way, you can understand menopause uh to some

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extent.

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So mother grandmothers that are, you know, sort of helping to provision and also helping to

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teach um, you know, these complex social um systems, um, again, sort of you know, frees mom

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up to reproduce again.

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So, you know, overall reproductive success is higher and that sort of thing.

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But it um it is, you know, it's it's a beautifully designed system in in a lot of ways, but

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also suggests that our evolutionary history was really strong with social selection.

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And you know, those that were, you know, a little bit more savvy and social skills did a

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lot a lot better.

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Yeah.

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I what I'm hearing you say, and just to make explicit, maybe for listeners, is that there's

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been arguments that we are foraging niches extractive, which is like we make a living.

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We're not like koala bears where you just eat a eucalyptus trees, leaves, whatever.

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We we we are we extract really difficult high process things like the

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process demand things, like and uh and then also socially we're very uh

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arms racy to put it simply.

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Um, and so both things sort of are an arms race of ever increasing complexity.

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So, in some sense, we have a really hard job, and so it requires a lot of help, a lot of

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learning.

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Yeah, I think that is that a fair sort of summary, or at least like that's the one that's

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sort of why we're complicated, right?

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Like there's it, it's we're very biased to think intelligence is a good thing, but in some

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sense, from a biological perspective, it's very costly because of time and energy.

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And it's really we we we are we're sort of an unfortunate

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possibility space in organism space from a Dawkins perspective, in the sense of we have to

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be complicated because of the way we make a living, I guess.

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Right, right.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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And you know, they're just things that don't translate very well in a canalized form from

238
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generation to generation.

239
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You know, um, you know, foraging, you mentioned, is a is a great example of that.

240
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Um, we forage in a lot of different niches.

241
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Um, and you know, eating the wrong thing could kill you.

242
00:14:07,610 --> 00:14:12,410
Um you have to learn how to process, you know, um different kinds of foods and um things

243
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like that, and all that is you know um happening through this developmental process.

244
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Right.

245
00:14:17,370 --> 00:14:21,850
So you can't build into the germline the information about how to make a living.

246
00:14:22,010 --> 00:14:25,850
So it's setting up these more open parameter systems, yeah.

247
00:14:26,170 --> 00:14:26,900
Yes, absolutely.

248
00:14:27,060 --> 00:14:30,900
And you certainly can't build in, you know, sort of, you know, mating systems and, you

249
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know, peer networks and, you know, all of those sorts of cultural things.

250
00:14:34,580 --> 00:14:35,060
Yeah.

251
00:14:35,620 --> 00:14:41,380
Is is a a a fruitful way of thinking about this in terms of the economics of energy uh

252
00:14:41,460 --> 00:14:46,740
and the endo endocrine system is you can think of them as kind of economic planners of, you

253
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know, uh channeling energy toward particular activities at particular life stages.

254
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So when you're in childhood, the best thing you want to do is invest energy in just eating

255
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and learning.

256
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Like that's that's your job.

257
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And then uh once you've eaten enough and learned enough, it's time to start competing for

258
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mates.

259
00:15:03,050 --> 00:15:07,930
And that and then you want to channel all the energy into sexually developing and competing

260
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for mates and entering you know so status games, whatever.

261
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Uh and then you know, once you get older, you have kids, um, you want to channel energy

262
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into investing in those kids.

263
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Uh for women, if you start to have grandkids, you might want to uh uh channel effort away

264
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from mating competition and into investing in the grandkids.

265
00:15:27,020 --> 00:15:33,020
Uh and behind each of these shifts in energy uh throughout the lifespan um are the

266
00:15:33,180 --> 00:15:39,100
uh the the endocrine mechanisms that uh uh that channel uh energy allocation in different

267
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directions.

268
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Is that uh a fair way of of describing the the evolutionary logic of it?

269
00:15:44,330 --> 00:15:45,050
Yes, absolutely.

270
00:15:45,210 --> 00:15:45,690
That's perfect.

271
00:15:45,770 --> 00:15:50,730
Um and the endocrine system really gives us an idea of how that energy is being distributed

272
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and and to what extent, you know, in in different domains.

273
00:15:53,690 --> 00:15:57,370
Um so that's why I love it is is that it really gives you an idea of what you know what is

274
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motivating that organism in that, you know, particular moment in time.

275
00:16:00,970 --> 00:16:01,130
Yeah.

276
00:16:01,290 --> 00:16:05,450
And I remember when I was a kid, uh I think it was like elementary school, there was like a

277
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poster.

278
00:16:05,850 --> 00:16:09,450
I have like a very vivid memory of it where I talked about the different stages of life.

279
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And I don't know, I don't know what source this was, but it was it was something like the

280
00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:17,600
equivalent of like, you know, it was like childhood play, like parenting, be productive.

281
00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:21,040
And I remember thinking, how do people know that?

282
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:26,560
Like, I think my my implicit like kid model was sort of like I was maybe I was being blank

283
00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:29,040
slatey about it, but I was sort of like, How is it possible?

284
00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:33,840
I didn't have the vocabulary to say what I'm gonna say now, but what my question was was

285
00:16:34,310 --> 00:16:39,990
how is it possible that this the human uh lifespan is reliably

286
00:16:40,150 --> 00:16:44,870
developing enough that people can predict people's motivations at different times in their

287
00:16:44,870 --> 00:16:45,350
life?

288
00:16:45,590 --> 00:16:51,350
Um, and I think that that's I I imagine scientifically in the history of the sciences that

289
00:16:51,430 --> 00:16:53,990
that is a phenomenon to be explained.

290
00:16:54,150 --> 00:17:00,080
And I wonder, you know, I and and maybe this is a getting the segue into how you

291
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:01,040
got into this.

292
00:17:01,200 --> 00:17:05,520
But I can imagine one way to approach or how to get into the endocrine system or an

293
00:17:05,520 --> 00:17:11,200
evolutionary approach to the endocrine system is to look at phenomena like reliably

294
00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:16,080
occurring different phases of life and start to ask well, why would that exist?

295
00:17:16,640 --> 00:17:16,880
Right.

296
00:17:17,120 --> 00:17:22,080
And another way is to sort of say, given an adaptive problem, what might not we be looking

297
00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:22,320
for?

298
00:17:22,400 --> 00:17:23,760
Or what might be missing?

299
00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:25,280
And you can kind of do both.

300
00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:31,530
How did you get interested in doing an endocrine informed psychology

301
00:17:31,530 --> 00:17:34,410
and marrying those two from an evolution perspective.

302
00:17:35,050 --> 00:17:40,490
And maybe this is relevant to the answer, but I'm also curious, sort of in that continuum

303
00:17:40,490 --> 00:17:45,450
of phenomenon first versus adaptive problem first,

304
00:17:46,490 --> 00:17:52,170
is is that is, you know, along that continuum, how is that informing that broader story of

305
00:17:52,170 --> 00:17:54,330
how you got interested in the endocrine system?

306
00:17:54,520 --> 00:17:54,680
Yeah.

307
00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:56,120
Yeah, that's a great question.

308
00:17:56,680 --> 00:18:01,000
So I really, you know, came through through this through through development.

309
00:18:01,320 --> 00:18:04,920
Not, you know, a lot of people, you know, sort of come at this through the mating context,

310
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:05,320
right?

311
00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:07,400
Um, and they get into interested in that.

312
00:18:07,640 --> 00:18:12,760
And um I think, you know, one of the things that I was really fascinated with as an even

313
00:18:12,760 --> 00:18:16,840
undergraduate student is the fact that that, you know, like you just mentioned, there is

314
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:18,920
such universals in human development.

315
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:21,160
Um, language is a is a perfect example of that.

316
00:18:21,240 --> 00:18:22,680
So we're exposed to different languages.

317
00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:25,090
Obviously, that the output is different.

318
00:18:25,490 --> 00:18:29,650
But if you look at kids across the world, they are reliably, you know, their first word

319
00:18:29,650 --> 00:18:31,330
comes about, you know, one year old.

320
00:18:31,410 --> 00:18:35,810
And you know, all of these things are very reliably sort of patterned.

321
00:18:36,050 --> 00:18:40,930
And then discovered that, you know, this marker of, you know, sort of where you're

322
00:18:40,930 --> 00:18:44,530
motivated happens to be, you know, really found in the endocrine system.

323
00:18:44,850 --> 00:18:49,100
That you can, it's a, you know, sort of different than like heart rate and and and things

324
00:18:49,100 --> 00:18:54,460
like that it's a much more sort of um broad measure of um sort of where is this individual

325
00:18:54,460 --> 00:19:00,460
attending um and uh that sort of thing so one of the the um things that you know

326
00:19:00,540 --> 00:19:05,260
and I could sort of explain um so you know some of the work that I've done in in my lab but

327
00:19:05,260 --> 00:19:10,910
also um related to you know drawing from from other folks um so Laura Stroud is a

328
00:19:10,910 --> 00:19:14,910
researcher that does just, you know, sort of biopsy um type stuff and doesn't really come

329
00:19:14,910 --> 00:19:18,670
at it from this, you know, sort of more evolutionarily informed perspective.

330
00:19:18,830 --> 00:19:24,590
Um, but um, one of the findings that um I was fascinated with early is there's sex

331
00:19:24,590 --> 00:19:29,470
differences in um, you know, particularly, you know, we're we all get stressed over a lot

332
00:19:29,470 --> 00:19:34,190
of the same things, but there's some things that men are more much more likely to at least

333
00:19:34,270 --> 00:19:38,500
show a stress response on if you ask them, it's essentially the same, but they show a

334
00:19:38,500 --> 00:19:41,060
stress response and then uh it's different for women.

335
00:19:41,460 --> 00:19:46,100
Um, and what's interesting about this is that doesn't show up, that different doesn't show

336
00:19:46,100 --> 00:19:47,220
up until puberty.

337
00:19:47,540 --> 00:19:51,780
So when you do, you know, kids on the in these paradigms, um, you don't see any sex

338
00:19:51,780 --> 00:19:56,820
differences, all of a sudden puberty comes in line, and you start seeing um these different

339
00:19:56,820 --> 00:20:01,620
responses in the stress response system, not in the in in um, you know, testosterone or

340
00:20:01,620 --> 00:20:03,300
estrogen and you know things like that.

341
00:20:03,540 --> 00:20:08,990
So they're tending to different um different aspects of their social

342
00:20:08,990 --> 00:20:09,870
environment.

343
00:20:10,190 --> 00:20:14,590
And, you know, a lot of these things are, you know, a lot of times people say, well, isn't

344
00:20:14,590 --> 00:20:15,710
that socialized, right?

345
00:20:16,270 --> 00:20:22,270
But it's, you know, we see it pretty reliably developing across different cultures and,

346
00:20:22,350 --> 00:20:25,790
you know, um, you know, replicated across time.

347
00:20:26,590 --> 00:20:31,950
So for example, men are more likely to show a stress response and boys,

348
00:20:32,190 --> 00:20:37,120
adolescent boys, over you know, these public achievement stressors, right?

349
00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:43,200
Anything that can, you know, sort of impact your status publicly, a public performance, you

350
00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:47,920
don't do well, that's that's going to initiate a really um really nice stress response.

351
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:53,520
Women also show that, um, and and adolescent girls, um, but not to the extent that men do.

352
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:59,120
Women are much more reactive to social rejection, um even very, very subtle forms of social

353
00:20:59,120 --> 00:20:59,520
rejection.

354
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:04,490
And so um you could, you know, get people in a lab um and you have two confederates and

355
00:21:04,490 --> 00:21:08,490
they start talking to each other more so than the actual participant.

356
00:21:08,650 --> 00:21:12,730
So even that, they're not being rude, they're not, you know, physically rejecting her and

357
00:21:12,730 --> 00:21:16,090
things like that, just this beautiful nice stress response to that.

358
00:21:16,170 --> 00:21:17,370
Um people do not like it.

359
00:21:17,530 --> 00:21:22,040
The men in the situation, again, you know, will show some stress response, but not not to

360
00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:22,680
the extent.

361
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:25,160
Um and those things are adaptively patterned.

362
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:29,080
If you think about it right around you know adolescence, what you should be attending to,

363
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:33,560
what men should be attending to is their public status, their explicit these status

364
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:35,960
competitions and things like that.

365
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:40,520
That should motivate their behavior to attend to these things, you know, sort of um be able

366
00:21:40,520 --> 00:21:43,850
to fix things, fix mistakes and those sorts of things.

367
00:21:43,930 --> 00:21:44,890
And the same thing for women.

368
00:21:44,970 --> 00:21:49,530
So social rejection has really big consequences starting in adolescence and then in

369
00:21:49,530 --> 00:21:50,170
adulthood.

370
00:21:50,490 --> 00:21:52,330
And so you should be attending to those things.

371
00:21:52,410 --> 00:21:57,130
And again, this motivates you to repair to some extent.

372
00:21:57,770 --> 00:22:01,770
Just to push on the social rejection versus public representation.

373
00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:13,520
has there been work sort of unpacking what exactly is the

374
00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:14,800
representation?

375
00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:16,800
Like I don't maybe, maybe not.

376
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:22,880
I mean, because I I can think about it sort of as it's all status in at a at a sort of more

377
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:24,240
abstract level.

378
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:28,480
And and I think too, you mentioned that you know it's the socialization.

379
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:34,010
There's been like a history of sort of there's been lazy evolutionizing and

380
00:22:34,330 --> 00:22:38,810
anti-evolutionizing in the past where it's sort of like, well, here's a behavior, is it

381
00:22:38,810 --> 00:22:39,770
learned or innate?

382
00:22:39,850 --> 00:22:40,010
Right.

383
00:22:40,170 --> 00:22:45,050
And I think the the the we're all doing the more complicated second wave thing of sort of

384
00:22:45,130 --> 00:22:50,730
there's some evolved representations, and there might be sex differences or even not about

385
00:22:50,970 --> 00:22:56,720
certain things being more problematic or putting more motivation behind, or this is sort of

386
00:22:56,720 --> 00:22:59,840
the north star of the control system, you know?

387
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,880
And so I'm just wondering like they sound both like status.

388
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:08,960
And I actually can't even uh tell apart maybe maybe it's sort of

389
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:13,840
like a common knowledge versus I like I don't actually can't even reverse engineer exactly

390
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:19,520
what's different between like I intuitively I get public uh status versus

391
00:23:19,670 --> 00:23:21,190
social rejection.

392
00:23:21,590 --> 00:23:26,870
But I can't actually I couldn't tell you a rope what the robotic software level difference

393
00:23:26,870 --> 00:23:28,230
between those two things are.

394
00:23:28,310 --> 00:23:28,470
Yeah.

395
00:23:28,710 --> 00:23:28,950
Right.

396
00:23:29,030 --> 00:23:29,190
Yeah.

397
00:23:29,270 --> 00:23:32,390
And you actually bring up a really great point is that they are both status.

398
00:23:32,550 --> 00:23:37,430
It's just, you know, sort of, you know, how we in psychology are used to measuring status

399
00:23:37,510 --> 00:23:38,310
um versus not.

400
00:23:38,390 --> 00:23:42,870
So we're not really, you know, used to having this more evolutionarily informed um aspect

401
00:23:42,870 --> 00:23:48,480
of like, you know, status for women is you know sort of this social acceptance and and sort

402
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:52,560
of you know how you're valued in the group same thing for men it just is expressed it you

403
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:56,880
know quite differently and so um these stressors that I was talking about are more like

404
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:02,560
achievement stressors so as an example um you know participant comes in and they're asked

405
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:08,160
to solve an unsolvable math problem um or memorize um a you know difficult passage like

406
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:12,320
Paradise Lost or something like that and then repeat it um to the experimenter and then

407
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:16,950
they see a confederate do quite well Um, so they're outperformed, um, essentially.

408
00:24:17,190 --> 00:24:22,150
And um, I think, you know, particularly for like skills, you know, you want to demonstrate

409
00:24:22,150 --> 00:24:26,950
that you're a skilled um member of your coalition, a valued potentially valued member of

410
00:24:26,950 --> 00:24:27,910
your coalition.

411
00:24:28,070 --> 00:24:31,990
Um, and and what that does is that just very publicly says, No, you're not.

412
00:24:32,150 --> 00:24:35,030
Uh so um I I I that's a great point.

413
00:24:35,110 --> 00:24:36,630
And that they're really both status.

414
00:24:36,710 --> 00:24:36,950
I see.

415
00:24:37,190 --> 00:24:38,390
Um it's just how it's expressed.

416
00:24:38,630 --> 00:24:41,670
And also, I guess it would be an opportunity for like aggression.

417
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:47,320
because I also think like sometimes male aggression is sort of oafish in in public, right?

418
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:49,160
Or it's sort of like, oh, you're stupid, right?

419
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:50,600
Like and and yeah.

420
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,000
So um it's interesting, but it's interesting, yeah.

421
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:58,120
Like the burden would be to sort of um unpack exactly what the representation is.

422
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:03,000
I'm guessing we're gonna bump up against that a lot because I imagine, because I would also

423
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:07,880
like to ask about stress, is a lot of the constructs you've inherited and we've all

424
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:13,590
inherited are not coming from an adaptationist or even selection pressure

425
00:25:13,750 --> 00:25:15,190
or adaptive problem first.

426
00:25:15,750 --> 00:25:21,350
And I and there's often sort of a uh instinct blindness or essentialism

427
00:25:21,670 --> 00:25:26,950
about it where it's intuitive, but that's a problem because then we don't really unpack

428
00:25:26,950 --> 00:25:27,590
what it is.

429
00:25:28,310 --> 00:25:32,500
Um so yeah, I mean is that true?

430
00:25:32,660 --> 00:25:33,540
You're saying yes.

431
00:25:33,620 --> 00:25:35,220
Is that absolutely yeah?

432
00:25:35,380 --> 00:25:40,340
Um and you know that much more so, obviously, in in sort of mainstream psychology than you

433
00:25:40,340 --> 00:25:41,300
know, um in our field.

434
00:25:41,380 --> 00:25:43,300
We we think a little bit differently about things.

435
00:25:43,460 --> 00:25:45,860
But um yeah, that's that's one thing that I come across a lot.

436
00:25:46,180 --> 00:25:46,340
Okay.

437
00:25:46,500 --> 00:25:52,340
I mean, maybe then this is a lead into then what is stress or is it even a thing?

438
00:25:52,660 --> 00:25:57,570
Um and it it's an intuitive and obvious and we all experience it.

439
00:25:57,650 --> 00:26:02,450
But then yes, can you disabuse us of the instinct blindness of stress?

440
00:26:02,690 --> 00:26:03,490
Yeah, absolutely.

441
00:26:03,650 --> 00:26:09,490
Well, and you bring a good a good point in that um oftentimes we're really poor reporters

442
00:26:09,490 --> 00:26:10,690
of our own stress.

443
00:26:10,930 --> 00:26:15,570
Um, so um there's a lot of you know things that are happening sort of under underneath um

444
00:26:15,730 --> 00:26:18,760
underneath the hood, so to speak, um, that we're not aware of.

445
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:22,760
Um, and um adolescents in particular are really horrible.

446
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,840
Um, reporters of of you know, sort of, you know, how stressed you feel, rated on one to

447
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:28,440
ten, you know, um, that sort of thing.

448
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:33,720
So uh and in terms of being bad at reporting this, is are you are you talking to about a

449
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,680
disconnect between self reports of how stressed a person is versus a physiological

450
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:39,160
response?

451
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:39,400
Yes.

452
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:43,400
Such that a person might say that they're not very stressed, but physiologically they're

453
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:45,320
revealing uh indicators of stress.

454
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:46,440
Is that what you're talking about?

455
00:26:46,750 --> 00:26:47,790
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

456
00:26:48,030 --> 00:26:49,870
More more commonly, it's the other way around.

457
00:26:49,950 --> 00:26:54,910
Um, so those like I'm very stressed, and and then you don't really see any physiological

458
00:26:54,910 --> 00:26:55,710
indicator of that.

459
00:26:55,870 --> 00:26:56,910
So interesting.

460
00:26:57,070 --> 00:26:58,110
Um yeah, yeah.

461
00:26:58,270 --> 00:27:02,910
But I I to answer your question of what is stress, you know, you can go way back to, you

462
00:27:02,910 --> 00:27:05,390
know, Hansele and, you know, things like that.

463
00:27:05,470 --> 00:27:10,360
And and, you know, essentially, you know, when the demands exceed the resources, you're

464
00:27:10,360 --> 00:27:14,440
going to experience, you know, sort of a disruption in homeostasis and you know, um, that

465
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:14,920
sort of thing.

466
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:21,000
So that basic definition is actually um really useful to build on, you know.

467
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:26,680
Um obviously humans are much more complex than that, um, but um that's that's sort of you

468
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:30,120
know the foundation um that I that I you go from.

469
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,840
Um and it's also important to, you know, sort of differentiate the two different stress

470
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:35,240
responses.

471
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,680
So the autonomic nervous system versus the HPA axis.

472
00:27:38,950 --> 00:27:44,630
Um, so autonomic nervous system more into the, you know, sort of current stress, acute

473
00:27:44,630 --> 00:27:45,110
stress.

474
00:27:45,270 --> 00:27:49,510
Um, the HBA axis is more recruited when that doesn't work.

475
00:27:49,670 --> 00:27:54,790
Um, so um, you know, you're experiencing a stressor and whatever you're doing, um, maybe

476
00:27:54,790 --> 00:27:56,790
what you did last time isn't working this time.

477
00:27:56,870 --> 00:28:01,510
And so then you recruit the sort of more expensive system um that's going to produce

478
00:28:01,510 --> 00:28:07,420
cortisol that um can, you know, is associated with sort of reorganizing um

479
00:28:07,420 --> 00:28:08,380
neural networks.

480
00:28:08,540 --> 00:28:14,300
And so to some extent, I really don't like the word stress um because a lot of times what

481
00:28:14,300 --> 00:28:20,220
we're measuring is more like arousal, um, attention, focus, you know, um, those

482
00:28:20,220 --> 00:28:25,820
sorts of things, not necessarily, you know, sort of the what lay people um perceive as

483
00:28:25,820 --> 00:28:26,220
stress.

484
00:28:26,970 --> 00:28:31,690
Could could you have in theory a a positively valenced stress?

485
00:28:31,850 --> 00:28:35,850
Absolutely such that maybe maybe you found a really great mate and you're really excited

486
00:28:35,930 --> 00:28:40,730
and you can't stop thinking about the person uh and uh and it just fills you with energy.

487
00:28:41,210 --> 00:28:44,890
Would that be a kind of stress and would it show up physiologically as a stress response?

488
00:28:45,210 --> 00:28:45,610
It does.

489
00:28:45,770 --> 00:28:46,730
Um it sure does.

490
00:28:46,890 --> 00:28:51,530
Um so yeah the those people that are in the early stages of a romantic love when they're uh

491
00:28:51,530 --> 00:28:55,610
interacting with their partner, they they um show pretty nice stress response.

492
00:28:55,820 --> 00:29:01,260
Um also kids, um, for example, like you know, the day before Christmas, um, right, um, they

493
00:29:01,260 --> 00:29:07,260
might be, you know, and pr there's you know uh anticipating um this great event um

494
00:29:07,340 --> 00:29:11,180
and that sort of thing a lot of times they'll they'll um show pretty high cortisol levels

495
00:29:11,340 --> 00:29:11,980
but they're happy.

496
00:29:12,140 --> 00:29:15,900
You know the affect is is excitement and um that sort of thing.

497
00:29:16,300 --> 00:29:17,030
That's fascinating.

498
00:29:17,110 --> 00:29:21,270
I mean, it suggests one way in which our intuitive notion, our full concept of stress is

499
00:29:21,510 --> 00:29:24,550
wrong in many ways, that it doesn't necessarily always need to be negative.

500
00:29:24,630 --> 00:29:28,470
What it is is basically the body mobilizing energy to deal with something.

501
00:29:28,630 --> 00:29:32,070
And it could be mobilizing energy to deal with a bad thing or a good thing.

502
00:29:32,310 --> 00:29:32,550
Right.

503
00:29:32,710 --> 00:29:34,310
Um that's that's really interesting.

504
00:29:34,710 --> 00:29:35,670
It's kind of magical.

505
00:29:35,750 --> 00:29:41,280
I mean, in a way that it's obvious when you because we experience it, but it's sort of a

506
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:47,520
system that's saying, like it's predicting based on informational cues in many cases, it's

507
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:53,200
it's detecting a situation, and then it's creating in

508
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:58,960
planning for future responses, um, and

509
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,240
somehow knows what is more likely to be needed in the future.

510
00:30:02,610 --> 00:30:04,450
That's just sort of a magical thing, right?

511
00:30:04,690 --> 00:30:05,650
Yeah, yeah, it is.

512
00:30:05,730 --> 00:30:10,130
And it's, you know, sort of again happening all, you know, on the level of the brain to

513
00:30:10,130 --> 00:30:10,690
some extent.

514
00:30:10,850 --> 00:30:16,770
But yeah, and it's it's interesting in a way that we, yeah, uh the HPA access

515
00:30:16,930 --> 00:30:21,330
and cortisol in particular, the function of it is not necessarily, I mean, it does

516
00:30:21,330 --> 00:30:25,010
definitely mobilize, you know, resources and energy and things like that.

517
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:29,880
it's also associated with destabilization of neural networks, um, particularly if you're

518
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:31,160
under chronic stress.

519
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:35,960
Um, and that, you know, a lot of times in in, you know, sort of mainstream psychology, they

520
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:39,000
say, oh no, the stress, you know, the stress response system is dysregulated.

521
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:40,200
We need to fix this.

522
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:45,160
It's actually an adaptive process because what what the the cues that are coming in is what

523
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:46,360
you're doing isn't working.

524
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:47,240
Change.

525
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:52,440
You know, find some different neural networks, find some different ways of approaching um

526
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:53,240
the situation.

527
00:30:53,570 --> 00:30:53,730
Yeah.

528
00:30:53,890 --> 00:30:58,370
I think one of the themes of this podcast has been respecting phenomena.

529
00:30:58,530 --> 00:31:04,530
And this sounds very much like a uh to almost channel David here, like stress is bad,

530
00:31:04,690 --> 00:31:04,930
right?

531
00:31:05,090 --> 00:31:07,250
Like uh it's a bad it's bad stuff.

532
00:31:07,410 --> 00:31:08,530
We don't want bad stuff.

533
00:31:08,690 --> 00:31:14,690
And so anything associated with stress, we so deregulation, it sounds bad,

534
00:31:14,770 --> 00:31:14,930
right?

535
00:31:15,010 --> 00:31:17,810
It sounds like a tangle or something.

536
00:31:18,210 --> 00:31:22,610
But I is there, yeah, it sounds like what you're what I'm what I'm hearing you saying is

537
00:31:22,610 --> 00:31:28,060
that we should appreciate not only is it sort of not just in too many negatives,

538
00:31:28,300 --> 00:31:33,980
not only is it um maybe not just entropic, it might be smart.

539
00:31:34,220 --> 00:31:39,900
And we should at least respect and better understand what's going on first before we sort

540
00:31:39,900 --> 00:31:44,940
of in a patronizing way sort of say, well let's let's make sure we never get to stress, we

541
00:31:44,940 --> 00:31:46,540
never get to deregulation.

542
00:31:46,860 --> 00:31:47,180
Right.

543
00:31:47,340 --> 00:31:47,580
Right.

544
00:31:47,740 --> 00:31:48,620
Absolutely.

545
00:31:48,970 --> 00:31:50,570
So what is going on?

546
00:31:51,450 --> 00:31:52,090
Yeah.

547
00:31:52,410 --> 00:31:55,210
Uh or or maybe I mean maybe that's too broad of a thing.

548
00:31:55,290 --> 00:31:59,530
I mean I it seems like a lot of your work has been looking at very particular things, which

549
00:31:59,530 --> 00:32:01,050
is probably how the systems work.

550
00:32:01,210 --> 00:32:03,690
There's no general stress response.

551
00:32:03,850 --> 00:32:09,770
Um can you give us maybe an example or um uh and maybe that's part of the story is

552
00:32:09,770 --> 00:32:12,250
that maybe you're arguing with people who think stress is general.

553
00:32:12,410 --> 00:32:12,810
I don't know.

554
00:32:12,890 --> 00:32:14,250
Like yeah, can you yeah?

555
00:32:14,740 --> 00:32:15,060
Yeah.

556
00:32:15,220 --> 00:32:20,660
Um well I guess you know, most familiar to me is I I've done a lot of work um with uh

557
00:32:20,660 --> 00:32:26,340
female friends and um a a paradigm that is um trying to mimic sort of a

558
00:32:26,340 --> 00:32:31,060
naturalistic um you know sort of playoff that that happens a a lot with, you know, sort of

559
00:32:31,140 --> 00:32:36,740
um and particular this is to some extent um you know um limited to age, but not not

560
00:32:36,740 --> 00:32:37,220
exactly.

561
00:32:37,380 --> 00:32:43,300
So um with um what I've focused on in the lab is um processes related to co-rumination, for

562
00:32:43,300 --> 00:32:43,780
example.

563
00:32:43,860 --> 00:32:47,330
Um So you have friends that are coming together and they're discussing a problem that's

564
00:32:47,330 --> 00:32:51,890
outside of the dyad, but that is important to at least one member of the dyad.

565
00:32:52,450 --> 00:32:58,370
What is most interesting to me is that the friend whose problem it is not hers

566
00:32:58,850 --> 00:33:01,090
will also mount a stress response.

567
00:33:01,810 --> 00:33:05,170
And it's actually pretty consistent with her friends.

568
00:33:05,570 --> 00:33:10,860
And so what that tells me is what's going on there is part of it is not

569
00:33:10,860 --> 00:33:15,820
necessarily only to deal with our own, you know, sort of um scenarios, our own challenges

570
00:33:15,900 --> 00:33:17,100
and things like that.

571
00:33:17,340 --> 00:33:22,860
It's um to some extent to sort of, you know, uh prioritize another's um

572
00:33:23,100 --> 00:33:25,260
priorities, um, if that makes sense.

573
00:33:25,340 --> 00:33:26,940
And that what what does that do then?

574
00:33:27,100 --> 00:33:31,180
That helps bond you to that other person, you become, you know, sort of um, you know,

575
00:33:31,340 --> 00:33:36,570
loyalty increases, the relationship quality increases, even while the stress response is is

576
00:33:36,650 --> 00:33:38,010
is doing its thing.

577
00:33:38,250 --> 00:33:43,850
Um, and so um I you know, I think to some extent we can, you know, sort of look at it that

578
00:33:43,850 --> 00:33:44,090
way.

579
00:33:44,250 --> 00:33:49,370
Um, and the it it was sort of surprising to some people that that you know both friends

580
00:33:49,370 --> 00:33:50,970
mounted a stress response on this.

581
00:33:51,050 --> 00:33:54,970
But if you think about it, what you're doing is coordinating and you're, you know, um also

582
00:33:55,050 --> 00:33:56,730
this is informative to you, right?

583
00:33:56,970 --> 00:34:01,600
Um sort of helping your friends solve their particular problem, maybe you can, you know, um

584
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:05,360
be faster, more effective um at solving that social problem in the future.

585
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:09,440
Yeah, it's interesting because it reminds me too of again, this is sort of instinct

586
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:14,480
blindness where you can imagine a simple model is you only have a real

587
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,840
physiological reaction to things that involve you.

588
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:22,190
But then of course, like, you know, like September 11th, like people have huge courtesy,

589
00:34:22,350 --> 00:34:24,110
you know, like super stress response.

590
00:34:24,190 --> 00:34:28,190
There's all kinds of, we know in popular culture, there's sort of like this is a disturbing

591
00:34:28,190 --> 00:34:28,430
video.

592
00:34:28,510 --> 00:34:30,030
Don't watch it if you do, you know.

593
00:34:30,190 --> 00:34:33,390
Like we, we, we are just swimming in emotional reactions.

594
00:34:33,470 --> 00:34:39,390
And arguably all most of our emotional reactions are third-party uh observations,

595
00:34:39,550 --> 00:34:39,870
right?

596
00:34:39,950 --> 00:34:41,630
Um, fortunately, probably.

597
00:34:41,790 --> 00:34:47,790
Um, so yeah, that's a really nice point to just sort of uh disabuse the the cartoonish view

598
00:34:47,870 --> 00:34:53,660
that sort of the the physiological stuff is really just for first person you know right

599
00:34:53,820 --> 00:34:57,820
yeah absolutely that's why we enjoy movies right that's why we enjoy you know sort of

600
00:34:57,820 --> 00:35:01,500
reading stories and things like that as you're vicariously you know sort of going through

601
00:35:01,500 --> 00:35:04,460
this um with this character without taking the risk yourself.

602
00:35:04,860 --> 00:35:10,770
So there's a stress response in response to this friend who so what

603
00:35:10,850 --> 00:35:15,490
what can you yeah so can you kind of continue what do you think is going on with that

604
00:35:15,490 --> 00:35:21,010
stress response what's that for even in that particular situation yeah um I think you know

605
00:35:21,090 --> 00:35:25,250
if you think about it the the other way so um for example you're talking with your friend

606
00:35:25,410 --> 00:35:29,730
and um your friend is just you know sort of apathetic and they're just you know looking

607
00:35:29,730 --> 00:35:34,440
away they're not really you know sort of engaged um that's not a good ally right?

608
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:36,280
Um, that's not a good coalition partner.

609
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:38,280
Um, and you know, um that sort of thing.

610
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:42,760
So by showing that you're sort of, you know, you're engaged in this process, um, you're,

611
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:47,560
you know, sort of um trying to unpack this with them, um, you know, maybe speculate um

612
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:52,280
about the causes and consequences of this, you know, um system um and things like that,

613
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:57,720
that um at least, you know, from some of the uh measures that we have, it's associated with

614
00:35:57,720 --> 00:36:00,030
them feeling closer afterwards.

615
00:36:00,350 --> 00:36:05,070
So they feel it it may be, you know, in part a sort of bonding situation.

616
00:36:05,310 --> 00:36:08,350
And um, I mean, you know, and we've all experienced that before.

617
00:36:08,430 --> 00:36:10,990
Like if we all experience the same stressor, right?

618
00:36:11,070 --> 00:36:13,870
Um, everybody feels a bit closer together.

619
00:36:14,030 --> 00:36:16,110
I was just talking to my graduate students about that.

620
00:36:16,190 --> 00:36:19,710
They're going through their quant sequence together and they feel very, you know, very

621
00:36:19,710 --> 00:36:24,510
bonded now that they're all nice and stressed and had to do their mentor and uh those sorts

622
00:36:24,510 --> 00:36:24,830
of things.

623
00:36:24,910 --> 00:36:30,020
And so you feel, you know, it's it's almost like um, you know, fitness interdependence um

624
00:36:30,180 --> 00:36:31,220
in a lot of ways.

625
00:36:31,300 --> 00:36:33,380
You're sort of you know showcasing that.

626
00:36:34,420 --> 00:36:35,780
So yeah, go ahead.

627
00:36:36,180 --> 00:36:39,460
It's it seems like w what what you're saying is I I buy this logic of fitness

628
00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:44,180
interdependence that if if our fates are intertwined, then what's bad for you is is bad for

629
00:36:44,180 --> 00:36:45,940
me and what's good for you is is good for me.

630
00:36:46,020 --> 00:36:49,700
I mean the simplest example of that would just be with kinship or you know, what's good for

631
00:36:49,700 --> 00:36:50,580
my daughter is good for me.

632
00:36:50,740 --> 00:36:52,500
When my daughter's happy, I'm I'm happy.

633
00:36:52,660 --> 00:36:57,910
But the same is true um with close friends, with close allies, there's

634
00:36:57,910 --> 00:36:59,030
interdependence there.

635
00:36:59,350 --> 00:37:03,030
But also, it seems like what you're saying is that part of the stress response may be a

636
00:37:03,030 --> 00:37:05,590
kind of costly signaling of interdependence.

637
00:37:05,750 --> 00:37:09,750
That if you tell me about your problems and I don't have a stress response and I'm blase

638
00:37:09,750 --> 00:37:13,590
about it and don't really react, I don't really pay attention, I look bored, I shrug it

639
00:37:13,590 --> 00:37:15,430
off, that's going to be a really bad sign.

640
00:37:15,990 --> 00:37:20,950
But if I uh am just as amped up as you are about the thing that you're dealing with and I'm

641
00:37:20,950 --> 00:37:25,140
just disturbed by it and appear to be having a stress response, then that is a costly and

642
00:37:25,140 --> 00:37:30,500
honest signal that I feel as if we are interdependent and that our faiths are

643
00:37:30,500 --> 00:37:31,380
intertwined.

644
00:37:31,460 --> 00:37:36,020
And in in this sense, the cost would be paid in terms of the energy I'm burning to have

645
00:37:36,020 --> 00:37:37,460
this stress response.

646
00:37:37,700 --> 00:37:40,900
Um is is that an accurate way of describing how you're thinking about it?

647
00:37:41,460 --> 00:37:42,500
Yes, absolutely.

648
00:37:42,740 --> 00:37:42,980
Yeah.

649
00:37:43,130 --> 00:37:46,490
And so it's a yeah, it's a it's a signal that, hey, I'm invested in you.

650
00:37:46,570 --> 00:37:48,010
Um, I am your ally.

651
00:37:48,170 --> 00:37:52,490
Um, and uh and and that's that's really important, particularly, you know, in some

652
00:37:52,490 --> 00:37:53,290
relationships.

653
00:37:53,690 --> 00:37:58,010
If stress is important, why do we feel like stress is bad?

654
00:37:58,330 --> 00:38:04,140
Why is it unpleasant to be I mean, I mean, as David pointed out, maybe the uh there's

655
00:38:04,140 --> 00:38:08,780
a version of stress that is, you know, like, oh, I'm madly in love, and I'm around, you

656
00:38:08,780 --> 00:38:08,860
know.

657
00:38:08,940 --> 00:38:13,340
I mean, I think maybe maybe arousal uh is the folk category, right?

658
00:38:13,500 --> 00:38:17,420
To um so maybe arousal is stress from a scientific perspective.

659
00:38:17,500 --> 00:38:22,380
But anyway, like why do we have at least half of arousal is quite negative and we call that

660
00:38:22,380 --> 00:38:22,620
stress?

661
00:38:23,100 --> 00:38:28,140
Why do we experience it as negative if it's so helpful from a functional perspective?

662
00:38:28,750 --> 00:38:32,750
Well, you know, I think if you think about like the emotion of fear, for example, like we

663
00:38:32,750 --> 00:38:36,270
don't like fear, we don't want to do, you know, um, we don't want to be afraid.

664
00:38:36,430 --> 00:38:40,270
Um, but it's really important that we have the capacity to do that, right?

665
00:38:40,350 --> 00:38:45,070
Um, and it's really important that, you know, and to some extent, you know, you can look at

666
00:38:45,070 --> 00:38:47,630
things like, you know, why do we watch horror movies?

667
00:38:47,790 --> 00:38:51,150
Um, why do we want to make ourselves we are deliberately scaring ourselves?

668
00:38:51,230 --> 00:38:53,200
Um, what is What is that about?

669
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,520
And I I think, you know, and there's individual differences and tolerance for that and you

670
00:38:57,520 --> 00:38:58,320
know that sort of thing.

671
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,320
But I think, you know, what that's showing is just it's a motivational system, you know.

672
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:08,400
Um, and um when we are experiencing the more negatively valent stress, um, that

673
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:13,840
motivates us to, you know, sort of terminate whatever is causing it, um, or move away from

674
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:15,600
it, or you know, um, that sort of thing.

675
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:17,360
But it's it's quite informative.

676
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:23,490
Is it is is what you're saying that the design itself of the system that's

677
00:39:23,490 --> 00:39:29,410
detecting the current state of the system or the organism is not sufficient to deal

678
00:39:29,410 --> 00:39:30,770
with the challenge.

679
00:39:31,330 --> 00:39:36,530
That this detection of the discrepancy creates a um

680
00:39:37,410 --> 00:39:43,410
the motivation to change that into is is that it it tags that the current state is

681
00:39:43,410 --> 00:39:45,810
all of a sudden unpleasant, right?

682
00:39:45,970 --> 00:39:51,860
And that's part of the manifestation of all the engaged systems that are

683
00:39:51,860 --> 00:39:55,300
moving towards changing, if that makes sense.

684
00:39:55,380 --> 00:39:56,260
I mean, it's very abstract.

685
00:39:56,340 --> 00:39:56,740
I'm I don't know.

686
00:39:57,060 --> 00:39:58,260
Yeah, no, no, absolutely.

687
00:39:58,340 --> 00:40:02,820
But yeah, it's you know, it's adaptively calibrating your behavior to the context.

688
00:40:03,460 --> 00:40:09,300
Do people put them like I feel like this is there's also a mismatch thing where if

689
00:40:09,300 --> 00:40:15,230
you can avoid stressful situations, It seems like we would be designed to do

690
00:40:15,230 --> 00:40:20,590
so, but in an evolutionary environment, the range of sort of stressful situations we can

691
00:40:20,590 --> 00:40:26,430
avoid is maybe less, or maybe we have more control

692
00:40:26,430 --> 00:40:28,190
now to avoid stressful situations.

693
00:40:28,270 --> 00:40:34,160
Like I'm thinking, a good example of this is there's good research on anxiety or

694
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:39,600
stress and kids' play, where if you have kids that are

695
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:45,440
avoiding anxiety-inducing play or stressful situations like difficult things

696
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:50,400
physically or socially, it can actually backfire and stunt development.

697
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:50,880
Yes.

698
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:56,240
Obviously there's a middle Goldilocks thing, like you don't want kids to be, you know,

699
00:40:56,550 --> 00:41:02,550
going through barbed wire or um being bullied to the point of you know abuse or something.

700
00:41:02,870 --> 00:41:08,790
But but you don't want to cover kids in pillows and just have them re see smiley faces

701
00:41:08,790 --> 00:41:10,710
and happy stories all the time either.

702
00:41:11,190 --> 00:41:16,950
Um so I wonder, is there a mismatch in terms of our the controllability of avoiding

703
00:41:16,950 --> 00:41:17,270
stress?

704
00:41:17,430 --> 00:41:19,270
Maybe even for adults that may be unhealthy.

705
00:41:19,350 --> 00:41:19,750
I don't know.

706
00:41:19,830 --> 00:41:20,070
Yeah.

707
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:21,760
Yeah, no, absolutely it is.

708
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:26,080
And I think, you know, uh adults try to do that for their children, right?

709
00:41:26,240 --> 00:41:29,680
Um, and and you know, you're right, it does cause problems.

710
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:34,160
And so, you know, from developmental perspective, you want moderate stressors.

711
00:41:34,240 --> 00:41:39,920
Um, and you want to experience some stressors that are initially uncontrollable, um, that

712
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,080
then move to the more controllable category.

713
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:43,120
That's really the point, right?

714
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:47,570
Is with coping skills and and things like that is this I can't control, but now I can

715
00:41:47,570 --> 00:41:48,610
control my reaction to it.

716
00:41:48,770 --> 00:41:50,690
I know what how to how to handle it.

717
00:41:50,930 --> 00:41:56,770
And um kids that don't have those experiences grow up to um have overactive stress

718
00:41:56,770 --> 00:42:01,250
response systems because it wasn't sort of inoculated during development.

719
00:42:01,410 --> 00:42:06,850
Um and so then they just, you know, the they are hyper reactive um to

720
00:42:07,170 --> 00:42:08,370
literally everything.

721
00:42:08,530 --> 00:42:12,290
Um so parents can, you know, if they bubble wrap their children, um, they're actually

722
00:42:12,290 --> 00:42:14,120
harming them by doing that.

723
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:18,680
And we're starting to see that more and more because of, like you said, our ability to be

724
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:22,920
able to protect and to, you know, sort of control our environments.

725
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:28,520
What we're seeing is that kids are not able to really deal with some of these challenges

726
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:33,560
that they're experiencing or just, you know, just normal, typical, not like you were

727
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:37,170
talking about like bullying and things like that, but just normal, typical, like, you know,

728
00:42:37,250 --> 00:42:40,290
how do I respond to that comment from my friend?

729
00:42:40,370 --> 00:42:45,170
Um, you know, um without getting, you know, sort of upset and looking in the truer and, you

730
00:42:45,170 --> 00:42:46,370
know, um that sort of thing.

731
00:42:46,610 --> 00:42:46,850
Right.

732
00:42:47,010 --> 00:42:52,450
So sort of this is interesting because it it it gets into things like autonomy and feelings

733
00:42:52,450 --> 00:42:55,090
of re efficacy and responsibility.

734
00:42:55,410 --> 00:43:01,100
And the system sort of learns number one, I've learned how to deal with it in this k

735
00:43:01,340 --> 00:43:01,820
situation.

736
00:43:01,900 --> 00:43:07,740
Maybe the situation in an abstracted form uh will um uh will occur

737
00:43:07,740 --> 00:43:08,060
again.

738
00:43:08,140 --> 00:43:13,020
And then there's the meta thing of oh, I was stressed, I felt like I couldn't solve a

739
00:43:13,020 --> 00:43:13,340
problem.

740
00:43:13,740 --> 00:43:16,140
Um, but then I I was able to figure it out.

741
00:43:16,220 --> 00:43:20,540
Right, or there's a so it it it I'm just sort of fleshing out what you've already said that

742
00:43:20,540 --> 00:43:25,180
you sort of inoculate or learn that you can handle situations, yeah.

743
00:43:26,090 --> 00:43:26,410
Right.

744
00:43:26,570 --> 00:43:32,410
I mean we we talked about this a bit in the episode with um Colton Scribble Curiosity

745
00:43:32,570 --> 00:43:36,010
and how we sort of learn how to self-regulate the more we expose ourselves.

746
00:43:39,370 --> 00:43:45,130
Um and the and the way I was tr trying to understand it was um there is uh

747
00:43:45,210 --> 00:43:50,090
a challenge in terms of burning the right amount of energy to deal with the challenge that

748
00:43:50,090 --> 00:43:50,890
you're facing.

749
00:43:51,050 --> 00:43:55,520
And that may be when there's a lot of uncertainty Uh uh, and you and you're dealing with

750
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:59,840
something for the first time and you don't really know what's going to happen, our body

751
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:02,800
errs on the side of overproducing energy.

752
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:08,480
And then the more we encounter that situation again and again, and we get and we learn more

753
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:12,480
about it and the types of things that are likely to happen, our body gets better at

754
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:16,080
producing the right amount of energy and it's less likely to overproduce.

755
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,230
And so what what we we might intuitively understand that is like learning how to

756
00:44:20,230 --> 00:44:21,270
self-regulate.

757
00:44:21,750 --> 00:44:27,670
But I think if you go into the nuts and bolts, it's uh it may be more insightfully

758
00:44:27,670 --> 00:44:32,470
viewed as the body learning more and more about this situation uh and and learning the

759
00:44:32,470 --> 00:44:38,240
appropriate level of of energy that is needed to to deal with this with

760
00:44:38,240 --> 00:44:38,560
threat.

761
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:42,720
And in the beginning, it may overproduce, you know, because you know it's it's more costly

762
00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:44,880
to underproduce than than overproduce.

763
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:48,640
Um but uh as as you learn more and more, you get the balance right.

764
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,000
Um anyway, that that was the s the sort of hypothesis that we were throwing out with with

765
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:52,400
Colton.

766
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:54,400
I'm sure I'm curious if if you find that plausible.

767
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:55,040
Yeah.

768
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:56,480
Yeah, it's very plausible.

769
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,640
Um and it's you know it's it's also related to sort of what I was talking about earlier,

770
00:45:00,720 --> 00:45:06,320
with cortisol being responsible for destabilization of neural networks, um, but also

771
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:07,120
reconnection.

772
00:45:07,310 --> 00:45:12,270
Um, and so what on a neural level, what that looks like is now you have this synaptic

773
00:45:12,430 --> 00:45:17,550
pathways um to be able to quickly and and um easily, you know, sort of um deal with that

774
00:45:17,550 --> 00:45:20,270
particular threat, um, whereas you didn't before.

775
00:45:20,350 --> 00:45:26,030
Um and had you not, you know, had you not had that reaction, you wouldn't have had you know

776
00:45:26,110 --> 00:45:30,190
the energetic resources to be able to sort of you know disconnect those ineffective neural

777
00:45:30,190 --> 00:45:32,510
networks and reconnect more effective ones.

778
00:45:34,140 --> 00:45:38,700
I wanna get your take on on something that still puzzles me and that I find kind of

779
00:45:38,700 --> 00:45:42,380
mysterious as about stress.

780
00:45:42,620 --> 00:45:48,460
And it seems to me that there are that stress is kind of poor this

781
00:45:48,460 --> 00:45:53,020
is maybe this is an illusion and maybe it really is well designed, or if if this is a an

782
00:45:53,020 --> 00:45:54,460
example of mismatch.

783
00:45:54,700 --> 00:45:59,950
But it seems like for a lot of the things that stress us out, we don't really need to burn

784
00:45:59,950 --> 00:46:00,750
a lot of energy.

785
00:46:00,830 --> 00:46:04,270
And in fact, in many cases, it could be counterproductive to burn a lot of energy.

786
00:46:04,510 --> 00:46:09,710
So if I'm stressed out about a math test that I'm gonna take tomorrow, it seems like I

787
00:46:09,710 --> 00:46:13,310
don't really need a lot of energy to deal with that challenge.

788
00:46:13,470 --> 00:46:17,790
I don't, you know, I'm not gonna be running a marathon, I'm not gonna be um fighting with

789
00:46:17,790 --> 00:46:18,830
anybody physically.

790
00:46:19,150 --> 00:46:23,980
All I need to do is just remember the damn information and then regurgitate that

791
00:46:23,980 --> 00:46:25,180
information on the test.

792
00:46:25,340 --> 00:46:29,900
Uh it seems like you know, burning a bunch of energy is just not going to help me deal with

793
00:46:29,900 --> 00:46:30,540
that challenge.

794
00:46:30,700 --> 00:46:35,500
In fact, it could uh impair my ability to deal with that challenge insofar as it prevents

795
00:46:35,500 --> 00:46:39,820
me from sleeping uh and actually, you know, retaining and consolidating the information

796
00:46:39,820 --> 00:46:44,140
that I've learned uh and and and being cognitively capable the next day.

797
00:46:44,610 --> 00:46:48,530
It seems like there are a lot of examples like that where our body is burning a lot of

798
00:46:48,530 --> 00:46:53,090
energy to deal with a challenge that is fundamentally cognitive rather than physical.

799
00:46:53,490 --> 00:46:57,250
And yet the the body is treating it as if it were physical.

800
00:46:57,730 --> 00:47:00,130
And to me that seems kind of maladaptive.

801
00:47:00,210 --> 00:47:05,490
It seems like the body should be good at uh estimating when it's necessary to burn energy

802
00:47:05,490 --> 00:47:06,050
and when it isn't.

803
00:47:06,210 --> 00:47:09,810
It should be stingy with with uh investments of energy.

804
00:47:09,970 --> 00:47:11,640
Do you am I missing something here?

805
00:47:11,720 --> 00:47:14,200
Is there is there hidden design here that I'm not seeing?

806
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:16,200
Is this a an example of mismatch?

807
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:18,200
Uh wha what what what is your take on this?

808
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:20,200
No, I think that that's a great point.

809
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:22,200
Um it to so it's both.

810
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:24,360
Um to some extent it is mismatch.

811
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:28,040
Um I think, but what you just described is sort of, you know, um very consistent with like

812
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:33,800
Sopolsky's view um of the human stress response anyway, as being just basically like just

813
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:35,320
overshooting all the time.

814
00:47:35,950 --> 00:47:41,070
And we're, you know, sort of misinterpreting these social situations as as being really

815
00:47:41,070 --> 00:47:42,030
impactful.

816
00:47:42,750 --> 00:47:48,590
I think I would argue that, you know, being, you know, sort of, you

817
00:47:48,590 --> 00:47:54,350
know, way super stressed over a math test is probably not a great use of

818
00:47:54,910 --> 00:47:55,630
your resources.

819
00:47:55,790 --> 00:48:01,150
But what you're what we're cueing on are these much more, you know, sort of older sort of

820
00:48:01,150 --> 00:48:06,140
perspectives of, you know, the way that others view me is important.

821
00:48:06,700 --> 00:48:12,620
And it's important as far as what skills I'm bringing to the group, how valuable I am

822
00:48:12,620 --> 00:48:14,060
as a coalition member.

823
00:48:14,620 --> 00:48:20,380
And so these social evaluative sort of threats are, you know, you know, should be,

824
00:48:20,540 --> 00:48:23,740
should reliably activate the stress response system.

825
00:48:23,820 --> 00:48:24,780
Now, do we overshoot?

826
00:48:24,940 --> 00:48:25,580
Absolutely.

827
00:48:25,980 --> 00:48:26,460
We do.

828
00:48:26,620 --> 00:48:32,540
So I, you know, we've done a study with um students in uh speech classes, um, for example.

829
00:48:32,700 --> 00:48:36,970
They they um you know know, mount this beautiful stress response and also an immune

830
00:48:36,970 --> 00:48:39,930
response to giving a stress in front of their class.

831
00:48:40,090 --> 00:48:43,930
Now, nobody, I mean, you know, I haven't heard of anybody, at least at my university, of

832
00:48:43,930 --> 00:48:48,650
like, you know, throwing daggers or anything like that at people that either, you know, do

833
00:48:48,650 --> 00:48:51,290
well or don't do well, you know, um in their speeches.

834
00:48:51,450 --> 00:48:56,650
But I think what that's cueing on is this sort of, you know, what others think of me is

835
00:48:56,650 --> 00:48:59,850
important um and my performance is important.

836
00:49:00,540 --> 00:49:05,180
And so what the stress response system is doing there is motivating you to prepare,

837
00:49:05,340 --> 00:49:07,980
motivating you to better your skill set.

838
00:49:08,060 --> 00:49:13,660
Um so if you think about, for example, um, you know, if you weren't if you weren't stressed

839
00:49:13,660 --> 00:49:15,980
about the math test, um, would you study?

840
00:49:16,140 --> 00:49:20,940
You know, um, does this, you know, sort of motivate you towards or away from important

841
00:49:20,940 --> 00:49:21,500
outcomes?

842
00:49:21,740 --> 00:49:21,980
Yeah.

843
00:49:22,220 --> 00:49:27,810
Um uh I'm I I could I'm gonna make a comment about Robert Sapolsky, but I'm not gonna do

844
00:49:27,810 --> 00:49:27,970
that.

845
00:49:28,130 --> 00:49:33,010
So um uh but what I'm gonna push back against the idea that we're overstressed too much,

846
00:49:33,250 --> 00:49:38,130
which is if you imagine the and I don't know if this is true, but if you imagine like the

847
00:49:38,130 --> 00:49:41,410
correct design of the system, there's there's two principles.

848
00:49:41,570 --> 00:49:46,690
One is there's sort of an error management perspective where if the whole point of stress

849
00:49:46,690 --> 00:49:52,440
is the situations detected where there are not sufficient resources to deal with

850
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:58,120
it, it's necessarily by definition, there's the a curve a state

851
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:04,040
initially of activating more than had been

852
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:09,960
previously, and that is probably activating more systems than even will

853
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:10,760
be in the future.

854
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:14,590
So, for example, I'm learning how to rock climb.

855
00:50:15,310 --> 00:50:19,390
The moment I get to a difficult situation, I get really stressed and scared.

856
00:50:20,190 --> 00:50:26,030
Now, though, a lot of that stress and scared response is an error in the sense of

857
00:50:26,350 --> 00:50:32,270
when I become a really good rock climber, what that stress and scared response

858
00:50:32,270 --> 00:50:38,220
eventually causes me to do is a subset of all the systems that get

859
00:50:38,220 --> 00:50:42,300
turned on when I'm initially as a beginner scared and stressed.

860
00:50:42,540 --> 00:50:45,660
But the issue is I don't know that yet.

861
00:50:45,820 --> 00:50:49,980
And so there is definitionally like a turning on more of many systems.

862
00:50:50,060 --> 00:50:55,340
So you would think, even just baked into the design, it's going to look overactivated to

863
00:50:55,340 --> 00:51:00,300
the extent it's turned on, because the whole point of turning it on is to go through and

864
00:51:00,300 --> 00:51:02,490
test do we need the system?

865
00:51:02,650 --> 00:51:03,450
Yes or no.

866
00:51:03,610 --> 00:51:09,530
And until the job of the stress system is to like wake everybody up

867
00:51:09,530 --> 00:51:13,690
in the mind and sort of go through and be like, are you going to be useful in this

868
00:51:13,690 --> 00:51:14,010
situation?

869
00:51:14,170 --> 00:51:15,210
Yes or no.

870
00:51:15,690 --> 00:51:21,050
And the process of waking everybody up is gonna look unefficient and

871
00:51:21,050 --> 00:51:25,690
overblown because that's the point, is you don't know who's gonna be relevant or not.

872
00:51:25,850 --> 00:51:29,050
And the second thing is, um, and I'm curious what you think about that.

873
00:51:29,130 --> 00:51:34,700
And the second thing is you could also imagine a good design feature would be to scale

874
00:51:35,340 --> 00:51:36,940
to the variation.

875
00:51:37,180 --> 00:51:42,940
So I think an a concrete way to put this would be yeah, why are kids worried about math

876
00:51:42,940 --> 00:51:45,020
tests if they were in combat?

877
00:51:45,340 --> 00:51:48,460
They would think like worrying about the math test would be stupid.

878
00:51:48,940 --> 00:51:54,750
But you would imagine that, yeah, if you put a person in combat, it would rescale to what

879
00:51:54,750 --> 00:51:56,670
is the most important thing right now.

880
00:51:56,990 --> 00:51:58,750
But that's a design feature, right?

881
00:51:58,830 --> 00:52:04,830
Like it's like it we shouldn't be designed to sort of say, well, what's the range of stress

882
00:52:04,830 --> 00:52:06,750
every human on earth is experiencing?

883
00:52:06,830 --> 00:52:10,590
And then I should put myself objectively on that scale.

884
00:52:10,830 --> 00:52:15,600
No, if I'm a rich brat and like the worst thing that can happen to me is like my filet

885
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:17,200
mignon isn't made the way I want it.

886
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:20,960
I mean it sucks socially and like morally we can like poo poo that.

887
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:25,600
But like it seems like a well evolved design system to sort of be like, look at the range

888
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:30,480
of likely things and then like the things that are the worst, you have that system.

889
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:31,840
Why wouldn't you use that system?

890
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:35,680
So like I actually would push back against that it's a bad design.

891
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:40,830
I can you can see why people would moralize that, but it it strikes me as actually a really

892
00:52:40,830 --> 00:52:46,030
good design to sort of just um use up the variation that the system is

893
00:52:46,030 --> 00:52:48,510
experiencing um in that way.

894
00:52:48,830 --> 00:52:49,950
Yeah, no, absolutely.

895
00:52:50,030 --> 00:52:52,510
And that's you know, I do disagree with Sabolski on that.

896
00:52:52,590 --> 00:52:54,350
Um, that it's you know, um, this bad design.

897
00:52:54,510 --> 00:52:55,950
It's it's perfectly well designed.

898
00:52:56,030 --> 00:53:00,030
Um, that's exactly what you would expect, is to, like you said, sort of recruit all of

899
00:53:00,030 --> 00:53:02,110
these systems in a novel situation.

900
00:53:02,350 --> 00:53:07,310
Um, and you know, when we experience novelty, then that's you know, sort of all systems go.

901
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:12,160
um, when it's a more familiar or habituated you know sort of context, um, then you know

902
00:53:12,240 --> 00:53:15,920
there's there's less need to sort of re you know recruit all of these um different

903
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:16,480
resources.

904
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:16,800
Yeah.

905
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:20,240
And I mean I will I I will say like as a parent, you know, I'm all the time with my son.

906
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:21,840
I'm like, oh you don't have to react this strongly.

907
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:23,920
So like I, you know, I take my science hat off.

908
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:25,600
But I can see I can see both sides.

909
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:25,840
Yeah.

910
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:26,480
Yeah.

911
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:26,720
Yeah.

912
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:27,200
Absolutely.

913
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:32,880
But you know, I on yeah, on some to some extent there, you know, this these mismatches um

914
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:36,170
do, you know, sort of um there there's a point there, right?

915
00:53:36,250 --> 00:53:40,090
Um, and that, you know, yes, we, you know, we it's probably adaptive to get at least a

916
00:53:40,090 --> 00:53:44,010
little stressed over the mass test, um, because that's that's gonna lead to some important

917
00:53:44,010 --> 00:53:45,050
outcomes later.

918
00:53:45,210 --> 00:53:51,050
Um, but at the same time, we have the ability now to socially compare ourselves to groups

919
00:53:51,050 --> 00:53:56,250
that are, you know, uh infinitely more um larger than um in our evolutionary past.

920
00:53:56,410 --> 00:53:59,770
And so I think that that then sometimes can create a mismatch.

921
00:54:00,010 --> 00:54:00,250
Yeah.

922
00:54:00,410 --> 00:54:05,860
I think a lot of advertising or uh in the marketplace of sort of

923
00:54:05,860 --> 00:54:06,420
attention.

924
00:54:06,500 --> 00:54:10,580
The people some people have called this sort of what is it like an attention market, where

925
00:54:10,820 --> 00:54:15,220
really what's being um sought is people's time and attention now.

926
00:54:15,700 --> 00:54:21,620
That's evolutionarily recurrent stressors are really, as

927
00:54:21,620 --> 00:54:24,340
you would expect, really good at capturing attention.

928
00:54:24,500 --> 00:54:27,870
You know, like one thing I always think about is I remember what the Weather Channel used

929
00:54:27,870 --> 00:54:29,310
to be like and what it's like now.

930
00:54:29,630 --> 00:54:33,870
And I like if I look at the Weather Channel website, I'm like convinced that like there's

931
00:54:33,870 --> 00:54:36,590
going to be like apocalypse any day now.

932
00:54:36,750 --> 00:54:39,070
And you know, 15 years ago it wasn't like that.

933
00:54:39,230 --> 00:54:44,350
And I just view that as sort of a result of this market of needing people's attention.

934
00:54:44,670 --> 00:54:49,790
And one can make an argument that a lot of news and a lot of political discourse is like

935
00:54:49,790 --> 00:54:50,430
that too.

936
00:54:50,590 --> 00:54:56,500
So I actually I I wonder, um, or I would imagine the stress system or understanding its

937
00:54:56,500 --> 00:55:02,260
inputs is actually going to be really important for understanding um these larger issues of

938
00:55:02,260 --> 00:55:08,180
what social representations or content gets um public or people

939
00:55:08,180 --> 00:55:09,140
find interesting even.

940
00:55:09,380 --> 00:55:09,620
Uh-huh.

941
00:55:09,700 --> 00:55:10,900
Oh yeah, absolutely.

942
00:55:11,060 --> 00:55:15,300
Um yeah, don't tell um some of those companies at Instagram and and things like that.

943
00:55:15,380 --> 00:55:17,780
They could definitely recruit Well, they're already doing it.

944
00:55:17,860 --> 00:55:21,380
Yeah, but I would think the basic science would correct against it and be like, look,

945
00:55:21,460 --> 00:55:24,070
they're actually using our endocrine system against us.

946
00:55:24,390 --> 00:55:27,190
Um and and that's part of why they're doing what they're doing.

947
00:55:27,350 --> 00:55:28,630
They probably don't know that they're doing it.

948
00:55:28,710 --> 00:55:30,470
That's just they're just A B testing, right?

949
00:55:30,790 --> 00:55:31,830
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

950
00:55:31,990 --> 00:55:35,830
But that's, you know, that's and you know, on social media, that's why, you know, sort of,

951
00:55:35,910 --> 00:55:39,990
you know, things are sensationalized and and you know, this rage, like we we pay attention

952
00:55:39,990 --> 00:55:41,430
to things that are enraging, right?

953
00:55:41,670 --> 00:55:43,270
Why would why are we doing that to ourselves?

954
00:55:43,350 --> 00:55:44,310
It's ridiculous.

955
00:55:44,580 --> 00:55:49,620
Um, and a lot of times these are things that don't impact us on a day-to-day basis.

956
00:55:49,780 --> 00:55:54,340
Um, but we are still, you know, sort of recruiting this, you know, absolute rage at these

957
00:55:54,340 --> 00:55:58,420
people and spend hours online, you know, arguing with strangers who we'll never meet and

958
00:55:58,420 --> 00:56:02,420
we'll never, you know, sort of have, you know, these um interdependent um relationships

959
00:56:02,420 --> 00:56:02,740
with.

960
00:56:02,900 --> 00:56:08,020
Um, but I think it's a it's just a design of the human mind of, you know, when this content

961
00:56:08,020 --> 00:56:10,420
is in front of me, um, so it must be important.

962
00:56:11,650 --> 00:56:12,290
It's interesting.

963
00:56:12,370 --> 00:56:16,290
I mean, when I when I think about stress, I I usually think about it in terms of its

964
00:56:16,290 --> 00:56:17,330
effects on the body.

965
00:56:17,410 --> 00:56:22,210
Um, you know, your heart races, your muscles tense up, your blood pressure increases.

966
00:56:22,450 --> 00:56:27,570
Um, but I haven't it's hard for me to wrap my hand around, you know, the fact that it might

967
00:56:27,570 --> 00:56:29,250
also impact the brain.

968
00:56:29,490 --> 00:56:35,280
Um is there thing are there things that the brain can do when

969
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:40,880
it gets a jolt of energy from a stress response that it could not have otherwise done?

970
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:44,400
Does stress uh change cognition?

971
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:46,560
Does it change neural processing?

972
00:56:46,720 --> 00:56:52,320
Uh is is in some ways do we need energy to cognitively deal with the challenge as well as

973
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:53,840
physically deal with the challenge?

974
00:56:54,190 --> 00:56:54,990
Yes, absolutely.

975
00:56:55,150 --> 00:56:56,910
I mean, it regulates attention, right?

976
00:56:56,990 --> 00:57:00,830
Um it regulates arousal and attention towards, you know, one stimuli over another.

977
00:57:00,990 --> 00:57:04,030
You know, how do you prioritize all the stimuli in your environment?

978
00:57:04,190 --> 00:57:07,310
Um, that's that's part of what what does that um overall.

979
00:57:07,470 --> 00:57:11,470
So, um, and yeah, it it definitely gets this bad name because a lot of times we we have

980
00:57:11,470 --> 00:57:14,350
this icky feeling um when we feel that way.

981
00:57:14,430 --> 00:57:19,340
Um, but again, it's it's you know, it's really sort of, you know, working with these neural

982
00:57:19,340 --> 00:57:24,540
systems um to in in order to sort of you know help us attend to things that were you know

983
00:57:24,780 --> 00:57:30,780
recurrently threatening um perhaps or recurrently rewarding as well um yeah that's yeah no

984
00:57:31,420 --> 00:57:36,700
oh yeah David go ahead yeah I I'm just curious like what so like why why the brain needs

985
00:57:36,700 --> 00:57:38,620
energy to pay attention.

986
00:57:38,860 --> 00:57:44,510
Like in theory you could imagine the brain just you know just you know uh turns on the the

987
00:57:44,510 --> 00:57:49,070
attention networks and focuses on focuses on on this particular type of information in

988
00:57:49,070 --> 00:57:53,550
theory that shouldn't require any more energy than being distracted or unfocused.

989
00:57:53,950 --> 00:57:58,910
And yet it's it seems to be related to how energized you are and how focused you are.

990
00:57:59,070 --> 00:58:04,800
Is there something about attention that requires energy or is that or is energy intensive?

991
00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:08,640
I mean, just riffing about it, well, I'm thinking about it right now, like it could be that

992
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:14,560
it takes energy to suppress systems that would otherwise uh take your attention away.

993
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:19,760
Like um, you know, for example, if your stomach is empty and you're hungry if you're

994
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:22,480
digesting or something, like that could just pull your attention away.

995
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:26,160
And it takes some energy to shut down uh the that system.

996
00:58:26,470 --> 00:58:26,870
The process.

997
00:58:27,190 --> 00:58:30,470
You know, your your your feel your cravings, your appetites, your, you know, the the

998
00:58:30,470 --> 00:58:32,870
feelings going on in your stomach, like your digestive system.

999
00:58:32,950 --> 00:58:36,310
Like I know stress has effects on appetite and digestion.

1000
00:58:36,470 --> 00:58:42,230
And it could be that the reason why attention requires energy is because it takes energy

1001
00:58:42,230 --> 00:58:45,030
to to shut things down and suppress them.

1002
00:58:45,270 --> 00:58:48,070
Did you do you buy that logic or is there something else going on in the relationship

1003
00:58:49,030 --> 00:58:49,830
stress and attention?

1004
00:58:50,390 --> 00:58:51,190
Yeah, absolutely.

1005
00:58:51,430 --> 00:58:55,590
You have to inhibit things that are at least in the in the moment not immediately

1006
00:58:55,590 --> 00:58:55,910
important.

1007
00:58:56,180 --> 00:58:56,420
right?

1008
00:58:56,580 --> 00:59:01,540
Um, and um that does take quite a bit of energy and you know, sort of prefrontal cortex

1009
00:59:01,540 --> 00:59:05,860
activity um to be able to sort of, you know, uh again, sort of, you know, decide which

1010
00:59:06,020 --> 00:59:07,300
which is a priority.

1011
00:59:07,460 --> 00:59:11,780
Um, let's let's not worry about digestion right now, um, because you know, there's a spare

1012
00:59:11,940 --> 00:59:17,780
coming or, you know, um, whatever, or, you know, I have to I have to give uh a a talk um

1013
00:59:17,940 --> 00:59:18,980
and uh that sort of thing.

1014
00:59:19,060 --> 00:59:24,470
So I need to allocate my my energy resources and and you know, neural networks cost cost a

1015
00:59:24,470 --> 00:59:28,710
lot um they cost a lot of calories they're very expensive um so if you just think about it

1016
00:59:28,710 --> 00:59:34,470
on a you know sort of cellular level um they're requiring energy to to fire even inhibition

1017
00:59:34,550 --> 00:59:40,470
it's it's not just excitatory processes it's inhibitory processes also it it might also be

1018
00:59:40,470 --> 00:59:46,140
the reverse um too which is that if there's a detection of an important

1019
00:59:46,140 --> 00:59:51,420
situation, like a bear, or I'm about to give a talk, there's a lot of energy allocated to

1020
00:59:51,500 --> 00:59:54,220
like just neck down stuff because it's important.

1021
00:59:54,700 --> 01:00:00,700
But it's that the that's co-occurring with then the strong shift down in attention.

1022
01:00:00,940 --> 01:00:06,940
And the idea is that such a strong shift or focus and attention is co-occurring with the

1023
01:00:06,940 --> 01:00:12,810
detection of such an important situation that it uh um that

1024
01:00:12,970 --> 01:00:16,490
that shutdown in attention is worthwhile, right?

1025
01:00:16,810 --> 01:00:21,530
So, so it might just be like it's sort of like Rob Kurzman's idea of like, why do we have

1026
01:00:21,530 --> 01:00:22,730
an experience of mental effort?

1027
01:00:22,810 --> 01:00:27,210
It's not that there's any more calories used up by something that feels effortful or not,

1028
01:00:27,290 --> 01:00:28,490
but there's an opportunity cost.

1029
01:00:28,570 --> 01:00:30,010
And so that should be detected.

1030
01:00:30,170 --> 01:00:34,170
So it might be that like we're aware of a real shutdown in attention.

1031
01:00:34,410 --> 01:00:39,080
Like, oh my God, I, you know, I was performing on stage and I wasn't even aware of the

1032
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:42,840
crowd, you know, like I was just in the zone, or like, you know, I saw the bear and I

1033
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:43,960
didn't even think about what I was doing.

1034
01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:50,040
Like we have this experience, but I but it but I wonder if it isn't that it it is

1035
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:55,800
more energetic, it's just that it's only in those situations that are really

1036
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:01,930
important that that are evolved psychology really directs attention very strongly,

1037
01:01:02,170 --> 01:01:05,130
those also sometimes require energy too.

1038
01:01:05,210 --> 01:01:08,970
But it's not that it's actually an energetic requirement.

1039
01:01:09,130 --> 01:01:14,650
It's just that it's an important enough situation that it's worth reducing attention and

1040
01:01:14,650 --> 01:01:15,770
most of the time it's not.

1041
01:01:15,850 --> 01:01:21,290
And we're just aware that it's sort of weird um that our attention has been narrowed so

1042
01:01:21,290 --> 01:01:21,450
much.

1043
01:01:21,610 --> 01:01:22,810
Does that I don't know if that makes sense?

1044
01:01:22,970 --> 01:01:24,330
Is that does make sense?

1045
01:01:24,410 --> 01:01:25,530
Um to some extent.

1046
01:01:25,610 --> 01:01:30,820
It's it's sort of a um, you know, yeah, uh going at it from from a slightly different

1047
01:01:30,820 --> 01:01:31,060
angle.

1048
01:01:31,140 --> 01:01:34,900
But yeah, it's uh we're using the same amount of energy, it's just how it's allocated.

1049
01:01:35,060 --> 01:01:39,860
Um and most of the time we're not you we're not really aware of how our energy is is

1050
01:01:39,860 --> 01:01:44,340
allocated unless we have this, you know, sort of system that is making it more more

1051
01:01:44,340 --> 01:01:45,220
apparent to us.

1052
01:01:45,940 --> 01:01:47,300
I want to throw another hypothesis out.

1053
01:01:47,460 --> 01:01:53,170
I mean, could it be that um the restructuring of our

1054
01:01:53,170 --> 01:01:55,090
neural networks is energy intensive.

1055
01:01:55,570 --> 01:02:00,850
You mentioned earlier that stress can affect uh brain networks and can uh damage certain

1056
01:02:00,850 --> 01:02:01,970
neural pathways.

1057
01:02:02,210 --> 01:02:07,330
Um could it be that, you know, if I'm in a really important situation that I need to pay

1058
01:02:07,330 --> 01:02:12,930
really close attention to and remember every single detail of it and totally uh revise my

1059
01:02:12,930 --> 01:02:18,760
plans and strategies uh and and you know into the future, then I'm gonna have to

1060
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,480
restructure my brain a lot during that moment.

1061
01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:23,480
Uh, and that itself requires energy.

1062
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:25,080
I have to construct new neural networks.

1063
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:30,440
I have to take in this information and uh, you know, uh store every detail of it so that I

1064
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:36,040
can use it later on, and so that I can use it to totally reorient uh my behavioral

1065
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:37,720
strategies going into the future.

1066
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:43,880
And so, could it be that the restructuring of brain networks and the retention of

1067
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:49,310
the information and the and the use of that information to guide long-term

1068
01:02:49,310 --> 01:02:51,630
behavior is itself energy intensive.

1069
01:02:51,710 --> 01:02:56,830
And that might explain the link between stress and attention.

1070
01:02:57,310 --> 01:02:58,750
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1071
01:02:58,990 --> 01:03:03,470
And, you know, um, that's the thing, is that you we can look at that one way as like, you

1072
01:03:03,470 --> 01:03:07,710
know, if you think about a stressful situation or maybe, you know, um social evaluative,

1073
01:03:07,790 --> 01:03:11,390
maybe not you're you don't feel super stressed, but you're you know very roused and you

1074
01:03:11,390 --> 01:03:13,230
know, very attentive to the situation.

1075
01:03:13,390 --> 01:03:17,260
Um, afterwards you feel hungrier than you would have otherwise, right?

1076
01:03:17,340 --> 01:03:22,460
Um and so it it there is that sort of process of of sort of, you know, I I expended some

1077
01:03:22,460 --> 01:03:23,340
calories somehow.

1078
01:03:23,500 --> 01:03:25,340
Um you did something.

1079
01:03:25,580 --> 01:03:25,740
Yeah.

1080
01:03:25,900 --> 01:03:30,060
And I like I don't this is all anecdotal, but like, you know, after I'm done teaching, for

1081
01:03:30,060 --> 01:03:34,940
example, I'll just be like compulsive for an hour, you know, like in a way that if I hadn't

1082
01:03:34,940 --> 01:03:37,100
been, you know, or just like I feel like I need a break.

1083
01:03:37,260 --> 01:03:42,460
I just need to like and I don't know what I don't know what that is, and I don't know if

1084
01:03:42,460 --> 01:03:46,430
there's like a good account of that, but I I feel like people talk about that a lot.

1085
01:03:46,510 --> 01:03:49,790
We're like, you know, oh, or I didn't realize how stressed I was, but now that I'm coming

1086
01:03:49,790 --> 01:03:51,790
down, I just need to relax for a while.

1087
01:03:52,110 --> 01:03:55,710
Like, I mean, you can see how people have this like hydraulic model of things, but I mean

1088
01:03:55,790 --> 01:03:57,070
clearly there's something to that, right?

1089
01:03:57,150 --> 01:04:02,910
Like so I um, yeah, there there's still mysteries there in terms of describing sort of what

1090
01:04:03,150 --> 01:04:05,070
what that means at a computational level.

1091
01:04:05,230 --> 01:04:06,350
Like why do people have that?

1092
01:04:06,510 --> 01:04:09,100
It's certainly a real thing at every scale, right?

1093
01:04:09,180 --> 01:04:14,700
Like people come out of a super high stressful abusive relationship and they just like they

1094
01:04:14,700 --> 01:04:20,060
have to unwind and they're, you know, like every scale of whether it's teaching for an hour

1095
01:04:20,140 --> 01:04:24,380
or a year-long stressor or multi-year stressor or whatever.

1096
01:04:24,540 --> 01:04:25,980
Um, it's interesting.

1097
01:04:26,140 --> 01:04:30,460
And I feel like sometimes people poo-poo that hydraulic model thing, but I think there's

1098
01:04:30,460 --> 01:04:33,210
something to it, but I don't know what would be going on there.

1099
01:04:33,290 --> 01:04:33,530
Yeah.

1100
01:04:33,770 --> 01:04:34,010
Yeah.

1101
01:04:34,090 --> 01:04:35,450
No, I do think there's something to it.

1102
01:04:35,530 --> 01:04:36,970
I don't think we understand it very well.

1103
01:04:37,050 --> 01:04:40,650
And I think that goes back to, you know, sort of what you mentioned earlier is this mind

1104
01:04:40,730 --> 01:04:41,450
blindness, right?

1105
01:04:41,530 --> 01:04:44,490
A lot of this is happening, you know, on a very implicit level.

1106
01:04:44,650 --> 01:04:49,210
Um, we really only bring it to explicit awareness when it's absolutely necessary.

1107
01:04:49,530 --> 01:04:49,930
Yeah.

1108
01:04:50,170 --> 01:04:51,370
It's really interesting.

1109
01:04:51,690 --> 01:04:57,220
Um, some of this stuff starts to touch on things like you know um

1110
01:04:57,540 --> 01:05:03,460
school performance or obesity or discounting the future, sort of

1111
01:05:03,460 --> 01:05:09,380
things that as we as citizens or as social institutions sort of train

1112
01:05:09,380 --> 01:05:15,300
people, we run up against the fact that people have adverse social situations,

1113
01:05:15,460 --> 01:05:16,580
they get stressed.

1114
01:05:16,740 --> 01:05:21,220
And then we're dealing with phenotypes that vary in how designed for a stressful

1115
01:05:21,220 --> 01:05:22,420
environment they are.

1116
01:05:22,580 --> 01:05:28,430
And I know some of your research has sort of touched on things like social adversity, and

1117
01:05:28,670 --> 01:05:32,350
obviously it's a big political or social issue, as you would expect, right?

1118
01:05:32,590 --> 01:05:38,590
Um can you talk maybe at least or give some uh flavors of what what those some

1119
01:05:38,590 --> 01:05:43,070
of those areas of research are, what you've discovered that might be surprising to people,

1120
01:05:43,150 --> 01:05:45,070
or just people who don't know the work?

1121
01:05:45,470 --> 01:05:45,870
Yeah.

1122
01:05:46,110 --> 01:05:51,760
Um, so it's interesting um to to me um that development has any sort of

1123
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:54,400
signature on, you know, the adult phenotype.

1124
01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:59,600
And so just, you know, sort of starting from that perspective is why would we, why would we

1125
01:05:59,600 --> 01:06:04,320
sort of, you know, calibrate our our, you know, attentional systems, our stress response

1126
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:09,040
systems and things like that in a childhood environment, you know, to something that's,

1127
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:10,800
that's um going to happen later.

1128
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:14,560
And, you know, there there's debate in the field about, you know, sort of the predicted

1129
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:20,170
value of childhood versus adult environment in our evolutionary past or even today and

1130
01:06:20,330 --> 01:06:21,050
things like that.

1131
01:06:21,290 --> 01:06:25,930
But one of the things that we found most is that all adversity isn't the same.

1132
01:06:26,490 --> 01:06:30,010
And so, you know, sort of I'm talking about, you know, like if you're just in a low

1133
01:06:30,010 --> 01:06:32,090
resource environment, yes, that's adverse.

1134
01:06:32,250 --> 01:06:33,130
Um, that's not fun.

1135
01:06:33,210 --> 01:06:34,490
Nobody wants to be there.

1136
01:06:34,730 --> 01:06:39,770
But that doesn't leave the same signature on the stress response system as, say, an

1137
01:06:39,770 --> 01:06:45,660
unpredictable social environment And so kids that are coming from, you know, sort

1138
01:06:45,660 --> 01:06:51,500
of these more, I don't know, I don't want to use a value judgment, but chaotic is

1139
01:06:51,740 --> 01:06:53,500
a lot of times the term that's used.

1140
01:06:53,580 --> 01:06:56,300
These, you know, homes that are, you know, unpredictable, basically.

1141
01:06:56,460 --> 01:07:00,700
Um they um maybe, you know, parents are unpredictable in their behavior, the resources are

1142
01:07:00,700 --> 01:07:06,530
unpredictable, um, you know, those sorts of things, they seem to show a stress response

1143
01:07:06,530 --> 01:07:09,090
system that's calibrated to that unpredictability.

1144
01:07:09,410 --> 01:07:13,650
But what that does is that then pulls back, you know, you mentioned, you know, sort of

1145
01:07:13,650 --> 01:07:19,410
future orientation that pulls that back to be able to, you know, develop that as a skill or

1146
01:07:19,410 --> 01:07:24,770
something that is even worth developing, you know, your energy towards and because

1147
01:07:25,250 --> 01:07:30,610
become much more, you know, sort of present focus, reward focus on you know what what's

1148
01:07:30,610 --> 01:07:32,290
happening um in the immediate.

1149
01:07:32,690 --> 01:07:34,740
Yeah, that makes sense given the design of the system.

1150
01:07:34,820 --> 01:07:39,140
You're basically what you're saying, if if I understand correctly, is that if the whole

1151
01:07:39,140 --> 01:07:44,580
point of the stress system is uh what's currently happening, you're not prepared for.

1152
01:07:44,740 --> 01:07:49,700
And if the environment is non-stationary, meaning it's moving constantly moving, you're

1153
01:07:49,700 --> 01:07:52,900
basically just telling the stress system you're gonna have to be active a lot.

1154
01:07:53,350 --> 01:07:57,110
It's not rational to expect that the way the environment is today is gonna be like, you

1155
01:07:57,110 --> 01:07:59,110
know, it's I'm just it's obvious I'm saying out loud.

1156
01:07:59,190 --> 01:08:02,230
But yeah, no, it makes sense that that would that would be the case.

1157
01:08:02,390 --> 01:08:08,310
Um, and I guess in a world where um, you know, if you wanna be a good worker in the

1158
01:08:08,310 --> 01:08:14,070
widget factory and you want to be a good, even just collaborative partner, it's ideal to

1159
01:08:14,070 --> 01:08:19,660
have somebody who whose calibrational settings are at

1160
01:08:19,660 --> 01:08:24,620
least stable or not discounting the future to the extent that discounting the future means

1161
01:08:24,620 --> 01:08:30,620
they might be more likely to want to exploit you for good or fair or not fair reasons.

1162
01:08:30,700 --> 01:08:36,220
Like you can see where um social friction arises or value judgments come up from the people

1163
01:08:36,220 --> 01:08:41,180
who have the luxury of not discounting the future sort of look down upon discounting the

1164
01:08:41,180 --> 01:08:41,580
future.

1165
01:08:43,180 --> 01:08:43,820
Yeah, for sure.

1166
01:08:45,020 --> 01:08:45,430
Go ahead.

1167
01:08:45,670 --> 01:08:45,910
Yeah.

1168
01:08:46,150 --> 01:08:52,070
I mean it it it it's making me think of a a metaphor of like if you're on a a sailboat and

1169
01:08:52,070 --> 01:08:56,870
there's really tumultuous and unpredictable weather such that there could be a storm at at

1170
01:08:56,870 --> 01:09:01,510
any time, you're gonna want to have all hands on deck, you know, for most of that time just

1171
01:09:01,510 --> 01:09:04,790
in case there's a huge tidal wave or there's a huge storm and you need to you know throw

1172
01:09:04,790 --> 01:09:06,150
water out of the boat, right?

1173
01:09:06,310 --> 01:09:09,160
But if you can perfectly predict the weather.

1174
01:09:09,320 --> 01:09:13,160
Even if it's really bad weather, even if you know there's going to be a storm at this exact

1175
01:09:13,160 --> 01:09:17,320
time for three hours, you can just sleep and then you can just be prepared for that storm.

1176
01:09:17,720 --> 01:09:21,720
And so it's not really the storms per se that that are going to make you have the all hands

1177
01:09:21,800 --> 01:09:22,760
on deck response.

1178
01:09:22,920 --> 01:09:27,160
It's the unpredictability of when the storm is going to come that the n necessitates the

1179
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:28,760
all hands on deck response.

1180
01:09:29,150 --> 01:09:31,230
Yeah, that's a that's a fantastic analogy.

1181
01:09:31,310 --> 01:09:32,270
Um really really great.

1182
01:09:32,430 --> 01:09:36,510
And one of the things that we see too, um, and some of my research has shown is those, you

1183
01:09:36,510 --> 01:09:41,790
know, individuals from these really unpredictable environments, they don't get stressed

1184
01:09:41,790 --> 01:09:45,870
over, you know, that we can send them through the trier social stress task, um, and they

1185
01:09:45,870 --> 01:09:47,310
don't show any response.

1186
01:09:47,470 --> 01:09:53,230
Um and a lot of it is because their systems are calibrated to um at least in our sample,

1187
01:09:53,440 --> 01:09:55,200
they there was a lot of neighborhood violence.

1188
01:09:55,280 --> 01:10:00,240
There was a lot of, you know, just unpredictability even in their young adult environment.

1189
01:10:00,960 --> 01:10:04,960
And uh so this, you know, yeah, I can come in and you know do some math problems for you,

1190
01:10:05,040 --> 01:10:05,520
no problem.

1191
01:10:05,600 --> 01:10:10,480
Um that's not going to really impact my uh you know sort of survivability.

1192
01:10:10,640 --> 01:10:15,680
Um but and you know sort of consistent with that we looked at their diurnal stress

1193
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:16,080
response.

1194
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:19,680
So we you know have an initial stress response in the morning and then it usually sort of

1195
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:20,800
declines throughout the day.

1196
01:10:21,070 --> 01:10:25,470
with these individuals, it was it was sort of the opposite and that they got they ramped it

1197
01:10:25,470 --> 01:10:26,830
up towards the end of the day.

1198
01:10:27,070 --> 01:10:31,070
Um initially when I got that finding I couldn't really understand what was going on.

1199
01:10:31,150 --> 01:10:34,590
Uh right it was like, you know, again, are are their systems just broken?

1200
01:10:34,830 --> 01:10:36,590
Are they, you know, uh what are they doing?

1201
01:10:36,750 --> 01:10:41,950
But if you look at their context, when are the things that are most likely um that are

1202
01:10:41,950 --> 01:10:45,900
going to be bad to for you to happen in the evenings, right?

1203
01:10:45,980 --> 01:10:50,140
Um if you if you're living in these, you know, sort of more violent neighborhoods, um, and

1204
01:10:50,220 --> 01:10:55,020
you know, things like that, that's that's when, you know, um you're you need to be um sort

1205
01:10:55,020 --> 01:10:55,580
of vigilant.

1206
01:10:55,660 --> 01:10:56,540
You need to be aware.

1207
01:10:56,620 --> 01:11:01,660
Um and so yeah, your your um analogy with a sailboat is is absolutely perfect for that.

1208
01:11:01,980 --> 01:11:02,220
Yeah.

1209
01:11:02,380 --> 01:11:02,700
Yeah.

1210
01:11:02,940 --> 01:11:08,780
Um it it also it reminds me of of um some of the work that Daniel Nettle's done on obesity

1211
01:11:08,780 --> 01:11:11,180
and the unpredictability of food.

1212
01:11:11,340 --> 01:11:17,210
Um and what he's argued is that um the tendency of the body to store energy in

1213
01:11:17,210 --> 01:11:22,330
the form of fat for the future is or may be caused by an

1214
01:11:22,330 --> 01:11:27,770
unpredictability in the available food sources, such that if you're constantly skipping

1215
01:11:27,770 --> 01:11:32,250
meals or if you're uncertain about where your next meal is going to come from, or if if at

1216
01:11:32,250 --> 01:11:37,660
any moment you could just run out of food, then it becomes a really good bet for you to

1217
01:11:37,660 --> 01:11:42,540
store energy on your body in the form of fat just in case food is going to be unavailable

1218
01:11:42,540 --> 01:11:44,620
or insecure in the future.

1219
01:11:44,780 --> 01:11:50,620
Uh, and so he has uh run uh a counter to this mismatch story that the reason

1220
01:11:50,620 --> 01:11:54,540
why um we have this obesity problem is because we just can't control ourselves and we we

1221
01:11:54,540 --> 01:11:55,740
shove the Twinkies in our mouth.

1222
01:11:56,060 --> 01:11:59,820
But he's actually argued that there's actually more logic and sophistication to this

1223
01:11:59,820 --> 01:12:04,770
system, that it's responding to reliable cues of uncertainty and food insecurity, and it's

1224
01:12:04,770 --> 01:12:09,490
adaptively storing energy on the body for those kinds of ecological contexts.

1225
01:12:09,810 --> 01:12:13,330
I'm curious if if there is any other research to back that up about the relationship

1226
01:12:13,330 --> 01:12:16,930
between stress and eating and fat storage and obesity.

1227
01:12:17,170 --> 01:12:17,250
Yeah.

1228
01:12:17,570 --> 01:12:18,210
No, there is.

1229
01:12:18,690 --> 01:12:22,690
And you know, also it's very consistent with you know future discounting and and and things

1230
01:12:22,690 --> 01:12:22,930
like that.

1231
01:12:23,010 --> 01:12:27,440
So childhood obesity, you know, we we see kids that are more impulsive, they're less able

1232
01:12:27,440 --> 01:12:30,240
to wait for long-term rewards, you know, um, those sorts of things.

1233
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:35,040
The entire system is is sort of calibrated to the here and now, um, you know, because

1234
01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:37,600
later, um, we'll worry about that later, right?

1235
01:12:37,760 --> 01:12:40,960
Um to survive this moment um in particular.

1236
01:12:41,200 --> 01:12:45,840
And um, you can even draw from, you know, like the studies with the Dutch hunger winner um

1237
01:12:45,920 --> 01:12:46,800
and and things like that.

1238
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:51,520
So those um, you know, mothers when they were pregnant experienced um malnutrition, a lot

1239
01:12:51,520 --> 01:12:54,310
of unpredictability, and things like that.

1240
01:12:54,390 --> 01:12:56,470
And they followed them afterwards.

1241
01:12:56,950 --> 01:13:01,270
And those kids were more prone to developing obesity, more prone to developing heart

1242
01:13:01,270 --> 01:13:05,830
issues, you know, um, and those sorts of things because the signal that they got was, you

1243
01:13:05,830 --> 01:13:07,350
know, there's not enough food.

1244
01:13:07,430 --> 01:13:11,910
Um, and you need to, you know, really downregulate your metabolism um in order to take

1245
01:13:11,910 --> 01:13:14,150
advantage of the calories that you do receive.

1246
01:13:15,030 --> 01:13:15,350
Yeah.

1247
01:13:15,560 --> 01:13:20,520
It's an it's an interesting thing too, and this comes up uh buses back to the magic point

1248
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:26,520
where I the the fact that our endocrine system interacts with our

1249
01:13:26,520 --> 01:13:28,120
brain is really interesting.

1250
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:33,640
I mean, again, it's sort of stupid that I think that's interesting, but but it is because

1251
01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:38,170
somehow our brains know how resources are unpredictable, right?

1252
01:13:38,330 --> 01:13:42,650
Or I mean, so it for example, you might say, well, like maybe, you know, if my how often am

1253
01:13:42,650 --> 01:13:43,050
I hungry?

1254
01:13:43,130 --> 01:13:45,370
That feels like a very physiological thing.

1255
01:13:45,530 --> 01:13:47,610
But there's a lot of things like social cues.

1256
01:13:47,690 --> 01:13:49,850
There's probably a lot of cues of like how often do I see food?

1257
01:13:49,930 --> 01:13:52,730
And if you don't believe that, well, like look at all the social reactions.

1258
01:13:52,890 --> 01:13:55,850
Like, you know, you're not getting punched a lot, you know.

1259
01:13:56,090 --> 01:14:00,720
And even if you are, like it matters whether or not somebody was like intending it or not.

1260
01:14:00,880 --> 01:14:06,160
But a lot of things are just very abstract social or inner information processing cues of

1261
01:14:06,240 --> 01:14:09,040
like what's the level of violence or conflict.

1262
01:14:10,080 --> 01:14:15,440
And somehow this is having an effect not only in our brains, but also the rest of our body.

1263
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:21,920
It's a really fascinating idea that very abstract cues can have a

1264
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:27,290
very concrete, even developmental or kind of calibrational effect on us, like how much

1265
01:14:27,290 --> 01:14:29,450
we're likely to store fat, for example.

1266
01:14:30,010 --> 01:14:30,250
Right.

1267
01:14:30,330 --> 01:14:30,810
Absolutely.

1268
01:14:31,050 --> 01:14:34,570
Well, and that's, I think, you know, reflects the fact that we don't really, you know, not

1269
01:14:34,570 --> 01:14:38,650
only do we not understand the brain as well as we think we do, um, but we particularly

1270
01:14:38,650 --> 01:14:42,890
don't understand development and the developing brain like we think we do.

1271
01:14:43,290 --> 01:14:48,570
Or as much as we think we do, kids are, you know, encoding much more information than we

1272
01:14:48,570 --> 01:14:49,610
give them credit for.

1273
01:14:49,880 --> 01:14:50,200
Yeah.

1274
01:14:50,440 --> 01:14:54,600
Um, to just I would this is something I just bring it back to stress for a second.

1275
01:14:54,920 --> 01:14:59,320
Um, have you thought about stress differently because of this work?

1276
01:14:59,560 --> 01:15:04,120
So for example, like if somebody's listening and they're like, well, how can I help my kids

1277
01:15:04,120 --> 01:15:04,920
be less stressed?

1278
01:15:05,000 --> 01:15:10,920
Or like if somebody I care about is stressed, um, is there a reaction that's sort of the a

1279
01:15:10,920 --> 01:15:12,600
better thing to do, a worse thing to do?

1280
01:15:12,680 --> 01:15:14,440
Does it really depend on what the stressor is?

1281
01:15:14,600 --> 01:15:18,230
Because I know like that's always, you know, we don't want our kids to be stressed, but

1282
01:15:18,230 --> 01:15:22,630
then as you said, we want them to gr build the muscles of dealing with that.

1283
01:15:22,870 --> 01:15:27,430
Um, do you think differently about stress, or like do you if does anybody ever ask you for

1284
01:15:27,510 --> 01:15:32,790
like you know advice, maybe quote unquote, uh, or like how to approach

1285
01:15:33,110 --> 01:15:35,430
stress among people we care about?

1286
01:15:36,150 --> 01:15:36,470
Yeah.

1287
01:15:37,000 --> 01:15:37,800
Yeah, for sure.

1288
01:15:37,880 --> 01:15:39,400
Um, yeah, I get that question a lot.

1289
01:15:39,560 --> 01:15:43,960
And um I think, you know, a lot of it really depends on on what the stressor is, you know,

1290
01:15:44,040 --> 01:15:47,560
um, and then also, you know, what, you know, potential impact.

1291
01:15:47,640 --> 01:15:51,960
And and, you know, we can talk about how good we are at at you know, sort of um forecasting

1292
01:15:51,960 --> 01:15:56,920
this, but what potential impact that might have, you know, um on the individual as well.

1293
01:15:57,080 --> 01:16:01,640
I think, you know, just taking kids, for example, um, a lot of you know, parents want to

1294
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:04,910
protect them from any sort of any sort of adversity, right?

1295
01:16:04,990 --> 01:16:07,310
Um, or any sort of negative outcome.

1296
01:16:07,630 --> 01:16:12,350
And um, you know, I could take, you know, homework uh as an example of that.

1297
01:16:12,430 --> 01:16:15,710
Like, you know, parents sometimes will, you know, make sure that their kids do that, you

1298
01:16:15,710 --> 01:16:20,030
know, homework, or um if they didn't turn it in, oh, can they, you know, can they turn it

1299
01:16:20,030 --> 01:16:21,710
in, you know, for a grade now?

1300
01:16:21,950 --> 01:16:22,910
And that sort of thing.

1301
01:16:23,630 --> 01:16:29,360
I had with my oldest son, his teacher was actually shocked at a parent teacher

1302
01:16:29,360 --> 01:16:31,760
conference because I told her, I said, I want you to fail him.

1303
01:16:31,920 --> 01:16:33,600
I he didn't turn this stuff in.

1304
01:16:33,760 --> 01:16:39,600
Um, so fail him because otherwise you don't ever learn to sort of mobilize those resources

1305
01:16:40,000 --> 01:16:41,840
to be able to, you know, sort of make that happen.

1306
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:46,160
And then they become student college students that ask for extensions and, you know, um

1307
01:16:46,320 --> 01:16:47,200
those sorts of things.

1308
01:16:47,360 --> 01:16:52,650
But on, you know, sort of a bigger level to and particularly now, it's really difficult, I

1309
01:16:52,650 --> 01:16:57,450
think, for parents to understand or to know what is a threat versus what isn't a threat,

1310
01:16:57,530 --> 01:16:57,770
right?

1311
01:16:57,850 --> 01:17:01,610
Um, and that's what you know, a lot of parents make the mistake of, you know, sort of like

1312
01:17:01,610 --> 01:17:06,330
not letting their kids play outside, um, not letting them, you know, sort of experience

1313
01:17:06,330 --> 01:17:10,170
some of these things on their own and having to, you know, deal with challenges of, you

1314
01:17:10,170 --> 01:17:14,170
know, how do I cross the creek or you know, um, you know, those sorts of things, or how do

1315
01:17:14,170 --> 01:17:18,460
I stay away from people that might be dangerous or situations that might be dangerous?

1316
01:17:18,700 --> 01:17:21,020
And um, so they they keep them inside.

1317
01:17:21,180 --> 01:17:22,300
Well, what are they doing inside?

1318
01:17:22,380 --> 01:17:26,140
They're going on the internet and they're getting all sorts of, you know, um things that

1319
01:17:26,140 --> 01:17:28,780
they shouldn't be exposed to and, you know, um that sort of thing.

1320
01:17:28,860 --> 01:17:33,500
But parents perceive that uh as um, you know, being safer um and that sort of thing.

1321
01:17:33,580 --> 01:17:37,500
So perception is a big, you know, um component to this, a big key to it.

1322
01:17:38,230 --> 01:17:42,230
But I think, you know, sort of with other relationships, you know, um, that you might care

1323
01:17:42,230 --> 01:17:45,990
about, I think it really depends a lot on, you know, the particular stressor.

1324
01:17:46,150 --> 01:17:49,030
But what people are looking for is a coping mechanism, right?

1325
01:17:49,110 --> 01:17:51,270
Um, of of how do I feel better about this?

1326
01:17:51,430 --> 01:17:54,390
How do I solve this, you know, um particular problem.

1327
01:17:54,630 --> 01:17:59,670
And to the extent that you can form an allyship or, you know, whatever, um, and and sort of

1328
01:17:59,670 --> 01:18:02,470
helping them out, I think would would be um better about that.

1329
01:18:02,630 --> 01:18:06,960
But um, like you mentioned before, it's it's difficult to sort of, you know, particularly

1330
01:18:06,960 --> 01:18:09,920
in this day and age, to determine what what should I be stressed about.

1331
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:15,280
Um, you know, so for example, should we, you know, should we be worried about, you know, um

1332
01:18:15,680 --> 01:18:18,480
how, you know, how much our colleagues are making, right?

1333
01:18:18,560 --> 01:18:22,400
Um there's there's um people that will go in and look at, you know, salaries and um things

1334
01:18:22,400 --> 01:18:22,960
like that.

1335
01:18:23,200 --> 01:18:24,640
I would recommend no.

1336
01:18:24,800 --> 01:18:28,790
Uh Than not being something.

1337
01:18:28,870 --> 01:18:33,030
But what that's reflecting is that's reflecting a motivation towards, you know, um, towards

1338
01:18:33,190 --> 01:18:34,070
status driving.

1339
01:18:34,150 --> 01:18:39,830
Um and so if you could redirect that in a way that is, you know, um more controllable, then

1340
01:18:39,830 --> 01:18:42,310
you're gonna see the stress response system damn down.

1341
01:18:43,110 --> 01:18:48,630
So part of it is that the status or not, yeah, well, status is the example, but the stress

1342
01:18:48,630 --> 01:18:54,280
system, in addition to our current situation, it's also a

1343
01:18:54,280 --> 01:18:57,320
function of what the plans and goals are.

1344
01:18:57,720 --> 01:19:02,920
So the same situation might not be stressful to one person versus another because of where

1345
01:19:02,920 --> 01:19:07,240
their mental representations of where they're trying to get to are.

1346
01:19:08,520 --> 01:19:09,160
Yeah.

1347
01:19:09,640 --> 01:19:10,680
That's interesting.

1348
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:11,480
Yeah.

1349
01:19:12,810 --> 01:19:13,370
Cool.

1350
01:19:14,970 --> 01:19:20,250
Well, I think we're about uh getting to that time in the episode where we uh ask our

1351
01:19:20,250 --> 01:19:25,770
canonical question, which is uh is there anything that we should have asked you or that we

1352
01:19:25,770 --> 01:19:28,570
should have talked about that we have missed?

1353
01:19:29,530 --> 01:19:31,690
Uh let me think about that for a second.

1354
01:19:31,930 --> 01:19:35,700
Um sorry to stress you out.

1355
01:19:35,940 --> 01:19:36,340
Yeah, no.

1356
01:19:36,660 --> 01:19:40,980
No, because yeah, I know I know because there's lots of like specific studies you've done

1357
01:19:41,060 --> 01:19:43,460
um too that we haven't really talked about.

1358
01:19:43,700 --> 01:19:45,380
But I mean people can look on your website too.

1359
01:19:45,460 --> 01:19:49,620
But yeah, if there's anything or yeah, any any question at all or anything that you're

1360
01:19:49,620 --> 01:19:54,340
either currently working on or um you know, really yeah, yeah.

1361
01:19:54,710 --> 01:19:55,030
Yeah.

1362
01:19:55,270 --> 01:19:58,870
I think most of my current work, I have, you know, a couple different areas.

1363
01:19:59,030 --> 01:20:03,990
Um, and um one thing that I think that people don't know enough about, or I don't know

1364
01:20:03,990 --> 01:20:09,830
enough about, uh, we don't know enough about as a field, is, you know, um to say so I got

1365
01:20:09,830 --> 01:20:13,910
into sex differences talking, you know, understanding sex differences sort of through this

1366
01:20:13,910 --> 01:20:19,670
stress response um system interest um and uh that sort of thing, but also an interest about

1367
01:20:19,670 --> 01:20:21,430
parenting and fatherhood.

1368
01:20:22,440 --> 01:20:27,480
And so I think that that's you know sort of an area that that people we don't know enough

1369
01:20:27,480 --> 01:20:27,800
about.

1370
01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:32,840
We don't know enough about how fathers uniquely impact kids' development.

1371
01:20:33,080 --> 01:20:38,520
And one of the ways that we think that may um be happening is actually through dads are

1372
01:20:38,520 --> 01:20:43,720
more likely to, for example, you know, do rough and tumble play with their kids and you

1373
01:20:43,720 --> 01:20:44,920
know um things like that.

1374
01:20:45,090 --> 01:20:47,890
That's sort of a it's a low level, but it's a risk.

1375
01:20:47,970 --> 01:20:52,050
Um and it's allowing kids to sort of, you know, get experience with, you know, sort of

1376
01:20:52,050 --> 01:20:56,690
getting really aroused and coming right to that edge of aggression and pulling back and

1377
01:20:56,930 --> 01:20:57,730
those sorts of things.

1378
01:20:57,890 --> 01:21:02,290
And so um just you know sort of building from that, I don't I don't think that we know

1379
01:21:02,290 --> 01:21:03,010
enough about that.

1380
01:21:03,090 --> 01:21:07,650
And I wish more researchers would would sort of you know get in line with um sort of

1381
01:21:07,650 --> 01:21:11,300
understanding what you know what is going on with human fatherhood.

1382
01:21:11,380 --> 01:21:13,620
Um why why are dads even investing in all?

1383
01:21:13,700 --> 01:21:16,980
And I realize there's a lot of, you know, there's variability in that investment.

1384
01:21:17,060 --> 01:21:20,180
Um, but why are you for why are you spending all your energy that way?

1385
01:21:20,340 --> 01:21:24,660
Um not even, you know, why are you not um, you know, seeking more mates, but just, you

1386
01:21:24,660 --> 01:21:28,420
know, why are you not just, you know, um spending your energy making more money or, you

1387
01:21:28,420 --> 01:21:32,500
know, having more fun, doing um things that why are we motivated um in that way?

1388
01:21:32,660 --> 01:21:36,850
So um so yeah, that's that's you know one area that I'm sort of dabbling in.

1389
01:21:37,010 --> 01:21:42,210
But interestingly, um, it's really difficult to get dads to participate um in research.

1390
01:21:43,650 --> 01:21:48,530
Um, even though we know that they're doing all of these things, um, we we can't quite, you

1391
01:21:48,530 --> 01:21:50,930
know, sort of um get it on an observational level.

1392
01:21:51,090 --> 01:21:52,290
Um, so yeah, yeah.

1393
01:21:52,530 --> 01:21:53,090
That's fantastic.

1394
01:21:53,170 --> 01:21:57,330
Yeah, no, you're preaching to the choir as you're talking to two dads uh of young kids

1395
01:21:57,330 --> 01:22:02,260
right now, and uh yeah, no, parenting psychology and dad um yeah psychology that's

1396
01:22:02,260 --> 01:22:07,620
fantastic we should do like a special issue in eHB or something even if it's totally yeah I

1397
01:22:07,620 --> 01:22:11,860
mean I I'm curious what you think about uh a change I noticed in myself after becoming a

1398
01:22:11,860 --> 01:22:12,180
dad.

1399
01:22:12,580 --> 01:22:18,420
Um I am now after becoming a dad much more likely to cry during movies um like movies that

1400
01:22:18,420 --> 01:22:23,940
I saw before like I remember I saw Moana before becoming a dad and then after and I did not

1401
01:22:24,090 --> 01:22:27,050
you know, have much of an emotional response when I first saw it.

1402
01:22:27,130 --> 01:22:29,770
And then after becoming dead, I was like bawling during the entire movie.

1403
01:22:29,930 --> 01:22:31,290
Like Yep.

1404
01:22:31,450 --> 01:22:33,530
Uh your child changed your brain.

1405
01:22:33,930 --> 01:22:34,970
Yeah, changed my brain.

1406
01:22:35,130 --> 01:22:36,250
I uh it's it's it's weird.

1407
01:22:36,330 --> 01:22:39,130
I don't know how to explain like why why crying during movies?

1408
01:22:39,210 --> 01:22:43,050
I don't know what that's about, but um it's an interesting response I've noticed in myself.

1409
01:22:43,450 --> 01:22:46,890
Yeah, I think that reflects, you know, just more empathetic sensitivity.

1410
01:22:47,050 --> 01:22:49,260
Um and you know, you guys know this.

1411
01:22:49,340 --> 01:22:54,380
And, you know, when I tell my college students that get very upset and worried about it is,

1412
01:22:54,460 --> 01:22:59,820
you know, when you're a father, when you become a father, if you are investing, you

1413
01:22:59,820 --> 01:23:02,540
experience a little decline in testosterone, right?

1414
01:23:02,780 --> 01:23:06,460
So testosterone is negatively associated with empathy.

1415
01:23:06,860 --> 01:23:11,660
And so it's probably, you know, an adaptive calibration there to become more sensitive to

1416
01:23:11,660 --> 01:23:16,930
these social cues, particularly um, you know, of this individual that you're um should be

1417
01:23:16,930 --> 01:23:18,370
really highly invested in.

1418
01:23:19,010 --> 01:23:23,090
You can tell them that it's fantastic to experience a decrease in testosterone.

1419
01:23:23,250 --> 01:23:27,570
As somebody who I feel like I had an excess of testosterone and I was like miserable, like

1420
01:23:27,810 --> 01:23:30,610
falling out of my skin and I had it out of the kid and I'm like, this is awesome.

1421
01:23:30,770 --> 01:23:34,370
I'm like I'm very glad to have less testosterone in my system.

1422
01:23:34,690 --> 01:23:34,930
Yeah.

1423
01:23:36,050 --> 01:23:41,820
Like it's it's a um you know parenting the parenting and uh the what what

1424
01:23:41,820 --> 01:23:47,340
dads are doing and we've had some people on like Karen Kramer or Shina Lu Levy,

1425
01:23:47,900 --> 01:23:52,940
this this idea that uh this second or third wave

1426
01:23:52,940 --> 01:23:58,860
evolutionary approach to even even though we have to reproduction

1427
01:23:58,860 --> 01:24:04,630
is important, the idea that investment in the social and

1428
01:24:04,630 --> 01:24:10,630
physical capital of offspring really makes a big difference on their success and

1429
01:24:10,630 --> 01:24:11,510
their status, right?

1430
01:24:11,590 --> 01:24:16,870
Like we don't question the idea that investing in my own

1431
01:24:16,870 --> 01:24:22,790
generation's resources and status is good fitness from a fitness perspective.

1432
01:24:22,950 --> 01:24:28,550
But there used to be sort of this cartoonish idea that, well, if we just have kids,

1433
01:24:28,950 --> 01:24:30,420
then that's all that matters.

1434
01:24:30,500 --> 01:24:32,260
And like the number of kids is all that matters.

1435
01:24:32,340 --> 01:24:37,540
But if you just follow the logic for yourself, then it's also it matters how many resources

1436
01:24:38,420 --> 01:24:39,060
your kids have.

1437
01:24:39,220 --> 01:24:41,220
It matters what their social status is.

1438
01:24:41,380 --> 01:24:44,820
It's just as much of an arms race their generation as it was for yours.

1439
01:24:45,060 --> 01:24:50,100
And if you just accept that consistent logic, then it immediately becomes a thing of yeah,

1440
01:24:50,180 --> 01:24:55,860
you're not going to just necessarily always just invest in mating or maximizing the number

1441
01:24:55,860 --> 01:24:56,420
of offspring.

1442
01:24:56,660 --> 01:25:02,290
There's also what's the level of investment in that in the next generation

1443
01:25:02,450 --> 01:25:04,930
because they're in an arms race just as much as you are.

1444
01:25:05,330 --> 01:25:06,050
Yeah, absolutely.

1445
01:25:06,130 --> 01:25:06,290
Yeah.

1446
01:25:06,370 --> 01:25:07,730
And what's going to pay off, right?

1447
01:25:07,810 --> 01:25:12,450
Um, and paying off is is on you know, really developing, you know, socio competitive

1448
01:25:12,450 --> 01:25:17,570
competencies um in your kid because their status is going to impact, you know, future

1449
01:25:17,570 --> 01:25:18,450
generations as well.

1450
01:25:18,690 --> 01:25:18,850
Yeah.

1451
01:25:19,010 --> 01:25:24,530
I've actually I've always felt as a coalition slash alliance researcher myself, I've always

1452
01:25:24,530 --> 01:25:30,060
thought that the time course of alliances and the fact that

1453
01:25:30,380 --> 01:25:35,900
you as an adult currently your alliance structure will

1454
01:25:35,900 --> 01:25:41,820
fundamentally may or may not survive the future because there's new there's new the kids

1455
01:25:41,820 --> 01:25:47,020
are gonna grow up I've always thought that was also under emphasized that that the this

1456
01:25:47,260 --> 01:25:52,700
there must be a psychology of worrying about that of wanting to affect that and I think

1457
01:25:52,700 --> 01:25:57,870
that's also something that hasn't been um uh as as emphasized as it needs to be.

1458
01:25:58,190 --> 01:25:58,910
Absolutely.

1459
01:25:59,150 --> 01:25:59,710
Yeah.

1460
01:25:59,950 --> 01:26:05,870
I think history, uh, people uh just this stupid aside, but like I always wonder like why we

1461
01:26:05,870 --> 01:26:08,830
teach history the first the way we do and when we do.

1462
01:26:09,070 --> 01:26:12,910
Because I don't know about you guys, but I feel much more interested in history the older I

1463
01:26:12,910 --> 01:26:13,070
get.

1464
01:26:13,150 --> 01:26:15,310
But I was taught history very early.

1465
01:26:15,740 --> 01:26:20,060
And I actually wonder if it's a readout of like the evolved psychology being like we have

1466
01:26:20,060 --> 01:26:23,660
to indoctrinate the kids early to our history.

1467
01:26:23,980 --> 01:26:29,020
And it's the expression of wanting our current social narrative to extend.

1468
01:26:29,100 --> 01:26:33,580
And it's probably not well designed for what kids actually are interested in.

1469
01:26:34,380 --> 01:26:35,340
But it's yeah, yeah.

1470
01:26:35,950 --> 01:26:36,190
Yeah.

1471
01:26:36,270 --> 01:26:42,270
No, there's a huge demand for, you know, teaching kids the values that the parents hold.

1472
01:26:42,430 --> 01:26:46,990
Like I see so many children's books that are, you know, preaching these political messages.

1473
01:26:47,150 --> 01:26:50,350
And, you know, I agree with the political message, but still I find it interesting that

1474
01:26:50,350 --> 01:26:55,630
there's such a demand for, you know, inculcating kids uh into these values at such a young

1475
01:26:55,630 --> 01:26:55,790
age.

1476
01:26:55,870 --> 01:27:00,510
I think it does speak to this um adaptive problem of ensuring that the kids don't grow up

1477
01:27:00,510 --> 01:27:05,230
to, you know, uh shake up the the political alliance structure uh that was built, you know.

1478
01:27:05,550 --> 01:27:05,630
Right.

1479
01:27:05,960 --> 01:27:07,800
Yeah, that's some of it's pretty explicit.

1480
01:27:07,880 --> 01:27:11,800
Like I've seen uh like I grew up in a religious background.

1481
01:27:11,960 --> 01:27:16,680
I remember looking, this was years ago, like like for example, like people staying in a

1482
01:27:16,680 --> 01:27:21,480
religion, like it's very explicit and well known that if you don't get kids early, they

1483
01:27:21,480 --> 01:27:24,840
don't stay in it or uh or get in it at all.

1484
01:27:25,000 --> 01:27:27,880
Like there's very much uh an age time course.

1485
01:27:28,440 --> 01:27:28,680
Right.

1486
01:27:29,130 --> 01:27:29,290
Okay.

1487
01:27:29,530 --> 01:27:29,930
Yeah.

1488
01:27:30,170 --> 01:27:32,970
Um, well, well, Jen, thank you so much for coming on.

1489
01:27:33,050 --> 01:27:33,850
It was a pleasure.

1490
01:27:34,090 --> 01:27:39,930
I feel like I uh it was the perfect combination of I feel like I am a clearer

1491
01:27:39,930 --> 01:27:45,130
thinker about really important fundamental things, but it also is opening up a whole bunch

1492
01:27:45,130 --> 01:27:47,130
of mysteries and questions.

1493
01:27:47,450 --> 01:27:52,410
But I think that's that's the lovely beauty of taking an evolutionary perspective is that

1494
01:27:52,570 --> 01:27:57,530
sort of the the things we take for granted are actually strange and we just get clarity on

1495
01:27:57,530 --> 01:27:57,690
that.

1496
01:27:58,020 --> 01:27:58,660
Right, right.

1497
01:27:58,740 --> 01:27:59,380
Absolutely.

1498
01:27:59,620 --> 01:27:59,940
Yeah.

1499
01:28:00,580 --> 01:28:01,860
Thank you so much.

1500
01:28:04,420 --> 01:28:06,900
David, this was not a stressful episode at all.

1501
01:28:07,220 --> 01:28:10,180
No, in fact, it was quite relaxing and enjoyable.

1502
01:28:10,420 --> 01:28:12,100
I I I yeah, agreed.

1503
01:28:12,340 --> 01:28:17,460
Um, if you feel the same, then please uh like and subscribe, social media,

1504
01:28:17,620 --> 01:28:18,500
Patreon.

1505
01:28:18,900 --> 01:28:24,580
Um, and uh David, I just want to reiterate how lovely the music is for this podcast.

1506
01:28:24,890 --> 01:28:25,210
Thank you.

1507
01:28:25,290 --> 01:28:25,770
I appreciate it.

1508
01:28:25,850 --> 01:28:26,730
That's very sweet to hear.

1509
01:28:26,890 --> 01:28:27,050
Yeah.

1510
01:28:27,130 --> 01:28:29,130
Um, can you remind me how do you do it again?

1511
01:28:29,290 --> 01:28:32,250
Do you use a you don't keyboard or no keyboard?

1512
01:28:32,570 --> 01:28:33,530
Uh mouse.

1513
01:28:33,690 --> 01:28:34,970
So I use Logic Pro.

1514
01:28:35,210 --> 01:28:35,530
Okay.

1515
01:28:35,690 --> 01:28:41,610
Um and you can just click a note and then drag it up or down to raise or lower the pitch

1516
01:28:41,690 --> 01:28:45,530
and I'd copy and paste the notes and put them where I want and amazing.

1517
01:28:45,610 --> 01:28:46,090
Yeah.

1518
01:28:46,330 --> 01:28:46,490
Yeah.

1519
01:28:46,650 --> 01:28:47,370
It's a lot of fun.

1520
01:28:47,770 --> 01:28:48,250
That's cool.

1521
01:28:48,410 --> 01:28:52,970
It's called being a composer with on your computer is it's wonderful.

1522
01:28:53,050 --> 01:28:54,250
It's you don't yeah.

1523
01:28:59,100 --> 01:29:00,300
What kind of guitar do you have?

1524
01:29:00,700 --> 01:29:01,900
I have an acoustic guitar.

1525
01:29:02,460 --> 01:29:05,580
Mainly because I used to have an electric guitar and it was too annoying for my wife to

1526
01:29:05,660 --> 01:29:05,900
play.

1527
01:29:05,980 --> 01:29:08,060
So but she likes the sound of acoustic guitar.

1528
01:29:08,460 --> 01:29:09,420
Headphones, headphones.

1529
01:29:09,660 --> 01:29:10,380
You can plug in.

1530
01:29:12,060 --> 01:29:13,100
What kind of acoustic guitar do you have?

1531
01:29:14,700 --> 01:29:15,260
Oh, it's right here.

1532
01:29:15,340 --> 01:29:15,980
I didn't even know.

1533
01:29:16,060 --> 01:29:16,780
That's fantastic.

1534
01:29:16,860 --> 01:29:17,500
Oh, it's beautiful.

1535
01:29:17,660 --> 01:29:18,620
What what what brand is it?

1536
01:29:19,020 --> 01:29:19,660
Is it fender?

1537
01:29:20,060 --> 01:29:20,540
I have no idea.

1538
01:29:20,620 --> 01:29:21,500
I'm I'm on a guitar.

1539
01:29:22,540 --> 01:29:24,430
Uh could look in the whole sun hole.

1540
01:29:24,510 --> 01:29:24,670
Yeah.

1541
01:29:24,750 --> 01:29:24,910
Yeah.

1542
01:29:24,990 --> 01:29:25,070
Yeah.

1543
01:29:25,230 --> 01:29:25,390
Okay.

1544
01:29:25,550 --> 01:29:26,350
Yep, it's a fender.

1545
01:29:26,510 --> 01:29:28,110
Yeah, I'm not a guitar person.

1546
01:29:28,190 --> 01:29:30,590
I don't know a lot about guitars, but I just enjoy playing them.

1547
01:29:30,750 --> 01:29:30,990
Okay.

1548
01:29:31,070 --> 01:29:31,950
So fantastic.

1549
01:29:32,110 --> 01:29:32,510
Well, great.

1550
01:29:32,590 --> 01:29:36,430
Well, maybe next maybe next week, maybe next out for a weekend, you can we can get a little

1551
01:29:36,430 --> 01:29:39,630
bit of David on the acoustic guitar or maybe bonus episode.

1552
01:29:39,950 --> 01:29:40,510
Ooh, yeah.

1553
01:29:40,670 --> 01:29:44,910
I mean, maybe we'll do that if we like if we get a lot of support from our listeners.

1554
01:29:45,230 --> 01:29:45,550
Oh, nice.

1555
01:29:45,790 --> 01:29:48,240
But if we Yeah, that'll be a nice incentive for you guys.

1556
01:29:48,560 --> 01:29:52,960
Well, we have to do our homework and think about what incentive to dangle in front of us.

1557
01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:54,800
Yeah, live performance.

1558
01:29:54,960 --> 01:29:57,200
Yeah, and David Pins off on the guitar.

1559
01:29:57,440 --> 01:29:58,880
Oh, I like this song request.

1560
01:29:58,960 --> 01:29:59,840
Oh wow, this is amazing.

1561
01:30:00,000 --> 01:30:02,480
Yeah, I'll leave I'll I'll write a song about whatever you want.

1562
01:30:02,720 --> 01:30:04,320
How's that for incentive?

1563
01:30:04,640 --> 01:30:07,840
Well, now we have to think about when we have the incentive down, now we have to think

1564
01:30:07,840 --> 01:30:09,360
about what we want from people.

1565
01:30:10,080 --> 01:30:10,560
Hmm.

1566
01:30:10,640 --> 01:30:14,550
Uh well, you can give us some money on Patreon.

1567
01:30:14,710 --> 01:30:18,790
You can say some nice things about us on social media, leave us a kind review.

1568
01:30:19,030 --> 01:30:20,390
I think that's about it, right?

1569
01:30:20,550 --> 01:30:22,550
That is, but it's pretty um vague.

1570
01:30:22,630 --> 01:30:26,870
Like you have to like if somebody's like, well, what do I have to do personally to be able

1571
01:30:26,870 --> 01:30:30,470
to be the one to tell David here's what the song should be?

1572
01:30:30,710 --> 01:30:35,960
Like donate this amount of money, or like, you know get this I don't don't we have to have

1573
01:30:36,680 --> 01:30:41,800
how about this after your kind review after your kind words on social media after your

1574
01:30:41,800 --> 01:30:46,520
Patreon donation just say this one's for you David I want that song

1575
01:30:47,480 --> 01:30:52,760
sounds good all right for whoever whoever gets to that first okay all right uh

1576
01:30:53,080 --> 01:30:58,120
interesting okay good um I like this direction okay uh and this is how we become a

1577
01:30:58,120 --> 01:31:01,720
bluegrass band okay all right um have everybody have a good week and we'll we'll see you

1578
01:31:01,720 --> 01:31:03,570
with Charles Darwin Um okay.

1579
01:31:03,730 --> 01:31:07,330
Uh with the AI ghost of Charles Darwin's throwback.

1580
01:31:07,890 --> 01:31:12,690
We should get we should get an AI to be to like you know read all of Charles Darwin's works

1581
01:31:12,770 --> 01:31:16,050
and just be Charles Darwin and then just interview him on the podcast.

1582
01:31:16,450 --> 01:31:17,650
That is weird.

1583
01:31:18,130 --> 01:31:19,970
That would be pretty bizarre to do, actually.

1584
01:31:20,050 --> 01:31:21,010
But it might be interesting.

1585
01:31:21,090 --> 01:31:21,410
I don't know.

1586
01:31:21,570 --> 01:31:22,930
I feel ambivalently about that.

1587
01:31:23,010 --> 01:31:23,490
I don't know.

1588
01:31:23,810 --> 01:31:24,370
That's great.

1589
01:31:25,010 --> 01:31:26,050
It's an idea.

1590
01:31:26,370 --> 01:31:31,700
I feel really uh yeah, I feel that's I I'm confident that it is an idea.

1591
01:31:31,940 --> 01:31:32,820
That's a little stressful.

1592
01:31:33,460 --> 01:31:33,780
Okay.

1593
01:31:34,020 --> 01:31:34,580
All right.

1594
01:31:34,900 --> 01:31:36,900
Uh okay, David.

1595
01:31:36,980 --> 01:31:41,380
Um I'll see you next week and maybe we'll uh maybe we'll have Charles Darwin and you on the

1596
01:31:41,380 --> 01:31:42,500
guitar next week.

1597
01:31:43,140 --> 01:31:45,140
Maybe he'll accompany me on uh on my son.

1598
01:31:45,540 --> 01:31:47,060
On the steel guitar for whatever reason.

1599
01:31:50,820 --> 01:31:51,780
I don't know why.

1600
01:31:51,940 --> 01:31:53,970
Um right, everybody.

1601
01:31:54,050 --> 01:31:55,250
Have a good have a good week.