Paul Bloom || The Joy of Suffering and the Downside of Empathy

The music sections are separated by five minute intermissions to remind you to take a break. You can listen to flow State now on Spotify. Full State was made using Anchor, a free creation toll brought to you by Spotify. You can make your own talk show about music using your favorite Spotify songs. Just download the free Anchor app or visit Anchor dot fm. Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity.

I'm doctor Scott Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding of yourself. Others and the world to live in. Hopefully we will also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today. It's great to have Paul Boom on the podcast. Doctor Boom is the Brooks and Suzanne Reagan Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University.

His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He is past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and co editor of Behavior and Brain Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field. Doctor Boom is also author editor of seven books, including Against Empathy, The Case for Rational Compassion. A delight to talk to you today, doctor Boom. Nice to see

you again, Scott. We didn't have known each other for a while since your Yale days. Yeah, a long time. I attending your lad meetings was one of the highlights of my graduate school career, so I remember it was great having you there, So it was nice. Nice to see you again. Thanks, nice to see you too. Well. We're going to talk about some like your classics as

well as some of your newer stuff. But before we get there, I wanted to back up a bit because I don't think a lot of people may know about your graduate research, which I thought was pretty revolutionary as well. The work you did was Stephen Pinker and that sort of stuff. Going back to your graduate school days and

talking a little bit about your earliest research in this field. Sure, I was an undergraduate at me GIL and I was lucky enough to connect with John McNamara, one of these chance moments where you connect with a professor who changes your life. And John was very interested in language and my early work as an undergraduate was on language development and world learner. And so when I went to graduate school at MIT, my advisor was Susan Carey, and I

did work on semantics and on conceptual structure. My dissertation was called something like Semantic Structure and Language Development. And after being in graduate school for five years, I think I had one paper that was coming up on that work. So things are very different than they are now, and a lot of pressure. It's a lot more pressure now. Nobody just you know, I would never if with the record I had back then, I would never get a

job now. But I also did some work with Stephen Pinker, and together we wrote an article called the theoretical article called natural Language natural Selection, where we argued that human language is a biological adaptation. It's a darkwhitty adaptation. And you might think, you know, a lot of time has passed. I think that it what an incredibly boring argument to make. You know, course, language is complicated in the structure, and natural selection is the only game in town for the

origin of complex structures. But at the time it was extremely controversial. You know. On the one hand, you had people like Noam Chomsky, strong nativists at MIT where I was a student, who argued were very critical of natural selection still still is. On the other hand, you had a lot of people who would argue that there's nothing special about language. Language. There's no such thing as the evolution of language, because language just a bypart of what

you get. When you're smart, you could learn language. So we published this in the journal Behavioral Marine Sciences, which was a lot of fun. We've got dozens of heated commentaries, got to respond to them, and then many years later, this is a journal now, and now I was gonna say, yeah, did you ever think that you would end up being the editor of it, of that journal. No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't, I did it. It's actually a very fun journal to edit. I get to encourage people

to submit material on ideas interesting they see. You get to encourage their submissions. They get to see a lot of stuff before it comes out. Because we're a theoretical journal, we don't have to wrestle with the sort of replication crisis and statistics wars that the rest of the field is involved in. Yeah, it's kind of a real pleasure being involved in that journal, I imagine. I imagine it's a it's a great journal in the sense that it's high quality articles, but also this debate aspect of it

is something you don't often see in other journals. It's like a one shot deal with the other articles and then yes, and then people just talk about you behind your back. You know, that's right. You still get talked about behind your back. But you published a VPS. You have you know, twenty to thirty maybe a little bit more people saying bad things, but you do face and you have to deal with it. Then you get to respond though, Yeah, you have to deal with it. So

you have to deal with it. But it's many people find it a very exciting experience for sure. Well, I mean just just historically that time period with them Chomski there and you and Stephen Pinker. I mean, that's that's just a very in the history of psychology. I feel like that was a very historic time period, and that debate about is language you know, like a module, so to speak, or is it uh, you know, sort of gnomes more gnomes you. I mean, that's to this day.

I don't I don't think that that's debated today. I think it's pretty much well accepted, at least by evolutionary psychologists. That's accepted that there is an evolved function there. But is anyone still arguing like that, well, no, evolutionary didn't have any forces specifically on the structure of language. I think there's a lot of people who would argue that language is better explain in the terms of cultural evolution

than biological evolution. I see. The thing to keep in mind is, you know, my field of development of psychology, I think is that root pretty empiricist empiricists in the sense that there's a lot of rejection and skepticism of innate ideas about hardwiring and and I think deep down a lot of people in development on a psychology feel a little bit bad that Skinner didn't quite win the

day and are always hoping for him to come back. Yeah, and and so so my own my own biases, you know, I think informed biases is that a careful look at psychology says a lot is hardwired in an interesting way. But I to answer your question, I think there's still a lot of controversy. Okay, fair enough, So with this discussion of what's hardwired? Was I mean, please explain to an audience that might not be familiar with the phrase,

like what you mean by hardwired? Because I think sometimes there's misunderstandings about what that means, you know, Like I think Steven Pinker is in a great job in some of his writings trying to make it very clear, you know what that that doesn't mean that like so, in fact, it means it requires environmental input, you know what I mean? Like people think like hardwired means like, oh, it doesn't require you know, any input, it's just gonna, you know,

automatic express itself. And if you could please dispel them of that misconception, that'd be great. You know, everyone who's thought about innate ideas and hardwiring, and nativism has always been clear and exactly the point you're making, which is typically these things need some environmental input to grow. Color vision is a great example of something that's built in.

You know. No, not even the most ardent empiricists would say, oh, we just learned to see in color, just the same way we learn to play baseball or we learn to do crossword puzzles. You know, color vision is part of what our species has evolved to do. Same with growing arms and legs. But at the same time, unless you have the proper input visual input in the case of color vision, food in the case of arms and legs, the growth won't happen, or if it does happen, to

be stunted, and so on. So one way to think about what it means for something to be in need or hardwired is just that it's not learned. It's not acquired through observation, generalization, induction. Rather, it grows. But just like what you're saying, say it grows doesn't mean that it's a independent input and also doesn't mean that it's present at birth. So puberty is an example. Language probably is not learned it's not people don't learn to show

the signs of puberty at that time of life. But at the same time, of course it's not present at birth. It comes in many, many, many years later. So so the fact that something isn't there at birth does not mean you should reject the claim that is hardwired are built in. That's a great a great example. I've always been a big fan of Rachelle Gellman's research, and and you know, she talks about it as a like in

terms of skeletons. You know, we have these build in skeleton structures that environment kind of like where our attention that focuses our attention on what to pay attention to in the world. I mean, people, if you really, if people really thought about it, like we wouldn't want nothing to be an eight That would be a mess. Isn't there a quote about the Big Booming Confusion? You know that William James is a Wim James quote, Right, Yeah, I mean, thank god, thank god it listen to me,

thank the evolutionary process. Whatever nicely put that was unintentional, you know, and that I was like, oh my god, that's kind of funny, but you know, but thank whatever whoever, I'm thinking for that process, even it's random, you know, variation selection that you know, we have some input of us, we would be it would take a d D to another level. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think

you're right in both ways. First thing, one way to think about this is sort of blueprint or I think Gary Marcus talks about a first draft, a certain fundamental starting point. But you could also get this through this another way. So there's a lot of interest as you know, in computational models of learning, invasion models in neural network models used to be. And one of the discoveries that that rediscoveries always comes up is unless these things are

are pre set to certain parameters, they don't learn. You know, they're a pure a purely unbiased learner the fiction and couldn't get off the ground. So true, we need something that's straining, is learning, and that's another way of making

sense of innate ideas and in aid categories. Oh wow, this this might be a total tangent, but I've been kind of diving into the intense debates and the machine learning literature about you know, about bias and the necessity of bias in the system in order information and it's and it's really controversial because there are some topics, some things you know that we the machine learning might be good at, but do we really want to predict certain things?

And I won't get into that, I won't mention some examples, but it can get really controversial quickly. But it's tricky because the field is going to has to learn how to balance morality with bias uh and have has to make some decisions on on exactly what thresholds and cut up what there'll be, what they're willing how much bias there are willing to allow into a system because there seems to be an accuracy bias trade off. Anyway, it's

really complex and I'm not doing it. I'm not doing the whole debate justice, but you just made me think that some of that. I mean, one thing to think about here is that bias is an ambiguous word, so it has two sorts of meanings are very important to keep the crop keep separate. One is the bias we've

just been discussing. So a creature might be biased to think the sun the light will come from above rather than from below, or that color is very important for sorting fruit, or that you know, animals are often symmetrical. And then there's bias in a way that we talk about in sort of the political social context, which you know, I say like oh I don't want to hire women or something like that, and they're very, very different. So, you know, great point a desire to reject the second

type of bias. It shouldn't preclude you from thinking that, oh, well humans must be biased to have some ideas and not others. Yeah, thank you for that clarification. So you have so many juicy topics. I'm like, which once shoud we jump in right now? Well, why don't we just just like go rate for the why why empathy sucks? No, No, that's not how you would ever phrase it, I know, but but let's just let's just go into that topic.

Because a fascinating topic, and I think, you know, there's a lot of a hall moments if someone were to read your book Against Empathy, a lot of a homoms that like, you know, maybe they'll read the title and they'll be like, oh, hell no, but then they'll actually read the book. And that's the experience I had once I actually read your book, which I'm apologized for taking so long to actually read it. Okay, it's a lot

of really really good insights. So can you talk a little bit about what are potentially some downsides of empathy? And then and and how are you defining empathy? Yeah, it's important. I mean one thing, I do you realize most people won't get Many people won't get past the cover of the book, which is why I have a useful subtitle. So my title is against empathy, but the subtitle is the case for rational compassion. And one of the things I hope to do there from the get

go is get people think. Well, when he's talking about it empathy, he's meaning something distinct from compassion, and the feel is in kind of a terminological mess and I like to sort of stay away from the terms. But just to get things started, there's one sense of empathy. People have to mean everything good, love, kindness, morality. I'm

not against that, that'd be terrible to be against. I'm thinking of empathy in sort of a more narrow sense when many psychologists and philosophers use it of putting yourself in another person's shoes and feeling what they feel. And I'm not entirely against that. I think it's an important source of intimacy between people. I think it's a great

source of pleasure. I think a lot of you know, a lot of joys of life is being sitting with somebody else and they're having a wonderful experience and you're sharing their experience. But from the standpoint of making moral decisions and moral motivation, I've argued that it's a train wreck. And one reason to answer your question is that empathy in the sense is highly biased. It's much easier for me to feel empathy for you, a guy who kind of looks like me, speaks my language, somebody I know

I'm familiar with. Then empathy for somebody who has different skin color, different ethnicity, doesn't speak my language frightens me. So there's countless studies finding empathy is more naturally drawn to those who are similar to us, those who are safe, those who are allies are in group, and a morality based on empathy then distorts our behavior in favor of the familiar in some way. Empathy is a wonderful ally for racism and bias, bias in a bad sense, and

that's one problem with it. A second problem is just to get caught up in these political times, empathy could be is often used by malevel and people to direct hatred towards some groups. So one common piece of rhetoric these days is to talk about victims. And so, for instance, one common thing to talk about victims of crimes by illegal immigrants and this, and people will tell these terrible stories of maybe some of them real, of horrific crimes, and they will use this as a mechanism to get

people to hate illigal immigrants. And this is a standard playbook. Anytime somebody wants to direct your hatred against some group, they'll tell you stories of victims. And so empathy, I call these empathy traps. But empathy could be used to

make the world worse and not better. So I think we're much better off making our moral decisions in a rational reason way, a reflective way saying you know, look, I don't feel a lot much empathy for this person in Africa, different skin colored as being my language, but I recognize there just as much of a person as my child is. Sorry, go ahead, Yeah, So I think that's that's very good to point out those particip pitfalls.

And I wrote this article for Scientific American recently summarizing this study that shows that actually people who are poort higher and pathic concerned for others, like for people suffering, actually are more likely to be politically polarized and to show less empathy for those they perceive as in their APT group. So I think that's like, if you were probably writing your book when that study, you probably would include that study is further evidence for this sort of thing.

Something that I'm interested, something that's interesting is this distinction the field between cognitive empathy and effective empathy. It sounds like you're describing effective affective empathy, but you've also pointed out that, And this is where I went wrong. What

I want to admit in misunderstanding your argument. I thought you were making the case that, you know, look at all these things that can go wrong with effective empthy, we need to cultivate more cognitive empathy, equating cogni empathy with your construct of rational compassion. That's not, in fact what you did. So it sounds like your idea of rational compassion is actually a different construct and maybe something

like a new construct in the field. It's not. It can't easily be mapped on to the you know, the different components of empathy or et cetera. What do you say that's right. I'm you know, it's it's always nice to have the idea you're saying something new, But I don't think it's really that new. Compassion. Compassion is reversed to caring with other people, valuing other people. Okay, you know, Okay, So if I suppose I don't put myself in your shoes, suppose I don't try to imagine what it's like to

be you, but you matter to me. You're a person. I hope you do well. You hope you're thry. That's compassion. Call it concern, call it kindness, call it love. And rational means rational, which is that that we should use sort of principles of logic and reasons and facts to try to make things better in the ways we want to make them better. Gotcha, And the reason so I

would I would distinguish that from cognitive empathy. That's a whole different thing, which is understanding what other people think. And cognitive empathy can be useful, can be a source of much kindness, could also be the source so much cruelty. M Hill, I'm really excited to announce that the Psychology Podcast is now being sponsored by Better Help, the world's largest counseling service Better Help is asked me to talk to you about your mental health and how to reach

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Better Help Forward slash psych Podcast. Again, you can get started right away and enjoy ten percent off your first month of high quality therapy by going to b E T T E r h e LP dot com Forward Psych Podcast. That's better h e LP dot com Forward Psych Podcast. Okay, now back to the show. Yeah, a lot of psychopaths are very good at cognitive empathy. They can really get in the mind of their victims, but they don't have very good affective empathy. But but but

maybe that's not true. So about the affective empathy part of something obviously, because you made a point about how people who are cruel can have used empathy in the service of being cruel, And do you think they still feel like, like, do you think, like, uh, how long did I go without mentioning Hitler? But do you think Hitler could like yeah, I mean right, it's like been like for only fifteen minutes. But like, do you I mean, is that possible that he like did have some feelings

in his life? I mean he's still like, like, am I allowed to say he was still human? I don't know if I'm even allowed to say that, But you know, he was obviously a horrible human being, But like, do you think there's he still like had these moments of like you know, for his like like people that he loved or people that he like saws in his inn group. Do you think he had feelings of empathy that would like be pretty much indistinguishable from like our me and

you feelings of empathy? Yeah, of course, yeah, okay, And people think of these of these monsters, and I think I think it's very convenient for us to see individuals like like Hitler and say, oh, what a monster or Stalin or everything like that, and one sense they're a monster that they did great evil, but basically they're human and most likely they're evil. Is motivated by the same things that motivate your evil. Am I evil? Just you know,

take it to a different extreme. So you know, the high ranking Nazis and had families, they had children, they loved, they had Hitler was apparently a vegetarian because he cared about the fates of animals. There's nothing inconsistent with that. So interesting. I hope I don't. I hope you don't get in trouble for any of that. Let me get

Let me give a flip side. Okay, Obama, who's a president I much love and much respect, agreed to have drone attacks which killed many innocent people wedding parties and children and some one no doubt, there's somebody. There's a podcast going on the other side of where one person asking asking another per se, is Obama a pure monster who loves killing? Or does he have some kindness towards

others who are around him? And the answer is Obama is as best I know, a family man, a good friend, a really really nice guy who because of what he believes, because I killed people. And now Obama's not Hitler. Hitler. I think Obama was Ratby right in his drone attacks, and there's no defending Hitler. But the psychologies are the same. People could be really kind to those who are close to them and either savage or indifferent to those far away.

That's the human condition. So such an interesting example. It really is thought provoking, and it makes me think of

Roy Baummeiser's book Evil. I don't know if you've ever had a chance of reading that, one of my favorite pots that thinks really underrated and you know, just really showing studies that have been conducted on how we all think we're victims, you know, like you know, and we think we're the ones that you know, we can't like think that, well, maybe we actually transgressed to someone in this situation. So it's a it's a it's a wonderful book.

One of Roy's studies in the book, if I remember correct me, if I got this wrong, he asked people to remember a time when somebody did something terrible to them, and people say, oh, my God, it was unprovoked, it was vicious, it was cruel. The person got the sadistic satisfaction from it. And then he asked people, well, what about a time you did something cruel to somebody? And people say, well, I did that, but you know I had no choice. I regretted it. I didn't mean for it.

I wasn't And we see things so differently. No, I think Roy is one of our best commentators on human nature around me too, and I think like underrated in terms of a lot of his books. He's written. I'm looking at my bookshelf right now because there was a book I was reading the other day. I was like, how come no one's read this book. It's an Escape from the self summer around there, and it's like, well, no one talks about out this this topic. But it's like, so,

oh yeah, escaping the self. I haven't hold on. Maybe I'll hold it up to like plug it. Maybe Roly will give me some royalties from from this. Oh oh, I have a burd background. Oh no, this sucks a boord. Okay, maybe can I do it? I get it, But then if I do it a certain light, Okay, anyway, you got it? Cool and This is only for those watching the video. Obviously, those who are listening to it just in the audio version, you might want to hop onto

YouTube in order to see that. Okay, so let's talk about why people enjoy suffering, and I should say sometimes there's a there is a joy to suffering, but there might be some boundary conditions around that, some context, some things that you can elucidate as a psychologist, I hope. So, yeah, I'm super interesting. This is a book it's writing. I'm like, oh, you're writing a book too, And oh no, no, I said the me too. I'm interested in the topic. I didn't know you No, no, no, I didn't know you

write a book on it. That's great, Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm I'm like, I don't know, a month away from a really really bad first draft, but I'm very interested in why we choose to suffer. And I kind of think the answer is two parts. Sometimes we choose to suffer to enhance our pleasure. We do it, and I think the cases they are like spicy foods or saunas

or hot bass b DSM. It's funny you mentioned Roy Baumeister because Mawemeister in that book you held up has a really nice discussion for how we could get pleasure from b DSM, and one answer is it is often nice to be liberated from our consciousness. So that's half the book is the sort of it connects lots of the work of Paul Rosen, who coined the term benign masochism,

and talks about chosen suffering of all sorts. The other half of the book, maybe, I think, connects more to what you have written about quite extensively, which is I think part of a good life for many people, maybe not all, but for many people is the pursuit of long term goals we call meaningful goals, and parton part

that is difficulty is suffering. If you want to do important things in the world, everything from going to war to raising children, to climbing mountains to writing a book, it's difficult, but the difficulty is an indicator you're on the right track. If you looked at your life and you found it was just incredibly easy, pain free, difficulty free, at some level, you're not doing things right, and so

suffering has another appeal in that way. It's an indicator that we're on the right track regarding our meaningful pursuits. Does that make sense You've thought more about these issues than I have. Well, I want to suspend all my thoughts until I read your book, and then I'm sure that my brain will be lit up. But I think that those are certainly some factors that can help explain it, particularly this one about the human need to overcome challenges.

I think there's kind of like actually, one of my intil I she heroes, Abraham Maslow, has a quote which I'll try to send you. I put it's an unpublished thing I put on my Twitter a little while ago, where he argues something like, we can't help it but create challenges in our way because we get Otherwise we'll get bored and depressed because of our exit, will get

existentially despair because of our boredom. You know, like we need we need, you know, like we can't just sit in front and enjoy like Netflix all day, you know, like we need to kind of create these mountains to climb,

and you know, the human variation. I think, I think it's just fascinating to look, you know, among our species that all you know, all the ways that because of our consciousness and our complex consciousness and ability to have imagination, that we can just conjure up in our imagination and in reality, so many variations of things, mountains, mini mountains to climb. Even you know that like other species, don't would never even think of like an ape. An ape

would probably wouldn't. So I agree with all of that. But let me ask you, because I'm struggling with this issue, so knowing you, you'd be bored out of your skull watching Netflix all day long and and so on. Are you sure it's true for everybody? Are you sure that there aren't some people who would find a life of simple pleasure sufficient. This is not a trick question. I honestly I know, I know, no, no, no no. I encourage you in this podcast to push me or bring

up any counter examples because I really enjoy those. Well, I think that if we're, if we're really thinking about this from an individual difference perspective, which is what I do. Most of my research focuses on individual differences, I'd be remiss to say that I didn't think there was something

to that. So I think that the personality trait, which I've spent since you've known me, studying openness to experience, is a really predictive, really really predict of a lot of things, including creativity and intellectually, the need for intellectual stimulation is a component of it, but also a need for uh, you know, aesthetics, you know, stimulation like beauty things in that nature, adventure seeking is kind of a blend of extraversion and openness to Actually it's a debate,

but maybe adventure seeks more part of the extraversion. But I think that those traits would moderate this strength of this. So I made this kind of like general statement about humans. I think it holds in terms of like human nature, but I think there like there are extremes of like extreme low levels of those traits where I think people would probably be very content maybe like just yeah, sitting there all day, like they don't have a driving force

to you know, to do that. But I think maybe on average, amongst human nature, there seems to be this like dry for for exploration, you know, as I called the drive for exploration, which I think, as I make a case in this new book I have come out in April, I sent you a pdf. Uh in the email? Did you get the email? I did? Okay, good good. I'm no pressure at all, but I just wanted to

make sure that it got through. I have an argument in that book about how the need for exploration UH deserves a place at the evolutionary table and and it can't be reduced to some of these other evolutionary drives that like Kenrick and others have made our like the mating drive, or you know, even like Jeffrey Miller has And that's an interesting topic. He's I think he's done

great work on them, you know, the mating motive. But he he really does subsume all these all the higher parts of human nature, you know, like like like intellectual as just like signaling, you know, so that we can get meats. And I think that's actually to to reductionistic. I think the need for exploration you can make a case that it is a drive on its own. So what do you think of do you what do you think of that? Well, let me let me start it. I find it really interesting. Let me step back to

the universality claim. So you're a young guy. I'm not a young guy, but I'm not necessarily an old guy. But I know people who are in their seventies and their eighties, and you talk to them, some of them are in good health, they're happy, but they might play a lot of golf. They may you know, socialize, see the grandkids sit by the pool, read books, do crossroad puzzles and so on. And I look at these people and I sort of say, where's the suffering? Where's the pain?

But so I wonder whether to what extent what you and I are talking about is developmental is something which shows up at some point in life, maybe phase later on. I think there is a lot to that. And it's certainly if you look at the ericson stage theory, you know, like there's this point above generativity. I think maybe like, well, maybe when we become wise, if we can ever become wise, then we finally call them the beep down, you know, and we're like, you know, actually, the wisest path is

one of the simplest pleasures. I think there's a lot to that. You know. Again, I'm gonna reference Maslo again because he's on my mind. He's been on my mind for years as I've been working on this book. But he distinguishes between the peak experience and and and and in the developmental stage towards end of her life, we actually, if we're lucky, we can start experiencing what he calls the plateau experience the plateau experience, and I think this

maps on nicely to what you're saying. I think that, uh, to have like ultimate peace before we die. I think it's best to have these plateau experiences where we get the greatest. They're not these big bursts of you know, I've overcome, I've got reached the top of the mountain, and then you know that all the Google images pictures of like reaching tops and mountains, you know, but a plateaux experience is like, you know what, from here on to the rest of my life, I'm okay with what

I've got. So I love my wife, I love my children, I love my my you know, publishing one journal article a year from here on out, you know, like God forbid, you know, Like I like, you just choose, like I'm gonna plateau here and enjoy the rest of my life with peace. And I think there's a lot too that, Paul, I really do. But I think that in order to get there, I think you like, there's this there's still this natural inclination within a certain period of your life

to be constantly exploring, you know. I think that's probably right. Yeah, Well cool, that was fun. So let's talk about the psychology of expectation and I and and pleasure. Okay, because in a lot of ways we talked about the joy of suffering, so I think it's appropriate that we talk about there is a joy and pleasure too, isn't there? Almost by definition, we're not MASSI kiss as a species. We're partly Matt, you know, like, I think you made

that point that you were talking. You said something like, what are we a species? You're like, well, we're a mix. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we we we seek out pleasure. I think we seek out meaning. We might seek out difficulty and harsh conditions, in part because it makes the pleasure enhanced, in part because it can connects to meaning and morality. I think it's complicated, you know. And there's your point.

I think you raised this in the question period of my talk, and it was very well taken that seeking a life of seeking out pleasure and seeking out meaning and higher goals are not essentially in conflict. That's right. You know, you ask people do you live a happy life? And you ask people do you live a meaningful life? You know, and there's a correlation. They're not opposed. There's a lot of people who say yes to both. Sadly,

there's a lot of people say no to both. Yeah, So you know, I'm sort of some sort of commercial that said produces a tagline. But you can have it all. You can have it all, yeah, with a certain income level obviously, yes, Well income, I think it depends where you live. But as you know, income is correlated with pleasure, with happiness, and it's like an inverted U shaped curve. So you mean you think there's a certain point where

if you make so much money, less happy. Yeah, data that you know, there's not like perfectly good data on that, and not like there's perfect goo data in anything, but if your research shows that, like, if you don't be on a certain point, if you don't like spend your money, well it actually can lead to like you know, like uh, the paradox of choice kind of issues. So you kind of get overwhelmed with all the things you could have.

I know, I know a lot of people are like, oh poor, you know, babies, you know, like rich people. But but I think there's some you know, it's interesting that among you know, more people could commit suicide. I'd hire higher tax brackets actually, then lower tax brackets those lower tax brackets are actually just trying to survive in

a lot of ways. Is that true? Is it really true that I because the data I'm aware of would say that when to come sort of experienced happiness, it goes up and up and up till like one hundred thousand dollars or something, and then you get diminishing returns because you know, obviously with each dollar you have another dollar matters less. But I hadn't known that there was risks at a higher point. That's really interesting. Yeah, I

think it's really interesting too. I think it's really interesting too. There's a really interesting chapter in one of my books on myself here called Spending Money Well, that goes through and shows like people who spend their excess money on experiences like growth, experiences like a new hobby, or on like connecting with others can kind of forestall that effect. But if you look on average past a certain point,

I think you do see lots of negative effects. So there is research showing that people above a certain certain income level start being less generous. They report they'll be less likely to actually donate money than those who are poor are actually more likely to donate money. It's a lot of counterintuitive things you wouldn't you wouldn't think. You'd think because you have more money, you're obviously going to be more likely to donate to charities and things, but

they're actually less likely to donate. Even just looking at money makes you more selfish, like in a psychology experiment, you like, just like put money in an implicit you know, like John Bard sort of way. You know, people are more likely to all of a sudden be more selfish. So it's like a life well lived and a life of meanings seems to be one where you expand outside yourself. So therefore, to the extent to which more money is detracting from that, it seems like it can get in

the way of happiness. If that makes sense, I guess. I guess. It just seems like it seems if we were to take your advice, Suppose I'm making I don't know, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and then I suddenly am offered to be making half a million a year? Should I say no? I always love your questions, Paul. This is I feel like I'm back in I feel like I'm back in grad school again. This is like

so exciting. Yeah, I loved it. You always did this, You always did this, so look I wouldn't say no. But but I also worry sometimes that, like I may my there's a there's like different selves we all have. There's a the yet the selve that would say yes immediately, I'm not because it's that's your best self, you know, Like is like, is that your best self saying yes I want that? That's sort of like the greedy self in a way, isn't it. I mean, what's going into

your calculation there? Why you would say yes? Well, money, money could do so much good. You could do it could good? Is that why you do it? Though? Because you'd like right, security and freedom from worry? Okay, can it can buy cool stuff? It can? It can help

out friends, It could be given to charity. I mean, in some ways sort of an economic effect of half a million strictly dominates a quarter million, because if you don't want to half a million, just you know, just take a quarter or take half of that and send it off to Oxfam and there you got off your shoulders. You can't do it the other way around. That's true, that's true. But I suspect that most people when given

that choice, they're not. Their immediate thought is and oh all that extra mondy means I'm going to be able to have more nonprofit organizations. I think there is maybe this human I mean, I wouldn't say most people would probably am I being recentical of human nature right now. I just think I've heard this before. I've heard you know. There's a friend of both of ours, Lori Santos. She had a podcast, so we went over some similar similar issues, and people are talking about the risks of having too

much money. What did she say so much? Well, she had on her show she had a psychiatrist who works with rich people, and he said, oh my god, there's so much problems with money. There's so much problems winning a lottery. Yeah, and there's a lot of anecdotes you could see how that could work. I'm just not honestly sure if it's true. I'd really be very interesting if it's true. So I'm actually very surprised if it turned out that people who are very wealthy commit suicide more

than the very poor. It just seems, I mean, anything's possible. There's very poor of far more life stressors. I mean, if it were true, it would also lead to some odd policy decisions, like you would you want to say, would you want to say, Hey, we're getting so obsessed with healthcare for the poor and improving the lives of the poor, but we shouldn't be they're better off. Well, if they're happier, why would you want to get and mess up to their lives. Well, they're happier, we should

put our interventions to help and the rich. Well, yeah, I don't know if that necessarily follows, but I think that it is. It is really tricky territory if we really want to take the data and think about the implications. Because I do like doing that too. I like saying, well, if this is true, what are the implications opposed to like, let's not even talk about this truth, you know, like and let's talk about you know, implications that will make

everyone sound good, you know, feel good. So I think that that's there are some really thorny implications of some

of this research. I think that it's it's really tricky because there there are I think higher levels of mental health issues among those who are like reaching this point of life where maybe they like they have everything, you know, and I wonder how that relates to what we were talking about earlier, with like the boredom and like the need to constantly have challenges and to have, you know,

things to overcome. I'm just wondering how it all hew maps onto that, and I guess you're you'd be skeptical of that finding. So I let me be one hundred percent rock solid that I can find some studies that

point to that. I want to be. I want to be sure that I one hundred percent because I do have a section in my book if you want to read it called money, Money, Money, that's the title of it, and I have review in that section, so you could after we've done this chat, you can just control f money, Money, Money, where I do talk about some of the studies that I've come across showing how it can make us more money can make us more self selfish and lead us

to make decisions that are actually against well being. See, the thing is what we know, the things that are most cool with happiness are the really simplest things like connection and and you know, having like even like religion, Like you know, we should talk about religion as a bond,

you know, as the function of religion. I mean, some of these things like you can go to a church, and thankfully I don't think you have to pay a lot of money to be in the church, but it can be one of the most meaningful, you know, things that you do in your life. Right, So it's interesting to think about about the real applications of this. So I I agree with everything you're saying about what what really matters. It's just the thing is, with more money,

you get what more of what really matters? If you If you if you have the meaning job that keeps you busy every day, you're not liberated to spend time with your kids. If you can't afford travel, you can't visit those you love. You know, if you are poor, you have to worry about your kids not having adequate

healthcare or education, our housing. There's so many things money you could help out with in exactly the way you're talking about, including connections with people you love, meaningful pursuits and so on. Well, I've been teaching. I've been teaching interestsych for a long time. I've teaching for so long remember giving that I remember giving lectures where I say, hey, psychologists have learned that money doesn't make you happy, and

it's just that's amazing. Who would have thought might make you? And then all of the new data came in, this whole wave of data, and oh, more money you make, the happier you are, and rich countries happier in poorer countries, and this the whole you know, And like a lot of things in psychology, something which was really unintuitive and really cool turned out to make more sense than we thought it would. Now again it might really be at

the very high end. It might be once you pass a million dollars to ten years in our one hundred million, weird things happen, and I can see again in theory, I could see that happening. It would isolate you from other people and so on. Well, there is that there was a study coming out that confirms something you just said.

It's showing that more people who use their money for time saving activities, so they use their money so that they don't have to do like chores they don't want to do, and they can add more time for the

things that matter do report higher levels of happiness. So I think I think that the key takeaway I want to make in this is that spending money well is what's important, not just the money that you have you know, but but but the but the more bolder claim, Yeah about you know, past a cerent level, you are, there is a robust correlation with war, levels of well being and even higher rates of suicide. I think I maybe want to look more rock solid into that literature. That's

fair enough. And I know that Jonathan Hype, by the way, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but he's been working on a book for a long time on capitalism and why why capitalism is a good thing in terms of happiness, And I hope he finishes that book someday because I think it'll be intriguing. And most of what John that's is very interesting. So yeah, yeah, I think it'd be really thought provoking. So I hope

you I know, he's been working that a while. And then he then he discovered this research and stuff and you know, and coddling of the American mind. He put everything else on a hold. I think, you know, to do that. Yeah, okay, So, well, this pleasure, you know,

the expectation of pleasure. I mean, something that I thought was really interesting and in reading your book is just how much whether or not we actually enjoy something really does depend so much on whether we think we will enjoy it and it it kind of it does kind of blow your mind when when you think about that, and it does relate to I think addictions as well, and and how we know addiction works in the brain and as you know, this kind of learning mechanism and

this and even to the point when we don't actually enjoy it anymore, as long as our brain thinks we're going to enjoy the cocaine even though we don't really don't want to do it. We don't. There's one less side of ourselves. We're like, we don't want to do it anymore, we're not getting the effects anymore. There's this other side that remembers that we once enjoyed it, and the dopamine is telling us, well, we got to keep doing it with a possibility someday we'll get back to

that time we enjoyed it. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, I have not in any of my work thought deeply about addiction. I mean, one very crude way of thinking about it is it's a nice one way to make sense of addiction at the very crude level is a way that Frankfort talks about in terms of first order desires and second order desires. So you know, I like coffee. I drink coffee, but I also don't mind it. I drink coffee. I'm perfectly happy with it.

Maybe a hallmark of an addiction is you might want it, but you don't want to want it. You know, I might smoke, but I really wish I didn't smoke it. We took all treatments. I take drugs, I see somebody because I don't want that desire. And that's one way to distinguish addictions from other things. But the second way is what you're talking about, and it's kind of grounded in neuroscience account involving different appetitive mechanisms in the brain.

And you're right. Apparently one of the hallmarks of addiction is they provide you some relief, but they don't provide you pleasure. Yeah, so someone who someone who is addicted to cigarettes doesn't really enjoy this smoking a cigarette, but it takes away, it takes away to pain of not having it. That's right. And there's kind of like this, These things we do in our lives because we want to relieve, as opposed things we do because we want it to grow. You know, like as we call them

deprivation needs versus growth needs. But there are things that we do from a sense of deprivation and it's almost like we feel compulsion to do it so that we can get rid of this feeling we have of you know, this compulsion to do it versus r That's a good way to characterize addiction in part. Yeah, So I was just I was just trying to link that to to your to your discussion of expectation, because I just like to link things on my podcast that see if they

go together at all. Well, but it seems like reading your book on you know, pleasure, how pleasure works, this idea of just you know, how much our expectation can influence things we enjoy. It can also influence things that we no longer enjoy, And that's made me think, yeah, does that make sense? So, you know, one the main theme of my book the different things I pursue, but main theme is that what you think of something influences

the pleasure you get from it. So if you think you're drinking the best wine in the world, will tastes better to you than otherwise. If you think you're looking down the street and this love of your life approaching as opposed to someone who just looks like that person, it'll affect you differently, and so on and so just for everything, for sex, for food, for literature, for film, what you think you're experiencing really matters for how you

experience it. It's so true. Sometimes it's like you can't get more true than that, and you've and how does that really to like judgments of the value of arts, you know, like, because we're told, you know, I'll go into an art museum. Let's say I go before people tell me, oh, I should find this one's worth four billion dollars. That one's seven million. Now let's say I go in. I don't know any of that information. I'm like, uh,

that's a sucky paint. But then like, but let's say I go in and I am given all that information is not going to fundamentally alter my like perception of what I'm seeing and the value that I give to it, and maybe even the enjoyment I get from it. I don't know it will it won't matter the story you hear behind the creation of something. But I'm not an arts I'm ar skeptic. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing. Let me give you another analogy.

There's a movie I want to see called Knives Out, and I just heard a commentary. It's a comedy and apparently there's a lot of references to Agatha Christie movies and stories and Hitchcock movies and so on. Now suppose you've never heard of Agatha Christie or Hitchcock. You go see the movie, you'll have a very different experience and someone who's more knowledgeable. Is it a better experience because

it's more naive. No. I think sometimes the knowledge of something, the knowledge of in the case of visual what a Kandinski is, what Picasso was up to, who Dechamp was commenting on, really can actually enhance pleasure. So when I say sometimes people hear me say that our beliefs about something influenced the pleasure we take from it and think, Ah, we're just so dumb. But it's not necessarily the case. It could be our beliefs influence us, and it's a

good thing because maybe we're better informed. Certainly, a wine expert, I am not a wine expert, but I am willing to believe a wine expert it takes things I cannot because of their expertise, So we're not an art expert too. Absolutely, that's a really good point, and they might get some enjoyment out of life that we'll never know what that's like. Also kind of sad, right, that's right, it's a very it's not well, it's it's only sad, you know, if we each have it at our disposal, all sorts of

tools to get better and better, have learning things. You know, you want to learn about movies, just watch a lot of movies, study movies and so on you want to you know, some of this could just be had on your laptop. You don't even need a lot of money to get access to the pleasure fair enough, So you wrote an article you saw you co authored an articled art and authenticity, importance of origins and judgments of value?

Does that study and those fundis related all to this idea that like people won't even like touch some If you say, like this shirt was made by a serial killer, like people, what is it? People won't touch it or won't want to, or if you say this food was I forget you mentioned example of this in our lab meeting. So I'm I'm trying to go in my memory from like fifteen years ago, so please forgive me, but I

feel like you said something. So that work was actually Paul Ros and Carol Nemrov and done some nice stuff on sort of social contamination. So if you knew a sweater was worn by I don't know, Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, you might be unwilling to put it on. They would have bad associations. And similarly, houses where there's been a suicide our murder are hard to sell. And this is my people who don't have any sort of magical thoughts or whatever explicitly, but there is sort of

this common sense feeling of contamination that happens. And in my work I did, and some of this work was with George Newman and some was skilled decent drug I was that positive contamination. So imagine a sweater that was worn by George Clooney. Imagined a desk that was owned by Albert Einstein. I'd love a desk going by Albert einst I'd pay extra for it, even if I couldn't brag a just the idea, this is Albert Einstein's freakings

and I'm working it would be worth a lot. So we have both positive and negative contamination influencing our thoughts on things. Yeah, it so relates to the expectations we're just talking about. Yeah, that's right, that's right. All the stuff is really I mean, everything we talked about today is like related. Did some Well these are great topics, these are fascinating, so much fun. So I did say I wanted to circle back to religion. So I was

going to ask you would Tarzan believe in God? So this is a title of the paper I wrote with Conybenergy And it was a clever thing. She thought of a clever way of framing the question. How much of religion is innate? So you take it so plainly, just about most people in the world have some religious knowledge and religious background because we live in a religious world.

But how much of that's human nature? And so one thought experiment is you take a bunch of kids, put them on an island somehow, give them food and water, and see whether they create gods. Well, they naturally do that, And our answer is no. Our answer is kids might develop some sort of superstitious beliefs, they may believe in some deities, but surprisingly, if they have any belief it will be polytheistic, not monotheistic. So you look at the

history of religion, religion starts off of many gods. The idea of a single god, what Era and or in Zion call a big God is a relatively recent invention or discovery. You could say, So the tame we have a natural default for religion. It's for polytheism. Well that's very interesting. Well what do you see as some of the other sort of evolved mechanisms that religion or modern religion plays on. That why religion is so pervasive and

so popular. Well, I think in some of my work I argued that modern religion often speaks to a common sense distinction being body and soul. You know, neuroscientists will tell you that you're a physical thing, you are your brain, but we don't feel that way. And so I feel like you say, you know, you do feel like you are your brain. No, I was going to say, when neu scientists say that that you, you know, I would say,

speak for yourself. Oh, I see, I'm just joking. So common sense says, you know, you know, I could leave my body in a dream, float around, exchange body. That's common stuff in fiction. Religions talk about this. Religions often have a notion of karma or karmic balance, some sort of justice where you know, people get what they deserve.

Religions often have creationists ideas, which is a very natural way to think about the origin of complicated things, and a lot of developmental work suggesting that gets probably quite naturally when they see something that's complicated, say well, something a person mustimated. The argument for design comes very naturally, and so these ideas end up coalescing and form the sort of cognitive basis, the factual basis of the world's religions. Then,

of course there's much else besides. There's moral systems, there's rich uals, there's community. But I do think these biases sort of form the basis for universal religious beliefs. So on page eight of my new book, I quote you from your article Religion is Natural in two thousand and seven. I say, many people, perhaps most people, see religion or

spirituality is central to their lives. Any complete theory of human nature has to make sense of this, and I think that this is this is still a uncharted territory in psychology. My collagues and I are trying, you know, particularly like David Yeden, who was a grad who's a grad student at univers of Pennsylvania really doing great work on this. But we've been trying to really understand like the all experience, you know, and and it's it's something that's so tied to religion, but it need not be.

I mean, these things are we can we can take that of those contexts and and those experiences are still meaningful to us, you know, even if they're not associated with specific duty deity the deity. So yeah, So anyway, I thought that was a really cool paper of religion is natural, and I really do agree that any complete theory of human nature does have to make sense to this, and and science has really the science of transcendent experiences

is an underdeveloped field. So well, though there are two things you could You could say religion is extremely important, but you could be skeptical as to whether the f institur exists transcendent experiences any in any interesting way you could tell people's beliefs in them, and so on. There's sort of the slippage there between. Certainly people have certain experiences and they call them transcendent experiences, but sometimes I think people go further and talk about them in terms

of being in some way actually transcendent. Oh that's interesting. Well that's the term that's used in this psychological literature. Now, yeah, transcend experience. But I see what you're saying. There are there are humans individuals who use that phrase making a claim about where the experience is coming from, like the source of it. I don't think the psychologists are making

that claim far enough. Yeah, okay, so sort of last question I have you take because this has been such a wide ranging I think we covered so much and I want you to to not be tired. I want you to leave on a great note. Last question. You know you wrote this book just Babies. What a great title. First of all, Oh my gosh, like just babies and just be I mean, like you think of all the I mean, how cool is that title? Yeah, I'm ready like it's gott I tell you a ninety nine percent

of people in the world didn't get it. Are you serious? And be? Actually? Amazon reviews saying the book says just babies, but there's parts of it that aren't about babies, so one star. Oh my god, anyway, I'm can you like that? I can't even It's so good. So the origins of good and Evil? Now we have touched on so much of this throughout this whole thing, but I thought it'd be kind of cool just a last topic. Just let's

go down from a developmental perspective. Are babies do they tend to be like having the precursors to a morality there like do you see what do you see at the youngest ages? That that kind of to answer this age old question, are we fundamentally good or evil? Yeah? I what's interesting is you ask two questions, So I think the question. I think you do find signs of morality early on. You have a sensitivity to good behavior and bad behavior. Pretty early in development. You get some

sensitivity to fairness and justice. You find suffering at the pain of others, You find some desire to help others. So and you know, I think we're social creatures, and the social and the moral tend to blend together early on. So you have ay, I don't know what word used earlier on, but a blueprint, a first draft, more skeleton, a skeleton exactly in the kid. As for whether we're good or evil, though, I think the answer is both. I think our morality compels us to do good things,

but also compels us to do bad things. I think we're bad in two ways. One is we're simply self interested, which often clashes with morality, and that's part of human nature. A baby, a baby crying to get fed doesn't really care that much about anybody else at the moment, nor should it. But also morality connects to punishment and cruelty, and you know, vendettas, and there's a case to be made that a powerful moral sense is responsible for an

extraordinary amount of evil in the world. M well, that's interesting. A lot of terrible, terrible things are done by people not who are sort of rational self maximizers, but rather we're caught up in a powerful moral vision. You know what.

A great point, and I think a really understudied topic in psychology is moral righteousness, that that particular kind of expression of one's morality, more righteousness, which seems to be something different than just just having a moral system or a code of code of ethics, you know, is the question is what do you do with the code of ethics? How do you feel about your code of ethics in relation to other code of d I mean, there's so

many interesting questions. There was this paper that was interesting about moral grandstanding, philosophers and then psychologists tried to operationalize it, and I think it got really close to this notion of more lightness. But I think it's still an underdeveloped field for sure. Yeah, well, yeah, there's but in some way people talk about moral grandstanding in terms of signaling,

and I had a perfectly reasonable idea. But look, suppose you think killing babies is wrong, you have a moral view, and then you walk down the street and there I am, and I'm killing babies. You're going to be compelled to act. So morality is quite aside from signaling, get you into other people's business. Oh sometimes that could be good. If you stop me from killing all those babies, You've done a great thing. Yeah, that's that. That's a very good point.

I mean, yeah, not all of it is virtue signaling. It's natural. I think there's an extreme cynicism that I don't ascribe to about human nature that everything is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're okay, we're on totally the same page about that. I I do, and and and that's a good place to end this on on the note that we have talked about all the naughty bits of human nature. But I think none of that negates the fact. There's also

there's like aspects of human nature that's good. And uh, I'm trying to choose my words very carefully because like it's it's because it's like nuanced, like if I say it's moral like and that's not quite what I'm saying. There's aspects of human nature that is cooperative. I don't know, is that fair? You know? And you know, and uh, and there's a lot of pleasure that we can have as a species and share shared shared pleasure. So absolutely, Paul, thank you so much for being on my podcast today.

It was such a fun as always to talk to you, such a delight. Thank you so much for having me on this was this was critic. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a reading and review of the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as we're

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