[Rerun] Todd Kashdan on Dancing with the Dark Side of Your Personality

human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just a quick note that today's episode is going to be a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it was about time to take a step back and think about how it can make this a better experience for you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives. Hey Toddcasted, thanks for coming on my show. You are

a professor, psychologist, public speaker, and family man. You recently wrote the book The Upside of Your Dark Side Why being your whole self not just your quote good self, drive, success and fulfillment. And you wrote it with doctor Robert biswas diner. And something else I noticed in your bio, Todd, is that you say, you say the things other people want to but are afraid to, And I think that segues nicely into kind of the main thesis of your book,

that we need to achieve wholeness. One of the problems in particularly in American culture, is we have this cheerfulness, happiness, optimism culture that prevents people from accessing information that they kind of know already that negative emotions are relatively useful. There are sides of our personality that are not socially desirable to talk about. We don't talk about our grandiose narcissm.

We don't talk about that there are parts of our personality that are similar to Dexter on the Showtime show. We don't talk about the fact that sometimes you like to be elfish. And we're not interested in talking to our colleagues, and we're not interested in collaborating, and we're very interested in spending some alone time focus on what we care about, what we're interested in, and we don't want to spend time with our kids that we want

to go out for a walk by ourselves. And these aspects of our personality when we recognize that they're useful at particular times in particular doses in our life. That's when we've become whole. Yeah, I like that. Something that I was trying to understand though, is that terminology used use the word dark side on the cover. You know, I don't really equate personally, just like in my own conceptuzation, I don't quate negative emotions necessarily with the dark side.

I think like positive emotions can be dark side as well. A psychopath could be really happy while they're killing someone, right like they can have right, well, they have positive emotions. So why do you why why A lot of examples like fear, and we're going to get into this stuff. But in your chapter you have on negative emotions, why are those things necessarily Why is that the dark side?

Do you know what I mean? Sure? Well, one is you're a psychologist, and you're a scientist, and you were trained with an evolutionary perspective on We were designed architecturally to have particular emotions that help us survive, reproduce, find friends, fend off rivals, find mates, and take care of our kids. That's why we have all these different this whole spectrum

of emotions. And so for you, I mean, you know, it's not the dark side that you take up what we take, which is a functional approach, which is, instead of asking the question how does something make me feel? How do I think something will make me feel? And that's the driving factor that makes me decide where I go on vacation, what house do I purchase, Who do I decide to be my friends? What do I do on a Friday night? What's the next MP three that I pick up from iTunes? Instead of asking how does

it make me feel? We ask what's the use of it? And so if I think about music that I want, restaurants I want to go to, trips that I want to take, and people that I want my social world, I think to myself, will these people be of value? Add because there's already a lot of things in my life and from that perspective, it's not the dark side. But when you ask people to report on a regular basis of what emotion they experience and were they valuable

to you? And I've done this with my college students and my Science of well Being class, regardless of the consequence, So regardless of feeling angry made them have an improved relationship with their romantic partner, regardless of being anxious, made them study harder and do well on the test. They regularly report that the negative emotional experiences were problematic regardless

of the consequence. And that's fascinating. You've got people that are saying the final outcome, the endgame worked out for me, but because it didn't feel good, I'm going to say this was the dysfunctional moment in my life. And that's what I mean by the dark side. That makes sense, and I could pletely agree. I come from this adaptation perspective from every psychology where I watch these traits without context are not necessarily good or bad, dark side or

light side. But your dark side it just does have that very much like Star Wars connotation, you know, like use the force of it and you are in a lot of ways. It's like the Star Wars the Science of Star Wars. It could have called your book maybe the Science of the dark Side. Well, we also want to be provocative because I think when we talk about anxiety and anger being useful, there are a number of people that just shake their head and say, yeah, yeah, yeah,

of course. Superficially, I know that if I'm going to fight with somebody and they're picking on my fifteen year old son, I'm going to step in with anger and say, listen, leave my son alone. And when it comes to anxiety, if it ends up being that someone's going to say, if you don't do this, I will vote against you for tenure for your job, well then yeah, anxiety is

useful because you should be worring. So people now their heads superficially, and what we're saying is superficial assessment of the value of negative emotions and parts of your personality that are uncomfortable. They don't feel you that's not satisfactory.

It's that these parts of your personality you specifically want to harness more in certain situations than happiness, than kindness and compassionate and things that are also incredibly beneficiable, but not pantasas and not things you want to be in, not states you want to be in at all times of your life. Right, But you would not say that.

You would certainly agree there are certain times in our life where we there are things that don't make us feel good about ourselves and really shouldn't Like that's a signal as well that we shouldn't continue down that line, like if we're fering, like if we're like intentionally like hurting someone or something and emotionally or something, and we just don't feel right about this anymore. So you have a very contextual approach to it, right, Oh, I think

you can come up with simpler examples than that. I mean, you know, if you think about envy and jealousy, sure they're helpful because there's signals of potentially your position with your romantic partner or friends of yours is unstable and you're likely to be rejected. But the more you communicate that with your friends and your partners, they get burnt out, they don't want to be around with you, and ends up toxifying the relationship. So it's very simple to come

up with examples where negative emotions are unhealthy. It's harder to come up with examples some positive emotions are unhealthy, but there aren't quite a number of them. And I think the beauty is the science is now available with decades of research of we know exactly when it's better to be in a sadder, an angry state than a cheerful and optimistic state. And that's the wonders of science. When you put all this stuff together into a complete package,

I love that. When did you I'd love to hear more about how you got to this perspective, Like when you start off in grad school, what was your dissertation title? Let's start there. What was your dissertation title? The role of social anxiety in group treatment for depression? How does it interfere with your engagement? And how does it interfere

with the effectiveness? Is that what the subdiscipline of psychology was that technically categorized in I got a PhD in clinical psychology, So I spent years while and then I realized that that is not my strength. There are people that are incredible and empathizing and taking people's perspective and soaking in people's pain, and I am not one of those people. Wow, So you start off in clinical I didn't even know that about you? And then you how did you get into should we say, like did you start?

Did you didn't transition to like positive psychology the beginning. So my initial work was in social anxiety disorder. And one of the things that's fun about treating people with social anxiety problems is everybody has a fear of being evaluated and rejected. These people, it's it's such a profound

part of their lives that they don't. They're not willing to raise their hand and ask questions and aren't really they're not willing to start conversations, and so they don't have they don't have close friends, they don't have close romantic relationships. They have impoverished sex lives. And when you treat these people, you shake their hand and say, listen, you no longer have social anxiety problems. And then what happened was many of them would ask me, so what

do I do now? I mean, what do I do with my day? My entire life has been and hacking computer programs in my basement and spending time by myself reading comic books or avoiding other people? Where do I begin with my life? And hearing that repeatedly in my clinical career made me think of I don't just want to take away people's pain, And now we've gotten to the point where I don't even not even sure that I want. I want to make sure that actually, in

some cases, pain is actually present. But I want to help people construct a life that's meaningful and it's surrounded by goals and people that are important to them that they want to spend time with, that are engaging and help their personal growth, and none of this has anything to do with the presence or absology present absence of what psychopathology psychopathology? Wow, so that does seem to beligned very well with with the ideas of positive psychology, right. Yeah.

I started grad school the year that Marty Seligman had his speech ship as the APA president in the age ninety eight. And so there's you know, this beautiful consilience of events that happened. That's so cool, that's so cool. That's a good history. I'm glad I asked you for the history of this. Thanks Terressing. Yeah. So what is the false knows of happiness? What does that mean? Well, we give a story, a historical account in the book, which I'm not going to reveal so people can learn

for themselves. Essentially, it's we think happiness is the endgame and the thing that should be the ultimate reason that we're alive and the thing we should be pursuing, and we should be making decisions based on does this thing make me happy or unhappy? And if you if you look at these panel studies of tens of thousands of people around the world, about eighty to ninety percent of people will say their fundamental objective in life is to

be happy. We're saying is in some way it's it's it's a fault else idle that we obey and we give too much credence to because if you think about the amount of effort that we put in and trying to be happy actually makes it more difficult to be happy. And we're not the first piece people to say this. We're actually probably the you know, the three thousandth to say this, which is you find happiness on the journey

to pursuing things you care about. But once you make it the fundamental objective, it becomes extremely difficult because your emotions set you astray when it becomes the thing you're trying to pursue. Your hormones affect your emotions, the time of day affects your emotions, the circadian rhythm effects your emotions,

Weather effects your emotions. And it's just like if you end up being a farmer, No farmer would ever say that I want to have a bomby seventy five degree cool day that's sunny outside every single day of the year. They wouldn't have crops. You need rain, you need storms, you need gusty winds to you know, for seeds to power and eat all over the fields that they have and in the same vein that a farmer is going to want of, you know, the varied seasons and varied weather.

We don't. We can't. We can't have a happiness in every moment of our lives, and we don't even want to. It's because when we're in these states of happiness, I mean, just to bring a little bit of the science into here. When you're in a happy state of mind, you tend to think to yourself, the status quo is great, there's no reason for me to double down on effort to pursue meaningful goals. And you feel as where I am now is where I want to be, and so you

pull away from effortful pursuits. And when you're mildly unhappy,

I'm not talking about the pits of despair. I'm not even talking about having bad posture in terms of you know, uh, unable to smile at someone else, but just being kind of like mildly despondent or just in a neutral state of mind, we tend to think of ourselves, what can I devote my time and energy to right now to put myself in a place where I'm close to things that I value most, and that state, that mindset, that effort for activity is less likely to occur when you're

in a happy state. That is a that's all fighting words for optimistic people. That's that. That's a funny juxta position, right, I said fighting words for people. But it is, I mean, that's so it's so interesting. It is a challenge. You're challenging a zecheist, right there. Really is. You know, you go to the self help section of the bookstore. You know, you see like, you know, think only happy thoughts, and then you look at like Facebook feeds and Twitter, and

you know, of inspirational speakers. It's all day long inspirational thing saying like smile, be happy. Do you think like we should? We should? We should mix it up at least twenty percent, and we'll get to the bias at twenty percent obviously in a second, with some inspirational quotes such as today, well, we know from studying social media that people are demotivated when they go on Facebook, particularly,

and when they go on Instagram would be second. Twitter is a little bit different because you're using mostly words, not images. But when people go on Facebook and Instagram, and they see that everyone's kids are always smiling and laughing, and everyone's marriages or are imbued with adolescent passion where they can't keep their hands off each other. They're still writing handwritten love letters even though it's been eighteen years.

And then you think about your own relationships and your own parenting practices, and you're demoralized and you feel as if, why am I the only person that has kids that talk back to me, that will slam the door on me and won't listen to me, and won't do their homework, and don't, you know, don't clean the dishes, and despite having two chores a week, won't take the garbage out on Tuesdays and Thursdays? You know, why am I the only person that do this? And there's a couple things

that happened here. Is one is this our culture has a particular bias such that all of us are trying to showcase just how amazing our lives are and show that we're intelligent, we're attractive in terms of we're open to people's new ideas, and we're agreeable, and we're kind and we're loving, and we're forgiving and we're grateful and then when you meet these yoga instructors, and you meet these gurus in their free time at the bar, and you find out they complain and gossip, and you know,

and have as many adversaries and problems with obnoxious people as the rest of us, they're just not talking about them. And so I completely agree with you. It would be a wonderful thing if people present themselves as they are. And in fact, the science is really clear that the quickest, most efficient way to bond with a group of strangers who never met before is to go through shared painful experiences together or share some of the difficulties in your lives,

as opposed to sharing your triumphs and successes. Jeeuz Todd, you know we should collaborate on a an antist inspirational campaign or something. What we do is we come up with like these slogans like be your authentic pissed off self today, you know what I mean? Like? Or do you know what I'm saying? Share the most obnoxious person that you met today, Share the story, and you would find more people talking with more enthusiasm and excitement than

any other conversation you have. You know, I was just watching my wife and I were watching Louis CS Suis cs C s Lewis. Is that his name, yeah? C. K Lewis, C k Lewis, And they had this very interesting moment in the episode last night where you had two single parents their kids are running around in a playdate, and they were on the couch and they were exhausted.

It was the end of the day. And then this woman asked, Louis, all right, so tell me the thought that is most terrifying to you that you have about your kids. You would never share it to anyone. And she shares the thought of, when my kid is boring, not when I'm upset, not when I'm pissed, but they're so their stories go nowhere. I just have this urge to want to bunch them in the face. And I would never do it. I would never harm them, but

I get this thought. And then Louise this looks at her says, damn, I would have never thought you would have went there, but and he went up, went up, sir. And it's the bonding that they have by sharing these uncomfortable thoughts that you're never supposed to talk about. Just not that you will hurt your kids, but you have

the thought of Oh my god, they're so annoying. I actually have the idea I could imagine addressing towards my kid, sharing that moment brings them closer together than anything else that they could be talking about at that time. So true. I know we've become Facebook friends recently and I try to and so therefore you're on my mind. So I

tag you sometimes and things. And I talked about how I made a call for people to complain to cafetch more on Facebook, citing your work, and dozens of people respond to that saying please, I want to hear people's problems. I want to feel I'm not the only one. It's so true. Getting back before, just before I forget about the false nose of happiness, that phrase, could you just

say like where it stems from? Sure, So there's there's a kind of a renaissance man Brock and what he was was he you know, he was like this is back in the you know, the eighteenth century when everyone was an astronomer, a philosopher, a botanist as zoologists those days. Yeah, I mean I wish I was in that time period

as well. And you know also he was in and you know, his sword fight and he lost his nose, and he ended up purchasing a bronze or a golden nose to put onto his face, thinking of, not only would this be a replacement for my lost nose, but I'd even be more attractive because I can show my conspicuous wealth because this beautiful gold nose that I have there. And if you read the accounts of other people in his life, which was nowaday, they find it weird and terrifying.

But they were incredibly confused of why you would waste gold to cover your nostrils on your face. And it's the false stones of happiness. It's the way we think of happiness, which is that if I cover my life with the pursuit of happiness and think about happiness, dream about happiness, and design my calendar in the beginning of the day of what are the five things I'm going to do so that it's going to bring happiness in

my life. And you are a full time working parent, or you are a full time stay at home mom or dad, the odds are that you're setting yourself up for incredible disappointment. As imagine in contrast, that you set up your day for what are the important things I want to accomplish, and what are the time periods today that I'm going to set time for myself to do whatever the heck I want that's going to satisfy me. So I'm not trying to pursue happiness. I'm creating space

for myself. I'm creating space for the things that are important to me. And then probably that second person on the way of getting through the entire day, they're going

to feel happier. They're going to connect more with other people, and they're going to be more energized, and they're not going to have this disappointment of you can't control your happiness because you can't control other people how they're going to how they're going to talk to you, how they're going to behave to you, and how they're going to drive next to you on the road. So I'm hearing all of this and I'm trying to think of how to reconcile this. Did do you still conceptualize yourself as

a positive psychologist? First of all, I never have I ever have. Okay, I'm just I'm a pragmatist. I'm thinking of how do you get through this world with the satisfactory level of engagement meeting pleasure and connecting with other people. So do you think there's no point for a positive psychology then as a field? Oh no, no, no, absolutely not.

I mean you're asking very specific questions. You know, if I was to ask, if if you were to ask me of you know, what proportion of your day should be focused on kindness and and what proportion of your conversation should be about positively charged themes, I would say the vast majority. You say eighty percent, right? Yeah, about

eighty percent right? And the best and what we're really aiming for when we talk about having negotiations, whether we're trying to buy a house or we're trying to talk to our romantic partner, of how do we divvy up the chores in a way where both people feel valued, understood and there's some level of gratitude. It's going to be difficult conversation, but in the end, the goal is for people to feel understood, it for intimacy to be there and eventually to be at a higher level of

positivity and connection. And so this doesn't discount the place for happiness and positive emotions and gratitude and awe and and just pure you know, physical sensations of pleasure of having a lollipop, eating an ice cream cone, and jumping into a pool that's seventy seven degrees. This is about what else are we missing? What are we prematurely discarding because we're trying to pursue a life of happiness. Thank

you for clarifying that. That was I think I was like really important to quarify because you can, you know, you can easily get misrepresented right by the media and people if you take sound bites away from this conversation

and people. You know, the most the greatest criticisms of our book are people that didn't read it of saying I know, I know, you know, you're saying that don't be grateful and don't don't have self compassion, and don't have loving feelings for your kids in your romantic partner. And it's nothing of the sort. We're just doing a value add in terms of what tools and weapons are in your arsenal that you have decided I will never

pull them out because they're uncomfortable. Yeah, so there's this idea of being uncomfortable or discomfort I thought that was really interesting. In your book, we talk about cultural differences. Uh, there so there's research showing that Asian people from Asian countries are able to tolerate this comfort better than Americans. Is that right? Yeah, there's there's even more, because you know, we often do all the comparisons between people of Asian

descent and Americans. I mean, if you look at Russia, and I've been there several times, and you talk about a business meeting between two strangers that never met, the optimistic cheerfulness of people in the United States is seen as superficial, childish and irreverent and inappropriate in Russia in business, in business meetings, and there's a somber said attitude that's actually seen as more respectful and appropriate to haveing a

conversation that involves financial and financial financial considerations, and you know, the exchange your property and cheerfulness will not get you anywhere in Russian culture in a business meeting compared to somber serious attitudes. I don't think I'd last in Russia more than two minutes. Neither did I. I just really came to that great, great realization. However, my whole ancestry is is Ukrainian, So is it the same in Ukraine

even though it's so close? Well, I mean, yeah, most of this research occurred where everything was kind of interconnected, so it's we don't really know about these I mean, this is the problem across culture research is the culture. The cultural changes are far outstripped the speed of biological changes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I also with these cultural differences. I see that when it because I give talks at different countries and I was in the I was in the Netherlands, and I was also in Denmark, and my jokes just like all my jokes just fell completely flat. It was like I felt like Rodney Dangerfield, like sweating, like with a handkerchief, like like you're you know, no good, you know sort of thing. And it's just so interesting to like see like, you know, you know, the differences in how much like

cheerfulness is appreciated. And my jokes tended to be like very you know, like well cheerful, teeky, I would say, I mean, I mean sarcasm, right, I mean sarcasm and playfulness is often seen as we both know, is scientists oftener. You're not supposed to be playful and funny. You're supposed to be very data driven and very serious and analyzing this information and not telling emotionally provocative stories. Where I say that the best scientists have much to learn from

science journalists. I completely agree with. I completely agree with that statement. But that's another element too, right, Like cultural differences in how you show what's going on inside you. So that's another element too. Absolutely, if you know, if you're in a negotiation with a really tough negotiator in Japan and you express your anger outwardly in terms of you know, your facial expression, squeezing your fists, or you know,

just spouting profanity, it won't get you anywhere. I mean again, You'll be seen as lacking humility, disrespectful, and showing you know, a lack of control is viewed as breach of contract. Where in America, if you transition from being content and having a fun conversation and all of a sudden you transition to realizing, you know, wait a second, I'm not comfortable with where you're going with this particular point in

this bargaining situation. That transition from happiness to anger is the most effective display of anger to get concessions in negotiation, but it will not work at all in a Japanese culture. On average, it will not work in Japanese culture. So have you been to Japan a lot? No, I just study these things for analogies and metaphors. I would well, we should go to Japan sometimes done. That would be the best thing to come from this podcast. Well, we

have to change our entire personalities. We will be serious and stuff are faced with a sushi at all times. Yes, I really like that idea depends on what kind of sushi though, I don't want like the you know, I don't know. There's certain I imagine there are certain kinds of sushi that I wouldn't be comfortable in embracing my dark eye on Oh, I take whatever the culture norm is. I mean, I'm ready for the chocolate scorpion and a stick when I get to Japan. I'm not I'm not

having a California role when I'm in Japan. Okay, I'll pass the scorpion role over to you. So this is interesting because you talk about how the pursuit of happiness itself can weaken you, and what should I be pursuing, like, for for if I want to be fulfilled love a fulfilled life, you're saying really embracing this eighty twenty rule, This wholeness. So you're you're sucially saying wholeness is the best is the best route to the most direct route

to a fulfilled life? Is that right? That's the direct route. But in terms of if you had asked me what is what are you in a replace the pursuit of happiness with right? So we know that the declaration of independence gets misunderstood. Where Jefferson wasn't talking about a pleasure in ratio to pain, you know he was, That's not

what he was talking about. He was talking about, you know, social social virtues, contributing to society and kind of you know this, you know, it's basically strength deployment was his was in his definition of happiness. If you're going to replace it, I would say, it's be present with an attitude of openness and curiosity and do what matters most to you. And so you have a combination of being mindfully aware, being curious and exploratory and experimenting with your life.

Because no one has the answers, no one knows what's

what works best for them. Everything I just described right now, in terms of the scientific research is on average for the people that were studied, which is a good starting point, But you have to figure out when you're talking to someone of higher status who's angry towards you, what emotional states puts you in the best state of mind such that you can handle yourself in an intelligent, you know, an intelligent and agile way in that conversation and not

be stomped on. And what emotional state works best when you're writing, and what emotional state works best when you're exercising, And the difference between when you're running or your weightlifting, or when you're having a difficult conversation with your friends trying to alter the relationship dynamics such that your opinion has given more value when you're having a conversation. You know.

To know the answers to these questions requires an openness to exploring and experimenting with different ways of behaving and taking note of what works and what doesn't, with what people and with what and what display of those emotions

is most effective. And so I'm suggesting is have a focus on what's meaningful to you, be open about different ways of doing it, and be present for what what the different sides of your personality, what arises, what emotions do for you, What emotions are interfere with your pursuits that you care about, and on the way of doing this work, you'll find happiness sometimes and sometimes you will. So there's so much meat there. I think something I could pull out from that that is an areative mutual

interest of ours? Is this under this this interesting paradox between mindfulness and mindlessness, and you know, I see I see all these studies looking at different types targeting different types of mindfulness meditation. There's this recent study that came out to found that mindfulness open it's sort of kind of open minded mindfulness, open minded awareness was more corelate with creative thinking than this very this very like concentrated

focused kind of mindfulness. So there's different kinds of mindfulness that exists. I completely agree about this open mindedness aspect and awareness and of the world. How how is it compatible to have that open minded awareness? Can you? Can you have that and be mindless at the same time? What is yes? Yeah? Yeah, I mean there are different

ways of thinking about mindless. And to to go in conserut with what you're talking about is while we're being mindful about a bunch of people collaborating together to think about what's the most creative way that we can present new research on imagination to a group of engineers so that they bring imagination to the forefront when they're thinking about what's the best way to create a facility that where people are efficient and effective at what they're doing.

So you don't typically think of engineers with being imaginative. So when you have all these creative ideas that are coming there, part of you has to be mindful and with a sense of openness to hearing what people are saying before you shoot things down. But then a part of you is also automatic, automatically making to touristics and shortcuts to figure out how do I synthesize all of this information that's occurring and it's coming at me at

one time. And so part of you is mindful of what people are offering, and part of you is also categorizing a tiny bit and making not let's avoid the word judgment and say you're discerning in terms of what information should I ask a question about next? Just like this podcast, I say five sentences and then you pick one nugget that we add on to for the next piece of the conversation. So you're mindfully attentive. You know,

none of this was scripted. We didn't talk about what we're going to talk We didn't talk about in advance what conversations we're going to have and what you're going to ask me. So you're you're mindful and yet at the same time, you're discerning of what do I want to build on as lego blocks to make this conversation move forward. And so I think, you know what, I think what's important is what works best in the real world when there's a lot of information, there's a lot

of people. We can't control how other people behave we can to some degree, be in control of how we react to other people. We've got all these emotional experiences. We have no idea what's going to come up in terms of our emotional experiences. We do have some degree of altering our emotions and to figure out what works best in the situation I'm in to get the best possible outcome, and often it can't be clear cut, as mindfulness is the state I'm going to enter into solely,

and most of our experiences are blended. Are blends. You know, we've been talking about negative emotions and positive emotions and happiness and other states of mind, but normally it's a blend. And you think about first dates roller coasters, being on a podcast, talking to twenty five hundred people in an audience, and and getting the floor when a bunch of executives are around the table from you you're talking about You're excited,

you're curious, and you're fearful all the same time. And that's the typical emotional experience when you're thinking about the real world as opposed to a scientific experiment. Have you done a talk recently for twenty five hundred executives? No,

but I've given it twenty one hundred people. And one of the things that happens when you get in front of twenty one hundred people and you know this is as good or better than I do, is if you don't experience anxiety and concern about what they think about you, it means you're not attending to what is unique about this audience that I think is going to be important to them. It's different from any of the audience that

I've ever speke spoken to before. I know, I gave a talk recently and I I don't know it came over me. I got so nervous, like right before I was I was like, I'm gonna have I'm gonna I

had to pee again. I had to pe again. I didn't have to pee at all, and I ran and I missed the introduced they introduced me, and you know, I came back in and the whole room was like thousands of people silent, you know, like I guess they've been waiting a couple of seconds for me to like come on, and I just, you know, I just played it off as like when I went up there, I was like, that was most dramatic entrance I've ever had, and they were like, oh, you know, like I needed

to say something to kind of relieve the tension. But it ended up being I think one of my best talks. And so I just don't tell so well with everything you're talking about. You know, it's almost become a rule for me that, like the more discomfort I feel or the things I have to overcome, it's almost like a rule now that like, the better the outcome is gonna be. It's so it's a fossible, freaking fascinating Ewicks and Scott on the same way. So, I mean, Robert and I

have been traveling around the world together. We just got back from Dubai and we got paid and you know a good chunk of money, and so we were really nervous to make sure that we deliver the best workshop

of our lives. And what was I think what was different from this workshop than it was a five day one at the Ritz Carlton in Dubai was almost every day, you know, we actually mentioned them as like, this was one hundred and seventy people chosen by Standard Charter Bank to be who are going to be the next coos and CFOs and CEOs CEOs of different branches around the world in the next ten years. And so these were the young guns. Wow, and it was it was an

honor and also nerve wrecking. And I can't tell you how many times we acknowledged to this group of one hundred and seventy people of you know, I'm a little bit uncomfortable because you guys are so intelligent and you're so much further in your career than we have ever been in ours that that this is even useful information. With that said, dot dot dot, you know, we would go into things and I think acknowledging that vulnerability brought

down people's defenses and let them become more open. The conversations were so much more potent that I've ever had in a workshop before, and like you said, all that nervousness, I think translated into being so fully present. What do these people need right now? And I thought very hard about this in the moment as every question they asked, I thought of like, Okay, how do I need to ulter my material to match exactly what they appear to

be needing right now? And what we because what we realized was we had a lot of things planned and then we realized that the ethics, ethics of being a businessman and a business woman were important. This is not our Arab expertise, but we realized that they had a gap there and so we dived into that and it wasn't our Arab expertise, and we explain why based on based on things that people were saying in terms of how they related to each other, the competitive nature, their

willingness to skirt regulatory rules. And so it became a big full from of the workshop. And I think that anxiety, that fear, that that worry about the unknown, that you know, Harnessing that anxiety as opposed to avoiding it is the difference between having an effective performance and connecting with these people and not and I would actually put a good chunk of my money. Is that's what made this work awesome? Well,

that's a great Another illustration of this. While Dubai must have been just amazing, I had I had such such unbelievable insomnia while I was there. I just that I rarely got to barely got to experience it. I'm going to have insomnia now thinking about your experience there. That's incredible. Did you did you gain some weight? Did you like Sultan's feasts and things? We had a Bedwin dinner that I'm pretty sure that it was eight thousand calories that

meal and it was worth seventy of them. That sounds awesome. So I want to go back to a little bit earlier that this idea of mindless creativity that we talk that you talk about in your book, is it. I don't so. I personally, I don't think of it as mindful. Is everything that you're paying attention to outside outside of your these two eyes and mindless as all my inner rich day dreams. I consider it more of like inner outer versus mindful mindless, Like I can be mindful of

my inner day dreams and that's not mindless. Agreed. Yeah, that's nice. That's a nice framework. You can have it. You can be focused your attention internal or external, and with that you could be mindful or mindless. I think that's a great framework exactly, Thank you. And you know, executive functioning, which is really hot right now. Everyone's like because mindfulness meditation trains executive functions like your cognitive attention

of flexibility. But I think what doesn't get appreciated as much is that we can use those attentional control mechanisms just as much to ignore outside distractions as we can to ignore our mind wandering. So cognitive scientists focus so much on using executive functions to ignore your inner stream because they really want you to pay attention to their boring techology experiment, right, But you can in the real world.

You can use those same functions just as much to ignore all the distractions from all the people around you, like Twitter or Facebook, you know, like maybe may maybe emails, you know, maybe I want this from you, I want this from you. Right, you can use their executive functions just as much to ignore all that so you can dip into your imagination. So I think we're probably both

on agreement on that, you know. I mean, let me give you a concrete example that happened in my class yesterday that fits to this conversation where we were talking about curiosity and I was saying that, you know, one of the things of why I let people use their smartphones and laptops in my class is it's the onus is on me as the instructor, and the onnest is

on me. If I'm a lecturer or giving a workshop, if I can't trigger your interest, if I can't sustain your attention to what I'm talking about, either one I'm not interesting and the contest content delivery is not interesting, or two you need time to consolidate information or synthesize the information. And your time away from me and away from whatever I'm talking about is probably more valuable than me stuffing more meat and vegetables and food and information

and data into your head. Is if you could take one idea and build on it in a single class or a one hour workshop or a two hour workshop. I mean, that's more valuable. Then you can reiterate, you know, exactly what I said, and give a five page of bullets of what the content was so we need to

let people wander. And I would say for you know, I know scientists are afraid to go prescriptive, but I'll go here when it comes to the educational system, I know this is your cup of tea as opposed to me, Which is when you think about kids who are seven to eleven years old and their prefunct to cortex has

rearely developed. The idea of them spending six hours sitting passively in the classroom absorbing information from one content area to the next every forty five minutes, and not allowing them to talk to the person next to them, and not allowing them to doodle on a piece of paper, and actually calling them out and shaming them in front of the room is not understanding what you've written about

mind wandering. And the few researchers that have written about the benefits of mind wandering, they need time away from that constant collection of information to make sense of it and make connections to it. And when you don't allow them to do it, it doesn't stick. It's not sticky, and it won't last beyond the period why you're feeding them information. And that's not the goal of any educator. No educator says, I want you to retain information for

forty five minutes. But that's what's the consequence of not allowing them for their minds to wander for a little bit. So true, and especially with certain special populations like kids that get the label ADHD who have their hyper mind wanderers, you know, hyper over active imaginations. It's it's particularly hard.

There's individual differences, right. A lot of the kids that we labels gifted, A lot of those kids have a great gift of executive attention, of being able to really you know, learn quickly and efficiently in the classroom environment. And then you know, we praise them. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't praise them. I'm not saying take away all their resources. I'm not trying to be cruel, but I'm saying we also need to appreciate there's other

forms of giftness that can come from that inattention as well. Right, Yeah, No, I mean the question is is the question is for every single culture, and that includes you know, your research laboratory, in my classroom, what do you do to cultivate creativity and not just the ability to intellectually regurgitate information that was given to you and if you can't give a good answer of one to three to one, two or three things that you do, it's time to stop teaching

and take a little a sabbatical and think about why are you not value creativity? No, I think I'm completely on board with with what you're saying. I think we could shift gears like like really like like sharp turn two to what I think is the actual dark side. I see, I don't in your book. I didn't up to chapter six, I didn't view any of that as the dark side. But as you know, that's just like maybe my background stuff. But chapter six I think, really,

you know, that's like that really is like the dark side. Right, we're talking about narcissism. We talk about the dark Triad, narcissism, psychopathy, Macavelianism. Absolutely, this is another mutual interest of ours is the dark Triad. This this it is so interesting and there's so much you know, you look at do do you read a paid you know, the journal personality and every iget they

love they love the Dark Triad. They're like, I feel like every EPISODEY are obsessed with, Like I think the editors have dark bry tattoos on their ankle, so you can't see it because they're usually wearing long pants or complete So I'm not imagining this, right. I've never actually I've never actually openly discussed this with any of my colleagues. But it's I'm almost like, come on, give me a break, Like, do you guys study anything else other than like narcissism?

Like this is crazy. I know there was a special issue that's part of it, but even outside the special issue, it's like yet another hexico correlation with dark triad. Here's the ten Texaco replication in China with a dark triad. It's like, okay, okay, we get it, but it's still it's a very important topic. And it's so the dark triad could maybe explain from my audience a little bit though, what what is the dark triad? How is that different

from clinical levels of these traits? Sure, so there's the triad. There's there's three qualities that we're talking about. One is narcissism, and they're you know, there's actually two sized narcisism, and when we talk about the benefits of narcissm, we're actually talking about only one of these types. So one you can think of as the striving for supremacy. And this is about having a grandiose vision. This is the self assuredness. This is the sense of entitlement. This is the charismatic

aspect of narcissism. There's another side narcissism, which is about really squelching rivals. It's a it's an obsession with rivalry, the obsession with not intercompetitiveness, but really competing with other people. It would be you know, me talking to you and this conversation is the goal is for me to sound more intelligent, more fluid, more open. Work thousands of people in Dubai. You've only been to the Netherlands. So they're two side narcissism. And we tend to use that term

loosely about other people. And there is a clinical side where we call narcissistic personality disorder, which is the sense of grandiosity, the sense of entitlement. The the exploitiveness of other people is one of the fundamental psycho psychopathological, the pathological features of narcissistic personality disorder, and really the tendency to see people as objects that get in your way or there to be manipulated pawns for you to move around as opposed to people that you connect with, So

there's often very shallow relationship ships. And there's got to be functional impairment for to have narcissic personality disorder. So that's one of the trial one piece of the tribe. The second one is probably the simplest one is Machiavelianism, which is really about selfishness and manipulativeness. And and I know that both of us are fans of Robert Green

and his forty eight Laws of Power. And he spends a lot of time talking about the when it's beneficial and when it's not beneficial, to think about the importance of manipulating other people. And can I interject for Oh sure. In my interview I did with him for my podcast, he had never heard of the Dark Triad. Oh that's amazing. And I said, I said, you are the god of Macavlien, you know, in terms of what you study. And I'm not. He's not. I don't know if he's Macamlian. But and

he's like, he's like, what's that? What do you say? Yeah? His writings are his writings are probably some of the best ever written on exploitation, manipulativeness e ever I would agree all your reviewers should read, should read the forty eight Laws of Power. And actually it's interesting. It has some really bad ratings on Amazon because people are very

uncomfortable with this topic. And so let me, well, let me, let me, let me go through the dark Triad and then I'll we can dive into why I think that's problematic. So it's about you know, selfishness, manipultiveness, and exploiting, exploit exploitiveness. That's Matchivellianism. And the third one which gets you know showtime, HBO and foreign documentaries love to focus on, is psychopathy.

And this is really you know, you've got some pieces of one part, which is the healthy part that we talk about, and we have Teddy Roosevelt as really the exemplar of healthy psychopathy is fearless dominance, which is the willingness to do things that really challenge other people, really upset other people and very controversial and not have a strong emotional reaction to this, or actually have almost no

emotional reactions. So no fear, no guild, no embarrassment, none of these moral emotions that arise when we potentially upset and bother other people, where you're able to you know, engage in leadership behaviors and not really worry what other people think. So that's part of the fearless dominance side.

But there are other sides where there's the delinquency, the unwillingness to follow social rules, the unwillingness to conform with social mores, and just you know, the inability to form close relationships with other people, and the inability to value the emotions of other people. So all of that together

and a few other pieces is psychopathy. And when we think of the exemplar in television might be dexter On, who's the serial killer on Showtime, where he essentially has no emotional reaction to killing other people, but he created specific rules with his father about who he would kill as a serial killer, and he works for the Miami Metro Police Department and will only kill people that have actually harmed multiple people over the course of their lives

in the criminal justice system and have all been taking all none of them have received a sense of retribution because there was some sort of you know, technicality in the criminal justice system where they were let go free. And so essentially he's a vigilante serial killer. And you're saying that we should all be that way? No, No, that's not what you're saying. What are you saying? What are you saying about the dark triad? Why should what

aspects of it should we embrace? And what shouldn't we embrace? Good? So that's so, that's the three psychopathy, narcissism, macuvilianism. And there are pieces of every one of those personality dimensions that are useful to us in particular situations. And I should I should tell you that Robert and I writing this chapter was challenging because we interviewed people in the military,

Navy seals, Army rangers. We interviewed CEOs, We interviewed people in Silicon Valley that were big players in the tech startups that are now, you know, part of our everyday world. We interview people in government and politics, journalists, writers, scientists, everybody had a story. Nobody wanted to go on record

that they engage in these behaviors. And I think that speaks to, you know, the unwillingness to touch the dark side, the unwillingness to recognize the tools that are at our disposal that are often useful to help us in situations that because they're socially inappropriate based on our culture because

they're uncomfortable. We don't go there. And this, this topic will not go over well with a large number of people, But let me give some Let me give some everyday examples to kind of make you realize that we all engage in the dark, dark tried behaviors. And what I'm what I am saying is this is not about becoming a narcissist. This is not about becoming a psychopath. It's not about becoming Machiavelli. This is about behavior, taking some

of these behaviors and using them when warranted. And so if you think about, you know, chores around the household, I mean, some of us went to college and some

of us have just lived with multiple roommates. In terms of one of the biggest problems that people have living with other people is who cleans the dishes, Who's going to you know, snake toilet when it overflows, and you know who's going to you know, who's going to clean the floor that you know for all the all the people that have left their sneakers on over the years, and often you know, what we do is we engage in these chores when we know our other roommates are

going to be watching us. We don't do it at three o'clock in the morning when everyone's sleeping. We don't do what everyone's outside of the house. We often do it when they're there, so they know that we're contributing to the household. We're doing our share, and it's important

to us. And we often just start the dishwasher or the laundry machine when our spouse walks, you know, as we know that they're walking down the stairs or you know, we'll make sure that someone you know, if if they're raising a kid with somebody else, we'll make sure that they'll see it. At some point. They'll see us changing the diapers, carrying it to the garbage, knowing that we're

willing to get our hands dirty. We do as opposed to all the things that are unappreciated, because no one ever gets to see what people contribute, and the same thing happens at work. Is one of the I've read an article about the five things that graduate students should know about how to be a superstar and to have your mentor love you, and one of these five factors was visibility. Your mentor should see should see you when

you're doing hard work. So as wonderful it is that we can do because of technological advances and Google Hangout and Skype, you can work from anywhere. It's good to be physically present so people can see all the sweat equity that you put into a project. And there's something about this in any single, any workplace that you should be seen doing the hard work. And part of that is exploitive and manipulative. Cool. So I think we can

move on. I mean, there's so much we could talk about, all this stuff, and like the link between the dark tried and creativity, for instance, right, I mean, there's there's some of the greatest genius. The people that we confer the label genius on were not the nicest people in the world, were they some of them? Yes. So at one end you have Steve Jobs, who was clearly I mean plenty of dark Triad characteristics and plenty even more

of dark Triad behaviors. And then on the other end you've got the Franz Kopcas of the world, who were incredibly desponded, not necessarily clinically depressed, but just a despondent said temperament. I mean, this is just like a just a not the guy you'd want to go out to a dance club with, you know, this was this was he took himself very seriously and was very sad and tragic about the world, about his life and about his future. And and because of that we got the metamorphosis and

we've got all these amazing stories the Hunger artists. Right, So there's multiple paths to success. You certainly don't have to be embrace or dark tribe, but maybe maybe at certain times maybe you do have to embrace certain aspects like I don't care that much what about this person thinks to me, or you know, I'm going to like be impulsive in this instance, which is associated with psychopathy. Right, So like being a psychopath doesn't mean that you're a

serio killer. We're focusing on behaviors, not changing your personality. I mean, even if Franz Kafka, who is an incredibly distressed, depressed, despondent guy, his final wishes with his best friend Max was you were to burn all my manuscripts. I don't

want them published if I die before you. And this and what looking looking at his I mean because I've actually you know, studied him from some time is if you look at his letters and if you look at his autobiography, you can see this is strategic, knowing that the greatest way to become a legacy and make a lasting impact on society is have a very profound, controversial death.

And you think of you know, all these amazing musicians that died at twenty eight with you know, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, and you know, Franz Kopka knew that his friend Max would not burn those manuscripts, and this story would add a little bit more to his legacy. And you know, you have this here I am talking you know, you know, decades later, I'm still talking about

you know what he was thinking about. A lot of these and a lot of these musicians are are very manipulative, you know, like they're they're media manipulators there, you know, that's what they that's that's why, that's that's how they

get so well known. And scientists do this as well, of course, yeah, of course, I mean you know how you know, you put graphs in there, because what we know is if you put a graphical representation of your research, people are more likely to believe that it's true, it's credible.

And it's simple to pass on to another person. And it's often it's it's an exploitation of a small piece of the study and all the caveats are not in that graph, and you know this is this is done is it's a sense of a little bit of Mackie villains, and that's involved in There's a little bit of psychopicy that's involved in there. Sometimes that's why I put lots of stories in my career. The journal articles not joking.

Every time I try to put a story, they like they're like reject autoback, reject of my my peer of ther journal article I've had. I've had the same thing every time I try to make it an interesting interesting Yeah, this is not what's noting. It has to be in a figure form. But if it's in a any form that evokes any sort of emotions in the reader, like the reviewer like they're uncomfortable with the feeling emotions, so they reject it, it cannot be entertaining. It can't be.

Let's let's finish on talking about how we can including the listeners. But also I want to know too, how can we embrace the whole anchilada. You said there's benefits of defensive pessimism is that part of the whole enchilada, no question. I mean, I mean, you know, you think about the amazing work that Martin Slovan is done with learned optimism, and this does not discount any of that.

It's saying that you need to figure out for yourself and the people around you, who who is not, by nature someone that tends to expect the worst but hope for the best. And it's not because they have a lifelong history of negative events and they expect negative events to happen in the future. So it's not pessimism built

on a life history of failures and mistakes. It's pessimism built on brace themselves so they don't get disappointed, and motivating themselves through anxiety to worry about all the possible things that can go wrong, such that I can choose the most opportune path as I work towards my goals. These are not people that are paralyzed by fear. These are not people that are that are quiet. These are people that are worry These are people that tend to ruminate.

And these are people that harness anxiety strategically because it mobilized the energy and when you try to give them relaxation therapy or when you use optimism training and try to make them think more cheerfully and positively, they end up being substantially less productive, less efficient, and less creative. We need to make room for people that harnessing anxiety and worry is exactly the route that they take to becoming creative and productive. Wow. Yeah, mindfulness meditation makes me

very anxious. You know, I don't know if I'm maybe I fall in this category. I'm just hearing this for the first time. Wow. I like to think of myself as very optimistic, but I get very nervous, like whenever I'm being like forced to do anything actually anything, you know. But you have like this playful, Northeast cheerful personality, which, yeah, which is just endearing in general. Thanks, I really appreciate it.

So do you want to end with any with lasting advice for people who do want to embrace the whole anchilada and they don't want to go to the local taco bell to do it. Well, let me let me say two things. One is, let me make an important note, and then they offer just kind of a tiny bit of suggestion, is that you know the reason we wrote this book is not is not to discount any of the research on strengths, pause, emotions, all the healthy processes

that make healthy relationships and often them. It's about capitalizing on people's triumphs and being grateful for what people contribute and benefit to our lives. And that there are no lone geniuses. It's just a myth. I mean, there are a few, but the grand story is collaboration and strong

connections is what leads to creativity. And what we're saying is if we want people, if we want people to change the world, and we want to be leaders that help people be productive and creative and innovative, we need to see people as they are, not as we hope they are or that we would desire people to be.

And people by definition based on an evolutionary history of humans adapting over tens of thousand years, we have this great arsenal of flexible strategies at our disposal that range from kindness, compassion and loving behavior and positive emotions and experiences of the pleasurable variety too, anger, anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, social anxiety discussed, narcissism, selfishness, and all of these things together are understanding how what motivates a human to do

what they do, what motivates us to be able to function well in an uncertain, unpredictable world, requires us to pay homage to the things that are comfortable and positive and the things that are uncomfortable and negative. And it's just instead of trying to put things in arbitrary bins a positive or negative, we should really be thinking about what's helpful and useful for this situation and what's not helpful or useful in this situation. And so it's not

about choosing between happiness and the dark side. It's about making room for both of them and having more tools available so you can match the situation at hand. Thanks Toyt. I think that's a really timely message, and I hope a lot of people do read your book because it really is an excellent book. Thanks for chatting with me. Yeah, this is great. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. 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 our rating and review of the podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next season for more on the mind, brain, behavior and creativity.