If you ask a disagreeable person what he wants, say, 00:00:07

or she wants, they'll tell you right away. They know. It's like "This is what I want 00:00:10

and this is how I'm gonna get it." 00:00:13

But agreeable people, specially if they're really agreeable, are so agreeable, 00:00:15

that they often don't even know what they want. 00:00:19

Cause they're so accustomed to living for other people, and to finding out 00:00:21

what other people want, and to trying to make them comfortable, and so forth, that is harder 00:00:25

for them to find a sense of their own desires as they move through life. 00:00:28

And that's not- 00:00:33

Look, there's situations where that's advantageous, 00:00:34

but it's certainly not advantageous if you're going to try to 00:00:37

forge yourself a career. 00:00:40

That just doesn't work at all. 00:00:43

And so, even though, 00:00:45

on average men and women don't- this- don't- 00:00:46

aren't that much different in terms of their levels of agreeableness by the group, 00:00:50

if you go out and you look at the extremes, they are very different. 00:00:53

So all of the most agreeable people are women, and all of the most 00:00:55

disagreeable people are men. 00:00:59

And the thing is the extremes 00:01:00

are often what matter, rather than what's in the middle. 00:01:02

And so one of the ways that's reflected in society, by the way, is 00:01:05

there's way more men in prisson 00:01:08

and the best personality predictor of being imprissoned 00:01:10

is to be low in agreeableness. It makes you callous. 00:01:13

Now you may think "Well, what's the opposite of compassion and politeness?" 00:01:17

And the answer to that is, 00:01:20

I think it's best sort of conceptualized as a- 00:01:22

as a trading game. 00:01:25

So let's say that 00:01:27

we're going to play repeated trading games. And if you're 00:01:28

very agreeable, then you're gonna bargain 00:01:32

harder on my behalf, than you're gonna bargain on your own behalf. 00:01:35

Whereas if you're disagreable, you're gonna do the reverse. You're gonna think 00:01:38

"I'm in this trading game for me, and you're gonna take care 00:01:41

of your own interest." Where an agreeable person is gonna say "No, no. 00:01:44

At best, this is- 00:01:47

At worst this has to be 50/50, but I'd like to help you every way I can." 00:01:49

One of the things you have to be carefull of if you're agreeable, 00:01:53

is not to be exploited. 00:01:56

Because you'll line up to be exploited. 00:01:57

And I think the reason for that is because 00:02:00

you're wired to be exploited by infants. 00:02:01

And so, that just doesn't work too well in the actual world. 00:02:05

And one of the things, one of the things that happens very often in psychotherapy 00:02:08

you know, people come to psychotherapy for multiple reasons, 00:02:11

but one of them is they often come because they're too agreeable. 00:02:14

And so what they get is so called 'Assertiveness Training'. 00:02:17

Although it's not exactly assertiveness that's being trained. 00:02:20

What it is is the ability to learn how to negotiate on your own behalf. 00:02:23

And one of the things I tell agreeable people, specially if they´re conscientious, is 00:02:27

Say what you think, tell the truth about what you think. 00:02:31

There's gonna be things you think that you think are nasty and harsh. 00:02:34

And they probably are nasty and harsh, but they're also probably true. 00:02:38

And you need to bring those up to the forefront and deliver the message. 00:02:42

And it's not straight-forward at all because agreeable people 00:02:45

do not like conflict. Not at all. 00:02:48

They smooth the water. 00:02:51

You know when you can see, you can see why that is, 00:02:53

in accordance with a hypothesis that I've been putting forward. 00:02:56

You don't want conflict around infants. 00:02:58

It's too damn dangerous. You don't want fights to break out. 00:03:01

You don't want anything to disturb the relative peace. 00:03:03

You know, and if you're also more prone to being hurt, physically, and perhaps emotionally, 00:03:07

you're also maybe loath to engage in the kind of high intensity conflict, that would solve problems 00:03:12

in the short term, because a lot of conflict- 00:03:17

It takes a lot of conflict to solve problems in the short term. 00:03:20

And, you know, if that can spirale up 00:03:23

to where is dangerous, which it can if it gets uncontrolled, it may be safer 00:03:25

in the short term to keep the water smooth, and to not 00:03:29

dive into those situations where conflict emerges. 00:03:33

The problem with that is it's not a very good medium-to-long-term strategy, right? 00:03:35

'Cause there's a lot of times there are things you have to talk about. 00:03:39

Because they're not gonna go away. 00:03:42

And the advantage to having a well-socialized disagreeable person is that 00:03:45

they really don't let much get in their way. 00:03:48

So if you can get a kid who's disagreeable socialized, 00:03:51

that person can be quite, quite a creature, you know? Because they're very- 00:03:54

They're very forward-moving in their nature and very difficult to stop. 00:03:58

But if you don't get them successfully 00:04:02

domesticated, tamed, roughly speaking, 00:04:04

by the time they're four, their parents reject them. 00:04:07

And that's a big problem because 00:04:12

your job as a parent is to make your child socially desirable by the age of four. 00:04:14

You've gotta- You wanna burn that into your brain 00:04:19

because people don't know that. That's your job. 00:04:22

And here's, here's why, it's easy, if you think about it carefully. 00:04:25

So imagine you've got a three-year-old child 00:04:28

so sort of half way through that initial period of socialization. 00:04:32

And you take that child out in public. 00:04:35

Ok, what do you want for the child? 00:04:37

Who cares about you? What do you want for the child? 00:04:40

You want the child to be able to interact with other children 00:04:43

and adults, so that the children are welcoming and smile and want to play with him or her 00:04:46

and so the adults are happy to see the child and treat him or her properly. 00:04:52

And if your child's a horrible little monster because you're afraid of disciplining them, 00:04:56

or you don't know how to do that properly, 00:05:00

then what they're gonna do? 00:05:02

They're going to experience nothing but rejection from other children, 00:05:03

and false smiles from other parents and adults. 00:05:07

And that's so then you're throwing the child out into a world where 00:05:10

every single face that they see, 00:05:13

is either hostile or lying. 00:05:15

And that's not something that's going to be particularly conducive 00:05:17

to the mental health or the well-being of your child. 00:05:20

If your child can learn a couple of simple rules of behavior 00:05:23

like "Don't interrupt adults when they're talking too much" 00:05:26

and "Pay attention" and "Try not to hit the other kids over the head with a truck any more 00:05:29

than it's absolutely necessary" 00:05:32

then- and, you know, and "Share" and "Play properly". 00:05:34

Then, when they meet other kids, the kids are gonna try out a few little play routines on them 00:05:37

and that's gonna go well and then they're gonna go off and socialize each other for the rest of their lives. 00:05:41

Because that's what happens. 00:05:46

It's that from four years old onwards. 00:05:47

The primary socialization with children takes place among other children. 00:05:49

And so if the kids don´t get in on that early, they don't move into that 00:05:54

developmental spiral upwards, and they're left behind. 00:05:58

And you can imagine how terrible that is, because 00:06:01

a four-year-old would not play with another four-year-old who's two. 00:06:03

But a five-year-old certainly will not play with a five-year-old who's two, right? 00:06:08

'Cause the gap is just starting to get unbelievably large. 00:06:12

And so the kids start out behind 00:06:15

and then the peers leave them behind, 00:06:18

and then those kids are alienated and outside the peer group for the rest of their life. 00:06:19

Those are the ones that grow up to be long-term anti-social, right. 00:06:24

They're already aggressive. It doesn't deep down. 00:06:27

Now, what happens to normal boys, roughly speaking? 00:06:31

Imagine that aggressive two-year-old types get socialized, 00:06:34

so their level of aggression goes down. 00:06:38

And then they hit puberty and testosterone kicks in and bang! 00:06:40

Levels of aggression go back up. 00:06:43

And so that's why males are criminals between the ages, roughly, of 16 and about 25. 00:06:45

So, when it matches the creativity curve, by the way, it's so cool. 00:06:50

If you look at the spike of creativity among men 16 to 25, and it starts to go down. 00:06:53

Criminality matches that absolutely perfectly. 00:06:59

That's quite cool. 00:07:01

So and part of- So, 00:07:03

the testosterone levels raise the average level of aggression among men. 00:07:05

It's more dominance than aggression, actually 00:07:09

and testosterone is, by no means, all bad. 00:07:11

And then starts to decrease about age 25 or 26, which is usually when men 00:07:13

stop staying up late at night, 00:07:17

stop drinking as much, 00:07:20

develop a full-time career, and take on 00:07:22

burdens and responsibilities and opportunities 00:07:25

that are associated with a long-term partner and family. 00:07:26

And so- 00:07:29

Well, so that's the development of 00:07:31

what I would call predatory aggression. 00:07:35

Because I also think that the agreeableness distribution 00:07:38

is probably something like predatory aggression 00:07:41

versus maternal sympathy. It's something like that. 00:07:44

So, if you look at other mammals, that are predators, 00:07:48

'cause we're predators, as well as prey animals. 00:07:51

If you look at other animals like bears, 00:07:53

the male bear has absolutely nothing to do with the raising of the infants. 00:07:56

In fact, the female bears would keep the male the hell away 00:07:59

because he's likely to kill the infants and maybe even to eat them. 00:08:02

So there's no maternality at all 00:08:05

in solitary male 00:08:08

mammalian predators. 00:08:11

It's really useful to investigate the viewpoints 00:08:13

of people who have opposing views to yours. 00:08:15

Because they'll tell you things- Not only will they tell you things you don't know, 00:08:18

they'll also tell you how to see the world in ways that you don't see it. 00:08:22

And they'll also have skills that you don't have, that you could develop. 00:08:26

So, for example, if you're an introverted person, it's very useful 00:08:30

to watch an extroverted person, because the extroverted person 00:08:33

has ways of being in the social world that aren't natural to you, 00:08:36

that you can use as- to improve your tool kit. 00:08:39

And if you're disagreeable, one of the best things to do with disagreeable people, 00:08:41

specially if that's alienating them from other people, for example, because it can, you know? 00:08:45

People treat you like you're a selfish, arrogant, son of a- maybe that's because you are. 00:08:50

It's like- Ok, so what do you do about that? 00:08:54

One of the most 00:08:55

promising 00:08:59

treatments -let's say for that-, is get the person to do something for someone else once a day, 00:09:01

just as a practice, and learn how to do it. 00:09:05

Maybe you can wake the circuit up, you know? 00:09:07

If you think that it's lying dormant in you, which is probably right. 00:09:09

You know, I think we have a very wide range of propensities within us. 00:09:12

Some are switched on: 00:09:16

genetic propensities. 00:09:18

Some are switched on. But I think that if you put yourself in the right situation 00:09:19

or walk yourself through the right exercises, you can switch some of these other things on as well. 00:09:22

But it takes work, and dedication and discipline, too. 00:09:27

I would say generally speaking, if you want to adapt yourself properly to life, 00:09:30

you should find a niche in the environment that corresponds with your temperament, right. 00:09:33

You shouldn't work at cross-purposes to your temperament, 00:09:37

because it's just too damn difficult. 00:09:40

But having done that, then you should work on 00:09:42

developing the skills and viewpoints 00:09:45

that exist in the space opposite to your personality. 00:09:48

Because that's where you're fundamentally underdeveloped. 00:09:51

Now, well, I think you can extend out your temperamental capability 00:09:54

across a wider range. 00:09:57

And to me that's roughly equivalent as bringing a richer tool kit to each situation. 00:09:59

You know, so if you're hyper-extroverted, you should probably learn to shut up in parties now and then 00:10:04

and listen just to see what's going on, to see if you can manage it, you know? 00:10:08

And if you're introverted, well, 00:10:12

then you should learn how to speak in public, and to learn 00:10:13

how to go to parties without hiding in the corner 00:10:16

and saying nothing to anyone, you know? 00:10:18

And if you're agreeable, then you need to learn how to be disagreeable, so people can't push you around. 00:10:20

And if you're disagreeable, you need to learn how to be agreeable, so you're not an evil son of a b- 00:10:25

So, and the same thing applies even in the conscientious domain 00:10:30

It's like if you're too conscientious 00:10:33

you need to learn to relax and let go a little bit. 00:10:35

And if you're unconscientious it's time like 00:10:39

get out the Google Calendar, man, and start scheduling your day, right? 00:10:42

And beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick until you're disciplined enough 00:10:46

so that you can actually stick to something for some length of time. 00:10:49

And not living in absolute squalor, 00:10:52

which is something that would characterize someone who's very disorderly, 00:10:54

for example, 'cause they just, they don't notice. 00:10:57

It doesn't bother them, disorder. It's like- 00:11:01

Maybe they can see it, but it doesn't have any emotional valance. 00:11:04

so it doesn't have any motivational significance. 00:11:07

Now, so, the other thing you might wanna think about too if you're choosing a partner is 00:11:10

try not to choose someone who's too distant from you 00:11:14

on the temperamental variables. 00:11:17

Because you're gonna have a hard time bridging the gap, you know? 00:11:19

It's hard for an introverted person and an extroverted person to coexist. 00:11:22

And it's really hard for an orderly person and a disorderly person to coexist 00:11:26

'cause they will drive each other nuts. 00:11:30

"Why don't you pick up?" "Why are you so obsessed by it?" 00:11:32

That's the basic argument, you know? 00:11:35

So, it's useful to know about your temperament so that you 00:11:37

can negotiate a space with your partner, and the other way as well. 00:11:40

And I don't think you should try to find someone who's exactly the same as you. 00:11:43

Because then you don't have the benefits of the alternative viewpoint. 00:11:46

But you gotta watch it, because you may hit irreconcilable differences of various sorts. 00:11:51

And I've seen that most particularly among couples who are 00:11:56

high and low in openness, that's a rough one. 00:11:59

And also high and low in conscientiousness, that's another rough one. 00:12:02

'Cause they just cannot see how the other person sees the world at all. 00:12:06