Understanding The Wisdom Of Psychopaths - Dr Kevin Dutton

Dr Kevin Dutton is a psychologist, author, and elite performance consultant whose research focuses on persuasion and social influence, psychopathic personality and elite cognition. Psychopaths get a bad rap. Perhaps understandably. They have a branding problem to say the least. But there are some personality traits like emotional control, focus, drive and single-mindedness that elite performers can model off of psychopaths to improve their effectiveness. Expect to learn how psychopathy exists at all, why teams kicking second in a penalty shootout have a 30% greater chance of missing, why psychopath pilots in world war 2 didn't make it home even though they won their fights, how different accents can be more prejudiced against than different races, why splitting the world into categories creates a foundation for huge biases to occur and much more... Sponsors: Get 7 days free access and 25% discount from Blinkist at https://blinkist.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy Kevin's Book - https://amzn.to/3fmAm9A Check out Kevin's website - https://www.drkevindutton.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #psychopath #psychology #mindset - 00:00 Intro 03:13 Why Does Psychopathy Exist? 10:05 Psychology of Penalty Shootouts 18:01 The Human Ability to Categorise 28:13 Lessons on Narrow Focus from Hoarders 38:55 Kevin’s Studies of Conmen 47:30 The Evolution of Super-Categories 55:49 Why a Different Accent Evokes Prejudice 1:02:13 How Brains Conflate Simplicity with Truth 1:11:33 Where to Find Dr Dutton - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top surgeon, but you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the people that you're operating on. You're not going to cut it, are you? Ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment, focus, charm. None of those traits is necessarily a problem in itself. In fact, all of them, dialed up at the right levels, can actually prove rather useful.

• 0:24Chris Williamson?

  Kevin Dunn, welcome to the show.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Cheers, Chris. Thanks for having me, mate. How are you?

• 0:28Chris Williamson?

  I'm well, thank you. How do you describe what you do for work? What is your area of expertise, if there is one?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Well, I'm a psychologist. That's number one. I'm talking to you from down under, mate, in Adelaide, whereas 8.30 in the morning at the moment, so bright and early. And I'm Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Adelaide. So that is Australia's first professor of such a thing. So I'm Australia's first professor of the public understanding of psychology, which basically means that I bring psychology to the general public. So psychology is a very broad church. It's got loads of sub-disciplines and different areas of study, everything from forensic to social to developmental to

• 1:17Speaker 00

  educational to sport, all those kinds of things. And so what my job is down here is to collate the best of that kind of information and make it accessible to the general public. So that's what I do for a living. That's my day job. My area of expertise, as most people will probably recognise me for, is psychopaths. So many years ago, well about 10 years ago now, I wrote a book called The Wisdom of Psychopaths, which became very controversial. And it's still, I think, the only book

• 1:59Speaker 00

  That suggests that psychopaths aren't all bad. That actually, you know, we have this stereotype of psychopaths being rapists and serial killers, what have you, but actually, if you were to look inside the realms of special forces, for example, you'd also find people who are high on what I call the psychopathic spectrum. So when I wrote Wisdom of Psychopaths, as I say, it became a controversial book, became quite well known, and it was on the basis of that, really, that I suppose, you know, if you can say this kind of thing, I kind of made my name in psychology.

• 2:35Chris Williamson?

  So you would be the current Australian equivalent in psychology of Brian Cox for physics in the UK?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Oh, well, listen, don't put me down like that, mate. Don't you dare, don't you dare put me down like that. What did it know? Actually, Brian's over here doing a big tour at the moment.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  He's, he's doing a great big tour. Yeah, I mean, listen, I'd, I'd, I'd go, I'd go with that.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, at the moment, obviously not doing the big stadium shows like Brian, but one can only hope.

• 3:10Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  But yeah, no, absolutely, mate.

• 3:13Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about the adaptive explanation for how psychopathy exists. Why would it be that evolution creates humans that have that particular mix of traits?

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Well, it's true, isn't it? I think, first of all, it's probably a good idea to define what a, what a psychopath actually is, Chris, because there's a lot of misnomers about psychopaths, mate. So it might help you listeners to just get a kind of a brief description of what they are. I mean, it's true, isn't it? When most people hear the word psychopath, they instantly think of, you know, on the silver screen, serial killers like Hannibal Lecter, and in real life, serial killers like Ted Bundy. But actually, when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths, mate, we're actually referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality traits, such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Focus, charm, charisma, and of course, those trademark deficits in conscience and empathy that you hear so much about. Now, none of those traits is necessarily a problem in itself, Chris. In fact, all of them dialed up at the right levels and deployed within the right context can actually prove rather useful. Okay, the key here, as I've always said, lies in context and level. So imagine, for instance, a personality mixing desk, probably the best way of thinking about it, on which those traits are just outlined comprise the the kind of hodgepodge of knobs and sliders. Okay, twiddle them up and down in various combinations, and you arrive at two conclusions, all right. The first one is that there is no

• 4:57Speaker 00

  objectively correct setting at which those dials might be positioned, but rather invariably depend on context, on the particular set of circumstances you might happen to find yourself in. The second, and this comes back to answering your question, the second is there exists certain jobs or professions, for example, that by their very definition, might demonstrate what we might call precision engineered psychopathy, that might by their very nature have those dials turned up a little bit higher than you might find in everyday life. So, give you a couple of examples. Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top surgeon, all right, but that you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the people that you're operating on. We're not going to cut it,

• 5:41Speaker 00

  all right, well, quite literally, in fact, you're not going to cut it. Sorry, mate, I didn't mean that on purpose. Imagine you've got the financial and strategic smarts to be a top businessperson, but that you lack the ability to fire someone if they're underperforming, that ruthlessness to let someone go, or the coolness under pressure to ride out of storm, or the sheer balls necessary to take a calculated risk when appropriate. Okay, again, you're not going to make it, are you? Imagine you've got the ability to be a top lawyer, but that you lack the almost pathological self confidence, that almost narcissism to be the centre of attention in the middle of a packed courtroom. Now, those characteristics, those traits I've just outlined for you there, ruthlessness,

• 6:25Speaker 00

  fearlessness, self-confidence, emotional detachment and coolness under pressure.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Comprised five core characteristics of the psychopathic personality. Now, would you say they were dysfunctional in those contexts? I certainly wouldn't, and I have written books on that and papers on that. So to answer your question, now we've defined psychopathy and given you examples in everyday life, if we go back to, say, the days of our ancient evolutionary forefathers, you know, a couple of million years ago, when we were living in small groups on the East African savannas, you could imagine that there were certain characteristics such as the, well, aggression, the ability to take risks, the ability to be predatory in terms of hunting. You can see how, and also the ability to tell lies, actually, to infiltrate other groups, maybe to get information out of them.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  You can see how these kinds of characteristics, which are beneficial in the modern era, actually might have evolved in eras long gone. So the kind of, as I say, the James Bond profile, the ruthless, fearless, remorseless character, actually, that we see today does have its uses, not just in special forces and, and the agencies, MR5, MR6, those kinds of things, but in everyday jobs like surgery, in business, for example. But also, they would have been selected for many years ago for the reasons that I just outlined.

• 7:50Chris Williamson?

  So even though raider or infiltrator of other tribe wasn't an occupation, it was a role, it was a role that needed filling, and because that needed filling, it was adaptive across an entire group for certain members of that group, probably not too many, because if you had 150-person tribe and all of them were psychopaths, there would be way too much chaos. But I'm going to guess that the amount of psychopaths that we have proportionally at the moment would be the amount, on average, that was effective to keep a group moving forward.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  You've absolutely nailed it there, Chris. In fact, there's a branch of psychology and information science. If you were to draw the Venn diagrams between psychology and information science and decision making, you've got an area that we call game theory. You might have heard of it. And when game theorists model the incidence, the prevalence of psychopathy, psychopathic personalities within the general public, which is roughly about 1% of people are psychopaths, what we would regard as diagnosed psychopaths, then game theory, when you look at the game theory models, they actually bear that out in the computer algorithms as well. So you're absolutely right. You can't have, well, you

• 9:03Speaker 00

  can't have a society which is all psychopaths because it wouldn't be a society. That's the first thing. It's interesting, an interesting parallel is with the Vikings many years ago. They had a group of, well, I suppose you could call them very early special forces soldiers called the Berserkers. It's where we get the word berserk from. And I mean, the Vikings were pretty fierce enough, but the Berserkers took it to an absolute extreme. So they kind of were the, were almost like the special forces when the Vikings. And they fought with an absolute trance-like frenzy and obviously contributed to the Vikings' fearsome reputation down the years. The problem with the Berserkers was they were fantastic in

• 9:47Speaker 00

  wartime, but they were absolutely terrible in peacetime because they were constantly looking for fights. Probably a bit like your days in the Newcastle nightclubs, mate, actually.

• 9:56Chris Williamson?

  I think there were some Berserkers that I got introduced to there.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Might have been a few Berserkers on the streets of Newcastle back in the day.

• 10:01Chris Williamson?

  Definitely some Viking DNA floating around. Talk to me, when it comes to psychopaths, one of the interesting things there, confidence under pressure, the ability to deal with that stuff. What was that study that looked at penalty takers trying to win versus penalty takers trying not to lose or trying to catch up on the score sheet?

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very interesting that. So there was a study which looked at what people, and obviously England, we've got the World Cup coming up next month. God's sake, don't ask me about that, mate. But yeah, there was a study done which looked at who was most likely to score penalties in a penalty shootout. And, you know, most people watching a penalty shootout would think that the pressure is equally high on everybody. But actually, when you look and you kind of analyse it, there's different pressures depending on whether you are taking a penalty to keep your team in the competition, or whether you are taking a penalty to put your team through. So if you're taking a penalty to

• 11:06Speaker 00

  put your team through, the pressure is actually less than the pressure on you if you're taking a penalty to keep your team in, because our brains have evolved a bias towards loss rather than reward. If you think back to our evolutionary history, if you're faced with a rustle in the bushes, and you make a wrong decision and you think, oh, well, that's nothing, then it can come out of the bush and eat you pretty quickly. It might not be the breeze, it might be a saber-toothed tiger. So actually, our brains have evolved a bias towards loss aversion. We don't want to make a mistake. We don't want to have

• 11:51Speaker 00

  a situation where we are complacent and where we mistake something which is eventually going to eat us, so which is going to lose us our lives. So those kinds of evolutionary biases that evolved many years ago are still with us today in football stadiums when it comes to penalty shootout. So if you're taking a penalty, which if you miss, is going to put your team out, that loss is really weighing on your mind, way more than if you know you're going to score and you're going to put your team through. The stakes, at least the way the brain computes it, Chris, are much higher if you're taking a penalty to stay in.

• 12:29Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what the relative percentages are?

• 12:32Speaker 00

  I think it's something like, off the top of my head, mate, I think it's something like 62% of people score uh when it's putting, when you're taking a penalty to uh keep your team in. And I think it's roughly about 90% score when it's taking a penalty to put your team through. Uh so it's something like that. It's something like 60, 90. So it's still the majority of people score. But when you're putting, when you're taking a penalty to put your team through, way more people score.

• 13:07Chris Williamson?

  I suppose.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Although if you're talking about England, mate, I'm not, maybe that study, maybe that study doesn't want, wasn't done in England.

• 13:13Chris Williamson?

  Yes, it's just never. Um.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:16Chris Williamson?

  What that means is when you're doing a normal penalty shootout, let's say that you're into the um knockout stages of a competition and you get to the end. There is a huge advantage. There is a 30% advantage to the team that gets to take the penalties first. Let's say that each team continues to score.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 13:37Chris Williamson?

  It's 4-4 with the final two penalties to go.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  You got it.

• 13:41Chris Williamson?

  If team one misses and team two scores.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:45Chris Williamson?

  Team one is out, but team one never faces the situation, game theoretically, of that 30% disparity between the success or failure concern. So there is a huge, I mean, that's the most important, way more important than who, which end do you get, who gets to kick off first.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:03Chris Williamson?

  The most important thing perhaps in an entire competition is who gets to take the penalties first.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  It's literally, it's who wins the toss. You're absolutely right. That, that, that is what we call in psychology, interact. Uh you know, the who wins that toss interacts with, you know, your ability uh to actually score. Penalty shootouts are very interesting. There's a lot of, you could almost have a degree in penalty shootouts. You know, you could almost like set up an entire degree course in it. Um there's loads and loads of different ways a penalty shootout can go wrong, how things prey on the mind. Um the best thing to do in a penalty shootout. Is what first of all to practise them which England are now doing. That's the first thing Chris. Uh. The second thing is to make your mind up and just go for it. So literally, um, a lot of penalties are missed, not in the run up,

• 14:53Speaker 00

  which uh people think is is often the case, but actually the penalty is often missed when you put the ball down. If you imagine a player, if you put the ball down and then you turn around and you walk away from the ball to a point where you're going to begin your run up. And that point in that when you put the ball down and you turn away and you begin the walk to your run up, that is when it goes wrong most of the time because that's all of a sudden when last minute doubts or changes of mind can creep in, um, all that kind of noise uh that that uh usually disrupts the clarity of thought, uh that can creep in and you can change your mind at the last minute without you even knowing you're going to do it.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  So the way around that is to absolutely decide from the word go, no matter what happens, it's top left, bottom right or what have you. Um. From a psychological point of view, that's the best way of winning a penalty shootout, to be absolutely confident, to be absolutely certain.

• 15:52Chris Williamson?

  I also heard that nine out of 10 deaths on Everest happen on the way down. And you had some similar story about fighter pilots in World War Two, maybe that was super successful in a dogfight, but then not so good afterward.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely right. Well, um, yes, that's true. Some in World War Two, um, some of the uh greatest fighter pilots, um, who were absolutely brilliant in aerial combat, uh ruthless and and fearless, um, lost their lives on the journey home because such was their laser-like focus to winning the dogfights at all costs, um, that they took their minds off the fuel gauges. And that's a typical psychopathic characteristic, might I say. So, you know, if you, it's really interesting, actually, I've, I know quite a few fighter pilots

• 16:50Speaker 00

  through various contacts I have in the military and there's, there's a kind of an old joke that you can tell a fighter pilot within about a minute of talking to them because they'll tell you they are. And it's, it's actually very true. And they've got a licence to do that because just as James Bond has a licence to kill, I think we all have various licences to do something. You don't get a fighter pilot without an ego. Okay. In order to be top gun, you've got to have a bit of an ego, Chris. And I think people who do that kind of job are licensed to have that, that, that kind of ego. And they're also pretty, they might be very nice men, but they're also pretty ruthless, pretty fearless and very cool under pressure. Now, what you find, as I was saying, going back to what you're saying in the olden days during, during the Second World War,

• 17:32Speaker 00

  that ruthlessness and fearlessness sometimes would, would result in tunnel vision where the pilots were so intent on winning dogfights at all costs, that actually they took their minds off the fuel gauges and of course ran out of fuel on the way home. And, and paid the penalty, obviously. So, yeah, absolutely right. It's all, there's a balance to be struck, mate. There's a balance to be struck between, you know, getting the job done and, and playing a percentage game.

• 18:01Chris Williamson?

  You've got this quote from your new book, which says, "What makes the number, the optimal number of categories for anything is usually a trade-off between practicality and precision."

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:13Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean by that? Why did evolution give creatures the ability to categorise at all?

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Well, if you think about it, Chris, everything out there is on a continuum. Okay. So you could have gender, sexual orientation, race, skin colour, colours of the electromagnetic spectrum. Everything out there is grey. And in order to make sense of reality, in order to work out how its multitude of different elements relate to and interact with each other.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  We need to dissect its amorphous unstructured content into smaller sharper self-contained byte-sized units, okay. We, in order to to to make sense of reality, this continuum, um, we need to construct for ourselves the illusion of a checkerboard surface, okay, uh, along which we can move sense and and reason like rational thinking chess pieces in an orderly, predictable and and rule-based fashion. Otherwise, everything and anything would mean anything and everything. We've got to have categories in the world. It was really funny, actually. Only yesterday, I was sitting in the Adelaide Oval, having a

• 19:35Speaker 00

  having a bit of lunch and there was a, um, not far from where I live, and a groundsman was out cutting the grass. And he was mowing it, you know, like, you know, groundsman cut the grass, they cut patterns. And he was going up and down, up and down, up and down, and then he was going across and across and across. And it struck me as a real metaphor for life, mate, because actually, you know, reality out there is just one big sea of green, big, one big sea of green grass. But our brains kind of think the way lawn mowers cut. They think in fast, straight lines. Um, and as a result of the grass cutting, he'd kind of, he'd basically turned the the the sea of green grass into a lattice of lime and emerald, as you know. And that's very much the way our brains dissect and cut up, uh, reality.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  We must have categories in the world in order to make sense of it, in order to survive. I mean, give you an example, if you didn't have pass and fail in exams, what would be the point of having exams? Okay, now, um, I know this is an unfair one, but what's the point of having speed limits? Well, big, otherwise, everyone's going to be driving as fast or as slow as they want. Now, if you're done doing thirty-four in a, I think it's a ten percent, isn't it? So, rule, so if you're done doing thirty-four in a, in a thirty mile an hour zone, all right, technically, you can get away with thirty-three. Um, if you're done doing thirty-four, it might seem really unfair. One mile an hour over the limit, but okay, so what are you going to do about that? Well, okay, what about make it thirty seven? Well, okay, what if you're doing thirty six? What if your mate's doing thirty six and you're done thirty seven?

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Again, you're going to think it is unfair. So we have to be able to draw lines in this multitude of continuum that are out there, Chris, in order to make sense of reality and in order to to make sense of the relationships between different parts of it. Now, to go back to your question, our brains evolve what I call a categorization instinct for that reason, in order to make sense of reality, in order to make it more predictable, in order to enable us to behave rationally and in order to simplify things, okay? Um, great quote, one of my favorite quotes of all time by Noel Gallagher and his brother Liam sums it all up. And he said that Liam is a man with a fork in a world of soup.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  And I think, I think we're all men with, and women, we're born with forks in a world of soup, mate. We, we, we have, we live in this kind of liquid amorphous structure and our brains have kind of got this kind of black and white way of trying to capture it and it doesn't work. And that's where a lot of the problems arise in, in everyday life because we, we, we're born with these binary black and white brains that we evolved many years ago. And yet technological advancement has produced a world which is far more complex than the world in which our ancestors grew up in. Um, so, um, where it gets interesting, I think, is when other needs apart from simplicity

• 22:34Speaker 00

  and functionality start taking over from the original needs for categorization. Now, I think a great example of this, now I'm not digging anyone out here by the way, I think a great example of this occurred a few years ago on a, on a budget airline. Um, where you know, when you're on a, on an any airline, you get the duty free trolley coming down, selling perfumes and what have you. Uh, what a duty free trolley kind of start coming down the aisle. Um, and one of the passengers on the plane took exception to the fact that the perfumes were divided up into male and female. And they thought that was very last century. Um, and they wrote a, a letter of complaint to the airline

• 23:16Speaker 00

  saying, look, this is, yeah, surely you can do better than that. You know, this is um, gen, this is, you know, pandering to the binary gender kind of stuff. Um, you know, actually, these should all be put in the same drawer and they shouldn't be differentials made between male and female. Uh, and actually the airline, I believe acquiesced to that. Um, now, that's very interesting. So you're objecting to male, female categories on the basis of identity. And yet, if you think about what that means, it absolutely decreases the functionality of selling perfumes on a plane. Because if you're not a perfume aficionado, I don't know whether, give or she, whatever is, you know, a male or a female perfume.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Somebody else, they could be buying a present for their wife or their, or their husband or whatever. So if you've got them all in the same drawer, you're kind of doubling your search time in a sense, because you're rambling around trying to find wherever it is, wherever you've got one or another.

• 24:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  It's easy to find it.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  Imagine if we had all of our clothing stores, where instead of there being a men's floor and a woman's floor, they were all just mixed together and you couldn't work out, actually, is this, is this a guy's pair of jeans or is this a girl's pair of jeans? And you'd have to sort through twice as much.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Great way of putting it.

• 24:32Chris Williamson?

  In order to get through that. Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Great way of putting it.

• 24:35Chris Williamson?

  So what you're talking about is that we have a environment now with far more complexity than we were used to. When we try and apply our pattern identification thinking and to try to categorize things, that sometimes gets hijacked.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely right. That that's exactly that's you've nailed it with the with the clothing analogy, an even better one than, well, you know, actually, the perfume analogy. I'm sure there would be people that would be would be pushing for something like that. But that is where you get we we we evolved a categorizing categorization instinct to simplify the world. And we've got to be careful that in the current day and age, um, that original categorization instinct for those original reasons isn't hijacked by other needs that may well be important, but actually don't simplify the world at all and make it much more complex and then make it far more

• 25:33Speaker 00

  difficult to make decisions for the benefit of most people. So that's that's a great example of this is is the color spectrum. That's what most people understand. So when you look at a rainbow, Chris, and you stand away from it, you see seven primary colors. You see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. However, the closer you get to a spectrum, the less clear and apparent those seven primary colors become. And actually, when you get right up close to, say, red and orange, it's very, very difficult, in fact, impossible to tell the colors apart when you look on the border. When does red fade into orange? When does orange fade into yellow? It's actually impossible because there's infinite

• 26:15Speaker 00

  gradations. So why do we perceive seven colors? Well, we perceive seven colors at a distance because our brains have made a decision for us over millions of years of evolutionary history that actually seven's about the optimal number of colors that we need to see in order to get by. All right. We don't need to see four million shades of red. It's a waste of time, mate. So we can get by with seven colors. Our brains are kind of thought, okay, that's about right. So there you go. Now, incidentally, of course, that's just Western cultures. There are some cultures such as the Burinmo in Papua New Guinea that don't see a difference between blue and green. Actually, it's called null. Blue and green are the same color. No way. Yeah. Oh, yeah, mate. Yeah. So I mean, so that we're talking here from a from a Western,

• 26:59Speaker 00

  you know, you're in America, I'm in Australia, we're both from the UK. We're talking about our own perspective. But actually, there, you know, seven primary colors, there are some cultures in the world in around the world, you only see four or five. And so, for example, I mean, a very good friend of mine, a colleague, Two colleagues, Jules Daviloff and Debbie Robison, give them a bit of a plug, have done lots of studies with tribes in Papua New Guinea and also the Himba tribe down in Namibia, northern Namibia in Africa. And they've looked at, you know, if you present various colour swatches, you know, like the old Dulux colour swatches. If you present 20 shades of green to say a Burinmo, I think it's a Burinmo tribes person in Papua New Guinea,

• 27:44Speaker 00

  they will, and they're all very, very slightly different, they will be able to pinpoint those minute differences between those 20 shades of green. If you were to show us, me and you, those 20 shades of green, we're probably looking and go, can't tell the difference at all. However, if you were to then put a green swatch next to a blue swatch, me and you could tell the difference very easily, but the Burinmo probably wouldn't be able to do it.

• 28:10Chris Williamson?

  Very interesting.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  That's how the brain works, mate.

• 28:13Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so what happens if people categorise too narrowly? If people get into this categorisation across their entire life, this has something to do with hoarders, I think.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  That's right, yeah. So studies have been done looking at hoarders. And if you categorise too narrowly, so if you think, so most of us would, you know, if you think of, say, like a washing up liquid bottle, we would be able to say, okay, one washing up liquid bottle, who cares? You know, there's other washing up liquid bottles which, you know, they're all the same pretty much. You know, we can do with one, they're all in the same category pretty much, we can do without them, you know, one will do us.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Hoarders look at it the other way. Hoarders are unable to see the commonalities between, say, a particular object or entity like a washing up bottle. Every single one is different and has its own unique kind of features. And so if you start thinking like that... It's very difficult to throw one away or throw nine, if you've got twenty of them, it's difficult to throw nineteen of them away and just keep the one because actually they're not the same thing as you and I might see it. They're all got their own individual idiosyncratic features about them. And so when we think about hoarders, there's a lot of other things going on with hoarders as well, but if you think about hoarders as being, oh, you know, they're just mad

• 29:43Speaker 00

  or crazy or filthy or whatever, actually, as usual, when you look at the psychology behind it, the brain works in very mysterious ways. And I call, in my book, I call hoarding a categorization disorder because it's, we're just seeing categories, they're seeing categories of objects in a different way to us, whereas we look at, say, I don't know, a newspaper as being, okay, you know, there's loads of different newspapers, loads of different editions, you know, we don't need five thousand, you know, newspapers or whatever, all tied up in bundles. They see it very differently. Each one has got its own individual properties and so each one must therefore be preserved.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  And that's why it's very, very difficult for hoarders to throw stuff away. Incidentally, the reverse of that is, you might know this, that there are some world leaders who simplify their wardrobes because they realize that every decision that we make, even a very simple one, like when we get up in the morning, what am I going to wear this morning, is a drain on the brain's battery. And sometimes those decisions can, especially in terms of what you wear, I mean, I know people that actually, you know, and I'm speaking on behalf of a friend here, by the way, Chris,

• 31:08Speaker 00

  who actually really, you know, sometimes take a very long time to decide what they're going to wear in the morning. So Barack Obama, for instance, that's why he pretty much always wore a dark blue or a navy suit and a white or a blue shirt and a very plain tie because he didn't have to decide what he was going to wear in the morning. It was pretty much a uniform. And that's actually the psychology of uniforms as well. You don't have to waste time deciding on abstract entities like what am I going to wear, what am I, how am I going to appear? It's done for you. And so that ability to make decisions automatically rather than, you know, well, who am I trying to appeal to? What image or vibe am I trying to give of all

• 31:50Speaker 00

  these kind of category selections we're making in our brains is taken away from us because making decisions based on categories can often be a real drain, as I say, on on our cognitive batteries.

• 32:02Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about the relationship between cognitive complexity and cognitive closure because there's this Frankl Brunswick study thing that I thought was absolutely fascinating. What's that?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, cognitive closure, we all differ. We're all on a spectrum and we all differ on the amount of information that we need to make decisions. Now, that's not linked to intelligence, Chris. Okay. So I know very intelligent people that just differ in their ability, in in the amount of information they need to feel comfortable to make a decision. So sometimes we get people that we all know them, we that need to chew over every single aspect of a problem. They can never get enough information in order to make a decision and

• 32:58Speaker 00

  they go on and on and on trying to work out what the various aspects are and how they relate to each other, sometimes on even very, very simple decisions. Those people have what we call a very high need for cognitive complexity. And then we get people who have a low need for cognitive complexity, who are able to just see a couple of bits of information, say, okay, more of a gut instinct, that's all I need. And to add a little bit of complexity to that situation, we differ in terms of our need for cognitive cognitive complexity in various aspects of our life. So for example, I kind of tend to need quite a bit of information to make decisions. I'm allowed, I'm licensed to do that. I'm a boffin, I'm an academic,

• 33:42Speaker 00

  mate. However, when I go into a restaurant, I'm like a new restaurant, I don't know, I'm lightning fast at looking at a menu, making up my mind what I want to eat. Now, don't ask me how that works, mate, I've no idea, but I'm very, very good at going to a restaurant saying, okay, that'll do. So, within a restaurant situation, a new restaurant situation, ordering a dinner, I have a low need for cognitive complexity, but there are other aspects where I need a high need for cognitive complexity. And that's linked to what we call cognitive closure. In other words, our ability to bring the shutters down on a decision. Okay, look, that's it. I've made the decision on this. Um, I'm happy with that.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  So a high need for cognitive closure is, is, is, is related to cognitive complexity, but not the same thing. High need for cognitive closure is how comfortable we are at keeping something going. Um, rather than, you know, just wanting a need to get it over with and that decision's done. Now, of course, won't go into too much of all this, but you've got a two by two grid here, haven't you? You've got people that have a high need and a low need for cognitive complexity. And then you've got people with a high and a low need for cognitive closure. And when you start going nuts is when you've got a really high need for cognitive complexity. In other words, you need lots of information to make a decision, but you've also got a high need for cognitive closure.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  In other words, you might want all the information, but blimey, you really want to shut something down quickly. The two kind of relate. So your high need for cognitive complexity, high need to get it over with. Um, actually, that's when you start going nuts. Now, interestingly, there've been studies done, uh, looking at high needs for, uh, cognitive complexity. And actually, um, again, not to go into too much detail about it, but extremists and fundamentalists of most persuasions have a low need for cognitive complexity and a high need for cognitive closure. In other words, they don't really need too much information to make their minds up and they're very happy making their minds up sharpish.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Uh, so when you get, and of course, it's not quite as simple as that, there's other, um, so socio-cultural factors going on with fundamentalism, extremism. But generally speaking, if you look at the cognitive profile, if you've got a low need for cognitive complexity, in other words, you don't really need too much information to make your mind up and a high need for cognitive closure, you like to get things over with. You're kind of veering into extremism category there, territory there rather.

• 36:20Chris Williamson?

  But it makes a lot of sense that that person would be very easily hijacked, right? You know, they want an answer to why this particular incident occurred. Somebody meets their threshold, which happens to be incredibly low. They attach their sense of self-worth to it. And then you're off to the races with ideology and all of the protectionist strategies that we create around ourselves, we attach ourselves to groups and so on and so forth. So I have to presume that the inbuilt desire for categorization has some relationship with tribalism.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure, absolutely right. And there's, these days is very interesting, Chris, when we look at what's happening on the web, mate, social media and the internet.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  There's actually a phrase which is, which is done the, doing the rounds, started a couple of years ago. Almost in like the, the post-truth kind of stuff, which, which, you know, reached his peak with Trump. Called tribal epistemology. It's a long old word. Tribal epistemology is basically, well, nothing's true anymore.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Objectively speaking, but it's true for your group or tribe. And therefore, because it's true for your group or tribe, it's real. And that's very, very interesting because then we start getting into all kinds of smoke and mirrors and truth chambers and echo chambers on, on the web as well. But yes, you're absolutely right. Group norms, group mores, group,

• 38:02Speaker 00

  the idea of, of stories and anecdotes which swirl around a group to keep groups together. And over the centuries and over the years, become fused in truth. And as a result of that, these kinds of things, the brain has, has evolved a propensity to distrust.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Information coming from other groups and to place perhaps too much trust and validity in the information which is a currency in your own group. Because obviously, you know, you you you you've got something in common with those people in your group. You've got a common goal, you've got a common background. And of course, as any con man will tell you, people are way more likely to believe you if you are one of them than if you're an outsider.

• 38:55Chris Williamson?

  Didn't you spend a bunch of time with con men? Didn't you do a ton of research with them? What happened there?

• 39:02Speaker 00

  I I did. That was my first book, actually, Flipnosis. And it start, you know what, Chris? It started with with my old man, mate. I grew up in in in London. My my dad, you remember Only Fools and Horses, don't you? Well, my dad was like Del Boy. I mean, even looked like Del Boy. He could, I always make a joke, he could sell shaving cream to the Taliban, mate. He could sell, he could share, he could sell anything to anybody, my old man. And he was a psychopath. He wasn't a violent man. He was ruthless, he was fearless, he was shameless. I never once saw him embarrassed. And he could do things that most normal people would find psychologically impossible. And I it was pretty much him that got me started, even as a young lad,

• 39:47Speaker 00

  into psychology. And he was, he was a con man. So that was my roots, basically. And I mean, I'll give you an example. I mean, I always remember one time, I must have been about ten or eleven. We got hold of a load of gear, I used to help him on the stall. And he got hold of a load of diaries. Calendar diaries, you know. And they were very different to the usual kinds of stuff that we got our hands on because they were actually good. They were actually nice, these diaries. They were, they were leather, they were embossed, they were slimline. And there was a very good reason for that. Anyway, I always remember one Saturday afternoon on the stall, we knocked out about three hundred of these, they went like hotcakes.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  And after about a couple of hours and we got back to the flat. And I remember I'm only about ten or eleven, I couldn't resist it. I said to dad, I said, yeah, I said, those diaries went like hotcakes and they were nice, weren't they? They were, you know, they were leathering, but they were thin. And he goes, oh, yes, and they were thin, all right, there's a reason for that. I said, well, what was that? And he said, April was missing. And I'm not joking, Chris. He gets one out of the drawer, mate. January, February, March, May. I said, here. I said, we've just sold out three hundred of these, Dan. I said, what are we going to do? I'll never forget it, Chris. He said, nothing for now, son, but come March the thirty first. Make sure you pack your swimming trunks, because we're off to Torremelinas for six weeks. That was the kind of geezer he was.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  So when I eventually, kind of, he's dead now, so listen, if there's any copper watching, it's long gone. Long gone. When I eventually started studying psychology, I was obviously very interested in how people were good at persuasion, like my old man. And eventually, after I, you know, got my PhD and all that, I wrote a book on persuasion.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Because I was interested to see whether there were limits to persuasion. Could, if you had enough skill, would you be able to persuade anybody to do anything?

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Or were there limits on persuasion?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  And I've got, I mean, I'll give you another example of my old man. Give you an example, again, young kid, helped him on the stool. Took me out to an Indian restaurant up in Brick Lane, the East End of London, that night. And just as he's about to pay the bill, and this is crucial, Chris, I'll never forget it. Just as he's about to pay the bill, he turns around and he says, Kev, if there's, if there's one thing I want you to remember in life, son, it's this.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Persuasion ain't about getting people to do what they don't want to do. It's about giving people a reason to do what they do want to do. Very, very, if you're a salesperson who's trying to get someone to do something, bear that in mind, okay? Push against an open door. And he says, watch and learn. So with that, giving example of what he done. He took his spoon and he tinkled it against his glass, right? Entire restaurant falls silent, told you in the psych button, he gets to his feet. And he says, right, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming. Now, I know that some of you have come just around the corner, some of you come from a little bit further afield. Uh, but I want you to know that you're all very welcome. It's very much appreciated. Oh, there's a party across the road in the King's Arms, uh, which will be hosting a little drinks reception later tonight there. Uh, you're all welcome to pop along.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  At which point he starts to clap, right? Which point the Thai restaurant starts to clap, doesn't it? So picture the scene, Chris. All of a sudden, we've got a restaurant full of people, never seen us before, never seen each other before, all applauding politely because right, none of them want to be seen as a gatecrashers at the party, right? That was the genius of it. Well, as we're leaving, remember, we're only about nine, I'll tell you, I can't resist it. So I said, here, Dad, I said, I mean, we're not really going to the pub, are we? And he puts his arm around me, Chris, and I'll never forget it. He says, course not, son, but let me tell you something, that lot in the restaurant are. My mate Malcolm, he's just taken over as landlord and make a few quid tonight. Now, can you imagine the kind of balls that you would need to even think about pulling a stunt like that?

• 43:49Speaker 00

  But that's the kind of thing he did. So having grown up with me, old man, always in the back of my mind was, can anyone persuade anyone to do anything or are there limits? So, uh, I had, uh, contacts at the time, um, various branches of the police. Um, so there used to be a show called Hustle on BBC years ago, you might remember it, uh, not the real hustle, but the one with Adrian Lester, which was a group of long con artists who were psychological geniuses. So I had access to a couple of guys like that, a few guys like that, and I spent about, um, about half a year hanging out and looking at, at what they did. Uh, and I wanted to know basically, mate, who knew more about persuasion, me who was the boffin who'd learned it out of the books,

• 44:32Speaker 00

  or them who were the evil geniuses of persuasion who derived it all from first principles, living on their wits on the street. Um, and I would say it was pretty much a draw. Um, I knew all the technical terms. They knew how to do it. Um, and the bottom line, um, because I'm sure people aren't going to run off and buy a hypnosis, um, or they never know. Um, the bottom line is, if, look, there's a lot of science on persuasion and influence, but it boils down to this. If you can get someone to like you, and if you can frame what you want so that it appeals to the other person's self-interest and not your own,

• 45:14Speaker 00

  you're pretty much there because no one's going to do something for someone they don't like. And we're all going to do something that benefits ourselves. So if you can frame something so it's in someone's self-interest and also get them to like you, then pretty much you're home and dried. Okay. And I'll give you a great example of self-interest. One of my fun favorite stories in persuasion, I think it was Baron Delphont many years ago, it was Lord Lou Gray's brother, TV mogul. And he is on the grapevine that there's a young man who's looking for a job. And this young guy pops into his office one day, true story this. And he says, I'm looking for a job. And Delphont says, right, here on the grapevine that you're

• 45:55Speaker 00

  a genius persuader. So I've got a little challenge for you. See that water jug? And he puts his water jug on the desk in front of him. He said, see this water jug here, just like that. He said, I want you to sell it to me. Right. It's a nightmare situation, right? So the young bloke thinks about it for a minute, and then undaunted, he gets to his feet, and he wanders over to the corner of the room, and he picks up the waste paper basket, carries it over to Delphont's desk, empties the contents of the waste paper basket out on a desk in front of him. So there's, I don't know, all kinds of bits of paper on there, whatever, whatever. And he takes Delphont's cigar lighter, takes the water jug away, puts it out of his reach, and sets light to the pile of rubbish in front of it with a cigar light. And he says to Delphont, right, how much are you

• 46:35Speaker 00

  going to give me for it? As basically his office is about to burst into flames. That is how you persuade someone to buy a water jug, son. All right. You basically, what you do is you reframe the situation so that all of a sudden, it's really in their self-interest to buy it off you. So you can't change the value of the water jug objectively, but by manipulating the context, you can change it subjectively. So the bottom line of flipnosis, hanging out with all them con artists, if you want to persuade someone to do something, basically get them to like you, which is why humor is very important. If you can make someone laugh, it's very, it's very important. I think it was, I think it was Victor Borgia, the Argentinian playwright,

• 47:18Speaker 00

  who said that humor is the shortest distance between two people. Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. So make them laugh, get them to like you, frame it in their self interest, and you've got the ingredients for persuasion.

• 47:30Chris Williamson?

  Draw the line for me between that persuasion and supercategories and how supercategories can be so persuasive. I think there was some very useful innovative language that was used around the Brexit marketing campaign as well. What's going on there?

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, right and wrong, us and them are basically categories, supercategories, which have evolved through many, many years of evolution. So going back to our prehistoric ancestors on the savannas of East Africa, they were living in small groups. So us and them is basically that in-group bias that I was talking to you about. Okay, so we have a bias to favor members of our own group against bias, against basically discriminating

• 48:31Speaker 00

  and favoring members of an out group. Okay, right versus wrong, basically the moral instinct evolved to keep groups together. And we kind of touched on that a little bit earlier. So if you don't have a sense of right and wrong, then you are more likely just to act out of a complete and utter self-interest rather than the good of the group. So if you don't, once you've got the us and them categorization established in your brain, you kind of need a moral categorization between right and wrong, otherwise that group wouldn't stick together. And the third supercategory to go with us and them, right and wrong, is

• 49:14Speaker 00

  fight or flight. So basically, that is, you know, the ability to either move towards a stimulus in your environment or to move away from it. So can I eat it? Or is it going to eat me? So fight or flight, right or wrong, us and them. Evolved it not quite in that order, evolved fight, flight, us, them, right, wrong, obviously. Okay. And they're all survival, what I call supercategories. There's three supercategories that our brains have evolved through millions of years of evolution. Now, if you can use persuasion, if you can set your language up.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  To tap into those three super categories that our brains have evolved long ago. Then whether you're right or whether you're wrong, Chris, you're going to get people sit up and and take interest, mate. So if you think about the Brexit argument, as you rightly pointed out, fight or flight. Okay, you think about the language that was used in the early days by Nigel Farage, by Boris Johnson, by the exit lobby. Look, are we going to stand up to these European bureaucrats? Are we going to let them roll all over us? Fight or flight language, right? Us and them. What about these crazy edicts and decrees that are coming over from Brussels, you know,

• 50:35Speaker 00

  about bananas being too spendy or whatever? Um, is this, what are we going to do about this? Are we going to just, you know, acquiesce to this? Right or wrong? Is it right to allow Europe to dictate to us rules in our own country? You can see through the rhetoric, fight, flight, us, them, right, wrong. If you can frame your language so that presses those ancient super category buttons in our brains, again, as I say, whether you're right or whether you're wrong, you're going to get people to sit up and take notice. That's what Trump did, by the way, in America, probably going to come as no surprise. Make America great again, fight or flight. We're going to fight against immigrants. We're going to build a wall between the USA and Mexico.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  That's the us and them again, right and wrong. Okay, you've got them all there in Trump's rhetoric. And it's very funny, when I was going back to flipnosis, Chris, I interviewed a top QC in London. And I once asked him, I said, what makes a great barrister? What makes a great QC? I wasn't interested in the difference between what makes a bad one and a good one. That's not interesting. The interest is in most things, what's the difference between good and great? And he was a pupil master in his London chambers. And a pupil master basically means that that's where people with law degrees, the cream of the cream from London, Oxford and Cambridge,

• 52:01Speaker 00

  go to study to learn their trade. You've got these various chambers around London. It's a little bit like teaching hospitals for law, basically, yeah. And he said, well, look, Kev, he said, you know, obviously I'll get the cream of the crop coming to me. He said, from all the top universities, he said, so, you know, the fact they've got brilliant minds, the fact that they have eidetic photographic memories for facts and figures, the fact that they are able to get their heads around the details of a case really, really quickly is entry level. He said, that's entry level, they're all like that. And he said, but the one difference between the people that really become great

• 52:41Speaker 00

  and forge a stellar career for themselves in advocacy and people who are good is something you can't teach. And he said, it's the ability to tell a story. He said, that is a God given talent, that if you have that natural ability alongside the other characteristics I've told you, he said, that kind of separates out the great from the good, the wheat from the chaff. And I'll never forget it, Chris, coming back to what I was saying. He said, information travels around the brain like electricity around a circuit. It takes the path of least resistance. So, Kev, he said, if you and I are up against each other in a court of law and you can assemble the facts of the case

• 53:26Speaker 00

  so that it goes around the minds of the jury quicker than I've assembled the facts of the case, you're gonna win. No matter whether that's right or wrong, you're gonna win. Because basically it goes around the minds of the jury quicker than my set of facts or the way I've arranged them. So it's very similar to the super categories. What you've got to remember, Chris, the bottom line here is that our brains conflate simplicity for truth.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  The simpler that I can make it for you to do something, the more likely you are gonna do it. And there's a number of different ways we've already kind of talked about that you can, you can do that. But you're not gonna do something for me, mate, if I make it difficult for you. It's just, it's a lot of persuasion is common sense. So, you know, as I say, it's get someone to like you, make it simple, make it in their own self-interest. You're halfway there. Well, you're more than halfway there. You're eighty-five percent there.

• 54:23Chris Williamson?

  We see this online as well. So a lot of content creators, some of the ones that are the most well-followed, the most popular, are the ones that have got the most fluent speech, because fluency is used as a proxy for truthfulness. And I think a big part of that is

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 54:38Chris Williamson?

  simplicity that people are able to understand what they are saying, because the friction between their brain and their mouth is as unencumbered as it's possible to be. The language that's being used is as precise as possible. It's no more words. It's no fewer words. It's no more complex. It's exactly where it needs to be. And that is, I mean, all of this stuff that you've brought up, the weaponizing of in-group, out-group bias, this is something else that we see. Like, the world that I exist in is online content creation, right? So

• 55:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:08Chris Williamson?

  I'm always very cautious whenever I see a community of people, whether it be online or elsewhere, that appears to be bound together, not over the mutual love of an in-group, but over the mutual hatred of an out-group. You see this with the social justice movement online, which seems to be very fragile held together by pointing at other heretics, people that aren't a part of them. Well, okay, what you're telling me there is that all you need to do is find someone that is currently a part of the in-group, that can be pointed at as part of the out-group, and now they're shaved off the outside. This is the ever-increasing purity spiral, right? Ever more distilled and concentrated into the middle. And yeah, I mean, I had a look at this.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  I love that, by the way. I love that purity spiral. That's a great phrase, purity spiral.

• 55:54Chris Williamson?

  Apparently, it's actually a thing. I haven't just made that, made that up. But

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Oh, have you? Okay.

• 55:57Chris Williamson?

  No, no, it exists online. And I learned about the difference in prejudice between race and accent. Have you heard about this?

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, go into a bit more detail, probably have, but.

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  So one of my friends, William Costello, evolutionary psychologist out here in Austin UT, he was explaining the fact that there is a greater prejudice against people of the same race with a different accent than people of a different race with the same accent. And the explanation for this is pretty simple, that evolutionarily, ancestrally, it would have been very unlikely for us to encounter somebody of a different race, but very likely for us to encounter someone that had a slightly different dialect or a slightly different accent. And what that means is that you have very interesting crossing prejudices and counteracting prejudices. For instance, if you were to see an Arab man that walked into the room,

• 56:55Chris Williamson?

  but then started speaking like somebody that was from the south end of London, or whatever it might be, if you have someone whose race and accent do not line up. For instance, I mean, everybody can think about this. If you were to see somebody walk into the room that is of a different race to you, but speaks with the same accent.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:15Chris Williamson?

  You would immediately think, well, we have an awful lot in common. You forget, you forget about the fact that they're of a different race. But then you flip that round. Okay, let's have somebody walk into the room who is of the same race as you, but has an entirely different sort of accent. There is immediately a big distance. And I just thought that that totally blew my mind. Okay, you're telling me that there is more prejudice against people with different accents than people of different races. Just totally took my head off.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  And it makes perfect sense, the way you've explained it. And William Costello absolutely nailed it right on the head there. The thing I would add to that is I was talking to, I probably shouldn't mention who it is. I was talking to one of the UK's top impressionists the other day. And interestingly, we were talking about impressionism as an art form and as a form of humour.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  And he said that he had come across people actually who had pointed the finger at impressionists as cultural appropriators, which is a very interesting argument. Now, whereas I don't buy it, whereas, you know, I think we have an innate fascination for different voices coming out of the same person. It's very incongruous. The incongruity principle is very powerful in all kinds of things. It's why we're so fascinated with serial killers, for example, because they appear on the outside to be very normal, but of course they've got these, you know, horrendous alter egos raging behind the scenes. If you have different voices coming out of the same person, then there is a real fascination

• 58:53Speaker 00

  with that. So we're fascinated by impersonators and impressionists. But actually, there's been recent lobbies saying, well, actually, you know, if you're doing different accents or taking people off, then why is that not cultural appropriation? Let's not go down that road, mate, because that's another two hours we could sit there talking about that one. But it's a good one to throw out there. But interestingly, it's very... When you look at when you talk to someone, and again, this is something that this guy, this impersonator, this impressionist who I was talking to, delved into. And I'm sure you do it. I certainly do it. If you really like someone, sometimes without knowing it, you

• 59:34Speaker 00

  end up talking a little bit like them. When you're in conversation with someone, you might adopt a little bit of their speech patterns. Might not be their accent. Sometimes it is in extreme cases, but you might unconsciously mirror the tone or the speed at which or the tempo at which they're speaking. So the voice of somebody is something that we find it very difficult not to empathize with. So that's where William Cosella was coming from there. That's one, that's another reason, an empathy reason. When we look, when we hear voices, it's one of those things that is a marker of how we gain an impression

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  of someone. And we're very, very susceptible to sound coming out of people's lips and how they sound.

• 1:00:29Chris Williamson?

  Let me throw some bro science at you. Is it the case that accents get locked in and are less likely to change as you grow up, but are more likely to change if you are younger? Let's say that you spend the first seven years of your life in Ireland and then you move to America or whatever, you're going to end up with pretty much just an American accent. And if you maybe make the move at sort of 13 or 14, you're going to end up with sort of an Irish American accent after maybe 10 years.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Chris Williamson?

  Would that be adaptive in case ancestrally you ended up merging with another tribe, perhaps being taken over by another tribe? And it would be in your interests to align yourself in terms of your accent with the accent of the new tribe that you have joined, because that is going to be one of the key determinants in not making you an outsider?

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, do you know what, Chris? You should, I don't know if you've ever studied psychology, mate, but you should definitely give it a go. I mean, I'd never heard that before, never thought of that before. I think it's an absolutely cool theory. And I can see that there's, I could instantly pull out of the hat a lot of evidence to back that up. Absolutely. The ability, and you know, I'm going to do a study actually, because no one's really looked at it. What makes people, why are some of us really good at changing our accents? Why are some of us not so good? What makes great impressionists, great impressionists? There's all kinds of different things. There's the flexibility of the vocal tract, for example. So there's all going to be all kinds of individual differences in this.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  But yeah, the ability to change your accent and to blend in would indeed confer an evolutionary advantage going forward, absolutely. Going back to your point about simplicity, which is related to this.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  There was a study and how, you know, our brains conflate simplicity with truth. There was a wonderful study done a few years ago, which looked at menus in restaurants. And two groups, I'm going off the top of my head now, so two groups of participants were given exactly the same menus, except for one crucial difference. One of the menus was printed in a very difficult to read typeface, a fancy one. And the other half of menus was printed in a very simple, easy to read typeface. One half of the participants got the easy to read menu, the other half of the participants got the difficult to read menu. The menus were exactly the same. Once they'd read the menus, they were then asked, how easy do you think the recipe would

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  be to cook? Not read, but cook it. What do you think they found? Well, you've got there ahead of me already, haven't you? Those people that were given the menus in the tricky typefaces thought it would be way more difficult to cook than those people that were given it in the simple typefaces and moreover were way more likely, way less likely to say that they'd actually give it a go. So moral of the story for restaurateurs out there, because I'm sure it would be the same in how food tastes. In fact, I think studies might have been done, I couldn't swear to it, I think studies have been done on that, the exactly the same dish printed in a simple typeface. I think, if I'm right by saying, I think studies have been done on this, actually

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  taste better or rated as tasting better anyway than exactly the same dish that you've ordered in a tricky typeface in a restaurant. So there's a physiological example of how simplicity interferes with our literal, with our, with our physical perception.

• 1:04:04Chris Williamson?

  I could have seen that going either way. I could have seen it that people would have presumed that the more difficult typeface, the more difficult dish to cook would perhaps be of a

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  More intricate.

• 1:04:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, worthy, worthy of a higher price point. A few other tips I've learned from Rory Sutherland and from Ogilvy about the

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  Oh, I know, I know Rory.

• 1:04:21Chris Williamson?

  He's a legend.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  I know him well.

• 1:04:23Chris Williamson?

  Coming on in a couple of weeks again.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a good lad. You'd better tell him to leave his vape at home.

• 1:04:27Chris Williamson?

  That guy. He'll have two. I don't know whether you've seen him on podcasts, but he has two. He switches between them. But yeah, that guy's like a chimney. So.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  He's a good lad.

• 1:04:37Chris Williamson?

  Couple of things restaurateurs should do if you're a budding restaurateur. First thing, take the currency denomination off your menu. It seems that if you just have the numbers rather than the currency denomination, people forget about the fact that they're spending money. Another thing, use anchoring bias. So have some very nice expensive platter first up on the page when you people land on it.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  You got it.

• 1:04:58Chris Williamson?

  That should be up there. Now, a final one, I don't think this was used with restaurants, but I could imagine a way that you might be able to work it into either the menu or the advertising. And this is a Rory thing. We actually use this in nightclub promo. If you involve the viewer in the completion of an advert, they have, you get a lot more attentional time. So for instance, if you were to ask a question, this has happened a bunch. Like who should be the next Prime Minister of the UK? And then it could be R underscore S H I, right? And like you already can complete it yourself, but the fact like that's obviously like an absolutely lame example that the UK government very well may end up using.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:41Chris Williamson?

  Involving the reader of an advert in the active completion of it and the participation of experiencing it has way, way, way more attentional input from them. And I'm imagining that if you had a way of constructing the menu, maybe like the dish of the day could be up on a board. But if you themed it appropriately, that yeah, the dish of the day is something you almost have to do a little bit of working out for yourself or whatever it might be. I could imagine that that would, that would probably be pretty effective at drawing people in.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  Another great point, Chris. Also, that's how construct your own pizzas work, mate. In pizza restaurants. So sometimes you go in, you can order the spicy hot one, you can order the margarita. But then there's an option which says, well, you know, create your own. So you're absolutely right. This is a technique which has been known to salespeople for many years. Not so much in what you're saying, in, you know, creating your own pizza has been done for years. The idea of creating a specials menu board is pretty cool, actually. That's very good. I like that.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  I'm getting a bit suspicious about you, mate. I think you, I think you study more psychology than letting on. But it's called in sales, it's called foot in the door, and it's a similar technique. So if you involve someone in the decision, you're way more likely to get a closure. So here's the deal, right? Imagine you go to a department store or a shop and you're looking at a shirt or a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes or whatever. And the person, the salesperson will say, try it on, sir. And you go, okay. You are way more likely to buy that object once you've tried it on than if you haven't tried it on. Because you've spent, we have, our brains like to remain consistent. So the way our brains will then work, Chris, is they will say, you've taken the trouble to try this on.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  You've, there's obviously something about it you like. Okay, otherwise you wouldn't have taken the trouble to tie it on. If you spent two or three minutes in the changing room, the cubicle, looking at yourself in the mirror, thinking, yeah, yeah, maybe. If it's a 50 50, you're going to come out and think, I spent three bloody minutes trying that on. Well, I'm going to get something out of coming into this shop. So you might well buy that if you were in any doubt it was 50 50. Or you might go looking for something else in the shop. So again, if you can involve someone in something, if you can get them to make, this is the key word, mate. If you can get them to make a commitment, that's the key. Then whether that's in advertising, whether it's in relationships, whether it's in sales, same technique.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  You're way more likely to get a result. Just coming back to one more thing you said there about, about in groups and out groups before I forget it. One of the things when we get online, you were talking about your online thing. And I've, you know, studied online quite a bit. It's a fantastic laboratory of social psychology. You find that when you get situations where, never has our identity, Chris, in any era in history, depended so much on what we are seen or perceived to say or believe. That's what social media has done. It's a massive petri dish.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  It's a massive prism of belief and we're all in the public arena. And so when you're in a situation where you are arguing in a public forum.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  It becomes almost like a surrogate court of law. And so we don't think like scientists, we think like lawyers. We don't try to get at the truth, and we're all guilty of this. We don't try to get at the truth, Chris. We try to win the bloody argument, mate. And that's what happens on social media. That's why you get people becoming more and more entrenched. One of the reasons why you say you get groups that are knitted together purely through hatred of an out-group, rather than any shared sense of value that they might have. And what you then get is groups that become vacant, become vacuous and very toxic, mate. That's the psychology behind that.

• 1:09:48Chris Williamson?

  I've got a friend, Gwinda Bogle, who has been on the show a bunch of times. He's phenomenal and everyone needs to go and check out his Substack. This is a quote from him. "The rise of social media as the primary form of social interaction changed the way that we judge people. We once used to judge people mostly based on their deeds, but in the age of social media, we judge people mostly based on their words and opinions because that's really all we see of them. Since we're defined by our opinions, there is a pressure to have an opinion on everything. Problem is, people generally don't have the time or the will to research everything they're expected to have an opinion on, so they copy the opinions of others. And the result is that there is precious few original thinkers out there.

• 1:10:29Chris Williamson?

  The culture war is largely two armies of NPCs being ventriloquized by a handful of actual thinkers."

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  Wonderful. Well, I couldn't have put it better myself, mate. And also, you can add to that, we were talking, you brought up earlier, the need for complexity and the need for closure. You look at the vehicles on which social media operate. You've got very short attention spans. You've got so much information out there. How do you get someone's attention in the information jungle? Well, you make something simple, you make something extreme. There's no room for nuance on any platform, really. And so what your friend was just saying is absolutely true, but that's also compounded by the fact that actually things are simplified beyond measures that they should be simplified. And so, yeah, absolutely right.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  You've got that, what you were talking about, that purity spiral or impurity spiral, maybe might be a better.

• 1:11:23Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The complexity of the truth is inconvenient for both sides.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Absolutely right. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:11:32Chris Williamson?

  Dude, let's wind this one up. I've really appreciated you today. I think your work's fantastic. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the things that you do online?

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  If you want to follow me on, cheers Chris, by the way, it was absolutely wonderful, mate. Really enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks for having me on.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  My social media handles Twitter and Instagram, I'm too old for TikTok, mate, is at the real Dr. Dr. Kev. So Dr. for Dr. At the real Dr. Kev. You'll find me on there. And if you want to check out some of the books, Wisdom of Psychopaths, probably the one that started all over, all going. Couple of books I wrote with Andy McNabb. If you want to become, if you want to become a little bit more assertive and successful, you might want to check out The Good Psychopath's Guide to Success, which I wrote with Andy McNabb, the SAS soldier, who's a, who is a psychopath, by the way.

• 1:12:24Chris Williamson?

  Kev, I appreciate you. Thank you.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Chris, cheers, mate.