Jocko Underground: The MONSTER Study: The More You Tell Them, The More They Believe. How Do SF Guys Fair in a Street Fight? Being an Employee of a Scammer. The Apocalypse.

The Monster Study. SF Guys in a fight. How do they handle themselves? Pursuing Jiu Jitsu. Compete? Or not? My boss was caught scamming customers. Communications in the apocalypse. Managing life when you have an unexpected addition to the family. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast. It's number 26. You got Echo Charles here for his commentary. And me, Jocko Willink. I come across things from time to time, and I know for a little bit while, remember we dipped into some psychological experiments and whatnot, a little bit. It's good to understand, show you some stuff about human nature. There's usually a bit more, more to the story than you would initially think. There was one that kind of caught my eye. I was doing some reading the other day, and this one was called the Monster Study. That's what it's called now. It wasn't called that at the time. A person named Wendell Johnson, I guess a psychologist

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  named Wendell Johnson, 1939, Davenport, Iowa, conduct this experiment. The experiment was actually ran by a graduate student. Her name was Mary Tudor. They took 22 kids that had some kind of speech impediment, actually specific stutter. Took them from an orphanage. And they tried to see if they could help stuttering kids by giving them positive feedback, how bad it hurt them if they gave them negative feedback, and if they took normal kids, what it would do to normal kids if they told them they had a speech impediment. And look, I'm not going to detail the, the whole

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  experiment, but basically you had two groups, and then there was two subgroups in those groups. You had Group 1A and Group B. Group 1A and Group 1B, these were kids that actually stuttered.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  And in Group 1A, they told the kids like, hey, don't worry, you'll outgrow the stuttering. You'll be able to speak even much better than you're speaking now. Don't worry about what other people say. It's gonna, you'll grow out of it. No big deal. That's how they treated those kids.

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  Then in Group B, they were, they would tell the kids that stuttered, it's gonna get worse, this kind of stuff, just evil. I mean, right? Kind of just evil. Like even when you hear it now, that's why they call it the Monster Study. So that's where the kids that actually stuttered. Then they had some kids that had normal speech. And one group of the kids that had normal speech, they said, you know, hey, you're really eloquent, you're very articulate, just that kind of stuff, just treated them, gave them praise. The other group, they told them that, and I have a little quote here, they had, they, they told them that the staff has come to the conclusion that you have a great deal of trouble with your speech.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  You have many of the symptoms of a child who's beginning to stutter. You must try to stop yourself immediately, use your willpower, do anything to keep from stuttering, don't ever speak unless you can do it right. You see how, and they'd give the name of a kid that had really bad stuttering. He started the same way as you.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And then they told the staff that worked with these kids, just the regular staff that worked with them, that they had, that they were going to stutter, that they were developing a stutter. And so the teachers actually believed the same thing and told them to point out their mistakes when they spoke. And don't allow them to speak unless they say it correctly and all this stuff. And it had a super negative effect on these kids, I mean, these poor kids, it's freaking awful. Here's a little, this is from Ms. Mary Tudor, the graduate student that ran the experiment, she said, "All of the subjects showed similar type of speech behavior during the experimental period. A decrease in verbal output of all six subjects, these are the ones that were told, you're gonna stutter.

• 3:40Jocko Willink?

  That is that they were reluctant to speak and spoke only when they were urged to. Their rate of speaking was decreased, they spoke more slowly and with greater exactness, they had a tendency to weigh each word before they said it. Their length of response was shorter. Two younger subjects responded with one word whenever possible. They were more self-conscious, they appeared shy and embarrassed in many situations. They accepted the fact that there was something definitely wrong with their speech. Every subject reacted to speech interruptions in the same manner. Some hung, or in some manner, some hung their heads, others gasped and covered their mouths with their hands, others laughed with embarrassment. In every case, the child's behavior changed noticeably."

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  And then she concluded in this that

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  the, she, she, her findings supported, or their findings supported the hypothesis that evaluative labeling can influence behavior.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  August 17th, um, oh, then she went back after these kids were all messed up and had messed up speech. She went back to the orphanage to try and reverse the effects now using like positive language. And after a little while, she reported, quote, she was unable to provide enough positive therapy to reverse the effects.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking horrible, right? 17 August 2007, the state of Iowa awarded 1.2 million dollars to the children for lifelong psychological and emotional scars. Just from the experiment. Just from this freaking experiment.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  My point in reading this or talking about it is be careful what you say to people, especially kids. Obviously, especially kids, but it's everybody. You know what's interesting is I'm around people when they have to speak a lot in front of crowds, or they're going to present something. Look, while I was in the military, you know, I have a young officer that had to present something for the first time, or, and my instinct was always to not be hypercritical because I figured that would only hurt them, right? Saying, hey, you better not screw this up, or dude, you need to speak clearer. I wouldn't say that kind of thing. I'd say, yeah, hey, man, just, just imagine that you're just briefing, you know, Fred there in the front row. No big deal. Just, just be natural. You're a good speaker. I would tell them that

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  kind of thing.

• 6:09Jocko Willink?

  That was always my instinct. Now, if I had some time to work with someone, I might sit him down and say, hey, listen, here's how you talk. Let's record it. Let's look at it. But if it was sort of, hey, someone's getting ready to present in 20 minutes or, you know, tomorrow, I wouldn't get them all amped up and say, you got, you gotta quit saying ah all the time. I wouldn't say that to them. Because it's going to get worse. They're going to lock up, brain lock. The instinct that I had was tell them, hey, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. You know, you, you know this stuff well. Oh, yeah, that was a good brief. It makes a lot of sense. Tell them that kind of thing. Let their confidence raise a little bit. And apparently that instinct was good. Because the worst thing you can do is tell them that, hey, you're going to lock up during this speech.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Just try your best not to lock up. Just whatever you do. Yeah, that's gonna be. You're, you're, don't even look professional up there. That kind of thing is just brain lock. It's weird too, how much of this is specific to speech? Cause speech is a really specific kind of thing, right? You can kind of hear it. It's an immediate feedback loop when you're doing it. Now you could say to someone, hey, don't choke during the game. You know, don't choke when you're taking the shot. The penalty kick, I bet that doesn't help. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this,

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now, where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  So thank you, it's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you, just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.