466. How your environment programs your behaviour (and how to deprogram yourself)

How much of your behaviour is really “you” - and how much has been shaped by the environments around you? In this episode, we explore how childhood, relationships, social expectations, habits and physical spaces can influence the way we think, feel and behave. From nervous-system responses and beliefs about what is possible for us, to the people we pursue, the habits we repeat and the versions of ourselves that present in different places, we look at the psychology of how environments programme our behaviour. Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s We explore: ● What our ‘environment’ can include ● Impacts of childhood experiences on our nervous system ● Where our belief of what it possible or attainable comes from ● How relational environments shape our pursuit of love ● How our environment shapes our habits ● The impact of our physical environment on our personalities Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Our favourite sources: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02309.x https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-33544-001 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883795/full https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-08705-013 The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Jemma Sbeg?

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• 0:41Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:25Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:10Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:52Jemma Sbeg?

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• 3:26Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

• 3:46Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Welcome back to the show as we break down the psychology of your 20s life and beyond. Today, I want to talk about behavior. And I want to talk about the way our choices are unconsciously shaped by things I think we rarely acknowledge or, you know, or notice at all, which is these minor, almost invisible cues from our environment. Your environment is everything. I don't know what anybody's been telling you, but it is the missing piece to explaining the very basic mechanics of discipline and why some people seem to find life effortless

• 4:27Jemma Sbeg?

  and others don't, why some people become successful and others struggle, why even some people are happy or have good relationships and others don't. There is this huge emphasis in the self-help and the psychology space on individual choices and agency and this idea that the most hardworking person is the one who kind of gets the prize. I don't think that's true. I think it is the person with the best environment who does. And you, you, the one person listening, you can use those principles of designing your environment for yourself to make certain behaviors easier and to break the habits that you want to break. Today, I want to explore the scientific evidence from this and why you are,

• 5:11Jemma Sbeg?

  a lot of you are, is your environment and how you were raised. From studies done in Romanian orphanages to classrooms at Harvard. Once you understand the role of behavior, I think the way that you look at society and everything else around you changes. And it also helps you understand how you can reprogram yourself through those same environmental cues and environmental changes. It's a massive episode, but I think it applies to literally everything in life. So I'm so excited to get into it. Without further ado, let's talk about how your environment programs your reality and how to deprogram that environment.

• 5:53Jemma Sbeg?

  So, first things first, today's episode, I feel like I need to make this caveat. It's not going to be an argument that you and I are like these helpless people and we are helpless to our surroundings. It's not going to be a blame game. Personal responsibility is really important. We make choices that affect us and that affect the people around us. And we need to be accountable for that. But we also don't exist in a vacuum. And that means that our behaviors and our actions are highly contextual. That is something I think a lot of us forget. It's this thing where we often feel like every problem we encounter

• 6:37Jemma Sbeg?

  is only ever individual or our fault and, and only ever determined by our choices alone, when it's so much bigger than that. A huge part of this, why we see things as all based on what individuals choose to do, is because of this social narrative we're surrounded by. Many of us have learnt to explain our choices through the lens of an individualistic culture. And it's a kind of culture that prioritizes autonomy, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. In many Western societies, probably all, all Western cultures, you have been taught that success, your success, somebody else's success is entirely self-made and entirely a reflection of who you are and what you choose to do. And same goes for failure.

• 7:22Jemma Sbeg?

  If you become a millionaire, you've worked hard, you were smart, you were disciplined. If you become homeless, you were lazy, you got yourself, you know, addicted to substances, you weren't good with your money. It's all about what you've chosen to do and your own behaviors. There is very little discussion of the role of luck or the role of family or the role of life circumstances. That's very easily erased from this narrative. This way of thinking is reinforced by something we call in psychology, the just world hypothesis. As humans, we like to believe that the world is fair and that people basically get what's coming for them, good or bad, based on how they choose to act.

• 8:05Jemma Sbeg?

  And we really struggle with the idea that someone who is honest and good and kind could still end up in bad circumstances. And someone who was mean and cruel and evil could end up successful and happy. We don't want to believe that. We refuse to acknowledge the sad fact that sometimes it's not your morals and it's not your hard work that determines your fate. It's just luck and it's context. Like I said, this does differ from culture to culture. A 1994 study published in, it must have been, it would have been the Journal of Social, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I can almost bet on it. It explored how American and Chinese participants

• 8:50Jemma Sbeg?

  explained particular events differently, including things like murders and instances where somebody was the victim of a crime. The crime was the same, but what they found was that in America, participants, um, well, they came from more individualistic cultures. They placed a greater emphasis on personal disposition and personal fault and how somebody chose to act in the lead up to the crime. So they were walking in a bad neighborhood, they were wearing this, wearing that. Chinese participants who came from more collectivist cultures, they really paid more attention to situational and relational factors. They said it was bad timing, it was bad luck.

• 9:33Jemma Sbeg?

  They observed what was happening around in the context, in the time when this murder or crime took place. And the researchers argued that this influences how people treat the role of their environment, often for the worse, because they don't see how their own environment shapes their reality. And they don't see how environment shapes the reality of others and creates outcomes that they don't necessarily deserve, good and bad. I truly think the self-improvement culture that we're all living in at the moment has a lot to answer for in terms of deepening this individualistic mindset across the board and across cultures, because it suggests

• 10:17Jemma Sbeg?

  deeply that every outcome in our lives should be and can be optimized through the right routine and should be or can be optimized through the right mindset or the right kind of discipline. Even discipline is environmental. If you were never modeled discipline, if your environment is chaotic, if you can't afford the same lifestyle interventions that others have access to, is that necessarily all your fault and all your choice? Some would say, yes, it is, where there's a will, there's a way. But I think that's a lot easier to say when you are somebody who has grown up and existed in an environment that makes it rather frictionless to commit to your goals and where having a will and having discipline has been modeled to you.

• 11:01Jemma Sbeg?

  I think a more nuanced approach would be to recognize that people have agency and that this agency is exercised under different conditions for different people. And that environment is significant, just that, I only want people to acknowledge it. So with that in mind, what are some ways that environment shapes our behavior? How can we use that to our advantage to create better outcomes for ourselves? And also to understand why we are the way we are as well. The first example, well, actually, I should say this, when I say environment, I do just wanna give a little caveat. I'm not talking about a house or a neighborhood or a room or even nature. All that is super important. Environment includes a lot more than just your physical situation.

• 11:44Jemma Sbeg?

  It also includes the emotional climate of the home that you grew up in, the money, the time, the transport available to you. It includes the values of your culture. It includes the behaviors that were normalized by your friends. It even includes like where you spend time online or the noise of your neighborhood, the food that's visible in your kitchen, the public spaces that you have access to. All of that is environment, plus a lot of things I literally just didn't mention. It also includes what's absent, and I rarely, I was gonna say I never, but I rarely see people talk about the effect of things that aren't in your environment on your behavior. If you never see a positive example of love or a realistic version of success, the kind of success you're after, or a story or an example

• 12:30Jemma Sbeg?

  of someone having achieved what you wanna achieve, how are you meant to imagine that for yourself out of thin air? Like, our imaginations are good, they're not that good. Also, physically, you know, like, if you don't have a grocery store that sells fresh vegetables or fruits near you, or you don't have any green spaces, or you don't have a quiet space to work or to study, your behavior is going to naturally be different to someone who does have those things. That is a very simple social psychology understanding. And with that in mind, let's talk about the ways that this is reflected in our behavior and how the environments we grew up in or continue to be in program you to act a certain way.

• 13:13Jemma Sbeg?

  Number one, your childhood environment calibrates your adult nervous system response. And that in turn influences nearly everything about how you respond to the world without you even consciously thinking about it. Everybody wants to talk about nervous system regulation, this is like the building block of that. Our nervous system determines a response, any response to a stimuli based on what it's encountered in the past. If your childhood, which is where a lot of this regulation and these systems begin to build themselves up, if your childhood was broadly safe and it was predictable and it was responsible, so you know, when you were hungry, you ate, when you were distressed, people comforted you. Um, you weren't abandoned.

• 13:57Jemma Sbeg?

  You didn't experience severe trauma. Your body learns that, yes, it's challenged, things do happen, but when it is challenged, it can come back down to neutral again. If the way you were cared for in childhood was frightening or neglectful and you didn't have enough to eat or it was really unpredictable, it didn't feel good, then a different set of responses have been encoded into you. You do not see stress and life challenges or conflict the same way. And those are things that every single one of us is going to encounter. You see it only as a space where things go wrong and escalate and get worse and worse and worse, like, that's the only thing that's gonna happen when you encounter these things. Unless, like, even if actually, reality tells you something different.

• 14:41Jemma Sbeg?

  These early environments become emotional patterns through no fault of your own. For example, there was a two thousand and fifteen study published in the National Academy of Science Journal. And it's one of the, I don't wanna say the best, but it's one of the most useful longitudinal studies we have of all time. It was taken from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project and it wanted to examine the effects of stress on child and adult development in Romania. Now, this study focused on children in Romanian orphanages, which were notoriously awful. Go and look up some stories, like, at the time in Romania, women were required, I think, to have at least like four or five children, like, by law.

• 15:21Jemma Sbeg?

  They underwent mandatory monthly gynecological exams at their workplace to check for pregnancies. These examinations were monitored by the secret police. There were taxes on people who didn't have kids. And there were just a lot of children, there were so many mouths to feed because of this forced birth program and there weren't enough resources or money to do so. Orphanages were overcrowded, they were underfunded, I guess, because there was no money. And there was all this abuse and neglect that went on. So researchers went into these institutions and they examined the children's cortisol levels and autonomic nervous system reactivity. They wanted to know

• 16:03Jemma Sbeg?

  how good was their body at regulating their blood pressure, their heart rate, their digestion, their stress response? How good was their nervous system developing? Children who had experienced institutional care were then randomly assigned either to remain in that care or they went to these specially created foster care programs. These days, this study would be highly unethical, I'm just gonna say that, that's why I said it wasn't the best. Like, you can't do that anymore. I genuinely cannot understand how this study was allowed to be carried out, because you can't deny a child what could be a life-saving intervention, but that was psychology studies back then, I don't know why they did that. However, in these two groups, they kept testing the stress response of these children as they grew up either in the

• 16:48Jemma Sbeg?

  foster condition or the institution condition. And this allowed researchers to observe how early caregiving conditions influenced physiological regulation over time. What they found was that children who were in families, who had safety, they showed typical patterns of cortisol regulation and stress reactivity compared to those who remained in institutional settings. This is the big part of this study. Twenty years later, same, the same differences between these groups were still evident. The children who were in institutions, some of them never recovered. Even as adults, they had all these other problems, but they also couldn't regulate themselves. They developed severe relational patterns, they couldn't relate to others.

• 17:31Jemma Sbeg?

  They displayed, displayed high levels of stress. Even when there was nothing wrong, even when they were out of that system and they were, in all words, you know, all intents and purposes, safe. What this research showed us is that caregiving environment shapes the development of your stress response systems, which shapes everything else in your life. The key thing here, though, was on calibration or what we would call nervous system sensitivity. So it's not that their nervous system was like broken and like hit on the head with a hammer by this experience. It's that they could still have all the same responses, but when they got shot up high into arousal, they couldn't bring themselves back down.

• 18:13Jemma Sbeg?

  And so if you think about all the things in life that are gonna push you up to that state, you're gonna encounter a whole lot of them in your everyday life, but most of the time, you can bring yourself back to baseline. These children who then became adults couldn't do that. The other thing your early childhood environment also determines is what you believe is possible for yourself. Before you pursue a future, any future really, you need to be able to imagine it as both A desirable and B available to some extent. Children build this future self map through observation. You have one, I have one.

• 18:54Jemma Sbeg?

  We noticed what adults around us did, you know, what was encouraged, what kind of people seemed to be happy, who was in positions of authority, who we admired. We noticed whether effort tended to open certain doors. And these observations become beliefs about what is possible for us. Long before we become conscious of like what a dream job is or, you know, what money is, we just see how effort is rewarded. In a two thousand and nine study, researchers from the University of Michigan examined how the financial context of low income teenagers influenced their expectations about whether college was for them.

• 19:38Jemma Sbeg?

  In the study, students were presented with different descriptions of college costs and financial aid, effectively altering how attainable higher education appeared. Again, completely unethical, but they did it. When information, the information they were provided framed colleges as financially accessible thing, they could get aid, these students performed significantly better academically. They also were more invested in schoolwork, more invested in extracurriculars. I'm pretty sure their IQ improved, they took assignments seriously, all because somebody said, hey, this is something that is available to you that will improve your life.

• 20:19Jemma Sbeg?

  In contrast, when college was presented as prohibitively expensive, they couldn't afford it. All their motivation and expectations declined, and so did their effort and their grades. And that suggests that perceived barriers can directly influence how how you respond, how you act, how your intelligence is presented. This is how our environment can influence motivation without actually altering anything about your ability. These people were still smart. They could still do everything that the other group could do, they just didn't believe it was worth it. We often describe effort specifically as an internal trait. You know, one child is motivated, one child isn't.

• 21:00Jemma Sbeg?

  Effort depends partly on expectancy. Like if studying feels like it's going to lead you towards a more reachable future, it has more perceived value. If the route looks blocked, it looks unknowable, no one you've ever seen has done it before, there is no room for that in your map. Like if you cannot visualize and picture it and see yourself in it, why are you going to pursue it? And this kind of programming around future expectations doesn't just happen with adversity and doesn't just happen because somebody lacks money. You have probably encountered something that has limited this map for you. It all depends on like what were you encouraged to do, what was dismissed as ludicrous when you were a kid? The conversations you heard when you were younger, even the conversations you hear now about

• 21:45Jemma Sbeg?

  what is available, what feels possible, that defines what you will end up doing. If your idea of your dream life is discussed openly and people say, yeah, of course you can make that much money and of course you're gonna find the love of your life and of course you're gonna build a successful career in whatever domain, you are gonna have less doubts about going after that. If that is out of the question, you are expected to follow a certain path and not do this and do that. Your limit, it's right here, it's placed right on top of you. I think um one way I see this a lot is how families talk about secure versus, I don't wanna say insecure, but maybe more like entrepreneurial risk-taking jobs, like in the creative industry, for example.

• 22:30Jemma Sbeg?

  A family who really celebrates that and who says like, yeah, that's totally possible is more likely to see perhaps children or people in their family have success in that space. And people who don't like that, just it doesn't feel possible. And that's why when we see like business people or entrepreneurs, there's so much more likely to have children who are doing that. Same with like people who are actors or musicians, that's where the whole nepo baby thing shows up. Like nepo baby psychology is really environmental psychology. What a child sees as available to them is what they will choose to pursue. Later in life, like the voice, like, you know, when people say like, that's not realistic,

• 23:15Jemma Sbeg?

  you start to believe that and you start to believe like, I'm not that person. Really, you are that person. This is, this is just a byproduct of some deeply internalized insecurity that's come from other people around you. So we've spoken about how early environment influences your nervous system and influences your perception of opportunities. Let's talk about love. How does your environment influence who you choose to date? We're gonna take a short break and then we're gonna talk about it. So stay with us.

• 23:53Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 24:31Jemma Sbeg?

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors,

• 25:15Jemma Sbeg?

  to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:30Jemma Sbeg?

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• 26:14Jemma Sbeg?

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• 26:58Jemma Sbeg?

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• 27:29Jemma Sbeg?

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• 28:14Jemma Sbeg?

  So when we talk about, as we have been, the ways that our, your environment programs your reality unconsciously. A big part of our reality is relationships and love. And who we want to be with and who we want to date. I'm sure by now, you guys, I just, I'm going to assume you've heard enough about attachment styles. You know, attachment styles, they're everywhere, patterns like anxious, avoidant, secure, disorganized. They are ways of relating to others that are shaped in childhood. What you probably haven't heard as much about is your teenage and adult relationships. Including your platonic relationships and the effect that they inevitably have on who you choose as a partner.

• 28:58Jemma Sbeg?

  Every relationship that you encounter shapes the next, regardless of your childhood. And who you are at around 13, 14, 15. And the level of desire, security or interest you experience then will shape who you date at 21, 25 and 27. So there was a 2013 longitudinal study published in the journal Attachment and Human Development. And they explored this, they explored how we make relationship choices. And specifically, they assessed peers and how friendships and people around us affected who we would choose to date. So they looked at people at 14, who were they around at 14, who do they date at 22.

• 29:43Jemma Sbeg?

  Researchers found that greater insecurity when you were an adolescent and greater insecurity in your adolescent friendships and relationships. Predicted more anxious romantic attachment later down the line. There was another 2019 study went even deeper into this. These researchers tracked people from 13 to 72. That is like a huge age range in psychology, especially when you're doing it on children. And they wanted to understand like how relationships and life events and your environment changes your attachment over time. When you look into attachment theory these days, it's going to say that like your attachment is fixed by how you experienced love as a child. And like, once that's set, there's no moving it.

• 30:26Jemma Sbeg?

  The researchers and this research actually found that your attachment style changes all the time, changes across your life. Changes based on who you're around and individuals have the capacity to move between secure, anxious and avoidant patterns at different stages of life. This study is so incredible because like it followed people over like decades, decades. And so it really allowed researchers to observe how major life transitions, like breakups, like forming long-term partnerships, like becoming parents, like facing loss or divorce or health challenges were associated with shifts in attachment.

• 31:07Jemma Sbeg?

  This right here is your environment, your relational environment, programming your behavior and how you relate to others. Your relational pattern, how you relate to others, how you show up in love. It feels like, like I'm making all the choices. What this research is really saying is your attachment is A, shaped by early experiences you don't even remember, first of all. B, it's also shaped by ongoing relational environments and new experiences. This can change how you date in both good and bad ways without you even realizing it. If you date somebody who is awful, without even knowing it, like you could have had the most secure attachment pattern.

• 31:50Jemma Sbeg?

  And it's, it's gone, like they can, they can destroy that. This also connects to that first point we made about our nervous systems, like all of this, you can see, it's all your environment. How you approach love and specifically dating derives from your ability to self-regulate. And your ability to trust, that self-trust, that I'm going to be okay, even if this person loves me or not. And that trust in others, that they're not going to hurt me, they're going to love me is largely determined by the relationships you've been modeled. And you've continued to experience as you grow up. Now, this isn't to say nothing we ever do in relationships causes, like is our fault or causes problems.

• 32:35Jemma Sbeg?

  Like we're just unwilling participants, like things just happen to us. Remember what we said at the beginning, you have to be, you are inevitably sorry, responsible for your own actions, which sucks. Because we don't always cause those patterns or relations or, or reactions. But I think it is a really important explanation. If you find dating incredibly stressful, if your entire world crumbles based on someone's affection or lack thereof. If you start fights, if you cannot handle minor conflict. Please examine the environments of your past and present relationships. And you may find your answer. This whole time, when we're like, why can't I love, why do these relationships fall apart?

• 33:19Jemma Sbeg?

  We keep looking further and further inwards for why we act the way we do, why we are the way we are, why we desire what we desire. You need to be looking beyond yourself, beyond our choices, because I think that's like 45% of the picture. The context we are forced to make those choices in matters way more. And the history that we have around love also matters significantly more. Have the environments you've been placing yourself in with people who might not be great for you be continuing to influence what you expect from love without you even realizing it. I want to give you, how many more examples? I want to give you one more example of how your environment programs your behavior.

• 34:01Jemma Sbeg?

  And I think this final example is most essential when we're talking about self-improvement. And when we're talking about becoming a better version of ourselves. Your environment, more than motivation, more than how much you want something, more than how much even success is visible to you. Is going to determine how your habits are expressed and whether you're going to reach your goals. We imagine a habit, any habit, as this like little building block of our desired life. And they're so small, they should be manageable, especially the more they are repeated, they become ingrained. That is partly true, but again, it misses the role of context. Here is what a psychologist or a researcher would tell you.

• 34:46Jemma Sbeg?

  Habitual behavior develops when a response is repeated in a sufficiently stable situation. Situation being the key word. Over time, features of that situation determine whether the behavior will be performed or not. Now, the cue might be a time, a location, an emotional state, an object, a person. Over time, simply coming into contact with that cue in your environment will trigger your behavior automatically. Without you consciously deciding to do so. Suppose you repeatedly check social media when you're working or when like what you're doing becomes boring or confusing.

• 35:27Jemma Sbeg?

  At first, you consciously decide to go on your phone. You're like, I don't, I'm going to go on my phone right now. I want the immediate stimulation, I want the relief. However, after enough repetition, the combination of boredom, uncertainty, being at your desk, having the phone visible. Leads to that action and triggers that action automatically without you having to make a conscious choice. Your behavior is happening without you deciding. You literally may find yourself being like, why am I holding my phone right now? I've, I didn't even realize that I did that, didn't even realize I was doing this. Because the habit is not located in you. The habit is now located in the environment.

• 36:10Jemma Sbeg?

  There is a cue and there is a response. Boredom, phone in environment, I'm, I've done this before, response. This was studied in a 2022 paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. And this relationship between environment and behavior was examined in the context of people trying to study. People trying to learn how to study well. Participants were asked to repeatedly perform specific behaviors such as studying at a particular time or completing a routine task in consistent settings.

• 36:49Jemma Sbeg?

  Other participants were given these instructions and basically they were just said, like they were just told. We want you to study more, do it however you wish. So one group was given an instruction on how to study. Other people were just said, like they just told them study. Over time, the researchers tracked how automatic these behaviors between these two groups became. And whether participants followed through on their goal or ambition to study more. Participants whose goal was created in context. So they weren't just asked to study more, but they were asked to study more at a certain time, in a certain environment, following a certain cue. They just performed so much better. Repeating behavior in a stable context was associated with greater discipline and greater automaticity.

• 37:34Jemma Sbeg?

  So how easy and automatic it was to perform a habit. The degree of friction between you and doing something. In other words, the brain begins to link the environment with the action so strongly that you, like less conscious effort is required to actually initiate it. The behavior and the environment replaces your need for willpower. If you want to read before bed, placing the book on the pillow might sound simple, that creates that environmental cue. If you want to stop opening an app, removing it from your home screen adds another level of friction. That is changing your environment.

• 38:13Jemma Sbeg?

  If you want to work out more consistently, working out at the same time, in the same way. Like that is important, or if you want to just work more consistently, like career wise or homework wise or whatever. Leaving an environment when you are getting distracted, again, establishes this network that this is our environment where we focus. And it makes it more automatically. Now, this doesn't make the behavior inevitable. You could still go and download that app, you could still not work hard. However.

• 38:49Jemma Sbeg?

  It probably will. And it also points to the fact that, yes, we can be critical of how our environment promotes good habits. It can also easily trigger bad habits. Think about how easy it is to develop a habit of like constantly ordering Uber Eats. It might start because like you've had a long week, you genuinely genuinely need it. You get home late, there's nothing in the fridge, you're exhausted, so you order dinner. But then again, like you do it a couple nights later and then you do it next week. And then every time you sit on your couch, you're like, I should just order Uber Eats. Eventually, a whole collection of environmental cues becomes associated with ordering food.

• 39:31Jemma Sbeg?

  The empty fridge, getting home late, feeling tired, sitting on the couch, seeing the Uber Eats app on your phone. After enough repetition, you don't necessarily wait until you've consciously decided that you want takeaway. Your routine is set around ordering food. The friction of doing something else, so making your own food, you know, meal prepping, becomes too difficult because you are resisting both your own desire and your environment. And that is what the behavior has been formed in. This exact experience has a name in psychology, it's called response competition.

• 40:16Jemma Sbeg?

  When a certain response, like ordering Uber Eats, becomes solidified, it becomes harder and harder to target the response itself. You have to target what's going on around it. And I feel so compelled to say this because this is why people feel so trapped by a lifestyle and by choices. They consciously don't actually want, they don't want that life, they don't want that choice. Your choice to drink on nights you don't want to, your choice to stay home rather than go to the gym, your choice. Well, I'm saying choice, but your inability to stick to a routine. Like, that's, that's not you, that's your environment. Replace, like, replace those with any of your problem behaviors.

• 41:02Jemma Sbeg?

  Your context is probably underneath your repetitive failures because there is a very well rehearsed relationship between everything you're exposed to and why you are performing a certain way. By changing even the smallest thing in that kind of environment or in that chain of reactions, you loosen those same patterns. So if you go to the grocery store before you get home, you have to stop on the way home, you will change the behavior. If you remove alcohol from your home, you will change the behavior. If you remove Uber Eats from your phone or from your digital environment, you reprogram the behavior through a contextual link. It's called a circuit breaker. It's this one thing that can kind of push you out of the circle you're going around in.

• 41:46Jemma Sbeg?

  So we're going to take one more short break here, but when we return, I really want to get to the meat of this psychology sandwich. I've given you some like brief ways that you can reprogram your environment. I want to just give you a few more and just lay out kind of everything, lay it all bare. Let's talk about it right after this short break.

• 42:12Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 42:50Jemma Sbeg?

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors,

• 43:34Jemma Sbeg?

  to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:49Jemma Sbeg?

  Growth isn't linear, there's no magic timeline or secret template. And no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University. Because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to ninety credits. And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor. And here's the best part, there's no set class times, so school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit SNHU.edu/psych. That's SNHU.edu/psych. Something that really frustrates me is when wellness brands greenwash their products

• 44:33Jemma Sbeg?

  to make them seem more clean or better for the environment when they are actually not. When you look into it, they are kind of just like the rest of them. Nature Sunshine, however, doesn't just talk about the planet. They do something about it. They sustainably source ingredients, they craft their supplements with one hundred percent solar powered manufacturing and their products are incredible. I don't drink coffee and so Nature Sunshine Brain Edge gives me that kick I sometimes need with potent ingredients, combining yerba mate with nootropics, adaptogens, botanicals to support mental clarity and focus. And you already know how much I love their marine glow and have for years. It is the only collagen that combines skin supporting marine collagen

• 45:17Jemma Sbeg?

  with the sun and blue light protection of luton to make your skin feel and look glowy and protected. Plus, I just really like that they have nature at the core of everything that they do. Try Nature's Sunshine and experience the difference with supplements that are better for you and the planet. Go to naturessunshine.com today and use the code PSYCH for twenty percent off your first order plus free shipping. That's code PSYCH for twenty percent off your first order at naturessunshine.com. I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop.

• 45:58Jemma Sbeg?

  Because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns. So I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. I can totally understand if our chat today has maybe left you a little bit like despondent, bummed out.

• 46:41Jemma Sbeg?

  I'm sorry if that's if I've, yeah, I'm sorry if I've disappointed you with this like deterministic, nothing is in your control, your destiny is sealed discussion. I should be very clear here, just because there are elements of our environment which feel predestined, which we didn't get a say in, doesn't mean that we are bound forevermore by our past or by our context. This is a two way street. And I think this is one of the most useful things we can take from all the research included in today's episode. And that is that, yes, our environment shapes our behavior. But by knowing that, we have a chance to manipulate our environment back

• 47:23Jemma Sbeg?

  and manipulate our environment in our favor and for our benefit. Because we know, you know, I now know, it's the hidden kind of secret. It's the hidden behavioral advantage. The behavior you want to change, the one that we All have in like the back of our minds. There's a behavior you don't like that you wanna change. Whether it's to do with love or health or money or effort. You know, the behavior that like we really don't wanna tell anyone about yet until you kind of have it a little bit under control. There is a formula for noticing and changing it and noticing and changing the role of environment that you now know.

• 48:07Jemma Sbeg?

  The first thing to do if you wanna reprogram your environment is to notice the cue. Before trying to change the behavior, identify what reliably comes before it in your surroundings. Where are you? What time is it? Who are you with? What can you see? What are you feeling? Is it boredom, frustration, sadness? You are looking for the environmental trigger that tells your brain, when we see this, when we feel this, this is what we normally do next. So you need to remove or reprogram that cue. If your environment is triggering a behavior you don't want, make the cue harder to encounter. Delete the app, don't keep cigarettes in the house, put your phone in another room.

• 48:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Stop studying somewhere where you are distracted. Stop going out with all your friends at night when you know that's gonna make you wanna drink. This is basically like removing the button that your brain has reliably learnt to push to bring about a certain feeling. If the button isn't there, it has to go searching for the next available button. And this is when we do the final thing, which is replace, replace the button, replace the cue. Deliberately, like, create environmental cues for yourself for the behavior that you wanna do. Like I said, I feel like, like, they feel so basic, but they really do work. Like, keep healthy food visible.

• 49:35Jemma Sbeg?

  Open your document on your laptop before you go to sleep, so it's right there. Like, leave your gym clothes out. They're so boring and basic because they work. Like, put obstacles in your way that are obstacles you want to encounter more because they are habits you wanna build. This is one of the simplest rules, one of the simplest truths about human psychology. I think that there is, like, in the world, we like to do whatever is easiest. So it's like one of the most basic, simple, like, simple rules of human psychology. We have a real deep aversion to anything that causes friction. So remove that friction for the desired behavior, increase it for the undesired behavior.

• 50:16Jemma Sbeg?

  The desired behavior flows better and comes to you smoother and comes to you easier. I also think there's a really important collective lesson here as well, just to like make this even bigger than you and I. If environment shapes behavior, we also have to think about that in our communities. Like designing schools, workplaces, neighborhoods. To be effective for people to change their behavior is a psychological intervention on a broad scale. Like, a student in a noisy, overcrowded classroom is not going to perform as well as a student in a quiet, well-resourced classroom. And yet, we judge one student for failing behind and we judge them for not doing well and we praise the other for their performance and we don't account for that context.

• 50:59Jemma Sbeg?

  And I think that creates a lot of blame in our society. You know, a person who has grown up in poverty and around financial scarcity and stress isn't going to make the same financial decisions as someone who has never seen money as something to fear. Or something that's gonna be taken away, you know, who has had an education on investing and saving and budgets. It's why I have such an issue, a personal issue with the term like self-made in business and entrepreneurship, because I think fifty percent of the time that you see one of those like cool success stories of like, I'm self-made. Then you like go on Wikipedia and like their dad or mom's name is in blue. Like, they have a network.

• 51:42Jemma Sbeg?

  And not just that, they have social security and safety and connections that have set somebody up before they even touched a business plan, before they even had a business idea. We need to be very cautious about always blaming the person before we examine the context and always, I'm gonna say blaming ourselves before we understand the context in which we have started to perform certain behaviors. How many of the things you blame yourself for and you see as personal failings are derived from a poorly structured environment? Or are derived from the absence of a, of a good environment or an absence of examples and seeing and knowing better?

• 52:24Jemma Sbeg?

  Now, like you do know and you can go forth with that knowledge about your environment. And I think you'll see so much more progress towards your goals and ambitions occurring and you'll see the appearance of the love you seek and you will feel a sense of calm and happiness because you have targeted the right thing. You haven't just targeted your own personal discipline and you haven't just turned up the shame, hoping that's gonna change something that you're not even focused on, which is what the frick is going on around me? That is funneling me into these choices. So have some grace towards your former self. Have these discussions with people. It is the environment that has shaped who we are and why we act the way we act.

• 53:09Jemma Sbeg?

  We also have the opportunity to reprogram that. So I wanna do a little summary of what we've spoken about in this episode. I know it was quite ranty, so I'm sorry. I've just been having this chat with so many of my friends. I felt like it was time to just like make a deep dive psychology episode on it. Your environment shapes your nervous system, shapes your, the love you seek, shapes what you believe is possible, shapes your habits. Reprogram that environment, reverse engineer it and create cultivate environments that allow you to perform at your best and you will. We can do that by noticing context, noticing cues, removing certain cues, reinforcing better ones and always, always, always remembering

• 53:53Jemma Sbeg?

  what your environment makes it easy for you to do is about ninety percent of the time what you will end up doing. Full stop. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope it has given you something to chew on. Thank you to our researcher Libby for helping with, with this one and for her research. Reminder, you can watch this episode and all other recent episodes on Netflix. You can follow us on Instagram, send me a DM if this episode resonated with you. And you can comment down below if you are on Spotify. And if you are, thank you for making it this far. Comment a little strong arm emoji down below if you have listened to the end. Great discipline.

• 54:35Jemma Sbeg?

  Maybe you're listening in the car and that, by which I should say, great environment, great environmental cue. Can't turn off a podcast if you're driving. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I had fun making it and I had fun recording it. So until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

• 54:56Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 55:33Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information-driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional

• 56:18Jemma Sbeg?

  and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop. Hi, this is Gemma Speck. Taking care of yourself doesn't have to mean completely changing your routine. Naturewise Vitamin D three is an easy way to support immune, bone and muscle health every single day. And because quality matters, Naturewise has one of the first NSF certified Vitamin D three currently on the market.

• 57:00Jemma Sbeg?

  Plus, it's non-GMO, gluten-free and third-party tested. Visit naturewise.com to explore their Vitamin D three options and find the one that's right for you. naturewise.com. You know that feeling when your skin just needs a tall drink of water? That's what Clinique Moisture Surge One Hundred Hour Moisturizer is for. Moisture Surge One Hundred Hour Moisturizer absorbs instantly and hydrates for a hundred hours for plump, glowing skin. That's right, a hundred hours. It is a lightweight, oil-free gel cream, safe for sensitive skin, it's allergy-tested and fragrance-free.

• 57:40Jemma Sbeg?

  I use this all the time. It makes my skin feel so fresh and plump and glowy. Even under makeup, I still see an amazing difference. It never leaves my skin oily or tacky. Try Clinique Moisture Surge One Hundred Hour today at clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge. Growth isn't linear. There's no magic timeline or secret template. And no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University. Because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to ninety credits. And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor.

• 58:25Jemma Sbeg?

  And here's the best part, there's no set class times, so school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit snhu.edu/psych. That's snhu.edu/psych.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.