Podcast

In today’s episode, Dr. Lisle & Howk discuss the following questions:

1. Jordan Peterson mentioned briefly in a video that increasing oxytocin can increase agreeableness. He also gives advice that agreeable people can become more disagreeable by “waking the circuit up” if it’s laying dormant in you. He thinks we have a wide range of genetic propensities, some that are switched on and it’s possible to switch other propensities on. Is there evidence to support either of these theories?

2. Could the doctors talk about “social climbing”? I have family members who spend much of their free time and resources trying to networking with higher status people. They join different country clubs, go to fancy fundraisers, and will cancel plans with people they have known for years if an opportunity with a fancier new acquaintance arises. They often bring up income and status in conversation, which I find a bit off putting. I can’t decide if this is pseudo esteem seeking, personality cancer, or a legitimate way to make real connections that matter for extroverts. Can this pursuit lead to meaningful relationships?

In today’s episode, Dr. Lisle and Dr. Howk discuss the following listener questions:

1. How do you square the notion that there is “no 1 mate” (or job, friend etc) with the jealousy/abuse/ stalking (and worse) that happens in relationships. What type of general education on this concept could be offered to attempt to mitigate such costly stone age behavior.  Related, can u talk about the treatment of battered women in your practice, how they do or don’t escape?  Buss claims one contributing cause of such behavior is patriarchal culture and institutionalized male dominance.  Any truth to that or is this just genetic like everything else?
2. I have a frenemy (that is, a friend who was really an enemy) who I’ve long lost touch with, but whom I still irresistibly stalk on social media. She was very competitive with me in college, although I drastically outperformed her at the time (I was the dux and she was upper-middling). Nevertheless, she went on to similar feats as me, getting her PhD from Yale (again, the same as me). I see her subtweeting things about me occasionally and I wonder why, after not being friends for so long, we both harbour a malevolent obsession about each other? What is the evolutionary good of this? Neither of us stands to gain anything from this and we’ve both achieved what we wanted, showing that it wasn’t the zero-sum game we might’ve thought during our early college years. She has become a tenure-track professor while I started a very successful company and am now a millionaire. Why do we ruminate so much about enemies/frenemies, and how can be finally move on from them?
3. I was wondering what over population does to a society. I understand nothing is changing genetically but was curious how lived experiences differ between populated densely packed cities and villages/ towns. Is one better than the other for mental health?