After watching this your brain will not be the same Jordan Peterson

if you ask a disagreeable person what

what he wants say or she wants they’ll

tell you right away they know it’s like

this is what i want and this is how i’m

going to get it

but agreeable people especially if

they’re really agreeable are so

agreeable that they often don’t even

know what they want

because they’re so accustomed to living

for other people

and to finding out what other people

want and to trying to make them

comfortable and so forth that it’s

harder

for them to find a sense of their own

desires as they move through life

and that’s not look there’s situations

where that’s advantageous but it’s

certainly not advantageous

if you’re going to try to forge yourself

a career

that just doesn’t work at all and so

even though on average men and women

don’t

exist don’t aren’t that much different

in terms of their levels of

agreeableness by the group if you go out

and you look at the extremes they’re

very different

so all of the most agreeable people are

women and all of the most

disagreeable people are men and the

thing is the extremes are often what

matter

rather than what’s in the middle and so

one of the ways that’s reflected in

society by the way is

there’s way more men in prison and the

best

personality predictor of being

imprisoned is to be low in agreeableness

it makes you callous now you may think

well what’s the opposite of compassion

and politeness and the answer to that is

i think it’s best sort of conceptualized

as a as a trading game

so let’s say that we’re going to play

repeated trading games

and if you’re very agreeable then you’re

going to bargain harder on my behalf

than you’re going to bargain on your own

behalf

whereas if you’re very disagreeable

you’re going to do the reverse you’re

going to think

i’m in this trading game for me and

you’re going to take care of your own

interests where an agreeable person is

going to say no no

at best this is at worst this has to be

50 50 but

i’d like to help you every way i can one

of the things you have to be careful of

if you’re agreeable

is not to be exploited because you’ll

line up to be exploited

and i think the reason for that is

because you’re wired to be exploited by

infants

and so that just doesn’t work so well in

that actual world and

one of the things one of the things that

happens very often in psychotherapy you

know people come to psychotherapy for

multiple reasons

but one of them is they often come

because they’re too agreeable and so

what they get is

so-called assertiveness training

although it’s not exactly assertiveness

that’s being trained

what it is is the ability to learn how

to negotiate on your own behalf

and one of the things i tell agreeable

people especially if they’re

conscientious is

say what you think tell the truth about

what you think there’s going to be

things you think that you think are

nasty and harsh

and they probably are nasty and harsh

but they’re also probably true

and you need to bring those up to the

forefront and deliver the message and

it’s not

straightforward at all because agreeable

people do not like

conflict not at all they smooth the

water

you know and you can see you can see why

that is in accordance with the

hypothesis that i’ve been putting

forward

you don’t want conflict around infants

it’s too damn dangerous you don’t want

fights to break out you don’t want

anything to disturb the

the relative peace you know and if

you’re also more prone to being hurt

physically and perhaps emotionally you

also may be loath to engage in the kind

of high intensity conflict that will

solve

problems in the short term because a lot

of conflict

it takes a lot of conflict to solve

problems in the short term and

you know if that can spiral up to where

it’s dangerous which it can if it gets

uncontrolled

it might be safer in the short term to

keep

the water smooth and to not delve into

those situations where conflict emerges

the problem with that is it’s not a very

good medium to long-term strategy

right because lots of times there are

things you have to talk about

because they’re not going to go away and

the advantage

to having a well-socialized disagreeable

person is that they really don’t let

much get in their way

so if you can get a kid who’s

disagreeable socialized that person can

be quite

quite the creature you know because

they’re very they’re very

forward moving in their nature and very

difficult to stop

but if you don’t get them successfully

domesticated

tamed roughly speaking by the time

they’re

four their peers reject them

and that’s a big problem because your

job as a parent is to make your child

socially

desirable by the age of four like you

gotta you you wanna burn that into your

brain

because people don’t know that that’s

your job and here’s here’s why

you think it’s it’s easy if you think

about it carefully so you imagine

you’ve got a you’ve got a three-year-old

child so sort of halfway through that

initial period of socialization

and you take that child out in public

okay what do you want for the child

who cares about you what do you want

from the child for the child

you want the child to be able to

interact with other children

and adults so that the children are

welcoming and smile and want to play

with him or her

and so the adults are happy to see the

child and treat him or her properly

and if your child’s a horrible little

monster because you’re afraid of

disciplining them or you don’t know how

to do that properly

then what they’re going to do is they’re

going to experience nothing but

rejection from other children

and false smiles from other parents and

adults

and that’s so then you’re throwing the

child out there into a world where every

single face that they see

is either hostile or lying and that’s

not something that’s going to be

particularly conducive to the mental

health or the well-being of your child

your child can learn a couple simple

rules of behavior

like don’t interrupt adults when they’re

talking too much and pay attention and

try not to hit the other kids over the

head with the truck any more than is

absolutely necessary

then and you know and share and play

properly then

when they meet other kids the kids are

going to try out a few little play

routines on them and that’s going to go

well and then they’re going to go off

and socialize each other for the rest of

their lives because that’s what happens

is that from four years old onwards

the primary socialization with children

takes place among other children

and so if the kids don’t get in on that

early they don’t

move into that developmental spiral

upwards and they’re left behind

and you can imagine how terrible that is

because a four-year-old will not play

with another four-year-old

who’s two but a five-year-old

certainly will not play with a

five-year-old who’s two right because

the gap is just starting to get

unbelievably large

and so the kids start out behind and

then the peers leave them behind

and then those kids are alienated and

outside the peer group for the rest of

their life

those are the ones that grow up to be

long-term anti-social

right they’re already aggressive it

doesn’t dip down

now what happens to normal boys roughly

speaking

imagine the aggressive two-year-old

types they get socialized

so their level of aggression goes down

and then they hit puberty and

testosterone kicks in and bang

levels of aggression go back up and so

that’s why males are criminals between

the ages roughly of 16 and about 25

so and it matches the creativity curve

by the way it’s so cool if you look at

the spike of creativity among men 16 to

25

and it starts to go down criminality

matches that absolutely perfectly

so that’s quite cool so and part of so

the testosterone levels raise the

average level of aggression among men

it’s more dominance than aggression

actually and testosterone is by no means

all bad

and then it starts to decrease at about

age 25 or 26 which is usually when men

stop staying up late at night stop

drinking as much

develop a full-time career and take on

the burdens and responsibilities and

opportunities that are associated with a

long-term partner and family

it’s really useful to investigate the

viewpoints of people who have opposing

views to yours

because they’ll tell you things not only

will they tell you things you don’t know

they’ll also tell you how to see the

world in ways that you don’t see it

and they’ll also have skills that you

don’t have that you could develop

so for example if you’re an introverted

person it’s very useful to watch an

extroverted person because the

extroverted person has ways of being in

the social world that aren’t natural to

you

that you can use is to improve your tool

kit and if you’re disagreeable one of

the best things to do with disagreeable

people

especially if that’s alienating them

from other people for example because it

can

you know people treat you like you’re a

selfish arrogant son of a maybe that’s

because you are

it’s like okay so what do you do about

that one of the one of the

most uh promising

treatments let’s say for that is get the

person to do something for someone else

once a day

just as a practice and learn how to do

it maybe you can wake the circuit up you

know if you think that it’s lying

dormant in you which is probably right

you know i think we have a very wide

range of propensities within us

some are switched on genetic propensity

some are switched on but

i think that if you put yourself in the

right situation or walk yourself through

the right exercises you can switch some

of these other things on as well

but it takes work and and dedication and

discipline i would say generally

speaking if you want to adapt yourself

properly to life you should find a niche

in the environment that corresponds with

your temperament

right you shouldn’t work at cross

purposes to your temperament because

it’s just too damn difficult

but having done that then you should

work on

developing the the skills and viewpoints

that

exist in the space opposite to your

personality because that’s where you’re

fundamentally underdeveloped

that way i think you can extend out your

temperamental capability

across a wider range and to me that’s

roughly equivalent as bringing a richer

toolkit to each situation

you know so if you’re hyper extroverted

you should probably learn to shut up at

parties now and then

and listen just to see what’s going on

to see if you can manage it

and if you’re introverted well then you

should learn how to speak in public

and to and to learn how to go to parties

without hiding in the corner and

saying nothing to anyone you know and if

you’re agreeable then you need to learn

how to be disagreeable so people can’t

push you around

and if you’re disagreeable you learn you

need to learn how to be agreeable so

that you’re not an evil son

so and the same thing applies even in

the conscientious domain it’s like if

you’re too conscientious

you need to learn to relax and let go

a little bit and if you’re unconscious

it’s time like

get out the google calendar man and

start scheduling your day right and beat

yourself on the back of the head with a

stick until you’re disciplined enough so

that you can actually stick to something

for some length of time

and not living in absolute squalor which

is something that would characterize

someone who’s very disorderly

for example because they just they don’t

notice

it doesn’t bother them disorder it’s

like

maybe they can see it but it doesn’t

have any emotional valence and so it

doesn’t have any motivational

significance

you know so the other thing you might

want to think about too if you’re

choosing a partner is

try not to choose someone who’s too

distant from you

on the temperamental variables because

you’re going to have a hard time

bridging the gap

you know it’s hard for an introverted

person and an extroverted person to

coexist

and it’s really hard for an orderly

person and a disorderly person to

coexist because they will drive each

other

nuts why don’t you pick up why are you

so obsessed by it

that’s the basic argument you know so so

it’s useful to know about your

temperament so that you can negotiate

the space with your partner

as well and i don’t think you should try

to find someone who’s exactly the same

as you

because then you don’t have the benefits

of the alternative viewpoint

but you got to watch it because you may

hit irreconcilable differences of

various sorts and

i’ve seen that most particularly among

couples who are

high and low in openness that’s a rough

one

and also high and low in

conscientiousness that’s another rough

one because they just cannot

see how the other person sees the world

at all

you