You're not the boss of me!'

This is the title of the most recent Hidden Brain podcast that I've been stewing over ever since I listened to it yesterday morning. I didn't write about it yesterday because I thought some distance from it might tone down my reaction a bit. Reasonable is always better than highly irritated and angry. But time has not softened my response. If anything, it has increased it. I guess I need to write out my response to get it out of my head. 

A better working title for this particular episode would have been, "Boys will be boys... or misusing science to excuse bad behavior." If you haven't listened to the episode, it was an interview with a scientist who studies why humans don't like being told what to do and how this explains people's behaviors. 

I'm not objecting to the idea that Americans don't like to be told what to do. That's hardly surprising. Anyone who watched people's reactions to being told to wear facemasks during Covid knows exactly how telling some people what to do will back fire. So I don't have a problem with the results of the studies, my concern is over the conclusions the guest made. Plus, the whole interview was incredibly cringe-y because of the guest's complete lack of self-awareness. 

But before I address the cringe-y bit, I wish I could have asked a question. Of these studies, where were they done? In just the US? Were different cultures included? My guess is not. So if these studies were done solely in the US, what they tell us is much more about American traits and not really much else. 

Ultimately, what was being discussed were traits not states. The guest even said as much. This means that trait behavior can be changed; it is not set in stone. Yet, then we get to listen to various stories about how the guest behaved boorishly because he doesn't like to be told what to do. The first instance was an episode of road rage when he was in college. While not great, I'll give him a pass. And when I was listening, I did think that we would hear stories about how he had changed with self-awareness about this trait of his and how he learned to manage it as an adult. 

Nope.

Instead we get to hear about another road rage incident while he had his child in the car. And about how he doesn't like leash laws so goes about taking his dog off leash as much as possible. All because he doesn't like people telling him what to do. He goes on to justify his behavior because studies have shown that when people are told to do something they don't want to do, they have the tendency to react in an outsized way in the other direction. 

I'm afraid the scientist has mistaken description for justification. In one moment of pushback, the host tried to ask if this behavior wasn't a result of privilege, but the guest remained clueless and couldn't see that whole groups of people don't have the luxury of having a temper tantrum when they don't get their own way. 

After hearing his stories, and stories of poor behavior from both his father and his son, I really wished someone would have asked him if anyone has correlated the results of his previous studies with the results from an  attachment interview. I think this might be illuminating.

The guest notices that his son has outsized responses to negligible events and requests. I can tell you first hand that this is a hallmark of a brain that does not feel safe. What he cannot seem to acknowledge is how extremely erratic his own behavior is. Probably just as disturbing was the laughter over his egregious behavior. With the two men... host and guest..  laughing together over how funny it was that he was such a jerk sometimes. Well add some beer and it could have been a frat party. (I'll add here that this phenomenon tends to be highly gender specific, the guest did acknowledge that.) Forgive me if I didn't find any of it amusing.

But chilling? Yes, very much so. Because here is where this ultimately ends up, this little boys club of not calling out bad behavior and justifying it to make it sound as though it's no big deal: If a man has trouble hearing that he can't do something and sees it as just how he is (that is, he couldn't help having an outsized reaction) then is it really surprising that most women would really ratter take their chances with a bear? No clearly doesn't mean anything to a man with this mindset. 

And to the host, whom I usually enjoy listening to, shame on you for not having the guts to call your guest on this. Laughing and playing along, whether you felt comfortable doing so or not, just allows thinking like this to continue. Bad science. Bad behavior.