Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #985 Responding to Gendered Violence With Richard Ryan
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
- 0:05Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
- 0:09Speaker 2: once answers now. Richard Ryan is a professor at the
- 0:12Speaker 2: Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Ustralian Catholic
- 0:15Speaker 2: University and a research professor at the University of Rochester.
- 0:19Speaker 2: He's been a clinical psychologist for the well, I'm not
- 0:22Speaker 2: going to say how many years has been, but we'll
- 0:23Speaker 2: just say since the nineteen seventies, the author of more
- 0:27Speaker 2: publications than just about anybody on the planet. In fact,
- 0:29Speaker 2: my understanding, Professor Ryan, is that you are the most
- 0:32Speaker 2: cited psychology scholar on the planet right now. Is that correct?
- 0:38Speaker 1: The living I guess yeah, the most sarted living at
- 0:41Speaker 1: that as long as I'm alive, justin I think that's
- 0:43Speaker 1: probably true.
- 0:43Speaker 2: You're a big deal, is what I'm trying to say.
- 0:45Speaker 2: There's very few people on the planet who know what
- 0:47Speaker 2: you know, and in fact probably nobody, and it's just
- 0:50Speaker 2: such an honor, such an honor to be able to
- 0:52Speaker 2: spend some time with you. Thank you. Where does this
- 0:54Speaker 2: conversation find you right now?
- 0:56Speaker 1: I'm in Sydney. I'm in my neighbor's apartment because my
- 1:00Speaker 1: if he's doing yoga, and.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Well, you have a wonderful wife and great neighbors. That's great.
- 1:07Speaker 2: The reason I wanted to talk to you is because
- 1:08Speaker 2: the theory of motivation and well being that you have
- 1:11Speaker 2: developed since the nineteen seventies with your collaborator, Professor ed DC,
- 1:16Speaker 2: is called self determination theory, and it's really the very
- 1:18Speaker 2: foundation of everything that I teach. There's pretty much nothing
- 1:22Speaker 2: that I talk about that doesn't trace its way back
- 1:24Speaker 2: to self determination theory. And people often say, where do
- 1:28Speaker 2: these ideas come from? What's this really all about? This is,
- 1:31Speaker 2: I guess at the very heart of the stuff that
- 1:34Speaker 2: I teach and the stuff that I think makes the
- 1:35Speaker 2: biggest difference in families. So what I thought i'd do
- 1:39Speaker 2: today in this conversation is just ask you a bunch
- 1:42Speaker 2: of questions and get you to talk us through it
- 1:45Speaker 2: from a parenting point of view, because I mean, you're
- 1:48Speaker 2: you're the guy. You're the guy that I learned from,
- 1:49Speaker 2: and I would love to introduce other people to you.
- 1:53Speaker 2: I want to start by talking about something that's been
- 1:55Speaker 2: extremely topical in Australia in recent times, and that's the
- 2:00Speaker 2: issue of gendered violence. We've got we've got a tremendous
- 2:05Speaker 2: amount of noise rightly being made about men and boys
- 2:09Speaker 2: behaving extremely badly, hurting, not just hurting, destroying and even
- 2:16Speaker 2: killing women specifically. But men don't just do that to women,
- 2:21Speaker 2: They do it to one another, and they also do
- 2:23Speaker 2: it to themselves. We really have a massive problem when
- 2:26Speaker 2: it comes to men and violence, men and harm. Are
- 2:31Speaker 2: there any things that you think parents need to know
- 2:33Speaker 2: so that they can reduce the likelihood that their children
- 2:35Speaker 2: are going to grow up and be disrespectful, be hurtful,
- 2:38Speaker 2: perform these denigrading acts on those around them.
- 2:41Speaker 1: First of wise, I just want to express my sadness
- 2:43Speaker 1: and my sympathies for everybody who's been a victim of
- 2:46Speaker 1: this violence. You know, here in Sydney, I think everybody's
- 2:49Speaker 1: still processing what happened at Bondai Junction and the murders
- 2:53Speaker 1: that happened there. And of course we've seen this not
- 2:56Speaker 1: just in Australia, but in many countries around the world.
- 2:59Speaker 1: There's a tremendous amount of violence against women and it's
- 3:01Speaker 1: a problem that it definitely needs addressing. When you look
- 3:04Speaker 1: at perpetrators of violence, you know, usually they have a
- 3:08Speaker 1: particular kind of background where they've experienced a lot of frustration,
- 3:11Speaker 1: a lot of rejection, a lot of themselves unhappiness in life.
- 3:16Speaker 1: This doesn't come from nowhere. What our research shows is
- 3:20Speaker 1: that aggression is usually a result of chronic kind of
- 3:23Speaker 1: frustration of basic psychological needs and so on the other
- 3:26Speaker 1: side of it, the people who don't commit violence are
- 3:28Speaker 1: people who've grown up in loving families, who felt the
- 3:31Speaker 1: support of other people, who have some place to go
- 3:34Speaker 1: when they are troubled with what's going on. So you know,
- 3:38Speaker 1: aggression is really the result of a lot of social
- 3:42Speaker 1: harms that have been done to people. For the most part.
- 3:44Speaker 1: I mean there are cases, of course, of certain kinds
- 3:48Speaker 1: of disorders that might result in aggression that we can
- 3:52Speaker 1: talk about separately from that. But in terms of a
- 3:54Speaker 1: parenting perspective, aggressive violent people don't come typically from loving
- 4:00Speaker 1: homes where they've had a lot of support from their parents.
- 4:03Speaker 2: So you've just used a couple of terms that I
- 4:04Speaker 2: think are really important to describe. And I talk about
- 4:07Speaker 2: this a lot, so long time listeners will be familiar
- 4:09Speaker 2: with those terms, but I'd love to get it in
- 4:11Speaker 2: your words. You mentioned that those who come from loving
- 4:13Speaker 2: homes are raised in an environment where their basic psychological
- 4:17Speaker 2: needs are supported, and you've highlighted that those who do
- 4:20Speaker 2: harm are more likely to come from homes where those
- 4:23Speaker 2: basic psychological needs have not been supported. Could you describe
- 4:26Speaker 2: what you mean by basic psychological needs and also maybe
- 4:30Speaker 2: talk about the difference between needs support and need frustration.
- 4:34Speaker 1: Sure you know, in self termination theory, we argue that
- 4:38Speaker 1: across humanity, we all have some basic psychological needs in
- 4:41Speaker 1: the same way we have some basic physical needs, and
- 4:44Speaker 1: those needs include a need for a relatedness to feel
- 4:46Speaker 1: like we're connected and we belong in our social groups
- 4:51Speaker 1: that were loved and cared for, and that we're able
- 4:54Speaker 1: to care for others. So that's really the basic need
- 4:56Speaker 1: for relatedness. A need for confidence, which is a sense
- 5:00Speaker 1: in which you can feel mastery over the things that
- 5:02Speaker 1: are important in your life and not feel overly evaluated, criticized,
- 5:06Speaker 1: put down, or otherwise treated as a failure. So the
- 5:10Speaker 1: need for competence is really that sense of mastery that
- 5:14Speaker 1: everybody needs. And the need for autonomy, which is pretty
- 5:17Speaker 1: central to our theorizing, is the need to feel volational
- 5:20Speaker 1: in what you're doing, willing to do what you're doing.
- 5:23Speaker 1: And people who have autonomy are able to pursue things
- 5:26Speaker 1: that interest them and feel intrinsic motivation for many of
- 5:29Speaker 1: the activities they're engaged in. But also even when they're
- 5:33Speaker 1: not intrinsically motivated or enjoying activities, that they value what
- 5:36Speaker 1: they're doing, so they've internalized a set of values that
- 5:39Speaker 1: they really truly embrace and can pursue them. And the
- 5:43Speaker 1: opposite of autonomy is heateronomy, feeling controlled, pushed around, pressured,
- 5:48Speaker 1: otherwise not having volition over what you're doing. So when
- 5:52Speaker 1: people can experience autonomy, competence and relatedness, they feel whole
- 5:58Speaker 1: and well and then they have the energy to be
- 6:00Speaker 1: constructive in life. But when they feel like they're autonomy
- 6:03Speaker 1: is thwarted, when they feel overly controlled, overly micromanaged, when
- 6:10Speaker 1: they feel rejected so that they like relatedness, or when
- 6:13Speaker 1: they feel really put down and overly evaluated in their
- 6:16Speaker 1: competence as crushed. And these are the things that really
- 6:18Speaker 1: hurt mental health.
- 6:19Speaker 2: If I parents, and I'm hearing this conversation, and I
- 6:22Speaker 2: don't want to make sure that my son grows up
- 6:26Speaker 2: to have a real sense that the support is at home.
- 6:31Speaker 2: What are the things that I'm doing wrong? What are
- 6:33Speaker 2: the things that you see most that parents are with
- 6:37Speaker 2: the very gest of intentions actually overstepping and undermining rather
- 6:41Speaker 2: than supporting those basic psychological needs.
- 6:44Speaker 1: I'm not taking pinpoint a particular thing. What I would
- 6:47Speaker 1: say is, you know, you want to have a listening
- 6:49Speaker 1: ear for your children. You want to know what's going
- 6:51Speaker 1: on in their lives. You want to be in a
- 6:53Speaker 1: way that's not a valuative and judgmental, but really open
- 6:56Speaker 1: to trying to understand their experiences and then be able
- 6:59Speaker 1: to talk those through. You know, one of the things
- 7:02Speaker 1: I would want my child to be able to do
- 7:03Speaker 1: is to come home and talk to me about the
- 7:05Speaker 1: pressure they feel under from peers or the fears that
- 7:07Speaker 1: they have about, you know, being rejected by others. Not
- 7:11Speaker 1: so that I can solve that problem for them, but
- 7:13Speaker 1: they can feel like somebody understands what's going on for them.
- 7:16Speaker 1: So I think the first and most important thing, especially
- 7:19Speaker 1: in the kind of ages we're talking about, is a
- 7:22Speaker 1: listening ear is a sympathetic, empathic parent who's not trying
- 7:26Speaker 1: to control behavior as much as understand it and help
- 7:30Speaker 1: guide their kids in the right directions. And when I
- 7:34Speaker 1: say guidance, I mean that means, you know, providing some rationale,
- 7:37Speaker 1: providing some understanding and modeling the right values. You know. Again,
- 7:42Speaker 1: I think if you've seen young males who are victimizing women,
- 7:47Speaker 1: you know, I want to look to the home and
- 7:48Speaker 1: see what are they seen as modeling, What are they
- 7:51Speaker 1: exposed to themselves, what kind of treatment goes on in
- 7:54Speaker 1: the interpersonal relationships that have been right in front of
- 7:56Speaker 1: them their whole lives? Again, I think these things come.
- 7:59Speaker 3: From Richard Ryan is a professor at the Institute for
- 8:05Speaker 3: Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University and
- 8:08Speaker 3: a research professor at the University of Rochester.
- 8:12Speaker 2: Have you listened to Kyle and Jackie Ohe on the radio?
- 8:15Speaker 2: Colin Jackie o are Australia's number one radio duo. Their
- 8:21Speaker 2: content between six I am I already a friend. Between
- 8:26Speaker 2: six and seven o'clock in the morning, seven and eight
- 8:29Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning, they regularly have conversations that are
- 8:32Speaker 2: deeply sexualized. They'll talk about and forgive me for being
- 8:35Speaker 2: so crass, but they'll talk literally about every kind of
- 8:39Speaker 2: sexual behavior you can. Last week, our executive producer for
- 8:43Speaker 2: this podcast sent me some of their content and they
- 8:48Speaker 2: were talking about completely explicit interactions with strangers on dance
- 8:52Speaker 2: floors in nightclubs, really sexualized, really objectified kind of conversations.
- 8:59Speaker 2: They are the number one breakfast duo in the country
- 9:03Speaker 2: with more than a million daily listeners. I wonder if
- 9:07Speaker 2: you can talk to me about what kind of impact
- 9:11Speaker 2: that sort of content or explicit content online, or the
- 9:17Speaker 2: degraded and increasingly coarse content that appears even in movies
- 9:22Speaker 2: that are oriented towards children and young people. Even if
- 9:26Speaker 2: kids come from a family or a home where their
- 9:29Speaker 2: basic psychological needs are generally well supported, how does that
- 9:33Speaker 2: impact their beliefs and their subsequent behaviors. But to what
- 9:36Speaker 2: degree can we blame media, the super pier, the Internet, Netflix,
- 9:42Speaker 2: the podcasts that they're explicit social media. Can we be
- 9:47Speaker 2: pointing the finger in that direction or does it really
- 9:49Speaker 2: just come back to values taught at home and the
- 9:51Speaker 2: internalization of those values full stop? End of story.
- 9:56Speaker 1: Well, you know, you bring up a lot of issues
- 9:57Speaker 1: kind of simultaneous there. But the first I would agree
- 10:01Speaker 1: with is that our children today are exposed to a
- 10:05Speaker 1: kind of sexuality and explicitness that probably a lot of
- 10:10Speaker 1: us didn't have to experience.
- 10:11Speaker 2: When we were young.
- 10:12Speaker 1: We couldn't get access to the same kind of content
- 10:15Speaker 1: and it was prevented. And I do think that that
- 10:17Speaker 1: has harmful effects on children's development. They're saying things before
- 10:21Speaker 1: they have the cognitive, emotional, even physical capacities to really
- 10:26Speaker 1: understand what's going on there. So I do think that
- 10:29Speaker 1: that's harmful. And this makes it all the more important
- 10:33Speaker 1: that parents are in a place where they can talk
- 10:35Speaker 1: to their children about the issues that they're exposed to
- 10:38Speaker 1: and help give them a kind of guiding light through
- 10:42Speaker 1: the morass of information that comes their way. You know, first,
- 10:46Speaker 1: I think, you know, for my own children, for any parent,
- 10:50Speaker 1: I think we want to kind of minimize the exposure
- 10:52Speaker 1: to these things. And then that means sending some limits
- 10:54Speaker 1: around the use of media and what they get exposed to,
- 10:58Speaker 1: and doing that with the kind of compassion rationale for understanding.
- 11:01Speaker 1: Kids have curiosity, they want to go certain places, but
- 11:04Speaker 1: they're not ready for it yet, and that's some place
- 11:06Speaker 1: where I think parent limit setting comes into play. At
- 11:11Speaker 1: the same time that's exposure is going to happen because
- 11:13Speaker 1: of the pervasiveness that you speak of right there, which
- 11:16Speaker 1: is it's hard to get away from it. It's everywhere,
- 11:19Speaker 1: and that's something I think, you know, requires some parental
- 11:22Speaker 1: conversation and some you know, guidance with respect to and
- 11:25Speaker 1: particularly objectification of women. And this is something both for
- 11:30Speaker 1: girls and boys. You know, the being objectified, the playing
- 11:34Speaker 1: into the objectification for girls, the treatment and ideation around
- 11:40Speaker 1: girls and women for boys. These are things. These are
- 11:43Speaker 1: topics that I think are worth parents paying attention to
- 11:47Speaker 1: when they see it, addressing it, when they see the
- 11:50Speaker 1: exposure to it, like when you're watching a show together
- 11:53Speaker 1: and you see it. That's that's a good opportunity for conversation,
- 11:56Speaker 1: I think, and for discussion.
- 11:59Speaker 2: I was having a couple of just the other day
- 12:00Speaker 2: with the young woman I think she's then maybe grade ten, fifteen,
- 12:04Speaker 2: sixteen years of age, and she was on TikTok, and
- 12:07Speaker 2: I asked her how she dealt with the coarseness and
- 12:09Speaker 2: the just all the language and all the explicit content
- 12:13Speaker 2: that comes through, Like I mean, so many of these
- 12:15Speaker 2: social media sites are just a sewer, and she said,
- 12:20Speaker 2: it's not that bad compared to what happens in the playground.
- 12:24Speaker 2: It seems that the environment we talk about basic psychological
- 12:27Speaker 2: needs and specifically that relatedness need feeling like you can
- 12:31Speaker 2: connect with others feeling like you belong on your matter
- 12:33Speaker 2: and yet a school playground the it doesn't feel like
- 12:39Speaker 2: it's a very safe place for a lot of people,
- 12:41Speaker 2: and it feels like there's a lot of push on
- 12:43Speaker 2: the part of others, mainly boys, to do more and
- 12:47Speaker 2: more extreme things to demonstrate their belonging, to demonstrate their
- 12:50Speaker 2: part of the crew to be in. I wonder if
- 12:54Speaker 2: you have any general reactions to this idea. I mean,
- 12:56Speaker 2: the more I think about it, the more I think
- 12:57Speaker 2: parenting is just we live in a postmodern world where
- 13:01Speaker 2: morality is not supposed to be a thing, but parenting
- 13:03Speaker 2: is fundamentally a moral endeavor, isn't it.
- 13:06Speaker 1: Well, I think teaching children morality is a part of parenting,
- 13:10Speaker 1: and I think it's essential that it begins, you know,
- 13:12Speaker 1: from the beginning, and it becomes even more complex as
- 13:17Speaker 1: kids get into adolescence and they're trying to shape in
- 13:19Speaker 1: a built identity. So I think parents have a strong
- 13:21Speaker 1: role in that. And you know, what you're talking about
- 13:25Speaker 1: is for that young girl is having resilience with respect
- 13:29Speaker 1: to the things that come at her. And again, resilience
- 13:32Speaker 1: comes not from having a dis adversity before you, but
- 13:36Speaker 1: from having support so that you have some place to go,
- 13:39Speaker 1: someplace to discuss, some place to seem to receive empathy
- 13:43Speaker 1: for these things also, you know, because what you want
- 13:46Speaker 1: is for her, for others to be able to stand
- 13:49Speaker 1: up and say, I don't tolerate that kind of treatment.
- 13:51Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to be treated that way.
- 13:54Speaker 1: Make it uncool for the boys who do that. That's
- 13:58Speaker 1: that's a resilient response. But that takes some courage, and
- 14:01Speaker 1: that takes, you know, kind of character building that that
- 14:04Speaker 1: parents do help shape.
- 14:05Speaker 2: That was something that as soon as you said it,
- 14:08Speaker 2: I thought, how do we get our kids to that point?
- 14:09Speaker 2: I mean, it feels as though it's overwhelming that almost
- 14:14Speaker 2: all the boys are buying into this.
- 14:15Speaker 1: They're overwhelming, and I just I do want to I
- 14:19Speaker 1: want to correct you there at least a little bit.
- 14:21Speaker 1: Most boys are not super aggressive.
- 14:24Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, that's what I was going to say.
- 14:27Speaker 2: It feels it feels like it because there's so much
- 14:29Speaker 2: noise being made by this group overwhelmingly. We know that
- 14:34Speaker 2: many of them are consuming explicit content, but outside of that,
- 14:37Speaker 2: it just feels like it feels like it's a tsunami
- 14:41Speaker 2: of unhealthy masculinity. Rolling at all of our kids, including
- 14:45Speaker 2: the healthy ones, and how many healthy ones are out there,
- 14:48Speaker 2: It's hard to know because it's so hard to get
- 14:50Speaker 2: them to stand up and be courageous enough to say, hey,
- 14:53Speaker 2: that's not okay. We don't tolerate that here, because they
- 14:55Speaker 2: must be terrified that they're going to get absolutely rolled
- 14:58Speaker 2: by this wave of unhe healthy primarily boys that are
- 15:02Speaker 2: doing this to everybody around them.
- 15:04Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of modeling of toxic masculinity.
- 15:07Speaker 1: It's true. There's also modeling of mature and giving and
- 15:12Speaker 1: loving masculinity as well. We just want to make sure
- 15:15Speaker 1: that the preponderance that we're showing as men this ladder direction.
- 15:21Speaker 1: But you know, I think we hear about every negative event.
- 15:24Speaker 1: You know, we're exposed to news media that wants clicks,
- 15:27Speaker 1: that wants us to pay attention, and of course, the
- 15:29Speaker 1: more noxious the story, the more outrageous the behavior, the
- 15:32Speaker 1: more likely it's going to be on the news or
- 15:34Speaker 1: in the documentaries or in the morning show at breakfast,
- 15:40Speaker 1: because those people are trying to command attention, and these
- 15:42Speaker 1: things are attention grabbers. But that doesn't mean it's the
- 15:45Speaker 1: normative way in which people act. You know, I think
- 15:48Speaker 1: if you look at most interactions on the playground, they're
- 15:51Speaker 1: not all noxious, They're not all this kind of a sexual,
- 15:54Speaker 1: abusive stuff that we're talking about. Those things do happen,
- 15:57Speaker 1: and we shouldn't be naive about that, but we can
- 16:00Speaker 1: characterize that that's the kind of normative behavior going on
- 16:03Speaker 1: with kids that you know, kids are not pounding each
- 16:05Speaker 1: other every day. Kids are not beating each other up
- 16:07Speaker 1: every day. Most kids are pretty social. They want to
- 16:10Speaker 1: be cooperative, they want to be kind to others. I
- 16:15Speaker 1: think that's the norm. But what we see in the
- 16:19Speaker 1: media is every kind of malevolence that the media can
- 16:23Speaker 1: dig up, find and put in our faces.
- 16:25Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the sort of thing that makes you think,
- 16:27Speaker 2: maybe maybe I should just turn the media off and
- 16:32Speaker 2: concentrate on what's happening in my living room.
- 16:34Speaker 1: I do, yeah, because I think most of us, if
- 16:36Speaker 1: we look more immediately, our kids tend to be good kids,
- 16:40Speaker 1: and we want to protect them as much as we can,
- 16:43Speaker 1: and we see these horrible things happening in the media.
- 16:46Speaker 1: It is terrifying to a parent saying, oh, look what
- 16:49Speaker 1: my kids exposed to every day.
- 16:51Speaker 2: Professor Richard Ryan is a professor at the Institute for
- 16:54Speaker 2: Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University and
- 16:57Speaker 2: a research professor at the University of Rochester. I've got
- 17:00Speaker 2: so many of your books on my shelves and they're
- 17:02Speaker 2: all the really big ones. They're the ones that are
- 17:04Speaker 2: like eight hundred pages or more.
- 17:05Speaker 1: I don't really apologize, and.
- 17:09Speaker 2: I've read most of them as well, and yet to
- 17:11Speaker 2: sit here and talk with you has just been such
- 17:14Speaker 2: a delight, and I really hope that the things that
- 17:16Speaker 2: we've talked about have have made a difference for your
- 17:18Speaker 2: parents who have been listening. Thank you for being so
- 17:20Speaker 2: so generous with your time and sharing what you've shared.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Happy we were chatting.
- 17:25Speaker 2: Thanks. The Happy Family podcast is produced by Justin Rawan
- 17:28Speaker 2: from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer. For
- 17:31Speaker 2: more information about making your family happier, please visit us
- 17:34Speaker 2: at Happy Families dot com dot au.