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Bad Homes, Bad Outcomes? How Parenting Shapes Future Offenders · Inside The Criminal Mind

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  Speaker 1: From wherever you are around the world, around the world.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Circle of Insight, a show that explores
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  Speaker 2: the many facets of human behavior and the wonders of
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  Speaker 2: the human mind.
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  Speaker 1: And now, here's your host, Dr. Carlos.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to be looking at something you don't always
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  Speaker 2: hear about, differential susceptibility. What is it? Well, you're going
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  Speaker 2: to find out a little bit later, but it's our
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  Speaker 2: journey through the criminal justice system and criminological theories. And
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  Speaker 2: we stumbled upon this one, which is quite fascinating, something
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  Speaker 2: I didn't expect. Sometimes I even think it's a little
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  Speaker 2: bit counterintuitive in my mind, but I'll see if I
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  Speaker 2: get corrected on that. Who's going to help us out
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  Speaker 2: with this complex theory? Well, none other than Professor Jay Belsky.
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  Speaker 2: He's a Robert M. and Natalie Reed Dorn professor at
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  Speaker 2: the Department of Human Ecology. at the University of California, Davis,
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  Speaker 2: or UC Davis, as we know it down here. And
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  Speaker 2: he has got actually a ton of books. I don't
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  Speaker 2: know how many books he's written. We'll find that out
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  Speaker 2: in a little bit. He's written hundreds of articles, books,
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  Speaker 2: all on different areas. And today we're going to be
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  Speaker 2: talking about, again, differential susceptibility. So let's not waste any
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  Speaker 2: more time. Welcome to the show, Professor Belsky. Welcome, Professor.
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  Speaker 1: Hello there. Good to see you.
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  Speaker 2: Good seeing you again. How many books have you written?
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  Speaker 1: Two, three, four, not that many. I'm finishing up one now.
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  Speaker 2: All right, another one. All right. So, Professor, before we
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  Speaker 2: get started, I want you to define differential susceptibility for
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  Speaker 2: the audience for sure. There's no doubt about that. But
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  Speaker 2: can you tell us, I like to always know a
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  Speaker 2: little bit of the backstory. How did you stumble upon
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  Speaker 2: this concept?
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  Speaker 1: That's a good question. My experience, I'm a developmental psychologist,
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  Speaker 1: study how we become who we are. particular interest in
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  Speaker 1: individual differences. And early in my career, in fact, what
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  Speaker 1: got me into my field was an interest in how
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  Speaker 1: early life experiences and exposures shape who we are, kind
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  Speaker 1: of the nurture side of, if you would, the nature-nurture
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  Speaker 1: divide or distinction, et cetera. And what I came to,
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  Speaker 1: but almost 20 years, well, I guess it was about
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  Speaker 1: 15 years, 12 or 15 years into my academic career,
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  Speaker 1: I got exposed to the thinking of an evolutionary anthropologist
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  Speaker 1: who introduced me really to evolutionary biological thought, especially modern
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  Speaker 1: evolutionary biological thought. Some people, when they think of evolutionary biology,
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  Speaker 1: think of survival of the species. Well, that's old, outdated
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  Speaker 1: evolutionary thought. But we're not going to get into that. Anyway,
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  Speaker 1: what it eventually made me reflect upon was the fact
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  Speaker 1: that implicit in our theories of nurture, with one interesting exception,
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  Speaker 1: is the implicit, if not explicit, assumption that all of
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  Speaker 1: us are equally susceptible to the things we're exposed to
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  Speaker 1: and are potentially shaped by, so that we're all influenced
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  Speaker 1: by the parenting we experience, or we are all influenced
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  Speaker 1: by the friends and peer group we hang out with,
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  Speaker 1: or we're all interested by the quality of schooling or
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  Speaker 1: the quality of daycare or whether or not our parents
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  Speaker 1: get along, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, what I
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  Speaker 1: came to realize was that if we were all influenced by,
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  Speaker 1: if we were all equally subject to influence, then, now
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  Speaker 1: you might ask, I'm getting ahead of myself here, let
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  Speaker 1: me step back and say, why would nature craft a
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  Speaker 1: species like ours to be susceptible to early life influences?
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  Speaker 1: That is, why should our tomorrows and how we function
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  Speaker 1: be shaped by our todays, that is, what we experience? Now,
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  Speaker 1: the intuitive answer to that question is because our experiences
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  Speaker 1: today are preparing us for the probable, anticipated, likely experiences later.
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  Speaker 1: So in other words, we're shaped to fit a future
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  Speaker 1: anticipated context. So a child who's beaten and becomes aggressive
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  Speaker 1: and antisocial is being prepared for a hostile world. A
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  Speaker 1: child who grows up under nurturance and kindness and consideration
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  Speaker 1: and develops pro-social skills, how to cooperate, how to give,
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  Speaker 1: how to take, how to care, is being prepared for
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  Speaker 1: a nice world. Well, it doesn't take long for us
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  Speaker 1: to realize what every economist and every financer and every
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  Speaker 1: smart investor knows, which is the future's uncertainty. What that means,
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  Speaker 1: it seems to me, is that what that implied to
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  Speaker 1: me was that if we're all equally susceptible to being
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  Speaker 1: shaped by our early life experiences, then we would all
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  Speaker 1: go over the proverbial waterfall if tomorrow turned out different
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  Speaker 1: than today. And that led me to the conclusion that
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  Speaker 1: every decent investor concludes, which is because the future is uncertain,
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  Speaker 1: what we should do is diversify our investments. A good
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  Speaker 1: investor doesn't put all his money in the stock market
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  Speaker 1: or all his money under the mattress or all of
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  Speaker 1: his money in gold or all his money in property
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  Speaker 1: because any one of those things can fail. And it's
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  Speaker 1: by diversifying your investments and hedging your best bets that
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  Speaker 1: you get over time on average, the best return because
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  Speaker 1: you can't be sure on any one thing working out,
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  Speaker 1: but the best you can do is get an average
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  Speaker 1: working out as a main strategy, okay? Well, investors care
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  Speaker 1: about investing money to make more money. Nature cares about
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  Speaker 1: making more copies of itself. It's reproductive fitness, the dispersion
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  Speaker 1: of an individual's genes in future generations. So this way
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  Speaker 1: of thinking that if the future was uncertain, nature, like
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  Speaker 1: an investor, should hedge its bets. Some of us should
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  Speaker 1: be like a bond. You buy it, it pays 2%
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  Speaker 1: for 30 years. And nothing that happens between now and
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  Speaker 1: 30 years is going to change that 2% return. Or
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  Speaker 1: it pays 4%, or it pays 8%. Whatever it is,
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  Speaker 1: it's a fixed percentage. It doesn't change. That's unlike the
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  Speaker 1: stock market that goes up and down. So it makes
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  Speaker 1: sense to me that some of us should be fixed strategists.
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  Speaker 1: We shouldn't change. We should pretty much stay who we are.
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  Speaker 1: Others should be more developmentally plastic or malleable, susceptible to
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  Speaker 1: our early life experiences and our exposures. Now, each of
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  Speaker 1: these strategies could pay off depending upon what happens in
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  Speaker 1: the future. If I am shaped by my experience today
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  Speaker 1: and tomorrow turns out like today, well, then I'm like
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  Speaker 1: the right key for the right lock, okay? And it'll
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  Speaker 1: open the door and voila. But what happens if tomorrow
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  Speaker 1: turns out not like today? When I stick the key
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  Speaker 1: in that lock, the door doesn't open. To mix metaphors,
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  Speaker 1: I go over the developmental waterfall. I am ill fit
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  Speaker 1: for tomorrow. Now let's think of the fixed strategist. He
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  Speaker 1: is a key or she is a key to open
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  Speaker 1: one door. If that door turns out to be the
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  Speaker 1: door of life, he or she is well fit for it.
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  Speaker 1: If that door does not turn out to be what
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  Speaker 1: life is like, then the key doesn't work. So in
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  Speaker 1: either case, you can have a winner or a loser.
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  Speaker 1: It's going to depend on something you can't know for certain,
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  Speaker 1: what tomorrow is going to be like. So nature, like
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  Speaker 1: the investor, my analysis said, should hedge its best. Some
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  Speaker 1: of us should be more developmentally malleable, shaped by our experiences,
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  Speaker 1: more nurture-based. Some of us should be more, if you would,
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  Speaker 1: fixed strategists, like bonds. We're just going to be who
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  Speaker 1: we are. Now, that might be nice or nasty. It
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  Speaker 1: might be Happy or sad, it might be tall or short,
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  Speaker 1: but we're going to have a much more limited range
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  Speaker 1: of plasticity. We're going to have a reaction range. We're
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  Speaker 1: going to have a much smaller range to deviate from.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to more or less stay who we are.
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  Speaker 1: Where others, who they become is going to depend on
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  Speaker 1: what their experiences were. So that's the notion of differential susceptibility.
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  Speaker 1: Some of we are differentially susceptible to environmental influences and exposures.
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  Speaker 1: You and I, for example, might both be beaten as children.
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  Speaker 1: But you know what? You're kind of impervious to it.
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  Speaker 1: You're going to turn out nice or nasty no matter
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  Speaker 1: how you're real. Me, it's going to depend on how
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  Speaker 1: I'm real. In fact, think about it this way. We
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  Speaker 1: both end up being nice. You might have been born
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  Speaker 1: that way. It didn't matter that you were neglected or beaten,
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  Speaker 1: not too severely, hopefully, or just average care, because you
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  Speaker 1: were just going to be nice. Me, unlike you, not
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  Speaker 1: because of the same reason, but because I was cared
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  Speaker 1: for in a caring, supportive manner. So even two people
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  Speaker 1: who can look exactly the same can get there through
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  Speaker 1: different routes. And by the same token, two people exposed
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  Speaker 1: to the same experiences growing up For one of them,
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  Speaker 1: they prove influential, and for another, it won't. So that's
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  Speaker 1: the idea of a differential susceptibility.
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  Speaker 2: Brought up a lot of questions. Go ahead.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I was just now going to apply this to
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  Speaker 1: your interest in criminology. And I have no evidence for this,
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  Speaker 1: but let's speculatively apply my thinking to a major criminological problem,
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  Speaker 1: which is that of recidivism. Now, I would argue that
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  Speaker 1: or I would speculate, maybe even put a little money
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  Speaker 1: on it, that there are at least two kinds of
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  Speaker 1: prisoners in prison. There's those who might have been born, quote, bad, truly,
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  Speaker 1: to be opportunists, to take advantage of others, to be insensitive,
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  Speaker 1: to be unempathic, and just be a criminal. And there's
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  Speaker 1: plenty of evidence that people like that. But now we
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  Speaker 1: might have another person sharing the same cell, maybe committed
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  Speaker 1: the same crimes. But why? Because of his or her
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  Speaker 1: early adverse exposures. In other words, his criminology was made.
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  Speaker 1: He learned growing up that the world is an SOB
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  Speaker 1: kind of place, that others will take advantage of you,
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  Speaker 1: that it's a painful world. So I'm going to hit
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  Speaker 1: first and ask questions later. That's my lesson in life. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I'm behaving perhaps just like my fellow inmate, but for
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  Speaker 1: entirely different reasons. Now let's apply this potentially to the
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  Speaker 1: issue of recidivism. You know, in good prisons, I don't
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  Speaker 1: know how many there are anymore, there's an effort to,
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  Speaker 1: what's the word, to positively influence. What do you use,
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  Speaker 1: what's the word in criminology that you use? I've got
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  Speaker 1: an aging brain here. When You know, if prison is
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  Speaker 1: going to have a program that's going to prevent recidivism,
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  Speaker 1: it's going to put you on a positive track. You know,
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  Speaker 1: prisons try to do what we're talking about, okay? And
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  Speaker 1: my guess is that rehabilitation works for some and not
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  Speaker 1: for others. And I further predict in this speculative analysis
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  Speaker 1: that it's the criminal who was made that way by
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  Speaker 1: his exposures who might have a fighting chance to benefit
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  Speaker 1: because if he's still susceptible from a rehabilitation program. But
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  Speaker 1: for the other person, rehabilitation is like nurturance in childhood.
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  Speaker 1: It's water off a duck's back. It doesn't stick. It
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  Speaker 1: doesn't take. Because what we've got here are two people
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  Speaker 1: who look the same, but they got in jail through
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  Speaker 1: very different developmental paths. One was always going to be
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  Speaker 1: perhaps an SOB, an advantage taker. The other was not
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  Speaker 1: destined to be that way. but because of his or
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  Speaker 1: her developmental experiences, became that way. Now, if that person
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  Speaker 1: is still developmentally open to exposure and experience, then a
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  Speaker 1: good rehabilitation program may take, may get under the skin,
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  Speaker 1: and may change this person, and he doesn't become a recidivist,
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  Speaker 1: whereas the first person might become. So in other words,
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  Speaker 1: we know that there's great recidivism in prison populations. The
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  Speaker 1: question becomes, and we typically think of why, when we
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  Speaker 1: answer the question of why is there this variation? Some
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  Speaker 1: do and some don't commit new crimes. The thinking is, oh,
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  Speaker 1: the program was mediocre. The program wasn't so good. He
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  Speaker 1: had a good program. He had a bad program. It
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  Speaker 1: may be less about the program than the person's susceptibility
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  Speaker 1: to environmental influence. Now, you might ask, well, how come
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  Speaker 1: nature hasn't made us all environmentally susceptible? And a colleague
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  Speaker 1: of mine, Robert Plowman, a behavior geneticist who studies the
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  Speaker 1: nature side of things very much, once pointed out to
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  Speaker 1: me something that I've only slowly come to appreciate. If
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  Speaker 1: we were all susceptible to our environmental experiences and exposures,
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  Speaker 1: we could all become Hitler youth. We could all become
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  Speaker 1: raving Marxist lunatics. We could all be progressive left-wingers or
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  Speaker 1: we could all become, you know, reactionary right-wingers. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: we would be highly subject to manipulation. If somebody figured
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  Speaker 1: out what the right exposures and experiences are that could
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  Speaker 1: regulate and motivate and affect us. Um, So from that standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: we don't want everybody, we shouldn't want everybody to be
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  Speaker 1: strongly nurture-based because the world isn't always a good, caring, nice,
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  Speaker 1: nurturing place. And there are people who would misuse that sensibility.
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  Speaker 1: So the idea of differential susceptibility to environmental influence is
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  Speaker 1: an evolutionary perspective on human development. And it suggests that
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  Speaker 1: nature matters, that nurture matters for some more than others.
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  Speaker 2: Let me get some clarity for it. And I got
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  Speaker 2: some questions that popped up because I think I know
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  Speaker 2: the answers to them, but we'll find out. So it
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  Speaker 2: sounds like it's almost deterministic, depending on your genetic makeup.
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  Speaker 2: Am I off beat here?
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  Speaker 1: I would say... Too simple? Remember I pointed out how
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  Speaker 1: the two people in jail could be there for different reasons? Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I want to make that same point about this environmental susceptibility.
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  Speaker 1: Two people could be highly susceptible for two different reasons. One,
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  Speaker 1: as you just suggested, and even my early work did,
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  Speaker 1: they were born that way. It was genetic. But it
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  Speaker 1: may also be that this, that malleability developmentally, that susceptibility
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  Speaker 1: to being shaped by experience may actually be environmentally induced.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, to become a nurturist, nurture may matter
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  Speaker 1: for some. to become a nurturist, nature may matter for some.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. So the susceptibility is not totally contingent on genetics then.
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  Speaker 1: Think of it this way. Think of a two by
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  Speaker 1: two matrix. Okay. The rows are born and made. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: Nature and nurture. The columns are environmentally susceptible and not.
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  Speaker 1: So some environmentally susceptible people are born and others are
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  Speaker 1: made by their experiences. Other non-susceptible people are born and
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  Speaker 1: made by their environmental experiences. Now, here's an interesting thing.
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  Speaker 1: If I had to make a guess of all four
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  Speaker 1: of those cells filled with people, it may be that
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  Speaker 1: lack of susceptibility is not made. It's just born. In
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  Speaker 1: other words, maybe only three of those four cells have
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  Speaker 1: real people in them, but I don't know. My point
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  Speaker 1: is simply that, yes, it looks like there are genetic
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  Speaker 1: differences that make people more and less susceptible, but genetic
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  Speaker 1: differences may also make people more and less susceptible to
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  Speaker 1: becoming susceptible.
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  Speaker 2: Got it. Got it. Let me backtrack a little bit
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  Speaker 2: then in regards to that susceptibility, those prenatal factors. Have
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  Speaker 2: you seen, what do you suspect about prenatal factors, birth trauma?
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  Speaker 1: What you're really asking is, well, what might be some
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  Speaker 1: experiences or exposures that induce plasticity? And in fact, I
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  Speaker 1: can point to one, two, three of them. Um, Well,
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  Speaker 1: three factors. One is environmental, which looks like it's prenatal stress.
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  Speaker 1: There's some evidence that fetuses that are stressed prenatally are
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  Speaker 1: environmentally more sensitive than other babies for better and for worse.
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  Speaker 1: That is to say, if they get supportive rearing, they
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  Speaker 1: turn out very competent. If they get unsupportive rearing, they don't.
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  Speaker 1: That it's almost like what prenatal stress is saying is
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  Speaker 1: wait to see what happens outside before you commit to something, i.e.
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  Speaker 1: what to do outside the womb. So prenatal stress may
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  Speaker 1: be one factor that fosters susceptibility. And it may do it, interestingly,
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  Speaker 1: by changing two phenotypic characteristics of babies. One, prenatal stress
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  Speaker 1: makes them more negatively emotional, more easily distressed, more hard
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  Speaker 1: to settle, more difficult adjusting to new situations, having what
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  Speaker 1: we call a difficult temperament. And prenatal stress also makes
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  Speaker 1: babies more physiologically reactive. They're easier to get cortisol spikes
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  Speaker 1: from when they're stressed. And both of those phenotypic characteristics,
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  Speaker 1: being physiologically reactive and being highly negatively emotional, look like
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  Speaker 1: they're associated with being more developmentally susceptible to environmental influences.
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  Speaker 1: So it may be that prenatal stress, by fostering negative
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  Speaker 1: emotionality and or physiological stress susceptibility, easily stressed, thereby manufactures
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  Speaker 1: environmental susceptibility.
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  Speaker 2: Fascinating. Fascinating. You mentioned cortisol, the hormone release. I know
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  Speaker 2: there are some things that happen. I can't think of
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  Speaker 2: the top of my head i think estrogen or certain
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  Speaker 2: injections that are given to mothers to induce uh to
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  Speaker 2: delay labor uh can increase a lot of testosterone in
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  Speaker 2: the baby to abnormal levels uh is that something also
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  Speaker 2: that can play a role.
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  Speaker 1: Or you know um in terms of either what makes us,
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  Speaker 1: what fixes us as being fixed strategists, as I call them,
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  Speaker 1: or developmentally plastic. It's open season on possibilities. This hasn't
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  Speaker 1: been well studied. This is, you know, I first made
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  Speaker 1: a sentence passing notion about this idea in a well-cited
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  Speaker 1: piece in 1991. Nobody noticed it. In 1999, I wrote
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  Speaker 1: two commentaries in which I developed this idea a little
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  Speaker 1: more Hardly anybody noticed it. In 2007 and 2009, I
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  Speaker 1: wrote more substantial pieces. People noticed it. So we're really
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  Speaker 1: only 10 years into looking at this issue because here's
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  Speaker 1: what's gone on before. It's really not the case, as
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  Speaker 1: I said at the beginning, for heuristic or explanatory purposes.
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  Speaker 1: It's really not the case that, you know, developmentalists have
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  Speaker 1: presumed that all people are equally susceptible to environmental influences.
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  Speaker 1: And that's because they have long presumed that some people
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  Speaker 1: are more susceptible to negative environmental influences. That is, they're
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  Speaker 1: more vulnerable to adversity. That is, they carry particular risk factors.
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  Speaker 1: So for example, classically, if you're a highly negative baby,
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  Speaker 1: that's considered a risk factor because now if you're cared
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  Speaker 1: for by a, insensitive parent, you have real trouble down
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  Speaker 1: the developmental road. Okay. Or if you're born premature, or
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  Speaker 1: if you're born handicapped, or if maybe you'd be unattractive,
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  Speaker 1: or maybe if you're prone to obesity and you grow
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  Speaker 1: up in an obesogenic environment. In other words, we've long thought,
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  Speaker 1: or if you carry certain genes, that there are certain
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  Speaker 1: individual organismic characteristics that make people especially likely to do
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  Speaker 1: badly when bad things happen, okay? And by definition, the
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  Speaker 1: other people are resilient. When the same bad things happen,
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  Speaker 1: they don't succumb. Well, that viewpoint has been around for 20, 30,
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  Speaker 1: 40 years, and it's been a useful one. But you
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  Speaker 1: know what we've never thought about until really I came
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  Speaker 1: along and a couple of other people and started thinking
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  Speaker 1: about this in a different way? So what was previously well-recognized,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: although not labeled in these terms, was differential susceptibility to adversity,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the resilient and the vulnerable. What was not thought about
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: was differential susceptibility to support and enrichment. And so what
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: we really discovered is that the very people who are
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: highly susceptible to adversity look like they're highly susceptible to
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: enrichment and support. That is, they're not just vulnerable, they're
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: developmentally plastic for better or for worse. Under bad conditions,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: their ship sinks. Under good conditions, their ship flies. They thrive.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Whereas others who are intriguingly resilient in the face of adversity,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: they're also resilient in the face of support and enrichment.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: They don't benefit. So it's almost like if you give
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: some people, well, I'm not going to go there. It'll
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: just be confusing. And in fact, here becomes a very
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: interesting linguistic observation. When we think about people who are
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: disproportionately likely to succumb to adversity, to do badly if
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: bad things happen, they're vulnerable, okay? They're just waiting for
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: the straw to break the camel's back, if you will.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: What word is the reciprocal or the reverse or the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: inverse of vulnerable to describe the person who's disproportionately likely
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to benefit from support and enrichment? I have asked this
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: question all over the world. No language, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I can go on. Nobody in the audience ever raises
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a hand and has an equivalent word. The only word
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I come up with is lucky.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It's a joke.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: But here's the point. Is it because we haven't had
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a word, that we haven't had a concept, that we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: haven't looked at those disproportionately likely to benefit from enrichment
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and discovered that they're the same ones who are disproportionately likely?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: to suffer in the face of adversity. And that's why
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I go back to the recidivism case. The guy in jail,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: because he was made that way, may benefit from a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: good rehabilitation because in the same way he was susceptible
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to the bad conditions he grew up in, which made
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: him a criminal, he could still be susceptible to the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: ongoing conditions and a good rehabilitation program, which will turn
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: him around.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because it reminds me of a couple of stories.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of a buddy of mine, Pastor Turnipseed.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Pastor Turnipseed grew up with a father that was very abusive,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: abused his mother, abused him violently. He was arrested, I
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: think he had 37 charges of felonies, convicted of 37
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: felonies by the time he was 21. Then he got
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: his life straightened by the time he was 37, and
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: he's been a pastor for the last 25 years. So
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: it seemed like he was vulnerable to the good thing.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: But we wouldn't say he was vulnerable to the good thing.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: My question would be, what turned him around? What exposures
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and experiences did he prove he was susceptible to? Now,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: let's think also about the pastors who had the bad experiences,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: but unlike him, never really succumbed to them. And let's
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: think about the individuals who grew up under nurturing conditions
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: who ended up like he did in the first half
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of his life. In other words, we have people who
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: are going to be, for better or for worse, just
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: who they are. And we have other people who are
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: going to be who they are because of their experiences
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and exposures. So you could have two pastors. One was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: born to be a pastor. The other was made to
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: be a pastor. You can have two anti-pastors. One was
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: born to be an anti-pastor. The other was made to
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: be an anti-pastor. Life ends up being intriguingly more complex
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: this way. And then you can ask yourself, well, why
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: do we have this kind of developmental variation in our susceptibilities?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And I would say because in our ancestral histories, it
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: paid off at times. To be an SOB, no matter what.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So we have genes for SOB. There are other times
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: when it paid off to be nice. So we have
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: genes to be nice. There were other times when it
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: paid off to bend with the wind. So to be
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the way the wind was blowing. So we have genes
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to make you developmentally malleable. So you can be nice
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: or you can be nasty metaphorically, depending upon which way
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the wind was blowing while you were growing up. Um,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: that is none of the, so, so people kind of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: often think that, Oh, it's better to be developmentally malleable
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: to be susceptible to environmental influences. It is if you're
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to grow up under nurturing circumstances, but is it,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: if you're growing up under adversity, um, Oh.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: One second. My people are here. Oh, one second.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Our human evolutionary history, there are times it's paid off
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: to be developmentally malleable and shaped by your experiences. There
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: are times when that has been a fool's errand. So
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: people have evolved. So then we have, in other words,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: we have genetic variation for being malleable and not being
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: developmentally malleable. And you know, You know what convinced me
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: of this? The case of the killing fields of Cambodia.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: That when the U.S. vacated Vietnam after we lost the war,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. They flushed everybody out
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: of the cities, into the countryside, and they murdered hundreds
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of thousands, if not millions. Who did they murder first?
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: People like you and me, untalented hands or spectacles. because
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: those they regarded as markers of education. So if you
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: grew up as a kid, listening to your parents, like
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you and I probably did, and maybe many of your
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: listeners who told you, go to school, study hard, respect
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: your teachers, do your homework, et cetera, because then life
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: will turn out better than it otherwise would. Guess what?
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: If you were a Cambodian and you were told that
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: 20 years earlier before the Khmer Rouge came in, you
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: were dead. Now let's imagine that you had a parent
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: who told you exactly the same thing. but you were
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: a fixed strategist. You weren't susceptible to that influence. You
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: were just going to play hooky, be tardy, not do
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: your homework, et cetera. You actually had a greater likelihood
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of living to survive. And here's the critical point from
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: an evolutionary standpoint, to breed again. You got to pass
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: on your genes. Those kids who did their homework because
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: their parents encouraged them to, They were very unlikely to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: get a chance to pass on their genes. So all
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, in that small example, being developmentally susceptible
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: was going over the proverbial waterfall. You were prepared for
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: a future that didn't come because the future is uncertain.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff. I'm going to get a futurist
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: in here as well. Fascinating. Well, there you go, folks.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You wanted to know what it was? Well, now you
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: found out what it was. Professor Belsky, you mentioned before
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: we did the interview. I mean, there's a couple of
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: questions I have, but I think I'm pretty much done.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Because it looks like cultural differences probably will just be
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: another factor that's involved. And one parent, all those are
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: just other factors that are involved, right?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Those become experiences and exposures. We know that some kids
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: grew up in single parent families and are adversely affected.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Others not. We know that some, you know, that not every,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm dating myself here because this is my
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: childhood history. You know what I learned? But not every
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: German teenager became a Hitler youth.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Only some were susceptible. And even of those who wore
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the uniforms, only some bought into the radical propaganda. So,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the point is that it's good that we're
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: all not a radical function of nurture because nurture can
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: be hijacked by bad guys.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I've been watching to make sure you're not in
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: some kind of lab back there. So I'm doing something weird,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: but Dr. Belsky is back in his little private lab.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Trying to manipulate the world. No, just kidding. Dr. Belsky,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you have a new book coming out, you said?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I'm working on a book. I'm finishing it up. I
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: can't give you a title because that's still up in
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the air.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: All right. We won't worry about that.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: You know, much of what I've been talking about these
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: days often goes by the terminology of orchid and dandelion.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: That's the metaphor. The orchid is the environmentally susceptible for
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: better and for worse. If you don't take care of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it well, it wilts, it dies. If you take care
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of it well, it's a magnificent flower. In other words,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: it's got a great range of reaction from dead to fantastic.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: You take a dandelion, it kind of doesn't matter what
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: you do to it. It's a dandelion. It's much more
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: just who it is. It's kind of that fixed strategist
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I was talking about. Now, so a lot of your
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: listeners may be familiar with that terminology. It seems to
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: be getting pretty widespread these days. I don't like it
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: for the following reason. It suggests, as some of my
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: discussion is, so this is a qualification of what I've
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: said to this point, it suggests that there are two
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: kinds of people, those who are developmentally plastic and those
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: who are not. Those who are susceptible to environmental influences,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: for better and for worse, those who are not. Think
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: of it more as a gradient. That is, there are
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: some who are going to be highly susceptible, some moderately susceptible,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: some modestly susceptible, and some not susceptible. So it's more
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of a continuum than a typological, yes, you are, no,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: you're not.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I guess the question I have to ask now, are
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: you going to continue to further study this, or are
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: other individuals or scholars going to do the same? You're
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: saying it's only been around about 10 or 15 years.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, this is a growing arena of research,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: and two of the most interesting things that are being done,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, are people looking at sets of genes,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: not just one gene or another, but sets of genes
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: that might identify more and less developmentally malleable people. And
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the other, of course, is looking at variation intervention efficacy,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: efforts to treat people, either to prevent problems or to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: or to remediate problems that are already developed, or even
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: just to promote well-being. And it's long been understood that
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of what we call, big word, heterogeneity.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of variation in efficacy. Some people benefit
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and some people don't. Well, now it looks like we
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: expect to see that, not just because we do, but
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: to understand why we see that, and even potentially be
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: able to identify the people ahead of time, we're not
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: there yet, who are likely to benefit and those who
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: are less likely to benefit. And that becomes intriguing because
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: it raises the question in a world of limited resources,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: whether if you could, we're not there yet, identify those
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: who are most likely and less likely to benefit that
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: you would target disproportionately the ones who are more likely
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: to benefit and triage the ones who are less likely
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: to benefit. Now, a lot of people object to that
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: way of thinking. It's unfair because they're valuing equity. Other
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: people who value efficacy say, what's the sense of providing
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: services to people if it won't work for them? That's
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: just throwing good money after bad. But again, people differ
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: in terms of how they weigh efficacy and equity. If
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you're a radical socialist, you're into equity. If you're a
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: hard-nosed capitalist, you're into efficacy. And I don't think it
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: necessarily has to be one or the other, but it
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: raises this issue. And, you know, what's fascinating to me
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: is people who object to the efficacy analysis. Oh, you
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: can't deny services to people. And they say that even
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: if you knew, if you had good reason to think
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't work, they say because it's unfair. I say,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. You know, after a battle, this is
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: how positions work. They triage. I can save this body.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I can't save this one. I can't do everything, so
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do what works. We now have personalized medicine.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to give this cancer treatment to the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: people I know work on. I'm only going to give
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: it to the people I know it's going to work on.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: So why, if we can do that in medicine, why
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: can't we do that in behavioral and psychological functioning in science?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And one of the resistance to this analysis, I find,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: is that people think, oh, psychology and behavior are different.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: You know, that's not biology. Well, that's a mind-body duality.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: That's 18th and 19th, at most, 20th century thinking. It
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: is not 21st century thinking. To think the mind and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the body are separate things. You know, we now know
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: that what's going on bacteriologically in your gut affects your mind.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And what's going on in your mind affects your gut.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: You know, so any attempt to say that that's psychology
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: or that's behavior, that's the mind and it's different, is outdated,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: old school thinking. And just, you know, time to move on.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Probably settled that already a couple centuries ago. Maybe not.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: So you got a lot of ethical issues coming up
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: in the future and exciting stuff, too. I can't wait
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: to find out what discoveries you and other scholars are
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: going to make about this new concept.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: It could prove very interesting.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And it will raise important philosophical questions as well as,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: you know, practical ones. But again, I want to underscore
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: the fact that we're not there yet. But I think
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: there's every reason to believe that we can eventually get there.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: In the same way we've discovered that these medications or
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: these drugs work for that cancer, but not for this
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: cancer or that person, but not for this person, we'll discover,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and we are discovering the same things about psychological and
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: behavioral treatments. And then the question will be, what do
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: we do with that knowledge when it comes to providing services,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: especially with limited resources?
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Professor Belsky, thank you so much for being here.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: We truly appreciate it.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: My pleasure. You take care. So long.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you, everyone, for joining us. All right, folks, you
• 38:40
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• 38:43
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• 38:46
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• 38:49
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• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you again for joining us.