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A CRIMINOLOGICAL LOOK AT HOW PARENTING AFFECTS CHILDREN · 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 1: Welcome to the Circle of Insight, a show that explores
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  Speaker 1: the many facets of human behavior and the wonders of
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  Speaker 1: the human mind. And now here's your host, doctor 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? Will another than Professor Jay Belski.
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  Speaker 2: He's a Robert N. And Natalie Reid Dorn professor at
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  Speaker 2: the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California
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  Speaker 2: Davis or UC Davis as we know it down here.
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  Speaker 2: And he has got actually a ton of books. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know how many books he's read, and we'll find
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  Speaker 2: that out a little bit. He's written hundreds of articles books,
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  Speaker 2: all on different areas, and today we're gonna be talking
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  Speaker 2: about again differential susceptibility, so that's not waste any more time.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Professor Belski.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome, Professor, 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 3: Day? Two? Three, four? Not that many. I'm finishing up
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  Speaker 3: one now, all right?
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  Speaker 2: Another one? All right? So, Professor, before we get started,
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  Speaker 2: I want you to define differential susceptibility for the audience.
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  Speaker 2: For sure, there's no doubt about that. But can you
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  Speaker 2: tell us I like to always know a little bit
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  Speaker 2: of the backstory. How did you stumble upon this concept?
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  Speaker 3: That's a good question my my experience. I'm a developmental psychologist,
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  Speaker 3: study how we become who we are, particular interest in
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  Speaker 3: individual differences, and early in my career, in fact, what
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  Speaker 3: got me into my field was an interest in how
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  Speaker 3: early life experiences and exposures shape who we are, kind
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  Speaker 3: of the nurture side of if you would, the nature nurture,
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  Speaker 3: divide or distinction, etc. And what I came to But
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  Speaker 3: almost twenty years well, I guess it was about fifteen
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  Speaker 3: years twelve, fifteen years into my academic career, I got
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  Speaker 3: exposed to the thinking of an evolutionary anthropologist who introduced
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  Speaker 3: me really to evolutionary biological thought, especially modern evolutionary biological thought.
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  Speaker 3: Some people, when they think of evolutionary biology think of
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  Speaker 3: survival of the species. Well, that's old, outdated evolutionary thought,
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  Speaker 3: but we're not going to get into that anyway. What
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  Speaker 3: it eventually made me reflect upon was the fact that
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  Speaker 3: implicit in our theories of nurture, with one interesting exception,
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  Speaker 3: is the implicit, if not explicit, assumption that all of
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  Speaker 3: us are equally acceptable susceptible to the things we're exposed
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  Speaker 3: to and the things were and are potentially shaped by,
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  Speaker 3: so that we're all influenced by the parenting we're experienced,
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  Speaker 3: or we are all influenced by the friends and peer
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  Speaker 3: group we hang out with, or we're all interested by
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  Speaker 3: the quality of school league, or the quality of daycare,
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  Speaker 3: or whether or not our parents get a long blah
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  Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah. Well, when I came to realize
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  Speaker 3: was that if we were all influenced by, if we
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  Speaker 3: were all equally subject to influence. Then now, now you
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  Speaker 3: might ask, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me
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  Speaker 3: step back and say, why would nature craft a species
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  Speaker 3: like ours to be susceptible to early life life influences.
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  Speaker 3: That is, why should our tomorrows and how we function
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  Speaker 3: be shaped by out today's that is what we experience now.
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  Speaker 3: The intuitive answer to that question is because our experiences
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  Speaker 3: today are preparing us for the probable anticipated likely experiences later.
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  Speaker 3: So in other words, we're shaped to fit a future
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  Speaker 3: anticipated context. So a child who's beaten and becomes aggressive
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  Speaker 3: and antisocial is being prepared for we're a hostile world.
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  Speaker 3: A child who grows up under nurturance and kindness and
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  Speaker 3: consideration and develops pro social skills, how to cooperate, how
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  Speaker 3: to give, how to take, how to care, is being
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  Speaker 3: prepared for a nice world. Well, it doesn't take long
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  Speaker 3: for us to realize what every economist and every financer
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  Speaker 3: and every smart investor knows, which is the futures uncerta.
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  Speaker 3: What that means, it seems to me is that what
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  Speaker 3: that implied to me was that if we're all equally
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  Speaker 3: susceptible to being shaped by our early life experiences, then
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  Speaker 3: we would all go over the proverbial waterfall if tomorrow
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  Speaker 3: turned out different than today. And that led me to
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  Speaker 3: the conclusion that every decent investor concludes, which is, because
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  Speaker 3: the future is uncertain, what we should do is diversify
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  Speaker 3: our investments. A good investor doesn't put all his money
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  Speaker 3: in the stock market, or all his money under the mattress,
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  Speaker 3: or all of them his money in gold, or all
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  Speaker 3: his money in property, because any one of those things
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  Speaker 3: can fail. And it's by diversifying your investments and hedging
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  Speaker 3: your best bets that you get over time, on average,
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  Speaker 3: the best return. Because you can't be sure on any
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  Speaker 3: one thing working out, but the best you can do
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  Speaker 3: is get an average working out. As a main strategy. Okay, Well,
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  Speaker 3: investors care about investing money to make more money. Nature
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  Speaker 3: cares about making more copies of itself. It's reproductive fitness,
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  Speaker 3: the dispersion of an individual's genes in future generations. So
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  Speaker 3: this way of thinking that if the future was uncertain, nature,
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  Speaker 3: like an investor, should hedge its fence. Some of us
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  Speaker 3: should be. Like a bond. You buy it, it pays
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  Speaker 3: two percent for thirty years, and nothing that happens between
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  Speaker 3: now in thirty years is going to change that two
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  Speaker 3: percent return. Or it pays four percent, or it pays
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  Speaker 3: eight percent, whatever it is, it's a fixed percentage. It
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  Speaker 3: doesn't change. That's unlike the thought market that goes up
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  Speaker 3: and down. So it makes sense to me that some
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  Speaker 3: of us should be fixed strategists. We shouldn't change, We
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  Speaker 3: should pretty much stay who we are. Others should be
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  Speaker 3: more developmentally plastic or malle susceptible to our early life
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  Speaker 3: experiences and our exposures. Now, each of these strategies could
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  Speaker 3: pay off depending upon what happens in the future. If
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  Speaker 3: I am shaped by my experience today and tomorrow turns
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  Speaker 3: out like today, well then I'm like the right key
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  Speaker 3: for the right lock, okay, and it'll open the door
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  Speaker 3: and voila. But what happens if tomorrow turns out not
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  Speaker 3: like today? When I stick the key in that lock,
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  Speaker 3: the door doesn't open. To mixed metaphors, I go over
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  Speaker 3: the developmental waterfall, I am ill fit for tomorrow. Now
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  Speaker 3: let's think of the fixed strategist. He is a key
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  Speaker 3: or she is a key to open one door. If
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  Speaker 3: that door turns out to be the door of life,
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  Speaker 3: he or she is well fit for it. If that
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  Speaker 3: door does not turn out to be the key to
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  Speaker 3: be what life is like, then the key doesn't work.
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  Speaker 3: So in either case, you can have a winner or lose.
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  Speaker 3: It's gonna depend on something you can't know for certain
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  Speaker 3: what tomorrow is gonna be like. So nature, like the
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  Speaker 3: investor my analysis said, should hedge its bests. Some of
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  Speaker 3: us should be more developmentally malleable, shaped by our experiences,
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  Speaker 3: more nurture based. Some of us should be more if
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  Speaker 3: you would fixed strategists like bonds, We're just gonna be
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  Speaker 3: who we are now. That might be nice or nasty.
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  Speaker 3: It might be happy or sad, it might be tall
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  Speaker 3: or short, but we're gonna have a much more limited
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  Speaker 3: range of plasticity we're gonna have or reaction range. We're
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  Speaker 3: gonna have a much moller range to deva from. We're
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  Speaker 3: gonna more or less stay who we are. Where others
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  Speaker 3: are gonna depend. Who they become is gonna depend on
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  Speaker 3: what their experiences were. So that's the notion of differential stability.
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  Speaker 3: Some of where are differentially susceptible to environmental influences and exposures.
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  Speaker 3: You and I, for example, might both be beaten children,
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  Speaker 3: but you know what, you're kind of impervious to it.
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  Speaker 3: You're gonna turn out nice or nasty no matter how
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  Speaker 3: you're real me. It's gonna depend on how I'm red.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, think about it this way, we both end
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  Speaker 3: up being nice. You might have been born that way,
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  Speaker 3: it didn't matter that you were neglected or beaten, not
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  Speaker 3: too severely, hopefully or just average care because you were
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  Speaker 3: just gonna be nice. Me I'm like you, not because
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  Speaker 3: of the same reason, but because I was cared for
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  Speaker 3: in a caring, supportive manner. So even to people who
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  Speaker 3: can look exactly the same can get there through different
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  Speaker 3: routes and by the same token, two people exposed the
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  Speaker 3: same experiences growing up, for one of them may prove
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  Speaker 3: influential and for another at won. So that's the idea
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  Speaker 3: of a differential susceptibility.
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  Speaker 2: Brought up a lot of questions. Go ahead, was.
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  Speaker 3: Just now going to apply this to you know, your
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  Speaker 3: interest in criminology, and I have no evidence for this,
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  Speaker 3: But let's speculatively apply my thinking to a major criminological problem,
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  Speaker 3: which is that of recidivism. Now, I would argue, or
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  Speaker 3: I would I would speculate, maybe even put a little
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  Speaker 3: money on it, that there are at least two kinds
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  Speaker 3: of prisoners in prison. There's those who might have been
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  Speaker 3: born quote bad truly to be opportunists to take advantage
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  Speaker 3: of others, to be insensitive, to be unempathic, and just
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  Speaker 3: be it, you know, a criminal. And there's plenty of
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  Speaker 3: evidence that people like that. But now we might have
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  Speaker 3: another person sharing the same cell, maybe committed the same crimes.
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  Speaker 3: But why because if his or her early adverse exposures,
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  Speaker 3: in other words, his criminology was made. He learned growing
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  Speaker 3: up that the world is in sob kind of place
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  Speaker 3: that others will take advantage of you, that it's a
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  Speaker 3: painful world. So I'm going to hit first and ask
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  Speaker 3: questions later. That's my lesson in life. Now I'm behaving
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  Speaker 3: perhaps just like my fellow inmate, but for entirely different reasons.
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  Speaker 3: Now let's apply this potentially to the issue of recidivism.
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  Speaker 3: You know, in good prisons, I don't know how many
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  Speaker 3: there are anymore, there's an effort to what's the word
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  Speaker 3: to positively influence? What do you use to what's the
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  Speaker 3: word in criminology that you use. I gonna have an
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  Speaker 3: aging brain here when you know, if if prison is
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  Speaker 3: going to have a program that's going to prevent recidivism,
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  Speaker 3: that's gonna put you on a positive track. Pro you know,
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  Speaker 3: PRIs striking what we're talking about okay, And my guest
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  Speaker 3: is that rehabilitation works for some and not for others.
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  Speaker 3: And I further predicted this speculum of analysis that it's
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  Speaker 3: the criminals who was made that way by his exposed
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  Speaker 3: who might have a fighting chance to benefit because if
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  Speaker 3: he's still susceptible from a rehabilitation program. But for the
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  Speaker 3: other person, rehabilitation is like nurturance in childhood. It's water
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  Speaker 3: ruff a duc's pack. It doesn't stick, it doesn't take.
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  Speaker 3: Because what we've got here are two people who look
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  Speaker 3: the same, but they got in jail through their very
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  Speaker 3: different developmental paths. One was always going to be perhaps
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  Speaker 3: an SOB an advantage taker. The other was not destined
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  Speaker 3: to be that way, but because of his or her
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  Speaker 3: developmental experiences, became that way. Now that person is still
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  Speaker 3: developmentally open to exposure and experience, then a good rehabilitation
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  Speaker 3: program may take may get under the skin and may
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  Speaker 3: change this person, and he doesn't become a recidivist, whereas
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  Speaker 3: the first person might become so. In other words, we
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  Speaker 3: know that there's great recidivism in print and populations. The
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  Speaker 3: question becomes and we typically think of why when we
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  Speaker 3: answer the question, well, why is there this variation some
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  Speaker 3: do when some don't commit new crimes. The thinking is, oh,
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  Speaker 3: the program was mediocre and the program wasn't so good.
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  Speaker 3: He had had a good program, he had a bad program.
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  Speaker 3: It may be less about the program than the person's
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  Speaker 3: susceptibility to environmental influence. Now you might ask, well, how
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  Speaker 3: come nature hasn't made us all environmentally susceptible? And a
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  Speaker 3: colleague of mind Robert Plumman, a behavior geneticist who studies
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  Speaker 3: the nurture side the nature side of things very much,
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  Speaker 3: once point out to me something that I've only slowly
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  Speaker 3: come to appreciate. If we were all susceptible to our
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  Speaker 3: environmental experiences and exposures, we could all become hitler youth.
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  Speaker 3: We could all become raving Marxist lunatics. We could all
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  Speaker 3: be progressive left wingers, or we could all become you know,
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  Speaker 3: reactionary right wingers. In other words, we would be highly
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  Speaker 3: subject to manipulation if somebody figured out what the right
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  Speaker 3: exposures and experiences are that could regulate and motivate and
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  Speaker 3: affect us. So from that standpoint, we don't want everybody.
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  Speaker 3: We shouldn't wanty to be strongly nurtured based because the
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  Speaker 3: world isn't always a good, caring, nice nurturing place, and
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  Speaker 3: there are people who would misuse that sensibility. So the
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  Speaker 3: idea of differential susceptibility to environmental influence is an evolutionary
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  Speaker 3: perspective on human development, and it suggests that nature matters,
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  Speaker 3: 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 it answers
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  Speaker 2: to them that we'll find out. So it sounds like
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  Speaker 2: it's almost deterministic depending on your genetic makeup. Off be here, I.
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  Speaker 3: Would say, Remember I pointed out how the two people
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  Speaker 3: in jail could be there for different reasons. Yeah, I
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  Speaker 3: want to make that same point about this environmental susceptibility.
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  Speaker 3: Two people could be highly susceptible for two different reasons.
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  Speaker 3: One as you just suggested, and even my early work
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  Speaker 3: did they were born that way it was genetic. But
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  Speaker 3: it may also be that this that malleability developmentally, that
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  Speaker 3: susceptibility to being shaped by experience may actually be environmentally induced.
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  Speaker 3: In other words, to become a nurturist. Nurture may matter
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  Speaker 3: for some to become a nurturist. Nature may matter for.
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  Speaker 2: Some Okay, so that's ability totally contingent on genetics.
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  Speaker 3: Then, and now think of it this way. Think of
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  Speaker 3: a two by two matrix. Okay, the rows are born
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  Speaker 3: and made Okay, right, nature and nurture. The columns are
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  Speaker 3: environmentally susceptible and not so. Some environmentally susceptible people are
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  Speaker 3: born and others are made by their experiences. Other non
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  Speaker 3: susceptible people are born and made by their environmental experiences.
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  Speaker 3: Now here's an interesting thing. I don't if I have
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  Speaker 3: to make a guess that we're all four of those
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  Speaker 3: cells filled with people, it may be that lack of
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  Speaker 3: susceptibility is not made, it's just born. In other words,
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  Speaker 3: maybe only three of those four cells have people, have
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  Speaker 3: real people in them, but I don't know. My point
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  Speaker 3: is simply that, yes, it looks like there are genetic
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  Speaker 3: differences that make people more and less susceptible. But genetic
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  Speaker 3: differences may also make people more and less susceptible to
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  Speaker 3: becoming susceptible.
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  Speaker 2: Got it, got it? Let me backtrack a little bit then,
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  Speaker 2: in regards to a susceptibility, those prenatal factors have you seen.
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  Speaker 2: What do you suspect about prenatal factors birth trauma?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, what you're really asking is, well, what might be
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  Speaker 3: some experiences or exposures that induce plasticity? And in fact
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  Speaker 3: I can point to one to three of them. Well,
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  Speaker 3: the three factors. One is environmental, which looks like it's
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  Speaker 3: prenatal stress. There's some evidence that that fetuses that are
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  Speaker 3: stressed prenatally are environmentally more sensitive than other babies, for
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  Speaker 3: better and for worse. That is to say, if they
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  Speaker 3: get supportive rearing, they turn out very competent. If they
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  Speaker 3: get unsupportive rearing, they don't that. It's almost like what
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  Speaker 3: prenatal stress is saying is wait to see what happens
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  Speaker 3: outside before you commit to something, i e. What's that?
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  Speaker 3: What to do outside the womb? Now, So to prenatal stress,
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  Speaker 3: maybe one factor that fosters susceptibility, and it may do
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  Speaker 3: it interestingly by changing two phenotypic characteristics of babies. One,
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  Speaker 3: prenatal stress makes them more negatively emotional, more easily distressed,
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  Speaker 3: more hard to settle, more difficult adjusting to new situations,
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  Speaker 3: having what we call a difficult temperament. And prenatal stress
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  Speaker 3: also makes babies more physiologically reactive, they're easier to get
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  Speaker 3: cortisols spikes from when they're stressed. And both of those
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  Speaker 3: phenotypic characteristics, being physiologically reactive and being highly negatively emotional,
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  Speaker 3: look like they're associated with being more developmentally susceptible to
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  Speaker 3: environmental influences. So it may be my prenatal stress by
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  Speaker 3: fostering negative emotionality and or physiological stress susceptibility easily stressed
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  Speaker 3: thereby foster thereby manufactures 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 off
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  Speaker 2: the top of my head. I think estrogen are certain
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  Speaker 2: injections that are given to mothers to induce to delay
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  Speaker 2: labor can increase a lot of testosterone in the baby
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  Speaker 2: normal levels. Is that something also that can play a
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  Speaker 2: role or you.
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  Speaker 3: Know, in terms of either what makes us what fixes us?
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  Speaker 3: As being fixed strategists I call them, or developmentally plastic,
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  Speaker 3: it's open season on possibilities. This hasn't been well studied.
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  Speaker 3: This is you know, I first made a sentence passing
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  Speaker 3: notion about this idea in a well sided piece in
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  Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one, nobody noticed it. In nineteen ninety nine,
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  Speaker 3: I wrote two commentaries in which I developed this idea
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  Speaker 3: a little more hardly. Anybody noticed it in two thousand
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  Speaker 3: and seven. In two thousand and nine, I wrote more
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  Speaker 3: substantial people pieces. People noticed it. So we're really only
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  Speaker 3: ten years into looking at this issue. Because here's here's
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  Speaker 3: what's gone on before. It's really not the case, as
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  Speaker 3: I said at the beginning, for heuristic or explanetary purpose,
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  Speaker 3: It's really not the case that you know, developmentalists have
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  Speaker 3: presumed that all people are equally susceptible to environmental influences.
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  Speaker 3: And that's because they have long presumed that some people
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  Speaker 3: are more susceptible to negative environmental influences, that is, they're
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  Speaker 3: more vulnerable to adversity, that is, they carry particular risk factors. So,
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  Speaker 3: for example, classically, if you're a highly negative baby, that's
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  Speaker 3: considered a risk factor because now if you're cared for
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  Speaker 3: by an insensitive parent, you have real trouble down the
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  Speaker 3: developmental road. Okay, Or if you're born premature, or if
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  Speaker 3: you're born handicapped, or if maybe you be unattractive, or
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  Speaker 3: maybe if you're prone to obesity and you grow up
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  Speaker 3: in an obesogenic environment. In other words, we've long thought
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  Speaker 3: or if you carry certain genes, that there are certain
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  Speaker 3: individual organismic characteristics that make people especially likely to do
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  Speaker 3: badly when bad things happen. Okay, and by definition, the
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  Speaker 3: other people are resilient when the same bad things happen,
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  Speaker 3: they don't succumb. Well, that viewpoint has been around for
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  Speaker 3: twenty thirty forty years, and it's been a useful one.
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  Speaker 3: But you know what we've never thought about until really
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  Speaker 3: I came along and a couple of other people and
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: started thinking about this in a different way. What about people?
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: And so what was previously well recognized, although not labeled
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: in these terms, was differential susceptibility to adversity, the resilient
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: and the vulnerable. What was not thought about was differential
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: susceptibility to support and enrichment. And so what we really
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: discovered is that the very people are highly susceptible to
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: adversity look like they're highly susceptible to enrichment and support.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: That is, they're not just vulnerable, they're developmentally plastic, for
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: better or for worse. Under bad conditions, their ship sinks.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Under good conditions, their ship flies, they thrive, Whereas others
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: who are intriguingly resilient in the face of adversity, they're
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: also resilient. In the face of support and enrichment, they
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: don't benefit. So it's almost like if you give some people, well,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to I'm not going to go there,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: I'll just be confusing. So and in fact, here becomes
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: a very interesting linguistic observation. When we think about people
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: who are disproportionately likely to succumb to adversity, to do
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: badly if bad things happen, they're vulnerable. Okay, they're just
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: waiting for the store to break. The can almost back
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: if you would. What word is the is the reciprocal
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: or the reverse or the inverse of vulnerable to describe
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the person who's disproportionate and likely to benefit from support
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: and enrichment. I have asked this question all over the world.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: No language, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian,
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: I can go on. Nobody in the audience ever raised
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: their hand and has an equivalent word. You know, The
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: only word I come up with is lucky. Joke. But
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: here's the point. Is it because we haven't had a word,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: that we haven't had a concept, that we haven't looked
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: at the those disproportioned and likely to benefit from enrichment
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: and discovered that that they're the same ones who are
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: disproportionately likely to suffer in the face of adversity. And
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: that's why I go back to the recidivism case. The
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: guy in jail because he was made that way, may
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: benefit from a good rehabilitation because in the same way
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: he was susceptible to the banned conditions he grew up
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: in which made him a criminal, he could still be
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: susceptible to the ongoing conditions and a good rehabilitation program
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: which will turn him around.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because it reminds me of a couple of
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: stories of a buddy of mine, Pastor turnip Seed. Pastor
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: turnip Seed grew up with a father that was very abusive.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: He abused as mother abused him violently. He was arrested
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I and get thirty seven charges of felonies, convicted of
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: thirty seven felis by the time he was twenty one,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: and then he got his life straightened by the time
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: he was thirty seven and he's been a pastor for
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the last twenty five years, so it seemed like he was.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, But we wouldn't say he was vulnerable to
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: the good thing. You know. My question would be what
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: turned him around? What exposures and experiences he proof susceptible?
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Is he susceptible to? Now let's think also about the
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: pastors who had the bad experiences but unlike him, never
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: really succumbed to them. And let's think about the individuals
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: who grew up under nurturing conditions who ended up like
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: he did in the first half of his life. In
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: other words, we have people who are gonna be for
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: better or for worse just who they are, and we
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: have other people who are gonna be who they are
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: because of their experiences and exposures. So you could have
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: two pastors, one was born to be a pastor, the
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: others was made to be a pastor. You can have
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: two anti pastors. One was born to be an anti pastor,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: the other was made to be an anti pastor. Life
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: ends up being intriguingly more complex this way, and then
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: you can ask yourself, well, why do we have this
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: kind of developmental variation in our susceptibilities. And I would
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: say because in our ancestral histories it paid off at
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: times to be an SOB no matter what, So we
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: have genes for SOB. There are other times when it
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: paid off to be nice, so we have genes to
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: be nice. There were other times when it paid off
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: two bend with the wind, so to be the way
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: the wind was blowing. So we have genes to make
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: you developmentally malleable. So you can be nice or you
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: can be nasty metaphor, depending upon which way the wind
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: was blowing while you were growing up. That is none
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: of the so. So people kind of often think that, oh,
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: it's better to be developmentally malleable to be susceptible to
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: environmental influences. It is if you're lucky enough to grow
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: up under nurturing circumstances. But is it if you're growing
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: up under adversity. Well, one second, my people are here.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Well one second are human evolutionary history, there are times
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: it's paid off to be developmentally malleable and shaped by
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: your experiences. There are times when that has been a
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: fool's errand so people have evolved so that we have
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: in other words, we have genetic variation for being malleable
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: and not being developmentally malleable. And you know, you know what,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: you don't convince me of this the case of the
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Killing Fields of Cambodia that when the you as vacated
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Vietnam after we lost the war, the Khmer Rouge took
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: over Cambodia. They flushed everybody out of the cities into
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: the countryside, and they murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Who did they murder first? People like you and me,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: uncalloused hands or spectacles, because those they regarded as markers
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: of education. So if you grew up as a kid
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: listening to your parents like you and I probably did,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: and maybe many of your listeners who told you go
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: to schools, study hard, respect your teachers, do your homework, etc.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Because then life will turn out better than it otherwise.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Would guess what if you were a Cambodian and you
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: were told that twenty years earlier, before the Khmer Rouge
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: came in, you were dead. Now let's imagine that you
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: had a parent who told you exactly the same thing.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: But you were a fixed strategist. You weren't susceptible to
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: that influence. You were just gonna play hooky, be tardy,
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: not do your homework, etc. You actually had a greater
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: likelihood of living to survive. And here's the critical point
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: from an evolutionary standpoint, to breed again, you got to
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: pass on your genes. Those kids who took who did
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: their homework because their parents encouraged them to, they were
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: very unlikely to get a chance to pass on their jeans.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: So all of a sudden, in that small example, being
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: developmentally susceptible was going over the proverbial waterfall. You were
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: prepared for a future that didn't come because the future
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: is uncertain.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff. Were gonna get a futurist in
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: here as well, fascinating. Well, there you go, folks. You
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: wanted to know what it was, how you found out
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: what it was, Professor Belski you mentioned before we did
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: the interview. I mean, there's a couple of questions I have,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: but I think I'm pretty much done because it looks
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: like cultural differences. Probably it will just be another factor
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: that's involved, and one parent's all. Those are just other
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: factors that are involved, right, Well.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Those those become experienced and exposures. We know that some
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: kids grew up in single parent families and are adversely affected.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Others not. We know that some you know that, not
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: every You know, I'm dating myself here because this is
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: my childhood history. You know what I learned. But not
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: every German teenager became a Hitler youth.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Only some were susceptible. And even of those who wore
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: the uniforms, only some bought into the radical propaganda. So
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: you know, the point is that it's good that we're
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: all not a radical function of nurture, because nurture can
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: be hijacked by bad guys.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'll be watching to make sure you're not doing
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: some kind of lamb back there. So I'm doing something weird.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: But doctor Belski is back in his little private lamb
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: trying to manipulate the world. Now, just kidding, doctor Belski.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: You have a new book coming out, you said.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: I'm working it on a book. I'm finishing it up.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: I can't give you a title because that's still up
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: in the air.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: All right, we won't. We won't worry about that.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: You know. Much of what I've been talking about these
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: days often goes by the terminal terminology of orchid and dandelion.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: That's the metaphor. The orchid is the environmentally susceptible for
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: better and for worse. If you don't take care of
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: it well, it wilts, it dies. If you take care
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: of it well, it's a magnificent flower. In other words,
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: it's got a great range of reaction from dead to fantastic.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: You take a dandelion, it kind of doesn't matter what
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: you do to it. It's a dandelion, you know. It's
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: much more just who it is. It's kind of that
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: fixed strategist I was talking about now. So a lot
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: of your listeners may be familiar with that terminology. It
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: seems to be getting pretty widespread these days. I don't
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: like it for the following reason. It suggests as someone
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: my discussion is so this is a qualification of what
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I've said to this point. It suggests that there are
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: two kinds of people, those who are developmentally plastic and
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: those who are not. Those who are susceptible to environmental
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: influences for better and for worse, those who are not.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Think of it more as a gradient. That is, there
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: are some who are going to be highly susceptible, some
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: moderately susceptible, some modestly susceptibly, and some not susceptible. So
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: like it's more of a continuum than a typo logical
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: Yes you are, no 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 other
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: other individuals or scholars going to do the same, or
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: as you're saying, that's only been around about territory is.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know this is this is a growing arena
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: of research. And two of the most interesting things that
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: are being done. On the one hand are people looking
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: at sets of genes, not just one gene or another,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: but sets of genes that might identify more and less
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: developmentally malleable people. And the other, of course, is looking
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: at variation intervention efficacy, efforts to treat people, either to
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: prevent problems, to or to remediate problems that are already developed,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: or even just to promote well being. And it's long
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: been understood that there's a lot of what we call
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: big word heterogenea heterogeneity. There's a lot of variation and efficacy.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Some people benefit and se people don't. Well, now it
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: looks like we expect to see that, not just because
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: we do, but to understand why we see that and
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: even potentially be able to identify the people a out
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: of time we're not there yet, who are likely to
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: benefit and those who are less likely to benefit. And
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: that becomes intriguing because it raises the question, in a
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: world of limited resources, whether if you could we're not
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: there yet, identify those who are most likely and less
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: likely to benefit, that you would target disproportionally the ones
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: who are more likely to benefit, and triage are the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: ones who are less likely to benefit. Now, a lot
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: of people object to that way of thinking it's unfair
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: because they're valuing equity. Other people who value efficacy say,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: what's the sense of providing services to people who if
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: it won't work for them, that's just throwing good money
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: after ban. But again, people differ in terms of how
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: they wait efficacy and equity. If you're a radical socialist,
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: you're into equity. If you're you know, hard nosed capitalists,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: you're into efficacy. And I don't think it necessarily has
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: to be one or the other, but but it raises
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: this issue. And you know what's fascinating to me is
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: people who object to the efficacy analysis. Oh, you can't
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: deny services to people even if and they say that
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: even if you knew, if you had good reason to think,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: they wouldn't work, They say, because it's unfair. I say,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: wait a minute. You know, after a battle, this is
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: how physicians work. They triage. I can save this somebody.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I can't save this one. I can't do everything. So
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna do what works. We now have personalized medicine.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to give this cancer treatment to the
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: people I know work on. I'm only gonna give it
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: to the people I know what's gonna work on. So
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: why if we can do that in medicine, why can't
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: we do that in behavioral and psychological functioning in science?
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: And one of the resistance to this analysis I find
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: is that people think, oh, psychology and behavior are different.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: You know, that's not biology. Well, that's a mind audi duality.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: That's eighteenth nineteenth, at most twentieth century thinking. It is
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: not twenty first century thinking to think the mind and
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: the body are separate things. You know, we now know
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: that what's going on bacteriologically your gut affects your mind,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: and what's going on in your mind affects your gut.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: You know, so any attempt to say that that psychology
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: or that's behavior, that's the mind and it's different is outdated,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: old school and just you know, time to move on.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, probably settled down already a couple of centuries ago,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: maybe not. So you got a lot of ethical issues
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: coming up in the future and exciting stuff too. I
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: can't wait to find out what discoveries you and other
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: scholars are going to make about this new concept.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: It could prove very interesting, yes, and it raised it
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: raised important philosophical questions as well as you know, practical ones.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: But again, I want to underscore the fact that we're
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: not there yet, but I think there's every reason to
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: believe that we can eventually get there. In the same
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: way we've discovered that these medications and these drugs work
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: for that cancer but not for this cancer, or that
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: person but not for this person, we'll discover and we
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: are discovering the same things about psychological and behavioral treatments,
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: and then the question will be what do we do
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: with that knowledge when it comes to providing services, especially
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: with limited resources.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Professor Belski, thank you so much for being here.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: We truly appreciate it.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: My pleasure you take care so long.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you everyone for joining us. All right, folks, we
• 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