Latest / The You Project / #1657 Should We Trust First Impressions? - David Gillespie

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#1657 Should We Trust First Impressions? - David Gillespie · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'll get our team. Welcome to another installment of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Bloody You Project with Bloody David Gillespian, Bloody, Tiffany and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Cook is not here. She's on sabbatical. And do you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: know where she is?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: No idea?
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  Speaker 1: She's in India, all right? What she got exactly? What
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  Speaker 1: is she doing there? Well, she's gone for a bit
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  Speaker 1: of sight seeing. She's gone with a group. She's staying
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of I should have paid more attention.
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  Speaker 2: You've got no idea what she's doing.
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  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, She's spending some time, like a retreat.
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  Speaker 1: And I know that. I saw a podcast podcast at
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  Speaker 1: Post today. She just finished spending I think two nights
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  Speaker 1: in a monastery or something, and so she's just out
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  Speaker 1: and about seeing another very different part of the world.
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  Speaker 1: And if her reports or anything to go by, she
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  Speaker 1: seems to be enjoying it. But she'll be back next
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  Speaker 1: time so you can you can ask her about India.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's where have you ever been? Have
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  Speaker 1: you ever been there?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Only very briefly as part of a business thing
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  Speaker 2: I did. I was there for maybe two or three
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  Speaker 2: days in maybe Delhi, I'm thinking. So, No, I haven't
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  Speaker 2: I haven't been to India.
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  Speaker 1: Well you have, but you really didn't say anything.
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  Speaker 2: No. No.
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  Speaker 1: I went to Fiji last year four eighten hours because
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I had to do a gig and I literally got in, slept,
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  Speaker 1: got up. I wasn't named an Ada. Now it's like,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: but there, Yeah, I would have been. Actually I got
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: in it like yeah, probably sixteen hours or something to
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  Speaker 1: do a forty five minute keynote.
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  Speaker 2: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
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  Speaker 1: Hardly, hardly I can I.
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  Speaker 2: Can top that one. So I used to commute regularly
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  Speaker 2: to San Francisco when I was doing my tech startup days.
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  Speaker 2: So by I commute, I mean I would fly there
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  Speaker 2: every fortnight, spent a fortnight there, a fortnight back here.
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  Speaker 2: There was one time I had to come back to
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  Speaker 2: Brisbane for a wedding on a Saturday night and then
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: be back the following morning. So I think I was
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  Speaker 2: actually in town maybe less than ten hours between flights
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  Speaker 2: back from the US, and each flight is a twelve
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  Speaker 2: hour flight, so that was a bit hectic.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's it's more, isn't It's like that's if
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  Speaker 1: you go to even that. I think it's fourteen.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm probably measuring a bit from Sydney to San Francisco,
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  Speaker 2: which was the bit where I got to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well you're up the pointy end, right,
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  Speaker 1: so you get quicker than the rest of you.
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  Speaker 2: Oh that's right, Yeah, that's exactly right. I've talked to
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  Speaker 2: you about that analogy with the education system at some
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  Speaker 2: time in the past, haven't I, which is it's all
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  Speaker 2: like us all being on a plane and the plane
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  Speaker 2: gets to London at the same time, but some of
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  Speaker 2: us pay a lot more for our seats and have
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  Speaker 2: a nicer ride, but at the end of the day,
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  Speaker 2: we still all get to London at the same time.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like, I'm not posh at it. Well,
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  Speaker 1: clearly I'm not posh, but I if I fly internationally
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  Speaker 1: in my old age, I tend to fly business if
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  Speaker 1: I can. I'm not trying to sound like a snob.
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  Speaker 1: I'd rather I did a gig in Ireland a few
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  Speaker 1: years ago and I've never been there till this gig,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and they and they're like it was going to cost
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  Speaker 1: them too much, and I said, fly me business and
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  Speaker 1: put me up somewhere nice and then don't pay me
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  Speaker 1: for the gig. And they're like, okay, so I got
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  Speaker 1: a free trip to Ireland and went business and my
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  Speaker 1: mum's mum was born in Ireland, so it was just
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  Speaker 1: like a free little holiday. But have you been to Ireland?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, once again, very briefly, to inspect a software facility.
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  Speaker 2: So I've seen an airport in the inside of an
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  Speaker 2: office building.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, you must have done a lot of travel. I
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  Speaker 1: bet you're glad those days are over.
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  Speaker 2: Very glad. Yes, it was a big reason why I
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  Speaker 2: stopped doing that.
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  Speaker 1: Now, of course, we are not a travel show.
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  Speaker 2: We aren't.
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  Speaker 1: No, we're not. You wrote a You wrote an article
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  Speaker 1: which I applauded on LinkedIn, and I'm sure it's up
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  Speaker 1: on your website or I'm sure it's somewhere else. But
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  Speaker 1: if you're not on LinkedIn, everyone get on LinkedIn. And
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  Speaker 1: if you don't follow David Gillespie, follow him. He wrote
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  Speaker 1: an article yesterday called Beyond First Impressions, Escaping the Psychopaths
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  Speaker 1: Charm and I thought, now, as much as you don't
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  Speaker 1: want to hear this, it kind of intersects with my
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  Speaker 1: stuff a little bit, not the psychopathy stuff, but like
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  Speaker 1: reading people and first impressions and all of that. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I found it fascinating and like you were talking essentially
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  Speaker 1: about what you see up front is often not what
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  Speaker 1: you get further down the line.
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  Speaker 2: It came from, you know, just I look around all
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  Speaker 2: the time for interesting bits and pieces, and one that
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  Speaker 2: sort of came through my feed, if you like, yesterday
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  Speaker 2: warning because I'm trying to put something out every day
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  Speaker 2: now just because keep me in practice. And yesterday morning,
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  Speaker 2: there was this experiment out of the Duke University in
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  Speaker 2: the United States. And look, you'd be familiar with these
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  Speaker 2: kinds of experiments, you know, because you're in the area
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  Speaker 2: of psychology, and so there's a lot of BS experiments
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  Speaker 2: done in psychology. But this one, this one struck me
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  Speaker 2: as a little bit interesting. This was one where they
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  Speaker 2: are What they did was they asked people to value
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  Speaker 2: sort of like a garage sale box of stuff. So
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  Speaker 2: they give people a box of stuff that was closed,
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  Speaker 2: and then they'd say, right open the box up and
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  Speaker 2: give us a value for the things that you find
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  Speaker 2: in the box. And then they do that and I
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  Speaker 2: think it was maybe five or ten boxes they'd do
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  Speaker 2: that and ask them to value them. Now, of course,
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  Speaker 2: being a psychology experiment, there's a trick you know, there's
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  Speaker 2: a hidden trick. And the hidden trick here is that
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  Speaker 2: all the boxes have exactly the same value, but they
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  Speaker 2: don't tell them that. But the box are arranged differently.
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  Speaker 2: So in some of the boxes, the items at the
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  Speaker 2: top are much more valuable than the items at the bottom.
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  Speaker 2: So you might find a necklace or something at the
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  Speaker 2: top of one box, and you know, and someone's old
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  Speaker 2: shoes or something at the bottom of it. But the
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  Speaker 2: value of the boxes was all approximately equal. But what
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  Speaker 2: they found is that people always valued the boxes where
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  Speaker 2: they found the more valuable things first much much higher
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  Speaker 2: than where they found the more valuable things last or
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  Speaker 2: in the middle. So and what they said was, Okay,
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  Speaker 2: this proves something that's been proven quite a bit in psychology,
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  Speaker 2: which is that first impressions count a lot. So our
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  Speaker 2: first impression of something, and in this case it's the
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  Speaker 2: first impression of the box, is that this is a
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  Speaker 2: more valuable box because the first thing I saw was
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  Speaker 2: more valuable, and even if I eventually got to something
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  Speaker 2: that valuable in another box, my first impression had a
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  Speaker 2: lot more weight. And so I considered that other box
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  Speaker 2: where I found someone's old sneakers at the top to
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  Speaker 2: be less valuable than the one where I found the
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  Speaker 2: gold chain at the top. And so this confirmed previous research,
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  Speaker 2: and that in itself is an interesting The twist in
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  Speaker 2: this research is that what they did was they got
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  Speaker 2: that cut of things, just like everyone else does. But
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  Speaker 2: then they said to the people, we'd like you to
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  Speaker 2: come back tomorrow, so don't give us a value now.
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  Speaker 2: So there was another group, a control group. Don't give
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  Speaker 2: us a value now. Go home, think about it, come
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  Speaker 2: back tomorrow and tell us what you think the value
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  Speaker 2: of the boxes were. And what invariably happened is when
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  Speaker 2: people came back tomorrow and then gave their assessment of
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  Speaker 2: the value, they were much more likely to get it right.
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  Speaker 2: So they were much more likely to say, you know what,
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  Speaker 2: these boxes are all about the same value and that
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  Speaker 2: was the correct answer. So if you gave people time,
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  Speaker 2: if you gave them a night to sleep on it,
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  Speaker 2: if you like, and do whatever else, I mean, who knows.
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  Speaker 2: They might have googled things, done some valuations themselves, or whatever.
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  Speaker 2: Whatever they did, it didn't matter. The point was when
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  Speaker 2: they came back twenty four hours later, they got the
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  Speaker 2: right answer. They'd had time to properly digest and so
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  Speaker 2: this was an interesting study because if you translate that
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  Speaker 2: into relationships or workplaces or anything else and start to
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  Speaker 2: think about the evolutionary reason why we operate on first impressions,
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  Speaker 2: that's to me, that's where it starts to become really interesting.
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  Speaker 2: I always find it interesting when you ask the question
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  Speaker 2: why why would humans why would be environmentally involved in
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  Speaker 2: favor first impressions, because this is not something unique to
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  Speaker 2: people who do psychology studies. I mean, as you would know,
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  Speaker 2: this is everybody everything. All the time we judge something.
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  Speaker 2: We do judge a book by its cover. We do
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  Speaker 2: make a snap judgment about whether we want to pick
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  Speaker 2: the book up and read it, whether we want to
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  Speaker 2: watch the television show, whether we even want to listen
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  Speaker 2: to Craig or his guest, you know, within the first
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  Speaker 2: few seconds of hearing about it. And the reason we
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  Speaker 2: do that is because our brains and bodies are optimized
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  Speaker 2: to save energy, and one of the most expensive things
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  Speaker 2: we can do is think. It is an absolute energy hog.
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  Speaker 2: Twenty five percent of the energy we can use is
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  Speaker 2: spent thinking, and that's for an organ that occupies about
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  Speaker 2: two percent of our body. So it's a massive energy hog. Now,
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  Speaker 2: in these days of food everywhere, all the time, far
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  Speaker 2: too much of it. We probably don't think too much
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  Speaker 2: about energy scarcity, but if you needed to find the
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  Speaker 2: food to supply that twenty five percent, and food was
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  Speaker 2: really scarce, as it is in any hunter gatherers society.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know if you do. You watch that show
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  Speaker 2: alone that's been on SBS where the people you know
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  Speaker 2: in the wilderness, you know, think of those people and
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  Speaker 2: how keen they would be to waste energy When you're
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  Speaker 2: getting one fish to eat, if you're lucky every three days,
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  Speaker 2: you're not wasting energy on anything. And our bodies are
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  Speaker 2: optimized that way, our brains are optimized that way. So
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  Speaker 2: we take lots of shortcuts. And one of the shortcuts
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  Speaker 2: we take is first impressions. So we figure and evolutionary
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  Speaker 2: has told us. Evolution has told us that most of
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  Speaker 2: the time we're right. More often than not, if we
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  Speaker 2: make a judgment in the first few seconds, we're right.
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  Speaker 2: And that was the rule that was being applied by
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  Speaker 2: these people when they looked at these boxes in this
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  Speaker 2: garage sale experiment. The first thing they saw was valuable.
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  Speaker 2: First impression. This is a valuable box. No more thinking required,
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  Speaker 2: look at all that energy I've saved as But if
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  Speaker 2: you force people to expend the energy, if you force
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  Speaker 2: people to actually think about it, you get a different result.
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  Speaker 2: Now why I say this is important with psychopaths is
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  Speaker 2: psychopaths rely on us making judgments on first impressions because
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  Speaker 2: everything about a psychopath is fake. They lie about everything,
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  Speaker 2: and they spend their entire lives working very hard on
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  Speaker 2: a first impression that sells you. Most people when they
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  Speaker 2: first encounter a psychopath will tell you that they are
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  Speaker 2: the most charming, fabulous person they have ever met. And
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  Speaker 2: that's because they are very very good at reflecting back
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  Speaker 2: to you exactly what you want to say. They are
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  Speaker 2: masters of first impressions. And if we only operate on
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  Speaker 2: a first impression, we will get sucked in every single time,
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  Speaker 2: both as an employer of psychopaths and in relationships. Yes,
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  Speaker 2: operate on a first impression and you are in danger.
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  Speaker 2: So I guess the tip out of all of this
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  Speaker 2: is don't take the time, get the you know, the
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  Speaker 2: extra night into the process, get the twenty four hours,
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  Speaker 2: get the backup research. You can and will probably make
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  Speaker 2: the correct decision if you put the first oppression aside
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  Speaker 2: and say, you know what, I'm not making a decision
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  Speaker 2: about this until tomorrow. Give your brain time to digest
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  Speaker 2: everything it saw, if it's if it's a job application,
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  Speaker 2: give give yourself time to follow through a process of
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  Speaker 2: checking the information you're being given, because it's too late
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  Speaker 2: after you've ended over the job or entered into a
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  Speaker 2: relationship with this person. So that's the lesson out of this,
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  Speaker 2: I think, which is, yes, we do work on first impressions,
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  Speaker 2: but there's a really easy cure time. Give yourself time
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  Speaker 2: to spend that cognitive power, to spend that thinking on
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  Speaker 2: thinking about whether your first impression is right. So had
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  Speaker 2: you asked those people with the garage boxes on the
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  Speaker 2: first day when they did it, which is the most
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  Speaker 2: vailable box, they would have said what everyone else said,
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  Speaker 2: which is the one I saw with the most valuable
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  Speaker 2: thing at the top. But don't ask them, don't ask,
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  Speaker 2: don't get them to make a decision there, and then
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  Speaker 2: ask them the next day and you get a very
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  Speaker 2: different answer. And that's a rule we should be thinking
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  Speaker 2: about in our whole lives, which is give yourself time
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  Speaker 2: when encountering new information to decide whether your first impression
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  Speaker 2: is correct.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things I advise people is to
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  Speaker 1: trust slowly and respect slowly. And I don't say that
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  Speaker 1: because I want them to think everybody is a potential
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  Speaker 1: enemy or but I just say, you know, it's like,
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  Speaker 1: how many people do you meet where initially they're exactly
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  Speaker 1: what you said, charismatic, charming, affable, likable, you know, they're
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  Speaker 1: articulate and all of that, and then down the track
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  Speaker 1: they're nothing like that, or their energy is totally different.
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  Speaker 1: And it's quite a significant percentage of people, even people
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  Speaker 1: who say to me, when we first started going out,
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  Speaker 1: it was like this, and then it's like three months past,
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  Speaker 1: and then this curtain got drawn back onto the actual
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  Speaker 1: person and it had been you know, a fucking charade
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  Speaker 1: for three months or six months or or one week
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  Speaker 1: sometimes for example. But did you ever read that book
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  Speaker 1: Blink by Malcolm glad Well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did, Yes, the whole book about first impressions.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is that part of this research is
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  Speaker 2: really old news, like that book and lots of others,
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  Speaker 2: plenty of plenty of research that confirms, yes, we do,
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  Speaker 2: in fact work on first impressions. So as if anyone
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  Speaker 2: needed that proof to them, there's a mountain of research
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  Speaker 2: that proves we do. The interesting part of this is
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  Speaker 2: how do you fix that? And you know it's maybe
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  Speaker 2: a statement of the bleeding obvious, will give yourself time,
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  Speaker 2: but this is this experiment actually proves it.
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  Speaker 1: So when when, for want of a better term, when
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  Speaker 1: are snap judgments? Okay? Because we don't always have the
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  Speaker 1: luxury of time, right.
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  Speaker 2: So when you're on I guess, when you're starving to
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  Speaker 2: death on a loan, then snap judgments are a pretty
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  Speaker 2: good idea because you want to conserve mean energy and
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  Speaker 2: the cost of expending energy thinking about things is real
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  Speaker 2: and maybe more than the cost of getting it wrong
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  Speaker 2: if you make a snap judgment. So, and you might say, well,
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  Speaker 2: where's your evidence for that, Gillespie, Well, the evidence is
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  Speaker 2: evolution favors it. We wouldn't have gotten to this point
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  Speaker 2: with this built in facility if evolution didn't say people
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  Speaker 2: who tend to make snap judgments tend to survive better
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  Speaker 2: than people who don't.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well yeah, and I mean there are a
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  Speaker 1: lot of instances where we have to especially not so
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  Speaker 1: much in twenty twenty four, but still, I guess sociologically
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  Speaker 1: in a way. But like evolutionarily, there were so many
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: dangerous situations and so many predators, and so much inherent
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: risk in the world that we, not me and you,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: but live in that you had to be constantly vigilant
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and constantly or at least regularly making decisions quickly because
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  Speaker 1: it was a lot more life and death back then.
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  Speaker 2: It's how we developed. I mean, you know, no, you
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: don't like me going off topic on these things, but
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  Speaker 2: it's interesting how we developed. The thing that is essentially
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: a sixth sense about what other humans are speak, are thinking,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: is using that exact capacity. So in our evolutionary environment,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: there's the quick and the dead, and the way to
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: be the quickest is that if somebody else's did you know,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: there's that old joke about you know, running from a bear.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I don't have to run faster than the bear. I
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: just have to run faster than you and me.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 2: And so that applies in an evolutionary sense, which is
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  Speaker 2: that we developed to facility to communicate with each other
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  Speaker 2: which did not involve having to think about communicating with
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  Speaker 2: each other about danger. So we develop the ability to
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  Speaker 2: read each other's movements, expressions, even tone in the voice,
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  Speaker 2: and understand danger without the word danger actually being said,
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  Speaker 2: and so that is done using a facility in human
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  Speaker 2: brain which is called mirror neurons, which essentially we have
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  Speaker 2: neurons that are mimicking the things that they see in
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  Speaker 2: others at high speed sublight speeds, well not sublight, but
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  Speaker 2: light speed mirroring. So even before we have time to
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  Speaker 2: even think about what's happening, our brain has already figured
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  Speaker 2: out what's happening from what it's read from other humans
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  Speaker 2: and the way they're interacting. Now, when you apply that
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  Speaker 2: in modern society, what that means is that we can
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  Speaker 2: read each other's oceans on autopilot. We feel it's almost
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: like we are directly connected to another person. When we
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: see another person experience pain, we experience it too. We
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  Speaker 2: feel it, and we call that empathy. But it's actually
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  Speaker 2: a really powerful mechanism that was evolved to protect us
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: from danger, which is we know about something being dangerous
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  Speaker 2: before we can even think about it being dangerous, before
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  Speaker 2: even the person that it's happening to can think about
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  Speaker 2: it being dangerous. It's all happening in milliseconds and protecting us,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and we're running and then five minutes later, as we're
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  Speaker 2: running along, we start to think about what exactly am
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  Speaker 2: I running from. I don't know, but my brain said run.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And that facility is the thing that psychopaths lack. By
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: the way, they cannot they cannot read another person's emotions
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: on autopilot like that. They actually have to do the
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: thinking bit, and that delay while they think about what
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: we're feeling is often detectable. So one of the surest
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: ways to detect whether a person in a group of
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: people may be a psychopath is watch how the group
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: reacts to something traumatic happening, either on television or in
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: a movie or in real life, or someone telling a
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: story about something traumatic in their life. Don't look at them,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: look at the people listening and see how they react
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: to that event. Most people will react automatically and in
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: almost at light speed in terms of real time reaction.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Some people will have to think about it, and that
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: delay will be noticeable.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you know how I know I'm not a sociopath,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: But a sociopath would say what I just said, by
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the way, exactly what a sociopath would say. But I
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: cry about four times a day when I watched emotional
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: shit on Instagram, like some soldier coming home and his
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: kids running up to him or her. I'm like, oh
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: my god, I've.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Got some bad news for you there, Craig.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Don't tell me they're not real.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: No, no, I don't know. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know. But your reaction is interesting. So blubbering
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: like a baby when something emotional is presented to you.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: So there's a chance I'm still a psychopath.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: That's a possibility, is actually an indication of a failure
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: of the higher order control mechanisms of an emotional response.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: So psychopathe shut up. Gillespie, shut up. It's not that
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: psychopaths can't experience emotions, it's that they can't experience the
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: higher order control of emotions. So one of the things
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: that quite a few studies have identified about psychopaths is
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that they do feel the four basic emotions, one of
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: which is sadness really really powerfully, and so will inexplicably
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: cry in response to something emotional being projected when others
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: around them don't find them, you know that intense Wow.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you've just cleared that up for me.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Now, I'm not trying to diagnose or anything there, Craig,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just saying that it's not. It's not
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the get out of jail free card you think it
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: might be.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a pity. That's you know, there is there
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: is a term in psychology for what you're talking about,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: which is understanding how other people think, which is called
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: theory of mind. Yes, that's the that's the capacity to
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: understand someone else's version.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: It's a bit different theory of mind.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: It's a bit different, but it's kind of understand it's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: having an insight into someone else's kind of Well.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Theory of mind is important because it, as far as
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: we know, we're the only species capable of doing it,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: which is understanding what another person's perspective is. So, you know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: there's famous examples of the chimpanzee experiments where they taught
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: chimpanzees to talk endlessly, you know, taught them whole alphabets
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and they comprehensively failed
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: theory of mind every single time because never once, even
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: after they could talk essentially by pointing to symbols and
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: all that sort of thing, never once did they ask
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the human what they thought or how they reacted. Because
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: to them, the concept that the human was thinking too
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: was an impossible concept. And that's what theory of mind is,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: is putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. Now, the interesting
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: thing about theory of mind is psychopaths are really really
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: good at it. They have to spend their life doing
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: it because the rest of us are doing it automatically
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: on empathy autopilot, where our mirror and your owns are firing.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: We understand what someone's thinking without even thinking about it,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: whereas a psychopath actually has to think about it and
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: then decide to imitate that behavior. So theory of mind
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: is something that psychopaths are really really excellent at, and
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: that's possibly why I think the theory of mind study
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: suggests that most people can't do theory of mind under
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the age of about three, I think is about the number.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: So that when they've done the studies on very young children,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: they you know that, you know, the sorts of studies
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: they do where they they ask them to think, you know,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: is the lully under you know, under that hat or
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: under that one, and what would the person have been
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: thinking and all that sort of thing. That doesn't work
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: on a young child. But a young child is capable
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: of empathy, very very capable of empathy, but they're not
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: capable of theory of mind.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the thing is they can understand
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: how other people think. They just don't care. That's right.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: They have a very good understanding of how you think,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: but the only purpose in understanding that is to manipulate you.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Well, that actually gives them a strategic and sociological advantage really,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that they can understand how you think. You know. That's
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: have you in all your businesses? I guess over the
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: years you've employed a fair few people or no, like yourself,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: have you higher? What's your I've employed about five hundred people,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: not anymore, but over the years, and did you fuck
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it up? Did you employed people and then three months?
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely? Oh absolutely. I think anyone who says to you, no,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I've always perfectly employed, you know, I've never ever made
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: a mistake in someone I've employed is lying, is absolutely lying.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Because the reality is we do go with first impressions.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: We do believe what is put on a resume. We
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: do believe what people tell us because all humans default
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: to believing. Remember we've talked before about this tit for
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: tap thing, which is in human interaction, the thing that
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: holds us together as a community is that we default
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: to believing what other humans tell us. And the only
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: time we don't believe what they tell us is when
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: they prove that they are a liar. And even then,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: if they then seek forgiveness and then be honest, we'll
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: give them another chance. So our default is to believe
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: what people tell us, and unfortunately that works against us.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: That plus the first impression in a job interview means
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: we've got a very low probability of detecting a psychopath.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: But the cure to that is give yourself time and
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: check their references.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I made a fair few mistakes, I'll be honest.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: But also the other thing too is you know, so
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: it's almost like the distance between person and persona like
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: in the interview, you get the you know, you get
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the show, the Craig Show or whatever it is. You know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, this is a person you're trying to be. Yeah,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: this is a person trying to be what they think
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: they need to be to get over the line in
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: this context, yep, yeah yeah.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: So but unlike when you're dating someone, so the same
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: thing applies when you're potentially seeking out a mate. You know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: if you're on a first date with someone, it's a
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: job interview, but it's less formal, and it's you've got
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: less backup should you choose to use it in that
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: when you're employing someone, even though a lot of people think,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: you know what, my judgment is fabulous, I love this person.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: They are terrific. I'm not going to check anything, and
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: that's what a lot of people do. But they could
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: check it if they wanted to. They could verify the references.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: They could talk to people who've worked for this person,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: which is what they should do. They could make sure
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: they understand what every minute of this person's career look like,
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: not just the bits they've chosen to highlight on their resume.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: They could do that. But when you're potentially interviewing a partner,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: let's say you don't have all of that. All you've
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: got is the facade, and you've got to give yourself
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: time if you cannot decide based on the first impressions
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: of that facade, this person is ideal for me, because
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: the more ideal they are, honestly, the more likely they
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: are a psychopath, because that's what psychopaths are good at doing,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: which is giving you the mask you want to see.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: So the great news is everyone, if you think you've
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: found your dream partner, you've probably found a psychopath.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: So don't sign your house over to them.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yourself sometime and do a prenup whatever that is. We'll
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: say goodbye fair but mate as always entertaining and we
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: appreciate you.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Thanks mate, absolute pleasure see you, Greg