Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.9 - Dr. Robert Mather, The Conservative Social Psychologist | Academic Bias | Faith and Science

Transcript

Ep.9 - Dr. Robert Mather, The Conservative Social Psychologist | Academic Bias | Faith and Science · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  Here with Doctor Robert Mather. So, Robert, can you provide us a
• 0:03
  brief introduction of yourself? Well, hi.
• 0:06
  Well, first, thanks for having me on the show.
• 0:08
  I appreciate it. So I'm Doctor Robert Mather.
• 0:10
  I'm trained in experimental social psychology, so I'm not a
• 0:14
  clinician, I'm a researcher. My research areas are attitudes
• 0:17
  and and prejudice and discrimination and.
• 0:20
  You know, persuasion, and particularly, you know, implicit
• 0:23
  biases, subliminal perception, things like that.
• 0:27
  I've also done a lot of research in human factors on human
• 0:31
  factors, visual perception. Human factors are driving things
• 0:34
  like that. Is that a good start?
• 0:38
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:39
  So you're you're a legit researcher.
• 0:41
  Although that's not how I heard about you.
• 0:44
  I heard about you because I in a moment of somewhat despair,
• 0:50
  thinking that I was the only one out there, I just googled
• 0:53
  conservative therapist. And out of all the out of all
• 1:00
  the tombs of Google, only three hits or something came up.
• 1:05
  And you were the first one, the social, the conservative social
• 1:09
  psychologist. Yeah, so, OK, so that's a good
• 1:12
  story too, how I ended up in that position, so I.
• 1:17
  Back in 2015, before President Trump ran for office, before the
• 1:21
  world managed to lose its mind, I was asked to write a column
• 1:27
  for Psychology Today on industrial organizational
• 1:29
  psychology. So, you know, social psychology
• 1:32
  applied to the workplace, essentially.
• 1:33
  And that's what I do for a business now too.
• 1:36
  And so they said, well, you need to come up with a a unique
• 1:40
  title. And I thought about it for a
• 1:41
  while, and I said. Well, I mean, I've got one if
• 1:44
  you're willing to back me up on this.
• 1:46
  And it was the conservative social psychologist at that
• 1:49
  time. There was a lot of literature
• 1:51
  that was coming out, both empirical research and then, you
• 1:56
  know, kind of popular press articles from from people in
• 1:58
  social psychology. It had been identified that it
• 2:01
  was, you know, about 99% progressive liberals in the
• 2:05
  field and very few conservatives were in there.
• 2:08
  And that had all started in around 2012, when Jonathan
• 2:11
  Height, at a conference that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking
• 2:13
  at, asked everybody to raise their hand if they were a
• 2:16
  liberal and then a libertarian and then a conservative.
• 2:19
  And there were hardly any hands in the room of 1000 that went up
• 2:22
  for the conservatives. I did not raise my hand, even
• 2:25
  though my buddy was poking me on the side and in the ribs and
• 2:28
  say, hey, aren't you going to raise your hand?
• 2:29
  I said no, I'm there's no way that's career suicide right now.
• 2:33
  And so anyway, I did. I did not raise my hand.
• 2:36
  And that was back in 2012 and so, but that launched some
• 2:39
  studies that Lee Jessam and some others did looking at the the
• 2:43
  breakdown of politics in the field and how biased the field
• 2:46
  was and how that affects the types of research questions that
• 2:48
  get asked. It affects the peer review
• 2:50
  process. It affects everything.
• 2:52
  And they were concerned about that.
• 2:54
  Jonathan Height and Lee, Justin really kind of led the charge on
• 2:57
  that. And so anyway, that was the the
• 2:59
  context swirling around me standing up saying I'm a
• 3:02
  conservative social psychologist and.
• 3:06
  It led to a lot of publicity for me.
• 3:09
  I guess I would definitely say unwanted.
• 3:11
  I felt like I was having to step up and you know maybe try to
• 3:16
  pave the way for others to come after me.
• 3:20
  And I was already a tenured full professor at that point.
• 3:23
  So there was very little I felt risk to my career.
• 3:26
  I'm I'm at I was at a university the University of Central
• 3:28
  Oklahoma. So I was at a university that
• 3:31
  was supportive of me. They didn't know that I was
• 3:33
  going to do that, but they were. I thought they'd be supportive
• 3:35
  of me. It's in a, you know, very
• 3:38
  RedState as far as Oklahoma goes.
• 3:40
  And I thought the pushback, if the university tried to do
• 3:44
  anything to me, the pushback on them from legislature and and
• 3:49
  the public and the community that we're in would probably
• 3:52
  prevent them from doing that. So I felt like I was maybe the
• 3:54
  only guy around that could step up and be dumb enough to do
• 3:58
  that. And so I did.
• 4:00
  That's why I came up on the search and I wrote, I wrote a
• 4:02
  lot of articles discussing how that impacted mental health.
• 4:07
  And so how that impacts people not wanting to go get treatments
• 4:10
  when they are afraid that there's going to be a viewpoint
• 4:13
  bias against them. And so that's how the therapy
• 4:17
  part connects to, you know, to me.
• 4:19
  And I end up popping up on all the searches.
• 4:22
  Yeah, well, I definitely experienced that hesitation to
• 4:25
  not seek services among clients, unfortunately, which is part of
• 4:29
  my rationale for just putting the values that I adhere to on
• 4:33
  my website so people know what they're getting into.
• 4:35
  Because people hold traditional values, they're very, very
• 4:39
  reluctant to advertise that That's.
• 4:43
  That's why. That's why it's so important
• 4:44
  what you're doing, the work that you're doing.
• 4:48
  Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
• 4:49
  And I appreciate your your witness and your encouragement.
• 4:52
  And it's talking to people like you that's allowed me to take
• 4:56
  these steps. So and along those lines, what
• 4:59
  would you advise someone who is was like you at the Gladwell
• 5:04
  conference not raising the hand, you know, not having committed
• 5:08
  yet, but there they see that there's something incongruent
• 5:12
  with that. What would you advise that
• 5:13
  person? Well, if if you're in academia,
• 5:17
  which I've given advice to a lot of people, I I do say you know,
• 5:20
  it's probably best to. Lay low for a little while until
• 5:22
  you have tenure or until you've, you know, established yourself
• 5:26
  because you're highly vulnerable when you're not tenured.
• 5:30
  And so you know, maybe lay low for a little while and and don't
• 5:35
  do anything that that is against what you believe and don't sign
• 5:38
  on to anything that's against to what you what you believe.
• 5:40
  But you don't have to. You don't have to bring.
• 5:44
  Your politics, your your viewpoints to the workplace
• 5:47
  overtly. And that's one of the places
• 5:49
  that conservatives have a disadvantage that we see too,
• 5:51
  right. Because you know, progressive
• 5:53
  activists, that's by nature what they do and they go out and they
• 5:56
  push and and they they really push their viewpoints on people
• 6:01
  and try to convert people and they try to move it into
• 6:03
  curriculum. They try to put it everywhere in
• 6:06
  the name of doing what they believe is right.
• 6:08
  Conservatives by nature don't do that right.
• 6:10
  We try to, you know? I know.
• 6:13
  I helped place a conservative employee within a conservative
• 6:17
  employer and a year later both of them talked to me and said,
• 6:21
  you know, I don't, I don't know if their politics.
• 6:24
  I don't know their politics. And I I wasn't asked to match
• 6:28
  them on politics. It just happened to fall that
• 6:30
  way. I said that's because you're
• 6:31
  both conservatives and you don't talk about politics in the
• 6:33
  workplace. You're very professional.
• 6:34
  That's why a year later, after working together, neither of you
• 6:37
  know the other one's politics. Conservatives by nature are.
• 6:41
  Are conservative. Yeah.
• 6:44
  Well said. You know that advice he gave of
• 6:47
  laying low that's that's pretty that's really common advice.
• 6:49
  I received that myself. Although I'm, I'm starting to
• 6:52
  question it. I have a buddy who's who teaches
• 6:56
  at Notre Dame and he said that what laying low trains you to
• 7:01
  teaches you to do is is how to lay low.
• 7:04
  You know, and there's this, maybe there's this like vision
• 7:07
  that OK, once I get 10 here, I'll just, you know, explode and
• 7:10
  defend the truth and you know, I'll be more confident.
• 7:13
  But if someone it could be, and I've experienced this myself,
• 7:17
  that it could be that if someone has a habit of disguising their
• 7:21
  opinion and not speaking the truth that a change in
• 7:24
  circumstance, like a change in their position, job, position,
• 7:27
  is not going to change their character.
• 7:31
  Right. So.
• 7:32
  And I'll add another example, something I heard from, I think
• 7:37
  it was a professor at Princeton who said that this professor
• 7:41
  observed that the conservatives who got tenure were actually not
• 7:47
  the ones who were quiet, were quiet about their opinion and a
• 7:53
  little bit unclear about their perspective.
• 7:59
  But it was the ones who their opinion was known, but they and
• 8:03
  they were clear about it. But they of course were very
• 8:05
  professional about it, but they didn't back down from it.
• 8:09
  Well that and that and that and that describes me, but I I
• 8:13
  don't, I don't think most people have the.
• 8:17
  I don't think most people can handle a lot of the backlash
• 8:20
  that they get if they're in an if they're in an area that's
• 8:23
  overwhelmingly against them. It takes a special kind of
• 8:29
  person like you. You're weathering the storm.
• 8:31
  Like I've seen a lot of people like you that have come out and
• 8:34
  try to do what you're doing and fold within weeks or easily
• 8:37
  within a month. But they they, they fold and
• 8:40
  change their everything and they go back to being neutral because
• 8:43
  they can't handle that backlash. And I don't fault them for that
• 8:46
  too. I mean, it's the livelihood.
• 8:47
  It's, it's everything. Everything's on the line.
• 8:50
  And it shouldn't be like that, but it is.
• 8:52
  And so I found that most people, most people, can't handle that
• 8:58
  well. That's the frailty of human
• 9:00
  nature. I think I feel like the way to
• 9:02
  make that push is for more people like me and you.
• 9:06
  You know, originally it was just me and now there are others like
• 9:08
  us, there's it's a handful, but there's others like us that are
• 9:11
  public about what we're doing and we're pushing forward.
• 9:14
  And so now that there's more than that makes it a little bit
• 9:17
  easier for the next more group to come in.
• 9:20
  And as we keep doing that, then all of a sudden I think the
• 9:23
  scale changes a little bit. And now, you know, for the
• 9:26
  person that may not have had the strength to do exactly what
• 9:28
  we're doing, they have the strength, though, to to stand
• 9:31
  with us. And that's different.
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  And that's my hope. And that's probably the primary
• 9:37
  reason I'm. I'm doing this, at least on a
• 9:40
  human level. But yeah, I questioned whether
• 9:43
  someone can embark on this path if they're primarily thinking of
• 9:47
  material gain or loss. I think you have to think of
• 9:51
  deeper things like including just values, like freedom,
• 9:56
  truth, the what the next generation is going to have to
• 10:00
  face and just the devastating consequences that could follow
• 10:05
  if people don't speak up at this stage.
• 10:08
  Yeah. And you know, I did it in 2015.
• 10:12
  I didn't know the world is going to change so rapidly.
• 10:14
  The context of politics in the United States was going to
• 10:17
  change so rapidly around me and become so volatile.
• 10:20
  So I thought I was in. I thought I was in kind of a
• 10:23
  safe time to do it. And it just the timing came up
• 10:26
  and and and next thing you know I'm in a full blown fight for a
• 10:30
  lot of years and getting lots of hate mail and hate voicemails
• 10:36
  and all kinds of stuff that I got for years.
• 10:39
  But I also have a background in baseball coaching at a pretty
• 10:42
  high level. So I'm used to crowds screaming
• 10:43
  at me and being the being the one that everybody hates and
• 10:47
  still standing up for what I believe in.
• 10:48
  So, uh, huh, It's, it's it's kind of the same.
• 10:55
  Yeah. Well, you know, peer peer
• 10:58
  pressure is real. I've mentored a lot of young men
• 11:01
  over the last 10 years or so, and I've spoken about peer
• 11:04
  pressure and what if country realizes it's not something that
• 11:07
  only high schoolers face? And it's a lot easier to to to
• 11:12
  talk, to advise someone about it than to practice it oneself.
• 11:16
  And we as adults face tons of peer pressure.
• 11:18
  And I can speak for myself. I'm very, I'm very cowardly.
• 11:24
  Well, it's and you're not. You may maybe we feel cowardly
• 11:28
  inside, but we push forward, right?
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  So people will ask me too about, like that's just so hard that
• 11:33
  you can not feel bad and just push for it.
• 11:35
  I'm like, well, hang on. It feels bad when people say bad
• 11:37
  things about me, but I just push it away and move forward, right?
• 11:40
  Like I'm, I'm human. I don't like it when people come
• 11:43
  after me. But you you get used to it and
• 11:45
  you learn to adapt to it, and you learn to ignore it and push
• 11:48
  forward when you need to, and and listen to it when you need
• 11:51
  to. Also listen to it when you need
• 11:53
  to. What?
• 11:55
  What do you mean by that? Well, if you just, if everybody
• 11:58
  that criticizes you, you just push that away and ignore it,
• 12:01
  then you might miss some important feedback that you
• 12:03
  genuinely need. Yeah.
• 12:06
  Yeah. Well, yeah.
• 12:07
  And that that is a really tricky element.
• 12:09
  I think the the virtue of prudence, the good judgment and
• 12:13
  action, that's one thing that I'm finding very difficult in
• 12:16
  this situation. How do I respond to these
• 12:19
  lengthy emails? How do I respond to these on his
• 12:25
  phone calls that I that I wasn't expecting in a way that's
• 12:29
  balancing both, you know, charity and and respect with
• 12:34
  justice and also, you know, not exposing myself unnecessarily.
• 12:41
  I think it's a really tricky balance and I'm not sure it's
• 12:43
  even humanly possible to strike it correctly.
• 12:47
  It it is tough and a lot of times you're blindly dealing
• 12:49
  with somebody whose intentions you don't really know, right?
• 12:52
  I mean, you pick up the phone and you may be talking to
• 12:54
  somebody who has spent a lot of time preparing their attack on
• 12:57
  you and you just answered the phone, right?
• 12:59
  You're not prepared at that moment to go after and defend
• 13:02
  yourself against somebody that you don't know.
• 13:05
  It's kind of a blind attack. And so or emails too.
• 13:09
  I mean, emails are easier. You've got more time to respond
• 13:12
  and think about things. But you know, phone calls are
• 13:15
  the the trickiest ones. Or somebody that you just run
• 13:19
  into, right, that has been waiting to at least, you know,
• 13:24
  in a university setting, you're dealing with other faculty
• 13:25
  members. So you might somebody who might
• 13:27
  want to go after you may be able to know that they have a
• 13:30
  committee meeting with you and be prepared to try to embarrass
• 13:34
  you. And then you're just kind of
• 13:35
  like caught flat footed, not expecting to have to do that
• 13:37
  because you went into to work on the business of the day.
• 13:40
  So yeah, it's It can be unpleasant.
• 13:44
  I still feel like at the end of the day, if I say something
• 13:46
  wrong, but it's or something, if I say something that maybe could
• 13:49
  have been handled differently and I make a mistake in that
• 13:52
  way, but it's something that I truly believe.
• 13:53
  Still, I can sleep at night. I'm OK with that.
• 13:55
  If I make a mistake by, like you said, revealing too much of my
• 13:59
  perspective on something, but it is truly my perspective, then
• 14:03
  then that's OK. Maybe it could have been handled
• 14:06
  differently, but I'll still stand by what I said.
• 14:08
  So looking back on it, is it worth it?
• 14:12
  It was. It was very worth it for me.
• 14:13
  I've met so many like minded people that have been in hiding
• 14:18
  and I've coaxed some of them out and I've coaxed it and they come
• 14:21
  out to different levels, right? Some of them come all the way
• 14:24
  out and they're full forced and others are more quiet, but they
• 14:27
  find ways to support and connect with other like minded people
• 14:30
  who are going through the same experiences.
• 14:32
  I've had a number of graduate students, not of mine, but from
• 14:37
  across the country, that contacted me and would.
• 14:40
  Eventually realized that I could kind of mentor them through that
• 14:42
  process. It was something they couldn't
• 14:43
  get from their advisor or other mentors.
• 14:45
  It didn't understand what it's like to sit in the classroom and
• 14:48
  have their viewpoint attacked constantly.
• 14:50
  And if they push back any then they they fake.
• 14:52
  They face backlash with their teachers and their grades and
• 14:54
  other things. And I found a tremendous
• 14:57
  unexpected reward on several of those who have gone on to finish
• 15:01
  their program that would have quit.
• 15:03
  They wanted to quit, and they find me in that moment of
• 15:05
  weakness when they. Google conservative psychology
• 15:08
  and they find me and they contact me and we establish an
• 15:11
  e-mail relationship and and some of them have become clinical
• 15:14
  psychologists that are helping other people and they've made it
• 15:17
  what I feel like to the finish line where they're extremely
• 15:20
  productive and and helpful to society.
• 15:23
  Some of them I've co-authored with after that.
• 15:25
  And so it's it's great to see these, you know, young people
• 15:29
  who dream of getting their PhD and doing this good work and
• 15:33
  they hit an unexpected political obstacle.
• 15:35
  That I can be the the lifeline that helps to pull them along
• 15:38
  and get them through to achieve their their dreams.
• 15:42
  Wonderful. Where do you get your
• 15:44
  encouragement and inspiration from?
• 15:48
  You know, I've been asked that a number of times and I always
• 15:50
  say, you know, I'm a Christian, so God and family are the things
• 15:53
  that I draw on. And I, you know, I tell my wife
• 15:55
  all the time. Especially back when people were
• 15:58
  saying bad things about me because that all kind of
• 16:00
  stopped. But I'd say, you know, as long
• 16:03
  as I'm, as long as I'm making you happy and you're proud of
• 16:06
  what I'm doing, the rest of it doesn't matter to me.
• 16:10
  So that's where I draw my strength from.
• 16:12
  That's awesome, man. And what is it?
• 16:15
  What is your vision? What do you see coming up in the
• 16:17
  future, or how do you want to have an impact?
• 16:21
  Well, I've got my podcast now. I've I've done, you know,
• 16:24
  podcasts and I've done, you have a Rumble channel.
• 16:26
  I've done some different things that are on a kind of a small
• 16:28
  scale and and written a book. The book I wrote was trying to
• 16:33
  bring science to conservatives, to trying to set, you know, say,
• 16:37
  look, I'm a conservative, I'm unique in my field, but there is
• 16:40
  some legitimate research going on in my field.
• 16:42
  Don't discount everybody because they're because of their
• 16:45
  politics. So let me kind of walk you
• 16:48
  through some of the good stuff. When it comes to implicit
• 16:51
  biases, unconscious, you know, my area of expertise And so
• 16:55
  trying to bring it to people, which a lot of people I've
• 16:57
  talked to that have read my book wouldn't have read it otherwise.
• 17:00
  They said, well, but because you're a Christian conservative,
• 17:04
  that's the reason why I was willing to look at that And it
• 17:06
  was fascinating, you know, research that you're discussing
• 17:09
  and information. So I feel like bridging that gap
• 17:12
  between, you know, conservatives and science is important for me
• 17:17
  to take. To take the conservative
• 17:19
  principles to the scientists and show them that we're not all bad
• 17:22
  people as conservatives. And then to also take the
• 17:24
  science to conservatives and say, look, they're doing good
• 17:27
  work over here too. Like, some of it you have to
• 17:28
  ignore because of the politics. But there's other legitimately
• 17:31
  good things that we can benefit from.
• 17:35
  And then so the podcast that I put together, I had done a
• 17:38
  podcast on my website where I wouldn't get censored in any
• 17:40
  way. Or, you know, I faced lots of
• 17:43
  that in a lot of different ways. But I've done it on my podcast
• 17:47
  in a very short form and finally people kind of coaxed me into
• 17:49
  doing a longer form podcast more regularly to a broader audience.
• 17:54
  And so that audience is growing and I love it because it's
• 17:59
  people that are finding it when they probably are looking up
• 18:02
  conservatives in psychology. Because conservatives psychology
• 18:06
  is something that's important to everybody.
• 18:07
  Like people love psychology. It's fascinating.
• 18:09
  We spent our lives trying to understand each other and so,
• 18:13
  but then if if you don't, if you can't trust.
• 18:15
  The people that are writing about psychology and telling you
• 18:18
  about it, because of their politics, they're so misaligned,
• 18:21
  then you've got this need that's there, right?
• 18:23
  And you're going to see this too.
• 18:24
  There's there's a need for what you're providing.
• 18:26
  There's a need for conservatives and psychology.
• 18:29
  They shouldn't be separate from each other at all.
• 18:31
  Psychology is an important part of the human experience.
• 18:34
  And so bridging that gap, I think, is where I see the future
• 18:37
  going with people like you bridging it in their their,
• 18:40
  their unique special ways with the gifts that they have.
• 18:45
  Can you give me an example of some of those research findings
• 18:48
  you have of the you said the two ways, bringing the modern
• 18:53
  research to conservatives and bringing conservative research
• 18:55
  to the property? Well, just either just the
• 18:58
  basics, right? Like, I mean conservatives who?
• 19:02
  Most of the conservatives in my audience.
• 19:04
  They don't know much about psychology like whether they
• 19:06
  they may have a college degree, they may not have a college
• 19:08
  degree, but they they don't. You know, even if you took an
• 19:10
  intro to psych class you probably don't remember much
• 19:12
  about it. So they don't remember the
• 19:14
  basics like the fundamental attribution error where we you
• 19:16
  know tend to attribute blame to the person and and and discount
• 19:20
  the situation that might do that.
• 19:22
  They don't know the basics of in, Group, out, group biases,
• 19:25
  behavioral confirmation, and how that can play a role in your
• 19:28
  life and so all the the basics of social cognition.
• 19:34
  Bring a lot of other things to my podcast.
• 19:35
  It'll be more, you know, like I talked about pessimism and in
• 19:39
  The Workplace on my last podcast episode.
• 19:42
  But things like that, like bringing basic psychology and
• 19:46
  interesting findings to people who would not have otherwise
• 19:49
  encountered it and and they're only encountering it because
• 19:51
  they're they're concerned mix in my commentary on on politics of
• 19:55
  the day. But then I also always wind up
• 19:58
  with psychology, So. And they've got a craving.
• 20:02
  They've got a well, they've got a craving for psychology.
• 20:06
  So that's that's where that comes in.
• 20:07
  My my time is just all over the place, right.
• 20:09
  So I'm a business owner. You know, I was in I was in
• 20:13
  Washington, DC for business a couple days ago.
• 20:17
  I've got I do the podcast. I'm also a volunteer assistant
• 20:21
  college baseball coach currently.
• 20:23
  So I do recruiting for that. I don't know.
• 20:25
  It's like every day I wake up and I've got a schedule that I
• 20:28
  an ambitious schedule that I put into it and then somehow it
• 20:33
  works right? My family is very important to
• 20:35
  me. I spend time with them.
• 20:37
  I try to, I try to make the evenings and the weekends my
• 20:39
  family time. That's something I learned
• 20:41
  several years ago that was extremely important.
• 20:44
  My wife said you're missing out on the good stuff and I said OK,
• 20:47
  well, I want to keep doing all the things I'm doing, but I I
• 20:51
  need to give the the evenings to my family.
• 20:53
  I need to give the weekends to my family.
• 20:55
  And so I I just make it work. That's awesome, man.
• 21:00
  Yeah, I think that's so important and I and I find time
• 21:02
  to pick up my kids and drop them off from school.
• 21:05
  I wedge that in there too and it's it's hard.
• 21:09
  And one of the nice things though is that I'm not I'm not
• 21:12
  hourly and I and I own my own business so I can cram in extra
• 21:16
  work late in the evenings or early in the mornings or on the
• 21:19
  weekends if I have to depending on what clients I'm serving.
• 21:22
  And so I have a a tremendous flexibility in my schedule and
• 21:26
  and I'm very methodical in how I put it together.
• 21:29
  So in terms of people who want to influence others, any advice
• 21:32
  for building? Building a podcast?
• 21:34
  Building an audience, Yeah. I would say be authentic, be
• 21:40
  yourself. Don't try to be anybody else.
• 21:43
  I I don't. I don't try to come up with like
• 21:47
  an exact time stamp for. It's going to be 30 minutes
• 21:49
  long. It's going to be 40 minutes
• 21:50
  long. I come up with what I want to
• 21:51
  what I want to an outline of what I want to talk about.
• 21:54
  And then I do it until I'm done. And yesterday's episode went 47
• 21:59
  minutes. If you would have asked me
• 22:00
  beforehand, I would have said, I don't know, it's probably going
• 22:02
  to be 15 minutes, but it went 47 minutes.
• 22:05
  I just, I guess I had a lot to say about the things I was
• 22:07
  talking about. But the the audience that you
• 22:10
  grow will like the way that you do your thing.
• 22:13
  If you try to do somebody else's thing, it doesn't work.
• 22:16
  But the audience that you grow, and it and it and it grows,
• 22:20
  it'll grow slowly, but it'll grow faster than you think.
• 22:22
  Like so. And I've done this multiple
• 22:25
  times. I've had between the YouTube
• 22:27
  channel and the Rumble channel and the old podcast and the new
• 22:32
  podcast and blog and Psychology Today call them like these are
• 22:35
  all new things you launch where you're out there with nothing
• 22:38
  and then you grow an audience in all of them.
• 22:40
  It starts off slow. In the beginning, you think this
• 22:44
  is a waste of time? I'm just talking to family and
• 22:46
  friends and not even all of my family and friends, right?
• 22:48
  Just the couple that are still with me.
• 22:51
  But then it grows. Somebody looks at it and they're
• 22:54
  like, hey, this is pretty cool and they show it to somebody
• 22:56
  else and they like it. And the next thing you know
• 22:58
  you've got a small and and strong audience that contributes
• 23:02
  to to the discussion that you have that values what you're
• 23:05
  producing. And as long as you're authentic
• 23:08
  to yourself, you can do that. If you're trying to be anybody
• 23:10
  else, you'll get wait, I think you'll get way too frustrated
• 23:13
  and not like it. And then they will, they'll see
• 23:15
  that too. So that's it.
• 23:17
  I'd say be be authentic and and be patient.
• 23:19
  Very, very patient. Why Rumble?
• 23:23
  Rumble doesn't really shadow ban me the way that YouTube always
• 23:26
  has. So YouTube's algorithms if you
• 23:29
  have conservative, if you have things like that in there, you
• 23:32
  know you can you you'll be able to see very quickly that people
• 23:35
  won't see it even when you talk to people in day-to-day life.
• 23:39
  Facebook's the same way. I I had a private Facebook group
• 23:42
  where I put all my stuff up and, you know, years ago, I you can
• 23:45
  see who can see it and who doesn't.
• 23:47
  And, you know, I still run into people that are like, yeah, so
• 23:50
  you haven't. So I guess you haven't been
• 23:52
  doing anything in a long time. And then I went over to your
• 23:55
  thing and it said it showed that you have a podcast and you're
• 23:57
  doing stuff and but it doesn't show me any of that.
• 24:00
  I'm like, yeah, that's the normal thing, right?
• 24:02
  Facebook and YouTube and and and Google and all of those are
• 24:06
  pretty strong in the shadow. Banning Twitter is the same way.
• 24:12
  So I've got yeah, so rumble. I've got to do the YouTube, so
• 24:15
  the YouTube channel. I've decided I I don't do any
• 24:17
  politics stuff on the YouTube channel.
• 24:19
  The YouTube channel. I just do psychology things.
• 24:22
  And I haven't done much this year because I tried to shift my
• 24:24
  efforts to the podcast Rumble. Rumble's pretty good about
• 24:29
  posting videos anytime you put one up to everybody who follows
• 24:33
  you and letting them see that. So Rumble's been good.
• 24:36
  I don't do much on Rumble either, but I created it because
• 24:40
  a lot of my listeners wanted there to be a possibility of a
• 24:43
  video presence that I had that was not YouTube.
• 24:46
  A lot of conservatives also I found they won't go to YouTube,
• 24:50
  they won't go to TikTok. I started my YouTube channel
• 24:54
  years ago when that was kind of the only game in town and it was
• 24:57
  a way to reach students and I kind of modified it into what it
• 25:01
  is now. I use true social is my my
• 25:05
  platform of choice for posting articles that are related to the
• 25:08
  show. It's it's not a great platform.
• 25:12
  There's not very many people on it, but it's something that I
• 25:15
  can point to that if you're listening to my show, you can go
• 25:18
  there without an account and you can click on it, on it and look
• 25:23
  at the articles I'm posting. Cool.
• 25:24
  I have a website too. The website you think I haven't?
• 25:27
  Well, websites are good because you control the content to that
• 25:31
  and you can use that as your focal point.
• 25:33
  So my website istheconservativesocialpsychologist.com
• 25:37
  and it's got links to like all the different things that I've
• 25:40
  done, which allow me the flexibility to point my
• 25:42
  listeners to that website and say you can go there and then
• 25:45
  you can click on the link and go to True Social, where you can
• 25:48
  find the links to this particular podcast.
• 25:51
  You know, the things that I've been putting up.
• 25:53
  You can go find my My Psychology Today, you know, all the
• 25:56
  different my book, right? All the stuff.
• 25:57
  It's all there in one central place that I control.
• 26:00
  It's not somebody else's, you know, platform that they can,
• 26:05
  you know, manipulate in some way.
• 26:08
  Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of a
• 26:11
  learning curve there. Well, is there anything I
• 26:14
  haven't asked that you think would be helpful for people to
• 26:16
  hear? Not that you haven't asked.
• 26:18
  I mean, the only thing I would add is just absolutely don't get
• 26:20
  discouraged. I mean, it's a tough time right
• 26:22
  now to be a conservative, but it's also not because, you know,
• 26:27
  because of the Internet, we have the opportunity to connect like
• 26:30
  you and I are connecting right now.
• 26:31
  We have the opportunity to listen to voices that we
• 26:33
  wouldn't have heard in the past and make friends that we
• 26:36
  wouldn't have made in the past and build audiences that we
• 26:39
  wouldn't have built in the past in in so many different ways.
• 26:43
  And so we we can. We can keep that discourse alive
• 26:47
  if you don't get discouraged. Absolutely.
• 26:52
  Well, thanks for everything you do, man.
• 26:53
  I really appreciate the personal encouragement you've given me,
• 26:56
  and it's inspiring to hear how you've helped other people too.
• 27:00
  Well, let's stick together. We'll see you in the last
• 27:02
  trench. Absolutely you're you're you're
• 27:04
  you're welcome and and keep doing what you're doing because
• 27:06
  that that's where I draw my fulfillment on this is when
• 27:09
  Someone Like You comes out and does you know all the things
• 27:12
  that you're doing in a very, I don't want to say aggressive way
• 27:17
  because you're not aggressive at all.
• 27:19
  But in a, you know, I mean, you're aggressively moving the
• 27:23
  chains on what you're doing and you're not backing down, but
• 27:26
  you're you're doing it in a very professional, polite, friendly
• 27:29
  way. Well, thank you.
• 27:33
  And if I if you ever need to correct me or anything let me
• 27:36
  know. I'm open to doing things better.
• 27:39
  Yeah, well, same here. Thanks for joining us, Robert.
• 27:42
  Yep, thanks for having me.