Psychology researcher answers Reddit’s most controversial psychology questions
Hi, I’m Spencer. I’m a psychology researcher and I’ve run over 100 studies on human psychology and today I’m going to answer some of the internet’s spiciest questions about psychology. Why do the majority of people think that they are of above average intelligence? Well, do people actually believe they’re above average? There’s a common misconception which says that it’s impossible statistically to have the majority of people believe they’re above average. But actually that could happen if you had a skewed distribution. There
Are situations where most people are above average. But you can’t have a situation where on average people’s percentile is above 50%. So we actually ran a study where we asked people, out of 100 people of your age and gender that live in your area, how many of those 100 do you think you’re more skilled than at various things? If people as a group were being rational, then on average they would rate themselves as better than 50 out of 100
No matter what the skill being evaluated is. But that’s not what we find. On average people rate themselves as better than 57 out of 100 people. This reflects a genuine bias, sometimes known as the better than average effect. People think there’s a better than average effect for everything, but that’s not true. For instance, in our study we asked people to rate themselves compared to others on both driving and race car driving. They rated themselves as better than 50th
Percentile at driving, but worse than 50th percentile at race car driving. But why would that be? Because we had people rate themselves on 100 different skills, we were able to look at what attributes of skills predicted people being overconfident versus underconfident. It turns out people tended to be more overconfident at skills that were easy, that were subjective, that people thought reflected on their personality or character, and that they had a lot of experience with. So if we think about
The skill of driving, well that’s something that tends to be easy, that people have a lot of experience with, and it’s kind of subjective what makes a good driver. Is a good driver someone who gets there fast or someone who gets there safely? On the other hand, race car driving is generally viewed as difficult. It’s not something people have a lot of experience with and there’s a more objective evaluation criteria. How quickly do you get to the
Finish line? And indeed, that’s exactly what we find. This brings us back to the original question. Why do the majority of people believe they are of above average intelligence? Well, in our study, we really did find that to be the case. Out of all the 100 skills we evaluated, intelligence actually had the fifth highest overconfidence score overall. So, people really are overconfident in their intelligence. But why? Well, we can go back to our framework from before. Intelligence is
Subjective. There’s not a clear evaluation criteria. Intelligence is something people have a lot of experience with and intelligence is something that we tend to think reflects on our personality or character. We tend to view it as an important part of ourselves. So, it meets three of our four criteria from before for things that people tend to be overconfident in. From that point of view, it’s not that surprising that people tend to be over- confident in their intelligence. Is
There such a thing as being in therapy for too long? Absolutely, there’s such a thing as being in therapy too long. But usually, that doesn’t mean too many years. It means too many years without making genuine progress or getting what you want out of therapy. For instance, I know someone who’s been with a therapist for over 15 years and I don’t think they’ve made any progress with that therapist. They find it appealing during the session, being there, but I don’t
Think they’re actually making progress. I don’t think that they’re actually changing their life because of it. Now, if they view it for what it is, if they just think, “Oh, this is a nice place where I can vent.” That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they understand that that’s what they’re getting. I also know of cases where therapists have made it difficult to end the relationship. Where they say, “Oh, well, if you want to end our work
Together, we really should go through this multi-month process to make sure that, you know, on the other side, you’re doing okay, etc.” And I think that could be really problematic. It can make it harder for people to leave therapy when they really should. The general rule of thumb that I have is that you should have concrete goals with your therapist. You should be working towards those goals and tracking them. You could track them formally. For instance, you could literally score your
Anxiety levels every week and see how you’re doing on that and communicate to your therapist that your number one priority is to reduce your anxiety. And maybe you don’t need to track it on a spreadsheet, but you should have a sense of whether you’re making progress. And if you’re not making progress, then you should try something different with that therapist, new techniques, new methods, or you should go find a different therapist or a different way of
Approaching your anxiety. There are some types of therapy that take the attitude that you really should be in therapy for decades, but the problem with that perspective is that for any given goal you want to work on, there’s probably a much faster way to do it. And a sign of a really good therapist is that they actually graduate their patients. They work on a problem with them, they improve the problem, and then they say to the patient, “I don’t think you need
Therapy anymore because we’ve really made a ton of progress together.” Do psychopaths know that they’re psychopaths? Well, first we have to answer, what is a psychopath? In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, you won’t find psychopath as a definition. The closest thing is antisocial personality disorder, which is a disorder related to violating the rights of others, being manipulative, being impulsive and risk-taking. Psychopath and sociopath tend to be more informal terms. They tend to refer to someone who has little
Or no ability to have empathy or guilt. So, for the purpose of this, let’s define a psychopath as someone with no empathy and no guilt. Now, do psychopaths know they’re psychopaths? Well, the answer is sort of and to some extent. And let me explain that. Over about the last five or so years, I’ve gotten quite good at detecting when someone’s a psychopath. I’m not perfect at it by any means, but I’m often able to tell. And the reason I know that is
Because when I think someone’s a psychopath, I’ll go up to them and I’ll start discussing with them how their mind works. And eventually, if I really do believe that they are one, I’ll typically ask them and say, “Hey, have you ever considered the possibility that you’re a sociopath or psychopath?” And we’ll have an open and honest conversation about it. Now, I don’t recommend you do this, definitely not, but for me, it’s gone quite well, and typically we’re able to have a detailed
Discussion discussing the evidence for and against the possibility that they’re a psychopath. Almost always, they’re quite aware that their mind works really differently than other peoples, and that they have to work hard to behave normally. One psychopath was saying that he had had to learn over time that when a friend’s family member dies, you have to make your face look sad and express sympathy, otherwise people think you’re really weird. Now, to you, that probably comes completely naturally. You don’t
Have to think about doing it, but they have to actually learn to do it because they’re lacking in empathy, so they don’t naturally experience the sad emotion when other people are sad. So, I think most psychopaths understand that their mind doesn’t work the way other peoples do, and they understand that has something to do with empathy or guilt, but they don’t necessarily put the pieces together and say, “I’m a psychopath.” They may or may not. Why is
It that therapy focuses entirely on preventing suicide rather than helping people figure out if suicide is the best option for them? I think this is actually a really good question and something that it’s difficult to get honest conversation about. There are a couple of different answers to this question. The first is a liability question. A therapist cannot help you come to the conclusion that you should commit suicide unless they specifically work in that area in a country where
Medically assisted suicide is legal. But there’s a potentially even more important answer to that question. We have to break down different categories of people that are suicidal. The first category are people at the end of their life. They’re not going to live a long time, and they’re experiencing a lot of suffering. Now, some people will still object to that group committing suicide on religious grounds or spiritual grounds. And if you’re a friend or family member of that person, you may
Not want them to commit suicide because you don’t want them to leave. But most people, myself included, think that suicide should be an option for that group. If the rest of their short life is going to involve extreme suffering, why not give them an option to leave early? The second category are people that are having an acute mental health challenge that’s relatively short-lived. Maybe they’re in the second month of a major depressive episode. Or, maybe they
Have bipolar and they’ve just come down to the manic phase and now they’re experiencing a lot of depression. Remarkably, when people in this category happen to be interrupted when they’re attempting suicide, it’s actually very likely that they will never commit it. This might be surprising. You might think, “Well, if they’re willing to commit suicide today, aren’t they just going to do it tomorrow if they’re stopped?” And the answer is, “No, they’re probably not.” And the reason that the vast majority of
Therapists are strongly against suicide in this case is because most of these people are just going to get better over time. They’re not going to be at that level of despair for the rest of their life. So, while they might feel like committing suicide at that moment, they probably are going to change their mind about it. This brings me to the third and most controversial category, which are people that face some really difficult challenge that they can’t seem
To resolve. Consider as an example, someone who’s had two decades of extreme depression and they can’t seem to feel better. Or, someone with really bad chronic back pain where they just have trouble enjoying life because they’re in pain all the time. Or, maybe they’re in okay health, but they’re about to have a huge health decline that they can’t prevent. Maybe their kidneys are about to fail and they just want to leave before that happens. In this case, it’s
Genuinely controversial. There’s arguments on both sides. Many people think it’s not acceptable to commit suicide in these cases, but one thing that’s easier to agree on is that people in those situations really should try everything first. If they’ve been depressed for two decades, they should make sure they try all the evidence-based treatments for depression before deciding that their depression is incurable. If they have horrible back pain, they really should try all the different protocols for helping back
Pain before deciding that life is not worth living. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman fairly recently actually committed assisted suicide at age 90. And while he was in fairly good health, he was very convinced his health was about to take a nose dive, and I think he had good reason to believe this. And he wanted to leave before that happened. But this was very controversial, and I think a lot of his friends and family were extremely upset about it. So, why
Do therapists focus on preventing suicide rather than getting people to consider whether it’s right for them? Partly it’s liability, but also to a significant extent because many of the people who are considering suicide are actually very likely to not want to commit suicide later. If you’re interested in going deeper on human psychology, I actually wrote a book which is coming out really soon. It’s called The 12 Levers, and it’s based on all the psychological strategies for
Improving your life. I’d love if you check it out at 12leversbook.com. And if you want to learn even more about psychology, please subscribe to this channel. We put out a new video every week.