What Evolution and Human Behavior Can Tell Us About Purpose and Meaning | Sam Wilkinson

29:22But I just want to point out that what is clear in the science is this pattern of monogamy in humans is prevalent across all cultures. Religion builds morality upon monogamy and the nuclear family in a lot of different instances of different religions completely. So there is a signal that is present in human nature that science is measuring across all of these cultures that leads to this conclusion of monogamy. Yeah, I think it's one of our great social achievements as a human race. Biologists tell us that our closest relatives biologically are chimpanzees. And chimpanzees have, basically, they have sex indiscriminately.

30:07And so sometimes people point to that and say, well, you know, we're just kind of like more advanced chimpanzees. One of the things that we often don't recognize how good we have it as human beings. Do either of you have, just to guess, if we applied our notion of, say, domestic violence to chimpanzees, do you have any estimate or guess at what proportion of female chimpanzees at some point in their lives experience what we would frame as domestic violence? Nearly 100. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And, you know, I would say that those are linked. And, you know, a lot of times violence is used by males to control, you know, reproduction and reproductive access and so forth.

30:50And, you know, again, I totally agree with you, AJ, that we do have a deep capacity for monogamy and what anthropology would call long-term pair bonding. We also have a capacity to not to kind of disregard that. I think it doesn't take long to look around the tabloids and see examples where, you know, people are behaving in other ways. It's obviously a sensitive issue. I think it's going to be good for society. It's going to be good for children. It's going to be good for women if we can continue on this road toward monogamy. It's, you know, it's not easy, especially with some of the cultural changes that have happened in the last decades, at least in the West.

31:35but I think it's a fight worth continuing. And in a sense, it requires us to overcome a deep kind of propensity within human nature. To bring it home and to get back to this idea of what actually is the purpose of existence, to me it seems that, look, the way that nature has shaped us leaves us pulled in these different directions, right? We have these differing capacities within us. And when you combine this, again, my conclusion is that on some level, we have this ability to choose free will. To me, it seems like life is a test, that we have to kind of choose between these competing impulses within us.

32:21And it seems at least on some level that life is a test. You know, we've had on Dr. Robert Waldinger to talk about the Harvard Adult Developmental Study. And I know that's a key chapter in the book. So I'd love to segue into, you know, how does this look from purpose from a personal level, but then also what is this good for society level that is linked, obviously, into human nature? Because it's clear through all of this that we have thrived as humans in civilizations. It's not been on our own, completely isolated, and it's not been in small tribes trying to fight off woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.

32:58we've been able to survive and strengthen in forming civilizations. And a lot of this meaning and purpose is tied to the human nature around creating these civilizations. Yeah. And also at a fundamental level are immediate social groups. When you ask people what is most meaningful about life in these large surveys that say the Pew Foundation does, and you give them a blank answer, so it's not necessarily multiple choice. They just can write whatever they want. Most people list in some form their personal relationships. And, you know, I think that is that is revealing. As you if you noted, you know, a lot of people will just say, well, should I just work as hard as I can, get as much money as I can?

33:44And we have, you know, there's some kind of cognitive illusions that nature kind of has in a sneaky way built within us because we're not good at, you know, one of the psychological principles that is really interesting is this notion of affective forecasting. Okay. And that is the ability to predict how we're going to feel in a given situation. Okay. And what that means, by extension, is that we're not great at predicting what's going to make us happy. Let me qualify it a little bit because we're mostly good at predicting whether a situation is going to help us to feel like positive or negative emotions, but the intensity and the duration of those emotions we're not great at.

34:25So, you know, this was driven home by an influential study in the 1970s with the provocative title of lottery winners and accident victims, where, you know, researchers, they went and they assessed these two very different groups of people, ones that had suffered terrible accidents that left them quadriplegic or paraplegic, and the other group, those who had won the lottery. This wasn't immediately after the event of interest, but some time. And so, you know, if I asked you, would you rather win the lottery or suffer an accident? You say, well, of course, I'm going to win the lottery because my happiness is going to be better.

35:01Right. But in terms of the ability of these two different groups of people to enjoy everyday things, there wasn't really any difference. And that is because and what, you know, it's because of a related principle called hedonic adaptation. This notion that for a lot of things, you know, after a period of time, our kind of happiness set point goes back to where it was. And that's certainly the case with, you know, things like money, getting a promotion, that sort of thing is, yeah, they make us feel better for a period. But then we kind of settle back in. In a way, there's a good part about this because it also means that we can adjust in the other way and that if we go through some sort of adversity, that we can adapt and prove resilient and adjust to difficult circumstances.

35:54It's not all bad, but there is a kind of a maddening aspect that depicts us almost as like hamsters running on this happiness treadmill. But the key exception is relationships. And that, again, for good and for bad, a positive, warm, intimate relationship can really increase our happiness set point. Whereas a toxic one, you don't really adapt to that. Toxic relationships kind of have this enduring negative impact on well-being. No, it's a great point. And I think the inverse is also something that's fascinating to me. So we had Daniel Pink on the show to talk about regret. And many of us end-of-life situations feel intense regret on the singular pursuit of achievement that often leads us to grow distant from those relationships in our life, friends, family, loved ones.

36:49And even upon achieving that, that regret dampens us later in life when we recognize the value in those relationships. So it's happening on both ends. It's impacting our happiness, but it's also that pursuit of achievement is impacting our regret later. Yeah. Well, and it's also showing up in all the studies that we're seeing. We've talked about it on this show for a long time now, which is the loneliness epidemic. And there are multiple reasons why we were going down that path. And we need to correct that. And due to that, we have a sicker society. We have a mentally unclear society as well. And all these things are contributing to our culture.

37:40So what I'd love to unpack for our audience is the overlap of relationships and purpose, because I think a lot of us when we hear purpose, it does draw out individual viewpoints of, again, achievement, success, things that I need to do. It's something that we even sought to find that purpose. And in actuality, a big argument in the book is that purpose is found through relationships and through these social ties and connections. And then that has a great impact on society as a whole. There's certainly an aspect of human nature that there can be a purpose in attaining individual recognition or status.

38:21And there is a measure of kind of satisfaction that can come from that. But it tends to be dwarfed by this sense of purpose and meaning that comes from, I am part of a larger group. I am contributing to a cause that is greater than myself. And that's all about, you know, social cohesion and how we relate to each other. And that, you know, my impact is not just about me, but it's about kind of the greater social good. So this just, again, it goes back to relationships. There's, you know, the one thing that I think is somewhat unique about the argument I'm trying to make is, right, where that comes from in a kind of biological evolutionary history.

39:03And a lot of that comes from, if we want to go down this path, if we don't, that's fine. But the way that our, you know, the way that our families are formed and the way that our offspring are so helpless when they are born. Yeah, I would love to unpack that. And I know we've touched on attachment theory on this show in the past with other guests, but I thought it was really unique to bring it into the conversation of purpose. Because I think it's a popular trending idea on social media, and a lot of people are aware of attachment, but I had never thought of it in the greater value of purpose.

39:37Yeah, I think they're related. So just to give a little context, in the early 1900s in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, there was this sense that you know relationships were just a means to an end the baby loved the mom because the mom gave the baby milk the the husband loved the wife because the wife gave him sex they have the very sort of kind of transactional nature to it uh one of my kind of academic heroes is this guy named john bolby who was a psychiatrist a british psychiatrist and who really kind of gave rise to this this attachment theory and he worked with uh he worked not only people who study humans, but people who studied animals.

40:17And he recognized, you know, even in animals, relationships were not just a means to an end, that animals would engage in behaviors to strengthen relationships just for the purposes of strengthening relationships. And the way that he characterized this is the root of this comes from the parent-child attachment, right? And our offspring are probably the most extreme example of this, is that they are extremely helpless when they are born. So everything a human baby does, you know, cry, coo, smile, is meant to draw the parent to the child. And that, you know, Bowlby reason was adaptive. And, you know, it had to be like that because the infant was so helpless.

40:59You know, those who study infant development sometimes refer to the first, say, three to six months of life as the fourth trimester because our babies are born half-baked. And so, you know, conversely, the parent had to develop this deep kind of love and attachment towards the child. It's not just a one-way street here. You know, certainly the child looks out for, you know, the parent's watchful care, but the parent, you know, anyone who's been a parent, you're looking at your three-year-old making sure they're not running in the street, that sort of thing. There's this kind of, like, they're a small attachment of you.

41:36And there's kind of an evolutionary link to that, right, that becomes somewhat obvious. That strongest form of attachment and love and altruism and so forth comes from the way that nature shaped our family relationships. Something I think is really interesting about that is that it's kind of inevitably linked with the challenge that it is, right? If you ask a parent, what is the most challenging thing you've done, nine times out of ten, they'll say, raise my kid. If you say, okay, what's the most rewarding thing you've done, they'll say, nine times out of ten, raise my kid. And you can't kind of get away from those.

42:14Let me just, if it's all right, drive this point home with this kind of kooky thought experiment. Imagine what our social lives would be like if we were, say, seahorses. OK, so seahorses are different and they have male pregnancy, which would probably automatically lead to some very different parental leave policies. But also the ways they're different is that they have like 2000 babies at once. Part of that that's different is that they don't have any investment in their kids once they're born. It's kind of like, OK, they leave the male womb and goodbye. Good luck. You know, hope you don't get eaten.

42:49Please make me proud. You know, no human being knows exactly what it's like to be a seahorse, but it's a good bet that they don't really care, have the same deep love and concern for their children, their offspring that human parents do. And so kind of at this confluence of psychology and evolution, you know, there can't be this deep love without compelling sacrifice. It's almost like a cosmic near spiritual truth. Does that make sense? Yeah. And there's another aspect to that as well. Sam, perhaps you could cite the study. We've talked about it on the show, but there is a certain level of happiness that we're all able to achieve, and that's going to go up and down as things change and we get older and there's going to be those hurdles.

43:34But those who do have children have much higher ends of happiness due to having that relationship. But their overall quality of life isn't as high in happiness as the person without the child. And I laugh about this because, of course, when I was younger, I never thought about having children. And now that I'm older and there's certain aspects of that that I do wish that I would get to experience and perhaps I will. But, you know, that shows exactly of that attachment and what that delivers in us in our quality of life. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of studies about this. And I think this is where it's kind of really important to try to parse out our terms.

44:24Right. We use these things like happiness, well-being, you know, good emotion. Right. So parenting is not like if you think of happiness is like reading a book on the beach. That's not parenting. I have five children that are 14 and under. You know, so I, you know, it's, it's a busy life. It's, but, you know, when you use terms like rewarding that, you know, that seems to kind of really get to this, this matter more. There was a great book. It was written by a woman named Jennifer senior 2014 or so. And I really liked the title. It said all joy and no fun, the paradox of modern parenting. And, and the only qualm I have with that is the word modern, because as I've kind of laid out here, it's always been a challenge.

45:13It's kind of like evolutionarily written into our natures that raising children is going to take a lot of sacrifice and effort. Those rewards of joy are that much greater and why that people without children are never going to be able to experience. Yeah. And I know from my friends who have recently had children that it does give a lot of purpose and meaning to their life and often leads to men investing more energy into providing into their career and also influencing this great society. And I know there's some great science around, in particular, dads and children. I'd love for you to unpack extending beyond the good life, what the great society actually means with all of this purpose.

45:58I think as you guys have pointed out, episodes that I listened to in prep for talking with you today, there's this sometimes illusion we have that I can be happy all the time, or I can have positive emotion all the time. And that's just not how reality is, right? And so, you know, sometimes in our efforts to avoid a negative emotion, we will maybe avoid a, you know, a longer term, greater payoff emotionally. And, and I think, you know, that you see that a little bit, The fertility rate has fallen quite a bit and now is hovering around, I would say, 1.7, 1.8 children per woman. And that's lower than if you ask women, how many children would you like to have?

46:43It's almost like a full child more than it actually is. So for lots of complicated reasons, families have been having fewer children. Women have been having fewer children in the West. And I think that's kind of related to this. So I am trying to draw back to, you know, biology and evolution, right? When you think of like, is there anything more evolutionary, evolutionarily motivating than providing for your offspring? And as you mentioned, AJ, that you have friends who have children, it kind of makes them view work in a different way. It's not just about me now. It's like, okay, I got to take care of my kids, right?

47:23And so when I go to work, it's imbued with a deeper sense of purpose than it was when it was just like I'm trying to be carefree and a bachelor and so forth. So I think those principles are related. What I'd love to hear from you, looking back at the research and everything you did and putting together this book, what would your advice be for Sam sitting there in med school, being leveled in evolution class around this concept of purpose? because it's something that we hear a lot in our clients and especially our younger clients who are fresh out of college and looking to find that purpose and often hearing advice on shows like ours that you need purpose to find meaning in life and to ultimately create the good life for yourself.

48:10But that concept of actually finding it for yourself is challenging. And many in our audience would love a map. So what is your advice to Sam sitting in that med school class? Well, there's a tendency among some in our Western culture now, especially those who are really driven to sequence these major life milestones. I'm going to get through, in my case, it was medical school. And then us doctors, we go to school like forever. And so after med school, there's residency. And there's a tendency to try to sequence those things and say, you know, I am, you know, after I'm done with all my medical training, after I'm stable financially, then I can focus on relationships, maybe a family, that sort of thing.

48:57It's tricky to say this is a, you know, this is an approach that's going to work for everyone. But I think sometimes it's better if you don't sequence them. If you look at, okay, let me focus. I don't have to focus exclusively on work or school right now. Let me also have time in the evenings where I can try to develop longstanding personal relationships. I mean, hopefully with a romantic partner. I know dating these days is a tricky thing. I was fortunate to get married right before I started medical school. So some scholars who study marriage will refer to this as a capstone marriage. That's when you kind of go through the career and then you have a capstone marriage or a cornerstone, meaning that you get married a little bit earlier.

49:44I'm not going to be so presumptuous to say, you know, this is when people should be married, that sort of thing. But you don't need to put it off. And in some ways, I think it's better to think about it earlier and not to sequence these events in our lives. Certainly, if you wait to form deep personal relationships too long, other opportunities might pass by for you to do this thing. That's what I wish I would have known when I was younger. And just to kind of, you got to remind yourself, look, it's the relationships. And I'm, by standards of Yale professors, I'm fairly religious. And I feel like that's one of the reasons that I go to religious services on a regular basis to remind me, look, it's a relationship, dummy.

50:33It's not your career. I mean, that's important, but you need to have a balance and a focus for this, right? In biology, there's a word for imbalance. It's cancer, right? When one cell becomes so dominant in the organism, it can overtake and starve the other tissues and parts of the body. So you don't want work to become a cancer. I mean, our brains finish growing and developing late 20s. 27, I believe, is one of the ages. ages. And part of that and getting married early is that those pathways, and there's a lot of imprinting left to do, and there's pathways that are being built. And if you're building those with your significant other, and then having a family together, those pathways are that much stronger.

51:29And the imprinting is that much stronger. And not to say that you can't build that relationship after 27, but your brain is fully developed. And we see it just in making friends as you get older is more difficult. In fact, we help our clients do that because it is difficult. And there's a reason why it is better. There's lots of reasons for a lot of people that it's going to be better to get married early, to have children early for those specific biological reasons. Yeah. Yeah. And this religious principle of investing in your community, I think is another very important part of this finding purpose.

52:16And I know we see it in a lot of our clients, this lone wolf mindset that if I just self achieve and I reach ranks and degrees and status personally, then I can put that down and I can start to invest in relationships. When in actuality, it's investing in your community that creates those relationships that helps you elucidate that purpose for yourself. And much of this purpose is tied to being in service of others, which is why most modern religious philosophies, that is a cornerstone of it, is the community building aspect, because it is so closely linked to purpose. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with everything you just said.

53:01So I'd love to hear what in this research of this book was most surprising for you, especially because I feel you did such a great job of looking closely at the science, but having this religious grounding. And I know as I started the show with, you know, many in our audience might feel that they're almost at odds, that you're picking one side or the other. But in actuality, there is a lot of overlap in the science that you researched in this book and brought forward. I feel like what was most surprising for me was the strength of the research that links marriage with well-being and happiness.

53:37That was just something that blew me away. And part of it was because Because it was the opposite of what I was reading in the newspaper or the prevailing sentiment from cultural and opinion leaders that if you want to be happy, you need to be carefree and maximize your freedom. And that is certainly not what the data say. The data, you know, probably the two most, the two modifiable factors that most impact mental health, well-being, happiness altogether are marriage and actually religious participation. And a lot of that has to do with relationships. relationships um and you know and it's you know facebook and social media you know there can be blessings from them but there's a lack of depth in in relationships that are formed in uh social media context that you know things like marriage and community groups religious participation that that the depth of those relationships is really much more gratifying than any sort of facebook friendship that you come across.

54:50You know, a lot of people, it's probably been said, you know, social media is a little bit like the junk food form of relationships. There's this, there's this aspect to it that tastes good, but it has essentially no lasting nutritional value. And part of that is because I think in part, you know, these things weren't around when, when our ancestors were evolving, they didn't, you know, they're, they're, they're an imitation for social interaction that our ancient brains were accustomed to and essentially evolved for. I have to remind people that this is an experiment. We don't know what the results are of all this technology.

55:32And even look, it's been very difficult to talk about some of these things and certainly a very difficult book to write in today's climate with all of this. Because it does make things difficult. And a lot of the paths that this technology has put us on has been very anti-human or even anti-relationship at certain points. And that's difficult. And we understand that and navigate that. I mean, just for instance, there was a class action lawsuit dropped on dating apps last week due to them misleading the public. But we're now 10 years into those marketing campaigns, and we're seeing the results of how those marketing campaigns to get rid of the stigma of online dating and what they replaced it with has resulted in.

56:31And we have to be able to fix that if we're going to be a healthy society. Yeah. One of the, I think one of the ways that we can approach this, you know, certainly there are benefits. I don't want to say, you know, I'm anti-technology, that sort of thing. You know, my extended family, my wife's extended family, we live across the U.S. We'll have a Zoom call once a month and the cousins can talk to each other. That's where it's, it's a great, it's a great benefit in that way. But one of the things I think we need to think about is we need to constantly be asking ourselves, how is this similar or how is this different to how humans interacted, you know, anciently?

57:09And in the ways that we can make it more like that, I think is going to make it better. So one of the things that is pretty intuitive is that, you know, there's a lot of toxicity that exists on the Internet. A lot of this has to do with anonymity. right if you have a username that has no link to your personal identity then there's there's really no way that there's going to be any consequences for you saying all sorts of toxic stuff people say things to each other on the internet that they would never say to each other in person and and that's because you know our subconsciousness kind of dehumanizes each other when when it's when we we don't see each other's faces and so forth it we we subconsciously forget that behind this chat is an actual person.

57:56And so if we can, can we make a policy where whatever social media platform is, you have to have a picture and it has to be prominent and it has to be linked to who you actually are. That would, it's not going to solve all the problems, but in a subtle way is going to decrease that toxicity that sometimes happens. Yeah. I think our view on it is technology should be additive to your life. It should be additive to your community. It should be additive to your relationships. The fear that we have, and there's a recent article in Atlantic about this loneliness epidemic, is it's substituting the third place, the religious gathering, the entertainment that we also gained from those weekly sermons and from our pastor and our religious leaders is now been completely substituted in our life by the screen.

58:44And that screen is readily available 24-7, whereas we only had that opportunity on Saturdays or Sundays to get together with our community in a safe space, to build and foster relationships, be entertained by our religious leaders, and then come away with that village that helps support us in child rearing. And as we've become more and more isolated in our career, moving away from our friends and family, and that screen is ever present, that technology acting as a substitute, as we're seeing, has a cascade of negative impacts on our lives. And it does bring us further away when substituting from finding our purpose.

59:21Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. So with this book, I'd love for audience to find out more about you and where they can purchase this book as it comes out a little bit later next month. Sounds great. You can visit my personal website, samueltwilkinson.com. You can also look me up on the Yale webpage. The book is available wherever books are generally sold. Thank you for joining us, Sam. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Sam. Thanks very much for having me.

59:59Johnny, I have to say, it's not often we get into conversations like this on the show, but it was fascinating to talk to Sam about free will, how to unlock purpose in our lives, and the duality of human nature, as I know we are such huge fans of cooperativity when it comes to our behavior and building relationships. And this week's shout-out is actually from Eric Douglas, one of our X Factor Accelerator members. My name is Eric Douglas. I work in the nonprofit field. The reason why I joined X Factor is I wanted to have deeper relationships. I also wanted to build opportunities around dating, career, and social life on my terms.

1:00:38X Factor has helped immensely, helped me see through my own patterns and behaviors. got me to see how I was accepting a lot of bad behavior around me. So I am looking forward to building a life on my terms that's already started in the X Factor program. I've been connecting with amazing people and doing things I never thought I would do. So I would encourage anybody to join. It's very valuable. Now, if you've listened this far, my guess is because you want more out of life. and to finally succeed at work, love, and life. And if that's the case, then join us, the Art of Charm team and hundreds of other people just like you who are experiencing breakthrough conversations, supercharging their confidence, and growing an incredible network inside our world-famous X-Factor Accelerator program.

1:01:33The X-Factor Accelerator is where high-achieving, like-minded people meet, strategize, and unlock their hidden X-Factor to make sure they get the most out of life's opportunities, and finally unlock those doors keeping you from success. Weekly implementation sessions with opportunities to practice your conversation skills, rapport building, supercharge your charisma through powerful communication and unlock the charm to attract the right people in your life. Imagine what you can accomplish with coaching and mentorship from the Art of Charm. What are you waiting for? Join us today at unlockyourxfactor.com.

1:02:07All right, before we head out, a huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harreld and Eric Montgomery. We hope you have an epic week.

1:02:41I remember you, oh yeah, I remember you In my best, best, best, best, best I remember you