But the point of this and the takeaway from this is if we tell a group or tell a person that you are a victim, you're going to be primed for that and again, that confirmation bias. We talk about this all the time. That is going to be overarching your interaction that people have while they must be treating you this way because of, my disadvantage, not because I'm a terrible candidate Hello and welcome to Awske at the Wheel. So in today's episode, we're going to tie together the themes of a few of our prior episodes over the last several weeks, and we're going to be focusing on the victimhood mentality that we are increasingly seeing in our society. So what we mean by this is we're living in a world where different groups are being told that they are oppressed, and because they're oppressed, they're victims of the man of the system, of society in general. But this isn't a brand new phenomenon. There is actually a study or an experiment that was done in the eighties or the nineties where they looking at how people perceive themselves if they are at a disadvantage. So the Dartmouth Scarr experiment had a group of individuals of women who were given a fake scar and the instructions that they were provided with where you're going to go to this job interview with this fake scar on your face and you are to make some observations about how you were treated. How it went. if you experience any discrimination and so on. The interesting part of this, though, is right before they went into the interview, they were told, but we're just going to touch up your make up a little bit here. But what actually happened was the scar was completely removed. So these individuals went into the interview thinking that they did still have a visible scar and they went through the interview process and came out. And the feedback that they provided, even though they didn't have a scar, they did report that they felt that they were treated differently. And they even provided actual lines of what the interview said that they perceived as discrimination. Whereas the reality of the situation is that couldn't have happened because there is nothing of that sort that they were perceiving that would cause that discrimination. So this is really interesting and I think it illustrates to us that this is a lot of what is overarching the attitudes in a similar fashion, but again, of different groups in society today. Okay. So so this is a study that would fall under the heading of social, social psychology and in all the different fields in social sciences or in psychology and psychology specifically, there are there's a crisis of replication, the crisis of poor methodology, this crisis of making interpretations that maybe don't really follow from the evidence, but it supports people's hypotheses, and it's something they devoted so much of their academic life to. And so there's, you know, rightfully so, People over the last number of years have lost their faith in social psychology. Not everybody, but many people have, when they realize just how poorly conducted the field has been or the studies have been as well. So in this case, when I looked at the study, it's like I don't see how one can make any interpretation other than the one that, you know, that you were just saying. So I just want to put all that out there. First of all, a caveat saying that I'm not just going to rush and say, yes, here's a great study that shows that I what I want to believe or what I know to believe or what makes sense. It's something that it was done in a way that, again, it's so hard to find a competing explanation for why these women reacted the way they did, other than they believed they were basically told that you're going to look like a victim. Okay? Or you're look other than or different. And they internalize that and they react in ways to, you know, to things that were either, you know, or neutral or maybe they're slight negative, but they said it must be because of this. I don't think any other study better depicts what's been going on in society today than that one. I hope more and more people learn about it. And it's funny because as I was describing it, you may have noticed I actually hesitated when I said and there weren't other factors, but if it was all women, I can actually hear somebody saying. And that was my hesitation came from was, well, maybe they were discriminated against because they were women. But the point of this and the takeaway from this is if we tell a group or tell a person that you are a victim, you're going to be primed for that and you're going to be, again, that confirmation bias. We talk about this all the time. That is going to be overarching your interaction that people have while they must be treating you this way because of, you know, my disadvantage, not because I'm a terrible candidate or I'm not qualified for the job, etc., etc.. Right. And more broadly, so that's in this position. And we are in this in this context. But we've talked previously about the fact that, you know, many people who assume or are told or want to believe that it again, it's I'm being discriminated against or I'm being treated poorly because of these, you know, features of myself, color of my skin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, whatever you come up with. Okay, maybe you're just a jerk, you know, and. Right. And a lot of people have a hard time accepting that. And, you know, I've I've had so many patients where, you know, I've had to tactfully and I know you have as well, where, you know, when you see there's something about how the person is conducting themselves, there's something about, you know, how they speak or whatever else where I see this. And sometimes even the first session, I'll point out to the person that, you know, hey, and again, I'm saying like, I'm not I'm not taking it personally. You know, you didn't offend me or anything like that. But I can see that if you and, you know, maybe talking about their personality, I'm talking about mannerisms, even like something like that, that I say someone could misconstrue that very easily and they could react to you in a certain way. Right. So this the first time they're meeting me and they could easily be offended. And of course, I you know, I give all these caveats. I say, you know, I try to soften the blow, but it's something that I can see right away, you know, that this is going to be something that people will consciously or unconsciously pick up on and it's going to throw them off. And they may not discriminate against the person, but they may act a little bit differently. The reason I'm saying all this is if someone sees something in somebody else. Okay, I'm going to give you an example. Okay. And it's funny cause I see this to my students. And so one time I was doing an assessment, okay, I can't face I've done this with you, but I was doing an assessment and I asked the person it was part of the testing was intelligence and an asthma question. And let's just say I'd say, like you know, what's the capital of Canada? And normally, if someone's thinking about something, they look away. Right up, down or away. But, you know, they're thinking about it. And every time I asked him a question that he didn't know, he never looked away. He kept staring at me like, it's 3 to 5. Second pause, staring at me. Okay. And then he would give the answer. And the funny thing is, because I was so wrapped up in trying to do this assessment, I would this is in my younger years. So I want to do it perfectly. And I'm just focused on my on my, you know, conducting it properly. And all I knew was something felt really off with this guy. Okay. And I couldn't put my finger on it. And when I demonstrate this in class, I don't tell him this. I just I you know, I asked the students to ask me a few questions and I respond that way. Every single student picks up on it right away, like you're not looking away when you wait for 3 to 5 seconds. Very disconcerting. Okay. But the fact is, he had a let's say he came up with a personality disorder and definitely a personality disorder, but he also had features of guess what do you do? What kind of person would never look away when they're talking to somebody. Somebody with some sort of social pragmatic issue or they're they're not aware of the social cues is where my mind first goes. Actually, it's a great answer because we do know that that does happen as well. And I know that, like people, a lot of people on the spectrum, they're sort of trained, looked after every few seconds. They look away and so on. Right. So, yes. And there's someone else, someone who's paranoid. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't look. So the funny thing is, there's a long way of saying So here's a gentleman who and I knew this based on the testing, everything. He was paranoid. So he's looking at me, you know, and never looking away. He's making me feel a bit off. And I tried my best not to react a certain way, but I can imagine with anybody else when he's really staring at them because he's worried that they're going to try to harm him because he's paranoid and they're starting to act a little bit weird, a bit fidgety, they're a bit uncomfortable, and that's evidence for him. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I knew it. They're acting twitchy and everything because they're going to try to do me harm. Right. So all of this to say if somebody has certain things about their personality or whatever that they're giving off and people are reacting and they're attributing that person's reaction to, they're racist or sexist or whatever else like that. So yeah. And it's funny because as you're describing that, what I was actually picturing was somebody giving you this stare of like, how dare you ask me that? Or how dare you ask me a question? You know, I don't know. You must be discriminating or something. That was kind of what I was picturing. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And so much of we know so much of human interactions is nonverbal, right? And it's not just nonverbal, such as physical. Got to be told within nonverbal imprinting, like if I thought the words per se, it's the volume, the tone and so on. Right. So all of this, right. If somebody believes that they're in the presence of somebody who is discriminating is or isn't trying to harm them, that the victim mentality, they will create the environment that that they're envisioning. Okay. Or the dynamic. Yeah. And to look at this from the clinical perspective, because again, I certainly don't want to look on empathetic or to minimize the fact that there are victims of terrible things out there. And that does cause, you know, a lot of psychological distress and turmoil. So, you know, let's get that part of the way here. But clinically speaking, our role is to not recommend or help them to sit in that victimhood. It's to find areas of their life that they can feel empowered in and take accountability for, not what happened if you were victimized, but what you do with it and what you can do and not what you can't do. So, you know, from a clinical perspective, this new manner of being is certainly not supported. No, it's so yeah, it's the opposite of what we're doing. And and by the way, you used a word that's very important. And I say this to my patients all the time. I said, You certainly were victimized. Yeah, but we can't let you become a victim. I think those are two different things. And every single one of my patients, you know, it doesn't matter. The sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, color of the skin. You know, every single one understands that concept. Right. And they appreciate it because that's the empathy that, you know, that we're building. We're saying, yes, I recognize you had a terrible experience. We just can't let that define you. yeah, so regarding, you know, being victimized versus having that mentality of I am the victim and everybody should treat me a certain way, I want to focus a little bit more on that accountability piece of things because oftentimes I think what that lack of accountability leads to is a feeling of entitlement. And we speak about entitlement in many other contexts. But in this sense, it's, well, you know, the world did this terrible thing to me or, you know, the circumstances, whatever. I won't even say circumstances because I think that oftentimes these people don't account for the fact that circumstances do dictate terrible things happening to us. And that's life to a degree. But it's this really strong sense of entitlement I think, that gets woven into it. Right. And actually, I write about in my book, I said to my patients, yeah, exactly what you're saying. And the entitlement manifests in several different ways. Either it's like my turn right ideas or something, and when I'm not getting it, they feel so hopeless, almost like, you know, they're angry, They're frustrated. Like, when is it going to be my turn? Or they think that they should get like that. They should be able to do things and get special treatment, like they should be forgiven even for unforgivable things. Right? Because if the world were fair for all the terrible things that happened to me, when is it my turn to be eager to to have some slack cut or to get a break or something like that? So they really expect others, even if those people had nothing to do with their earlier adversity, they just expect them unconsciously or consciously to again forgive them to do to give leeway and stuff. Yeah, and to the point of earlier experiences, I think to a large degree we can attribute this to parenting and certainly it's not the only factor. But I think increasingly parents aren't allowing their kids to do hard things and not only are there social ramifications for that, but there's also neurological ramifications. The anterior cingulate is the part of the brain that actually grows or doesn't grow when we don't engage in this behavior. So that part of the brain grows. The more we do things that we don't want to do and the more we do hard things. And interestingly enough, if you do that hard thing and start to like it, that doesn't develop that growth. We keep doing the hard thing that we don't want to do, even though we don't want to do it. But that is happening less and less and less, and we're seeing the societal impacts of that. And you know, as a parent I can say, yeah, it sucks to have to push your kid to do hard things and to get that push back and deal with all of that. I get that. I think that's a universal thing that parents experience. But parents are absolving themselves of that responsibility more and more and just giving in saying, All right, well, Johnny, you don't want to do X, Y, and Z. Okay, fine. And while in the moment that might be easier, that is an extreme disservice to kids and society at large. 100%. And so I'm going to tie in two things I'm sure we've talked about before. Okay. I always tell parents you ultimately we have one job, okay? And a lot of parents will say, to love our kid or not know our one job like every other animal on the planet is to raise children who will be able to be independent one day. Right. And everything that you described is, you know, will contradict that if they're, you know, not allowing them to struggle, to fail to pick themselves up and everything, which is the second thing I mentioned to parents that I only mentioned. I usually mention to parents, sorry, to people who when they've shown me that they actually have this trait and they they they have it, they've demonstrated their entire life. They've had a horrible childhood or some terrible adversity, and they don't recognize what they've done. They just see it as survival or maybe they got lucky or something else. They unfortunately, they minimize, they dismiss their accomplishment. And that accomplishment, I say is I say I tell and I say, you have this. And I say, I tell parents, if there's only one thing that you can bestow upon your children, just one. I say resilience. And that's what you're describing is right. And if people understand that resilience, it's the ability to pick yourself up after a setback, after you fall, you keep going forward. It's like tenacity. But that's a little bit different because tenacity just keep going, keep going, keep going. Resilience is I had a setback, but I'm going to keep picking myself up and going forward. And as you say, parents are not giving children that opportunity. Again, we're not all parents, but more parents than ever before, let's say, in our modern history. And it's such a paradox, too, because, you know, to tie in that theme of DIY and all of what's going on with that, it's initially in the spirit of empowering people. But in doing that, they're again allowing people or promoting that people adopt this victimhood mentality, but they're also robbing them of the ability to overcome adversity. And I'm certainly not speaking in extremes. I say it over and over again. There are absolutely circumstances where people need help, they need accommodations. And I, you know, and hugely in support of that. But in many cases, people are being, you know, overly accommodated or overly labeled as X, Y and Z, which then rob some of that ability to develop those really important skills to overcome adversity, display their resilience further, build their resilience. So I think that it's very short sighted of, you know, whether it's parents, teachers, schools, whatever system we want to insert here, it's very short sighted. Well, it is. And when you say short sighted, I mean, that should be the drinking water of the day, because I know there's other countries out there who do not have the West best interests in mind where they're not doing that. They continue to subject children, and I think that's a good thing. But to hardships that toughen them up, that builds resilience. And because you and I are we are the antithesis of black and white thinking, we're not saying, again, you know, punish children mercilessly and make them suffer. You know, it's not that. Okay. But you're absolutely right. When children don't have these experiences, we are raising a workforce and we've already seen it. I've had so many patients. And actually I started saying this about 15 years ago because I remember giving a TV interview about this about 15, exactly 15 years ago maybe, where I was saying, I've spoken to so many CEOs, managers, VP's, etc., and they were all saying that these this new wave of again, this is 15 years ago, the new wave of hires, the number one word, you know, number one word. I may have told you before that they used it was the most common, I'd say like 90 something percent of them. And I said, give you one word to describe. And I didn't say positive or negative. I said one word to describe the newer batch of employees. Guess what the word was. So I'll I'll preface my response with I've been fortunate that our staff is amazing and does not fit into this, but entitled. Exactly. Okay. Well, by the way, the reason that I think they're amazing also because you select them very well. Thank you. That's a fact. But you're entitled. And if there was someone who was entitled, they would learn very quickly. This is not the environment in which that's going to be tolerated. So that was 15 years ago, and it's only gotten worse over the years. And entitled people, they do not make for a good society. Entitled people make for a self-serving, selfish, narcissistic, atomistic society. That's what we're creating. And it's being promoted through social media. You are special. You deserve all this. You've been victimized. Don't allow yourself to be a victim. You know, stand up for yourself, etc., etc.. But all they're doing is basically saying, I don't want accountability. They're not standing up for their rights. They're standing up for no accountability. And the the the to that point, the really crappy among many results. But one of the very crappy results of that is the fact that responsibility I sound like such an old person saying this, but it's true the literature supports that responsibility. Hard work, accountability, overcoming adversity. All of these things are incredibly important in creating meaning and fulfillment in our lives. So without that, if we're going to sit back and life is easy and I'm the victim, everybody hand me everything you're again. But in the short term, maybe that's going to feel, you know, great or helpful. But in the long term, you're just screwing yourself over. You are. And again, is your screen yourself over you screwing society over. And God forbid, if you have children, you're screwing them over because what are they going to see? What are you modeling for them? You're not going to suddenly become, you know, a very self efficacious, productive person. You're going to you can raise the next generation. It's only going to get worse. And so many people have been asleep at the wheel, hence the name of our podcast Awake at the Wheel, because of people in positions who should be, you know, stemming the tide of this, you know, again, in education, politics, law, science, research, all of this. And think about education when we talk again about the victim mentality. And it's also tied in with the like the fact that it's happening in the States, it's happening in Canada, it's happening locally. It's happening federally that so many departments or schools or, you know, whatever they say, well, you know, math is really hard and it disadvantages certain people. So because of that, instead of trying to give resources to help the people who are struggling to be able to, you know, to do well in math or certain types of math. Right. Because we know that helps with the brain that maybe you won't use most of it in life, but certain stuff does help prevent brain growth. But instead of doing that, instead of, you know, giving accommodations to help people or special classes and stuff like that, Nope. What are we going to do? We are going to either eliminate test scores or tests or math all together. Okay. It's insane when you reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator, when you say, Well, what is the lowest common denominator of It's the most marginalized, oppressed or victimized in society. If they're canceling math? Well, people know what that means. Okay. lowest common denominator. Yes, Very good. So anyway, yes. So back to little victimization, everything like that. We I think I mentioned this book, the short story before, Harrison Bergeron, I'm pretty sure. Okay. I'll say it bears repeating one more time. Okay. That in that in that short story, the idea was that that they wanted an average and anybody who was better than average was had some handicap imposed on them that would bring them down to the average or down to the low, not the average sorry, to the lowest common day. It wasn't even the average was the lowest common denominator. And that's what we are actually literally doing. And again, the people from these marginalized groups or oppressed groups or whatever you want to call them, there are so many of them who either are parents or they went through it themselves and said, Yeah, that's the one area that I really thrive in, whether it's math or something else, right? That you know, So you're robbing me of that or I knew that I was, you know, that that was my talent and that I could, you know, one day get a job in this field or something like that or that gave me a sense of pride or fulfillment. And you even give me that ability because you're again, you're taking away because too many people are doing well. And there have been studies and reports about what happens to the schools. There's not one I have not seen any evidence ever. And I look for it. I've not seen any evidence that these types of programs have actually helped the people, the individuals and the school system itself and the society. There's not one. And if someone can show it to me, maybe I'll change my opinion. But so far I haven't. It's all counterproductive. Once again, good intentions executed poorly lead to terrible or disastrous outcomes. Yeah. So, you know, sadly, it appears that this is just the direction that things are going in. If 10 to 15 years ago people were feeling that employees were entitled, frankly, it's only getting worse at this point and from here is probably going to get worse. I know that that sounds very grim, but I think that that's the situation that we're we're in. So as we always talk. But what can people do? I think I'll speak directly to parents here as far as what can be done. Really, really think about fostering that strong sense of problem solving and accountability and overcoming adversity and just learning how to do hard things. One of the things that I often use in therapy, because we're talking about, you know, enhancing our ability to tolerate distress, you need to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and it's not an easy thing, but the more you do it, the more meaningful and accomplished you are going to feel. So if parents can do one thing to overcome this, even if your child has something very severe that is getting in their way, because that does happen, sadly, whether it's an illness, whether it's a disability that doesn't define who they are and that shouldn't excuse them from optimizing every other area of their life. Exactly. And once again, it's it's a nuanced approach. You factor in whatever difficulty that they have. But, you know, and you don't mean you might have to lower your expectations. They may not be able to accomplish what someone without that challenge, you know, But the fact is we still want them to challenge and to maximize their potential. Everyone's got a different range of potential, whether it's intelligence, physical prowess, you know, resilience, whatever happens to be. But we want to try to add as much as we can, try to maximize that. And once again, accountability. It really does start with that. And the accountability begins with the parents. You bring a child into the world. It's you know, it's your job to to do the tough work here and and try and again, as we say, it's not easy. I've got three daughters and I sometimes take the easy route in some cases for little things. But overall, they know they hear this message all the time. And I tell them that that this is going to make you you know, you don't like it now. And I know it's not a good selling point, but trust me, eventually you're going to see it's going up the dividends are going to be so obvious when they start paying out or paying off. Absolutely. So to our listeners, we want to know what you think. Are we way off base here? Should society be going in this direction or do you agree with what we're saying? Let us know in the comments. And I will say one more thing. For anyone who thinks that we're off base, not pulling rank here, this is not a an appeal to authority. But the fact is we've spent our professional lives many, many years seeing these different issues play out. We've seen, you know, they do take one trajectory or another and seeing the impact on the people. We've had the feedback, we've done assessments, we've done all these things, and we have really clear evidence. The people who are promoting the other approach, the victimization approach, what do they have to support their claims and their ideologies. Now, some of them have some kind of doctorate. They have a Ph.D. or whatever. Look and see what it's in, really. And you will see in most cases, it's not in an area that some people might say it's in your psychology, like really? What is that? Okay, great. What? But I guess it's a soft science, right? But again, it's not just about I don't care about my my degree. It's about the work that we've done. I was just going to say, the degrees aside, that the solid evidence that we see from practicing I think is irrefutable. Really? I do. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not putting the sock on the degree. It's a field that we're in and seeing that and these other people, you know, again, what field are they in really? They're in usually ideal, logically driven fields. They're not it's not science based, it's not evidence based. It's, you know, philosophy and it's mostly ideology based. So. All right. So not to shit all over those fields. They do have their place, but they should know their place and okay. And again, we've seen what places we've gone when we've allowed them to, you know, to have unfettered access to these these systems. And we've seen the damage being done. And again, they're victimizing kids left, right and center, which is again, which is creating a society of victims. Once again. This is the first time that victimhood is being is being praised as being something that people should aspire to. It's very unhealthy. So on that note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.