In this episode, my guest is Dr. Jordan Peterson, Ph.D., psychologist, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, best-selling author, and prominent online educator. We discuss the biology of human emotions and motivations, healthy versus destructive impulses, addictions, and generative drives. Topics include how brain states shape decision-making—for better or worse—and how religion and culture can guide us toward and through the best paths in life. We also explore the innate human drive to create "impact at a distance" and how it influences social interactions, educational pursuits, career choices, and relationships. Additional subjects include morality, social media, politics, the human appetite for drama, and the importance of embracing responsibility as a form of adventure to avoid wasting time. Listeners will gain practical knowledge from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and religion. Read the full show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Levels: https://levels.link/huberman ROKA: https://roka.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Dr. Jordan Peterson 00:02:32 Sponsors: David & Levels 00:05:19 Brain, Impulses, Integration, Personalities 00:14:08 Personalities, Motivation 00:18:18 Context & Children; Religion, Motivation & Personality 00:24:08 Hypothalamus, Context, Maturation 00:29:46 Psychopathy, Kids & Aggressive Behavior & Socialization 00:33:37 Polytheistic & Monotheistic Religions; Rage, Sociopathy & Addiction 00:41:05 Sponsors: AG1 & ROKA 00:43:58 Belief in God, Addiction 00:50:34 Pornography, Dopamine, Processed Foods 00:56:20 Clean Diet, Satiety; Fundamental Pleasures, Food, Sexuality 01:04:44 Power, Target, Sin 01:06:46 Sponsor: Function 01:08:33 Abraham; Call to Adventure, Success, Respect, Community 01:21:30 Wisdom, Noah; Religion, Incentive Structure & Motivation 01:26:52 Dopamine & Target, Sin; Frontal Eye Fields 01:31:59 Meta-Target & Goals, Sermon on the Mount; Fears 01:40:36 Sponsor: LMNT 01:41:51 Ultimate vs. Local Victory, Pearl of Great Price 01:45:05 Time Scales & Rewards; Entropy, Dopamine & Goals 01:51:20 Pornography, Effortless Gratification; Revelation & Sexuality Demise 02:02:33 Adventure & Responsibility, Sacrifice; Tool: Ordering Room 02:12:02 Storytelling, Science, Career Advancement, Pursuing Truth 02:23:46 Abraham & Adventure; Purposeful Satisfaction, Podcast 02:28:13 Finding Your Calling, Tools: Calling & Conscience; Creating Order 02:35:06 Order vs. Chaos; Public Shootings, Narcissism 02:40:16 Long-Term Goals, Pursuit, Curiosity, Commitment 02:45:43 Finding Purpose, Tool: Fixing Messes; Conscience & Voice of Divine 02:54:26 Prayer, Aim, Revelation; Thought 03:00:34 Religion, Common Themes 03:10:55 Psychoanalytical Traditions; Play 03:19:23 Play; Humor, Discourse, Alternative Media 03:27:18 Democrats, Republicans; Fear & Growth 03:34:59 Tour, Peterson Academy, YouTube, Cancel Culture 03:48:30 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does Dr. Jordan Peterson discuss about the biology of emotions?
We also discuss the media, politics, cancel culture, things like social media and pornography, shifting masculine and feminine roles, and the innate human drive to create action at a distance, both in space and in time. Today's discussion is both intellectual and practical.
Dr. Peterson emphasizes how to use different sources of story, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to understand and best guide one's decision-making process. Indeed, he discusses the tight relationship between the call to adventure and responsibility as a trustable framework for moving forward in life towards one's best possible outcomes.
And I'm certain that by the end of today's discussion, you'll be thinking about your own neural circuits, That is the connections in your brain that drive emotions, thoughts, and behavior, as well as your psychology, your different states of mind. And you are going to have a number of different tools and frameworks with which to apply all that knowledge toward the best possible outcomes.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David.
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I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also given me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels.
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Chapter 2: How do brain states influence decision-making?
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Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K slash Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. And now for my discussion with Dr. Jordan Peterson. Dr. Jordan Peterson, welcome.
Chapter 3: What is the relationship between morality and cultural influences?
Thank you, sir.
Delighted to have you here and want to talk about elements within your new book.
Yeah.
Also some elements within your previous books and within that mind of yours generally. As a framework for that, I'm wondering if you would tolerate or permit a little bit of a discussion about sort of brain and psychology. Just kind of lay the groundwork for where we might prod some of the themes that you bring up related to the book.
Chapter 4: How can storytelling guide life decisions?
So I view the brain as obviously a bunch of cells and parts, et cetera, but I distill it down to some sort of basic features. First of all, we have an autonomic physiology. I think we'd both agree on that, that regulates our sleepiness and wakefulness, our breathing, our heart rate, stuff that runs in the background.
And then we have a lot of circuitry devoted to what I would call impulses, things that we desire we want to move toward. appetitive behaviors, and we also have some impulses to avoid things that are putrid, painful, etc. That's all in there like it is in other animals.
We should talk about the idea of impulse in relationship to that characterization. Okay. Because there's an important point to be made on the... You pay a price for characterizing that as impulse, and I'd like to explore that with you because it's crucial.
Great. We'll circle back to impulse. I'd like to do that. And then we have a lot of circuitry. People will hear about it as executive function, prefrontal circuitry, which does many things, but I like to think of
As a circuit that can say, and here I'm borrowing from a previous guest who's a neurosurgeon, it can say, shh, or exert what's called top-down suppression on these, what I'm calling impulses.
We should talk about that too, the suppression idea and the inhibition idea in general.
Great.
Because I think there's a parallel problem there to the notion of impulse that's very much worth delving into.
Great. So circuitry that's devoted to our ability to self-inhibit the desire to reach for something or to avoid something. We can push ourselves into things that would otherwise be aversive. We can avoid doing things that would otherwise drive us to, quote unquote, just do it anyway.
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Chapter 5: What does addiction reveal about human motivation?
And it occurred to me to just step back from all of that and ask, is part of the reason that we have a concept of God, that there are multiple religions, is that the consequence of some humans at some point realizing, or perhaps God himself realizing, that what we are equipped with as humans
which we just described is insufficient to allow us to evolve as a species and be the best version of ourselves. I think this for me really is like the central question of at least my life, which is to what extent do I need to intervene with my default settings, rewire them, engage that prefrontal cortex and push down on some repetitive or aversive behaviors. And to what extent can we do that?
And to what end?
And to what end? And maybe we need a rule book. You know, I am starting to believe, and I'm now 49 years old, that we need a rule book, that the neural circuitry that's encased within our skulls is not sufficient to allow us to navigate through life to our best outcome.
We kind of know that we need a rule book. You admitted that in some ways implicitly when you discussed the fact that we have a 25-year socialization window. And what that means is that we have to interact with other people and our traditions in order to set us right. And that's so complex it takes 25 years. And so we're learning something from that.
And that's indication that our, let's say, default biological settings are insufficient to guide us into the future, right? And so then the question is, well, what is it that you're learning as a consequence of that socialization process? And you can think about it. And people have thought about it as a series of complex inhibitions of lower order motivational states, impulses.
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Chapter 6: How can one find purpose in life?
But I'm not very happy with the inhibition model because inhibition is unsophisticated socialization. Integration is sophisticated socialization. So here's a way of... I really learned this, I think, from contrasting Freud with Piaget. Because Freud's model, superego, is really an inhibition model. And Freud was a neurologist. Piaget's model was very different.
He thought of the properly socialized person as someone who had integrated their lower order, we'll call them impulses for now, into a sustainable voluntary structure that regulated them and gave them all their proper place. That's very different than an inhibitory model. So for example, I'll give you an example from my own life. My son was quite a willful, Young child.
Wonder where he got it from.
Yeah, well, fair enough. And my father was, you know, a formidable character. And so my son liked to do what he liked to do. And it took him quite a bit of tussling with him to help him, I wouldn't say inhibit that or regulate it, to integrate it. And one of the consequences of that was he became a very good athlete. And so why is that relevant?
Well, because it wasn't like he stopped being assertive or even aggressive. It's that he learned how to put that aggression in its proper place in relationship to a goal that was much more sophisticated than merely getting his own way moment to moment. Okay, so integration's a better, like a very sophisticated athlete, a team athlete in particular, isn't not aggressive.
And they're not inhibiting their aggression on the playing field. They may now and then when they're provoked, let's say, but all things considered, what they've done is subordinate their aggression to a higher order goal that enables them to be more successful, but also to be successful in a maximally social and sustainable way.
And Piaget's point, and he's absolutely right about this, is that that's much better conceptualized as integration. And then with regard to impulse, because I said I would return to that, I spent a lot of time walking through the behavioral literature, right?
And a lot of that was derived from animal experiments and it was predicated on the idea that if you could explain something on the basis of a deterministic reflex, you should. And there's something to be said for that hypothesis. Don't make your... Theory any more complex than it needs to be. How far can you get with a theory of chained reflexes, a deterministic theory?
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of responsibility in personal growth?
The behaviorists got a long way. They couldn't get to the highest strata of human endeavor with a chained reflex theory, but there was a lot of things they did that were very good. But one of the things they made a big mistake about was to conceptualize motivational states, let's say, as impulses or drives. That's not sufficient because it fails to take
into account the effect of those states on perception. So it's much better to think of a motivated state. This is what helped me integrate behavioral theory with psychoanalytic theory, especially the psychoanalytic theory of religious endeavor. It's much better to think of those lower order motivational states as personalities. They're sub-personalities. They have their perceptions.
They have their objects of perception. They have their cognitive rationalizations. You certainly see that in addiction, let's say. They have their emotions. They are small personalities, unidimensional, very narrow-minded personalities. But they're personalities. They're not impulses.
So are they personalities within what most people would think of as our larger personality? I mean, what I'm hearing is that, let's say somebody's an addict.
It depends on how integrated you are because you could be nothing but a succession of dominion of sub personalities. That's what a two year old is. Right. And so you have to build an integrating personality on top of those sub personalities, but not in a manner that inhibits them. That means your socialization is in unsophisticated.
Even Freud knew this because even though he had basically an inhibitory model of say, super ego regulation, um, He believed that a healthy personality would have the impulse of aggression and the impulse of sexuality to take two major lower order motivational states into account, would have them integrated into the functioning ego. The issue is integration.
And so what you're doing when you're social, like, okay, when my son, for example, would become willful in a manner that I regarded as counterproductive for him and the household. And the rule would be you can't act that way because if you act that way, people aren't going to approve of you. And that's a bad plan.
So you have to control that because it's not going to work out well for you if you don't. Okay, so I use timeout. Now, timeout is an effective disciplinary strategy for social creatures because we don't like isolation. And so timeout basically takes a child, puts the child in isolation. That produces a pain-like response because social isolation produces pain. It's pure inhibition.
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Chapter 8: How does social media shape our impulses and behaviors?
Well, that's the question. You see, that's the question. He had to inhibit his immediate desire, say, to run around because he was gonna sit on the steps. But see, I put a rule in place there. And the rule was, as soon as you get yourself under control, you can leave the stairs. Okay, so now the question is, what does under control mean? One interpretation is inhibition.
Another interpretation is, no, no, he's developing a superordinate personality, probably cortically, that has enough dominion so that those underlying motivational states can now be integrated and placed properly into a hierarchy. And when I'm insisting that he regulate his behavior, and I allow him to move off the step when he
is now able to be a social creature again, instead of falling prey to his whim. I'm reinforcing the cortical integration of those underlying motivational states. Now, you might think the human organism comes into the world with a warring battleground of primordial motivational states. That's a perfectly reasonable view.
We know a lot of that is mediated by the hypothalamus, for example, the amygdala and these lower-order, biologically to some degree pre-programmed systems.
Now, the specific manner in which those systems should find their expression and the specific way that they're going to be hierarchically integrated is going to depend to a tremendous degree on the particulars of the society at that moment, which is why you need that 18-year framework to hone the manner in which those systems make themselves manifest. But I think the best way to
conceptualize that is that it's it's the hierarchical integration of the motivational states within an overarching superordinate personality and that personality is not bound to the moment it takes the medium and long term into account and it's not self-serving like a two-year-old would be because you have to take other people into account if you're going to be successful so
And this is where the cortex comes in as far as I'm concerned. This is what it's doing. It's stretching the... It's integrating the lower order, temporally bound motivational states that are specifically self-serving to a much broader vision of the world that takes the future into account and other people. And that's hard. It's very hard.
I love this, and I'll tell you why. Because... the way that I think of the prefrontal cortex is that its main job is context dependent strategy setting.
Right. Context dependent.
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