Something You Should Know
A Paradox That Makes You Miserable & How We Amplify Our Own Stress
Mon, 17 Mar 2025
At some point, most men have likely been told they eat too fast – that they should slow down and enjoy their food more. Do men really eat faster than women? Should they slow down? This episode begins with a brief exploration and explanation. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/study-men-and-women-chew-differently/ Here is something you likely haven’t thought about much – it’s a paradox really… Humans are dependent on one another. Our happiness and survival require that we connect with others and be part of the group. Yet we also have a need to chart our own course – to be autonomous. This paradox creates a tricky balance that seems to have gotten out of whack. This has created a lot of problems that directly affect you in ways you have never thought about. But you are about to. Listen to my guest William von Hippel. He is a former professor of psychology at Ohio State University who has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, and the BBC. He is also author of the book, The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness (https://amzn.to/3DI67pE). There are things in your life that cause you stress. Yet, if you are like most people you have a tendency to compound that stress by imagining all sorts of other possibilities. You may start to catastrophize, think about what else could go wrong, and ultimately “What If” yourself into a frenzy. That is why you need to listen to my guest, Jennifer Taitz a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the book Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes (https://amzn.to/43RdghQ) Have you noticed whenever you type a document that you can choose from an almost endless list of fonts? Of course, you probably have a default font you use without thinking about it. But what fonts do people prefer to read? Which are the easiest to read. Listen to hear which fonts are sure winners – and one big loser. https://nerdfighteria.info/v/7g_7Cr1vEnM PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off QUINCE: Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Do men really eat faster than women?
Yes, we all eat and chew our food, but we don't all eat and chew our food the same way. Hi, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. I suspect every man has probably been told once or twice or more that he eats too fast and that he should slow down, enjoy your food. Is there really a gender difference in how men and women eat?
Well, researchers in South Korea hooked up electrodes to the jaws of men and women and gave them some rice to eat. And the results? Men do eat faster than women, on average twice as fast. There are two reasons for this. First, men take bigger bites. And secondly, they generally chew their food faster than women. The advice is not for women to speed up their eating.
It is for men to take smaller bites and slow down. At the very least, you reduce your risk of choking, but there are other health benefits to eating slower as well. People who eat slower tend to eat less, which is good for your waistline, and you will improve digestion when you eat more slowly. And that is something you should know. Humans have a need for social connection.
We cannot survive and thrive alone. People need people. We've discussed this many times here. Yet people also have a need for autonomy to do things and have things our way and not be subject to the desires of the group. It's a tricky balance and there are a lot of reasons to believe that this balance has gotten out of whack.
Now, you may not have given this a whole lot of thought, but this conversation you're about to hear will fascinate you as you start to understand this social paradox between the need for connection and autonomy and why it is so important. Here to discuss it is William von Hippel.
He's a former professor of psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, a former professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and his research has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, the BBC, and many other places. He's author of a book called The Social Paradox, Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness.
Hey, William, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, it's great to talk to you, Mike. So let's start with an explanation of what this paradox is between autonomy and connection and why it's important. And let me just have you explain that.
So the paradox is that the two most fundamental needs that humans evolved are the need for connection and the need for autonomy. And the need for connection comes from, both of these happened after we left the rainforest about 6 million years ago.
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Chapter 2: What is the social paradox between autonomy and connection?
So I can't tell you exactly when, of course, but somewhere in the ensuing few million years, as we moved to the Savannah, we evolved a strong need for connection because that's how we stayed safe. We cooperated with each other.
we work together to drive away predators and then eventually to become the you know apex predator on the planet so connection is our most fundamental need but secondarily we also evolved a need for autonomy and by autonomy i mean self-governance choosing your own path in life now the problem is connection is all about cooperating and friendship and relationships
And that means putting your own needs aside sometimes. Whereas autonomy is all about self-governance and what suits you the best, which means sometimes you have to put your relationships aside. So the consequence is that these two needs, our two most fundamental needs, are in permanent tension with each other. And the key is finding a balance that allows us to be happy. That's the social paradox.
And can you give me an example, a quick example or two of the social paradox in life and in action?
Sure. So let's talk about rich people versus poor people. And we can talk about, there's a million examples. So you tell me anything that's interesting to you, we could go in that direction. But here's a classic example. Poor people need each other. They live in these dense networks of interdependence because they're barely getting by.
And so if they want someone to house sit their dog, they can't afford to hire it out. They have to ask friends to do that. If they need a new tool because theirs broke or they don't have the right one, they have to borrow one. They can't just go to the shops and buy one.
And so poor people are densely interconnected with each other, and they tend to get together with their neighbors several times a week on average. Rich people, in contrast, are not interconnected with each other. They don't need each other at all. Rich people often don't even know their neighbors. And if they run out of their favorite coffee beans, they can drone a latte in.
They don't need to go over to their neighbors and borrow it and create a conversation, et cetera. And so the consequence is that rich people keep making decisions in their life about what suits them the best.
And in making these decisions, they're continually cutting off connections such that in the end, poor people actually spend much more time with their friends than rich people do, which if you think about it, it's ironic given that The point of being rich really would be to have total freedom, which you ought to use for social connection. Now, how do we know this?
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Chapter 3: How does wealth affect social connections and happiness?
if you um if you look at how often people attend religious services so now we've got something that you do if you believe in god but of course you don't do if you don't believe in god or don't believe that god wants you to attend services so people tend to attend services for reasons not to do with their social goals but reasons to do with their religious goals and what we find is that attending services has a huge impact on happiness it makes people much happier if they go to religious services a few times a week than if they only go
you know once a week or even once every few months more importantly however the effect of attending religious services on happiness is greater for rich people than it is for poor rich people get more bang for the buck out of going to services than poor people do because they've cut themselves off from their other connections and so in countless different domains wealth is just one of them we tend to cut off our connections when in fact those are what make us happy and do
We know that? Do we, in other words, do rich people who cut themselves off realize they've cut themselves off and are therefore unhappy about it? Or do they think, well, I'm a rich person and that's what we rich people do?
No, they don't know. The irony is that, and we can come back to talking about why this is if you'd like, but the irony is that we've evolved to continually grab autonomy whenever we have the chance to do so. And so every individual decision that the rich person is making makes perfect sense. It's what makes them happier in the moment, but the long-term cost is huge.
It makes them way less happier in the longer term. We see this in countless domains. It's not just rich and poor. So for example, in 1840, about 10% of humanity lived in cities. Cities are about 5,000 years old. That's when the first proper city existed, 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. And so, you know, it took in 5,000 years, slowly 10% of humanity, all of the world moved to cities.
Well, in 1840, Americans started moving to cities en masse. And by 1900, the rest of the world started moving to cities en masse. such that by 2007, half of the world lived in cities. So we're now in a world where more than half of humans live in cities, whereas just 150 or so years ago, only 10% lived in cities.
Now, given that half of all of humanity's moved to cities, you'd say, oh, well, cities must make you happy, right? Cities certainly provide autonomy. They give us opportunities. They allow us to make our own choices in a much bigger way than the country does. But ironically, they actually make us less happy.
People who live in the country are happier than people who live in the city, even though all of humanity is moving to cities.
And yet, in that case, it isn't either or. There are... you could say the suburbs where they're not, it's not rural, it's not little towns, but it's not big cities either. It's kind of somewhere in the middle. And what about those people?
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Chapter 4: What role do religious services play in happiness?
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So William, you said that poor people are more connected, have more connections than rich people. You also said that poor people are less happy. But we also hear that, but it's that social connection, that's what makes people happy.
Yes, so there's competing forces here. And so let me put it in context. So first of all... A big part of what makes human beings happy is status. And it's too bad, but we've evolved to want to always be at the top of our heap because that's our best chance of getting someone to choose us as a mate, getting somebody to want us to be on their team, to be our friend, et cetera.
And so when we look at rich people being happier than poor people, it's not money per se that makes them happy. It's the status that comes with it. And so if we look, for example, in the United States over the last 70 years, we can see that Americans now are about three times richer in real terms than they used to be.
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Chapter 5: How has technology altered social interactions?
I live in Australia now, so I'm in Brisbane. I'm walking by a construction site. And when I walk by construction sites when I was a kid in the 70s or 60s,
everybody should it's if it's break time they're all schmoozing with each other having a good time laughing and telling stories now when i walk by them the guys are all sitting in a line they're next to each other but they're all ignoring each other looking at their phones and so that those tight connections that we had in a more in a world that was not as technology technologically based as it is now those tight connections are largely disappearing we we rarely walk into our neighbors homes anymore unless we live in the country
Right. And then it does seem that the smaller the community, the more social and the more everybody knows everybody.
They know everybody. No, there's a downside. They're in everybody's business. And so if you have an affair, it's going to go through the town really fast. But the upside is they're tightly connected. They are not surprised when somebody walks into their kitchen door and just sits down at the counter. Whereas that would boggle my mind if my neighbor did that.
But it isn't just, I mean, the technology problem, I get that. And I've always been so fascinated by and disturbed by the fact that when you see people together who are on their phones with somebody else, why are they together? But I remember, I think I may have mentioned this on another episode of a similar topic, but I remember having a conversation with someone
who I knew and, and, and I said, I met this guy and he lives on your street. Do you know him? And she said, I make it a point not to know my neighbors. And I thought, well, what an odd, what is the benefit of that? What, why? And I didn't really get an answer, but what a strange, I thought that was a very strange outlook on life that make sure you don't know your neighbors.
It is, but it's sort of understandable if autonomy is paramount, if you don't want people in your business, then you want your friendships to be elsewhere. You want your romantic relationships to be elsewhere, because if you start dating the person two houses down and it ends badly, you've got an awkward situation whenever you see them.
If you are tight with your neighbors and then they expect things from you when you're busy and you don't want to deliver, you've got an awkward situation and you can avoid that awkwardness by just making sure your friends are elsewhere. And in a way, that's a good thing because it does give you more autonomy, but the cost is huge.
If you make it a point not to know your neighbors, you're literally making it a point to disconnect yourself. And we know very clearly the data show that makes us unhappy.
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