157. Mental Health & The Male Hubris, Female Humility Effect
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Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Hello
Henry: I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are talking about this interesting phenomenon called the male hubris, female humility effect. This is a nice fit amidst our element of joy this month, which is curiosity.
Because if nobody's heard this, they're like, what are you talking about? So, I also wanted to touch on [00:01:00] this to prepare us for some episodes on imposter syndrome that will be coming up soon. Let me define imposter syndrome quickly because it's such a buzzword. I think we all kind of generally know what it is.
It's this feeling of not measuring up, feeling like we don't have what it takes in whatever capacity and that we're going to get found out. There is so much more to this idea, though, and I'm really excited to get into it because when you understand the factors involved, and there's many, it's not just a self esteem issue.
That's actually one of the smaller of the variables that are contributing to imposter syndrome. Then you can really start to work with it and not let it be an obstacle in your life. So, what we're talking about today The male hubris, female humility effect, along with something called intellectual humility can be helpful to understand before we dive into imposter syndrome, as I said.
[00:02:00] And this does relate to mental health as well, so, let me, let me get into this. Let me explain it. The male hubris, female humility effect essentially describes this phenomenon around self-reported intelligence. And you can probably guess based on the name that males estimates of their intelligence are higher than females So as we talk about this, I'm, I'm going to use binary gender terms rather than the sexes.
One reason I want to do that is because cross-cultural assessments of self reported intelligence, they do vary across countries. Although men still rate themselves higher than women in nearly every study. I think that's patriarchy and not biology. So, I think it's more accurate to talk about gender here.
So, and using the binary to help our conversation along. Also, I want to be really clear here that [00:03:00] study after study after study after study has determined that gender does not predict general intelligence. So neither men nor women are smarter than each other on these global scales. Okay. So clearly though, something is different here between the genders and in and of itself, this actually, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
You know, where folks estimate their intelligence. I'll set aside the Dunning- Kruger effect for a moment. That's another thing we'll get into, I think, later, in an episode, perhaps. But when it comes to mood and emotional regulation, this tendency of humility that women tend to have more of, based on this phenomenon, that when it's in balance, I think it can give women an, a bit of an advantage because it can feed something called intellectual humility, which is that other piece that we want to get into.
So intellectual humility is just the opposite of a know it all, I guess you could say. So [00:04:00] when we have it, intellectual humility, we can acknowledge that we don't know it all. When it comes to our knowledge, our beliefs, even our attitudes that we're fallible, really. We can get it wrong. It also suggests that we are more likely to value others' knowledge.
And this is kind of an emerging concept, but the research on it is absolutely clear that intellectual humility is an essential skill for wellbeing. Because if we think we know it all, or think other folks don't know anything, then we've immediately created rigidity in thinking, and we've created separation between ourselves and others.
And those two things, if you've listened to Joy Lab for maybe even just half an episode, you'll know rigidity and separation are damaging for our mood.
Henry: Could not agree more. But before I say anything further, I just have to come clean for a minute. I have been known [00:05:00] to fall into male hubris myself.
Aimee: Hehehe
Henry: I'll
Aimee: Story time!
Henry: I'll give you a example. a, few years ago, there was a book that came out called, "Men Explain Things to Me." I don't know if you've heard of that. The author, I was Rebecca Solnit. Anyway, we were having dinner with a group of friends, so there's men and women sitting around the table here, and somebody brought this book up and, you know, asked, was trying to tell us what it was about, kind of briefly, and, and said something about the term mansplaining. Well, at the time, I don't think any of, many of us had heard the term mansplaining, so I helpfully started to tell people what it meant.
Aimee: attaboy!
Henry: I got just a [00:06:00] sentence or two into it and realized what I was doing. So I said, well right now I am mansplaining and everybody laughed and, you know, I got off the hook, but um,,
Aimee: Intellectual humility right alongside male hubris. So beautiful. I think that is the message... these things...
Henry: We can stop our podcast now! Back to your point about rigidity and separation.
Uh, it makes me think of a concept that we have talked about before, the idea of finding the middle way.
One of the important models for mental health is one that looks at emotions on a continuum. On one end there is chaos and on the other end there is rigidity.
And I think it's really easy to see that we don't want to be on either end. We want to be somewhere in the middle, and I think this applies just as well to our [00:07:00] thinking as it does to our emotions. So whenever I see rigidity in one of my patients, to me it's just a sign that something has gotten out of balance. It's out of balance and this is their automatic reaction to it. It's just like a self-protective, knee-jerk reaction. They might be reacting to stress. It might be their brain chemistry. Maybe they just never stop to rest and let their nervous system catch up with them. But once they get stuck in a rigid pattern, it can be kind of hard to break out of it. And I think the kind of humility that you're talking about is a possible antidote to this. Because it allows us to release that tightness, you know, to loosen the grip that this has on us so that the mind can flow more freely again. 'cause when you get caught in the grip of this [00:08:00] rigidity, or this, I have to know, and I, I have to be right.
It is unpleasant to say the least.
So this opens up the possibility of maybe seeing a solution. And when you're thinking rigidly, you can never get to those kind of solutions. I'm also reminded of a fable that I first heard, this is over 30 years ago, so I'm reaching way back in my memory. I heard this from Jon Kabat-Zinn when I did my mindfulness training with him and the whole fable is kind of long so I'm not gonna try to remember the whole thing. I'm just gonna jump to the end and share the image that really stuck with me. So, it was a young man who kind of impulsively rode away from his castle because his father was sick and he was trying to find this elixir that was like a fountain of youth to save his father.
So he just rides out, going as fast as he can and doesn't listen to the woman who's standing by the [00:09:00] gate, trying to tell him how to find it. He just thinks he knows best and he just goes down this mountain path and eventually he gets into a slot canyon.
And a slot canyon is like, if you've ever been in one of them, it's kind of a narrow canyon with very high steep sides to it so that, these cliffs you just can't get out of it once you're in it without turning around. Well, he keeps going further and further into this canyon which gets more and more narrow and he's just so stubborn pursuing his goal that eventually it is so narrow that he can't turn the horse around.
And horses don't, they just don't back up so he is stuck. He can't get out. So, as I'm thinking about it now, even if this wasn't the point of the story, he really could have used some intellectual humility.
Aimee: Yeah. I think that's a perfect story to demonstrate and that there [00:10:00] is a middle way here and that continuum you noted: too much humility, not good. We, we never step into our power. Too much hubris, not good. We either get stuck in a slot canyon or nobody can stand being around us for very long.
And, speaking of that continuum as well, this is not just like a male versus female thing. We're, you know, we're talking about these constructs as a maybe see some tendencies and it shows up in the literature. It's this phenomenon. But you know, how were you reared or, what has society told you?
Do you need to prove it or do you need to sit down and listen? And there's the other sides of the extreme as well. So, I think the message here is that we just may lean toward one side more than the other. And putting in some work to find that middle way is really important. Like, you know, the antidote, that's the skill of intellectual humility.
I agree. I think that's, that's it. That's the middle road. [00:11:00] And it is so powerful. That's why we work on our element of curiosity in Joy Lab. Curiosity builds intellectual humility and that kind of balanced humility creates flexibility and connection within us and with those around us. It's way more enjoyable to move through life in that way.
Henry: Mhm, I'm sure a lot of folks have heard the term beginner's mind,
which usually makes me think of, a young child, who is still open and curious and engaged and really just wants to explore the world that he or she hasn't figured out yet. And just think of how excited they can get just about doing that. Buddhists sometimes use a term, a similar concept, called "don't know mind." And I like that too, and as someone who does like to know, I find it helpful to remind [00:12:00] myself once in a while that this is a really good way to be in the world. I don't know. And to me, it seems like such a good antidote to fear because so much of our fear, I think, is driven by uncertainty.
What might happen? We've somehow gotten the notion that we should have certainty all the time, or at least we want it. And I think a lot of our fear and anxiety would just dissolve if we could maybe make friends with uncertainty a little bit. So here's an idea for how you might make this concept work for you. Think of something that makes you feel apprehensive when you think about it coming up in the near future. Nothing that's super strong, just a mild sense of nervousness. Maybe I just kind of want to avoid this. For example, it might be a social [00:13:00] gathering, one of the most common of all forms of anxiety.
Or maybe it's an upcoming trip that requires a lot of work, or the uncertainty of travel. It might be a meeting, or just even the fact that you have to go to work the next day and it's a Sunday night or something. Just try to get clear about what it is that you're uncertain about. Will people like me? Will I know what to say? Am I forgetting something? What could go wrong? And then see if you can just turn it on its head. Instead of uncertainty, see if you can see it as "I don't know." And just try to connect with a sense of freedom in that. "Ooh, I wonder what this is going to be like." "Isn't it nice not to know what's going to happen ahead of time?" See if [00:14:00] you can just be glad for not knowing how things are going to turn out. And then as you go into the event, it's Just try to notice whenever you begin to tense up, you know, to feel tight and just silently say to yourself, "I don't know." "I don't know and I'm right where I want to be."
Aimee: Yeah, I think that's a perfect practice. If you're in our NMH community, I think you'll see that show up as a simple joy challenge. I don't know. It feels good. I don't know. It also reminds me of an episode on the power of uncertainty and savoring that we had a while back.
So I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well. I think that will be a nice compliment to this one. So to close, I'll share some simple wisdom [00:15:00] from C. S. Lewis that I just love. Here it is. " Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less."
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