A CRIMINOLOGICAL LOOK AT HOW PARENTING AFFECTS CHILDREN

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
From wherever you are around the world, around the world.
Welcome to the Circle of Insight, a show that explores
the many facets of human behavior and the wonders of
the human mind. And now here's your host, doctor Carlos.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
We're going to be looking at something you don't always
hear about, differential susceptibility. What is it, Well, you're going
to find out a little bit later. But it's our
journey through the criminal justice system and criminological theories, and
we stumbled upon this one, which is quite fascinating, something
I didn't expect. Sometimes I even think it's a little
bit counterintuitive in my mind, but I'll see if I

(00:56):
get corrected on that. Who's going to help us out
with this complex theory? Will another than Professor Jay Belski.
He's a Robert N. And Natalie Reid Dorn professor at
the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California
Davis or UC Davis as we know it down here.
And he has got actually a ton of books. I
don't know how many books he's read, and we'll find
that out a little bit. He's written hundreds of articles books,

(01:18):
all on different areas, and today we're gonna be talking
about again differential susceptibility, so that's not waste any more time.
Welcome to the show, Professor Belski.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Welcome, Professor, Hello there, good to see you.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Good seeing you again. How many books have you written?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Day? Two? Three, four? Not that many. I'm finishing up
one now, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Another one? All right? So, Professor, before we get started,
I want you to define differential susceptibility for the audience.
For sure, there's no doubt about that. But can you
tell us I like to always know a little bit
of the backstory. How did you stumble upon this concept?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
That's a good question my my experience. I'm a developmental psychologist,
study how we become who we are, particular interest in
individual differences, and early in my career, in fact, what
got me into my field was an interest in how
early life experiences and exposures shape who we are, kind
of the nurture side of if you would, the nature nurture,

(02:20):
divide or distinction, etc. And what I came to But
almost twenty years well, I guess it was about fifteen
years twelve, fifteen years into my academic career, I got
exposed to the thinking of an evolutionary anthropologist who introduced

(02:40):
me really to evolutionary biological thought, especially modern evolutionary biological thought.
Some people, when they think of evolutionary biology think of
survival of the species. Well, that's old, outdated evolutionary thought,
but we're not going to get into that anyway. What
it eventually made me reflect upon was the fact that

(03:02):
implicit in our theories of nurture, with one interesting exception,
is the implicit, if not explicit, assumption that all of
us are equally acceptable susceptible to the things we're exposed
to and the things were and are potentially shaped by,
so that we're all influenced by the parenting we're experienced,

(03:22):
or we are all influenced by the friends and peer
group we hang out with, or we're all interested by
the quality of school league, or the quality of daycare,
or whether or not our parents get a long blah
blah blah blah blah. Well, when I came to realize
was that if we were all influenced by, if we

(03:44):
were all equally subject to influence. Then now, now you
might ask, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me
step back and say, why would nature craft a species
like ours to be susceptible to early life life influences.
That is, why should our tomorrows and how we function

(04:05):
be shaped by out today's that is what we experience now.
The intuitive answer to that question is because our experiences
today are preparing us for the probable anticipated likely experiences later.
So in other words, we're shaped to fit a future
anticipated context. So a child who's beaten and becomes aggressive

(04:31):
and antisocial is being prepared for we're a hostile world.
A child who grows up under nurturance and kindness and
consideration and develops pro social skills, how to cooperate, how
to give, how to take, how to care, is being
prepared for a nice world. Well, it doesn't take long

(04:52):
for us to realize what every economist and every financer
and every smart investor knows, which is the futures uncerta.
What that means, it seems to me is that what
that implied to me was that if we're all equally
susceptible to being shaped by our early life experiences, then
we would all go over the proverbial waterfall if tomorrow

(05:16):
turned out different than today. And that led me to
the conclusion that every decent investor concludes, which is, because
the future is uncertain, what we should do is diversify
our investments. A good investor doesn't put all his money
in the stock market, or all his money under the mattress,
or all of them his money in gold, or all

(05:38):
his money in property, because any one of those things
can fail. And it's by diversifying your investments and hedging
your best bets that you get over time, on average,
the best return. Because you can't be sure on any
one thing working out, but the best you can do

(05:59):
is get an average working out. As a main strategy. Okay, Well,
investors care about investing money to make more money. Nature
cares about making more copies of itself. It's reproductive fitness,
the dispersion of an individual's genes in future generations. So

(06:20):
this way of thinking that if the future was uncertain, nature,
like an investor, should hedge its fence. Some of us
should be. Like a bond. You buy it, it pays
two percent for thirty years, and nothing that happens between
now in thirty years is going to change that two
percent return. Or it pays four percent, or it pays

(06:40):
eight percent, whatever it is, it's a fixed percentage. It
doesn't change. That's unlike the thought market that goes up
and down. So it makes sense to me that some
of us should be fixed strategists. We shouldn't change, We
should pretty much stay who we are. Others should be
more developmentally plastic or malle susceptible to our early life

(07:02):
experiences and our exposures. Now, each of these strategies could
pay off depending upon what happens in the future. If
I am shaped by my experience today and tomorrow turns
out like today, well then I'm like the right key
for the right lock, okay, and it'll open the door
and voila. But what happens if tomorrow turns out not

(07:26):
like today? When I stick the key in that lock,
the door doesn't open. To mixed metaphors, I go over
the developmental waterfall, I am ill fit for tomorrow. Now
let's think of the fixed strategist. He is a key
or she is a key to open one door. If
that door turns out to be the door of life,

(07:47):
he or she is well fit for it. If that
door does not turn out to be the key to
be what life is like, then the key doesn't work.
So in either case, you can have a winner or lose.
It's gonna depend on something you can't know for certain
what tomorrow is gonna be like. So nature, like the
investor my analysis said, should hedge its bests. Some of

(08:10):
us should be more developmentally malleable, shaped by our experiences,
more nurture based. Some of us should be more if
you would fixed strategists like bonds, We're just gonna be
who we are now. That might be nice or nasty.
It might be happy or sad, it might be tall
or short, but we're gonna have a much more limited

(08:32):
range of plasticity we're gonna have or reaction range. We're
gonna have a much moller range to deva from. We're
gonna more or less stay who we are. Where others
are gonna depend. Who they become is gonna depend on
what their experiences were. So that's the notion of differential stability.
Some of where are differentially susceptible to environmental influences and exposures.

(08:55):
You and I, for example, might both be beaten children,
but you know what, you're kind of impervious to it.
You're gonna turn out nice or nasty no matter how
you're real me. It's gonna depend on how I'm red.
In fact, think about it this way, we both end
up being nice. You might have been born that way,

(09:19):
it didn't matter that you were neglected or beaten, not
too severely, hopefully or just average care because you were
just gonna be nice. Me I'm like you, not because
of the same reason, but because I was cared for
in a caring, supportive manner. So even to people who
can look exactly the same can get there through different

(09:42):
routes and by the same token, two people exposed the
same experiences growing up, for one of them may prove
influential and for another at won. So that's the idea
of a differential susceptibility.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Brought up a lot of questions. Go ahead, was.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Just now going to apply this to you know, your
interest in criminology, and I have no evidence for this,
But let's speculatively apply my thinking to a major criminological problem,
which is that of recidivism. Now, I would argue, or
I would I would speculate, maybe even put a little

(10:24):
money on it, that there are at least two kinds
of prisoners in prison. There's those who might have been
born quote bad truly to be opportunists to take advantage
of others, to be insensitive, to be unempathic, and just
be it, you know, a criminal. And there's plenty of
evidence that people like that. But now we might have

(10:47):
another person sharing the same cell, maybe committed the same crimes.
But why because if his or her early adverse exposures,
in other words, his criminology was made. He learned growing
up that the world is in sob kind of place
that others will take advantage of you, that it's a

(11:08):
painful world. So I'm going to hit first and ask
questions later. That's my lesson in life. Now I'm behaving
perhaps just like my fellow inmate, but for entirely different reasons.
Now let's apply this potentially to the issue of recidivism.
You know, in good prisons, I don't know how many
there are anymore, there's an effort to what's the word

(11:30):
to positively influence? What do you use to what's the
word in criminology that you use. I gonna have an
aging brain here when you know, if if prison is
going to have a program that's going to prevent recidivism,
that's gonna put you on a positive track. Pro you know,
PRIs striking what we're talking about okay, And my guest

(11:50):
is that rehabilitation works for some and not for others.
And I further predicted this speculum of analysis that it's
the criminals who was made that way by his exposed
who might have a fighting chance to benefit because if
he's still susceptible from a rehabilitation program. But for the
other person, rehabilitation is like nurturance in childhood. It's water

(12:13):
ruff a duc's pack. It doesn't stick, it doesn't take.
Because what we've got here are two people who look
the same, but they got in jail through their very
different developmental paths. One was always going to be perhaps
an SOB an advantage taker. The other was not destined

(12:33):
to be that way, but because of his or her
developmental experiences, became that way. Now that person is still
developmentally open to exposure and experience, then a good rehabilitation
program may take may get under the skin and may
change this person, and he doesn't become a recidivist, whereas

(12:53):
the first person might become so. In other words, we
know that there's great recidivism in print and populations. The
question becomes and we typically think of why when we
answer the question, well, why is there this variation some
do when some don't commit new crimes. The thinking is, oh,
the program was mediocre and the program wasn't so good.

(13:15):
He had had a good program, he had a bad program.
It may be less about the program than the person's
susceptibility to environmental influence. Now you might ask, well, how
come nature hasn't made us all environmentally susceptible? And a
colleague of mind Robert Plumman, a behavior geneticist who studies

(13:36):
the nurture side the nature side of things very much,
once point out to me something that I've only slowly
come to appreciate. If we were all susceptible to our
environmental experiences and exposures, we could all become hitler youth.
We could all become raving Marxist lunatics. We could all

(13:57):
be progressive left wingers, or we could all become you know,
reactionary right wingers. In other words, we would be highly
subject to manipulation if somebody figured out what the right
exposures and experiences are that could regulate and motivate and
affect us. So from that standpoint, we don't want everybody.

(14:22):
We shouldn't wanty to be strongly nurtured based because the
world isn't always a good, caring, nice nurturing place, and
there are people who would misuse that sensibility. So the
idea of differential susceptibility to environmental influence is an evolutionary

(14:43):
perspective on human development, and it suggests that nature matters,
that nurture matters for some more than others.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Let me get some clarity for it. And I got
some questions that popped up because I think it answers
to them that we'll find out. So it sounds like
it's almost deterministic depending on your genetic makeup. Off be here, I.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Would say, Remember I pointed out how the two people
in jail could be there for different reasons. Yeah, I
want to make that same point about this environmental susceptibility.
Two people could be highly susceptible for two different reasons.
One as you just suggested, and even my early work

(15:30):
did they were born that way it was genetic. But
it may also be that this that malleability developmentally, that
susceptibility to being shaped by experience may actually be environmentally induced.
In other words, to become a nurturist. Nurture may matter
for some to become a nurturist. Nature may matter for.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Some Okay, so that's ability totally contingent on genetics.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Then, and now think of it this way. Think of
a two by two matrix. Okay, the rows are born
and made Okay, right, nature and nurture. The columns are

(16:20):
environmentally susceptible and not so. Some environmentally susceptible people are
born and others are made by their experiences. Other non
susceptible people are born and made by their environmental experiences.

(16:41):
Now here's an interesting thing. I don't if I have
to make a guess that we're all four of those
cells filled with people, it may be that lack of
susceptibility is not made, it's just born. In other words,
maybe only three of those four cells have people, have
real people in them, but I don't know. My point
is simply that, yes, it looks like there are genetic

(17:02):
differences that make people more and less susceptible. But genetic
differences may also make people more and less susceptible to
becoming susceptible.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Got it, got it? Let me backtrack a little bit then,
in regards to a susceptibility, those prenatal factors have you seen.
What do you suspect about prenatal factors birth trauma?

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, what you're really asking is, well, what might be
some experiences or exposures that induce plasticity? And in fact
I can point to one to three of them. Well,
the three factors. One is environmental, which looks like it's

(17:48):
prenatal stress. There's some evidence that that fetuses that are
stressed prenatally are environmentally more sensitive than other babies, for
better and for worse. That is to say, if they
get supportive rearing, they turn out very competent. If they

(18:09):
get unsupportive rearing, they don't that. It's almost like what
prenatal stress is saying is wait to see what happens
outside before you commit to something, i e. What's that?
What to do outside the womb? Now, So to prenatal stress,
maybe one factor that fosters susceptibility, and it may do

(18:33):
it interestingly by changing two phenotypic characteristics of babies. One,
prenatal stress makes them more negatively emotional, more easily distressed,
more hard to settle, more difficult adjusting to new situations,
having what we call a difficult temperament. And prenatal stress

(18:54):
also makes babies more physiologically reactive, they're easier to get
cortisols spikes from when they're stressed. And both of those
phenotypic characteristics, being physiologically reactive and being highly negatively emotional,
look like they're associated with being more developmentally susceptible to

(19:14):
environmental influences. So it may be my prenatal stress by
fostering negative emotionality and or physiological stress susceptibility easily stressed
thereby foster thereby manufactures environmental susceptibility.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Fascinating, fascinating. You mentioned cortisol, the hormone release. I know
there are some things that happen I can't think off
the top of my head. I think estrogen are certain
injections that are given to mothers to induce to delay
labor can increase a lot of testosterone in the baby

(20:00):
normal levels. Is that something also that can play a
role or you.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
Know, in terms of either what makes us what fixes us?
As being fixed strategists I call them, or developmentally plastic,
it's open season on possibilities. This hasn't been well studied.
This is you know, I first made a sentence passing

(20:24):
notion about this idea in a well sided piece in
nineteen ninety one, nobody noticed it. In nineteen ninety nine,
I wrote two commentaries in which I developed this idea
a little more hardly. Anybody noticed it in two thousand
and seven. In two thousand and nine, I wrote more
substantial people pieces. People noticed it. So we're really only

(20:46):
ten years into looking at this issue. Because here's here's
what's gone on before. It's really not the case, as
I said at the beginning, for heuristic or explanetary purpose,
It's really not the case that you know, developmentalists have

(21:06):
presumed that all people are equally susceptible to environmental influences.
And that's because they have long presumed that some people
are more susceptible to negative environmental influences, that is, they're
more vulnerable to adversity, that is, they carry particular risk factors. So,

(21:26):
for example, classically, if you're a highly negative baby, that's
considered a risk factor because now if you're cared for
by an insensitive parent, you have real trouble down the
developmental road. Okay, Or if you're born premature, or if
you're born handicapped, or if maybe you be unattractive, or

(21:47):
maybe if you're prone to obesity and you grow up
in an obesogenic environment. In other words, we've long thought
or if you carry certain genes, that there are certain
individual organismic characteristics that make people especially likely to do
badly when bad things happen. Okay, and by definition, the

(22:09):
other people are resilient when the same bad things happen,
they don't succumb. Well, that viewpoint has been around for
twenty thirty forty years, and it's been a useful one.
But you know what we've never thought about until really
I came along and a couple of other people and

(22:31):
started thinking about this in a different way. What about people?
And so what was previously well recognized, although not labeled
in these terms, was differential susceptibility to adversity, the resilient
and the vulnerable. What was not thought about was differential
susceptibility to support and enrichment. And so what we really

(22:56):
discovered is that the very people are highly susceptible to
adversity look like they're highly susceptible to enrichment and support.
That is, they're not just vulnerable, they're developmentally plastic, for
better or for worse. Under bad conditions, their ship sinks.

(23:16):
Under good conditions, their ship flies, they thrive, Whereas others
who are intriguingly resilient in the face of adversity, they're
also resilient. In the face of support and enrichment, they
don't benefit. So it's almost like if you give some people, well,

(23:38):
I'm not going to I'm not going to go there,
I'll just be confusing. So and in fact, here becomes
a very interesting linguistic observation. When we think about people
who are disproportionately likely to succumb to adversity, to do
badly if bad things happen, they're vulnerable. Okay, they're just

(23:58):
waiting for the store to break. The can almost back
if you would. What word is the is the reciprocal
or the reverse or the inverse of vulnerable to describe
the person who's disproportionate and likely to benefit from support
and enrichment. I have asked this question all over the world.

(24:20):
No language, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian,
I can go on. Nobody in the audience ever raised
their hand and has an equivalent word. You know, The
only word I come up with is lucky. Joke. But

(24:41):
here's the point. Is it because we haven't had a word,
that we haven't had a concept, that we haven't looked
at the those disproportioned and likely to benefit from enrichment
and discovered that that they're the same ones who are
disproportionately likely to suffer in the face of adversity. And

(25:01):
that's why I go back to the recidivism case. The
guy in jail because he was made that way, may
benefit from a good rehabilitation because in the same way
he was susceptible to the banned conditions he grew up
in which made him a criminal, he could still be
susceptible to the ongoing conditions and a good rehabilitation program

(25:24):
which will turn him around.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
It's interesting because it reminds me of a couple of
stories of a buddy of mine, Pastor turnip Seed. Pastor
turnip Seed grew up with a father that was very abusive.
He abused as mother abused him violently. He was arrested
I and get thirty seven charges of felonies, convicted of

(25:47):
thirty seven felis by the time he was twenty one,
and then he got his life straightened by the time
he was thirty seven and he's been a pastor for
the last twenty five years, so it seemed like he was.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah, right, But we wouldn't say he was vulnerable to
the good thing. You know. My question would be what
turned him around? What exposures and experiences he proof susceptible?
Is he susceptible to? Now let's think also about the
pastors who had the bad experiences but unlike him, never

(26:23):
really succumbed to them. And let's think about the individuals
who grew up under nurturing conditions who ended up like
he did in the first half of his life. In
other words, we have people who are gonna be for
better or for worse just who they are, and we

(26:43):
have other people who are gonna be who they are
because of their experiences and exposures. So you could have
two pastors, one was born to be a pastor, the
others was made to be a pastor. You can have
two anti pastors. One was born to be an anti pastor,
the other was made to be an anti pastor. Life

(27:05):
ends up being intriguingly more complex this way, and then
you can ask yourself, well, why do we have this
kind of developmental variation in our susceptibilities. And I would
say because in our ancestral histories it paid off at
times to be an SOB no matter what, So we

(27:30):
have genes for SOB. There are other times when it
paid off to be nice, so we have genes to
be nice. There were other times when it paid off
two bend with the wind, so to be the way
the wind was blowing. So we have genes to make

(27:53):
you developmentally malleable. So you can be nice or you
can be nasty metaphor, depending upon which way the wind
was blowing while you were growing up. That is none
of the so. So people kind of often think that, oh,
it's better to be developmentally malleable to be susceptible to
environmental influences. It is if you're lucky enough to grow

(28:16):
up under nurturing circumstances. But is it if you're growing
up under adversity. Well, one second, my people are here.
Well one second are human evolutionary history, there are times
it's paid off to be developmentally malleable and shaped by

(28:37):
your experiences. There are times when that has been a
fool's errand so people have evolved so that we have
in other words, we have genetic variation for being malleable
and not being developmentally malleable. And you know, you know what,
you don't convince me of this the case of the
Killing Fields of Cambodia that when the you as vacated

(29:01):
Vietnam after we lost the war, the Khmer Rouge took
over Cambodia. They flushed everybody out of the cities into
the countryside, and they murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Who did they murder first? People like you and me,
uncalloused hands or spectacles, because those they regarded as markers

(29:25):
of education. So if you grew up as a kid
listening to your parents like you and I probably did,
and maybe many of your listeners who told you go
to schools, study hard, respect your teachers, do your homework, etc.
Because then life will turn out better than it otherwise.
Would guess what if you were a Cambodian and you

(29:48):
were told that twenty years earlier, before the Khmer Rouge
came in, you were dead. Now let's imagine that you
had a parent who told you exactly the same thing.
But you were a fixed strategist. You weren't susceptible to
that influence. You were just gonna play hooky, be tardy,

(30:08):
not do your homework, etc. You actually had a greater
likelihood of living to survive. And here's the critical point
from an evolutionary standpoint, to breed again, you got to
pass on your genes. Those kids who took who did
their homework because their parents encouraged them to, they were

(30:29):
very unlikely to get a chance to pass on their jeans.
So all of a sudden, in that small example, being
developmentally susceptible was going over the proverbial waterfall. You were
prepared for a future that didn't come because the future
is uncertain.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff. Were gonna get a futurist in
here as well, fascinating. Well, there you go, folks. You
wanted to know what it was, how you found out
what it was, Professor Belski you mentioned before we did
the interview. I mean, there's a couple of questions I have,
but I think I'm pretty much done because it looks

(31:10):
like cultural differences. Probably it will just be another factor
that's involved, and one parent's all. Those are just other
factors that are involved, right, Well.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Those those become experienced and exposures. We know that some
kids grew up in single parent families and are adversely affected.
Others not. We know that some you know that, not
every You know, I'm dating myself here because this is
my childhood history. You know what I learned. But not
every German teenager became a Hitler youth.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Only some were susceptible. And even of those who wore
the uniforms, only some bought into the radical propaganda. So
you know, the point is that it's good that we're
all not a radical function of nurture, because nurture can
be hijacked by bad guys.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Absolutely, I'll be watching to make sure you're not doing
some kind of lamb back there. So I'm doing something weird.
But doctor Belski is back in his little private lamb
trying to manipulate the world. Now, just kidding, doctor Belski.
You have a new book coming out, you said.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
I'm working it on a book. I'm finishing it up.
I can't give you a title because that's still up
in the air.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
All right, we won't. We won't worry about that.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
You know. Much of what I've been talking about these
days often goes by the terminal terminology of orchid and dandelion.
That's the metaphor. The orchid is the environmentally susceptible for
better and for worse. If you don't take care of
it well, it wilts, it dies. If you take care

(32:49):
of it well, it's a magnificent flower. In other words,
it's got a great range of reaction from dead to fantastic.
You take a dandelion, it kind of doesn't matter what
you do to it. It's a dandelion, you know. It's
much more just who it is. It's kind of that
fixed strategist I was talking about now. So a lot

(33:10):
of your listeners may be familiar with that terminology. It
seems to be getting pretty widespread these days. I don't
like it for the following reason. It suggests as someone
my discussion is so this is a qualification of what
I've said to this point. It suggests that there are
two kinds of people, those who are developmentally plastic and
those who are not. Those who are susceptible to environmental

(33:32):
influences for better and for worse, those who are not.
Think of it more as a gradient. That is, there
are some who are going to be highly susceptible, some
moderately susceptible, some modestly susceptibly, and some not susceptible. So
like it's more of a continuum than a typo logical
Yes you are, no you're not.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I guess the question I have to ask, now, are
you going to continue to further study this or other
other individuals or scholars going to do the same, or
as you're saying, that's only been around about territory is.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, you know this is this is a growing arena
of research. And two of the most interesting things that
are being done. On the one hand are people looking
at sets of genes, not just one gene or another,
but sets of genes that might identify more and less
developmentally malleable people. And the other, of course, is looking

(34:28):
at variation intervention efficacy, efforts to treat people, either to
prevent problems, to or to remediate problems that are already developed,
or even just to promote well being. And it's long
been understood that there's a lot of what we call
big word heterogenea heterogeneity. There's a lot of variation and efficacy.
Some people benefit and se people don't. Well, now it

(34:50):
looks like we expect to see that, not just because
we do, but to understand why we see that and
even potentially be able to identify the people a out
of time we're not there yet, who are likely to
benefit and those who are less likely to benefit. And
that becomes intriguing because it raises the question, in a
world of limited resources, whether if you could we're not

(35:13):
there yet, identify those who are most likely and less
likely to benefit, that you would target disproportionally the ones
who are more likely to benefit, and triage are the
ones who are less likely to benefit. Now, a lot
of people object to that way of thinking it's unfair
because they're valuing equity. Other people who value efficacy say,

(35:38):
what's the sense of providing services to people who if
it won't work for them, that's just throwing good money
after ban. But again, people differ in terms of how
they wait efficacy and equity. If you're a radical socialist,
you're into equity. If you're you know, hard nosed capitalists,

(35:59):
you're into efficacy. And I don't think it necessarily has
to be one or the other, but but it raises
this issue. And you know what's fascinating to me is
people who object to the efficacy analysis. Oh, you can't
deny services to people even if and they say that
even if you knew, if you had good reason to think,
they wouldn't work, They say, because it's unfair. I say,

(36:21):
wait a minute. You know, after a battle, this is
how physicians work. They triage. I can save this somebody.
I can't save this one. I can't do everything. So
I'm gonna do what works. We now have personalized medicine.
I'm not going to give this cancer treatment to the
people I know work on. I'm only gonna give it
to the people I know what's gonna work on. So

(36:42):
why if we can do that in medicine, why can't
we do that in behavioral and psychological functioning in science?
And one of the resistance to this analysis I find
is that people think, oh, psychology and behavior are different.
You know, that's not biology. Well, that's a mind audi duality.
That's eighteenth nineteenth, at most twentieth century thinking. It is

(37:05):
not twenty first century thinking to think the mind and
the body are separate things. You know, we now know
that what's going on bacteriologically your gut affects your mind,
and what's going on in your mind affects your gut.
You know, so any attempt to say that that psychology
or that's behavior, that's the mind and it's different is outdated,

(37:26):
old school and just you know, time to move on.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Absolutely, probably settled down already a couple of centuries ago,
maybe not. So you got a lot of ethical issues
coming up in the future and exciting stuff too. I
can't wait to find out what discoveries you and other
scholars are going to make about this new concept.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
It could prove very interesting, yes, and it raised it
raised important philosophical questions as well as you know, practical ones.
But again, I want to underscore the fact that we're
not there yet, but I think there's every reason to
believe that we can eventually get there. In the same
way we've discovered that these medications and these drugs work

(38:08):
for that cancer but not for this cancer, or that
person but not for this person, we'll discover and we
are discovering the same things about psychological and behavioral treatments,
and then the question will be what do we do
with that knowledge when it comes to providing services, especially
with limited resources.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Absolutely, Professor Belski, thank you so much for being here.
We truly appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
My pleasure you take care so long.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
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