237. Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Brain

Welcome to episode 237 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Doug Kenrick and Dave Lundberg Kenrick to talk about their book Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Brain.

Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Doug Kenreck and Dave Lundberg Kenreck to.

Talk about their new book, Solving Modern.

Problems with a Stone Age Brain. As you'll hear about in the episode, they are a father and son team with very different backgrounds, so it's incredibly interesting to see how they came together to write this amazing book. I became acquainted with Doug and Dave through Bob Cialdini who emailed me saying that this team from ASU had a new book out that he found to be fascinating and thought I would too. That was, of course, enough endorsement for me and I always do due diligence anyway, and quickly confirmed that this was an interesting and insightful book that was worth featuring on the podcast. Doug and Dave have stories of a young Bob Cialdini as well as Danny Kahneman in their book as they share examples of how our brains have adapted or not while the world around us has changed dramatically and how that matters to all of us in life and of course in business.

And I think you'll agree they are a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed our conversation. I'll let them tell you more about themselves and their backgrounds. But before we jump into the conversation, I want to remind you that there are links in the show notes for everything, including the book and related past episodes, like my conversation with Bob Cialdini in Notes for this episode. It's all waiting for you within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 237. Now let's jump right in. Doug and Dave, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you for having us.

Great to be here.

Yeah, I'm so, so excited and as I'm sure I will have talked about in the intro here of our, you know, connection of introductions that we were just sort of speaking about here, Bob Cialdini emailed me and said he you should absolutely have these guys on the podcast and When Bob emails you, you say, yeah, that sounds good. And I'm so glad because I really love your book and I'm so excited to be able to help people to learn more about it. For everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about your backgrounds and how you found yourselves writing a book together and all of that?

Yeah, sure. Why don't you go ahead and start, Dave?

Oh, well, me, Okay. I was gonna say you should start because you and your team developed this pyramid.

But sure.

My background's actually in film production and my dad, who is my co author on this book is a psychologist and I always grew up hearing about psychology and I was like, that's kind of interesting. But then he and his team put together this pyramid of needs of seven human motives that we'll list in a minute. And when I heard about these things, I was like, oh, this is really cool. In terms of the things people in movies care about, they're always sort of making trade offs between these seven motives. And so we actually started this as a book about movies. And then as we were shopping it around, people were like, well you know, this also, you know, has lots of these things apply to everyday life as well. And so we started writing about, well, you know what, this is how choosing between these seven motives really affects your life, your relationships and your business.

From my perspective, I'm a social psychologist and in fact have a textbook with Cialdinia Newberg and Kenrick over here, the, the other author. And so I've always thought about social relationships and in fact when Bob and Steve and I originally started talking about this book 20 years ago while Dave was still a student, we began to think, well, it'd be nice to have a book that was organized in terms of different social motivations. And then over the years working with Marc Schaller, who was one of the members of our team, we developed this kind of modification of Maslow's pyramid of needs because we had done a lot of research activating different motives. So how does it, if you're in a mating frame of mind or if you're in a parenting frame of mind, or if you're in a threatened self protective frame of mind, how does it affect what you pay attention to basic cognitive processes, who you remember when you go into a crowd, the kinds of decisions you make. We did some work on economic decision making and loss aversion when you're in different kinds motivational states. And Schaller and I were walking around the streets of Vancouver and thought, well we should just remake Maslow's pyramid because Maslow was actually an early evolutionary psychologist. He was a student of Harry Harlow, who was. Harry Harlow was the guy with the cloth mothers and the wire mothers. And Harlow was kind of arguing against the basic behaviorist idea that all we have of sort of hunger and thirst and everything else, social motives are built secondarily upon that. Harlow, I want to talk to you. No, social motives are actually primary. And Maslow just expanded that a little bit by saying that we have these basic prime, you know, needs like hunger and thirst. Then we get a little older, though, you start to become concerned with protecting yourself. You know, kids become afraid of strangers and we sort of, you know, borrowed all of Maslow's lower hierarchy. Our hierarchy basically says that and it's sort of developmental, right? That as you're a child, you're just concerned about feeding yourself and keeping dry. And you know, then you get a little older, you get afraid of strangers. And none of these things ever go away, incidentally, isn't as you get older, you're still afraid of strangers kind of. Right. But the motives, as the motives get activated, they sometimes move into the background. They don't go away ever. Though you get a little bit older, you become concerned with making friends. So I remember watching Dave's younger brother liam, who's now 18 years old. When he was 2 years old, we brought him to the preschool. And the first kid who came near to play with him, he pushed him away. He didn't care. But then after a while he became very concerned. He really was upset if his friends weren't at school that day. But he didn't really care whether they looked up to him. I mean, he would, you know, wet his pants and not even care to change them. So he wasn't thinking about how people, how people thought about him.

He's not gonna like hearing that now.

We won't tell anybody.

Hopefully he won't watch this because he's now 18 and he's very concerned with what people think about him. But anyway, so then you get a little bit older and you become concerned with people respecting you. And again, this is all very consistent with what Maslow said. But then what Maslow did is he said, well, then we become concerned with sort of higher non social needs. And this is where we part company with Maslow. And we think Maslow would today part company with himself if he had read modern evolutionary accounts of what are organisms designed for? Well, they're designed to reproduce. Okay. And so you go, human beings go through These same basic phases. Other animals, you develop your body, you know, you develop your social relationships, and then you find mates, okay? And if you're a human being, you also have to maintain those mates. And that's a different problem. As some of us have learned, painfully, you can be okay at finding a mate and not so good at keeping a mate. But then from an evolutionary perspective, and again, this is not really what we think sort of peoplehouse should live their lives. This is how our ancestors were designed to live their lives, okay? And this is the sort of baggage we come with. Were designed then to think about having offspring and caring for our families, okay? And even if we don't have offspring, we think a lot about caring for our brothers and sisters. You know, Dave and Finn, who is Dave's kid, and Liam, who is, you know, Dave's younger brother. They all take care of each other. They go to the rock gym together. They.

I look out for. When dad tells embarrassing stories about Liam on podcasts, you know, I try to.

Stop doing that. Yeah.

And hopefully, hopefully he'll do the same for me.

Yeah. Dave has a bigger job preventing embarrassment with me than I have with him, thank goodness. At any rate, so we have all these different motives, and we've been thinking about this. And then Dave started to talk to me about it. And Dave was interested in the film aspect, but I was actually interested in the Dave and Liam and Finn and Greta. Greta's Dave's other kid. The aspect, because Dave and I bike around town a lot, and we're always talking about the latest problem that our kids have. And, you know, what can we. What do we know from psychology that we could use to help them or ourselves? You know, as I was saying, speaking of Bob Cialdini, when Cialdini wrote his book Influence, what he did is he went around and he got jobs with all these kind of influence con artists, okay? People selling fire insurance and, you know, people selling used cars. I don't know. I don't know what the various jobs he had, but he tried to figure out, how do people. How do people trick you to influence you? And what Dave and I did is we did a similar thing. We went around and made every possible mistake you could make.

In our lot in the seven motives.

Every one of these things.

So just to recap. Can I just recap real quick what the seven motives are? Because I think my dad sort of explained them all, but didn't necessarily name them. So you've got. The first one is sort of basic resources, food and shelter. Second one is self protection. Third one is affiliation or friendship. Fourth one is status gaining status. Fifth one is finding and choosing a mate. Sixth one is maintaining romantic relationships. And the seventh one is kin care, taking care of family and loved ones. So those are the.

Those are the seven just for people listening.

Awesome.

And so our book is organized around those motives and it basically asks the question of. We went and dug into the anthropology literature and asked the question of, well, what would hunter gatherers or people living in horticultural societies that don't have modern conveniences. The groups that anthropologists have studied and the guesses that anthropologists have made about earlier human groups, to what extent we assume they had all those same problems as we do today. They had to at least solve those motives. But they were living in a very different world. And so a lot of evolutionary psych is about trying to solve this mismatch problem. Okay, so you, you know, now our ancestors had to solve the problem of finding the way around. I just have to go on this phone and I can find my way around. You can drop me anywhere in the world. Now I'll find my way around. Our ancestors had a problem of finding food. And right now I have a problem staying away from food, okay? Because there's just too much nutrition. And so there's some places in which our ancestral motives serve us well, and there's others in which they serve us really badly. The desire to eat, you know, in my house, you know, and Dave, I'll embarrass you now, but, you know, in my house, I keep all this chocolate and I put it in the closet so that I don't eat it as I walk by the counter. But I like, you know, Dave's younger brother is really skinny, so I want him to. I'm always Manja, Manja, eat some chocolate, right? But then Dave found it in the closet the other night and I was gonna like, tap and say dave, no.

Well.

Cause I'm trying to avoid carbs.

We all, except for Liam, right?

So all of us.

Yes.

Well, I also, you know, I gotta say, so last night, Melina, I was reading your book and I saw that most people buy like 18 Snickers bars for their freezer, right? But if I eat six, then that's not too bad.

You're doing great. You're much better than.

Yes, for sure.

Well, I really love the book, just in general. And one thing that is kind of a funny, I'm going to say it reminded me of a book that it is not like at all. And I'll explain is so I'm not sure if either of you have read or familiar with. I'm guessing maybe, but Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared diamond is just such a really. I really love this book and I read it well over a decade ago. And the way that it ties in that, you know, who we were and how that has created who we are today. While again, your. Your book is by no means structured anything like it at all. And it's very, very different. It is something that was reminiscent of something I really loved in that book of the lessons that came and were tying back. But you, of course, do a really good job of tying it to, you know, why this isn't serving us well versus just a look back.

So I thought that was.

Was really interesting.

I take that as a great compliment.

Yeah, that is a great compliment. I love that book.

I was afraid you were going to name a book I'd never heard of, but that's one of my favorite books of all time.

It is such a.

Isn't it?

I loved that book when I read it. And just as another shout out of a really great book that came out this last year, Evolutionary Ideas by Sam Tatum, if you haven't read that yet, is really great. He's a behavioral scientist and he's working at Ogilvy and really, really interesting. Yeah, yeah, he. He was on the show earlier this year, too. So anyway, great, great books, but where you're learning stuff about different aspects that then tie into something in. In our humanness.

Right.

And I think that it does a really great job of tying in interesting stories of people that we know, like Cialdini and Kahneman, and learning something about them that we might not have known and how that ties together, you know, to ourselves, which is. Is really cool. So. Yeah, thanks.

Well, thank you. That's a very. That's a great compliment. And we do have a little bit of that element in there, the sort of the anthro. The big picture of human nature and where we came from and how. Where we are today. But again, what you, as you pointed out, what we try to do is then bring in psychology and say, what can we learn about these. What do we know from psychology that can allow people like, you know, college students or any of us really, to deal with these. With those problems in everyday life? Because it turns out that there are some heuristics that you can use. There are some things that actually, like. Like take the calorie thing. You can't. So Dave and I both stopped getting a parking pass and we Live, you know, a mile or two away. And so we bike in. Okay. And that seems like a small thing, but it turns out that every day we're forced to get some exercise coming in and going back. And some days we walk. And a mile and a half walk, and a mile and a half walk. That's back. That's a good walk. And so what we know from behaviorists is that stimulus control is incredibly important. And you can control your environment if you think in advance. I want to control my overeating. And under exercising, you can set up your environment so you have to exercise a little bit. And you can set up your environment so that, like, what Dave likes to say is, you can hide the food. Okay. Or you cannot bring it. You know, when I go to the supermarket, I don't want to bring home a case of my favorite ipa. And I really don't want to bring home, you know, all those really bad chocolates. I at least bring home dark chocolates and hide them a little bit. But there are things that you can do, really. If I didn't have a teenager living in the house, I simply would leave the chocolate in the store. And that's. We're lazy enough that when we get that craving for chocolate, I'm not going to get in the car or, you know, or walk a mile to the store. Okay. But if it's right there in front of me, stimulus control is very. You know, we are really bad at resisting temptation. Okay. But we're really good at planning.

Yeah, I do. I have to say, yesterday I was, I was running errands with my daughter and she asked if we could get donuts. And I was like, yeah. And I did. And I ate three of the donuts myself when we got home. So I feel really kind of bad of like preaching stimulus control right now because, you know, I fell prey to the sort of trade off of I chose affiliation over health, maybe. And maybe I just wanted the donuts, but I'm telling myself that my daughter asked for the donuts and I was like, sure. And so, so it can be tough.

So, yeah, it's a battle. It's not a perfect science, even if you wrote the book, right?

Yes, yes, it is.

It is.

I mean, one of the things is that, yeah, perfection is you should never strive for perfection because then you're always going to feel disappointed. And so you just, you get up again.

And that's true. I haven't, I haven't. I haven't had any doughnuts today. I don't, I don't think.

Yeah.

So you biked in with me.

I did. So you earned it.

We were almost late, so we had to bike fast.

Yeah.

But I think, I think this idea, this idea of trade offs, right, is always. One of the big things is it's really hard to balance all seven of these motives, right.

For all of us.

I think everybody is usually trying to eat healthy, but a, it tastes good to sometimes eat unhealthy, but also it's fun to go out and get dinner with your friends, you know, or get donuts with your kids. And so I think, I think one of the things we really discuss in the book is the way of how do we balance these things? How do we, how do we consciously decide which ones are most important and also sort of set the world up so that one motive can help support another motive.

Yeah, well, and I think it was. I know multiple people have said this.

Now, but I think first attributed to.

Randy Zuckerberg talking about, you know, there are these kind of five. You can focus on friendships, you can focus on your career, you can focus on relationships, you can focus on health, and, you know, something else.

And you get to pick two, right?

These are the five areas, and you only get to be really good in two of them. And if you try to spread too thin, you're not going to be able to do any of them very well. And so you have to let some of the other things go to, you know, excel in career and health. You know, these friendships have to fall.

By the wayside or whatever it is.

So there's this balance potentially.

Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I agree with that, actually, I think you can recruit. So, like, what I'll do lately is, you know, when I'm trying very frequently to just have one beer a day, because I believe that, you know, one beer, a glass of wine is good for your heart, but three or four is not good for you, okay? And so what I'll do is I'll recruit the kind of this sort of social status motive when I go out. I did it with you recently, Dave. I went out to a nice restaurant and I said at the beginning of the meal, I'm only drinking one glass of wine tonight. So now if I got a second glass, I would have sort of fallen in the eyes of the people at the, at the table. And in fact, I did stick, remember the one glass? And it was a good glass of wine and I wanted a second glass, but I had already committed myself and I had the other social and I had Dave there who would have maybe said, yeah, dad, you know, I actually, he actually likes me better when I only have one glass of wine, so.

It'S easier to get work done. And so. But no, I think that's true. And actually I probably could have done that. I could have, when we got the donuts, I could have said to my daughter, all right, I'm only going to eat one. But I, I didn't. And so probably because I knew it wasn't true.

So.

But I think sort of going back to the Randy Zuckerberg idea, I kind of think there is something to be said for we can only prioritize one or two of them at any given time. And I know for me, yesterday was a super busy day at work and I let myself slack a little bit, you know, so I was, I was pursuing the status motive like full force. And the health motive.

It slipped.

But I can go back to it, you know, maybe this, maybe today. Well, I'll go back to it today. I'll make a commitment now to you guys.

Oh, nice.

We actually had something that we've been working on it and we're going to put it. We're developing a website, you know, of our own. There's a website that APA has for our book, but we're developing our own and we're going to put on things kind of like self helpy things, like, you know, the kind of stuff that people love in the business world. But we have like a little checklist of in every one of these motives, there are things that you can do today. In fact, at the end of the book, we go through each of these motives and we ask. Dave's asked himself and I asked myself, what can I do tomorrow in each of these categories? Okay. In fact, you can do a little something in each of these categories every day. We have this little sort of checklist that we're going to put up for people that they can look at and say, okay, here's a small goal I am going to set for myself tomorrow. I'm going to bike to the supermarket and buy blueberries and kale and other healthy kinds of foods. And I'm not going to buy chocolate. I am going to cancel my subscription to anybody who keeps asking me for money by scaring me about all the terrible stuff happening in Texas. Okay. And Arizona, you know, that try to get my money by scaring me. You know, I'm going to just unsubscribe if you just try to scare me every day. I'm going to Unsubscribe. And I've done that with a number of things. And so there's a number of things in each of these categories. For friends, I could do a favor for one of my colleagues. Okay. I can have lunch with Adam Cohen. Okay. I can list a bunch of things that people that I can do and that I could fit into one day. And I think that's a useful thing to do on a daily basis. We often have a checklist that's mostly just about work. Okay. And maybe if we're into exercise, we have a checklist on that. Okay. But I think we've actually set up a sort of checklist for each of these social motives, because it's good to keep in mind that, you know, that I can do a little in each of these. And when you do them, it's interesting. They kind of make you feel healthier, you know, just having lunch with a friend or having coffee with a friend. Putting it on the to do list is a smart thing to do because you actually do feel better when you take yourself a little bit away from your work. I always work better when I come back after having coffee with a friend, you know?

Right.

You can do a little each day.

Yeah.

You can't move the whole mountain.

Right.

But it's good to have that. That balance. And I do like. And I. You know, in the book, you talk about how there's the separation. People say, like, work and play can't go together. And saying that's wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. And I love that. And seeing your working relationship together, where you're able to have the. The bonding and you get the value, I guess, of friendship and taking care of kin together.

Right.

So you get to have that value. Add there. I do a lot where my husband and I have a similar, you know, walk and talk and being. Going for long drives and being able to just talk forever and feel like we still have so much more to say, you know, and so it adds that.

That value.

So I would love if we can have just a quick moment on the. I always like to have this kind of process of book writing because I know so many people who listen to the podcast, have aspirations, and think about writing books or creating content in various ways. And so I think that all very likely have a very different process than what others have had. And I believe this book has been in the making for a long time. Like you said, it went through various iterations. So can you share a little bit about that and maybe tips for people who are looking to write a book, what. What your thoughts might be on that, and then we'll talk about how this all applies to business.

All right, I'll start. I. I mean, I would say our dynamic would only work with relatives or maybe a spouse that you have a really secure relationship with, because essentially our process was we would go for a walk in the morning and we'd talk about the ideas we were gonna write that day. The talk would almost always. Not almost always, but very frequently become a heated argument, Right. We would have strong opinions on what was the correct way to the point where sometimes we would be yelling in the street, right? Just like, no, we've got to do it this other way. That doesn't make sense. That's going to be sending the wrong message, you know, and then we would part ways and think about it and maybe do some writing on it. And then we would go for another walk in the evening, at which point, almost every time, both of us had come up with sort of solutions to whatever the problem was in the morning, and we'd be like, you know what? I was thinking about what you were saying, and actually, maybe you made some good points. And here's a way we could sort of hit those. And then we would write those down basically the next day while we thought about whatever we'd argued about that morning. So that was more or less our process, I think.

What do you think, dad?

Yeah, I don't think. I mean, I think the arguments stand out saliently because we've always, you know, we've always gotten along really well with each other. And there were times during this book that was where we didn't get along so well. And those. Those stand out in our memory because we normally have such a friend. You know, we just exercise and do fun stuff together. And so it was. It was a little tough at times, but we also had a lot of days that were very kind of positive and just, you know, fueling one another, you know, that in some sense, it would make me happy to be working on this book because you would be excited about it. And so there were. There was a little bit of both, you know. But again, I agree that it's. That our dynamic was different than my dynamic when I write something with Cialdini, for example.

Yeah. And not in a bad. Like, the thing is, it was. It was fun, you know, like, it was really fun.

And it was.

Because it was like we were discussing sort of, well, what is the best way for people to live their lives and what do we know what can we sort of say, like, all right, we really have science to back this up, and we really believe this and, like, these sorts of things. It's exciting, you know. And so I actually really, I'm being honest when I'm saying that sometimes it was heated, but it was also blast. So, yeah.

I would say I learned a lot from this book. Even as an old man, I learned a lot from Dave. And that was fun because Dave, unlike one of my graduate students who always maybe nods their head and says, yeah, you're right, Dave, like a typical son, doesn't always say, yeah, you're right. Here's where you're wrong. And so it forced me to rethink some of my own ideas, and that was fun.

Well, I also think there was this sort of idea that we weren't going to quit.

Right.

So no matter, even if we disagreed, there was sort of this assumption that, look, we're gonna. We'll figure it out.

And I think that allowed us to.

Sort of, you know, to sort of just be honest about the parts where we felt like the book was working, parts where we felt like the book wasn't working, and things like that.

I think, Yeah, I guess with, with family members, you can get away with more disagreement than you can if you were with co workers. Although I, you know, like, Newberg and I argue all the time and we still, we run a lab together and it's. It's still fun. But there's a, you know, there's this, some. There's a joy in dynamic interaction sometimes, you know, that's like throwing ideas or dialectic interchange, as they say.

Yeah.

And. And I also think it's important because, like, even, you know, if you look at any book on human behavior or on business, like, what you say has an impact. It has a real impact. And you also have to think about how are people going to use this? Are people going to use this only for good, you know, or are they going to use this to try to trick each other? Or is this going to make them think everyone is out to trick them and so they have to trick each other? And so figuring out ways to present things, you know, in a way that we feel is ethical, is really important, too.

Yeah, there's a big responsibility in that space, and I think you do a really good job of that. I will say it is very funny throughout, too. I had lots of moments where I was laughing. I will say there's one section header, and I took a picture of it because I want to get the actual title right. Because I. And it's one that I actually left, like had my LOL just at the section header and for multiple reasons being so it's Rolling with the homies in the old style hood is my favorite thing. And I was so it made me laugh, of course, because I have the tie back. And then I was thinking, if I was writing a book with my dad, there is no way he would get that reference by any means. And he would probably feel really weird about it being included into a book that we were doing. And it would be a whole different animal of stuff. And so I love that there's such a good mix. I find co authored anything to be such an interesting concept as someone who's always written as a solo author and I've been talking with some people about co authoring things and I don't even know how to do the voice. So it sounds like one person is so fun foreign to me. So it's interesting when you can see the different kind of characters in there.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. So first of all, I'm pretty sure my dad wrote the line.

I wrote that line.

I love it.

The only reason I wrote Rolling with the Homies is because when Dave was a little kid, he used to listen to, you know, hip hop music. And he still does.

And so for me, it makes me think of Clueless. It is.

And so, yes. And that is actually my dad is a big fan of Clueless and so. And that song.

And so I often will be singing Rolling with the Homies. Rolling with the homies. Don't assume the 74 year old people.

I mean, I love it. I love it so much.

I didn't stop.

I didn't stop my music with Cream and believe it or not.

But real quick, going back to what you're saying about the voice, if, if we were to do this all over again, I think I would. I think I would give us even more distinct voices. I think I would make it more of a dialogue. I think I really like. And part of what I like about this book is there's something really interesting about ideas that come from dialogue. They're not one person's take, you know, and sometimes that take is different. And so I don't know. So maybe, maybe you guys don't need it to sound like one voice.

I know.

Interesting.

So as this is the Brainy business podcast, we of course need to make.

Sure that we talk a little bit.

About the business side of this before.

We wrap up the show.

Dave, can you go ahead and start.

Off a little bit there.

I know you said you had some thoughts on this aspect.

Yeah, so we've talked about this a lot, my dad and I, and we've actually started looking at some commercials and things which I'll go into in a sec. But we've, we've been talking about sort of three ways that, that this could be applied. And two of them fit very nicely with your books because one is sort of thinking about, all right, how can your business fulfill the seven fundamental motives for your customers? And how can you also make sure your business isn't undercutting your customer's ability to fulfill any of these motives? Because that could be a thing that could stop people from purchasing something. And then also how can you do that with people you work with? And make sure you're setting up an environment in your workplace where everyone has the ability to sort of accomplish these, even though some of them don't generally get accomplished in the workplace. But, but there are ways you can sort of talk about building people's status and things like that. And then the third is sort of looking at ways to innovate on these to help the whole world accomplish these seven motives through your business. And so we've started mostly with looking at the customer facing side of it so far. And what we were doing is we were going through some super bowl commercials and looking at, well, what is the product? And then also what is the fundamental motive that the ad primes. Now we don't quite have enough to do like a full analysis yet and say, here's really what is what? But for now, you can almost think of it as a thought exercise of like, okay, what does my business actually convey? And there are a couple of examples that stand out, I think that sometimes might be counterintuitive. Right. Coca Cola is a brand that is a basic needs brand, right? It's thirst. But their advertising is really much more focused on affiliation. Right? I'd like to buy the world a Coke. And so sometimes it turns out that the thing you might think your brand is about might not actually be the best way to convey or may not be the only way to convey. Because Coke also does have commercials where someone's thirsty. The meat meet Joe Green. Meet or meet mean Joe Green. I can't remember. This football player is a famous Coke out. And a kid hands him a Coke after he's come back from a game. So clearly he's thirsty. So thirst is still in there. And then he gives the kid his towel, his thanks, and the kid's super excited. So there's also affiliation. But yeah, just thinking about, all right, what does our brand really convey and what do we want it to convey? Another big example I always talk about is Apple. You know, they're a technology brand, which technology sort of inherently can help you build status. But they're very good at sort of playing up the fact that Apple is a status brand. You know, everything from the 1984 AD to the Think different ad, but it's also not just in their advertising. One of the things that I think helps Apple feel like a really good, high status brand is they have real stores where you can go and talk to people. And that is a way that it actually shows. Look, once you're one of our customers, it's like status and affiliation, right? You're one of us. You're not just a person who gives us money and we never think of you again. Because when that happens, when you're trying. I'm sure we've all had experiences of trying to get in touch with a company and you just talk to a robot that just seems like it's there to stop you or you're on hold for four hours trying to get through to an agent. That is thing that is, it makes me feel very low status in the eyes of this company. So I think some of those examples of like, all right, what are we doing? And then also with customers, but then also with employees thinking about, not necessarily like, oh, we need to pair up our employees to make sure they have access to mates, but thinking about, well, we also do want to make sure no matter what our employees do from sort of the bottom level to the top, that it seems like maybe a cool job, or when they go out and they tell people they'll be like, ooh, that's really cool. And so I think thinking about those sorts of ways that people can achieve status can be really useful.

So let me add one thing which I was thinking about. You had talked about thinking about the fundamental motives of your employees. I think, and I'm not sure you talked about your co workers, you know, and the people who you work for. Because one, one question you can ask yourself is, well, how can this job satisfy my motives? And I actually think you'll do better on the job if you walk in and think about, how can I satisfy the motives of my coworkers and my bosses? Because if you satisfy your co workers, if you help your co workers, they're going to like you and they're going to want you to be the person who leads there's all this research on prestige and dominance. And, you know, people don't like the dominant, pushy bully leader. Maybe when they're at war, they think it's okay to have someone like that. But pretty typically throughout history, those bully leaders have been overthrown and they've been assassinated. Okay? We don't like bullies. We do like people who serve the needs of the group. Many people who study leadership say the best kind of leader is someone you don't even know the name of because they basically facilitated their employees doing better. Okay. And they weren't all about me, me, me, me, me. They're all about, you know, their employees. And that's probably a very important thing to think about. What can you do for your bosses to help them and, you know, convert. I was just, I guess I was giving the converse side of that.

No, I think that's a good. This point of, like, how can you help the people around you? So if you think about. So one of the trickiest ones, I think, with employee situations is mate acquisition. Right. And if you go around your workplace trying to do that for yourself, you're likely to get fired. Right. But you could easily go around and say to somebody that's a coworker, hey.

Here'S two tickets to a concert.

Take somebody you like, Right? And that's probably not going to get you fired. And in fact, now that's. Concerts are expensive, so there's. There's less expensive things. But you know what I mean? There's just ways you can just try to build up the people around you and in all these domains, status, just make the people look good. Give people public compliments is one of the best things leaders can do, co workers can do, and I think that's a really effective thing.

Yeah.

So what about on the public compliments? That's an interesting one. And I know I've had some people actually. So Brian Ahern, who is a Cialdini certified trainer, and we've obviously been talking about Bob on the show and he was talking about, about, you know, the thirsty people. Like, you don't realize how thirsty you are. And I'm talking thirsty and like actual thirst, not what we're talking about.

Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a funny way that terms change in this way, but like, someone doesn't realize how thirsty they are until you give them a drink of water. And in the same way, people who say that they don't like praise often are going to be the most receptive to it because they get it so little that they're not being praised in that way. So. But I'm sure that people who are listening when you say something like public praise, and they say, well, not everybody likes public praise, so what am I supposed to do about that?

Well, yeah, so there are a couple of.

I feel like, and I think there's research to support this, that almost everybody likes when people know their names. Right. That's a very, that's not a very big embarrassing form of public praise, but it does say, like, hey, you are a real person to me. Right. And so learning people's names, I think is one of the classic ways to sort of give just a little bit of both affiliation and status. So that's a good one. I also do think that Bob in Influence talks about people do generally like compliments, you know, especially if they're specific and about an action. Right. So like, you wouldn't necessarily want to say, oh, this is somebody, and they're so good looking. Right. That could be super awkward. But like saying this person did a fantastic job on that project, which is actually a thing that even for parents, like process centered praise.

But that is always it. People love it.

They love to hear you did a good job.

Right. And you were noticed. Right.

That's.

I know from when you were talking about Peloton, as far as some of the commercials before too, that we, you know, that I see you statement that the instructors have when they're shouting people out and, you know, they can't actually see you. But when they say, oh, like the brainy biz, I see you, you've got, you know, it's your hundredth ride today or like you're really kicking it on the leaderboard. Great job. That is something that feels good when you get that shout out, even if you know that somebody knows you.

Yeah. So Peloton is a fantastic one. Right. Because they're also. They're a product that lives in the health space. Right. So that the bottom of that pyramid. But they've managed to really make a name for themselves through like you're saying affiliation. Right. So the people say they see you. You also know there's other people doing the class with you and also a bit of status right through those leaderboards. And so it takes a thing that would normally just be sort of a chore. Right. You know, just riding an exercise bike, it's not my favorite thing to do. But I like winning. Right. I like seeing my name go up and down and I like to be acknowledged. So it uses these other, other motives to really make. To make it more engaging in a really successful way, I think.

Yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot of value for a brand if they can think about in all the aspects of everything they do, whether it's customers and employees, whatever else, just their overall brand messaging to be able to look at, not the pigeonhole of what everyone would say.

That you are about, but to.

And that you have this guide of these seven categories to be able to look and say, okay, if these are.

These drivers we should look at if.

We were going to be fitting into this category, what might that look like? And kind of force yourself to go through them. And like you said, some of them aren't going to be a fit because, you know, finding a mate, like, maybe we're not going to put that in there, though. Work life balance is something that's important for both finding and keeping a mate.

Right. I mean, no, that's a big thing, people.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a perfect one. And for parenting, that's important, you know. And so. So I'm thinking of, actually, this is a status one, but because I was thinking, even when you talk about mating, well, one of the things is you never want to make your employees look bad. Right? But I, I went to a conference one time and I don't have any research as to whether or not this is effective, but I can't imagine it was. They had, I was filming this conference and they had the people, their employees, their salespeople, they gave them different colored name tags based on whether they were meeting or exceeding or failing to meet their key performance indicators.

Yikes.

And so they're essentially shaming their employees. Right? And I'm like, if I was an employee, I would quit even if I.

Had the green tag.

Right? Because I'm like, I don't want to be in a culture where shaming is a part of what you do. And so going back to even this idea of like compliments, I mean, sure, not everyone loves compliments. Nobody likes to be shamed, right? So just still thinking about, I would still say stick to. Just always lift people up, always give them more status, always. And also, I think the other thing we've been talking about is give them more autonomy, give them more time to say, all right, you got a wedding coming up, go ahead, take a little extra time off and go have fun.

Yeah, time with family, with their kids, with all those things making it so that is easier for them to do and that they're not feeling guilty. Guilt and shame are two things that.

We don't like to feel for sure.

The one other thing I would say when it comes to these questions, like, how do you do this with employees? One way to start would be to just ask them, you know, to just ask them in a way that I think is, you know, you want to do it in a polite way, but just be like, do you feel like this job gives you enough time for your health? Do you feel like there's any concerns about your safety? You know, and ask people.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much to both of you for coming in and sharing about your new book and how important it is for people across their lives and business and relations, relationships and all of the things. So as people are wanting to learn more from you and connect and get copies of your book, you know, what's the best tactic?

What's their best path?

I know you said you're working on a website. I don't know if the URL already.

Exists or what the URL is there.

It's getting better all the time. We want to put up, actually a worksheet. We've made the worksheet. We got to put it up on the website. So we'll try to do that in the next few days. So it'll be up when people check. So it's solvingmodernproblems.com hopefully when you go there, that will have a free worksheet that you can get if you. You'd have to sign up and join, you'd have to affiliate with us by giving us your email. But then we have a worksheet on how you can sort of achieve these things. We don't tell you. We let you fill in sort of, how can you achieve these things in your. In your own life? How can you help the people around you achieve these things? Because we think that's one of the most important, important things is helping other people achieve these seven motives. So, yeah, so solvingmodernproblems.com is a great place to start. You can find the book on where books are sold. Yeah, you can. That's one of the best places in terms of having copies. But you could always go to your local bookstore and see if they have it. And if they don't, say, well, get it, get it.

Definitely there on Amazon. And let me actually add one thing in terms of a conversation I once had with Dave. One of our reviewers was a psychologist who had taught evolutionary psych for years and thought he wished that there was some way to get across that evolutionary psych isn't just about sex. And aggression, that it's also about all of human nature. And wouldn't it be nice if there was a positive psychology? And he said he read this book and he went, bam. This is exactly. This was like. And then the part that I loved is he said, I bought copies for my three sons. So I think in terms of what Dave was just saying, if you like this book, and I think there's something in this book for everybody, buy a copy not for yourself, but for somebody else.

Buy a copy for everyone at your workplace. That's the perfect way to help them. They can achieve these. Then it's no pressure.

So, yeah, I love it than your friends.

I do actually think though, I mean, if we were to be serious, I'd say beyond the workplace, even the simple biggest message that I think we discovered and sort of looking at the anthropological literature and thinking about what did we learn from evolutionary psychology and social psychology, it's that human beings are designed to not be selfish, but to help other people. In fact, the ironic thing is that the best thing you can do for yourself is to help your family members, to help your romantic partners, to help your friends, to help your co workers. And that's ironically, the best way to serve your selfish needs is to be unselfish. So it's an interesting little, you know, kind of a judo trick.

Yes. So send the link to solving modern problems to all your friends and also, I'm assuming all of your listeners. Listeners have already bought your books, but if not, they should.

Well, thank you, I appreciate that. And if not, well, this will be, you know, this episode's going to be coming out in this, like, late November, early December time frame. It's. It's the holidays. It's a great time for gift giving. And like we said in that generous space and there's a lot of research, of course, you all know this, but for the listener, I did an episode years ago which I'm going to have be the replay. I have decided I do a replay now every Tuesday. A refreshed episode. So the one about generosity and how being generous actually helps us to be happier and you should be giving first. I'll make sure to have that be the episode that comes out just before this one, so everyone can go check that out as well. And we'll have links to everything in the show notes.

Cool. Actually, can I give one more plug? I also, I co host this podcast, Zombified, which is really fun, talking about all the things that manipulate us from disease to technology. And so you can find that on YouTube@channelz.org I'm actually not the only host. We have a bunch of different shows. There's like a cooking show and a.

Medical show and it's really fantastic and.

People should check that out.

Yeah, it's really interesting stuff. They just had a conference this week.

Which kept Dave from sleeping.

Yeah.

You.

You are now zombified from.

It exploited his mind. But it was fun.

But yeah.

So thank you so much.

Of course. Thanks so much for joining me. It was really fun to talk with you.

You thank you again to Dr. Doug Kenrick and Dave Lundberg Kenrick for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I probably, not surprisingly, really love the business applications of all this and that taking an opportunity to look at all the motivators and how they might apply to your business, employees and customers as you shape out your practice practices and messaging and offerings and so much more so you can stand out from your competitors and really resonate with whatever audience you happen to be communicating with. Often a simple reframe of your message can make all the difference in the world. And understanding the things that will motivate our Stone Age minds to act even in this modern world is so, so useful in finding messaging that sticks. Please do share how you use this and what you found valuable with me on social media. You'll find me as the brainy biz everywhere. And don't forget there are links to related past episodes like the one on Framing or my interview with Bob Cialdini. And to get your copy of Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Brain and other related books. And to get in contact with Dave and Doug. It's all in the show notes for the episode which are waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 237. And thank you again to Doug and Dave for joining me on the show today.

It was a delight to chat with.

And learn from you. Join me Tuesday to discuss one of my all time favorite concepts, reciprocity.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.