Interview
The More Successful You Are The Longer You'll Live! Will Storr
- Children raised with the belief they can achieve anything are predicted to fail, as expectations like becoming Beyoncé are deemed impossible and unhealthy.
- While a good upbringing can correct a negative course to a certain degree, it is considered probably impossible to fully reverse negative feedback received during the 18 years of brain formation, though early traumas remain always present with power that can be diminished.
- The brain continues to be formed until the mid-20s, after which learning processes stop, and personality is identified as a causal factor in most predispositions including addiction, which is mostly genetic.
- Alcoholism is predicted to be accelerated by trauma for individuals with genetic vulnerability, and personality stability is increased while happiness improves when playing multiple status games.
- Levels of perfectionism are predicted to have increased massively in the UK, America, and Canada since the onset of neoliberalism, and this trait is implicated in suicide ideation, eating disorders, steroid abuse, and self-harm.
- The self-esteem myth is attributed to a correlation-causation error where high self-esteem resulted from doing well in exams rather than causing it.
- If encouraged by an adult to write, the speaker predicts they would have started sooner and become a better writer today, and would definitely have continued writing without stopping.
- Businesses that do not communicate with story are predicted to fail because the brain's language is narrative, not logic or facts, and successful persuaders will make tribal appeals in an era of heightened political tension.
- Some organizations are warned they will get it wrong when attempting to serve as a light figure in political causes, whereas the Nike Colin Kaepernick ad campaign did something up to six percent in positive brand impact.
- The Volkswagen "Snow Plow" ad is cited as having revolutionized marketing by presenting the car as a light figure helping the hero.
- Since the global financial crisis, life is predicted to have gotten harder, especially for young people, creating elite overproduction of educated workers.
- The Whitehall studies show health outcomes worsen as one goes down the status hierarchy, with one rung down having worse outcomes than the next, and workers at the bottom of office hierarchies aged 40 to 64 have four times the risk of death compared to those at the top.
- Monkeys lower in the pecking order are more likely to die of heart-related diseases when fed a terrible diet, and health outcomes change in lockstep with changes in hierarchy.
- When the brain registers a drop in status, it prepares cells for inflammation to go up and antiviral response to go down, and two people living the same lifestyle will see the higher-status individual less likely to die of a smoking-related disease.
- Loneliness causes the same physiological damage as low status with inflammation going up and antiviral response going down, and suicide is often the result of people losing status, particularly due to sudden drops.
- People who stay still while others accelerate become vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and potentially suicidal ideation, and suicide is often linked to men feeling like a failure when careers grind to a halt or relationships end.
- People who are like us trigger an ancient copy, flatter, conform mechanism because they represent a highly successful version of us, and the "Paris Hilton effect" creates feedback loops where lots of people looking at one person causes more attention.
- Money is just one way to measure status, but humans evolved to crave status, and most people would accept a high-status job title over a modest pay rise in a study of 15,000 people in the UK.
- Status detection occurs in 43 milliseconds when observing body language, and the most effective way to advance in the status game is to give status to others as it is free and more valuable than money.
- Competition leads to toxic cultures, while rivalry is a healthy and massive motivator, and the origin of the iPhone is attributed to Steve Jobs creating a rivalry with Microsoft that pushed innovation.
- Religion acts as a status game that gives people meaning and purpose, and even at the bottom of a formal hierarchy, a person can leave a meeting feeling like the king of the world if the organization is healthy.
- Men have to fight for connection as they age, and the speaker predicts they are going to start volunteering to a charity to fulfill a need for connection and another source of status.
- The speaker predicts their next book will be released next.