Join Jason Hartman as he and author of “Quirk”, Hannah Holmes explore human personality types and how they affect who we become, whether extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, or even neurotic or obnoxious. Is it possible that our hard-wired brain chemistry can even determine our political opinions and economic views?
Research has shown that mice have personalities, and somewhere out there, perhaps in your own basement, is a mouse just like you. Hannah Holmes has led an adventurous life since graduating from the University of Southern Maine. She was an editor at the New York-based Garbage Magazine in the late 1980s, after which she returned to Maine to start a freelance writing career. She was a contributor in a variety of magazines.
In the late 1990s, Hannah was recruited by the Discovery Channel Online for an experiment called live internet reporting. This grand experiment led her to distant and uncomfortable parts of the world, from hunting dinosaurs in Mongolia’s Gobi desert, to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, where fine volcanic ash ruined her computer and left her hair like a ball of jute twine. She also piloted the Alvin submarine around “black smokers” a mile and a half under the ocean. It was a glorious era until Discovery.com’s plug was pulled. Hannah then went on to author several books, “The Secret Life of Dust,” “Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn,” and her recent book, “Quirk,” about the many fascinating personality types.
Hannah’s blog can be found at www.HannahHolmes.net.
—————————————————————————————-
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman! During this program Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing: fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it! And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.
JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show! This is episode #230, and this is your host, Jason Hartman; thanks so much for joining us today! As you regular listeners know, every 10th show we do a non-financial topic, but it always relates back to finance and success in life in some way. And we are doing that again today, of course, because this is show #230. I’ve got Sarah here with me; how you doing, Sarah?
SARAH: Good, hi Jason, how’s it going?
JASON HARTMAN: Good. And we’re going to talk about a couple things. But the first thing I wanted to touch on, before we get to today’s guest, is talk a little bit about my comments last week, when I talked about my very swanky new penthouse here in Arizona, in the greater Phoenix area, and talk about rent elasticity, because that’s really what that whole subject was about, and it’s very important for us as investors to understand and exploit these little holes and loopholes in tax law, in pricing, in imperfections of pricing in markets. And all of those types of things can really, really benefit us. You know, you’ve heard me talk about it before. But the concept of embracing the fragmentation. And that’s one of the things I love about the income property—the real estate business. It’s very fragmented. It’s a very imperfect market. You have many different disparate players, and they all do things a different way, and that makes it impossible for big hedge funds to institutionalize it and do it very well.
That’s what keeps Goldman Sachs out of our business, and what keeps the opportunity there for us. But you also see these imperfections in pricing. Whereas the commercial real estate market, although you can wheel and deal in that market as well, I would say generally speaking, it’s less so than the residential side of the real estate market. Because it’s more fragmented, less professional, and there are just all kinds of little loopholes in pricing and in markets. So, this also applies to the concept of rent elasticity, and last week, I offered kind of an informal challenge, just as I was talking to you. I just thought of it right there off the top of my head, as so many things happen that way. And that was to have you guess my rent.
Because I think it’s such an incredible deal. First of all, not living in the Socialist Republic of California—that’s why so many people are leaving. States like that, with big government, with intrusive government—states that aren’t business friendly. But also, when you’re renting a high end property, it’s better almost always to be a renter, from just a purely rent-to-value ratio standpoint. Of course there are other considerations—family and so forth. I get that. But when you’re renting a lower end property, it’s almost always better to be an owner of that property. So, if you want to participate in this silly little contest, it’ll be kind of fun, and all you have to do is guess what my rent is.
Now, if you were at the last Meet the Masters event, I disclosed what my rent is. So you can’t play! Sorry about that. Because you were there and you heard me talk about it. But just go back and listen to show #229, and here’s what you get: the three closest guesses will get free tickets to our Creating Wealth Boot Camp that is on January 7th in Phoenix, and we’d love to have you at that event, and here’s what’s special about this Creating Wealth event—we’ve never done it quite this way before. So, what I always say is, you should always come to the events on a repeated basis, because there is always new information. And even if some of the information is a repeat, you’ll always hear something new.
And I’ll never forget the way Earl Nightingale—the late, great Earl Nightingale—explained this to me many, many years ago, and this is why it’s so important, when listening to the podcast, that you listen repeatedly. Not just to all the new shows, and all old archived shows, both on the website at www.jasonhartman.com or on iTunes, but also in the members only section, the exclusive content that we’ve got there. And the reason is, this is what happens with your mind. And today, on this show, on this 10th show, our guest is going to be talking about the way our mind works. So, here’s one thing I want to tell you, and this I learned from Earl Nightingale many years ago, and here it is. If you picture an old fashioned record player—well, what does it have? It has a turntable, right? And so, you’ve got the record on the turntable, and then there’s the tonearm, or the needle, right? And the needle drops on the record to read the grooves in the record, and then turn that into sound for us, right? Well, that’s the way a good old fashioned record player works.
If you look at a CD, well, what’s reading it? A laser is reading it. But it’s being read. Well, what happens when you hear something that is of particular interest to you, to your mind? When your mind hears that, it’s as if you’re picking up that tonearm, or picking up that needle off the record, and the record keeps spinning under it, and you miss—your mind misses—everything that was said immediately after that interesting thought. So, that’s why when you listen to audio books, podcasts, or you attend seminars, even if it’s the exact same thing over and over, as it is with a podcast or an audio book or any recorded information, you still learn something new, because your mind has already heard and analyzed and evaluated the interesting thing that was of interest to you the first time, and now you’re ready to listen to all the stuff your mind is now perceiving and remembering and analyzing and processing—all the stuff that came behind each of those little interesting bits and bites or tidbits. And so that’s why it’s so important to immerse yourself in this content on a repeated basis.
But here’s what’s so special about this Creating Wealth Boot Camp that we have on January 7th in Phoenix, is that since it’s in one of our markets—our Phoenix market—you will have the opportunity to look at properties and tour properties as well. So, the event is all day on Saturday, January 7th, but on the Friday or the Sunday, you will have the opportunity to meet with our local market specialist and look at properties. Or, if you don’t want to look at properties necessarily, just the opportunity to sit down with them face to face, talk to their management team, talk to their people, and really learn about that. So, it’ll be a really valuable Creating Wealth Boot Camp, even if you’ve attended before, you’ll want to attend this one again as a re-audit of the content, but also so you can look at properties in the greater Phoenix market. I think that’ll be a good opportunity for you. Sarah, don’t you agree with that?
SARAH: Oh, absolutely. I think it’s a great idea to be able to meet face to face with a team you’re gonna be working with. And just to chime in on the repeat content idea, it’s so true. I mean, I’ve sat through your seminar, I listen to the podcast, believe it or not—
JASON HARTMAN: You have been to my seminars almost more than I have [LAUGHTER].
SARAH: Is that possible?
JASON HARTMAN: You’re a very good student like that, I gotta compliment you on that. Because even though you hear it over and over, you’re always sitting at the back of the room, listening and learning. So, that’s really good.
SARAH: Well, and I truly do pick up something new each time. And you know, even if it’s not new content, your mind wraps around it in a different way, depending on where you’re at in your investment horizon. So, it’s great content, it really reiterates that real estate is the best place to be. It makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing. And it also makes you feel like you know more about real estate than most of the rest of the world. So, I felt really privileged during that last Masters weekend, just to be sitting in that room soaking up all that information.
JASON HARTMAN: Well you know, that’s actually another good point, that you’re bringing up. You mentioned something—that it makes you feel like you’re more knowledgeable, right? But see, that, oddly enough, that may seem like a really sort of soft comment—like, not a hard thing, a hard comment. Sort of a soft comment. But it’s really not. You know why? Because I was talking with one of our burgeoning investors last night, and this person who I was speaking with has not invested yet, and really wants to—has just been so enamored of our content, loves the podcast, etcetera, but it’s kind of like, until you really jump in and do something, you just don’t really get it. One of my favorite quotes is a good old Zen quote. It’s a quote from Zen. And it is this. To know, not to do, is to not yet know. And when I hire people in the businesses I’ve had over the years, I honestly find that the best training is the on the job training. And there is no better way to learn how to do income property investing than to just actually do it. And the way you get the confidence to just actually do it—the steps leading up to that point—are to attend the events over and over, to be listening to the podcast over and over, and be attending live events too. So, that’s where that comes from. So, great points there. So, here’s the contest. Win yourself—now, there’s two free tickets for each winner. We’re gonna have three winners, and whoever’s the three closest guesses on my rent, okay? This is just kind of a funny thing—
SARAH: Now, Jason, is that—
JASON HARTMAN: Are the winners.
SARAH: Is that three closest without going over?
JASON HARTMAN: No, you can go over or under. Three closest, either way. So, if you’re a dollar over, or a hundred dollars over, or a thousand dollars over or under—we’re just going to pick the three closest. So, could be either side of the over or under equation, okay? So, here’s the deal. You have to go back and listen to the intro of show #229, the last show, and hear the description of my very swanky new penthouse, and guess the rent; I think you’ll be pretty amazed. And this is a study in rent elasticity. My point here is that, why it’s such a good deal to rent a high end property and rent low end properties to other people, okay, is because there’s very little elasticity in rents. And so, renters will only pay up to a certain point. After that, the property just becomes such a fantastic deal, because the RV, or rent-to-value ratios are so in favor of the renter, when it’s a high end property. Whereas a low end property, they’re much more in favor of the owner. And this is why high priced markets don’t make sense for us as investors. So Sarah, what else do we have to talk about? Any big questions or burning issues that our clients are facing, that they’ve been talking to you about, over the past week or two that you want to share?
SARAH: Oh boy, you put me on the spot here.
JASON HARTMAN: I did put you on the spot. Well you know what, let me let you think about that for a moment while I talk to the listeners about what is covered at the Creating Wealth Boot Camp, okay? So, again, folks, you can probably tell—I have to tell you, Sarah, this is funny. One person wrote me an email, a listener, a while ago. This was about maybe a year and a half ago. And said, I love your show. It’s so insightful, and so great, and folks, I love those comments, so, keep them coming. They really make me feel like what we’re doing is very worthwhile, so thank you, all of you supporters out there for all the kind words. But they said, you know, you must spend just a crazy, inordinate amount of time preparing for the show. And the fact is, I don’t.
SARAH: He’s literally called me and said, hey, you want to record a podcast?
JASON HARTMAN: Exactly. But what I really do is, my preparation is my whole life. I live this every day; I’m always reading and digesting this kind of material, and sometimes I’m listening to other peoples’ shows as well, and some of you listeners give me some recommendations. Like someone—forgive me, I can’t remember who it was—told me to listen to the CATO Institute podcast, and I’ve been listening to that one, and I find it pretty interesting, and my preparation is that I live this all day long every day. So, that’s the preparation for the show. But let’s talk about the Creating Wealth event for just a moment, while Sarah’s thinking about my put her on the spot question there. What will this event include, the boot camp? This is our fundamental course. We have had thousand and thousands and thousands of people come through this course over the years, and we’ve been doing it since—I think our first one was in 2004, and of course, it’s changed, with the times. It always has to. But this is our fundamental work.
If you have been to Meet the Masters, I commend you. You have my compliments. I mean, that is a great event. However, it is not a foundational event. And at one time, I really wanted to make it so that there would be a prerequisite before you could attend Meet the Masters, you had to attend the Creating Wealth Boot Camp. And you know what? I tried to do that, and frankly, it just didn’t work. I just couldn’t get people to do it. So, you can attend whichever one you want in whichever order. But the Creating Wealth in Today’s Economy Boot Camp is our foundational event. It’s where you get all of the foundational principles and philosophies upon which our thinking lies. And I know if you’re a listener to this show, for any length of time, you know that our philosophy, and our methodology, and our strategies for investing, are totally unique. I mean, you really just don’t hear them anywhere else.
We have really distilled some very unique ideologies that, at least, I have never heard anywhere. They are truly original thought. Now, they’re not—not everything is original thought. Of course there are some timeless principles that, you know, I’ve learned from everybody dating back to Bill Nickerson and his book about how he turned—what was that book called? How I Turned $1000 into $1,000,000 in Part Time in Real Estate, or something like that. It’s a classic, it’s an old book. But, those are woven into this, of course. But so, we go over the way to move from active to passive income. Of course we go over in depth the 10 Commandments of Successful Investing. We talk about leverage, how it works for you, how it works against you, and how really, it doesn’t always work against you anyway, but most people think it does. We talk about how to understand true ROI. And the four different major components of ROI, or return on investment, and what else? Return on inflation. We look at some historical appreciation data for US properties. We go through a sample portfolio makeover that we’ll take you through.
We go over the refi till you die methodology. We talk about the different governmental, fiscal, and monetary issues that affect us, and really benefit us as investors. We talk about how the government is in such a mess, and how the government will react to the mess it finds itself in. And when I say it, I mean we, because we are the government, but we’re not the elite class, so we have to learn how to defend ourselves against that elite class. We’ll talk about the refi till you die scenario—what is your seven year plan, what is your 12 year plan. Gosh, there’s just so much in this. It’s like a whirlwind day. It is just packed with information. And I tell you, at the end of these—I’m basically the speaker, for pretty much all of this event. So, this is the event that tires me out. I love it, but it gives me an exhilarating sense of exhaustion, okay? But, I’m the speaker, for virtually all of this event. I’m taking you through all of it personally.
And whereas at the Meet the Masters event, I’m sort of the emcee. I’m not really the speaker. We call in experts, and they do all the heavy lifting and all the speaking. So, that event’s kind of an easy one for me, frankly, because most of the speaking is done by other people. We’re gonna talk about, of course, one of my favorite topics, inflation and deflation. And we’re gonna talk about parsing up the various elements of a property, and how they react to asset deflation and monetary inflation; we’re gonna talk about some reports in some various magazines and publications—TIME Magazine, US News and World Report—we’re gonna talk about something I call the double inflation arbitrage. We’re gonna talk about stages of your wealth building plan. And we’ll talk about the risk evaluator. The thing that it took me 19 years in this business to discover, and it was a discovery, it was not an invention.
But, I think I discovered something that I have never heard anyone else talk about in the countless seminars I’ve been to, the countless books I’ve read on the subject, and it is my own thinking on how to really, really reduce, and almost eliminate risk—I can’t say completely eliminate, because there is always risk in everything. Risk when investing in income properties. So, I’ll teach you about that risk evaluator, and that aha moment that happened 19 years into my career, that I think is very, very unique. We’ll talk about constructive versus destructive debt, and how to make sure you’re on the right side of that equation. We’ll talk about the three dimensions of income property investing, and really a whole lot more. So, Sarah, you asked me to mention that, because people want to know what we’re going to cover on January 7th at our Creating Wealth event in Phoenix. So, there we go.
SARAH: Yep. So, I had a second to think about what questions people are asking me these days, and so I’m ready.
JASON HARTMAN: Go for it.
SARAH: So, you know, I was thinking about how we’ve had a lot of new investors call in. We’ve got some radio ads going, so I’ve been talking to a lot of people who are kind of newer to our network.
JASON HARTMAN: Right, and those are on, by the way, just so you know, folks—those are on the Sirius XM Satellite network. Mostly on CNBC and Bloomberg, because we wanna be where the financial people are listening. But we don’t want them going down the road of Wall Street, because Wall Street, we know, is nothing more than the modern version of organized crime. The modern version of organized crime: we call it Wall Street. Anyway, Sarah, go ahead.
SARAH: Well, I mean, and the one question I always get is, you know, well, it’s first, what do you do. And then the other question is, well, what can you do for me? If you recommend investing in Dallas, why wouldn’t I just go to Dallas on my own and find a property? So, I sort of explain to them how we’re area agnostic, and I just want to kind of talk a little bit about that today. Because it’s important for our investors to know that we’re in this every day. We are constantly talking to our local market specialists, our lenders, our property managers, but more importantly, our actual investors who are doing this every day. So I know if there are any red flags with a property manager, or I know what’s going on that’s good in a market, and why you should maybe choose this market over another market, depending on where you’re at with your investments. And so, I can talk to the newer investors about what’s really going on. And it’s so hard to know, when you first go to our website—well, where do I start? Dallas looks great, Atlanta looks great—well, depending on when you talk to me, I may have some insightful information about a market that may steer you to or away from a market.
JASON HARTMAN: That’s a great point you’re making, Sarah. Because it’s a dynamic thing. It’s always changing. We’ve done business in I think now 45 markets, I believe. I haven’t counted lately. But 45 different cities around the United States. And at any given time, and lately, really, we’ve been kind of in the same markets for a couple of years now. Really I’ll say since the financial crisis. We’ve sort of stuck with a core of maybe 10, 12 markets that we’re mainly recommending. But it’s always changing! The inventory is always changing, and that’s what I just want to say again. Because many people read stuff, and they think, oh, this is a great market, or that’s a great market; Atlanta, Phoenix, whatever, right? And that may be true. But the question is not just is the market the right market; the question is, do you have good inventory there?
Do you have a strong local market specialist there, that has good follow through, that keeps their promises, that does what they say they’re going to do, that delivers on their promises? And I tell you, that is always changing. So, it’s not just about the market. It’s about the relationships. And the advantage you have with us, that you will never have on your own, and you will not have with most other groups out there, is the fact that we do such a high volume of business, and frankly—and this may sound braggadocious, but—we have such a stellar reputation. And I know we do, because believe me, I’m paying attention to that. We have such a good reputation, and so much leverage with these vendors, that they do right by our clients, by and large. I’m not saying there’s never a problem. There are problems. But compared to the horror stories I hear about other groups out there…believe me. You want to be hitching your wagon to a star that’s been established for a while, and who has a large volume of business, who is in this for the long haul, like we are.
SARAH: Well, and don’t get me wrong. I have good relationships with our market specialists. But our loyalty is to the clients, and we want our market specialists and property managers to do right by the clients. So, if I see something, or I hear something that doesn’t sound right, or sounds like we could make it better, I do my best to call them out on it, and help improve situations in every way that we can. And you know, I’m not afraid to hire and fire property managers. If I find a property manager that can do a better job, I will. And I think our investors will attest to that. So, one other quick point about this is, when you go and you talk to—and I keep using Dallas as an example, I don’t know why, it just pops into my brain—
JASON HARTMAN: You know what I kind of like right now? I kind of like Atlanta, at the moment. I’m sort of partial—like, if you asked me today, I’m into Atlanta at the moment. I think we’re getting some really good inventory there. But—yeah, go ahead.
SARAH: Well, I’m partial to Atlanta too. That’s where my husband and I just bought. So…but you know, if you go and you buy, you want to buy in Atlanta, and you talk to maybe a local agent there, and then you talk to our market specialist there, you’re gonna hear all the great things about Atlanta. You’re gonna hear everything that they want you to hear. But when you call me, I’m gonna give you the other side of the story, if there is one. And I’m also gonna point out the benefits, and I’m gonna point out maybe some downsides, so that you can make the most educated decision, based on what you’re looking to do, and what your investment goals are. And that varies for every investor. Every investor is in a different place in their investment timeline.
JASON HARTMAN: Absolutely. And you know what? The reason we do that is because we’re area agnostic. Another big mistake I see investors making, is that they’re going to certain groups that are out there marketing, who are just in one market. That is the dumbest thing any investor can ever do. You want to go to an impartial, area agnostic source. We’re not just offering properties in Atlanta, or Dallas, or Phoenix. We’re offering properties in a lot of different places. So, we can afford to move around and put the client in the stuff that makes sense. You never want a one trick pony. Would you go to a stockbroker who only sells one stock, or one mutual fund? Of course not. That would be like going to the mutual fund company directly. That wouldn’t make sense at all. You’re never gonna get any impartial, objective advice unless you’re dealing with someone who’s area agnostic, and that’s what we are. So, very good point. Okay, Sarah, anything else real quickly, or should we go on to today’s guest? Because, remember, this is a 10th show, and we’re not supposed to talk about financial stuff too much.
SARAH: Oh. Well, so sorry. No, I think that pretty much sums it up. I’m happy to answer anybody’s individual questions. You can always call in, or email us. If you’re looking for some one-on-one consultation, you can always go to our website and complete our investor questionnaire, and to get to that questionnaire, it’s just www.jasonhartman.com/iq. And as soon as we get that questionnaire we will certainly get in touch with you, and help you personalize your own portfolio.
JASON HARTMAN: That’s a good way to put yourself at the top of the list. Because the people that fill out the questionnaires, we know they are the more serious clients. So, definitely recommend that you do that. But, you know what, we didn’t tell you how to enter the contest. It’s real easy. You just go to www.jasonhartman.com/contact, and you just fill out that little contact us form, and in the comments, just put—say, I think Jason’s rent is: and put the number. So, if you think it’s $10,000 a month, or you think it’s $8,000 a month, or $12,000 a month, or $3,000 a month, or whatever you think the number is, just put it in the comments section, and the three closest winners get a free ticket to the Creating Wealth Boot Camp in Phoenix on January the 7th, and we’ll look forward to seeing you there. I hope all of your listeners can make it. Well, that would be a little large. Don’t all come. We’d have to rent a stadium. But, anyway. I hope a good number of you come, and thank you so much for listening, and we will be back with our guest in just a moment, on this 10th show, where we’re gonna talk about how our mind works, and how we can use our brain more effectively. Sarah, thanks for joining me today too, and listeners, we’ll be back in 60 seconds in our guest.
[MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: What’s great about the shows you’ll find on www.jasonhartman.com is that, if you want to learn how to finance your next big real estate deal, there’s a show for that! If you want to learn more about food storage, and the best way to keep those onions from smelling up everything else, there’s a show for that! If you honestly want to know more about business ethics, there’d a show for that! And if you just want to get away from it all, and need to know something about world travel, there’s even a sure for that! Yep, there’s a show for just about anything. Only from www.jasonhartman.com. Or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store.
[MUSIC]
JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Hannah Holmes to the show! She is the author of four books, and an expert on humans, nature, and human nature. She has written some great sort of tongue in cheek work, in her different titles, and has looked at the world with new eyes, things that we take for granted, and seem very obvious to most of us, Hannah has a very, very interesting perspective on. So I’m sure you’ll like this talk with her today. Hannah, welcome! How are you?
HANNAH HOLMES: Great! Wonderful to be here.
JASON HARTMAN: Well good! Good to have you. So, your latest work is entitled Quirk. Tell us about that, and what you learned about humans and human nature in writing that one.
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, here’s the deal. You look around and you see all these people whose personalities are not like yours, and the natural response is, why not? It would be so much better if everyone were like me. And the problem is, if everyone were like you, we would all have the same response to the risks and the opportunities that naturally come our way, and that simply doesn’t work in an unpredictable world. So what we find, not just in humans but in all animals, is that personality is the variation in how we respond to the crazy stuff that nature throws at us. So nature throws a fantastic opportunity out, and some people are afraid of it, and they avoid taking risks to grab it, and others and unafraid, and they grab it. There are drawbacks and benefits to each approach, and they really are complementary, and we have to have that diversity of personality in order to survive.
JASON HARTMAN: And to keep people interested in all the different things we need to do to create our economy, too, you know, in all the specialization of labor and so forth. So yeah, very interesting. How does our brain chemistry, though, dictate our personality? And is it not just—is it chemistry only, or is it actual structural—I mean, if you look at the brains of males and females, the structure is different to some extent, right?
HANNAH HOLMES: Right. The genes that make up your personality, and there are probably many thousands of them that go into personality, these genes dictate, oftentimes, how active a certain part of your brain will be. In other words, you might have a super active amygdala. Mine tends to be on the—runs kind of hot. It’s always looking for danger. And so, in my brain, when there’s any indication of trouble, my amygdala’s gonna ramp up pretty quickly. But then in the next person, who takes things a little less seriously, is going to be a kind of a quiet amygdala, and maybe their pre-frontal cortex is online just sort of analyzing the possibilities. So, what we really see is differences in the aptivity level in the various modules that make up the brain.
JASON HARTMAN: And this is probably thanks to the FMRI, right? The functional MRI machines now that we have? And we can really tell what people are think—it’s almost like mind reading, it’s pretty amazing, nowadays.
HANNAH HOLMES: It’s very cool. Because psychologists used to have to rely on us to tell the truth about our personalities, so they would just rely on questionnaires. And those are still valuable. But obviously we all want the world to think well of us, and so, this comes out in questionnaires. We try to make ourselves look sane, when perhaps we’re a little too neurotic, or a little too impulsive or extroverted. So they’re actually finding that by comparing our answers to questionnaires, and then MRI, which watches our brain respond to things, they’re getting a much more honest answer out of these MRI machines.
JASON HARTMAN: Of course they are, yeah. So, you said that your amygdala is active. First of all, what is the amygdala, and does that make you a thrill seeker? Do you like to bungee jump and do things like that?
HANNAH HOLMES: Au contraire.
JASON HARTMAN: Okay.
HANNAH HOLMES: Yeah. After you. The amygdala—it’s an ancient part of the brain, and most of the personality regions are very, very old, and they’re shared by all animals. So, the amygdala is this tiny little piece sort of dead center deep in your brain, and that’s the emergency detection system, and it’s constantly scanning data that comes into your brain that comes in through your senses for signs of danger. And if there is a sign of danger, the amygdala sort of coordinates an emergency response. And some people’s are set on, oh my gosh! And others’ are set on eh, who cares? And we all have the amygdala, but it’s the degree to which you are neurotic or anxious or laid back, depends on how active your amygdala is. And that’s a genetically determined element of your personality.
JASON HARTMAN: But if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, I mean, seeking danger is, as the word would imply—it’s dangerous, right? Why would someone seek danger? That would weed them out of the gene pool, potentially, right?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, absolutely. But there are risks to every personality type. If you think in terms of the environment we grew up in—our species evolved in—millions of years ago, before we had excellent shelters, think of us as squirrels. And the economics the squirrel has to navigate in order to eat. The squirrel has to come out of the shelter of the tree, and go out into the middle of the lawn in order to eat, and that exposes him to a potential cost, which is the hawk overhead. So, the squirrel is always balancing opportunity versus risk, and that is exactly how humans evolved, too, and we maintained all the brain chemistry to work that math. But some of us are set up, don’t go into the middle of the lawn for an acorn, if there’s a kind of mushy, nasty, old sour one that you can survive on for another day without leaving the shelter of the tree. So that’s the don’t risk anything response. Others are set on, go! Go! Go out in the middle! Go even further—there might be something really awesome there! And then you can maybe move to the next tree, where things are better. So it’s a more exploring, short term opportunity personality.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, I agree with you there, but some of the thrill seekers aren’t doing it for opportunity, other than I guess the opportunity is the actual thrill itself, and the endorphins, right? It’s not for a survival opportunity, or a monetary opportunity. They just seek thrills for thrills’ sake.
HANNAH HOLMES: There are two responses to that. One is that we’ve created for ourselves an environment that has a huge number of ways to kill ourselves, and so, this normal drive to experience thrills, which evolved to push people, to push our boundaries, to explore and find opportunities—now there are so many opportunities to seek thrills, and in the process, behead yourself, that it’s a lot more dangerous to be a thrill seeker these days. On the other hand, we can see in the genetic record of humans how that thrill seeker mentality has served us. There’s a particular gene, and it’s a deltamine gene. And deltamine is the sort of go forward, the extrovert, the impulsive, the ADHD system. It’s all about looking outward for opportunities. And there’s a particular form of this gene that we find really enriched in populations of risk takers today, but also in populations that have migrated around the globe, further than any others. So if you look at a population in, say, deep in South America, those people have to basically walk there, and they tend to have more of this go for it, explorer gene. And like, with financial risk takers—same exact version of the gene. It’s a gene that says, take opportunities. Don’t just wait for them—go and find them. And it pays off in the long run.
JASON HARTMAN: So, is that to say that the person who takes the risk and seeks opportunity does better in life? Or does it obviously—I mean, I know there’s two answers to this. Or does it pay to play it safe? It reminds me of the quote, ships are safer in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, the magic of this diversity of personality is that we come in all flavors. So, on a bad day, when it’s really hard to find acorns, then it really pays off to have that risk taking opportunity. You’re not gonna starve to death, because you’re motivated to go and look. On a really bad day when there are no acorns and you’re anxious, you may starve, because your anxiety prevents you from getting in the ship and sailing over the horizon to see what’s there. They compliment each other beautifully, because someone’s always gonna be keeping an eye on what’s safest and most protective, and someone’s always gonna be sort of networking and reaching out for new opportunities. And the fact that we have this variation in our population, as do mine, again, is testimony to the fact that we need all these different responses, or we would just be wiped out.
JASON HARTMAN: Absolutely. So, let’s talk for a moment, Hannah—well, first of all, before we talk about this, I want to ask you—in terms of scientists measuring a person’s personality, are they doing it with the FMRI? Is that really the gold standard? Or are there other ways that you want to talk about?
HANNAH HOLMES: There’s a million ways to measure personality. And often people try to really focus on something tight, so they know what they’re measuring. So, if you wanted to measure impulsivity, for instance, you could do that by watching the brain’s response to various games. Or you could—there’s computer based games, where you can sit and answer questions. There was this wonderful one called delayed discounting, where you’re offered a series of monetary options. One is—it’ll start out with, would you rather have a dollar today or two dollars tomorrow? And then it moves up to more complex stuff. Would you rather have $10 in a week, or $100 in a year? And this predicts—it’s a really tidy graph of how impulsive you are. Really impulsive people will not wait for a reward, and really low impulsive people like me will wait. I’ll do the math, and I will never leap before I look. So, there are a million ways to test these things, and very specialized tests for each element of personality.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, you talk about the five factors, in your book. What are the five factors of personality?
HANNAH HOLMES: This is how health psychologists have boiled this down. I mean, we’re really complex. But they try to boil it down to these five factors: conscientiousness, openness to experience, extroversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness. And you can think of these as five dials on a stove. And you are the stove. And your personality is a combination of where each of those dials is set. So, you might be high in conscientiousness and low in agreeableness, and middle in extroversion, and so on. And that’s what makes us all a little bit different.
JASON HARTMAN: Does it change? Do our personalities change? Of course they change situationally, I’m sure. But do they change with age? Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
HANNAH HOLMES: Really, because personality is so strongly genetic, it does not change much at all. You’re essentially—you are who you are born to be. There’s a few exceptions to that. You can change your personality on a temporary basis, as many of us do with drugs and alcohol, which actually does alter the balance between your sort of older, primitive, impulsive brain, and your frontal lobe, which is sort of the CEO who tries to balance all the interests and be rational. Over the long haul, the one thing that does seem to change is that younger people are more impulsive, and older people are less impulsive. And we know that, just kind of from watching people age. But it is a measurable change, and it’s really the only major factor that does change with age.
JASON HARTMAN: People get more careful as they age, because maybe they’re had some bad experiences, right?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, even their bodies—some of these tests measure their brain’s impulsivity, so it’s not even rational. It’s just a slow decline in your impulsivity. And there are probably good biological reasons for that. It’s important for young people to take risks, because their entire reproductive future hangs in the balance. One of my favorite studies, recently, is, involved men crossing the street not on a sidewalk—so, jaywalking, and taking a risk with their physical safety. And men are more likely to do this at all ages if there’s a woman watching. And what that tells you, is that males are willing to take some physical risks to advertise their strength and power. And it’s theoretically so they can win more breeding opportunities. So, we’re all doing this stuff all the time, regardless of our age, and dignity. We’re still motivated by these very ancient drives.
JASON HARTMAN: Right. That’s very interesting. You know, I want to get back to the dating and mating subject in a moment. But before we talk about that, let’s talk a little bit about belief systems, if we can, Hannah. It amazes me, especially, I guess, in the political arena. And I have long thought that democrats and republicans, conservatives and liberals, literally just have different brain structures, and different brain chemistries. Because they can’t see eye to eye no matter how good or how sound an argument is for one position or the other. It just doesn’t happen. Would you agree with that? Are people wired a certain way? Are they physically, chemically made up to be, say, liberal or conservative?
HANNAH HOLMES: Absolutely. Yeah, people have been doing questionnaires on this forever and ever, but again, scientists are starting to use the more imaging based ways of looking into it. So, there’s a couple important studies that have come out on the differences between the brains. And one showed—well, this one used EEG, which is a little cap of electrodes you wear on your head, and you can watch what’s happening in the person’s brain. And they also were measuring the amount of sweat on the palm, and that’s just a tiny little physical reaction that can tell what’s happening with your emergency response system. And they showed a bunch of people threatening images—images like guns, and violence, and sort of physically threatening images, and measured the sweat on the palm. And what they found is that what I call the red brains—the more conservative brains, were really ramped up by images that were threatening. On the other hand, they’ve done some MRI with showing people images of people in pain, and in that case, they found that it’s the blue brain, these liberals, that fires up for images of pain.
Our own pain center goes active when we see someone else in pain. Everyone’s does, but the blue brains were much more empathetic on a biological level. What that tells me is that we’re seeing a complementary role between the two, where the—think of us as these animals that evolved in small groups, where anyone approaching the small group might be bringing a horrible disease for which there are no drugs, or they may be coming to kill us and take our territory, or just kill the males and take the females, whatever. Strangers are bad. And they usually are, in animal societies. And probably in most of human history. So what it looks like is, the red brain is tuned to protect that group of people. To maintain the safety and security of the home group, at all costs. And the blue brain is tuned to look for outside opportunities, to make sure that we still have some trade connections so we can get better tools, to make sure we can find fabulous, attractive young people for our people to mate with so that we don’t become in a gene slump, and the two are extremely complementary. One is keeping the group safe, the other is keeping the group vibrant over the long term by bringing in new ideas.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, very interesting. So, diversity—nature likes diversity. I mean, obviously, genetically we all know that you shouldn’t marry your cousin, right? And certainly not your brother or sister. But that diversity of thought is a big part of nature too, it sounds like.
HANNAH HOLMES: Yeah. You know, I found that kind of interesting. But then taking a few steps back, recognizing that all the science that’s coming out of ecology, says that the more plants you have in a flock, the more healthy and vibrant and resilient that ecosystem is going to be. This has been a huge area of research, because we’re trying to restore some of the things that we’ve destroyed. And that’s a really strong signal, that diversity is a source of strength. And it’s kind of in retrospect kind of a duh moment, when I stood back and thought about that in terms of personality. If we all threw ourselves on any opportunity that walked in the door, we’d all be killed by the metaphorical hawk, or fox, or whatever. And at the same time, if none of us went forward and took opportunities, we’d use up everything we had around us and all starve to death. So, it becomes quite clear that you have to have a mixture.
JASON HARTMAN: When you talk about opportunities, I just keep thinking of—what I think, it wasn’t like a great movie or anything, but it had a great lesson in it. And that is the comedy with Jim Carey, Yes Man. And I just noticed in that, and I think it’s true in one’s life most of the time—that taking advantage of opportunities, and kind of the old proverbial, just do it, go for it, that mentality—I just think that most of the time those people have a better life, when they take chances. More often than not. And I don’t know if you saw the movie. Did you, by any chance? With Jim Carey?
HANNAH HOLMES: No, I don’t remember it, if I did.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, it’s fairly recent. And he just said yes to everything. He couldn’t say no. That’s the story. And he’d find himself saying yes to things, and it seemed like they wouldn’t work out, but then fate twisted around, and ultimately it did work out. Any thoughts on that again? I mean, you touched on that earlier. But it just seems like the people that do more stuff and try more things just—usually things work out better for them. I could be wrong. But that’s my perception of it.
HANNAH HOLMES: I think to some extent it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because there will be a subset of people—extroverts, mainly, and people who are open to experiencing the high and low, and these people are more inclined to take risks, but they’re also higher in sort of overall energy and gumption, and so, they are more likely to succeed. And when you look at the population of people we call entrepreneurs, or venture capitalists—people who are sort of leaping for opportunities—they are a certain pair of personality types. They’re not a random selection of humans. They tend to be higher in conscientiousness, so, they work hard even if no one’s telling them to. They’re higher in openness, so, their mind is open to opportunity, as opposed to sort of protecting what they’ve already got, and they’re extroverted. They’re energetic, and they’re motivated by people and by experience. So, it’s not surprising that those people would end up being successful. What you don’t see is the neurotic and agreeable people jumping in to start a new business, because that’s just not—that just doesn’t feel good, to that personality type. And so they don’t do it. And they wouldn’t be suited for it. They wouldn’t be successful. They’re much better at managing than at creating, and they’re more comfortable in that role of trying to keep people happy and motivated and cooperative.
JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. They’re like the team player type. You know, you’ve mentioned neurotic quite a bit, because that’s one of the five types. Do you want to define neurotic a little bit? Because that might mean something different to everybody listening.
HANNAH HOLMES: Yeah. Neuroticism is essentially an avoidance orientation in the personality. And that doesn’t mean someone who just doesn’t want to deal with the world. It’s avoiding risk. So, elements of the neurotic personality are things like high anxiety, which is really just a watch [unintelligible] for problems. Depression is an element of the neurotic personality. And that doesn’t mean you’re hospitalized for major depression—it means your energy level isn’t really high. You’re more of a watcher and a waiter. And again, we are so inclined to judge people, in this country, based on their productivity. And so, the neurotic personality doesn’t look all that productive and awesome and fun to hang around with, but it’s a conservative wait and see cautious personality that will serve you well in the long term, just like every other type.
JASON HARTMAN: Hmm. Yeah, very interesting. You know, I want to ask you about culture, Hannah, and then animal personalities, just for a moment. But before we do that, is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of the dating and mating thing? Personality types getting along, and relationships, and so forth? Like, if I’m an extrovert, do I want to marry a neurotic—[LAUGHTER].
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, actually that’s a good matchup, if the difference isn’t too huge, because you would really balance each other. Because the extrovert is all about short term leaping before you look, and let’s have fun today, and the neurotic is all about, well, I don’t think we should go on vacation this month, because, you know, the mortgage is due, and the college bill is coming up. And so, they really balance each other. One has their eye on the long term stability, and the other has the eye on the short term opportunities. That’s a nice—that could be a nice mix, if people appreciate that about each other, and that’s really the strength of understanding your personality, is appreciating who you are, because it’s not going to change, and it certainly has benefits. So, certainly that’s a nice mix and match. The only real research on this subject, if you’re really high in conscientiousness, do not mess around with somebody who is not, because they will make you crazy. The whole point of that personality is finishing what you start, and sticking to the hard work, and not taking a two hour three-martini lunch, and if you’re mated with somebody who does that, it’s gonna drive you nuts.
JASON HARTMAN: Okay. What about culture? What does the role of culture play? You’ve got, in America, which is—I think that’s a personality type, because it’s sort of the rugged individual, demand fairness, demand rights type of personality, which I think is great. I love that. But then it’s very topical. I was in Japan a couple of years ago, and then of course we just recently had the terrible tragedy there, and you see the way the Japanese have handled themselves with such, really, dignity. I’m so impressed with the way they’ve responded to that, and been so civil about it, and been so community oriented. What’s the difference, sort of, when you talk just about culture, and the way it shapes personality?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, if you start with the fact that about half of your personality is etched into your genes. That’s your potential, and your environment has an opportunity to either sort of dampen your high points, or expand them, allow them to grow to their full potential. And so what the role of culture is, to sort of put parameters around how extreme the personality can be. And like you said, in America, we love extroverts. We love showoffs, we love confidence and go get ’em, so if you’re born an extrovert in this country, you’re halfway home. If you’re born neurotic in this country, you might be considered kind of a milk toast, a weenie, a sissy, and so on. The Japanese culture, as you said, is completely inverse. The emphasis in that culture is on cooperation. It’s not on individualism. It’s on taking care of everyone, and being fair. And so, if you have a wildly extroverted personality in your genetic makeup in Japan, you’ll find that you’re not encouraged to express that through your behavior.
Your personality isn’t going to change, it’s going to be the same, but your culture is always going to be saying to you, hush, pipe down, keep that to yourself. And you see that in the way that they respond to this terrible, terrible environmental situation, where they’re very restrained emotionally; they are not expressive. And if something like that happened in this country, we’re just so much more emotional. You would see a huge difference in how much we’re allowed to express our personalities. So, that’s the role of culture—sort of putting limits on how you express the genes that make you who you are.
JASON HARTMAN: Okay. So, it’s nature and nurture, no doubt about it. We’ll be back in just a minute.
[MUSIC]
RICH: You know, Penny, sometimes I think of Jason Hartman as a walking encyclopedia on the subject of creating wealth.
PENNY: Well, you’re probably not far off from the truth, Rich. Jason actually has a 6-book set on creating wealth that comes with over 100 hours of the most comprehensive ideas on investing in business. They’re in high quality digital download audio format, ready for your car, iPod, or wherever you want to learn.
RICH: Yes, and by the way, he’s recently added another book to the series that shows you investing the way it should be. This is a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.
PENNY: Jason actually shows us how we can be excited about these scary times, and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.
RICH: We can pick local markets that are untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.
PENNY: I like how he teaches us how to protect the equity in your home before it disappears, and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.
RICH: He’s recorded interviews with Harry Dent, Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, Pat Buchanan, Catherine Austin Fitts, Dr. Denis Waitley, T. Harv Eker, and so many others who are experts on the economy, on real estate, and on creating wealth.
PENNY: And the entire set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered with a savings of $385.
RICH: Now, to get your creating wealth encyclopedia series complete with over 100 hours of audio, and 6 books, go to www.jasonhartman.com/store.
PENNY: If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker, Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.
[MUSIC]
JASON HARTMAN: Talk about animals for a moment. I mean, I think my dog has a tremendously interesting personality, and I’ve always noticed that about animals. You say that mice have personality. I mean, how much personality does a mouse have? What about animals?
HANNAH HOLMES: What’s funny—biologists only in this century realized that animals have personality at all, and I don’t know how that happened. Anyone who’s ever had two different animals—
JASON HARTMAN: I think Darwin wrote a book on that, didn’t he? The emotions of animals, or something like that?
HANNAH HOLMES: Yes, yes. But biologists just somehow always figured, if you’ve seen one lion, you’ve seen them all. I don’t know how they failed to notice the variation in how animals respond as we do to opportunities or to risks. But now, fortunately, we do understand that. And so, most of the drugs that we have for personality disorders, like anxiety disorders, or schizophrenia, or ADHD, these drugs have been created using mice, because you can create mice who have ADHD, or depression, or anxiety, or schizophrenia, because their personalities are so identical to ours. They don’t have all the nuance that a human has, but they have all the fundamentals, all the fine factor, you can find in a mouse.
JASON HARTMAN: So, two of the big chemicals that come up here are serotonin, and you’ve got the whole line of drugs like Prozac and that field—what do they call them, the uptake re-inhibitors, and then dopamine. What roles do those play?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, if you think of your basic animal as a tube with a mouth at the front that is sort of supposed to go and get things to keep it alive, what tells an animal which direction to go, and what to eat? The system that informs everything, from even a starfish to a slug to a human, is the dopamine system. And that dopamine system has evolved for each animal to tell it to go get things that are high in calories, if salt is limited in the environment, it tells them to go get salt. It obviously needs reproductive opportunities, and so the dopamine system points animals towards reproductive opportunities. Basically, if it feels good to you, your dopamine system is tuned to that, and it’s saying, go get it, go get it, go get it, go get it. So that’s dopamine. And when it goes wrong, is the addiction. And if you don’t have enough of it, you’re not very motivated to get the stuff that you need.
JASON HARTMAN: So it needs to be the right balance, the dopamine balance, right? When you say addictions, are you talking about drug addictions?
HANNAH HOLMES: Yes. Well, any kind of addiction—gambling, food, anything. What that is, is the environment has hijacked the dopamine system, and got it hooked on something that never was in our ancient environment. So, a million years ago, our genes never saw Southern Comfort coming. We did not evolve surrounded by alcohol and meth, and poker games, and so on. Now our environment is so full of stuff that’s dangerous, that the dopamine system is really challenged to steer clear of that stuff, and not get hooked on it.
JASON HARTMAN: Because that stuff is so powerful, and we didn’t—I mean, the ancient people, though, they used alcohol, and they ate berries and things like that that would make them feel—change their state, right? But they just weren’t so powerful like they are today, right? Is that the difference?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, they weren’t as powerful, they weren’t as common. So you couldn’t go to a store. You had to head out. And for 99.9% of human history, going out to get your food or your berries or your water meant you were walking past lions and alligators and mosquitoes that had malaria, and all these risks that we have forgotten about. There are no lion between me and the 7 Eleven if I want a donut. But most of our history, we had to balance our desire to get high against the risk of heading out to find something that would do that.
JASON HARTMAN: You know what I want to say about that? I think that’s what’s so dangerous about addictions, especially drug and alcohol addictions, is that the person gets the rewarding feeling without doing any real work for it. In the olden days, they would have to do some real work for it. Of course they’d have to balance the danger of going to get the berries, or the work involved in creating the alcohol and distilling it and so forth. But nowadays, it just—it comes too easily. And that’s a very damaging thing, I think.
HANNAH HOLMES: We are a finely tuned animal that is finely tuned to find these sources of high calories and these other little chemicals that we need. Unfortunately, we have built for ourselves an environment that is too full of that stuff, and it’s too easy to get, so we maintain all the motivation and the drive to capture that stuff. But as you said, there’s no cost. Biologists talk about this stuff in terms of economics. The cost of getting high on anything, or even just getting food, used to be extremely high. You had to spend calories walking around to find it, and then you had to risk your physical health by competing with other animals to get what you want. Now we have zero cost when we want something to soothe our dopamine. There’s no cost to going and getting French fries or cigarettes or a bottle of beer. So, the economics of pleasure have changed in a way that’s absolutely devastating for our brains.
JASON HARTMAN: That’s a very dangerous thing. So, serotonin. You didn’t address that one yet.
HANNAH HOLMES: Serotonin seems to be the social approach or avoid setting. And this is a system that can cause depression and anxiety when it’s out of whack. And oftentimes, those phenomena—the depression or the anxiety—are social responses. They are responses that move a person away from interaction with others. So, serotonin seems to be a bit of a driver that keeps us in touch with others, and we are a social animal; we are, we’re usually dependent on each other, because we’re again, so weak and pale and fleshy and unprotected. We need each other to survive, and serotonin seems to push us into proximity with others, when perhaps deeper parts of our brain are saying no, people are dangerous, and they can give you diseases, and they want to eat your stuff, and pick on you, and that sort of thing. Serotonin may be the chemical that tries to hold us together.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, those drugs like Prozac, and so forth—there’s a whole series of them—those are dangerous, aren’t they? People have committed suicide on them, I’ve heard, and they’re not without their cost, it seems like.
HANNAH HOLMES: No drug is. The problem with these personality disorders is that personality is so complicated that—well, some psychiatrists feel now that there are no too forms of depression that are the same, in terms of what’s going on inside your brain. So if you think about a personality that involves thousands of genes, and many chemicals beyond serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are also involved in depression disorders. It’s kind of remarkable that we’ve found drugs that work at all. The truth is that those drugs work in about half of people who need them, who need some sort of help. And the other half, no. So, it’s a fairly impressive thing we’ve gotten as close as we have to figuring out how to treat these things, considering how complicated they are. But of course, if you aren’t the brain type that those drugs work for, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen when you put that into your head.
JASON HARTMAN: And they can’t tell in advance, can they?
HANNAH HOLMES: No, they can’t. Not yet. Obviously that’s why we keep working with mice. That’s why there are so many millions of depressed mice in the world, is that researchers are always trying to improve the way we treat these disorders.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, Hannah, this is fascinating. I guess I have maybe one more question for you, before you go. Men and women. The genders. The battle of the sexes. Assuming there are a male and a female that are the same—maybe the same level of each of those five personality types your described before. Are they still different in personality?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well—especially one week of the month they’re different.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, okay.
HANNAH HOLMES: And that raises the issue of hormones, which are tremendously influential on personality. The male in general is underwritten by testosterone, which informs his shape, his size, and a fair amount of how his brain works. And the female is underwritten by estrogen, and that determines her shape and size and a fair amount of her personality. So, you don’t actually see males and females with the same general personality types. Females, in general, are reliably more neurotic, which is going to afflict anxiety and worry, and more agreeable, and males are reliably more extroverted. And you might think, why? What is that good for? But remember that again, because of our history, the female got stuck with the job of cooking up babies, and then carrying them around for a couple of years, in the days before infant formula and play cribs, little play pens. So, the entire fate of that kid was dependent on a female holding it for two, three, four years, on her body. It was a huge damper on her ability to feed herself, not to mention her child. And so, females needed the assistance of other females. We couldn’t do it alone. And so, females have this completely different set of hormones and brain chemicals that allow us to be more sociable, more cooperative, more friendly. And you see that clear as day in the personality research, just reliably, the female is more social and less aggressive. And the males did not have that burden of having to carry a child around, and were free to be more independent agents, and pursue their own interests. So you see more independent, aggressive behavior from males. They simply didn’t have the biological need to be as cooperative.
JASON HARTMAN: And males are generally, obviously, more risk taking oriented, and more opportunity oriented, whereas females are more safety oriented?
HANNAH HOLMES: Absolutely. And you see that from politics to investing decisions to who’s gonna get on a bike and ride it down a hill with no brakes. Absolutely universal, and of course it comes down again to this reproductive issue. The female is taking risks for two, essentially. And so, there’s a considerable amount of braking power in her brain that says no, stay safe, stay safe, stay safe, don’t risk. And the male has this really sort of short term orientation when it comes to reproduction, because their role is not necessarily one that takes years to fulfill. They do have the potential to just conceive a kid and then go to the next thing. And so, a higher risk strategy does pay off for males.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. It pays off for everybody, in a sense, because there are more of us here today because of the way each gender is, right?
HANNAH HOLMES: Well, of course, it always comes back to complementarity. Because if there were no females, it wouldn’t matter how risky or safe males were playing it. If females were all real risk-takers, we would lose a lot more babies, and a lot more pregnancies. Biologically we’re doing what has worked for millions of years. Sometimes from our perspective, in the 21st century, it looks a little odd. But when you think about how our species spent most of its history, we’re really doing fine.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. Just one thought on that. Do you believe in that? The sort of…the four year theory? I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it basically says that after the male and female conceive a child, that the male will have deep feelings of love and commitment for about four years, and then he starts to look around again, because the theory being that that’s the time that the woman really needs him to stick around, because she’s gotta carry that kid, as you say. I’m not talking about in her uterus, but in her arms. And then the kid, by age 4, is rather independent, to some extent, and the female can get along better without the male. I’m sure you’ve heard about that evolutionary theory.
HANNAH HOLMES: Absolutely, and it makes a ton of sense. Not to traditional religious thinking, which prefers that humans mate for life, but this is not what we see on the ground, so to speak. What you often see is that a couple comes together for one reproductive round, as you said—three, four, five years—and then it really benefits both parties to try mixing their DNA with a fresh batch from somebody else, because it comes back to diversity. You don’t know if you’re putting your kids into a fabulous environment or a really tough environment, and so, it always is a better bet to have each of your children with a different partner, because that will be the most genetic diversity that you can produce. Giving your genes the best chance of making it through the lottery. So, we see this not just in males, but in females; that people start to shop around after a few years. A smaller version of that same effect is the few days when a female is super fertile. In the modern world, those few days are the days when a modern American woman is most likely to go to a bar without her husband or boyfriend. It’s when males find her most attractive, just based on her photograph. It’s a time when females will take more risks. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, that we are still trying to look for opportunities when the stakes are the highest, for the female. The female is on the hunt, on those few days when she’s fertile.
JASON HARTMAN: When she’s ovulating. Yeah. I just saw a really interesting documentary that said that same thing. So that is fascinating. Hannah, this is fascinating, fascinating stuff. Tell people where they can get your book, and give out your website, so they can learn more.
HANNAH HOLMES: The website has everything on earth, including a USDA approved, 100% geeky scientist personality test, on which a lot of—and a lot of research is based on it, because it’s very tried and true. It takes perhaps 20 minutes to go through it. So, you can link to that through the website, and figure out, really, what kind of mouse you are, and what you’re supposed to be doing. The website also has all of my books and links there. And the book Quirk is just out, and so it should be widely available, unless your local bookstore has recently been converted to a nail salon, which is going around. I don’t think Borders has the book, because Random House won’t send them any until they pay for the other ones—
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, I’ve heard about their bankruptcy, yeah. That’s something.
HANNAH HOLMES: Yeah, so the book is not available at Borders. It tends to be available at Barnes & Noble, and at your local booksellers, and of course through Amazon.
JASON HARTMAN: And so, that’s Quirk, and you’ve got three other books as well. And the website for your site is www.hannahholmes.net. That’s h-a-n-n-a-h-h-o-l-m-e-s.net. And you’ve just got some fantastic stuff there, and check out the books at Amazon.com, at your bookstore or whatever, and Hannah, it’s just been great having you on the show. This is fascinating work. Thank you so much.
HANNAH HOLMES: It’s been a pleasure. Anytime!
[MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor, LLC. exclusively.
Transcribed by David
* Read more from JasonHartman.com
Get Paid to Borrow (Part 2)
Get Paid to Borrow (Part 1)
The Jason Hartman Team
