The Dangers Of Being Too Agreeable - Jordan Peterson

Had situations in my lab where I had underperforming

Graduate students and one of the things that was really awful about that was that it was [really] hard on the high

performing graduate students

You [know] because they felt that even being in the same category as the people who weren't working hard and pulling their weight

Devalued what they were doing you [know] and that's exactly right, and so this is also. Why there's there's a

Conscientiousness trait and an agreeableness trait because conscientious people judge you on your accomplishments, right?

They don't give a damn about your feelings not a bit

It's like are you doing the work or not [whereas] agreeable people think well?

You know your mother is sick

And you know you you've got a bunch of family problems and and we all have to take care of each other

And it's no wonder that you're having a rough time and like you can't say that one of those

Attitudes is correct and the other isn't correct you can't say that there wouldn't be those two dimensions

If there wasn't something correct about both of them

But you can certainly point out that often they conflict

you know and so the demand for for inclusiveness and unity and care and the demand for

[High-level] performance in a hierarchical structure [they're] very different orientations in the world and so

it's complicated for people who are agreeable and conscientious and

actually, I think often that large corporations [and] large large institutions of any sort run on the

Unheralded labor of people who are high in agreeable lifts and high in conscientiousness

And they're disproportionately women in my experience in large institutions has been that if you want to hire someone to exploit

Appropriately no not appropriately if you want to hire someone to exploit productively

You hire middle-aged women who are hyper conscientious?

And who are agreeable because they'll do everything they won't take credit for it

and they won't complain and

that's

Nasty and I think that happens all the time and so one of the things you have to be careful of if you're agreeable [is]

Not to be exploited because you'll line up to be exploited

and I think the reason for that is [because] you're wired to be exploited by infants and

So that just doesn't work so well in that actual world and one of the things one of the things that happens very often in

Psychotherapy, you know people come to psychotherapy for multiple reasons

But one of them is they often come because to agreeable and so what they get is so-called assertiveness training although

it's not exactly assertiveness that's being trained what it is is the ability to learn how to negotiate on your own behalf and

One of the things I tell agreeable people especially if their conscientious is

Say what you think tell the truth about what you think there's going to be things you think that you think are nasty and harsh

And they probably are nasty and harsh

But they're also probably true and you need to bring those [up] to the forefront and deliver the message

And it's not straightforward at all because agreeable people do not like conflict

not at all they smooth the water you know and you can see you can see why that is in accordance with the

Hypothesis that I've been putting forward [you] don't want conflict around infants. It's too damn dangerous

You don't want fights to break out you don't want anything to

Disturb the the relative peace you know and if you're also more prone [to] being hurt physically and perhaps

emotionally you also may be loath to engage in the kind of

High-Intensity conflict that will solve problems in the short term because [a] lot of conflict

it takes a lot of conflict to solve problems in the short term and

You know if that can spiral up to where it's dangerous which it can if it gets uncontrolled it might be safer in

The short term [to] keep the waters smooth and to not delve into those situations

Where conflict emerges the problem with that is it's not a very good medium to long term

Strategy right because lots lots of times there are things you have to talk about

because they're not going to go away and

so partly what you do with agreeable people is you get them to figure out and they have a hard time with this too if

You ask a disagreeable person. What what he wants say or she wants they'll tell you right away

They know like this is what I want and this is how I'm going to get it

But agreeable people especially if they're really agreeable are so agreeable that they often don't even know what they want

because they're so accustomed to living for other people and to finding out what other people want and to trying to make them comfortable and

So forth that it's harder for them to find a sense of their own

Desires as they move [through] life, and that's not

Look, there's situations where that's Advantageous, but it's certainly not advantageous if you're going to try to

forge yourself a career that just doesn't work at all so

All right