This lesson is available on my YouTube channel via video. The transcript is below.
Hey, guys. I know that my lessons can get pretty in-depth and kind of long, so I wanted to start a separate segment called A Little Less. Now this is going to focus on the science behind some of the topics that I bring up at my lessons that maybe I’m not able to expand on or any random topics that I’ve learned or come across that I want to make sure that I share with you.
This way you’ll know where my information usually comes from and gives hopefully some credibility to what I have to say or the conclusions that I draw. If you watched my first lesson, you heard me say: “Our decisions are driven by subconscious motivations, such as repressed or childhood trauma, primal instincts, whether you’re drinking a hot or cold coffee, and by those we deem as authority.”
So this little is going to expand on just that and to bring awareness to the concept of free will and understand that it isn’t as simple that one may think. Understanding these different dynamics can allow one to foster compassion towards each other and provide the knowledge to evaluate what might be driving your own choices, especially when it comes to relationships,
Childhood Trauma
When it comes to childhood trauma, it doesn’t just hurt emotionally, it can also change how our brain works, shaping our adult decisions. Early trauma can actually alter a brain structure and function, leading to physical changes in key areas. One such area is the prefrontal cortex, which helps us make decisions and control ourselves. Trauma can slow or alter its growth, making adults who went through childhood trauma more prone to risk taking or struggling with simple choices. In fact, trauma is extra harmful from age 0 to 3, when the brain is rapidly growing, creating one whole over 1 million new neural connections every second.
It can disrupt the development of neural pathways that control behavior, language, memory, motor skills, impulse control, and executive functions. The limbic system is another crucial part. It includes the amygdala, which handles our emotions and can become overly reactive. And the hippocampus, the key for memory, which can shrink, affecting how we process and recall emotional events. Childhood trauma can make this system overly sensitive or completely dull to stress and fear, causing stronger stress reactions are weak responses to danger and reduced ability to predict consequences.
This imbalance can lead to excited depression and other mood issues impacting our decision making and relationship. Another way that childhood trauma can affect our biological makeup is with epigenetics. Epigenetics is how what we do, what happens to us and where we live can change how our genes work. It doesn’t change the DNA itself, but it turns those genes on and off because the chemical changes around our DNA called methylation.
A key gene in this area is that f k BP five gene. It helps control how we handle stress by affecting the glucocorticoid receptor. This receptor grabs onto cortisol, which is our main stress hormone, and helps us deal with stress. When bad things happen in childhood, it can cause epigenetic changes, making our stress system super sensitive. This high alert mode can stick with us into adulthood and affect how we handle stress and make decisions, especially when we’re under pressure.
Childhood trauma can also mess with the chemicals of our brain. Experts have looked into how bad experiences when we’re younger, change our oxytocin and our dopamine systems. This research shows how early troubles can affect the way we behave and control our emotions as adults. Oxytocin is often called the love hormone or social bonding hormone, and it helps us trust, feel for others and make friends.
But if a child goes through a lot of stress or trauma, it can mess up how the system works. For example, someone who was abused or neglected as a child might have issues with their oxytocin receptors. This can make it hard for them to build relationships, trust people, or deal with stress. Dopamine is a chemical that is part of the brain’s reward system.
It is linked to feeling good, staying motional and enjoying things. If a child faces trauma, it can affect their dopamine pathways. This might make them more likely to use drugs or get hooked on certain behavior or develop mental health problems like depression or schizophrenia. The thought is that changes in the dopamine caused by trauma might lead adults to look for ways to feel better quickly, even if it’s just for a little while.
Now, these two chemicals are super important for getting along with others when they’re mixed up with the stress responses. It can make it really hard to have healthy relationships, problems like not trusting people, being scared of getting too close or misunderstanding social signals can make someone feel alone or have troubles with others. Certain personality disorders, like borderline or antisocial, can impact relationships.
These are often linked to problems with oxytocin and dopamine. For instance, people with borderline personality disorder might have extra sensitive to feeling rejected, which could tie back to issues with the oxytocin system. On the other hand, those with antisocial personality disorder may act impulsively or chase rewards because of dopamine signaling problems. Narcissistic traits might develop as a response to being early emotionally hurt as well.
Now, as or not, has been a lot of in-depth studies related to narcissism and dopamine. There is a suspected correlation, and this can influence how someone makes decision and interacts with others. They may become overly self-centered, have troubles understanding other people’s feelings, or choose what’s good for them in the short term rather than thinking about long term happiness or other people’s emotions.
However, this is not all bad news. Positive change is still possible with therapies aimed at emotional regulations and cognitive behavioral techniques offering hope for brain retraining and better decision thinking. Also, there is something called poly vagal therapy, which helps you regulate your vagus nerve that can also be affected within this. Additionally, addressing epigenetic changes via lifestyle adjustment or therapy may alleviate these long term impacts.
Recognizing childhood trauma is crucial, and some may not even see their past hardships as traumatic. Now there is something called the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire. It was a collaborative creation by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente that evaluated various adverse childhood incidents. Now, about 64% of the U.S. adults reported at least one ace incident, with roughly 17% experiencing four or more.
While details on the eight study findings are extensive, I’m not going to be able to go through all of them here. But it is key to understand future health risks that may be affecting your decision making. So if you would like to know if you’ve been affected by childhood trauma, you can refer to the original ACE questionnaire and the CDC resources.
Primal Instincts
To understand how our basic instincts and today’s choices work together we need to think about human behavior that goes back to when we evolved our basic instincts, guide our actions and believe, even if we’re not always aware of them, they show how our past still affects how we behave. Today. Our ancestors had instincts that helped them survive in a dangerous world. These instincts now show up in complex ways as we act in today’s society, like how we act in groups or deal with changes in society by the choices that we make.
Well, the Asch Conformity Experiment conducted by Solomon Asch from the 1950s showed how much we want to fit in with others. In this study, people had to match line links, but others in the group that were actors gave the wrong answers on purpose. The real person in the group or the participant in the group had to choose to go along with the wrong answer or trust their own eyes and say the right one.
At least 75% of people went along with the group’s wrong answer at least once, even though they could see that it was clearly wrong. This shows how strong our need to belong is and how much we want to avoid being left out. Always needed a part of group to survive, so we tend to go along with others. This shows how our social surroundings can change the way we make decisions and it all comes from our past.
One social psychologist named Dr. John Bargh actually wrote a book on called Before You Know It and How Our Unconscious Mind Affects Our Current Mind Today, focusing a lot on those survival instincts. One study they did actually showed how our survival instincts affect our political views, which was quite fascinating. They had people imagine that a genie gave them a superpower either that it could be that they couldn’t be hurt or they could fly.
This was to the how feeling safe, which is important to us from way back, would change their political views of people who felt they couldn’t be hurt, started to have more open minded liberal views. People who imagined flying didn’t change much. So this means that when we feel safe, we’re more willing to accept new ideas and changes and become more liberal.
But if we feel scared or feel threatened, we might want to make things stay the same. Pushing is more towards that conservative Republican view. This study showed how our need for safety can shape our political opinion. It suggests that our political views might come more from our instinct to survive than from actually careful thinking in today’s time. It also explains why fear can have a big effect on politics, just like President Roosevelt or Obama said about fear, stopping social change and reflect.
The Asch experiment and the study of political views together show how our instincts still change the way we make social and political choices today. By understanding these deep influences. We learn more about how our basic instincts and modern decisions are connected, allowing us to reevaluate where those decisions are really being fostered.
Hot or Cold Coffee
Imagine starting your day with a warm cup of coffee in your hand. Beyond the caffeine boost, this is a simple ritual that might suddenly be shaping your social interactions and decision making in ways that you’ve never actually realized. So research, led by also Dr. John Bargh, has revealed the fascinating connection between physical warmth and social warmth, suggesting that the temperature of your morning beverage could actually influence your feelings towards others and even sway your judgments.
This intriguing concept has its roots in both evolutionary biology and early childhood experiences. Our primal instincts, such as risk aversion and sensitivity to social contact, play a pivotal role in our modern lives. These are not arbitrary biases, but adaptive traits sculpted by the challenges of anxious environments. Parallel to those primal instincts, our early attachments to caregivers or the foundation for trust and social interactions.
That sense of security or insecurity instilled by our relationships with our parents and their responsiveness to our needs from empathy remarkably predicts how we navigate social relationships or interpersonal relationships throughout our life, influencing our capacity for trust and our approach to conflict and intimacy. Drawing on the psychological effects of physical sensation, Dr. Park’s research has demonstrated a direct link between the warmth of a beverage and the warmth of social judgments.
Holding a warm cup of coffee can make us perceive others more positively, fostering feelings of closeness and trust. While a cold beverage might lead us to feel socially distanced or skeptical. The insula, a region of the brain, activates in response to both physical warmth and the emotional warmth of connecting with loved ones. The hard wired connection suggests that our social behaviors and attitudes are influenced by our physical states more than we have assumed.
Individuals with secure attachments tend to show a stronger association between physical and social warmth, reflecting a deep rooted trust in the others that traces back to the reliability of our early caregivers. This highlights how nurture shapes our innate tendencies. Tune into those emotional responses to align with our personal histories. Study alone shows how our evolutionary past and our early attachments continue to echo throughout our everyday decisions and social interactions, often in ways as simple as yet profound to the temperature of what we drink
So the next time you wrap your hands around a warm mug, consider the subtle yet significant ways it might be warming more than just your body. It might actually just be warming your heart and mind toward those around you. Bridging the gap between the physical sensation of warmth and the emotional warmth of social connection.
Authority
We like to think that we make choices on our own, but authority is everywhere, is in our families, our laws, and the way society works. This can mean that we have less freedom than we think because authority guides and sometimes tells us what to do. Authority shows up. In many ways, it’s clear in places like police, courts, government, it also come from things like religious books. Religion itself, all documents the Constitution and social rules that tell us how to act based on past people’s ideas
However, it’s not just about powerful people either. Brands, especially best friends, teachers, bosses, and even famous celebrities can influence us without even noticing someone who we like, such as a crutch or a significant other can change what we want and how we choose things. So what does all of this 30 do to our actions? Studies in the past have shown that authority can make people do things that they know are wrong.
Before, there were strict rules on how to conduct experiments in science. Tests showed that people would hurt others if someone in charge told them to or put them in a position of power or an authority over others. As we figure this out, it’s important to understand how authority plays into the tricky balance between doing what we want and following someone else’s lead.
One very well known study that shows the power of authority over us is the Milgram experiment. In 1961, psychologist Stanley Milgram at the Yale University ran this study during a big moment in history. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, was on trial in Jerusalem for transporting Jews to concentration camps. The trial made people wonder how the Holocaust could happen because it wasn’t just like a few people were involved.
It was thought that up to a million people took part of the killings of Jews, yet no one stopped it. And people asked, Why did you do it? Those involved often said they had no choice. They were just following orders. Milgram, who was Jewish, took the trial very personally, and he wanted to understand what makes people commit genocide.
He asked. Could it be that Eichmann and his helpers in the Holocaust weren’t really just obeying orders, or can we call them accomplices? This experiment has been repeated many times around the globe and the results have been always very consistent. And they could not, even though it could no longer be conducted today scientifically in the U.S., due to the implications of required ethical practices and scientific experimentation.
There are some cases where they’ll be done on reality TV or in other countries. While the experiment went as follows. Milgram placed an ad calling for male participants for a memory experiment at Yale University to be paid $4, which is about 40 bucks today. He didn’t really give details on what would happen or what would be required of the study.
Now, there are three components involved. There was the experimenter who was in charge of the session, which was the authority figure, the teacher, the volunteer that was actually doing the session. And then there was a learner, which was actually an actor pretending to be a volunteer. The participants were told they were to be separated in pairs, where one would be the teacher and won’t be a learner.
And that would be decided by pulling a piece of paper from a hat. The actual participant didn’t really know, though, that both pieces had the word teacher on it. Then the teacher and the learner were taken to adjacent rooms where the learner was strapped into what appeared an electrical chair. The teacher and the learner were then separated so they could communicate, but they could not see each other.
Also in the room was a machine that was set up to look like a voltage, but when she it had a row switches, it started off with a 15 volt increasing by 15 volts each time going up to 450 volts. In addition, they put little messages on top of each of them like light shock, danger, shock, severe shock.
And at the very top of 450 just said x x x. They needed the teacher to believe, though, that this machine was legit, even though it wasn’t. So they decided to give the teacher a 45 voltage shock so they knew what it felt like and to make it seem like it was real, even though that little shock, that little voltage shock was hooked up to a battery within the machine.
Now, the teacher was instructed to read a list of words to the learner to memorize them. Afterwards, the teacher would then read the first word of each pair and then read four possible answers. The learner would have to press the button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would have to administer a shock to the learner with a voltage increase of 15 volt increments for each wrong answer.
The learner was instructed to answer one in three questions, right to make the teacher believe that the learner was actually getting shock. There was a tape recorded integrated with the electroshock generator to play a previously recorded sounds for each shock level. Sometimes the learner would start protesting, demanding for them to stop, or even at times being up against the wall, begging for them to stop.
But then, as the higher the voltages came, the learner eventually fell silent. It went from screaming the pain to just nothing, and the teacher had no idea what’s going on. They could have passed out. They could die. They had no idea. Some learners even actually complained of a heart condition. Each time the teacher would indicate a desire to stop.
The experimenter would give specific verbal prods to respond with it. The teacher would say, I don’t want do this anymore. They would simply respond with, Please continue or Please go on. If they continued to protest, then the experimenters would say, The experiment requires that you continue. If they continue to protest, it would be it is absolutely essential that you continue. If they still continued to protest, the experimenter would say, You have no other choice. You must go on. If the teacher wanted to stop after all, for successful verbal prods, the experiment would stop. Otherwise the experiment would go on until the subject had listed the a maximum of 450 volt shocks three times in succession. How many do you think got to the 450 volt three times in a row?
I understand as well that the subjects were not excited about minutes during these shocks. They were actually displaying various degrees of tension and stress. Some even had nervous laughing fits or seizures. At 100% of the participants paused. The experiment at least once. The question at some said that they would even refund the money because they just didn’t want to participate.
So how many people do you think did? Two thirds of the male participants gave the 415 volt shock three times to a completely silent person. It’s also been done in different cities, different situations and over time till the same results, there is even a meta analysis done on the repeated performance results of this experiment. For those that don’t know what a meta analysis is, taking all the research that has been done on it and compiling the data together and coming up with the answer, they found that the percentage of participants who inflict the fatal voltages ranged from 28 to 91% on average.
In the US it was 61% and non-US was 66%. Now there was some compliance decrease when it came to variations of the experiment, including like distance between the teacher and the learner. So when the teacher was physically closer to the learner compliance decrease in one variation, they had the teacher actually hold the learner’s arm onto the shock plate, which only 30% of the participants completed the experiment, but still that’s 30%.
There was also a decrease of compliance of the experimenter was farther away. For example, like there was a 21% decrease when the experimenter or the person in charge of the study was conducting the experiment via the phone, the teacher would just pretend to continue, even though they actually weren’t. He also combined the study with conformity when the participants were joined by one or two additional teachers, which made a huge difference. When two additional teachers refused to comply, only 1% of the participants completed the study.
One variation which guys fricken kills me because some people hypothesize that the Milgram subjects may have suspected that the victims were faking it, so they wanted to repeat the same experiment with a real victim. And they used a puppy. Now it was given real even though the experimenters claimed that it was harmless electric shocks. So teachers were not aware of that. And still the findings were similar to those of the Milgram experiment. Seven out of 13 male subjects on all of the 13 female subjects obeyed, even though many subjects did show high levels of stress. Some were even weepy that they were causing pain to this puppy.
Now, I thought about this for a while. Like, what would I do? I’m not going to lie. I probably would shock people. I’m just being honest. I probably would have gotten up to that least 45 mark because I experienced to myself. But I am confident to say because of my 18, which is a rejection of authority, I would have stopped. But I’ll tell you right now, if I knew about the puppy, I probably would have got Black Widow on their asses and kicked all the experiments but grabbed the puppy and ran the fuck out of the room. I mean, come on, I’m a dog, Mom. You don’t mess with puppies.
And some maybe say, Well, that was in the fifties and sixties and seventies doesn’t really count. So I mean, today people wouldn’t be like that because we’re more aware. Well, guess what? As for today’s time, well, approved scientific variations in different countries and also on reality TV shows that showed up in the 2011 still they showed the same results. Now we know that there’s been a decrease of empathy and the rise of narcissism. So I can’t really imagine that if we did the study today, it would be any better
These are just a few of the variations when it comes to making choices. So how do you really know what’s influencing your choices? You might not be aware because our unconscious mind does really drive a lot of our choices.
So what’s next? Well, how do you gain free will? First, become aware. Think about how you’re making your decisions and the choices that you’re making and what is actually influencing. Second, gain knowledge. Third, tap into your power. Not a quick fix, but it can teach your brain. You can teach your brain to resist traumas, impact or how to control your reactions to things.
If your choices are hurting you or others, you might need to understand why shift your thinking and try new choices. I mean, think about it. If the same choices keep bringing sadness, wouldn’t the opposite possibly lead to happiness? Now, if you’re human design one other way to do it. You can check out your type and learn about your authority.
Human Design actually aims to help you make choices that fulfill you. So if you’re a manifest or feeling angry, a generator or a manifesting generator who’s been frustrated, a projector, who’s been bitter, or a reflector who’s always disappointed, you’re likely making poor choices and ignoring your true authority. The beauty of human design is that once you are aware and you can start deconditioning, it paves the way for your inner authority to bring you peace, satisfaction, success and joy
The choice is simply up to you.