Emotional Ignorance with Dean Burnett

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, podcaster, pundit, science communicator and comedian Dr Dean Burnett. Previously employed as a psychiatry tutor and lecturer at the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education, Dean is currently an honorary research associate at Cardiff Psychology School, as well as a Visiting Industry Fellow at Birmingham City University.

Dean is currently a full-time author, previously known for his satirical science column ‘Brain Flapping‘ at the Guardian, which ran from 2012 to 2018 he went on to write his first (the hugely successful) book ‘The Idiot Brain‘. He has since written ‘The Happy Brain’, ‘Why Your Parents are Driving You Up The Wall’ and his most recent book ‘Emotional Ignorance’.

Referenced during this episode:

The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To (2017)

The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why (2018)

Emotional Ignorance: Misadventures in the Science of Emotion (2024)

 Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
 Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:06 How do you describe yourself?
• 6:23 How did you get into this work?
• 9:35 Can you tell us why you wrote your latest book ‘Emotional Ignorance’?
• 15:25 You start your latest book in ancient Greece where thought leaders of the time were first to acknowledge emotion as a concept with scientific validity.
• 20:44 We often miss two things when discussing emotional intelligence, firstly creating the space to allow people to experience their emotions and secondly what emotions are actually for. Where has your research taken you in your thinking?
• 25:34 Can we talk about how emotions and motivations work together?
• 32:00 While you were writing the book, did you start to see your motivations change, or perhaps you understood them differently as a result of your reflections writing the book?
• 35:39 Many of us think about our emotions in a binary way where positively felt emotions are good, and negatively experienced emotions are bad. What can we do to become more open to a wider breadth of emotions?
• 41:35 Can we talk about decision making?
• 47:05 What role do emotions play in our ability to encode and recall events?
• 51:41 How do we make this work for us?
• 55:30 What is humour solving for from an emotional perspective?
• 59:55 How does your understanding of emotions help us to navigate the new technologies that are shaping the world?
• 1:03:54 Do you have a take away for leaders that you would like to see them consider, adopt or challenge themselves in what you’ve come to understand around emotions?

Transcript

Jean Gomes: 0:03

How you feel is to a huge extent who you are. But how often do you pause to really consider? How are you feeling? And even if you ask the question, what answer do you get? Most of us have a very limited vocabulary, somewhere between seven to eight words to describe how we're feeling and most of which aren't even emotions, but words to describe our physical state, tired, overwhelmed, busy. When our guest confronted his feelings following his father's death, he realized how limited his understanding was. As an academic, he decided he needed to find out more. His starting point was the honesty that he wasn't dealing with emotional intelligence, but emotional ignorance, which became the title of his wonderful new book, tune in for a great conversation with Dean Burnett.

Scott Allender: 1:16

Hey folks, welcome to the evolving leader, a show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront our biggest challenges. I'm Scott Allender.

Jean Gomes: 1:27

And I'm Jean Gomes.

Scott Allender: 1:28

How are you feeling today Mr. Gomes?

Jean Gomes: 1:30

Oh a mixture of things. I am feeling really excited for this conversation because I really enjoyed the the author's book. And you know, just the, the person behind the book I'm really getting, I'm looking forward to getting to know and I'm also anticipating a week in Florence next week for my holidays. So I need that. So how are you feeling?

Scott Allender: 1:52

I'm feeling I'm feeling a breath of emotions today. Because it's been. It's been a pretty intense time. So I'm feeling a little bit fatigued, but I'm feeling also kind of playful and kind of excited because I'm very interested in our guest today as well and all the things we're going to talk about, because today we're joined by Dr. Dean Burnett. Dr. Burnett is a neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, podcaster, pundit, science, communicator, comedian, and numerous other things depending on who's asking and what they need from him. So previously, employed as a psychiatry tutor and lecturer at the Cardiff University Center for Medical Education Dean is currently an honorary research associate at Cardiff psychology school, as well as a visiting industry Fellow at Birmingham City University. He is currently a full time author, previously known for his satirical science column, brain flapping at The Guardian, which ran from 2012 to 2018, with over 16 million views, and this led to his internationally acclaimed best selling book, The idiot brain, which has sold hundreds of 1000s of copies and been a best seller in nations like Canada and Mexico. And his second book, The Happy brain was published in May 2018. With a similarly large readership as his first book, and his most recent book, which I'm particularly eager to speak with him about today is called'Emotional, Ignorance'. Dean, welcome to The Evolving Leader.

Dean Burnett: 3:30

Thank you for having me, Scott. Jean. lovely to be here. Virtually.

Jean Gomes: 3:33

Dean, welcome to The Evolving Leader. How you feeling today?

Dean Burnett: 3:36

I'm okay. So I currently work from and am in my outside office in my garden. Lot of grass cutting going on, we've got a bit of smell of dry weather. So apparently that hay fever I had like three months when I was 12 has come back in the last few hours, which makes a great recording excellent prospect. Sometimes you got to think give him sabotaged by life, then they're just gonna go with it. So if I sneeze randomly, that's what that is. Other than that, ploughing on, ploughing on, all good.

Jean Gomes: 4:04

Okay, well, before we dive into your work, and so on, let's imagine that we're in a dinner party. We don't knew each other. We're not talking with people in your space. And I say, hi, Dean, what do you do? What would you say?

Dean Burnett: 4:18

I guess it depends on the dinner party, I suppose. And on the on the guest list depends who was interested. But yeah, I tend to say I am an author now, because that's the most accurate done the most simple thing to say because it is the truth and it's something people recognize. But no, if I do, it's a conversation carried on and there was actually more interest I would say I'm a neuroscientist and author or neuroscience author, even though a lot of it right does cover a wider remit. There was a lot of psychology in there. A lot of physiology, a lot of them social psychology, sometimes sociology, it's all part of the same tapestry of brain based matters. But I think one thing people don't really think about is that when you say you write about the brain What it does, that does cover pretty much everything humans do and have ever done. So is your wide remit. So you can cover a lot of stuff. But yeah, neuroscience author is my general go to for casual discussions, such as the one you've put to me.

Jean Gomes: 5:17

When you're in this dinner party, let's just take it a little bit further, what's the most kind of unusual question you might get from somebody trying to figure out who you

Dean Burnett: 5:27

Oh, yeah. I guess, not unusual. But the sort of the are? question, which people think is straightforward, but is very sort of noodle answer is like, how did you get into this? Or like, or how do I get into it if someone who wants to follow a similar path, and I cannot really give them a straightforward answer, because this isn't something I plan to do like, then sit down at age 20. And think, right, my 10 year plan, my 15 year plan is to move into this space and become a go to person for this. It was very organic, but very sort of unintentionally. I am not someone who comes from a traditional academic background, I have never, I've never immersed in that world growing up. So I was figuring out as I went along, once I got into it, just by sheer interest in ignorance was a big part of my success, I suppose I didn't know I shouldn't be doing stuff. So ended up doing it. And it sort of paid off.

Scott Allender: 6:24

How did you kind of find yourself? And I'm fascinated, like, how did you come to get into this work? Accidentally?

Dean Burnett: 6:31

Yeah, like I said, I was doing my PhD after various iterations of the attempts that science, jobs and qualifications and stuff, I got a PhD place, which I was very pleased about because I thought, at first I thought I wouldn't do a PhD because I would first start remember to do something as simple as a levels that learn anything more. So I didn't know how far I could take it off, I should take it. But I was always wary of that clip together, sort of cliche of the perpetual student, or someone who never wants to get their hands dirty. So I don't know what to say, I'd like to do a PhD, I think I could do one that'll get an actual job between, you know, well, between them and PhD, but I didn't know if it would be a permanent thing. So I had a look at the science job. And I was based in Cardiff, so to work in embalming the cadavers for the medical school, which it was, as far as get your hands dirty goes, I got ticks up box very, very thoroughly. Yeah, so I ended up doing that, then I wanted to do something different is obviously becoming an oblique Morbi person, because he would. And that's when I finally took the plunge and tried some stand up comedy, which I always wanted to try and never had the guts to do. But like I said, people, when you spend all day every day handling dead bodies, your threshold for what you've put up with changes drastically. So I thought, no matter what my big fear was, I'll do a stand up, set, no laugh. But then I thought, well, this is still breathing, that's a step up really, for my day job. So I lost all fear of doing it, they did it, they went okay. And it became a sort of thing of mine. But then I realized I prefer writing the humor to actually deliver on it. I was like, I'd like to do Saturday. Oh, that's good. Now I got to tell someone that was sort of became a bit of an odd thing to be annoyed about. And then there's gonna be blogging was a thing with AD, you could just write stuff and put it out there and maybe find an audience. So as I'm doing that, and I tried to combine science and humor, because that was something I was sort of, to my interests if people said you should never combine. But again, a very ignorant of the world. Why not? Is it a rule of law cannot do that, I'm gonna go who's gonna stop me Why is totally consequence free, I sort of started to do satirical science stuff, which found a bit of a niche audience and then ended up writing a piece for The Guardian of the similar vein, and they picked up my work and I became one of their most popular bloggers, and then someone, an agent reached out and said, like your work, the blog guardian, definitely we're writing a book. And I had, but in the same way that people think of owning a jetpack, like a hobby nice, not gonna happen. Idle daydream. But then it became a thing so yeah, quickly fun to play. There's much better to communicate in neuroscience talking about it than actually doing it. Because they're going to didn't have the experience of the drive to be a sort of armchair focus researcher. But as a result of just trying new things, and said diversify and ended up in this very strange space I found myself in but like I say, it wasn't planned, it was just a take advantage opportunities made blundering around ended up providing me so there we go. And I'm not trying to do it again. But I'm sure that other routes into it, which other people should take.

Scott Allender: 9:35

I love it. So we really enjoy there's a lot to cover, but I'm gonna jump into your new book because we really enjoyed that. And it's not a usual tone of a neuroscientists, which our audience already has an appreciation for just listening to your, your story of how you came to be a writer and get into your profession. So and the subtitle gives us a particular clue around its unusual tone, which is misadventures. In the science of emotion, but it does start with the very sad loss of your father and your recognition that perhaps you weren't fully able to maybe understand completely what you were feeling. So can you can you take us to the origin story of this book and why you wrote it? Yeah,

Dean Burnett: 10:20

I mean, it's like my own career to hold. It's a very sort of convoluted origin story, I did plan on writing a far more upbeat, straightforward book than I ended up producing, came off the back of my book, The Happy brain, like you mentioned earlier on my second book, and I've done the usual promotional tours, and events and people come to me afterwards. And people liked the book code. And I have no complaints about that. But one question I kept getting asked was, why do I care about happiness when any other emotion which isn't as complimentary as they think it is? I mean, it's some it's basically saying, why'd you write this book, I'd read a different book. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for that. That's not as marvelous. But don't happen often enough that I realized there clearly is interest out there in emotions in the wider context as Milton as a whole. So I thought what I could do, because I've been led to believe that emotions myocytes emotions is a lot more established, a lot more accepted. And it really is. I thought I could I'll just write a breezy easily accessible book about emotions. I could have one chapter about fear one chapter about anger do funny asides of of that funny analogies explained the neuroscience of it. 10 chapters, or each episode where many emotions like find job done, that's a perfectly acceptable book of my sort. And my publishers agreed, shook hands, signed the contracts more specifically, and went off to write it. And that's when I sort of started to realize, oh, actually, the science of motions is far far more complex and nebulous and hotly argued that I've been led to believe it was like just an area I haven't delved into much, because in main neuroscience where I was delving into like behavioral neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, emotions are just sort of acknowledged, but not really explored it just like, and then emotional reaction occurs. Which led me to believe that they were in order to stop that's why they accepted, we all know that works. This is the important stuff over here, but it's not that it's more like a almost like a conspiracy of silence. Look, we know that they don't have their work, so they just not, this is not look at them. And then we look, we're all gonna agree yes, that we're just gonna ignore those because that's too complicated. And and that's what I ended up sort of having to delve into. And the more I researched it, to find the basic fundamentals, like one of your former guests, Dr. Richard Firth got to be here, I asked him about it, I said, I can't find a separate definition of emotions. And he was laughing in my face at the audacity of even thinking I could find one when no one has so far. And no, we can't even find the basic definitions right to the whole simple isn't going to happen. So don't explore different avenues to reformat the book several times. And then was on the verge of thrown in the towel thinking I can't write this, I can't promise you I promise to do when the pandemic hit, and I thought, Oh, I'm stuck home alone. Everyone know when I'm, no, can't do anything, I'll do much and everyone's up to the air. So just keep plodding on with it. And then see I'm I was well set up to write at the pandemic, psychology, mental health, go to expert. And that was a big ish area at the time. And like, I was already working from home before it was fashionable. So I thought this is going to be okay for me, I'm going to be set up properly. But then my father contracted the virus early and passed away within a month that it was completely unexpected. He wasn't even 60. And it was such a time that I had such uncertainty and isolation. So all the usual mechanisms of coping with grief and things which help you get work through it. were denied to me because I was a home alone with my wife and two small children. And even then they couldn't just like let it out, which I know is the healthiest approach. But I have two small children who have no one else in the world right then, and no access to anyone. And I had to sort of put on the brave face and suppress it as best I could to not traumatize my family, my family all I've got at the moment and ended up realizing that all I have at the moment is a head full of powerful emotions, and a contract to write a book about emotions so that we know what this seems like. For what for wanting anything else to do. I should combine these things I can use my own neurological insight may experience my knowledge to explore my own emotions pin my own psyche to the court boredom. Okay? Why am I feeling this? What is this? In my head? What is it? Why is it happening? What's the benefit of this in the evolutionary sense in this mental health sense, the well being sense? Why do we go through all this powerful stuff when we lose someone because it can be debilitating and lasts months? It seems counterproductive, but clearly it must happen for a reason. We just make this stuff up and using that as the hook is what sort of power My whole journey through the world of emotions I find answers my own experiences. And no, I think at the end of it, I did sort of combat my emotional ignorance. That is the the book ended up being titled, because that was that was better was trying to do. I'm ignorant, but why I'm feeling this why I'm going through this, as are many people? How do I tackle that? How do I address the difference and that is what the book ended up being.

Jean Gomes: 15:25

And you start the book with in ancient Greece and kind of show how the kind of thoughts from Plato and Aristotle and others kind of set them the kind of way in which we look at it and that mental got passed down the generations through to Thomas Brown and Darwin and right up to almost present day before. People like Lisa Feldman, Barrett and others kind of challenged it. Can you take us a little bit through kind of where that kind of origin story and how it manifests itself in modern thought? Yeah,

Dean Burnett: 15:59

I want to clarify for the listeners, they didn't go to ancient Greece, it's like a metaphorical thing. If I had that ability, I would be writing about this. So good. By the way, I've got a time machine. So that's all the old folks on that show, because that's more of an achievement. But then, yeah, it's sort of like the Greek stoics. Like the way the name stoicism comes from, they were again, this is Dr. Richard, we've got the point me in this direction, the first to accept emotions or non emotions as a concept with scientific validity, as in they were very, the whole meaning of stories that comes from them. They only thought things which had a tangible presence in the real world were worth studying were actually genuine, and things which were irrational or illogical or not real would be avoided. And that's a whole school of that, that sort of puritanism that hyper rationalism, like they're like proto Vulcans, but they acknowledge that emotions were real tangible things, because they recognize that when you have an emotion, you have a physical response with no your face changes your skin flushes your body expresses things in a certain way. So clearly, they have some sort of biological form and presence. And that was like the key observation, which kicked off the whole study of emotions as a as a concept in their own right. I mean, they weren't called emotions and their own passions and things like that. They said to you, but they sort of acknowledged that emotions really irrational, so they should be suppressed or ignored. And you want to achieve the state of apathy, which is like no, completely independent of emotions, and only have a rational thought. Sort of like a more scientific version of enlightenment, I suppose, when you distinguish the self, of course, with the ancient Greek society, ended eventually, sadly. But these these views and the values were incorporated into more religious ideologies, which occurred at the time, especially proto Christianity, like the whole idea of sex is bad, and motions are bad, this all still explain sexual and before procreation, because otherwise, it's an emotional process, which makes no sense. Logically, I mean, we don't think that now but at the time, so it was incorporated into the more that the Roman cultures on the later Christian countries who became a persistent thing, of their committee should always suppress your emotional desires. Because that's, those are bad. But it became mixed up with religious ideology of religious thought and stuff until pretty much until like the 19 century, Edinburgh lectures, and the philosophers like Thomas Brown, and so forth, who decided to like try to wrestle the mantle of emotional study away from the philosophers and the religious types and put it back into the realms of psychology and science say these are, these are real things which happen in your brain, like thoughts, like, senses, and emotions are a part of the human neurological makeup. Again, Charles Darwin did a whole book about the interaction with emotions and facial expressions. So Darwin himself says a lot of influence. And of the moment when emotions came from their neck, the word to be applied to all these different, not conscious thoughts, but feelings sensations we have in our own bodies and our minds. So that sort of became that's when, like, the scientists wrestled the control of emotions back from the more esoteric worlds. But there's still a lot of problems with that, because there's still no accepted definition of emotion which all scientists agree on. I think I found the one in the study, which tried to combine all the different definitions into one, which made some sort of super definition which is even more confusing. Well, the definitions which when you read it, you do it, you know, less than when you started, certainly, I wasn't asking for us before I read this as I am now so that it has the opposite effect that so yes, so that's part of the ongoing thing and we have the ball Ekman and baritone adds and flows and like schools of thought currently, we're in a very much in fundamental emotions versus a constructivist viewpoint. This one argues that emotions are inbuilt. We have primary emotions, which all emotions are formed from, we all have like seven or eight doors, five emotions and do ask, much like we have five fingers on the channel, we just happen to learn that. Whereas now there's more of a constructivist viewpoint, it says actually know what we have is affecting the raw building blocks emotions, and they are constructed on the fly in the moment, depending on what's happening in our brain learns to do that all the time. And that's why emotions always refined and so slippery and so hard to pin down. And those are the sort of dominant schools of thought at the moment. And I'm sure there'll be others along eventually,

Scott Allender: 20:44

I'm, I'm supremely interested in where these different strands of thought, in psychology are taking you and habit and where have they taken you. So you know, I do emotional intelligence coaching. And there's two things often missing from the conversation or even the framing around this idea of building emotional intelligence. One is creating the space for people to actually experience and feel their emotions, right, there's a lot of tendency to want to bypass it. But also, what's what I find, you know, almost completely omitted from the conversation is this idea of what are emotions for? Like, why did why do we have them? So where did Where does your research and where as your study of these different vantage points, where's that landed you in your thinking? Um,

Dean Burnett: 21:31

I think my own sort of experiences sort of been colored a bit by the fact that, like, you mentioned it when I was working in the psychiatry program as a tutor lecturer. I inherited a lot of lectures from other people who went to towards the course before I got there. And since moved on, one which is about emotions, which focus on ones primarily on the primary emotions theory that when we have inbuilt emotions, we all have the same ones. They expressed during various combinations. And so I thought that was the I thought that was stablished, I thought that was that was ever knew that was what it was. So discovering the more constructivist viewpoint that made it sort of more intriguing, like find out to be discriminated with two separate arguments is one thing to be presented with one that you just take his take on trust. And then suddenly, you're not, you're not comfortable anymore, it gives it a different slant. So I'm, I'm more interested in a constructivist viewpoint these days. And I do think this idea that your brain creates emotions on the fly as when needed. It sounds counterintuitive to so many people, because we all have such profound emotional experiences, we all recognize them back, they could all be created, the moment doesn't seem plausible. But it does reflect a lot of how the brain works generally mean, there's a lot of evidence just that memories themselves are like constructed in the moment from the different memory traces scattered throughout your brain, like individual elements are saved. And the combination is recreated when you trigger those particular elements. And that's why memories are also constantly updated and refined and tweaked over time. Or like your visual system, the fact that you have this rich, diverse vision is great. But it also comes from just like slow money trickles of neural neural impulses from your retinas. So your brain is doing a lot of polishing a lot of a lot of on the fly, refining visual information in interpreting a great deal. So the senses are also on your brain going, let's create this here and now in the moment. So there is a lot of stuff in the brain which works like that. And I do think there's more to that argument than people perhaps except because I think the you know, the primary emotions idea has been dominant for quite a while. And it has been, I wouldn't say misused to a certain extent after intentionally, but it's been taken on trust to the point where it's becoming an issue now, like there's so many corporations and companies, which have this idea that you can recognize the basic emotions in your employees respond accordingly, or like, it makes people seem too simple. Like there's a lot of facial recognition software now, which reads emotions, which isn't a thing you can read trust software to do when people struggling to do it well enough to have context without understanding the person they did, the machine can do it. So you can read a customer's face go they'd like this product because they are happy now they don't like this product, because they are sad now is massive oversimplification. And I'd rather have unhelpful twisting of the natural science itself. You know, whether or not that science is completely valid is a whole other issue. And yeah, I do think there are many, many sort of oversimplifications of emotions in the wider world, like the business and corporate world because you hear people go into interviews and having like personality tests to say like, oh, you're, you're a nice Briggs or something or like you've got to, you've got to find your temperament or you have to be controlled in this way. People just don't work like that emotions are aren't that predictable or established, they are far more in flux far more malleable and always changing. And that makes people with complex too. And I don't think that's really given enough. Credence as a as an idea, it just makes no it makes working harder makes big deal. Wikidot harder. But that doesn't mean it will doesn't exist to make things easy for you. This is just how we are.

Jean Gomes: 25:34

I really love that definition you have in the book of motivation being the cognitive energy that makes us want to perform certain actions and behaviors. Can we talk about how this is a huge topic? How emotions and motivation work together, particularly for Scott and his quest to avoid eating cookies?

Scott Allender: 25:54

I like cookies.

Jean Gomes: 25:56

You need to avoid I'm telling you.

Dean Burnett: 26:12

Average love and all podcasters for some reason. Yeah, well, emotions and motivations are heavily intertwined, I think saying the book, they come from the same Latin word and move it to move. So they both acknowledges having this sort of sort of dry, they make us do things that make us either to think or want to do things. And there are lots of lots of different levels of motivation. Now there's the basic fundamental motivation, which comes from reflexes and instincts, you know, you touch a hot stove, you are immediately motivated to move your hand away, it happens much faster than in the realm of conscious thought even. It's also all hypothalamic stuff, you know, when something happens, body's compelled to go elsewhere. But because human brain is so massively complex and advanced and has so many layers of function, you know, there's the Basic Instinct is the emotional aspects of like the sort of the more mammal limbic regions, and then we have the abstract thinking, the the neocortex, the consciousness, the forward planning abilities. So because humans can simulate humans can prophesize we can predict and work towards certain actions. So we are capable of things like delayed gratification. Like the COVID example, I think it gives in the book, like as in, you may see a cookie or a cupcake or something, which Oh, that's very tasty, I want to eat that. And that is a basic motivation to biological stimulus. Because biologically rewarding things presented to you you want to consume and go get it and engage in that is a motivation. But no, that's sort of kind of low down fundamental motivation. Whereas above that, you have long term plans, they will know I am training for a marathon, I want to be an athlete, I want to get in shape for some of me Beachbody, whatever your motivation is, involves an abstract simulation of a potential outcome, your ideal self. So you have the current self, your ideal self, between the two you have what people find is your auto self, are ordered to turn my current self to my ideal self, I ought to do this like ought to do that. A lot. That means turning down immediate rewards. So like, Well, I do want to cookie, the cookie, cupcake, whatever it is, but I don't want to gain weight, I do want to look good on the beach, or whatever, whatever your impetus is. So I'm going to avoid that even though my biological motivation is saying not to. And it's a constant sort of balance yin and yang between these warring emotions. I mean, it can happen on the same level to like, example, use a book is delicious cupcake there, I want to go towards it. There's a cupcake is on the other side of like a shark tank. I don't want to go into it to my self preservation. It overrules immediate gratification with a treat. So how big is the shark? And it's hard to say waters murky, because rickety, so there's uncertainty as well, which flows things off. Could be a leopard shark could be like one of those, like tiny ones could be a great way to the uncertainty itself, but also motivate you, but also curiosity can motivate you know, you want to go there, I need to know what kind of shots because I'm a big fan and fish, and so on and so on. So there's all these different conflicting impulses and like a lot of breed is that not really it's like multiple things happening. And one of them winning out. So like, you have your executive function like the frontal part of your brain, which is analyzing all the things going on right now and saying, Okay, what should I be doing right now? And it's something which you work on, which do all the development thanks to emotions, like you have the emotional impulses, your brain needs time and practice to step in front of those funds, just like bring them in, pull them back and say, like, I want to do this emotionally. I know I shouldn't rationally and the two We're also constantly in flux in sort of, just because sometimes the most reaction is the correct one is a lot of emotions are the precursors of thought. In many senses, they are actually guiding, even like the majority of our thinking because conscious thought objective analysis, rationalization is perhaps the most impressive complex thing we can do. But it's very demanding process. And it takes up a lot of brain power to do that. So we can't do that for every single decision we make you walk down the street, you can't stop and think, objectively, rationally, when every single thing that comes into effect, do I cross the road? Do I walk there? Do I look in this direction? Do I step over this, these are all things that happen subconsciously, which means your emotions are sort of guiding you more than anything else. And the sub conscious decision making is the most important stuff, the urgent stuff, the novel stuff, the uncertain stuff. So your emotions are engaged in what you're thinking anyway, which means they are the ones that are making you do things. And when you have the ability to control them orderly, to regulate them better, you're more in control of yourself. And that's something which we learned how to do in our teens, like teens are more prone to risky behaviors and sort of immediate gratification because their brains has been updated, refined, matured, and emotion systems mature faster, because they are an older, more fundamental, meaning less complex, objectively, relatively part of the brain. So like your motion system is online and hyped up when you're looking at being a 13 or 14. But your more complex brain regions, which normally control and regulate your emotions, is still being worked on, it's the need to practice doing that. So when your teen you are a bit more reckless, or a bit more sort of impulsive, and you feel things much more powerfully, that motivates you to do behave in certain ways to do certain things which your adult older parents don't necessarily agree with, because they have a different emotional range. And therefore your notions of motivations have a huge overlap, and a lot of interaction.

Jean Gomes: 32:00

This whole thing around emotions and motivations such as central experience to us. And I'm wondering when why you're writing the book, was there anything for you? Where you started to see your motivation change? Or you understand it differently as a result of the kind of reflections you did writing the book?

Dean Burnett: 32:19

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think it's very much revamped and to overhaul by, appreciate appreciation of emotions may acknowledgement of them, because I had fallen in the trap that many scientists do that emotions, if not bad, are things to be sort of suppressed or at least avoided. Because of the scientific method. With research, a lot of it is set up offensively to prevent emotions getting involved, because obviously, there's lots of things about science people recognize but it is still the work of humans, or people or individuals who will have emotions. Certainly when you are expected to run an experiment for like, three years. And your career depends on the outcome. Can you say you will be emotionally disinterested you cannot do not listen, even if you mean to be it's very hard to completely shut that down. So much of the scientific method like double blinding procedures and peer reviewed stuff, it is all there to total certain or lesser or greater degree, prevent the emotions of interfering. No scientific publications have to be non emotional. And say, here are the facts. Here is the data we produced here. The methods we used here are conclusions based on these facts. You can't have emotions, in science or in scientific procedures. But I think that's sort of like sometimes taken too far they do the scientists can't be emotional or emotional, because they clearly are. I think I mentioned the book like when you're a scientist in the modern world, you have to be very, very driven to do things to conduct an experiment, which may last five years which takes all your time and effort energy and may produce the result is useless to you. And chase the day and chase the data chase the grand chase of research across the world and if you want scientists are meant to be very, very smart people as that's the stereotype. I mean, I've met a few which would challenge it but that doesn't matter. But you know, it's that's the that's the stereotype. But think of it completely logically as scientists are meant to do apparently is maybe very logical, rational people. Why would you do that? Why would you dedicate your life to something which may never happen, which may not make a difference, which evolves you pursue an immense mentor personal sacrifice, women's time sacrificing and mixed family life Hard Mix, career progression hard? I know which isn't essentially that financially rewarding. Why would you do all that? If you were nothing but a logical person, you wouldn't you know, you did a much easier job, but you can apply your intellect to scientists become scientists because they invested because they are emotionally driven to do it. And it's an emotional fact that you wouldn't have science without emotion. And yeah, I was very much really there was a camp of, Oh, if only we could separate So emotions when you could shut them off and be like Mr. Spock, and it'd be much easier, you know, and that's not the case at all. I mean, they are a vital part of how we think how we operate how we function. And I have very much come around to acknowledging and appreciating that and sort of explaining that whenever the opportunity arises, because it's just a common, it's pretty much an online thing as well, like they will I don't, I don't use emotions. I only use logic and reason for my arguments like you don't, you can't it's not something people are capable of doing. You care about is subtly getting involved in online stranger at all, to you, emotions are clearly a bit of vital and unavoidable part of our thinking. Now, the sooner we accept that probably get more done.

Scott Allender: 35:39

Talk to us about our tendency to think of emotions in a binary way, right sort of good emotions are positively felt emotions are good, negatively experienced emotions are bad. I mean that that's not the case, right? We tend to want to move away from negatively experienced emotions, but they're filled full of information right and usefulness to us. Can you talk to us about that sort of tendency and what you've learned about that, and what we what we can do to be more open to the full breadth of our emotional experience?

Dean Burnett: 36:12

Yeah, totally. Well, that's a particular once a bugbear, but it's a it's a topic, they will I go back to whenever I can, because it's, I think it's one that is really important that you bring up and I mean, in the scientific tense there are, there are positive negative emotions, like the the valence of it do is is it negative is a positive, does it make us feel better or make us feel worse, that's like the scientific classification or the motor experience. But that's not to say that these ones are bad, these ones are good, you're just saying how they make us feel. And there is sort of the obsession, that's the wrong word. But there is a sort of tendency in the modern world, particularly in the realm of social media and stuff to really emphasize the positive, to the extent that the negative is often seen as unhelpful or disruptive or harmful in some way. It basically the whole toxic positivity movement, they will live love, laugh and stuff, these are all you can sort of on the surface is all perfectly fine sentiment, you know, like, it's nice, but there's a deeper process at work, which is unhelpful, this idea that negative emotions must be avoided, and you can choose to suppress them and you should, is really unhealthy, it's really bad for well being, because then we have this full emotional range that our brains are capable of, and all of them are a vital part of our makeup, it is impossible to have a life where nothing bad ever happens. And even if it did, would leave you with sort of an emotionally stunted person. Like the analogy I always use is like going to the gym every day, and only ever exercising the left leg. He did that for a couple of weeks ever. Next big strong left leg, and the rest of your body would be all misshapen and lopsided. And you fall over and walk in circles. And that's unhelpful. You've, you've done the work, but you haven't done the right work. Same as suppressing negative emotions, isn't healthy, it's not good. And that's six males export the book, like it's something else, which changed my outlook, because I always used to be sort of like confused and sort of almost like laugh at the fact that people like and embrace art forms creativity and entertainment, which induce negative emotions, sad films, and horror movies and angry music. These are all very, very popular formats. And on paper, they are types of expression and often entertainment, which induce negative emotions. So you should avoid them. But logically, people wouldn't like them. But that's not how it works. You know, when someone makes you cry in a family, when an Oscar they make you laugh, they just get a pat on the head and told to go to netflix. And that's an innovative, a different process. So clearly, there is some sort of deeper meanings around here. And I realized, well, one of the findings from the book is that when you indulge in these sad movies and films, for example, what you're doing is you're you're allowing yourself to experience sadness in a safe and controllable context. And that means your own sadness from your life, your brain has a chance to process it because the way the brain works the system in the brain which processes emotional experiences, which integrate them into our system and allows us to deal with them and cope with and file them away is the same system which produces emotions, so you can't process emotions if you don't feel them. But what sad films and angry music does it allows us to feel these emotions in a safe controlled context, which doesn't cost us anything. So if you're watching a sad film The Ukraine along with what's happened to the characters, but you can turn off any time. It doesn't mean we actually affected your life. You've just got the empathy you've just got the vicarious sadness so your brain is gonna live with sadness Okay, cool like a work of this I'm I'm gonna work from my own sadness and refine that and work through it and smooth out and me put into my system. And that's what makes you feel better. Sound like weight loss studies show that people who are heavy metal fans are counterintuitive, even the least angry people by and large, because because of their musical interests, their brains spend a lot of time being angry, but in the abstract, so when you allow yourself to get angry, but no particular cause or source or reason, there's no sort of injustice, it's just an okay cache and emotional experience. The brain spends a lot of time dealing with anger, so it's better at it. And therefore, when things do make you angry in the real world, that you're not as quick to fly off the handle. You've got Oh, I'm experiencing anger. I know what to deal with this. It lets you deal with I mean, you become a more emotionally healthy person. So yeah, there's this idea that you have to downplay, suppress, or control, or just ignore negative emotions. It's an unhealthy one. And like, why is this emphasized? Nothing but the positives? That's also not how we should exist. And we haven't evolved to do that and trying to do it is it's on a hiding to nothing really, in the long run.

Jean Gomes: 41:02

It makes sense about all those furious ambient and chill out music fans?

Dean Burnett: 41:07

Yeah, but I have a lot of music in the background, and also a punch bag. So you know, do the math that makes sense doesn't.

Jean Gomes: 41:16

If you're enjoying the show, you might also appreciate Scott's new book, The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence, which provides simple, powerful tools to help us better understand ourselves and others available online at all major retailers. Can we talk about decision making because you have some very interesting observations there about the two way street between cognition and emotions and things around how color affects our decision making and so on. We've gone back a little bit about that as well, because it ties into the, into the scientific method. Thoughts that you had earlier on?

Dean Burnett: 41:59

Yeah, it again, it comes back to the idea that you can have a purely rational, analytical, purely objective thought you can, but those are like, a lot more effort than people would appreciate a lot, it will be emotionally tinged, that's okay. It's an unavoidable part your brain them again. But another thing I sort of changed my view on was this idea that in your brain, you have emotions, and you have rational thinking, rationality, if you want to give a shorter word, and that still is as binary, they coexist side by side, like two neighbors who share a fence, don't necessarily get on, you know, maybe one neighbor's dog go to the woods alone a bit too often. And then they have a bit of a falling out but separate entities in a shared space. But it's not like that they are actually far more intertwined. And read more people realize they're even the parts of the brain which are which were supposed to be your believed to be this one separate this one processes, conscious thought this process and emotions, those weren't nearly as clear cut as people thought when they will be scanning technology advanced and we look, we look closer and deeper down, or they are far more intertwined. So it might help to think of a conscious thought and emotional expression as like one river ending towards seeing like, a few miles from the shore, it sort of splits. So like, yeah, you have different outputs, different outcomes, but they have more in common and they add a lot more shared background and a policy realize. So there is like a lot of emotional and conscious thinking, overlap, overlapping, intertwined, but then, but also that means that emotion does collect the bedrock law and analytical thinking or understanding and it can color our emotional thinking more often than we realize, like for example, color. Technically speaking, different colors are just a different wavelengths of photons hitting our retina, they shouldn't really have an emotional quality, because they've just liked it and April's more bored of it. But it does in last, the whole field of color psychology, we associate certain colors with certain emotional qualities, like red is always stimulated to do with arousal so it's not a danger or excitement or deputy fun times. Or, or Father Christmas, you know that there's a whole other I don't want to touch him and said all those things together and Yeah, exactly. That's mean, that's that's fanfiction. Nobody needs and there's like blues and greens are calming and reassuring. As again, you never see, you'll see, like blue and green and white and sort of lightly shaded colors of scrubs and gowns and hospitals. You never see someone in a bright red hospital gown. That unless a surgery has gone spectacularly wrong, but that's not that's not planned. Yet because those color of red and oranges are stimulating like they are they're cause of arousal, whereas blues and greens are reassured in common and it does so it seems to evolve who don't have physical reactions to emotions, so green with envy, red with anger, these are biological responses we, we associated with them, there's some evidence suggests that the human and primate color vision is particularly attuned to recognize the color of changes in skin when people have an emotional reaction. So it can be that don't that colors make us see emotions, that emotions make us see colors, which is a sort of really strange roundabout way of looking at it. So again, you have that most fundamental level, emotions are affecting your thinking, your motivation, your you want, what you're focusing on. And you can't really think of anything, unless you're being entirely abstract without taking these things into account. So it's really, really hard to separate emotions from decision making processes. But because of the way conscious thinking works, it's always like after the effect, emotions happen much faster than conscious thought. Because I just thought it's a more complex process, emotions are far more directed in bang out. Whereas conscious thought is like A to B to C to D to E to F to so I think analogy I use is that conscious thought is like, the human and emotions are like big dog when a lead. Now you're, you're in human to charge the dog, for all intents and purposes. But it doesn't technically control what the dog is thinking what it's trying to do it, but it can restrain it. Like when the dog wants to chase a squirrel, we're human doesn't go to bat and say, do not chase that squirrel. The dog goes, Okay, I understand because it doesn't, or does the dog is runs off and you sort of pull it back, and then try and stop it. Sometimes it's too powerful. Sometimes it runs off and drags it with it. And then you have a mess to clear up. But no, but in most cases it is you you don't control the emotions, you respond to them and rein them in and sort of deal with the aftermath. You don't sort of preempt them, because you can't because the the brain, the conscious thinking parts of the brain don't have that speed. They don't have the ability to do that, because emotions just happened too rapidly.

Scott Allender: 47:05

You briefly mentioned memory earlier in the in the conversation, I'd like to come back to that and talk about the interplay between cognition and emotions in memory, what role do our emotions play in our ability to encode and recall events? And how do we how do we use that knowledge to have better recall? Yeah,

Dean Burnett: 47:28

I mean, emotions are perhaps the most important thing that comes to what we remember, I think, can you understand why that is, we have to appreciate that your memory system in your brain evolved a long time ago, before conscious thought and availability, abstract processing and route rationalization and simulation. Memory predates that, obviously, because partly, memory predates that, because most creatures have a memory. In the simplest ones, no, back in your dinosaur times they had memory, they their ability to remember things because we just need that to exist and survive. But you know, when you're primitive creature, like sort of observing the world around you. How do you know what's important? What's worth remembering? If you can't remember everything, no brain has that sort of capacity to meticulously encode every single thing we experience on a weekend every waking moment. How do you prioritize what and what not to work when you're a primitive creature? Or like your older style of creature? What causes emotional reaction? What scares you? What did you find pleasant, what made you feel disgusted? What angered you, these are things which are worth remembering, in the primitive brain. And that is still, by and large, the system we're using, we've got like the abstract thought and reasoning systems bolted on top, which are very integrated. But our memory system still primarily prioritizes emotional experiences, like if you think of memories being formed like a big system of conveyor belts, just like items gone in constantly. The ones that are emotions, like these are tangled like VIP or delicate, fragile priority, and they get put on the faster conveyor belt, they go in on the cap to separate, separate and safe from the others. So emotional experiences are, by and large, what our memory system reverts to when it comes to prioritize memories. Which is why like when you are studying for an exam or preparing a big presentation, which needs to have all this information to hand, it's it can be an arduous process, because even though you consciously, rationally know, this information is important for my long term plans for the outcome of my exam presentation, whatever it is. Your memory system doesn't see it that way. Is Yeah, you say that, but this is just abstract information. Is it numbers, graphs, dates, figures, items, like equations? I don't, I don't care about that. It doesn't. This stuff doesn't elicit an emotional reaction unless you're really really really into it, which some people are. And that's why people with no enthusiasm and passion to reel off stats at a moment's notice. But for most people like this is abstract information, it doesn't have an emotional quality. So you have to read it and reread it and read it again. And again, again, to give you a more long winded memory systems like the repetition, the formation of memories gradually, if give that a chance to work on it and get it get into the system. So I mean, then when you've sort of done your exam and done your will your presentation, unless you need something that's come back to you on a regular basis, you probably will forget about it. I mean, I studied for, you know, for months to pass my a level chemistry exam, I couldn't tell you much of what's in it now. But I knew it was only in the at the time I passed. And then a month later, oh, yeah, that, you know, pops up occasionally. I haven't needed it since the brain just goes Oh, that's not he did, I'll just flush that with the rest of them. And that's kind of annoying, but it happens. But think of an emotional experience. In school, like the exam example, you spend months trying to learn for exams, you better remember it and then forget it afterwards. But if you like the school hall and your trousers fall down, and suppose in your novel, the underpants that they haven't lasted you that memory is not going anywhere, that memory is going to be with you for the rest of your life. And it'll just pop up when you're walking down the street, like 40 years later, you're collapsing your balls off cringing inside out, because it's powerfully emotional. And that sort of the brain goes up. Well, that must be important. Let's just bring it up again, time and time again, for no reason whatsoever. Just make sure you don't forget it. And that's why these emotional memories don't fade so much. Because they're emotional because the brain thinks emotional equals important when it comes to memories.

Scott Allender: 51:41

How do we make this work for us? Like, yeah, well,

Dean Burnett: 51:45

it's a lot of studies show that if you can attach some sort of emotional significance to the information you need, is a lot more easier to take in. I mean, particularly children isn't a study quite some time ago now where I think I mentioned the book, but they had sort of mass information delivered by two characters. One was Elmo on Sesame Street, the beloved Elmo, one was some sort of bird character from Thailand. And these are like American students, returning children who had never seen this character before. But the things like Elmo taught them, they were able to learn far more rapidly than the other character. But then, and different group of students were taken them given time to interact with this Taiwanese character, because Taiwan or Thailand can't ever type thing with Taiwanese. Yeah. So they've given merchandise and you watch the cartoons and let's play the games and the Buddha, love this character. Play the test again. Now this character is as good as Elmo teaching them stuff. So if you have an emotional connection to your viewer, you can induce emotional connection to the information, people taking it a lot better. So I get celebrity endorsements. You know, if someone comes up to you and says, buy this bag, that well, no, I don't want to I don't care who you are. That's something which happens. But if famous, famous celebrity who says, Here's my bag, do you want it? People don't Oh, yes, it sells through the roof. Because people have an emotional attachment to this individual. And in information, even part, it is more convincing, more persuasive, because there's an emotional element attached. And you don't have to be sort of just a person doing it. People remember a lot more readily, taking place a lot more readily if it's something they want to be doing. Which is where the whole extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation comes in. If you let people discover their own enthusiasms if you'd like, if they let them do things, because they want to do them, they tend to be far more able to retain information more dedicated to it more willing to do it, than if you sort of reward them externally. So getting your example in the book is doctors and people why you want to be a doctor wanted, I want to help people, I want to be useful person, they want to improve lives. Someone else says Well, I it's a good CareOne the money, it's guaranteed job for life. The first person is intrinsically motivated, they want to improve lives, they want to know it's more personal investment in this career, the second person wants money and one still security, which is totally valid as a motivation and reason totally logical. But that extrinsic means that if suddenly, safety chains and medics weren't as reward anymore, they probably wouldn't keep doing it because the rewards they have is dependent on someone else giving it to them. Whereas an intrinsic motivation, which is more far more emotionally rewarding, because you want to do it, you find this stimulating you find this engaging. And that when it comes to information that tends to make you far better able to remember to like if you have a favorite football team, I get this a lot of people say oh, you're a neuroscientist, that's, that's amazing. I can never do that. And then they will reel off like 70 years with the stats about your master football team more green bay packers or whatever it is, because they care about that they are emotionally invested in that and they have access to just as much information as I do. who they think it's not as impressive as what I do, because that's brains. Neuroscience aren't a mainstream thing. But they clearly have the capacity the ability to retain vast amounts of information. Because information that they care about nuts sometimes all the next difference

Sara Deschamps: 55:16

If the conversations we've been having on The Evolving Leader has helped you in any way, please share this episode with your network, friends and family. Thank you for listening. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

Jean Gomes: 55:30

You've been a stand up and you you write a lot of funny witty things in the book. I was just chatting away about your description your feet.

Dean Burnett: 55:42

Just an observation that

Jean Gomes: 55:45

made me laugh? Probably because I've got similar flat feet. But the question really was about what what have you learned about humor? And what's it solving for from an emotional perspective?

Dean Burnett: 55:58

Yeah, humour is a really intriguing one, because it's one of those things. Like I mentioned, it's not like if you make it a laugh in a film, it's not really that rewarded. Well, as long as it's respected, perhaps that it is just as impressive a feat I think, as making someone cry in with the performance, not just under like stealing this week to run it off. That's just not impressive. We shouldn't reward that. It's one of the things that because it's so commonplace, people don't appreciate our complex and sophisticated it is. And it's no, it's something very fundamentally human. It's, I mean, I think I'm doing I've been married for nearly 20 years now, and I've been on a dating app, but I don't feel the same. But when I was when I was on ADD, when I was growing up, you know, every dating profile every sort of personal and always said GSh good sense of humor. That's as long as like the first and most fundamental thing you need. In your partner, romantic partner, no matter who they are, I'm not really interested in, that's expected as the norm. So humor is sort of very intrinsically linked to human meeting, human interaction is a lot more subtlety and nuance in there. And it's also a really powerful thing I find it shows incredibly complex and impressive the human brain is that you can, with a certain combination of simple words, delivered in a certain way, you can make someone laugh hysterically. And it's like you've just used some very basic, you know, bodily functions, to induce an extremely powerful emotional reaction into someone else. So in many people, if you're the one in front, like, if you're doing comedy, you're doing a good job of it, you can see some words and every entire room just falls out laughing That's, that's an impressive feat when it comes to interaction and emotional and it's very rewarding because we're such empathetic, so such social creatures and but in a sense, it is the sort of human equivalent of like a DSM please is like the idea that we have this massive brain, which is such a biologically demanding construct two, it absorbs most most our body sugars and oxygen is by just by taking up 2% of the body weight. It's, it's a hugely demanding construct. That we will use that to tell dad jokes or puns. So it seems like this is squandering it, but then that is one of them. That's the whole point of the things like the examples peacock tail is like, I am so successful. I have such access to resources, I can afford to just wasted frivolously look at these massive anklets, they're either never use them. If I get my hands on a bush, I'm dead, and I'm there for the foreseeable future. But I got them because I am just so fit and healthy. And the really humorous sort of a human equipment of that, yes, I got this massive brain. Now I'm gonna do I'm going to manipulate words to make make you laugh, because you know what, why not. But it's not just that these are two social bonding thing like people I'm 30 times more likely to laugh in a group that alone it's it's a release of psychological tension. That's one of the arguments and that something bad happens, something in Congress happens, you know, your, your expectations are violated, whether it's through words or visual situations, or static is a good example, someone slipped on a banana falls on their back. And then you're technically almost back that can be seriously hurt. If it's simply go back now. It's, it's okay, like, I was tense, something bad could have happened. It didn't happen. Now, I will laugh, and we can all acknowledge the fundamental and then there's also the state distinct to like, you laugh at someone, you also period to them, if you make them laugh, you are superior to them. If you're the butt of a joke, you are inferior, you know this, all these different aspects of the human psyche are sort of enhanced or manipulated or don't just take part in human and exploit it in some way. So yeah, it's a really, really fundamentally important thing for humans, at least.

Scott Allender: 59:55

I know we're near the end of our time here, but I've got one more question. curious to get your insights on is how does your understanding of emotions, how can that help us to navigate the new technologies that are shaping the world?

Dean Burnett: 1:00:12

Yeah, so I think it's something I mentioned earlier on that deal. Technology and emotion aren't as compatible as people seem to think in many cases. I mean, there's lots of different dem applications of technology, which tried to say manipulate, but I think tried to sort of induce an emotional reaction or try to factor in an emotional reaction from people. And it tends to be offensive backfire, because one thing humans are is very, very good at detecting emotions and recognize emotions. In other words, we expect it and we are very empathetic creatures we have empathy is a hugely complex process, which allows us to detect motions of others via a myriad of complex but subtle cues. And our brains expect that so when we're talking to someone, we will see in the face, tone, posture, gestures, even totally stamps, like all these different key which was given off which we subconsciously recognize as emotional information on a low was face to face communication to be the most enriching, or stimulating type stuff, we crave, you know, we could just post pandemic, we could have all just stuck with Zoom calls, and just doing our own housekeeping safe, but we didn't suddenly have that opportunity, straight back outstrip them in front of me, because that's what we need. As humans, we want that. And technology tries to mimic that and it does a bad job. Because if one thing is human don't like its artifice, when it comes to emotions, we do not like being emotionally manipulated, we don't like being deceived. Example, I always use this, if you've ever it was a train in Britain, it will have been delayed, because they always are mean, it's literally I still have the option at the moment. But when that happens, you get the announcement of the station speakers. And it will say, I'm sorry to announce that the 1045 train to London Paddington is delayed by approximately 17 minutes. I am extremely sorry for the late to the stream. And then I get the play that as I sort of stopped if you can't, but it has the opposite effect. People are going to leave my train late, but I'm being lied to by a machine. Like that machine is not sorry, that my training he doesn't know it's picked up no conscious thought it just like, I am extremely you're not sorry, stop saying you're sorry, is like when people do false apologies, we do actually have a total of eight low thresholds put up with that. I suppose. actors who are good have to be acting really good bad acting is something which is really great in because women face to display an emotional reaction is like, no, what's wrong, we have a very high threshold for that. So low threshold for put up with that. AI technology obviously has this problem, it doesn't have the motion to just try to mimic the signs of it. But they're so complex, so subtle, and so, so nuanced. And maybe something we have evolved to do, the software cannot do yet. And again, AI images are probably a good example of this. It's very common MCA art, even though there's no, they're all wildly different. They all have the same quality, the sort of glossiness, this, this this aspect, which we can go, oh, that's AI. Even if it is so simple. I've got like 53 fingers or something upside down on the other roof like it's you then you could tell it like the whole uncanny valley thing. Something is too close to being human, but not quite, it doesn't have the right emotional expression set. But on the other hand, someone gifted artists with a ballpoint pen can draw a picture, which will go as amazing if it's simple and crude, we just have a strong emotional reaction to it. So humans are able to convey emotions and machines don't have them, so they can't. And I think that's something that's been overlooked a lot. But there's expectation that we will just ignore it, we won't it's it's an issue, which I think needs more looking into.

Jean Gomes: 1:03:54

To close, can you think about a takeaway for leaders that you'd like to see them consider, adopt or challenge themselves in what you've come to understand around emotions?

Dean Burnett: 1:04:09

Yeah I think there's a big difference between having control and authority and being a leader. The latter is probably a lot to do with emotions. Because then when you have control, you have authority, what the people or the people you're in charge of feel or think doesn't really matter. You don't have to know how their involvement and investment in you. This is just the situation. You're in charge. You're in control, but I wouldn't say that makes you a leader. But if you can engage them on emotional level, if you make people emotionally relate to you, that makes you a leader. I think nobody you may not be a good leader, you may make them do bad things. But that's that is I think the difference between being a boss being like a manager being in charge and being an actual leader. People if you're a good leader, people want to do what you say. Well Want to follow your instructions What a wonderful succinct way of putting a definition around because they're emotionally invested in you and believe in you on an emotional level? And that I think is the difference. And to do that, you have to sort of acknowledge that you've given them Do you have emotions, their emotional needs emotional drains, and trying to sculpt their emotions to what you want is usually a counterproductive process, the whole happy Fridays and this idea of const employee happiness, some people just aren't happy. Some people don't have this happy demeanor. Accepting that rather than trying to change it is probably a better strategy for good long term leadership, in my humble opinion. leadership and emotions. I love that.

Scott Allender: 1:05:41

Dean, thank you so much for sharing some of your wisdom and insights and it's been a delightful conversation and I could talk to you for hours more but sadly, we're not allowed so we're gonna wrap it up. And folks do do get your copy of emotional ignorance. Everybody needs a book that says emotional ignorant on their shelf it'll, it'll be a great conversation starter and now you'll Jean's holding it up right now. Yeah, do it do it. And remember, folks until next time, the world is evolving. Are you?