 So Ethan Klein of H3H3 Productions just released a video discussing all the people out there who are refusing to self quarantine. But the way he went about it isn't so effective. So if you were like me and you're hoping to slow down the spread of this thing, we need to understand a little bit of psychology and get into their minds and figure out productive ways to get people to stop running around in public. So come along with me and we're gonna get inside the mind of people who refuse to self quarantine. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So if you're someone like me who is actively trying to improve your mental and emotional well-being, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because when it comes to this type of crisis going on or other situations going on in your life, there is a right way and a wrong way to talk to people if you hope to motivate them to do something. So Ethan Klein just came out with his video on the H3H3 Productions, the main channel which he barely uploads to anymore, and it's called The Morons of the Situation. I'm trying to stay monetized so bear with me as I dance around certain words. And he goes through and he shows a lot of clips and pictures and things like that. And he's not wrong. Trust me, he's not necessarily wrong. And I want to make it very very clear that people out there who are refusing to self quarantine are extremely selfish and they're not thinking about humanity as a whole. And that's something difficult to deal with. But I just want to put it this way when we're trying to figure out how to talk to people about this stuff and get them to make the right decisions. Like I just want you to switch roles real quick and ask yourself when's the last time that you wanted to do something when someone called you a moron or an idiot or insulted your intelligence in another way? You probably didn't want to. So by understanding a little bit of psychology and getting into their minds maybe we could figure out how to encourage people to do the right thing. And I really think that the government would do much better if not only did we bring in more scientists but we brought in more psychologists to explain a little bit of human nature. So we're going to break this down into a few parts. But the first thing that we need to talk about is human agency. Agency is one of the most important factors of our lives. So what is human agency? So human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It is normally contrasted to natural forces which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes. So in this world of just so much chaos and so many things outside of our control we crave that control. And this agency, this control greatly affects our mental health. So in the best-selling book Lost Connections by Johann Hari, which is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite books on depression, he discusses some studies they did about people being depressed at work. The people who are the most depressed at work have little to no control over their jobs. You might recognize this. If you are miserable at your job, take a second to think like how much control do you have over your job? Some people are just doing this tedious monotonous work day in and day out and they have no control, no creativity over the work that they produce, right? Then there are also people who just have a boss who does not let them, you know, try to express new ideas and be creative. These people are typically miserable. For example, I love my job. I get to be very creative and all of that. And a quick tip for those of you who do not have that kind of control or creativity in your job, do something on the side, all right? Have your own hobbies where you get to be creative. Like if nothing else, I have my YouTube channel, I have my writing and all that other stuff. So find a way to be creative. You will be a little bit happier because we all crave control. The next thing we need to talk about is internal versus external locus of control. So professor of positive psychology over at Harvard University with all them smart people, all right? His name is Sean Aker and he released a book called The Happiness Advantage. In this book, he talks about internal versus external locus of control. People with an external locus of control, they believe that their actions have little impact on outcomes. All right? These people are more anxious, more depressed, overall not very happy with their life. Then you have people with an internal locus of control. Those with an internal locus of control, they believe that the steps they take, the actions they make, the decisions they make do have an impact on the outcome. So those people with an internal locus of control, since they feel that control, they are less anxious, less depressed, and they're happier. So finally, when we're talking about human agency and control, there is a famous, famous study. All right? It is cited in a bunch of psychological books that I read. It's a study they did at a nursing home. Okay? So in this nursing home, they separated the old folks into two different groups. In one group, they gave them a bunch of different options. Okay? They said, hey, like, what movies do you want to watch? What activities do you want to do? Here's a plant that you get to take care of, all that stuff, right? Give them extreme amounts of control over their lives in the nursing home. Then they took the other group and they gave them a bunch of different new activities and everything, but these people had no choice whatsoever in what was going to happen. All right? So they did an 18 month study following up. Not only were the people in the first group happier and healthier, but they lived longer. In the group that had less control, those people were sadder, sicker, and they had a higher mortality rate. Okay? So think about that for a second. Our sense of agency is directly related to not only our mental health, but our physical health as well. All right? So remember I was telling you like, when's the last time that you wanted to do anything when someone called you an idiot or a moron? So now we're going to talk about the psychology of reactants. We need to understand that we are naturally inclined to do the opposite of what other people tell us. All right? As a way to maintain that control, that agency, we don't like being told what to do. All right? So as you can see in this figure, this is a little bit of what it looks like. All right? So our importance of freedom, the magnitude of the threat to that freedom, that creates this strong reactants. Okay? So although it saddens me and it breaks my heart that those Florida spring breakers are not thinking about all the people they could possibly infect, and then you also have the government too like, hey, we need to get people back to work. They don't mind if they get sick. Like it's not about that. It is about getting other people sick. All right? So here's the thing. The most successful people in sales and marketing, they understand this. They understand reactants. They understand that people don't like being told what to do. Okay? Obviously this is much higher in younger people, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a second, but people in sales and marketing, they realize that in order to get people to do what you want them to do, you have to make them believe it's their own idea. That is how you get past the reaction. All right? So although Ethan Klein of ACE3, ACE3 Productions had a couple yucks in his video. I would say that she was joking, but if you look closely at her face, she does not crack a smile. This woman is ready for. What are the kids calling it? The boomer doomer? The boomer groomer? The boomer remover. Yes, the boomer remover. I'm getting dangerously close to being a boomer here myself. So it's going to have little to no impact because he is telling people what to do. And I know it's hard. I know it's hard not to just want to tell people what to do and then get angry about it, but check this out. People don't even like being told what to do when it can benefit them, when it can benefit others, or can benefit the entire planet as a whole. One of the most famous marketing strategies that was ever done was with the Toyota Prius. All right? The Prius came out. It is this environmentally friendly hybrid, less pollution and everything like that. Now you see them all over the road, that and Tesla and everything like that, right? But here's the thing. When telling people like, hey, buy this car, you'll help save the environment, right? People aren't going to go for that. So what Toyota did with their marketing campaign, they were able to get people to want to buy the Prius to save the environment because those people feel like they really want to save the environment. Okay? What happens after that? Once you get a massive amount of people doing something, more people are likely to do it. Okay? As much as we love to say like, oh yeah, if everybody was jumping off the bridge, I wouldn't do it. Most of us would. A lot of us follow suit because we don't want to be seen as outside of the tribe. Okay? So think about that for a second. How do we get people to do what we want to do, right? But how do we make them feel like it's their own idea? So one of the other most successful campaigns out there was when it came to an anti-smoking campaign for teenagers, okay? So the rate of teen smoking is high, especially with vaping coming out. But in the 90s, it was really, really bad. So this dude, Chuck Wolf came along, all right? And he saw that just telling kids not to smoke wasn't working because again, high reactants in younger people, younger people really don't want to be told what to do. Okay? One of my favorite neuroscientists, Dr. Dan Siegel, he talks about that. During that portion of brain development, teens are trying to distance themselves away from adults just because they're naturally trying to become their own person, to become more individual. So what was Chuck Wolf going to do? The first thing that he did was he held a teen tobacco summit, all right? He talked to teens and he asked them questions. He said, why do you guys smoke? Why wouldn't you smoke? You know, he asked them a bunch of questions and got a bunch of input. So he took that and he combined that with the psychology of reactants and he started to ask himself, how can we get teens to not smoke when they don't like being told what to do? So here's what tricky little Chuck did. What Chuck ended up doing was he created a bunch of different ads where one of them, for example, was two teens calling up a magazine publisher, calls them up and they're like, hey, you know, smoking's bad, right? And they're like really harms teens and the guy's like, yeah. And he's like, okay, so well, will you stop running these advertisements? And the guy's like, no, they're like, why not? And the advertising agent or the publisher, he's like, well, because we like making money, all right. And that was one of the most successful ads out there. You want to know why? Because teens were then being told that the corporations, Big Tobacco wanted them to smoke. So you know what a lot of teens started doing? They started not smoking because they knew that's what Big Tobacco wanted them to do. And Chuck Wolf became this famous dude in marketing and it was actually the beginning of the whole truth campaign. Okay, so the last tip I'll give you is this therapeutic technique that's often used. I knew a lot of therapists who use it when I was working in the drug and alcohol rehab center. It's called motivational interviewing. Okay, also known as MI. This is a form of therapy where you ask a series of questions. So the person comes to their own conclusion. Okay, when they come to their own conclusion, they feel like they have that control. They feel like they have that agency. Alright, so some examples of motivational interviewing. Why do you want to go out? What's the benefit of going out? Will it affect anyone you know? How will you going out affect other people? Right? And these are just questions. You're not telling them and when you're doing this, you got to make sure that you're coming at it with curiosity, like wanting to understand. Okay, because when you come abrasive, the reactants kicks in. Okay, now check this out. When it comes to motivational interviewing, it might not work right away. Okay, but what you have successfully done is get the person to start thinking about their actions, about their behaviors, about their thoughts, right? So that person you're talking to, they might go out, they might do something, right? But you've planted that seed in their head. So as they're getting ready, as they're getting going out, they start asking themselves those questions. Why am I going out? Why do I want to go out? Will this affect anybody I know? Will it affect other people? Will it hurt the community? Right? Now that they're asking themselves that question, they now have control over that situation and you are much more likely to get them to do what you originally wanted them to do. All right? So again, like this stuff is really important to me because I talk to a lot of people who are addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, and just like I don't know how many of you out there are recovering addicts or currently addicts, like those types of interventions where people say you're destroying our family, stop doing this, you're ruining your life, right? People don't want to do what they're being told. So how do you get that person to want to stay sober, right? When people don't want to go to therapy, how do you get people to want to go to therapy? You see what I'm saying? So I know Ethan Klein of H3H3 Productions had good intentions, but calling people idiots, morons, and all that other kind of stuff, you are just increasing reactants. They are not going to want to do what you want them to do based on human motivation and why we do what we do. Okay? So understanding this psychology might help you with your friends or your family members who are currently not behaving in the interest of the entire planet. All right? So anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell, and a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the rewiredsoul.com, as well as everybody who gets the merch from the merch store. You're all awesome. All right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.