You See What You Expect

Peter Kinderman I'd be tempted to say that if you are in a position where either your friends or your intimate partners are making judgments about you that mean that you think that you should have cosmetic surgery, then you should probably change your friends and your intimate partners

Hilary Jeffs Hello, and welcome to Experience, the weekly podcast where we get to psychoanalyse the news. Now, if you're a bit of a news junkie like we are, but you're also fascinated with what makes people tick, then this is the podcast for you. Please do like and subscribe, and also pass it on to your mates so they can enjoy it. But we actually want to know a little bit more about you as well before we get started today. So on our website, experiencepodco.com, you will find that there is a survey, and, it's only a really short thing. It's just 'cause we're nosy, really. I think that's the bottom line of it. So there's five questions, take you a couple of minutes, and we'd love it if you could do that for us. And then we get to know you a little bit better. And obviously, you can always drop us a line at any time if there's anything that you'd like us to cover on the podcast as well. We're also after a bit of a sponsorship, so if you are in an organisation who would like to reach an audience that are interested in all things psychology, then just get in touch with us as well. It's hello@experiencepodco.com. Coming up on today's show, we're gonna be, haha, gloating over the Trumps dropping. We're also gonna be discussing the psychological implications for families of people who've had nasty convictions. We're talking about Russell Brand's family in particular. And also, we're all leaving in droves to go and get surgery abroad. No, it's not about the NHS. It is about vanity. So we'll be talking about the psychology of cosmetic surgery. But I could not do this psychological adventure on my own. We are joined each week by the very wonderful professor of psychology, Peter Kinderman. How has your week been, Peter?

Peter Kinderman My week's been excellent, partly because it's been punctuated by fireworks, which are good things

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, no, we are always gonna disagree. I thought it was 'cause it was gonna be punctuated by copious amounts of wine. But I need your help

Peter Kinderman modest amounts of wine and copious amounts of fireworks, that's the

Hilary Jeffs Oh yeah, maybe that's, that's the other way round for me. I need your help. So I was having a conversation with a neighbor's daughter, she's only 18, bless her, and they were talking about the fact that their sister had just sort of p- not passed their driving lesson and their driving test. And I happened to mention, 'cause she's, you know, she's 18 and at university, that, I knew of someone who had passed their driving test by offering services in kind. So she said, "Oh, was this a long time ago?" And I went, "No, not really. Probably 80s or 90s." Okay, that's like 40 years. What is going on? Why do I not understand the passage of time?

Peter Kinderman Oh, yeah. No, that... Well, first of all, that happens to me all the time, that I talk about things that happened and then I realise that they're things that happened 50 years ago. The worst is eBay. When you're shopping for eBay and it says mid-century and you're thinking, "Well, hang on a minute," and, you know, these are things that were manufactured in my lifetime because they push mid-century a little bit. Yeah, no, I mean, and when it was, I think vintage in some people's eyes is things that are 50 years old. So things that were manufactured after I were born are already considered to be vintage. There's the passage of copyright. Yeah, no, it's terrible. And of course it's because we evaluate things in our own lifetime. There's this phenomenon that the perception of time changes. And at least one of the theories is that you basically measure time, like many things in life, like, like coming off drugs and so forth, you measure things proportionate to where you started. So what you're talking about with any unit of time is, you know, like a millionth of your lifespan. So I don't know. I don't know whether a second is a

Hilary Jeffs think the

Peter Kinderman one's life-

Hilary Jeffs '80s or '90s were a millionth of my lifetime. Anyway, carry

Peter Kinderman But the point is that, you know, the unit of time called a second is perhaps thought of in physics terms as being fixed, but in human terms, what you're doing is talking about a millionth of your lifetime. So the point is that for a five-year-old, a five-minute wait is like a substantial percentage of their experienced waking life. Whereas for me, five minutes is a relatively small part of my accumulated waiting life. So does that make sense?

Hilary Jeffs That does make sense, and actually it's quite reassuring because I would never let my siblings talk about life before I was born because it all sounded so idyllic and I was like, "Hang on, I wasn't born then." and I just thought it was just this entire arrogance that I can't see it because I just think about me first. But it is literally about that passage of time, and

Peter Kinderman I think it's about passage of time.

Hilary Jeffs Before is old

Peter Kinderman I, yeah, I would say that objectively the way in which humans perceive... I think a media psychologist somebody who's done like TV shows and so forth, wrote a book about the perception of time. I think it might have been her PhD thesis. And I thought, "Well, that's nice. That's nice." But it skips over the idea of offering sexual services in return for passing your driving test, which is a much more interesting psychological phenomenon that you think you've just drifted past

Hilary Jeffs I don't know if it would still work. I guess it might in certain circumstances. If that

Peter Kinderman the news tells us that it probably would

Hilary Jeffs Yes, indeed. Well, we're coming onto all things sexual a little bit later on. But first, can we just do some gloating? Because the Democrats absolutely smashed it last week in the midterms. They handed Trump his bum on a plate. It was wonderful to see. They won in rich areas, in poor areas, in rural areas, and in highly populated areas. They especially won, ha-ha, in Hispanic areas. Take that in your ICE patrols, Trumpy. They got their first, Democrat senator in Kansas in 94 years. And in Texas, they got their first Democrat senator since 1988. Obviously just a blink of an eye for me. But obviously significant for them. Now, this was a wonderful thing to see, but it was more of a landslide than the polls were predicting. And I was interested in what that difference is between your intention and what you say you're going to do, and then when it comes to it, what you actually are going to do

Peter Kinderman Yeah. I have, you know, well, I think that's interesting. I think that some of the stuff about what's happening in terms of politics is, I think, interesting and hopeful from a sort of standoff, long-distance social psychology perspective. I have to say two things about the polls. And I will come back to the idea of what people say and then what they do. But, when we were in the run-up to the election, I think I made the point to you about this BBC journalist who'd said, you know, "The polls are telling us that it'll be a success for the Democrats, but can we really trust the polls?" And my stance was, "They're the best things to trust." I mean, technically, no, but yes, in the sense that they're probably the best things to... And I still think they're the best things to trust. If the polls predicted a major Democrat win, and there was a major Democrat win, then the polling was pretty accurate. The fact that it was slightly bigger even than the polls, well, good, I mean, morally good, but also if you're predicting a reversal of fortune, then you should probably be conservative in your prediction. So I think the polls were exactly on

Hilary Jeffs And actually that's a really good point, is that because they are aware that they managed to reach more Democrat voters through their polling methods, that they are cautious in how they interpret that result

Peter Kinderman So do, do, do pe-- I mean, there's a, there's, there's a thing in the UK of shy conservatives in the polls, and I found it,... So I think when I, when I was employed for a living, I would be slightly more cautious in what I would say about psychology as it was applied to political things, but I can be less cautious now. The shy conservatives thing is a phenomenon that people talk about in UK politics and polling quite a lot, which is that people say, "I'm all in favor of X, Y, and Z, therefore, I think that I support, you know, Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto." And then they go into the polling booths and they vote for the conservatives. And really, there's probably one dominant explanation for that, which is that people know that voting for human rights and equity is a good thing, and then they're really selfish bastards when they're in the polling booth because voting conservative is a selfish bastard thing to do. Sorry if I alienate people who vote conservative, but that's my viewpoint

Hilary Jeffs But yes, and believe me, not all people who vote Tory are selfish so-and-sos. But we do think that people who are voting for Trump, I didn't understand it at all.

Peter Kinderman Well, so my brother-in-law i- is American. He's a naturalized American. He did come from Keighley, but now he lives in America, and, I think he owns two Harley-Davidsons. Anyway, so...

Hilary Jeffs That pertinent to being a Trump voter or not?

Peter Kinderman Well, no, th- but this is the point. So the... My sister and he have more than one property, and, he was said that he was going on his bike around a heavily rural, I think it's West Virginia, but it's a heavily rural heavily conservative area. Is that... And he was going into, you know, neighborhood bars and so forth on his bike, and he was talking to people who are rural living, mainly Black people. And given that he's English, he talks to people in,... So he was saying that quite a lot of the people that he was chatting to on his bike trips were Black, rural, poor Trump voters. And I went, "But that's amazing." He goes, "Yes, but here's what they said," 'cause, you know, I asked him, and he's from Keighley, so he asked them directly. And their answer was, "But the Democrats have lied to us, and the Democrats haven't done anything for us, so what's the difference?" And I think that, you know, it's only an anecdote, although it's true, and it may or may not reflect what was going on in America, but I think there's an element of that. I think there's an element that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and, Jeff Bezos, their investment in media and the biasing effect of the media on voters, you know, we know that it's not many years old, and the electoral process, you have presidential, in America, you have presidential elections, midterms, presidential. So the timescale is over a number of years. I think people are probably prepared to give lies the benefit of the doubt in the context of mass indoctrination by new forms of media for a few years until they realise that it's, it's stopped. I was... I'm not gonna, I don't particularly want to go into too many personal details because I don't want to go into too many personal details. But a 12-year-old w- no, but a 12-year-old was looking over my shoulders at my phone at, I think I was looking at Pinterest

Hilary Jeffs Thank goodness.

Peter Kinderman Home decorating ideas, and she goes, "You need to turn on the less AI. They're all AI then." So if 12-year-olds are starting to recognise when we're being manipulated by AI-generated images and saying that if you go with those images, you won't buy the real product, that gives us some hope that they'll just go, "That's not real. That's AI slop. That's been poorly edited." I think people are starting to see through the lies. So when Trump goes, "I'll offer you a $5,000," people are going, "That's just nonsense," and

Hilary Jeffs Yeah. Well, let's come on to a couple of things that you've raised there, because one is habit, I think, as well. So you've talked about them believing the lies, but there's a habit. You, not only is whether you've voted in the past the greatest predictor of whether you are gonna vote again in the future, I think people are wedded to the habit of what party they go to. Now, why is habit so important to us as human beings?

Peter Kinderman So an enormous amount of psychology is predicated on the idea of what basically heuristics. So Kahneman and Tversky won the Nobel Prize, it relates to economics. There's all this stuff about heuristic reasoning, which is basically

Hilary Jeffs to everyone what heuristic reasoning actually is

Peter Kinderman so heuristic reasoning is that in- instead of analyzing the data points relevant to a decision at any one time, you just go with the simple answer. So, you know, it... We were talking previously about attention-grabbing sirens and so forth. So, and when I was working clinically, well, I still do work clinically a bit, but I would say to people about h- anxiety that, you know, a baby rabbit is genetically programmed to pay attention to foxes, because if the baby rabbit didn't pay attention to foxes, then it would get eaten and not have any baby rabbits in her turn. It's a thing. So heuristic reasoning is you just simply can't spend all day analyzing the data for each decision. You just go with what feels right. You

Hilary Jeffs And the hence the habit because you're use- and that's, you're, you're comfortable with that decision

Peter Kinderman Yeah, and we try to make habits and quite a lot of, you know, what are they called? Old... Not old wives' tales. That's, well, partly that's sexist. You know, but the aphorisms that we use in everyday life, you know. So I use a lot because I do DIY stuff, you know, measure twice, cut once. It's ju- you just remind

Hilary Jeffs sayings.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, you remind yourself to return to the data. So heuristic reasoning means that people jump to conclusions. That's a big thing. There's the anchoring and h- heuristic where you can kind of fool people by saying, you know, "Do you," you know, "Would you pay more or less than 50 quid for a watch?" And then you ask people, "Would you pay more or less than 25 quid for a watch?" And their estimates are very different because of the act... So people use, use anchoring... People use heuristic reasoning a lot to save cognitive effort. So we have habits because otherwise we'd just be bogged down in analyzing the details of the data for every decision that we make. And I vote Labour because life experience has told me that on balance, nearly all of their policies are

Hilary Jeffs all know

Peter Kinderman the ones that I want.

Hilary Jeffs Peter. I don't think there's anyone here that is ambiguous about that. But even though I say that whether you have voted in the past, that is a great predictor of voting again, we know actually there were some record turnouts of new voters in this particular election. Now, I'm interested because we know that new voters have turned out for Trump in the past, and there were all those sort of the bro boys, you know, the bromance boys were all turning out. These young guys that were sort of disaffected, the incels as they are called or call themselves, I'm never quite sure which. They were turning out to vote for Trump, so they were voting for something. But this time people were voting against something, against Trump I get the feeling, rather than necessarily for a solution. Which, which is more important? Or is it just simply the fact that you take action if you believe that taking that action will get you closer towards where you want to be from where you are right now?

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. So I'm, I think that there's... Well, I think one of the most striking theories, models of the world really that have been applied to psychology in recent years is perceptual control theory, which applies to flying rockets to the moon, and it applies to the feedback loops that happen in nature with, you know, igneous rocks and so forth. But it happens to us. So we respond to feedback. And of course, if things are working well, if we're in our just right states, if things are as they should be, and even if you step back and appraise things a little bit and things are in their just right state without you putting your hand on the tiller, then great. You know, set, set the, set, set the plane to autopilot. Everything's fine. Is there any turbulence on the radar? No. Do we have to land? No. Are we cruising in a nice jet stream? Yeah. An-any warning signs? No. Any planes within 200 miles of us on the radar? No. Stick on autopilot. Let's go and have a cup of coffee. It's brilliant. So if you're not into politics, and even if you're quite cynical and you think, "Oh, you know, all politicians are corrupt, and I don't really understand the decisions that they make." And, you know, what would you do if you were Prime Minister? I don't really know. It's not really my game. Then you let things slide. If on the other hand, you see t- you know, 10 years of chaos and you think, "I'd better turn the autopilot off and maybe find my voting card and do something because this is just getting disastrous." There was a, something I saw on the internet, which was a little bit rude, which is a whole list of all of the misdemeanors of the Trump administration. And then they

Hilary Jeffs Wow, could they fit it onto the whole internet? I'm surprised

Peter Kinderman it was a, it was a song. I had it on silent, so I don't know if it was kind of Appalachian banjo music or whether it was heavy metal. It was just a series of lyrics. So I thought that, yeah, the lyrics were quite funny. And then he goes, "But gas prices have, have hit $4 a gallon," or whatever it was that they hit. So it was a skit on selfishness. But I think there's a truth to that, which is that, you know, it may well be that the impact of Trump's policies, especially the war in Iran on domestic gas prices, meant that people have gone, "Actually, I've got to turn off the autopilot, and maybe I should motivate myself to vote this year."

Hilary Jeffs I'm most fascinated by everything you've said is that you listen to music with the sound off. Anyway, we'll come back to that at some point. Right, moving on to Russell Brand. And I don't wanna waste any time talking about that man, but I am very interested in the people who have been the innocent bystanders to the whirlwind that has been that man. We know about the shame that victims, especially of sexual violence, actually feel. But I'm interested in Russell Brand's family. He's got a wife, he's got kids. Now, what's going on there? Because surely they are gonna be feeling some shame. I know that I would, and I want to understand what that is. They haven't necessarily done anything wrong, have they? But they feel the shame, the association. Is it because of their identity? What psychologically is going on for how they may be feeling today

Peter Kinderman Right. So in the course of my career, I've met quite a lot of people whose parents have been convicted of doing abusive things, especially abusive things to children. That's in the nature of my work. I think... And so what you're saying is, what you're talking about, I think, is a phenomenon that I recognise a lot, which is the, especially the children of people convicted, especially of sex crimes suffer. I think we need to be a little bit cautious about saying shame because, you know, if I was starting to write an essay about shame, and lots of my clinical psychology colleagues talk about shaming experiences a lot. It's a, it's a thing. It's, you know, it's obviously a phenomenon. But I think we need to be cautious about what we mean by shame when we're talking about those people probably feeling shame, because it might not be shame. It might be intense and justified anger. And so it may well be the case that the son or daughter of somebody convicted of a sex offense would feel no shame at all, even when being bullied by people about that, but instead feel just white-hot anger. Anger at their father for having done it, and anger at the people for saying those things. I don't think you necessarily feel shame when people are bullying you about something that for which you yourself do not feel ashamed. You feel angry. So I've spoken to usually survivors of childhood sexual abuse whose parents were then jailed for the abuse on them, and sometimes they feel ashamed, but quite often they don't feel any shame at all. They feel quite proud of themselves for having survived the abuse, and they feel absolutely furious at that person for having betrayed them in that way. But they don't feel shame. And even when they're being bullied or, you know, if their privacy is breached as adults, if their privacy is breached in some way, then what it is very traumatic and other people do things that are designed to be shaming to them, but they might not feel shame. I mean, obviously it's quite likely that they feel shame. I just don't think it's inevitable that what, in this case, Russell Brand's children will be

Hilary Jeffs No, but there is a difference, isn't there, between guilt and shame? There's one sort of about action, guilt guilty for your actions, and also association for the shame. Now, I know as a mum that I am pretty darn sure that even though it's not the right thing, I think I would feel shame that my family was in the spotlight in this way, that somehow I'd picked a partner that had behaved in this way, that I'd had children, you know, as a mum with someone where I've got... Now, this is me. This is probably telling you a lot about how I would be, but I think I would feel both guilt and shame over this. And what would you say to someone when they're feeling those things?

Peter Kinderman Okay, so there's, there's two, there's two layers here. So if you said that to me in a clinical or a pseudo-clinical situation, I mean, even if I was thinking, "Hang on a minute, I need to be a bit of a clinical psychologist here." So we met on the train, and strangers on the train phenomenon and so forth, then I would say words to the effect that if you feel that's completely understandable. Absolutely. It's not inevitable, but of course, that's understandable. But if I was supervising a trainee clinical psychologist, what I'd say is, "Okay, so think about before you go into the conversation, the sorts of outcomes that might be there. And don't, don't project onto that person what you would feel in th- that situation and assume that they must. Don't go, ' Ooh, you must be feeling ashamed,' or, 'I would.'" What you do is you think there's probably a 75, 80% probability that that woman would in those circumstances feel shame. But there's a 20% probability that she wouldn't feel any shame at all, and actually genuinely in absolute every dendrite of her nervous system is saying, " I am very proud of myself, and he did a bad thing, and that's all on him, and none of it falls on me." So what you need to do is ask questions to find out what it is. Or it might be that you feel a scintilla of shame, and we could have a conversation about it. So I think it's a very reasonable hypothesis that people would feel shame in that circumstance, but it's not

Hilary Jeffs It's sort of full-blown

Peter Kinderman and this is, this is important because... So a lot of people sort of take the piss out of psychology because sometimes their explanations work backwards. So you say, "Here is a woman whose husband did X, Y, and Z," and you go, "Yeah, it must be very shaming." And then you go, "No, I'm not shamed. I'm angry." And you go, "Absolutely, yes." Well, which is it? And the answer is y- that's not how science works. The way that science works is you go on the basis of all of the research and indeed personal knowledge that we have of humans, it is highly likely that present that as a hypothesis and see whether that's true. And this is why the definition of shame is so important because the shame might be, "I feel that I let down my children by not seeing the warning signs, so I feel ashamed." Or it might be, "I feel mainly angry, but I do wonder whether I missed the warning signs." Or it might be, "The only time I feel shame is when I have to go out in public, and even though I know that I've done nothing wrong, other people are treating me as if..." so what we do is, and, you know, this is what we should do, is just reserve judgment. All of those are likely. So anyway, but the point is that when people-- You're right, that when people are convicted of those sorts of crimes, the impact on wives and children are quite intense. I know for a fact that the judicial system, when they pass sentence, are completely aware of that- So I mean, obviously always the defense team go, you know, "You have to remember that there are innocent people here." And the judges go, "Yeah, I know. I absolutely know. Anyway, here, here's the sentence." a lot of people change their names, a lot of people move. It's, yeah, it's, it's dramatic.

Hilary Jeffs Well, it's

Peter Kinderman it is important to say that, you know, cause of this is the bloke who did the bad thing

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, and it is compounded by the fact that everyone knows that particular person's name, certainly at the moment. Or quite a lot of people. Not everyone, but, you know, you will be aware that there will... It would've been a water cooler moment, as they say, wouldn't it? People chatting about it. How do you then, as a mum, make that decision... And I'm... Obviously, we can't be inside Laura's head who's Russell Brand's wife. We cannot know their circumstance directly. But as a mum, you've got to go through this understanding about whether you are going to take your children with you to visit the father in jail. Because even though, that person will be on the sex offenders register if they've been convicted of rape or sexual assault, it doesn't mean that they are automatically barred from seeing their children. How do you go about wrestling with such a huge decision as that? What are the steps you must go through to kind of do it fully or give it respect?

Peter Kinderman Well, the truth is, I was going to say I have no idea. That's not quite true. I haven't read the literature, and one of the rather good things about our society is there will have been people who, who will have been reasonably intelligent and reasonably well supervised, who will have spent their PhDs looking at exactly this issue. So there will be PhD theses on the impact of prison visits on the children of sex offenders, and that's what we should look at. So the answer to how does she, a mother, go about weighing up the options for managing this is read the literature. Read the literature and appraise it. And it sounds glib, and it sounds arrogant, and it sounds a bit nasty, but that's what we should do. We shouldn't say too, too much about kind of speaking from first principles. I would say, you know, think, think back to what you were taught at university about appraising data sources. University is a good thing. University is a good thing for everybody. University is a very, very good thing for everybody, even if they're in the cir-circumstances that you're talking about. Because what you do is have a look at where the information's coming from. Is the information coming from a reputable source? And have a look at what decent social psychologists have written about the issue and what has been proven to be effective and non-effective, and what childhood survivors of these circumstances then say later in an interview about what they found either traumatising or helpful about it, and I haven't read that data. I would, however, say that even at a relatively young age, I'd ask the kids what they wanna do. The other thing, speaking cynically, is, they have quite a lot of time. They don't have to make a decision this week. You

Hilary Jeffs Yes. They are gonna have, hopefully, quite a lot of time. Yes, indeed. Lastly, before we go then, it's always difficult for kids who are in the shadow of famous parents, and obviously if that fame turns to infamy, that becomes even harder for them. How are they going to have the resilience going forward to be able to deal with the playground, deal with other people's talking, at least talking to them about it, raising it with them talking about them behind their back, those feelings? How, how do they manage? How do these children manage in the spotlight the way they will be, even if it's only on a small scale in their own playground, or indeed just in their high street?

Peter Kinderman Well, and again, it-- I mean, this is an area that I've looked at a little bit. I haven't done any research into it, but I looked at a little bit. And one of the things that you find about people who have been in this situation is that parents do talk about choosing schools carefully where, where that's managed. I think there's also an element of the schools being buffers against this. So I've, I have read positive stories about teachers buffering that situation so that going to school can be a place where you're not exposed to the negatives of the outside world, but you're amongst... Yeah, you're within walls and amongst a group of people. Which raises the issue of immediately what I would think of is that friends are more important than anything else.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, aren't they? Friends really do help the world turn for yourself, aren't they? If

Peter Kinderman Yeah. So I think that if I was a parent in that situation, then the first thing I would look at is yeah, w-what the friendship groups are. And I'd probably make quite ruthless decisions about the fact... So if you're thinking about should we stay where we are, I mean, do we have to move financially? Would it be a good idea to move locations, even move countries? Could you move locations and change your name and change schools? Then partly I would say, are the friends that my children have at the moment friends that I would worry about them being bullied, or are they friends that would act as a positive buffer against this? And that would, that would shape my decision as to whether it's

Hilary Jeffs you have raised something very... Well, and it has raised something very interesting about changing your name. Will that not necessarily sort of help people feel or encourage people to feel in a negative way more association, more guilt, more shame that they've had to take such an evasive action? Does that not store up issues for later on? We're talking about identity, aren't we? And having to shift your whole identity away from it

Peter Kinderman Well, again, I think it, I think... So of course, being English, of course, I'm gonna say something which will make you laugh. But with respect, Hilary, I think you're talk- still talking about the idea of it being predicated by shame. But if it's predicated by anger, then, then, you know, " What a bastard. I'm not gonna have anything of my name associated with him. I'm absolutely going to take my mum's name, and could you please run through all of the legal documents to make sure everything's changed, please?" Then that would follow from a sense of anger being the dominant cognitive and emotional set rather than shame

Hilary Jeffs and our d- our hearts do go out to her and the kids because, you know, whatever else, they've got a difficult time coming up, for absolute sure, and we hope it's as easy as it possibly can be for you. Cosmetic surgery then. More of us are going under the knife, and half a million people went abroad to get their cosmetic surgery done in 2024. That was up 20% on the previous year. And obviously as pennies tighten more, purse strings get a bit tighter, we're going to find perhaps more people going abroad for this cosmetic surgery. And it just made me think, apparently, 'cause they've launched this whole campaign to vet it before you get it, to basically do due diligence around the place where you're going to get the surgery. You'd kinda think that was normal. But like, you know, are there emergency services nearby if things go wrong? You know, what about, what are you doing, what are the steps that you are taking to ensure that they're properly qualified and that the materials are used are actually going to be appropriate for you and that the testing is rigorous and your aftercare is okay? But one of the consulting surgeons that was talking about this report said that actually you need to be aware that the risks start from the minute you get on that plane to not just when you come back and you're healing from your scars, but until your risk of blood clots is finished at the other end. Now they say that what they're concerned about is that when you combine a cosmetic procedure with the sunshine, the sun, the sex, the sangria of a holiday, that people are not as rigorous in their decision-making and they're more likely to pick up these buy one get one free offers, you know, where they go in for a tummy tuck and end up with, you know, new boobs at the same time. I'm just, what is going on here? Please tell me what's happening.

Peter Kinderman Okay. So, and I need s-- well, you say tell me what's going on. Of course, well, be-be-being a Cambridge-educated person with male gonads, I will of course rise to that challenge and tell you exactly what it is with a, with a very assertive,

Hilary Jeffs Thank you. Mansplaining. Here we go. Come

Peter Kinderman I don't bloody know, do I? But, so I, and I need to separate a little bit from the science and then some, some sort of kind of thoughtful kind of considerations of the science and then sort of personal views. So I'm not... Personally, I'm not a particularly big fan of cosmetic surgery. I think there are reasons why, yeah, it doesn't really work for me on a, on a personal level. The science of it,

Hilary Jeffs well. How's the Botox coming on? I thought it was going well for you.

Peter Kinderman Little of me is artificial. So my-- Right. The, I mean, the science of it is, you know, when people do reviews of cosmetic surgery, they tend to say the outcomes tend to be mixed. So I mean, what the NHS does is it recognizes that disfiguring injuries are bad for your psychological wellbeing, and cosmetic procedures are, of course, covered by the NHS because committees thinking about how to spend public money, blah, blah, blah. And so for instance, if people have surgery, then there's reconstructive work that is done in order. So we know that disfiguring issues and correcting disfigurement with surgery is actually quite strongly positive for people. Cosmetic enhancements, obviously there's a blurred line between the one and the other. There, the story is much more mixed. So things like breast augmentation, facelifts, and so forth, the psychological outcomes for those procedures is pretty much mixed. And then you've got short-term and long-term consequences. And I have to say that for me, if you've got something which has very mixed outcomes and where if there are positive outcomes, they're short-term, and then they're negative outcomes- Mm. That's,

Hilary Jeffs So when you're saying positive and negative, are we talking psychological? Do you get... Like, when you immediately have surgery, you get a boost to your self-esteem if it's gone well, but then that's short-lived and you chase more. Is that

Peter Kinderman Yes. And al- and also you get immediate short term, and then you get sort of medium term, and then you got long term. So for instance, common procedures like facelifts or breast augmentation, what people tend to report is positive effects, but it's mixed even in the short to medium terms, and then the long term effects are longer. Because, you know, to be blunt, i-i-if you're a woman in your 30s who has breast augmentation, and we were talking earlier about, oh my good God, that was 50 years ago. If you have surgery in your 20s, then when you're in your 60s, is that surgery going to be physically augmenting to your physical appearance

Hilary Jeffs got some crazy visions in my... Well, obviously I don't see visions, but thoughts in my head about really pert boobs on a not very pert body

Peter Kinderman Well, yeah, and you know, if you're talking about a Brazilian butt lift and you're, you're talking about... Anyway, I mean, all right. The other thing is it-- and this is, this is not scientific and is entirely personal, but in my personal experience, I've rarely... You have to... I mean, you know, I'm not rich. I, you know, I left school, got a job, did quite well, but that's it, right? So I don't move in the, in the kind of circles of the mega-rich. But I've never seen good cosmetic surgery. None, none of it

Hilary Jeffs it's crazy, isn't it? Because what happens is it seems like they get addicted because you see all these lovely, you know, like take Nicole Kidman, she just seemed to just age without aging looked beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And then recently I saw her and was like, "Okay, you've crossed the line. You've now become an alien." You know, you've just become this, like, cartoon with these massive eyes and this face, and you can't... I just, that's why I wouldn't want to start it because where do you finish and when do you know when you've gone too far?

Peter Kinderman And I have seen photographs of myself, when I was in my 20s, and I look at myself now and I think, "Yeah, my body is not as nice as it was when I was in my 20s." But I don't think that if I had surgery, I would recapture the body of me when I was 20. I would have the body of me age 61 with some surgery scars and some odd bits of plastic inserted in places that plastic shouldn't be inserted. So I'm, I'm not a big fan. I tend to think that for both men... This is my, a personal view rather than scientifically. I tend to think for both men and women that natural is nice. You know, I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I do like the human body and I don't like plastic. When it comes to would I share my romantic and intimate life with a human person or a plastic person, I prefer hu- So no, I'm not a big fan of it. Plus the data are, well, you might feel be- better, but what I really don't understand is people who go through all of that analysis and then think, "Yeah, I'll go for the buy one get one free idea in some dodgy clinic," just strikes me as... I mean, I don't wanna, I don't wanna have a general anesthetic any time in my life. I really don't want to have a general anesthetic 'cause they're terrible things. I mean, I would if I needed one, but I'd ask the surgeon whether it could be done under local. I'd ask them whether they could put a big fat tourniquet on whatever part of the body it was and do it under local. I'd try to avoid a general anesthetic.

Hilary Jeffs Really?

Peter Kinderman Wouldn't... They're bad. You, yeah, you know, coma, blood clots. I don't want... The physical consequences of major surgery are negative. I don't want major surgery. If I can avoid major surgery, I would really avoid it. I would have surgery done under [unclear]. I don't... And so I certainly wouldn't do it for cosmetic reasons, so I'm, I'm a sceptic

Hilary Jeffs I do wonder whether, because when I was a little girl, I found out that my dad's cousin had had a nose job done, but years ago. So like in the '50s or '60s or something, had had a nose job done that had always not delivered what she wanted, and she really hated her nose. So whilst it wasn't as big as it had been, it had a big dip in it. It hadn't gone to plan, I think, we can safely say. And I used to think, "This is ridiculous. Why, why has she done that in the first place?" And also, you know, it's gone wrong, and she's had to live with that then for the rest of the years. And she'd look in the mirror, and rather than it being just natural, you're going, "I did that to myself, and I spent the money doing that to myself." But I wonder if I've got... What's that thing when people think they're really fat when they're skinny? What's it called? Body,

Peter Kinderman Body dysmorphia

Hilary Jeffs Yes. Well, I think I've got the reverse kind, because I look in the mirror and I'm like, "Well, I don't look that different to when I was 18." Obviously I really do. I'm not that fat. Obviously I've got fat. But I just don't see it, and that's

Peter Kinderman [unclear]

Hilary Jeffs Isn't there a thing where you look in the mirror and you just don't see what actually is there?

Peter Kinderman Th-th-there are lots, lots of us look in the mirror and our appraisal of our bodies in various ways i- is distorted compared to maybe what you would say would be objective or what other people see. There's an interesting interface between psychology and physics here because... Right, so this is, this is quite difficult to do without having a blackboard and a, and a, and a chalk. But if you're standing here i- in front of a full-length mirror there, and you're looking at yourself, then the angle of attack means that-- And then you look down at yourself. So what you see from the bouncing off is foreshortening means that your body shape, even in a straight mirror, and most mirrors aren't straight. If you again, this is possibly a nerdy thing to do. But if you take a step back from full-length mirrors and have a look from a single vantage point, maybe close one eye, sorry, bit nerdy, and look at a full-length mirror, and then look at things like the corner of a room or the line of... You'll see that they're, they're, they're nearly all really distorted. It's like being in a funhouse at a, at a, at a fairground. It's, they're really distorting. Then the angle of attack from your eyes to the center of the mirror to your feet means that your feet are physically, with the reflection ampl- magnified in a different way than, for instance, your face, which is just has a shorter passage for the angle of the light. When it comes to looking in a mirror, especially makeup mirrors, what you're talking about is your nose is like an inch and a half closer to the mirror than your eyes. So your nose is splayed out. It's like when you take a photo with a mobile phone because the focal length, you-- People look different on iPhone cameras than they do

Hilary Jeffs more physics than psychology?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. So when we look in the mirror, the physical reflection has dimensions which are not quite the same as the dimensions that another person would see when they look at you. So taking a photo of you and then having a look at the photo is different from looking in the mirror. The other thing is you're reversed

Hilary Jeffs I just can't take a good photo because I can't bear

Peter Kinderman But also you're reversed.

Hilary Jeffs Fine in the mirror

Peter Kinderman Yeah, so the reversal of image is different, and we're all slightly asymmetrical, so that's different. The other thing is when you look at yourself in the mirror, you always see staring eyes. You've, you've never seen yourself in a mirror in profile. You only see yourself, but you only see yourself from a particular perspective. So judging yourself in the mirror is a, is a ridiculous thing to do. That's not what you should do

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, and also I'm astounded that they haven't cottoned onto this in changing rooms because in changing rooms I look really fat in mirrors and I'm always like, "Why are you not doing a skinny mirror?" But maybe it's just because I have to stand so close to mine because of where it's put in the room compared to, when I'm in a, you know, a place that's got a much bigger room and I'm a step further back and then I really do see all of my body and that's really not a good thing and we don't want to be doing that anymore. So before we finish about the whole psychology around cosmetic surgery, the upshot is that it's not really gonna work. I mean, the fact is I've got people who I know, and I'm not gonna name names, but they've taken sort of prophylactic Botox to stop the wrinkles even forming in the first place, and they're doing that in their 20s

Peter Kinderman I would-- okay, this is, this is a personal opinion based on my profession over the years rather than the scientific c-conclusion. But I'd be tempted to say that if you are in a position where either your friends or your intimate partners are making judgments about you that mean that you think that you should have cosmetic surgery, then you should probably change your friends and your intimate partners for people who like you for who you are, 'cause that's probably a better thing

Hilary Jeffs I think I would also pass a law saying that Botox had to be called botulism. That would be the absolute thing. Now, I realise that we have not yet looked at the concept of the week, nor the psych hack. The triple T as was, we're now calling a psych hack. Could you deliver both for us now?

Peter Kinderman So the concept of the week is something called perceptual set, and it's kind of again obvious. And what you've got is a bunch of psychologists who take the most obvious of things and then give it a name. So perceptual set is closely related to the idea of confirmation bias. Basically, it's, you see what you're expecting. So there's lots of kind of examples of perceptual set. One of them is the so-called cocktail party phenomenon, where you hear your name but you don't... Everything else is a hubbub, but you hear your name. So the expectations that you have set the expectation. There are psychological tricks, I can't remember all of them, but, you know, where it-- the sort of duck rabbit thing, where is it a duck or is it a rabbit? And you go, "Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. What's this?" And you go, "Duck." And it turns out it's a rabbit, and you go, "All right, so you fooled me by getting my perceptual set focused on rabbits." yeah, peop- people do it all the time with,... And then it leads to things like, you know sort of cultural expectations of women are like this and people who look like me are like that and so forth. But the idea is that the perceptual set is that your understanding of the world shapes, in an anticipatory sense, your perception. So you don't see things as the photons determine, you see what you expect, and that can lead to problems. It can lead to confirmation bias. It can lead to halo effect and so forth. So the per- the perceptual set is that, we see what we expect rather than what's actually there

Hilary Jeffs And consequently, our psych hack this week then. Thank you, Peter

Peter Kinderman Well the s- the psych hack would be about... The phrase for it is self-distancing. So what you do is, i- is you take an observer stance and you look at it from different eyes. There's something called the Solomon effect. I'm, I'm chucking in concepts of the week that I could have used next week. But anyway, the Solomon effect is this phenomenon whereby you give better advice to other people than you do to yourself, and you think, "Why, why is that?" And of course, by self-distancing, you're, you're able to escape from your perceptual set, and you're able to give your friend the advice that you should have given to yourself if you could escape from the fact that you're in your perceptual set. The fun thing that follows from that is, okay, so what do you do about self-distancing? And there is a phenomenon, which I do not share, but I'm talking you through the psych hack, which is: what would Jesus do? So you're in a situation, and how do you do self-distancing? You go, "What would Jesus do?" Now, obviously, I'm an atheist, and there's another obvious thing about life, which is by obviously

Hilary Jeffs probably did live though. I mean, to be fair

Peter Kinderman It's, it's a good thing to say to yourself. So I do genuinely say to myself and to my friends where they go, you know, "Should we have, you know, should we go for Indian or Chinese?" And you go, "Well, what would Jesus do?" That's, yeah

Hilary Jeffs Middle Eastern then I think, please.

Peter Kinderman It's just about self-distancing. More importantly since, since I'm an atheist, it's kind of moved to what would my wife do? Which is usually safe and usually she's right. So that, and also is a very good thing

Hilary Jeffs wife would do. It's always gonna be better. One of the

Peter Kinderman [unclear]

Hilary Jeffs which is self-distancing, I think, is what advice would you give your daughter or your son? Because I think you're much kinder to other people than you are to yourself. And so I think it really does help you go, "Ah, okay. All right. I can let myself off the hook for this thing and move forward."

Peter Kinderman So the story for the podcast is what's the concept? The concept is perceptual set. You get yourself trapped in a set of expectations that mean you see what you have been programmed to expect to see. How do you spring yourself out of it? Self-distancing. The truthful self-distancing is to say something like, "Yeah, what advice would I give to other people?" Or, "What would my wife do?" But of course, the shorthand is you go, "What would Jesus do?" And then you go, "Well, obviously it's gonna be a Chinese."

Hilary Jeffs Peter, thank you very much. Do not forget to like and subscribe so that you can find this podcast whenever, and you can help us because we are independent in our podcast making. We're also after a sponsor, so if you know of an organisation who might want to get to know you guys better as our listeners, then please do tell them to get in touch, hello@experiencepodco.com. And last but not least, we wanna find out more about you because we are that nosy. Please head over to our website, experiencepodco.com, and click on take the survey. Been lovely to see you this week, Peter, and we'll be back next week with more headlines and our psychological deep dives.

Peter Kinderman Excellent.