2: Eli Finkel

Written By WTJU Radio

Welcome to Episode 2, where I talk with Professor ELI FINKEL of Northwestern University about everything from the history and science of marriage, to the trade-offs underlying science's contemporary methodological growing pains.

Although you may recognize Eli from his many New York Times op-eds, you may not know that his book, THE ALL OR NOTHING MARRIAGE, is set to hit bookstores September 19th. You can get it for your Kindle, in hardcover, or even as an audiobook.

Many others have already heaped praise upon his book--among them folks like Aziz Ansari, Adam Grant, and my old friend and mentor John Gottman, so I won't say much except that one of its best attributes is how clearly you can hear Eli's voice in the text--a rarity in this hyper-edited genre (so a tip of the hat to Eli's editor, too). It really is essential reading if you want to understand modern marriage on any level--either abstractly as a scientific question or, concretely, as a guide to your own. When I spoke with Eli for CIRCLE OF WILLIS, he was in the midst of writing it, and I'm delighted to see it hit the bookshelves. Buy it, enjoy it.

* * * A NOTE ON THE CONTENT OF OUR CONVERSATION In many ways, my conversation with Eli hits the bullseye of what I was hoping to accomplish with this podcast, which is to capture the essence of the great conversations I've had over the years with colleagues as I visited other universities or attended conferences. We talk about his book and his research area, meander through some theoretical backcountry, confess some of our methodological sins, and ruminate together about the future of science. It's marvelous. And... I thought it might also be nice to have a few links to extended readings for those inclined to do so. So here are a few topics that might have left a few listeners scratching their heads. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Nash equilibrium, Attachment Style Meta Analysis.

As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page. Find out more on the Circle of Willis site. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

  • Jim Coan: From VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. This is episode two of Circle of Willis, where I discuss the history and science of marriage with Eli Finkel of Northwestern University. So settle down everyone, maybe…maybe sit and cling nervously to your special someone and have a listen.


    [Intro Music]


    Jim Coan: Hey, everyone, it's Jim Coan. This is my podcast Circle of Willis. Today, it's my great pleasure to introduce you to Eli Finkel, who is a professor at Northwestern University, splitting his time there between the psychology department where he directs the relationships and motivation lab and the famous Kellogg School of Management, where he holds an outstanding teaching professorship. Actually, owing to his regular contributions to the New York Times op-ed page, you may know Eli already. But you may not know that he's published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific articles describing his original research, all of which was funded by places like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. And you may not know that Eli has a new book out called “The All-or-Nothing Marriage,” published by Dutton Press and available wherever you'd like to get your books. I have read this book, by the way, and I love it. 


    Jim Coan: When I talked with Eli, he was still in the midst of writing this book, and I'm thrilled to see it hit the bookshelves. Which it will have done I think, by the time many of you hear this. It has to be said that there are a lot of books out there offering relationship advice. It's not…One of the reasons this is a book I think you can really trust is that Eli doesn't, he's not he's not whispering, you know, false promises here. In fact, I'd say he's pretty frank about the challenges of marriage in our time. And…but… that just that just means the hope and assistance he has to offer is grounded in a clear-eyed view of both the hard work and the genuine pleasure that's there to be found in our closest romantic relationships, I'd say. In this book, Eli also does a nice job of reminding us how important our friendships can be. And on that note, I definitely feel lucky because I can call Eli, a friend of mine. 


    Jim Coan: I first met Eli about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, something like that, on the island of Crete, believe it or not, in Greece. My friend David Sabara introduced us. We were all out to dinner someplace. I can't remember where. Somewhere in Crete, Rethymno. And we were hanging out. And I immediately realized that Eli was a guy I wanted to be around. He just had this look. This look that communicates sort-of crackling intelligence on the one hand in a little edge, a little danger. And that sort of crossover where intelligence meets a little crazy, that's sort of my social comfort zone. So I wanted to be next to that guy and talk to him and, you know, see what he was all about. And I wasn't disappointed. In fact, the only problem with Eli, and I encountered this problem with him almost right away, is that I can't really keep up with him. He's one of those guys who's always on the move. You know? You don't see, you don't catch Eli Finkel just sort of hanging around. 


    Jim Coan: When I see him, I saw him one time in Amsterdam, for example. I was living in the Netherlands with my family for a sabbatical and Eli had come out for a conference. And we made some plans to meet up and he was like, “yeah, so I'm giving two talks and I'm working on a paper while I'm here and I'm, yeah, why don't you join me for my 25 mile bike ride in the morning? And I'm going for a run later too, maybe. And we'll probably be out having a, you know, a substantial and an exciting and enriching social life. You want to do any of that?” And I was like, “yes, absolutely! I want to do all that stuff.” But, sadly I couldn't. And it wasn't because I had other obligations, really, either. The problem with me is that I have these… I have limitations. You know? I have limitations of the mind and limitations of the body. I just have these limitations that place constraints on me, that are unknown to individuals like Eli Finkel. He makes stuff happen at a level that most of us can only sort of fantasize about. 


    Jim Coan: And a lot of that stuff is obviously scholarship. He contributes really substantially to the empirical database we all share, of course. You know, findings on how relationships function, things like that, but he's also made tremendous contributions to psychological theory. From my perspective, he's been extremely integrative, taking a sort-of bird's eye view of the larger empirical database that does exist in helping us all with how to think about it. I'm not alone, I'm not alone in this conclusion. It's actually why Eli was honored recently with a theoretical innovation prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.


    Jim Coan:  Now, one of my favorite personal examples of his theoretical contributions is something Eli calls Transactive Goal Dynamics, which describes the many ways that people share, negotiate, and pursue goals, really, together in kind-of dynamic systems that sort-of resemble fully functioning organisms. I think this is, I just, I think this is a fascinating idea, among the many we discussed in the conversation you're about to hear. That said, if there's one problem with that conversation, it's that we didn't really get much into Eli's personal life, which is one of the things I like to do with these recordings. But you know, from my perspective, that's only really a problem if I'm not going to have him back on, which I'm totally going to have Eli Finkel back on the show. I mean, if he'll come back on. I mean, if I can catch him, maybe during one of those moments when he's not not writing a major new review article, or running a marathon, or hosting a salon-like social experience, or something like that. 



    Jim Coan: And I don't know. I'm sure he would try to talk me out of how awesome I think his life is. If he were here right now. But I think these things about him. I do. And I envy him a little bit. I envy him, his energy. And I envy him, his intellect and his productivity. He's just… an amazing person. So anyway, if I can find him during one of those little gaps in his schedule again, I'm going to bring him back and talk a little bit more with him about his life. But until then, we'll just have to just have to talk about his work and his ideas. A bunch of which are coming up right now. 


    [Guitar music fading in]


    Jim Coan: Friends, comrades, esteemed listeners. Here's Eli Finkel. 


    [Music fades in, then quickly out]


    Jim Coan: How's it going, man? 


    Eli Finkel: Good, good. It's good to see you. 


    Jim Coan: What's lighting your fire these days? What's really what's really doing it for you? I mean, I don't really know exactly what to ask you about? Because there’re like five things that I could discuss with you for an hour. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's right. There's been a lot of stuff that's been exciting. I have been, you know, I'm working on this book, I think I might have mentioned to you, this…


    Jim Coan: Oh, yeah. What is this book? 


    Eli Finkel: The book is the idea of “The All-or-Nothing Marriage.” So, how the institution has changed over time in the US that makes it so that the elite marriages appear to be better than the elite marriages of any previous era, but that the average marriage is sort of limping along.


    Jim Coan: How do you know that? I mean, it's this, I tell, you have that great climbing Mount Maslow paper, which I love. I tell everybody to read that paper. Is this sort of based on that? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, that's that's the idea. I mean, the answer of how we know that the truth is, we kind of don't so here's what we know: the General Social Survey tells us that the proportion of marriage that reaches the highest level of satisfaction, the very happy definition, that's been falling about, again, not crisis level falling, but linearly declining since the early 70s. And that's consistent with the idea that we might be asking more of the marriage, not in all ways but in these sort of self expressive ways. We're looking for the marriage to do these very intensive, high-level things for us, help us discover our identity, live lives in accord with what we discover, while we're simultaneously spending less time with our spouses. Doing things like intensive parenting and working longer. So....


    Jim Coan: So working a lot with intensive parenting is causing us to spend less time with our spouses?


    Eli Finkel: Less time alone with our spouses, yes.


    Jim Coan: Less time alone with our spouses.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, exactly. So...


    Jim Coan: Good God. 


    Eli Finkel: The amount that we're parenting is interfering heavily with the amount of time that we get along with our spouse, and to the degree that we're looking to our spouse to help us really do these deep, difficult high-level psychological tasks. I mean, it's not like it used to be, where we look for our partners to help us, you know, sow the fields, or even even in the 1950s. Even things like cherishing each other. 


    Jim Coan: Or the 1970s even.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Right, for some of us. The, even cherish each other, you don't necessarily need this level of profound mutual insight into each other. You can cherish somebody who lives a life totally independent of yours, which is what we had in the separate spheres era.


    Jim Coan: The separate spheres era…


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: Which is like everything before…


    Eli Finkel: 1960s basically. Well, no, it's not everything before. I mean, it's basically the 1950s archetype. So it's what's known in the sort of history literature as the breadwinner, homemaker, love-based marriage. And that wasn't, people think of that as traditional marriage because it happens to be the marriage that was shown around the time that TV came into existence. So we have Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.


    Jim Coan: But it was all very idealized pictures. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. And it's bizarre! It's not only idealized by historical standards. If you really want to talk about traditional marriage, it looks nothing like that whatsoever. It looks like a man and a woman and a farmhouse. And he doesn't go off and earn wage labor. They try to bring up enough food to feed their eight children, four of whom are gonna die anyway. And that is traditional marriage. So the idea of the separate spheres where the man goes off and works in the economic structure and the woman stays home and this sort of tender-hearted place, that was really new, that really...


    Jim Coan: So does that mean that before that the man was more involved with the day to day…? What does that mean? I mean...


    Eli Finkel: Because the man and the woman- 


    Jim Coan: Man and the women were both more involved in day to day goings, comings and goings of the household?


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, the comings- there was no separation between the home and the place of economic production. The home was the place of economic production. There was no, there was no like, “Bye, honey, we'll see you after work!” 


    Jim Coan: Right, right, right.


    Eli Finkel: She had her jobs, he had his jobs. They weren't the same jobs. I'm not saying that there were no sex differences in the specific jobs people did. She was more likely to attend the gardens, he did the more physically demanding tasks. But Stephanie Coontz, the, I think, outstanding historian of marriage, says there weren't dual-career couples. There was a single career that you needed both people to do, and that neither one of them could have done independently.


    Jim Coan: This seems to overlap substantially with your idea of Transactive Goal Dynamics.


    Eli Finkel: I think it does.


    Jim Coan: I mean, this is, it sounds almost like the definition of Transactive Goal Dynamics. And the problem, the only problem I have with Transactive Goal Dynamics is saying ‘Transactive Goal Dynamics.’ 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, it's a brutal phrase. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, it's brutal. So what do we do about that?


    Eli Finkel: It's an homage to… 


    Jim Coan: To Dan Wegner? 


    Eli Finkel: … to Dan Wegner and..


    Jim Coan: Bless his heart. I loved that guy.


    Eli Finkel: Bless his heart right? And he, I mean, that's a lot of how I think about that theory, is that it's basically a hybrid of Dan Wegner and Caryl Rusbult. Who both are...  


    Jim Coan: Was your advisor, right?


    Eli Finkel: My advisor and both luminaries, both of whom died young from very unfortunate illnesses. And so that was the bigger priority than coming up with, like, a catchier label. Will we regret it? I don't know.


    Jim Coan: You know what it is? It's really descriptive, though, too. I mean, if you attend to the meaning of any of the words in the phrase, it really, you know, pretty much, they contain the whole theory.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we debated do we want some…like, transactive is just a complex word. And...


    Jim Coan: I mean, I just say shared goals. 


    Eli Finkel: Shared goals.


    Jim Coan: But that doesn't, that leaves out the dynamic part that…shared doesn't really deeply explain what's going on in the same sense that transactive does.


    Eli Finkel: That's right. I mean, look, we have, shared goals means something specific in the model, and they differ from… uh-oh, am I gonna remember the labels?


    Jim Coan: Don't mess it up.


    Eli Finkel: I know I'm gonna mess it up in real time. So shared goals I think we defined as goals that we both have for the same target. So we both want me to lose weight. They differ from parallel goals, which are goals that we both have, but for different targets. Like I want you to lose weight, and you want me to lose weight, and the dynamics between those two things…


    Jim Coan: Can they overlap? 


    Eli Finkel: Sure. 


    Jim Coan: So the shared goal is joint health. You know, our family health, and then the parallel goals being that…


    Eli Finkel: That's called a joint goal. Parallel, shared, and joint. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.


    Eli Finkel: Joint is, yes, both of us. Joint goal is, I have it for you and me, and you have it for you and me, that's a joint goal. And in the model, these are all significant distinctions. And independent of all of this and cross cutting all of this is who's pursuing the goal?


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: So I might have a goal for you to lose weight, but that doesn't tell us anything about who's in charge. So I might have a goal for you to lose weight, and therefore I start cooking more healthfully. Or I might have a goal for you to lose weight, and get annoyed that you're not doing it. So where's the locus of responsibility for those things? So you'll see how, like, we needed very general terms. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. And you did, I think you hit it. I think you hit it. It's tough. Yeah, it's tough. It's… those are the breaks.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we bring it back to the initial question of is there evidence for this all-or-nothing mariage.... So there's definitely evidence that the average marriage is declining a bit. But the problem is, for me, if I want to make a strong version of the argument is, the data don't exist. There is no study, and you can't even really cobble together a series of studies to say, let's look at some measure of elite marriage-ness something that says I'm spectacularly over the moon I can't even believe how fulfilled I am.


    Jim Coan: What about, you know, Locke-Wallace and the DAS and all of those kinds of, you know, measure marital quality?


    Eli Finkel: So, what we would… this is a good point, because those are standardized measures. Maybe I could use these. So the idea would be: I need a cut off. I would need to say the mean has been coming down over time – by the way, I don't, I think I'd have to conduct a cross temporal meta analysis. Which is reasonable, but I don't think anyone's done this yet. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I don't think so. 


    Eli Finkel: To plot Locke-Wallace, scale by date. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: Date of study, which is actually a cool idea. And what I think you're suggesting…


    Jim Coan: Yeah, wow, that’s really interesting,


    Eli Finkel: Right, it is, and I think what you're suggesting is, is that, you know, and this is the sort of thing I've been hoping for and I hadn't thought it through. But yes, I think the model suggests that we should be seeing a decline in mean, Locke-Wallace or other type of merit dyadic adjustment score. But that if you took a cut off near the top, that you'd have more people, more marriages that are deeply fulfilling, like at the very top, and simultaneously decline in the average marriage bifurcation. 


    Jim Coan: Are these sort of developing bimodal distributions in marriages?


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: Interesting. 


    Eli Finkel: Well, the reason why... I mean, the argument is, the reason why we should be able to achieve a better marriage than ever before is basic Maslow. He says, higher level need fulfillment, affords greater serenity, happiness, and richness of the inner life. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: Nobody in 1800 or even really 1950 was looking to the top of his hierarchy. No wife in 1950s said...


    Jim Coan: Right. That was pretty lofty stuff. Maybe humbled. You know, traveling around the world, longing for South America.


    Eli Finkel: Yes. And in fact, no, in fairness, you see that you sometimes see these things in beautiful love letters between poets. In the 1800s for example, but this isn't the norm. I mean, it really wasn't until humanistic psychology, like Maslow went mainstream, there was a human potential movement. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. Carl Rodgers…


    Eli Finkel: And this was – Carl Rogers, yeah. This is the kind of cultural revolution of the 60s that this stuff really starts to take off. And it's only then people are even looking to their marriage for those things. 


    Jim Coan: Really? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: Really? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. I think so. 


    Jim Coan: That's only when that's... 


    Eli Finkel: Do you think June – is it June and Ward? 


    Jim Coan: June Cleaver? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Do you think that they…So, it's clear that they were looking to each other for affection and coparenting…


    Jim Coan: Does Ward complete you? 


    Eli Finkel: Right! Right! 


    Jim Coan: And she'd just look at you with the dog head lean.


    Eli Finkel: She would. She would cock her head and like, “what are you even talking about?”


    Jim Coan: “What do you even –  what does that mean?”


    Eli Finkel: That's right. That's right. And I think these days...


    Jim Coan: “I want to know whether Ward is getting a paycheck, and whether Ward is, you know… disciplining the children.”


    Eli Finkel: Well, they cared about love. And by the 1950s, love was a really big deal. And a loveless marriage, really in the late 1800s, you see a loveless marriage becoming a deeply sad thing for people. In 1700, love was like a neat little perk that maybe you were lucky enough to get. But if, you know, would have been laughed out of your colonial Hamlet if you said, “I'm not going to marry until I find someone I love,” or if you said, “Oh, I don't love him anymore. I'm going to leave the marriage” – that would have gotten mocked. But by the 1850s and after, and certainly into the 1950s a loveless marriage was a profoundly sad, became a profoundly sad thing. And now we're seeing a new element on top of that a loveless marriage is still considered profoundly sad, unlike in 1700. But you're also seeing a marriage that fails to foster your personal growth and development is sad or that fails. Or, fails to offer excitement.


    Jim Coan: So the realm of possible disappointments is expanding.


    Eli Finkel: Yes, that's precisely right. The realm of possible disappointments is expanding. But alongside that issue is the realm of possible ways that marriage can thrill you is expanding. So those of us who are able to say, “I'm looking to the to the top of Maslow's hierarchy, I want deep fulfillment, I want you to help me discover who I am and lead a life that affords the expression of those things will do that for each other,” the people who do that, nobody tried that in the ‘50s. The couples that can do that should, this is just logic I don't have the data, but the logic is, they should be able to achieve a level of marital bliss that nobody had ever even tried to get before.


    Jim Coan: Do you think that's really possible? 


    Eli Finkel: Yes.


    Jim Coan: I mean, so these couples are out there. I mean, of course, I'm one of them. And you're one of them.


    Eli Finkel: “Yes, of course I love you, baby.” No, that's right. I mean, so again, you and I have young kids. And we were touching on this earlier. I don't... so Maslow sometimes talked about people who have self actualized. And he was talking about, and he said something, I think he said something like 2% or something.


    Jim Coan: Finding the Buddha, or sort of like... 


    Eli Finkel: He did in his, some of his early work on this stuff, he plucked out, like, historical characters and talked about it and basically said, almost nobody really self actualizes. But elsewhere, the way he talks is, I think, the more sensible way to think about this stuff, which is we fluctuate on this stuff. Nobody, almost nobody, lives a self actualized state and then just resides there.


    Jim Coan: It's sort of like an emotion. It's sort of like, you know, people who imagine that you can be in a state of joy.


    Eli Finkel: Right! 


    Jim Coan: Constantly.


    Eli Finkel: Right! 


    Jim Coan: When, which is just not reasonable.


    Eli Finkel: No, you'd hedonically adapt for one thing. Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: So, but, the striving is there. And it's real. And we have moments where we feel like we've had real self discoveries, and then we leave a job and find a new job and say, “oh, my goodness, like, this is really who I am and this allows me to express the the particular, you know, Jim Coanian qualities about me,” right? Not like, “everybody would like this job,” not not like that. Like there's some alignment between my idiosyncratic, what you might call core, self qualities. I know these things get nebulous. And the life that I'm able to live. So the question is for the marriage: do I think that there are marriages where both partners are successful in loving each other? And by and large, are overall really helping them work through who am I, who are you, what are our priorities, what are our ideal selves? And now that we've really had some insights on those things, what can we do about our lives to increase the percentage of the time that we're acting in accord with them? Yeah, some people are really succeeding at that. My guess is that you might be one of them, despite the fact that you have two young children at home.


    Jim Coan: It's possible. It's possible. When we did our first, we did that hand holding study in 2006, that we selected people, we used the DAS, and we selected people on a dyadic adjustment scale. On a sub scale of that, there's like four sub scales. I can't remember what they all are right off the top of my head, but one of them is satisfaction. We selected people who were scored really high on that satisfaction sub scale. It was hard to do. We had to let go of a lot of people. Really easy to find people in the mid range or worse, but they're really high quality. But the thing that was amazing is that that was satisfaction. So, then you add any other sub scales, and all of a sudden, there's all this variability in the overall score of this...


    Eli Finkel: Oh, you mean in the subset of people that you kept…


    Jim Coan: Yeah, 


    Eli Finkel: …there's variability, interesting.


    Jim Coan: Right? So according to the DAS, there's their satisfaction and quality. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah... 


    Jim Coan: They are not synonymous.


    Eli Finkel: Not synonymous. 


    Jim Coan: So then I start wondering what that means for your formulation. Is there an objective assessment? 


    Eli Finkel: No, I mean, I wouldn't want there to be. No, yeah, I mean, I would want it to be, “are you finding this marriage fulfilling?” But fulfilling is a broader term than satisfaction, which is part of what you're saying. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.


    Eli Finkel: So I think it should be subjective. But that doesn't mean that just a, you know, hedonic valence measure would be sufficient. And in fact, these are things I haven't thought about. But in fact, now that I think about them, I think hedonic valence isn't the main measure I would want if I were designing a 40-year longitudinal study that was backwards or a 500-year longitudinal study. The main measure... because, as Maslow argued, and I think he's right, these things are often hard work. I mean, imagine that your spouse. Um…Cat! Imagine that Cat, the photographer. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, so imagine – I'm just making this up – but imagine that she's built herself a successful photography business, but that she has an ache, like a yearning to, you know, not just make a good living doing photography, but to be an artist for the ages. And imagine this is in her. But meanwhile, you guys have two kids and she's somehow just never getting around to finding the three hours that she needs to like, look at a park bench in the right way. Um, and so I don't think it is an easy thing for you to facilitate the pursuit of that goal or the achievement of that goal. So sometimes it's going to be like, “honey, I'll watch the kids and make sure you can do that.” And that's complicated because you also have your goals. 


    Jim Coan: Right. Right, right, right.


    Eli Finkel: And that may well be sufficient, is that that's all she needs. But a lot of us have bigger blocks than that. Right? Like she might- I don't have any idea if this would- I don't know if this is her goal, or if she would have a block like this. But it may well be that she needs an ass kick. And that she needs it – Come on! Like, do you mean it or not? Like, is this a priority or not? Get off your ass. Because I've watched it for three years.


    Jim Coan: I think it's absolutely right.  I think it's absolutely right. And you know, I keep doing these social regulations studies, and it's all about social regulation of affect or emotion like soothing. And I constantly, I just have dropped the ball on this element that social regulation is so much bigger and broader than soothing. It's in every part of the way in which a couple can interact.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, the  question of like, ‘what's the right DV?’ is tricky. And I agree, like, soothing is a really good one. It's like, it's...


    Jim Coan: It's nice.


    Eli Finkel: It's beautiful. It's a really big deal. But I also agree with you that, maybe we agree with each other here, that soothing doesn't get the photography done. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Not always.


    Eli Finkel: In fact, right? Not always. That's right. No, sometimes it may, that it's a safe base sort of process whereby once you feel soothed you go out on your own. But often, it's going to be a swift kick in the pants. And that's why, coming back to this, what is the right measure of relationship quality? Feeling, you know, valence positivity, satisfaction, may not be the optimal benchmark of “is this the sort of marriage that is forcing us to do the level of hard introspective psychological and behavioral work to achieve things that, if they were easy to achieve, we would have achieved them by now?”


    Jim Coan: You know, what it makes me wonder about is the Nash equilibrium. Yeah, you know about a Nash equilibrium?


    Eli Finkel: Not well enough, but I know what you mean.


    Jim Coan: But the…the idea is that, that your, whatever else is true, you found a solution that any movement in any direction 


    Eli Finkel: Makes it worse. 


    Jim Coan: Makes it worse. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: I mean, it's maybe that's a cynical way to look at it. I don't think it's cynical. 


    Eli Finkel: No, I don't think so. 


    Jim Coan: So it's one way to try and operationalize what you're talking about without having to worry about pleasantness all the time. 


    Eli Finkel: No, that's right. I mean, we don't... our lives are too dynamic. They have too much flux in them to imagine a variation of a Nash equilibrium that sticks. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: Right? Like, then you, there's like a new problem that you have at work, or you have a health diagnosis, or you start getting fat, right? I mean, like it's…and that's what I think is so complicated. I mean, that's why I think most people probably aren't going to be able to achieve the expectations that they themselves are placing on the marriage. These specific, these unique, idiosyncratic psychological sorts of expectations. And they certainly won't be able to do it if they're like, “okay, love you, honey bye, mwah.” Right? Like it's gonna take, and this is sort of like rich person characterization, but I think the sorts of things that are like, “well, we saw a challenging matinee and we talked about it.” Right? And like, I think that is one mechanism that certainly, like, rich people with money and leisure time can do if they really want to challenge themselves to think deeply and try to understand each other. What the other mechanisms are that are optimal? I'm not, I really don't have a strong intuition for that yet.


    Jim Coan: So there's at least a subset somewhere, like the unicorn, of these very, very, very wonderful relationships. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: Maybe not, maybe the unicorn is oversaid. I don't want to be too flippant about it. But that, you know, we can probably agree that they're going to be a minority. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: And they're, those relationships are as they are because they're responding to this increasing…pressure's maybe to negative a word. This increasing cultural expectation for what the marriage can – what's it doing to everyone else?


    Eli Finkel: I think it's, again, I think it's on average hurting us a bit. I really care a lot that this doesn't get mischaracterized. I mean, I'm, podcasts are great, because there's no editing. 


    Jim Coan: We have no limit, right? And also, we can, just, you can just talk and talk. So... 


    Eli Finkel: That's right, it's so, it's not... it's usually with other types of media, I don't want to be mischaracterized as saying marriage is in crisis. Marriage is not in crisis. In fact, marriage in the US, relative to say the rest of the Western world, widely respected here. Most people want it, even like strongly liberal people who can't even articulate why marriage still matters to them are eagerly walking down the aisle. So marriage is not in crisis. But the evidence is pretty clear at this point that the average marriage is kind of limping along. Now, divorce rates, as you know, have been declining. Particularly among the well to do. 


    Jim Coan: Yep. 


    Eli Finkel: Among the college educated. It's dropped almost by half since about 1980. It's like, really, the divorce rates have come down. But overall, if you collapse across socioeconomics, the divorce rate is still pretty high. And even among those marriages that are remaining intact, there has been some amount of decline in overall quality. And that's I think due to the two trends. One is the spousification of our social lives. So the amount of time... 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I worry about this a lot. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, the data – I don't know if you've seen them – but the data are stark. If you look, say, there's good work that looks, say, at 1975 and then 2003. How much time do you spend without your spouse but with other intimate… 


    Jim Coan: With other people that are... 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, your friends and family.


    Jim Coan: This is like sociological data? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, yeah. And it's dropped among people with children, it's dropped by half. 


    Jim Coan: Holy shit. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Half?


    Eli Finkel: It's, well, it's big. So the actual data point that I'm talking about there is hours per weekend day that you engage, that you socialize with people, friends or family, without your spouse there. It's dropped from two hours, on average, per weekend day to one hour, on average, per weekend among people with who have young children at home because of again, this intensive parenting that we're doing now. And among people who don't have young children at home, it's dropped from about two to about 1.4. But those are precipitous drops in a generation. 


    Jim Coan: Holy shit, that’s incredible.


    Eli Finkel: Right, so we've really... Yeah, we've really spousified our social network. Which is, I think, one of the main reasons why the extent to which you have a satisfying marriage... 


    Jim Coan: Matters. So much.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, it matters more. And these data exist too. So, if you look at it analytically, and you look at the association of… You know, across all the studies that have been done, if you look at the association of earlier marital quality with change over time in personal well being psychological wellness, I forget, self esteem, I think, is lumped in here… You see that the effects are always positive. They were positive in the 70s and they're positive now, such that people who have higher quality marriages tend to show better psychological trajectories over time. But the effect is almost twice as strong in the 21st century as it was in the 1970s. And I think part of the reason for that is the fact that we've spousified our lives so much. That it used to be that you've had a diverse portfolio of significant others, and to a large degree, you don't now. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah you don't now. So if you've got a good, you've got a awesome spouse... 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Then things are great. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: If your spouse is more on the not-awesome side, or sorta awesome…


    Eli Finkel: Right? Yeah. I mean, I would characterize it... 


    Jim Coan: I mean you’re not, you’re not… It's like a financial portfolio. 


    Eli Finkel: That's exactly right. And I would characterize it as a strong marriage. I mean, your spouse might be perfect for another person. Right? I mean, this is a dyadic...


    Jim Coan: Okay, that's very good. That's very, I love... Yeah. Thank you. That's a much better way of looking at it.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. And that stuff dovetails with the expectation stuff. So the idea is not that we expect more. I mean, people expected their spouse to help them survive in 1800. Which is not a trivial ask. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, yeah.


    Eli Finkel: But the high level psychological and social needs that we expect the spouse to fulfill, to a large extent, independent of every other person in your relationship, like your spouse should uniquely fill these things. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.



    Eli Finkel: That's just higher than ever. And that's why you see these increasingly strong relationship between the quality of the marriage and the overall quality of life.


    Jim Coan: You know what I wonder? I wonder, I've been wondering that, even before having this conversation, I've been thinking about individuals regulating other individuals.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: And what you're sort of… the possibility that you're raising is that couples as a unit require a broader sort of concentric circle of social resources to regulate the couple.


    Eli Finkel: Interesting. 


    Jim Coan: To sort of keep the couple functioning well. Because, suppose that you have diversified. Suppose your spouse, there's some things that you're really disappointed about with your relationship. The way your dynamic, the way things work. If you have diversified, you can take some of that heat off. You know, it's emotion regulatory work to bite your tongue when, you know, if you're getting into that same old pattern again, of fighting about something, you know? And you need help with that work. Right? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: So to the degree that you can derive that help from some other source, and that translates into how you behave with your spouse. You know, this regulatory social system seems potentially much broader.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, this is one thing that we've done, I think, without noticing it is…In the language of goal systems theory, so this gets jargony, the marriage has become strongly multifinal. And by that I mean, so if you take the goal case, multifinal is the idea that a given means, say, walking to work serves multiple goals, say, getting exercise and enjoying the outdoors, right? So that's the idea of multifinality. You can do one thing that achieves multiple goals. It used to be to a larger extent that we had a more diverse social network and we could turn to people to do different sorts of things. To the degree that we've spousified our intimate social life, we're looking to our marriage, our spouse, to help us with a broad range of things that formerly probably would have been spread across a social network. And I wouldn't say that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I would say that it's not that likely that the spouse…that you're playing to your spouse’s strength for all of those things. Right? So it may be that your spouse is just like the best partner in the world if you want to go out and celebrate that, you know, you had a major achievement at work, but your spouse is pretty intolerant of your bitching about the person next door.


    Jim Coan: Right, right, or they don't want to go with you to the new superhero movie, 


    Eli Finkel: Right. 


    Jim Coan: They want to see, you know, the French foreign film. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: And you know, and so, who do you go to the superhero movie with? 


    Eli Finkel: Right. I think to a larger extent than in the past, you don't see it. You watch it on demand and in your home by yourself. Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Wow. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: This is the whole “Bowling Alone” story a little bit too.


    Eli Finkel: To some degree. It is. Yes. So, Robert Putnam, you know, bowling alone is the idea that in the second, really the last two thirds of the 20th century, we had a great decline in civic engagement. 


    Jim Coan: Right.


    Eli Finkel: He wasn't so much interested in intimate social networks. He was interested in things like joining school boards, the Elks Club, right? So yes, I would say that the ideas overlap.


    Jim Coan: But those are sort-of structures for creating this decentralized social, you know, fabric.


    Eli Finkel: Right. I mean, what happened? We moved to the suburbs. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: And we increasingly, and we took parenting far more seriously, particularly for men. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And he blames television. I mean, Putnam, don't get Putnam started on television. 


    Jim Coan: Really? I won’t.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Get him on one of these podcasts. 


    Jim Coan: [laughs] I’ll stay away from him. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, ask him about, you know, something else. So we did a bunch of things that reduced civic engagement. And I do agree with him that, and I agree with your observation, that part of what I'm talking about is related to these decline in civic institutions. But those are independent from like, why aren't we like hanging out with our sister? I don't think he was talking about that. He was talking about, like, civic institutions. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, this is really... I see what you mean. It's a little bit different. The focus is there. Why aren't we seeing our best friend? And the other thing that I worry, I wonder is contributing is, so, I guess the characterization I'm getting so far as this cultural shift, right? 


    Eli Finkel: That's right.


    Jim Coan: But there's also things like mobility that's increasing. So, you know, I have moved, since starting graduate school, you know, like four times, right? And every time there's another sort of iteration of forming good friendships. And that's tough.


    Eli Finkel: That’s right. So historically, so in the… so, you know, here's the 30,000 foot view on, like human economic systems, there's basically been four throughout the course of our history. So, starting with the hunter gatherers forever. Nobody cared about marriage. That was like, wasn't even really discussed. Then there was agriculture. So the last Ice Age ended about 11 or 13,000 years ago. And over that, in that, over that time, over the course of basically 10,000 years, society after society after society went from a nomadic hunter gatherer to agricultural.


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: It's then that even the earliest of these folks was able to extract a yield of up to 100 times as many calories per acre. And it's only then that people have any wealth, right? So then it's for the first time that some members of society don't have to devote themselves full time to food production. And then once you have wealth, then you start to care about who marries home. Because there's this because of inheritance, basically. And they care a lot about illegitimacy. Like this was a huge deal. You know, what did it happen within marriage or outside of marriage? 


    Jim Coan: Because you have to figure out how, where the resource goes.


    Eli Finkel: Exactly. That's why it was so taboo to have a child outside of marriage. It was so shaming and we had words like bastard. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: So it was only in that era that we that...


    Jim Coan: I’ve heard this linked to sexuality, too.


    Eli Finkel: How so? 


    Jim Coan: Sex, well sexuality…when economic constraints are high, that sexuality is, becomes synonymous with contract. 


    Eli Finkel: Interesting. 


    Jim Coan: So it's not about recreation. Or at least, it's less about recreation..


    Eli Finkel: It's high risk.


    Jim Coan: It's high risk.


    Eli Finkel: That's right. 


    Jim Coan: And as you go up the resource ladder, sexuality becomes more recreational.


    Eli Finkel: Interesting. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: You know, it certainly was true – I don't know the extent to which this overlaps with your observations – I mean, it certainly was true, say, in courtly love, this was middle ages, but this was agricultural societies. That, you know, the elite of society certainly cared a lot about passion. I mean, there were the troubadours 


    Jim Coan: Yeah 


    Eli Finkel: There were the, oh, why am I forgetting…. Anyway, there were a whole bunch of different groups that cared about romantic passion or cared about sexuality, but never with your wife. Seriously. By definition, it was like not something that you would ever do. 


    Jim Coan: Right.


    Eli Finkel: That was not the point...


    Jim Coan: Like your business partner, 


    Eli Finkel: No, right. Your wife is your business partner, your husband was your business partner. These were things that were, you know, contractual, and if anything was debasing to...


    Jim Coan: To the covenant, or the... Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. To treat, like, sex and passion as something that you would do in marriage, it was all, by definition, adulterous. And that was considered, like, the right way to do it. And it is our, it is… Forgive, your listeners may not like this, it is a little arbitrary. I mean, why have we linked this specific constellation of factors that have to happen within the marital bond. And some of them are almost inherently contradictory. So, for example, we want our spouse, this is a lot of your work, right? We want our spouse to be the place where we can go when we need soothing and care.


    Jim Coan: Yes.


    Eli Finkel: And who will help us regulate our emotions, and make us feel safe when we're anxious and so forth. But that's often not that hot, right? So you could have imagined that we would have built a different system, something more like what the troubadours might have had, for example, where you have somebody who's really you're responsible for each other's emotional support, like you're each other's rock.


    Jim Coan: Right.


    Eli Finkel: And then you could imagine that there's somebody else who's, like, fiery and irresponsible, and like, just you have, like, really hot sex with those people. And that there wouldn't be some inherent contradiction or immorality to those views. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: These things are much more arbitrary than we want to admit. But we link them and we care a lot.


    Jim Coan: I think, first, that they are clearly arbitrary. I mean, well, I mean, maybe not totally, because you have these patterns, right? There are patterns. It's not like North America is where this happens. These kinds of patterns happen. You know, sex, and contract are linked a lot because sex makes babies, probably. And but...


    Eli Finkel: And can make bonding.


    Jim Coan: And can make bonding. Yeah, it makes bonding. And you know, it's all... So it's not totally arbitrary. But it has the potential to be arbitrary. Where resources are sufficient. Probably. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. Arbitrary was the wrong word. It has taken on a moral rigidity that seems superfluous. And many ...


    Jim Coan: But is it superfluous? Go ahead. Go. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean many... I'm concerned about the default nature of the monogamy assumption, right? I'm alarmed that... So some people ask the question, is monogamy realistic? And they usually want to answer no. The question shouldn't be is monogamy realistic. Yes, it's realistic, you can do it if it's a priority! But that it's not trivial to do. So, I think the question that I would have people ask on a unique basis, that each couple can ask this of itself, is monogamy sensible for us? Because it's treated as if, like, “oh, well, that's just the obvious default, we're going to do that. And then we start thinking about all the other things as if we haven't already made a big ask.” But we have! So monogamy is great. I have nothing against it. Many people, in fact, maybe most people are probably best suited by having a monogamous marriage. I'm totally enthusiastic about it. But the fact that it's treated as if it's not going to be work. As if it's, like, self evident, as if it's anything other than impressive, right? It's treated as a default. Like, you haven't slept with anybody for five years, like there should be a celebration about that.


    Jim Coan: So since human nature has come up, it seems, you know, people are always looking for these broad generalities about human behavior. And it's, as you know, very hard to find those because one of the most realistic generalities about human behavior is we have flexibility. We have these massive brains that afford us this incredible range of behavioral flexibility. So then it seems to me that the questions change. It's not about “are humans monogamous or not?” It's “under what conditions does monogamy make the most sense? And under what conditions does it not?” And that's why I can't help myself anymore from always coming back to resources, budgeting, sort-of goals that need to be met, what are the means to those goals… 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: All of these themes sort of function as sort of structural organizing principles for questions like, should there be monogamy, are we monogamous? 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, I have exactly the same reaction. So anytime that, you know, a scientist gets on the radio, or an individual married person wants to think this through or have a discussion with her spouse about these things, it's not a, it shouldn't be a good, bad, necessary evil sort of calculus. It should be: What are our priorities? 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And what resource investment is going to be required in order to achieve those things? And, what are we not prioritizing? What are we willing to, say…


    Jim Coan: What's the trade off?


    Eli Finkel: What – precisely. What is it that we're willing to say, “boy, I've asked a lot of this one relationship and I don't want to overburden it or be unrealistic, because that's likely to have costs on the quality of the relationship,and the satisfaction that my spouse, and I have in the marriage and the fulfillment that we have.” So if people were serious about this, I think they would, like, make a list. What is it that's important to achieve in the marriage, and what am I actually asking of the marriage? I think they'll be shocked by actually what they're looking to their partner to do, I think they don't notice. And then there's a conversation that's like, all right, well, realistically, if I'm really going to expect this person to be my primary or even sole source of emotional support and sexual fulfillment and have this person who helps me discover who I am, and achieve my idea grow toward my ideal self. And, like, you go down this list of high level intensive psychological things. It's like, well, what's going to be required to do that? And then am I willing to invest those things?


    Jim Coan: Are we willing to invest them. And also, let's be honest, there's also, you know, how do I understand myself? We're all individuals with cultural behavioral histories, and backgrounds, things have been sort of inculcated the way we view things, what hurts our feelings, or what makes us excited? They're gonna vary. 


    Eli Finkel: That's right. 


    Jim Coan: So what are we willing to – how are we willing to negotiate that as well?


    Eli Finkel: That's right. I mean, this is one of my major concerns about one-size-fits-all recommendations. By the way in the replicability crisis. Yeah. But also...


    Jim Coan: I know, I know.


    Eli Finkel: Also applied to marriage as well. It's like, I couldn't write a book that says, the seven secrets to a happy marriage, unless that book were seven questions that you should pose to... 


    Jim Coan: Then that's what you should write. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, that will be part of my book is basically what are the questions that people need to think through, and on a case by– person by person, or couple by couple basis, figure out their own answers to.


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: There's not going to be these like, well, here's the way you need to support people. For example, your work largely comes out of the attachment theory tradition.


    Jim Coan: Although not – I mean, I didn't know that until later. 


    Eli Finkel: So, inadvertently. Well, let's say it this way, Phil and Mario were delighted when your paper came out. So, and I view your, when I discuss your work in class, and so forth, I talk about it as attachment work. In large part because it, I think, the first, certainly, I think the first neural work to get serious about the nature of the attachment bond. So, not just individual differences and anxiety and avoidance, but the normative attachment system. Like, you know, anxiety triggers the attachment system and then can you find a safe haven? 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: Think about the way that people like to be supported, right? So, I can imagine as a relationship researcher, or you could imagine as a relationship researcher, writing a book that says, “here's how to sooth somebody who's experiencing anxiety.”


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: I suspect that I don't want to be treated in that way. Right? 


    Jim Coan: You said, you've said, I saw you at a conference. You said something rather provocative.You said like, if you're anxious, and someone tries to touch you, you're gonna say fuck off. ,


    Jim Coan: Yeah, well maybe that was hyperbole. I mean, let me say this. My wife has certainly learned and not because I've actually, you know, yelled at her or certainly... 


    Jim Coan: Sure, you're not actually going to say that. 


    Eli Finkel: No, but I'm going to feel it. Yeah. So that's the thing is, like, usually, like reasonable responses to things like, I had a bad day or I just stubbed my toe… 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: …Are things like, “Oh, honey, I'm so sorry…” Back rub. Kiss on the head.That is the last thing I want. 


    Jim Coan: So that would make you like.. Well, anyway, keep going.


    Eli Finkel: Angry and like, get out of my face. And, again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm a... maybe it is true that I'm a pathological case. But I doubt it. I think what I am is somebody who's generally securely attached, but has some avoidant leanings, and basically always has. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: And in my vulnerable moments, the single worst thing to do is do the “oh baby…” you know, like, be tender and sweet to me. It basically... the best thing to do – I like your surprise. The best thing to do is give it two minutes.


    Jim Coan: Just two? 


    Eli Finkel: It depends. I mean, if I've, like, hurt myself, it's probably less than two minutes. If I looked like I, you know, just bashed my head on something like, two minutes, it won't be hurting anymore. And I'll be totally back to myself.


    Jim Coan: Because you... but here's the interesting part is it because you get this... because I have anger. Like I have anger problems. You know. And so for me, for me I was just just thinking about your example. If I, when I hit my head or something, I'll have this surge of rage. And it's not that I don't like to be soothed so much, it's that I'm just a live wire at that moment.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, it's a little different for me. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: Again, to the degree that we have accurate introspection about these things. I think I suspect you're being accurate about yourself. And my best guess if I do the sort of armchair self psychoanalysis is, yes, I experienced some like, “oh, that was upsetting and the pain hurts and now I'm kind of angry about the fact that I just bashed my head and I'm in pain.” But that there is something unique on top of that, that is like don't get near me when I'm vulnerable. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And by the way, to your listeners, no, I'm not advocating this as, like, the optimal lifestyle.


    Jim Coan: Well, you know, but I think most people will be able to get there. But I just have to tell you, it sort of surprises me. When I... the construct of Eli Finkel that I have in my mind emphasizes someone who's extremely flexible with affect. So other people's negative affect doesn't seem to me that it'd be that frightening to you.


    Eli Finkel: It’s not other people's negative affect. 


    Jim Coan: But even yours, it seems like well, I don't know, but maybe...


    Eli Finkel: No, no, I think you have a more benign view of me than is true. Like if I've had something that's, you know, a negative experience of work or I feel shame about something... 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: I clam up. And again, the reason why we brought up this general topic is certainly not to psychoanalyze me or to advocate for this sort of clamming up approach. I think it's probably maladaptive. The reason why we're talking about it here is the cookie cutter solution to what to do when your husband is suffering would fail in a rather spectacular fashion.


    Jim Coan: With you.


    Eli Finkel: With me and...


    Jim Coan: And with, Jeff Simpson would say, roughly 25% of the population.


    Eli Finkel: I think that's probably right. I mean, I am willing to say that if this applies to only me and that I'm a unique case, then your listenership shouldn't care. But I don't believe that. I don't believe that I have a completely warped psychological architecture. The fact is, these attachment dimensions, say, anxiety and avoidance, the, you know, a highly anxious person probably wants that soothing way longer than the average secure person wants it. And the average avoidant person wants everybody out of the room when feeling vulnerable. And so this is why there's no, there's…I think, never going to be any guidebook that can tell you when you confront situation X, the optimal behavior is Y.


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: There might be main effects. There might be like, this is better than, like, you know, punching your partner in the face. Right? Like, I'm sure that's true. But I think there's…but I think the main thing is going to be this highly, you know, sensitive to individual differences, sensitive to individual psychological idiosyncrasies that weren't as crucial to marital wellness in 1800.


    Jim Coan: Yeah, and the world was shittier then. 


    Eli Finkel: The world was way shittier.


    Jim Coan: Way shittier.


    Eli Finkel: We managed to feel oppressed nonetheless, though. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I know.


    Eli Finkel: Heroically. [laughs]


    Jim Coan: Yeah, yeah, truly. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Cool. Well, with that, that all makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, you know, my own work, I definitely think that I've neglected the individual differences.


    Eli Finkel: You’ve looked at avoidance, right?


    Jim Coan: You know, I did in the early sample. And now, although small... 


    Eli Finkel: Here’s the segway.


    Jim Coan:  Right. Now in the age that we are in, it is almost unpublishable. So there are 16 subjects with a moderator. 


    Eli Finkel: No, you're right.


    Jim Coan: Yeah, it's just not publishable. 


    Eli Finkel: But I agree with you. 


    Jim Coan: But you know, the thing is, if I showed you or anyone the data, and I could…


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: …You would go that makes 100% sense and was predicted by at least two dozen people over the last three decades. 


    Eli Finkel: That's right. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: That's right. So, I am worried about this, because relationships research is vulnerable to this movement in the ways that you and I have talked about previously. And neuroscience is vulnerable…


    Jim Coan: Oh, yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: …To this movement. Probably more than relationships research. Again, the issue for people who aren't paying attention to the replicability crisis... 


    Jim Coan: Reproducibility. 


    Eli Finkel: Reproducibility crisis roiling the sciences, is this rather abrupt change in what the standards are of how many subjects you need, and so forth. And very, very good reasons for those. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: But, are we going to do those at the expense of the ability to conduct certain types of research that we can all look at and say “that research has value, and if conclusions have to be slightly more tentative, then so be it.”


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And that seems like the, again, a sophisticated adult mature way to think about trade offs is, I think, that approach.


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I love the trade offs view of these things. I love the trade offs view of most things. 


    Eli Finkel: All things, basically. 


    Jim Coan: But also, one of the things that does bother me about the putative movement is a lack of empirical attention to the dictates, the new dictates. I mean, you know, we just for shits and giggles, in a way, my student and I, we have a study, nicely powered study, MRI study of how trait anxiety interacts with the hand holding effect. You know, it's and this is like, over 80 subjects. So we took that finding, and we made a prediction that we'd see that we would just…we had the same data in the original 16 sample. So we said, will we see it in the original sample. We do. So you know, so you see the same associations. It's still, this is statistically significant, but it's in 16 people that we went back in time to look at it so. 


    Eli Finkel: I think I know where you’re going.


    Jim Coan: You know. It's so, so...


    Eli Finkel: Well, no, so, this is one of the issues that has been alarming to me that I don't think has been discussed yet. I think this is what you're bringing up, right? So, you have it in a large sample study. 


    Jim Coan: Yes. 


    Eli Finkel: So the question is: should we be more convinced or less convinced of the effect now that you also have it in a second study that's got a small sample?


    Jim Coan: Right. 


    Eli Finkel: And I think you and I have the intuition that, okay, so that second study, the older study, is not definitive, because we now know enough about the problems of small samples that we don't want to draw strict conclusions. But I think both of us would feel comfortable saying that there is an increment in our confidence and...


    Jim Coan: Confidence has been achieved.


    Eli Finkel: So yeah, some nonzero amount of increased confidence in the effect, because it's been replicated. The irony is the statistical forensics procedures that people have been developing would draw exactly the opposite conclusion. 


    Jim Coan: That's why I raise it.


    Eli Finkel: Right. And now I guess the argument would be if it were all preregistered, maybe...


    Jim Coan: That would help.


    Eli Finkel: Maybe there would be less concern about it. Although the statistical procedures are indifferent to pre registrations, right? 


    Jim Coan: That's right. 


    Eli Finkel: I don't know. I mean, if it turns out that you can't, or people like you can't, do the sorts of research you've been doing over the last decade, or can only do one study every few years, because you need to...


    Jim Coan: Cause you have to get 100 subjects to do an MRI. 


    Eli Finkel: FMRI machine and hell knows, you know, some of them are going to move. 


    Jim Coan: Yep. 


    Eli Finkel: And you're gonna have to throw out the data because they move their head. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: And so like, that's the part that really terrifies me about the movement, there's all sorts of great things about it. But if it turns out that there's just, you know, in some senses, the very best, most convincing, most compelling work that we as a field know how to do gets replaced with a bunch of mechanical turk studies, because it's easy to get big samples. Like man, why aren't we talking more about that problem?


    Jim Coan: Well, and also the problem of constrained methodological creativity. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: You know, there are.... Alan Kazdin wrote this amazing book in the, I think, the 80s, that's in like, its fifth or sixth edition. It's just research methods and clinical psychology. It's the driest title in the world. But I highly recommend it, because it is stuffed with research designs that maximize causal inference with small samples. 


    Eli Finkel: Interesting.


    Jim Coan: With single samples, case study designs. You know, multiple baseline designs for very small rare diseases. You know, ABAB designs that we know, where you try to understand the mechanism by switching it on and switching it off and switching it on. There are so many options for increasing sensitivity to real effects with small samples that if we restrict our solution to a sample size adjustment, this doesn't make any sense. 


    Eli Finkel: I suspect this would be an argument that would be palatable to people who are more activist in this space then you and I are. There's has been a greater discussion, and I think in the last year or two, you've probably seen some of this that says increasing power, there's lots of ways to do that. It doesn't have to be big samples. And that's, I think the point you're making here. So that I think, is not going to be a third rail, like everyone will grant that, I think non defensively. It's other stuff like… replicability is great and it's true that, all else equal, the larger the sample size is the more replicable the effect is likely to be. But what are the other parameters that also matter? And under what circumstances are we willing to sacrifice this percentage of replicability of a given study for this level of innovation, of creativity, of methodological rigor, of unique sampleness? 


    Jim Coan: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.


    Eli Finkel: I mean, it's like, in fact, I-


    Jim Coan: Unique sampleness. That’s my fav.


    Eli Finkel: Unique sampleness is gonna be the title of my…”Transactive Goal Dynamics: Unique Sampleness.” I actually want to check out. Like, I'm not enjoying being involved in the debates. I find a lot of it to be pretty unpleasant. But I would be happy to check out as long as I can get a commitment from everybody that I feel like everybody should be willing to commit to. Which is, can we have a rule that says, anytime we want to propose a policy or even consider current practices, we must think about the reverberations for the other desiderata, the other valued criteria of science.


    Jim Coan: How does it fit into the ecosystem? 


    Eli Finkel: Yes. How does it fit into the ecosystem? 


    Jim Coan: Because there is an ecosystem view of this. And this is what you've really been talking about writing about beautifully is this, there's all... there's virtually always trade offs. There are competing interests, and the canonical one is the external-internal validity problem. You know, that this is just true.


    Eli Finkel: That's right. And so if that happened that there was just an increasing, I believe to be the right word, of recognition of that fact. I mean, that you can no longer write papers that say, “science is in crisis”, “replicability”, “here are six things to do about the replicability problem.” Like that it's now... yes, that's a great paper as long as it is accompanied by: these are the prices that we're going to pay for the changes that we want to make to increase replicability. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: If they're thinking aloud about it, I don't really have a horse in the race about what the right trade offs are. I'm not knowledgeable enough and not that interested in figuring that stuff out. Let the methodologists do that. But just a recognition that all practices, including current practices, in fairness...


    Jim Coan: Yeah.


    Eli Finkel: Have a set of trade offs embedded within them. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And that it shouldn't be okay anymore. In 2011, it was probably fine. But it shouldn't be okay anymore to make recommendations about solving a specific problem for a specific desideratum of science like, for example, replicability, without actually thinking through okay, well, that means we're going to run a lot fewer studies or that Jim Coan can't do fMRI studies anymore. Like, okay, these are costs and maybe, you know, and let's debate them. And maybe it's true that shutting down Jim Coan's lab, or making you run one study every four years is a good trade off that the increased replicability is worth the loss yield of number of research questions people like you get to ask. It may well be. I doubt it. But it may well be that that's good for science. And as long as people are engaging with that question, I'm out. I just want the engagement with that question to be the main topic in the field.


    Jim Coan: Is it my imagination or... I hate “good old days” kinds of points. But I think of Cook and Campbell…


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Even, what's the classic stats test? Cohen and Cohen. You know, that the trade offs language was all over the place. And when you talk about the list, you know. Remember in Cook and Campbell, they go through all the threats to validity.


    Eli Finkel: They do.


    Jim Coan: And how to cope with all the various threats to validity. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah.


    Jim Coan: And there's trade offs all over the place. And this is what makes it hard.


    Eli Finkel: That's right.  And certainly the McGrath article that we've referenced recently, the talks about internal and external validity, for example. I mean, look, in fairness to the sort of more activist side of the people in this discussion, none of those people really understood P-hacking. I mean, I think none of us did.


    Jim Coan: And I think that's right. Well, I think I definitely let it… I certainly didn't have a word for it. And words are useful in that they consolidate a lot of conceptual thinking


    Eli Finkel: It's worse than that for me. And I think probably for you for and for most of the field. Like, I didn't realize… I never had the thought that you run until the end of the semester, and then you analyze the data, and if it's a P of less than 0.05, you stop. And if it's a P of greater than 0.4, you stop. But if it's a 0.07, or 0.16, you collect more data to see if it levels into a 0.05 or doesn't. It was called getting more power. And never did I realize like, oh, but actually, you've already used up your 0.05 error, the type-one error that you're allowed when you ran the first analysis, and now you're playing, like, on house money, basically, when you do the additional hypothesis test. And same thing, even with outliers. Like I mean, I guess we kind of knew that it was shenanigan-y, the way we were, “oh, it's 00.7. Oh, now I'm gonna think to look for an outlier. But it didn't occur to me before.” So I mean, those are things that I think we didn't- and when we look for outliers, yes, it was oriented towards trying to get P less than 0.05, but it was always with the belief that this is going to reveal, like there was truth. Yeah, there's a weirdo who's not from the same population. So I think that they've done more than just...


    Jim Coan: I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. And also, just these, you know, these methodological conversations are good to have. It's been heuristically valuable for that. For me, it was the discovery in grad school of multilevel modeling. 


    Eli Finkel: Right. 


    Jim Coan: So as soon as I started the transition period, where I went from sort of running a standard ANOVA to more HLM kind of research, or data analysis. That's where we're, you know, I would face situations where, this way it's significant and that way it's not. 


    Eli Finkel: Or like do the slopes vary or not.


    Jim Coan: Or not! How do you model the random slopes? And that's what, you know... Now, we just do, by the way, we just, we know… we sort of figured it out. But there was that period of time where it's like...


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, and we shenanigan-ed. We shenanigan-ed our way around point five. They're correct. And we should have been better, and we didn't really realize that the shenanigans had consequences. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And we're way better tuned in. But let me actually riff on that exact example. The then multilevel modeling came around and was – well, I think it really came around a while before – but it was translated for relationships, research and psychologists. It's like, all of us just did it. And the reason why I think that's relevant to this discussion is, sometimes I think some of the leaders of the movement feel like there's resistance to improving methods. But every time Dave Kenny tells me…


    Jim Coan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.


    Eli Finkel: …Look, we discovered a new way to do it and it's this way. We just did it. It's never like we thought, oh, I don't know. I'm thinking maybe I won't do that. So it's not a resistance to change. This part bothers me. It's how convinced are we that specific recommendations can emerge from the…


    Jim Coan: Are going to be useful?


    Eli Finkel: …Are actually good for science. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, and I completely agree. 


    Eli Finkel: I know you and I agree, but I think this is something that… I hope this podcast gets heard by, you know, zillions of people. 


    Jim Coan: I hope so too.


    Eli Finkel: But specifically about this. It's like, I am changing right away. Like, I know that I sometimes seem like I'm, like, putting up roadblocks to change. I have changed. 


    Jim Coan: Oh, yeah me too.


    Eli Finkel: Hundreds of haters in the lab.


    Jim Coan: We have its new grant. We're integrating it as much as we can, with the Open Science Framework. We're trying to put all the data online in a public, publicly accessed... 


    Eli Finkel: That’s new! Totally new!


    Jim Coan: You know, it's all new. We never, it never would’ve occurred before that.


    Eli Finkel: The sample sizes are bigger and the paying attention as you spit ball ideas with your students to make sure that you're like, you know, that you're not harking, hypothesizing after the results are known. I've changed all of these things. But that's…they're wrong to detect resistance from me. They're right to detect resistance to policy. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. God dammit.


    Eli Finkel: That's the major thing is we can't have policy level change. We're not ready. And so policy level changes that should apply to all scholars in all disciplines, I don't think we'll ever be ready for. But even at the level of okay, within relationships research with couples, I don't think we've thought through the trade offs yet. 


    Jim Coan: Yes.


    Eli Finkel: The movement is five years old. We've made massive progress.


    Jim Coan: Well, yeah. I mean, you're... the distinction between “useful new tool, useful new strategy that can help you do better science” and “policy that we're going to use to constrain your movement… 


    Eli Finkel: Right. 


    Jim Coan: That's, that's all the difference in the world.


    Eli Finkel: That's all the difference in the world. But the truth is, policy that constrains your movement, I'm in favor of that, too, as long as I'm convinced that it in fact improves science.


    Jim Coan: I'm not even sure. I mean, yes. Put in those terms. But even though politically, I'm a progressive, leftist, centralized government, scientifically, I'm totally a libertarian. There's so much that we don't know about the creative process still. There's so much that we don't know about the generation of hypotheses, the moments of insight that people have, looking at datasets that I would look at the same dataset and see, you know, the bottom of the ocean. I wouldn't see anything. 


    Eli Finkel: Right. 


    Jim Coan: We just don't understand that we're so... Really science, what I mean to say by that, to me is it's the old west. It's anything goes, it's a free-for-all hellscape on some level. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Because it's that unknowable, the future. We don't really know how...


    Eli Finkel: I haven't thought through this. I mean, this is an interesting set of ideas. And I'm trying to think through... So everything you say is sensible. And if you want to use non-political language, it's the “let many flowers bloom” approach. And one other brief thing, Alison Ledgerwood, at UC Davis talks a lot about the start local approach. 


    Jim Coan: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: And to some degree, she's very, I think…She's more activist, I think, in the movement than we are, but she's simpatico with this broad idea of “one size fits all solutions and top down policies are going to be destructive.” So her take is you and your own lab, pay attention and in good faith listen to the issues in the movement. When you find something convincing, change your practices, if you learn, oh, that didn't work in a sensible way for our lab – not work as in 0.05  work-- but wasn't sensible for our lab, then do something different. And that this is the optimal strategy for here. Your point is interesting, because I'm wondering if there isn't a downstream implication for that, of that science is arbitrary. I mean, it's interesting to think it's interesting to take seriously your idea and think through well, well, what does it actually mean? Does anything go? 


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I mean, it is. What I don't mean to say is that there aren't ways to improve the probability that we are doing, learning about things. I wouldn't say that at all. There's a whole giant collection…I never would want to abandon the immense progress that we've all made methodologically, including the recommendations of the more activist folks that we're talking to right now. Never. Never, ever, ever. The problem is, I don't know what someone's going to find out. Not in terms of content. But in terms of process. I don't know what someone's gonna figure out how to do a thing, or how to... It's just... I'm in favor of principles. 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Jim Coan: Like, you know, publicly verifiable 


    Eli Finkel: Transparency.


    Jim Coan: Of transparency. I'm not in favor of rules.That's just my bias.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, I mean, transparency. In some ways. I don't wanna say sufficient, but I think transparent, greater transparency than we all had in 2011 would go a long way toward addressing... 


    Eli Finkel: Yeah. 


    Eli Finkel: Real problems that we had ignored.


    Jim Coan: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And most of the activist folks that I know, certainly Brian Nosek, makes that point all the time. That transparency is sort of like the ultimate virtue.


    Eli Finkel: Yeah, and then readers can judge for themselves. Reviewers can judge for themselves as long as they have the information and they didn't get some scrubbed, prettified version of things. Then they can judge how convincing the evidence is and the reader, once something's published, then she can judge.


    [Outro music on guitar fades in]


    Jim Coan: Dude, I didn't talk at all about your life. But this was fantastic.


    Eli Finkel: Very fun. Sounds good, my friend. Thanks for the time.


    [Musical Interlude]


    Jim Coan: Okay, that's it everyone. Thanks to Eli Finkel for a lively and informative chat. You are fun to talk to, mister. You make it easy. Can't wait to do that again. And, as I've said before, if I can catch up with him, I'll ask him to come back soon. And we'll talk some more about his personal life. 


    Jim Coan: Folks, the music on Circle of Willis is written by Tom Stouffer and Jean Ruli and performed by their band the New Drakes. For information about how to purchase this music, check the about page at circleofwillispodcast.com. And don't forget, that Circle of Willis is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. And that Circle of Willis is a member of the TEEJFM network. You can find out more about that  at teej.fm. All right, I'll see you all at episode three where I talk with Lisa Diamond of the University of Utah about sexual identity. Both the science and her own personal story. And, hopefully, she won't get me into any trouble. Until then. See you all next time. Bye bye.


    [Outro Music]


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