Kevin Hogan

How to Stop People from Getting Devastating Results their Life. Part 1

It never fails. A well meaning, well intended person has an idea which seems to make sense only to have the idea come crashing down and backfire. Sometimes these ideas kill people. That’s when I get my most frustrated.

Well meaning people want students to stop killing themselves and others. Well meaning people want the elderly to stop killing themselves and others.

This is happening in many countries but not the U.S.

Here is the beginning of the answer to a very complex problem.

If you really want to know….

Imagine that you’re a psychologist. You got your degree in hopes of helping yourself and then fixing the world, generally, in that order. Back in the day psychologists didn’t teach classes or give groups of students projects to do at home together.

You might already understand why teachers have the hardest job in the world.

Imagine you had to do YOUR JOB under a microscope. Imagine you have to teach a specific ideology to a specific group of students without triggering any negative feelings or emotions.  Imagine your every action is scrutinized as potentially harmful, abusive, discriminatory, racist, sexist, etc. etc.

Got it? Now try not to lose your mind.

We’ll come back to the above, next week. More than any professions, I cite psychology and science. So let’s begin here.

Two super important studies were done in 2023 that completely backfired and you never heard about it.

Psychologists tend to be over 25 years old and rarely is their market 15 year old students. But there’s always a psychologist out there willing to tell people what to do without actually talking to a lot of people that are similar to the market they are going to help which is 45 year old adults dealing with depression, anxiety, emotional problems, family problems, sexual issues and on and on.

Psychologist are never taught what a market is. A market is in large part, defined by psychographics and demographics combined. 

Please write that down.

These two measures include, values, attitudes, personality traits, lifestyle, social class, habits, behaviors, interests, age, gender, height, weight, skin color, place of origin, place where someone is living now and where they have lived in the past.

Everyone must understand the psychographics and demographics of their market (a market is who you serve).

One of the reasons I get attention when compared to other consultants or presenters is because I tend to be gently direct and straight forward. In other words, for example, most people cheat to get the result they want in social psychology at some point. How many? 60% of social psych studies aren’t replicable. (This is not true of studies done in the 70’s or 80’s however) Similarly 40% of psych studies in general are not replicable. 10% of scientific studies are not replicable.

Why?

Because a professional wants to present his PHILOSOPHY (political perspective/religious perspective/personal beliefs) instead of what the FACTS are.

Because I’m a human, I can tell you that men and women are different. Women get more college degrees than men. Women behave differently at different points during their cycle. Women (on average) perform better in groups of women than in groups of men. Women do not have as much success with the Pygmalion Effect as do men.

Because I’m human, I can tell you that on average most black people in the U.S. don’t earn as much money as Latino’s and it’s not close. I can tell you that most Latino’s don’t earn as much as white people and it’s not close. I can tell you that most white people don’t earn as much as Asians and it isn’t close.

And because I’m human, I can share with you that this has been the case in the U.S. for 50 years.

Because I’m human I can tell you truths that other people don’t want you to know. I can share with you that black people don’t often go to white psychologists in contrast to others. That’s an example of how choice plays a role in life. What it MEANS to you or someone else is a different story.

Psychologists have known this for decades.

Psychologists want to become religious leaders in the new millenium… and report the “wrongs of the system” and change the results of research so that the world becomes more like what they are certain must be the way to get the world to be a better place.

(Religious leaders are people who perceive themselves of understanding what people should do and why.)

Unfortunately that means they have to change the facts to promote their philosophy instead of coping themselves with real results.

I read papers both scientific and psychological, far too often to enjoy learning because you don’t learn as much as you once did. Most papers now come out with say 7 ideas (hypotheses) that the experimenters/researchers want to share and then they show that the research shows they were right ON ALL the hypotheses. It is incredibly unusual for papers to show which hypotheses were WRONG. There was a period when I read over 60 consumer papers before seeing the FIRST hypotheses of the batch that month, that had an incorrect hypotheses.

That makes the consumer psychologist or marketing researchers…one thing…religious leaders.

Why? People want to be right, but people are right about half the time when they are 90% sure they are right.

Example: Quite often I KNOW what I feel/believe about a topic. I know what I want to communicate to someone by text. I know what I want to say in a Facebook post. I know how I want to say “I love you,” or “you’re doing great” or “this is the fact.”

And I turn out to have typed or had autocorrected the exact opposite.

I watched my Self on a podcast last month and saw a sentence that floored me. I had for the 100th time in my life said something that was completely incorrect and it was obvious.

That…is real life.

In 2023 there were two psychological studies that were legitimately and honestly done that I want to thumbnail for you.

One piece of research in Australia that was HONESTLY done had a psychologist or two at the front of a room full of students (several rooms really) and they taught the students mindfulness and told them to do it at home.

I started reading it and said, “uh boy” they’re going to say it worked and I get to fix it.

I was wrong.

They said it didn’t work.

The kids had more problems with depression, anxiety, coping than they did before AND even after six months most were more likely to think about suicide.

Well no sh*t. I’ll explain why it’s obvious in a moment.

The second study taught kids in the UK, one of the most valuable psychological templates of psychology by Marsha Linehan. Linehan is a genius. She is the psychologist of our time. Her work is directly aimed at working with people who experience Borderline Personality Disorder. It is notoriously difficult to work with and help people improve. Borderline in english means that if you have to walk around people on “eggshells” because they are likely to freak out with anger or hostility at any moment and blow up…if they can’t control (regulate) their emotions with people in the moment then they can write down “check for Borderline” as that’s a decent guess this is what they experience.

Linehan created an amazing template (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) of working with people who are Borderline. Her work has been successful to the degree that any therapy other than hers, has not been proven to be superior.

Meanwhile, the psychologists in front of classrooms of students in the UK taught the kids the template. Why?

If the therapy is effective with people in the therapy room, it will certainly work for students dealing with anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, anger issues, and a host of other challenges.

Without detail the therapy includes meditation, body scan, techniques for self regulation, self awareness and their impact on other people. It’s a BIG THERAPY for people with big challenges. It’s the best their is.

The students learn the basics of the therapy, go home and apply.

The results are devastating.

The students over time report the same thing that the students report in the previous study. They are far worse off than they were with depression, ideation, and on and on. And the results stuck with the students at least beyond 6 months of the studies completion.

1. 1. It’s important to credit the psychologists in these two countries for reporting the truth. Their idea was close to good but few psychologists would get the reasons it is going to fail.

1. 1. In the U.S. this would have been swept under the carpet and never reported.

1. 1. You KNOW it is going to fail beginning with who (adults) is teaching to whom (students) without being asked by the student to teach it to them. Students on average do not listen/respect adults.

1. 1. You KNOW it is going to fail from the beginning because when you give someone a pill for severe depression that the placebo in the research study is also going to have suicidal ideation because it is why the person is taking the pill.

Professionals forget the basic human dynamics in life. They put out of their minds the notion that someone other than a medical doctor can solve a medical problem. They put out of the equation that without a teachers certificate someone can teach. Most professions have created cults that everyone fits into their religion. And thus you get the expected results. You comply or you are out of the cult.

It all makes sense in some ways right? You need standards. But the standards need to be around human A helping human B get result that B desires. Instead the standard is human A doing what they are told and not taking any risks as determined by the cult…or you don’t get your insurance money.

And I get it.

And with all of this, psychologists still are pretty good at what they do and scientists are pretty good at what they do. And pastors in churches are pretty good at what they do. But it’s because they understand their psychographic, their demographic, the actual HUMANS they are working with and not because of the set of tools.

This is a huge and crucial subject. 

You figured this next piece out in the 90’s right? DARE doesn’t stop kids from using drugs. It CAN’T. It breaks the first basic rules of being human including adult telling students what to do and not getting that’s what triggers students TO DO. All students? Of course not.

Final Thought on today’s examples: 

In theory in 2024 the U.S. should be at it’s best as far as psychological/scientific research, methods, applications. How would you know? Easiest is to check the number of suicides in the country. Survey says? Suicide has not been higher in the U.S. for at LEAST 50 years. This includes highest among the elderly and highest among teens. So is the Republican/Democrat ideology working? Is the Church working? Is school working? Measure the most important results and check.

(Yes the majority of social psych studies don’t replicate either because the heads of the research cheated to report the result they want you to believe or they just didn’t get that to report you have to match the psychographics and demographics of the market.)

And then where a group of people are going in life. Do they want to take a chance on playing sports? Are they driven to achieve? Do they have the self discipline to keep the money they earn? Do they have an understanding of precisely what causes success in the fields they want to play in or work in?

The Psychographic is Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles of who people were, who they are and who they want to be. It’s what they want to have and what they want to actually do.