Rob Henderson's Newsletter

From the archives:

Social Media Is Turning You Into an Informant

Social Media Is Turning You Into an Informant

2 years ago · 102 likes · 11 comments · Rob Henderson

The Psychology of Morality:

My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.

I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience that explore the origins of morality. The course examines the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how emotions and intuitions often guide our judgments more than rational principles. It also investigates frameworks such as Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Gray’s moral dyad theory. The series also covers dark personality traits and their relationship with moral behavior, and concludes by examining the relationship between morality and happiness, sex differences in moral judgment, and moral development across the lifespan.

Enroll here for immediate access.

Here’s the trailer:

Links and recommendations:

My friend Alex runs one of my favorite newsletters about books. Strongly recommended. Check it out here
What We Have Forgotten About 9/11 by Tal Fortgang
On the Shortage of Marriageable Women by Roy Baumeister
Ego-Shock by W. Keith Campbell
Why did evolution give us menopause? by Nichola Raihani
The BBC Tries to Debunk IQ. A professor of differential psychology responds. by Timothy Bates
The West Faces Two Islams by Zineb Riboua
Dr. Paul Dobransky is taking patients now
A Korean newspaper reviews the Korean translation of Troubled

Three interesting findings:

1. The United States is the only nation in the world with colleges that use legacy status as a factor in admissions. The remaining vestiges of the practice at Oxford and Cambridge, for example, were swept away in the middle of the twentieth century. (source: Dream Hoarders by Richard Reeves).

2. Gay men tend to rack up many more sexual partners than straight men. On the other side, lesbians tend to have fewer partners than straight women, despite the fact that lesbians don’t have to worry about accidental pregnancies. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams).

3. In a study of groups that met regularly for several months, the people who scored highest on narcissism were at first the most popular people in the group. By the end of several months, they were the least popular. People who love themselves the most do not make the best friends. (source: Concise Introduction to Social Psychology by Roy Baumeister).

The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.

If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.

Order your copy now:

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

Some Status Games Are Worth Playing

Rob Henderson — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 14:12:42 GMT

Some people think I’m “against” status seeking. I’m not.

It’s not that I’m in favor of it either; I just accept that it’s part of human nature.

Humans compete for status everywhere. They do it in offices, universities, sports leagues, restaurants, clubs, politics, business, art, and just about any other social endeavor you can think of. Sometimes people do it openly. Sometimes they pretend not to. But the basic motive is ever-present.

If the word “status” makes you bristle, replace it with “respect,” “honor,” or “admiration.”

I’m not against luxury goods as a way to exhibit or compete for status, though some of my critics seem to mistakenly think that I have a problem with ostentatious displays of wealth.

Yes, competing for material goods might be wasteful, but it’s far from the most malignant type of status game. When strivers are deciding what status game to play, it’s better for them to aspire to own a fancy car or expensive handbag than to aspire to be the voluntary thought police.

I recently read a classic paper by the economist Roger Congleton titled “Efficient status seeking: Externalities, and the evolution of status games.”

Congleton explored an important question: are status games always wasteful?

A common answer in economics and psychology has been yes, or close to yes. If status depends on relative position, then one person’s rise necessarily requires another person’s fall. Status is relative. If I buy a bigger house to look successful, you might feel pressure to buy a bigger house too. If everyone spends more, no one ends up with more status than before. We are all just running faster to stay in the same place. This is why status is often seen as wasteful or zero-sum.

Congleton suggests this story is too simple. Some status games are wasteful. But others produce real benefits for people who are not actually playing the game. Thus we should be mindful about what kind of status games a society rewards.

A status game is any contest in which social rank depends on relative performance. An author gains status by winning more awards or selling more books than other authors. An athlete gains status by scoring more points than other players. An executive gains status by climbing higher on the corporate ladder. Status games develop once a community develops standards for judging who is impressive.

Congleton divides these status contests into two types.

Micro-status games involve small groups. Academic fields, sports games, elite clubs, and professional competitions are examples.

Macro-status games involve the whole society. In modern capitalist societies, wealth, education, and influence are major sources of macro status. In other societies, status might come from family lineage, religious devotion, or political access.

Micro-status games can affect outsiders. If two climbers compete to reach the highest peaks, the rest of us don’t gain much. Their contest is mostly private. But if scientists compete for prestige, the rest of us get knowledge. If entrepreneurs compete for wealth and admiration, the rest of us get cheaper goods, better services, and more jobs. If athletes compete for glory, spectators get entertainment. The contest is still about status, but it creates spillover benefits.

I’m reminded here of the parable of the poor man’s son, described by Adam Smith in his 1759 book “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

Smith tells the story of a poor man’s son. As he puts it in the old-fashioned language of the time, “The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich.”

The young man gazes at the rich and imagines their lives must be full of ease, pleasure, and respect. He sees their houses, their clothes, their servants, and their public honor. He concludes that if he can get what they have, he will finally be happy.

So the poor man’s son works hard. He studies, saves, risks, suffers, flatters, and schemes. He endures physical strain and psychological torment in his pursuit of his goal. Smith writes that he “submits in the first year, nay in the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body and more uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them.”

And then, if he is lucky, he achieves his goal.

Once he has wealth and status, though, he discovers that they do not bring the happiness he expected. Perhaps a boost, but not nearly as much as he had imagined or hoped.

The pleasures are smaller than they looked from a distance. The burdens are heavier. The rich man has a nicer home, but not necessarily a calmer mind. He has more choices, but also more worries. The artist Biggie Smalls compressed the idea to four words: mo money, mo problems

Smith’s point here is that the poor man’s son was mistaken about his own happiness. However, by playing this status game, he inadvertently increased the happiness of others.

Because he believes success will make him happy, he works hard. Because he works hard, he produces things. Maybe he built a business, employed workers, invented tools, improved trade, or created knowledge.

He never finds the lasting inner peace he imagined. But other people still benefited from his restless striving.

This is one of Smith’s great insights. Human beings are often moved by illusions. We chase status, praise, honor, and distinction. We tell ourselves that maybe one more achievement will finally settle the matter. It rarely does. Yet these private illusions produce public benefits. Smith writes that “It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

More than 250 years ago, Smith saw that ambition could be personally deceptive but socially productive. The poor man’s son overestimates what success will do for his own inner well-being. But in chasing success, he helps raise living standards for others. He may not become as happy as he’d anticipated. But the people around him become better fed, better housed, better informed, better clothed, or better employed.

The poor man’s son didn’t set out to serve humanity. He wanted wealth and honor, because he believed such things would bring him lasting happiness and peace. But if his striving creates jobs, goods, services, or knowledge, then society gains from his error.

But sometimes bystanders aren’t made better off. Sometimes status games create waste or harm. If the only thing at stake is rank, then there is no societal benefit.

Some status games merely reshuffle prestige. Others reshuffle prestige while also producing benefits for others.

Which means the usual “rat race” or “treadmill” model is incomplete. We may not be able to remove the desire for status, but we can change what earns status.

Congleton’s most interesting argument is evolutionary. Over time, he suggests, societies tend to move away from highly wasteful status games and toward more efficient ones. This isn’t inevitable, and it isn’t a law of history. But there are pressures in that direction.

One pressure comes from outsiders. If a status game harms nonplayers, the larger society has reason to suppress it. Congleton mentions dueling, street racing, and destructive potlatches. These were status games, but they imposed costs on others or consumed resources in ways that seemed socially damaging. Public rules, laws, and norms eventually pushed them aside.

Another pressure comes from status seekers themselves. People often prefer games that give them something more than mere status.

A charity ball can display wealth, taste, and social standing, of course, but it can also raise money for a worthy cause. A patron of science can gain prestige while helping to produce knowledge. A union can compete for status by securing better wages, health plans, and retirement benefits for workers. Even if status is part of the motive, the activity does something useful for others.

This is why Congleton sees subsidies for science, sports, journalism, architecture, and public service as important ways of encouraging productive status games.

Prizes, grants, honors, fellowships, medals, rankings, and titles all harness personal vanity for public benefit. They tell ambitious people: if you want admiration, you gotta do something we value.

The hard case is macro-status. Here, almost everyone is inside the game. If a whole society assigns rank based on religious zeal, military glory, family ancestry, political connections, or wealth, it’s hard for individuals to opt out.

You might dislike wearing the uniform of success, but if you refuse to “dress for success,” you could lose both status and income. People can privately dislike the game while publicly continuing to play it.

Macro-status games can therefore persist even when they are inefficient. Congleton draws on Timur Kuran’s idea of preference falsification: people may hide their real views because the social cost of honesty is too high. In the same way, people may keep participating in status games they privately resent because the penalty for withdrawal is too severe.

Indeed, people often enforce norms they privately dislike. They do this to show that their own obedience to the norm is real, and not just forced by social pressure. If you merely go along, people may think you’re afraid to object. But if you publicly condemn someone who breaks the rule, you send a stronger signal: I am not just complying, I truly believe.

This is why people can defend ideas they do not truly hold, and punish dissenters they may secretly agree with. This helps to protect their own reputation. It tells the group they are loyal, reliable, and safe to trust. In some settings, public behavior matters more than private belief.

Congleton is clear that many status games remain wasteful, absurd, or destructive. Since status seeking is a permanent feature of human life, though, the sensible goal is not to abolish it. The goal is to channel it in a productive direction.

A good society directs people’s vanity to useful ends. So that the hunger for distinction leads people to discover, build, teach, invent, entertain, serve, and produce. Rather than catch people out for failing to express the latest fashionable dogmas.

The Postmodern Defense of Lindsay Clancy

Rob Henderson — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:34:13 GMT

Some crimes are so horrific that, given the facts, just about everyone uniformly recoils from them. When a perpetrator becomes a symbol, though, the most obscene acts can be recast into a political story about grievance, loyalty, and revenge.

What I’m about to explain is why some verdicts are more about settling emotional debts than attaining a fair outcome. Once you understand this, the support for Lindsay Clancy begins to look much less mysterious:

Bad Strategy, First-World Problems, Heterodox Dating

Rob Henderson — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:57:50 GMT

Here’s my conversation with journalist Meghan Daum and clinical psychologist Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. on episode 14 of the Open Therapy podcast.

Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.

From the archives:

Killing A Bad Strategy Before It Kills you

Killing A Bad Strategy Before It Kills you

2 years ago · 346 likes · 11 comments · Rob Henderson

The Only Reading App I Use:

I’ve been using Readwise since April of 2021.

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter/X, you’ll know I regularly share screenshots like this from books or articles I’ve read:

These screenshots come from my Readwise app.

Readwise aggregates your reading highlights from various sources like Kindle, Apple Books, Substack, Twitter, and so on. It stores your highlights in one place, making it easier to stay on top of your reading.

Each morning, it emails me 8 random excerpts from different books I’ve read. Since 2021, that daily message has been a quiet ritual for me: fragments from books I half‑forgot are resurfaced, like my own past self giving me a tap on the shoulder.

Moreover, when I’m thinking about a particular topic, a quick search pulls up not just my notes but every highlighted Kindle passage I’ve ever saved on the topic.

Exclusive Offer for My Readers

Use this link →  https://readwise.io/robkhenderson/ to try Readwise free for 60 days (double the length of the standard free trial).

I suspect, like me, you’ll wonder how you ever read without it.

Links and recommendations:

25 Years after 9/11: An event on Sept 8 in NYC. Register here.
First-World Problems Were Once an Emperor’s Problems by
Kids These Days by
Why has sociology become so politicised? by
REVIEW: Aztecs, by Inga Clendinnen by
The End of an Era by Hugh Howey

Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here

Three interesting findings:

1. In almost every society on Earth, men are more likely than women to be murdered. Most of the time, the killer is a man as well. Women kill much less often, but when they do, the victim is usually a husband or a boyfriend. Apparently, both sexes prefer to kill men. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams).

2. Happier couples tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Rather than assuming “My partner doesn’t care,” they’re more likely to consider that the other is tired, distracted, overwhelmed or simply unaware of the impact of their behavior. (source; h/t Joshua Coleman).

3. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin: “Ideas do have great influence. The Nazis seemed to grasp this fact when they took care at once to eliminate intellectual leaders in conquered countries, as likely to be among the most dangerous figures in their path; to this degree they had analysed history correctly.” (source: Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin).

The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.

Order your copy now:

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

When Men Become Optional, Babies Disappear

Rob Henderson — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:35:31 GMT

Fewer couples mean fewer children. The problem is that fewer men are becoming someone with whom a woman would want to build a family. A new paper in the journal Politics and the Life Sciences offers an honest diagnosis of this pattern. It also offers one of the worst prescriptions.

The authors, three psychologists led by Mads Larsen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, begin by pointing out that women in rich countries still say they want between two and three children. In Norway, the average stated preference is 2.4. In America, it’s 2.7. Actual fertility rates are 1.4 and 1.6, respectively. The reason for this gap, the paper suggests, is that fewer young women and men are forming stable relationships during their most fertile years. In Norway, the share of women ages 20 to 34 not living with a partner has doubled since the 1970s. According to one estimate by Morgan Stanley, nearly half of American women ages 25 to 44 will be single by 2030.

What drives the decline in couples? Here the researchers say something most demographers won’t: When women became financially independent, the value many men once offered, basic provision and protection, has largely been lost. A woman who earns her own income and lives in a country with a strong safety net doesn’t need a husband to survive. She can hold out for a partner she actually wants.

The authors call this the “Female Choice Fertility Paradox.” Each woman holding out for a better partner is making a sensible choice. But when enough women do it at once, many end up with fewer children than they wanted, or none at all.

Female emancipation reduced the utility of what the authors terms “low-value men.” They even suggest that in previous decades, monogamous marriage was “DEI for men,” meaning that it used to be easier for men to find partners, regardless of their own level of success or attractiveness. Most men could find a wife. Now those norms have weakened.

So far the analysis is sober and largely persuasive. Then the paper takes a turn. If pair bonding can’t be restored, the authors argue, the answer is to help women have children without men. Governments should “consider experiments” offering single women enough money and support to make solo motherhood appealing, with “24/7 nearby childcare.”

The researchers concede this would further reduce men’s value to women and aggravate male marginalization. They argue the stakes justify it. They suggest that “perhaps men should not have to pay child support, particularly if experiments show that women are mostly interested in having children with the most compelling men.”

This is where the paper collapses into fantasy. Take the two-parent family, an institution that the social science literature consistently indicates is one of the most reliable predictors of child well-being we have, and replace it with a state-funded apparatus of cash, communal housing and shift-worker child care. Tell men that their economic role is obsolete and their parental role is optional.

The children in this scheme are an afterthought, as are the men. So, eventually, are the women, who are being told that the right response to a romantic market they find frustrating is to accept a permanent arrangement with the government in place of a husband.

If the problem is that fewer couples are forming, we should ask why. Economics explains some of it. So does culture. Some of it is the slow erosion of norms—religious, civic, familial—that once nudged young people toward marriage before their fertile years ran out. None of that is easy to rebuild. But difficulty isn’t a reason to give up on the family and hand the job to the government.

The fertility crisis is downstream of a pair-bonding crisis. The researchers are correct that the standard explanations miss it. They’re wrong that the way out is to accelerate what the crisis started. A civilization that can’t persuade men and women to form families won’t be saved by subsidizing fatherlessness.

This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal under the title “Big Brother Is a Bad Daddy.”

Sexual Morality, Unsolicited Advice, Drug Decriminalization

Rob Henderson — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:03:29 GMT

Here’s my conversation with journalist Meghan Daum and clinical psychologist Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. on episode 13 of the Open Therapy podcast.

Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.

From the archives:

I Was Mistaken When I Said That Giving Unsolicited Advice Is a Mistake

I Was Mistaken When I Said That Giving Unsolicited Advice Is a Mistake

2 years ago · 114 likes · 15 comments · Rob Henderson

The Psychology of Morality:

My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.

Enroll here for immediate access.

Here’s the trailer:

Links and recommendations:

We’re Living Through Present Collapse by
Do Flock Cameras Actually Work? by Ian Adams and Scott Mourtgos
Breaking the Cycle of Sexual Morality by Roy Baumeister
Material Stress, n. by
Progressive Intellectuals: Image vs. Reality by
The Death Penalty is Overwhelmingly Popular. Here’s Why That Matters. by

Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here

Three interesting findings:

1. Gay men commit fewer crimes than straight men, whereas lesbians commit more than straight women. This pattern is most plausibly explained in terms of sex-atypical prenatal hormones rather than social factors. (source: A Billion Years of Sex Differences by Steve Stewart-Williams)

2. In 2021, Oregon and Washington both effectively decriminalized the possession of small amounts of all controlled substances. Decriminalization caused over 1,000 excess deaths per year—a dismal cost to a misguided experiment. (source).

3. The share of Harvard undergraduates receiving disability accommodations rose from roughly 3 percent in 2014 to 21% in 2024 — a sevenfold increase in a decade. Meanwhile, at community colleges, the rate is 3 to 4 percent and has not changed in a decade. (source).

The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.

Order your copy now:

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

Lindsay Clancy Has Admitted She Killed Her Children. Why Does She Have So Many Supporters?

Rob Henderson — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:02:20 GMT

Source

Usually if you strangle a bunch of innocent children to death, it’s a big no-no. But if you’re the one person on earth who is supposed to love and protect them, then apparently it’s not so bad.1

Last week, hundreds of women in pink shirts stood outside a Massachusetts courthouse to support Lindsay Clancy, a mother who has admitted to strangling her three children with exercise bands. Nobody has held a comparable gathering for her dead children. There are also thousands of commenters online claiming Clancy is not guilty.

This reveals something disturbing about how people decide who deserves sympathy. What I’m about to explain is something about our society that most people would rather ignore.

So Apparently That Was Only Woke One

Rob Henderson — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:04:16 GMT

Reminder: You’re invited to my London meetup today (Thursday) at 7pm. Please register here.

AOC recently said that “Woke One was craazy.” What happens after “Woke One,” and does this imply the existence of a forthcoming “Woke Two?” In this conversation, Louise Perry and I discuss how the answer may be more unsettling than most people want to admit.

We start with AOC’s attempt to wave away the excesses of 2020 as a strange moment with bad rhetoric. But even if the rhetoric has changed, the underlying ideas remain the same.

We talk about Trump as both a reaction to wokeness and an accelerant of it, the collapse of old-fashioned colorblind liberalism (aka “Star Trek liberalism”), and the fantasy that a more diverse society would automatically retain the same values.

The conversation then gets darker. We discuss ethnic loyalty, group narcissism, anti-Semitism, successful minorities, white guilt, demographic change, and how people react when their own group loses status or power.

Starving Artists, Pace Killers, Rock Bottom

Rob Henderson — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:01:37 GMT

Here’s my conversation with journalist Meghan Daum and clinical psychologist Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. on episode 12 of the Open Therapy podcast.

Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.

London meetup:

I’ll be in London later this week. Figured while I’m in town it would be a good idea to have a meetup. August 20. 7pm. Please register here.

The Best Sleep Upgrade I’ve Ever Had:

I’ve been using Eight Sleep for more than a year, and it has meaningfully improved my sleep.

Most people who care about sleep focus on the obvious things. Don’t drink caffeine too late. Keep your phone away from your bed. Make your room dark. Go to sleep at roughly the same time every night.

But there was one thing I overlooked: the temperature of the bed itself.

For me, this turned out to be hugely important.

Before I bought an Eight Sleep Pod, I’d often wake up in the middle of the night because I was too warm. I would kick off the covers, get cold, pull them back on, and then repeat the whole process.

The Eight Sleep Pod solves this by controlling the temperature of the bed throughout the night. It can heat or cool each side separately, from 55°F to 110°F, while its Autopilot feature makes adjustments as you sleep.

This is important because body temperature is closely connected to sleep. Your core body temperature falls as you move into deeper sleep. Eight Sleep gives you control over a part of your sleep environment that most people overlook.

Eight Sleep recently introduced updates to make Autopilot even more powerful. Instead of merely reacting to what happens while you sleep, it can use information about your climate, activity and recovery during the day to predict how you are likely to sleep that night and adjust the bed accordingly.

I am usually skeptical of sleep gadgets. So I was shocked to discover how good this is.

Members see up to 34 percent more deep sleep on average. Individual results may vary, but mine have not. I travel a lot for work, and, sleeping in hotels, I find myself thinking “Damn I miss my Eight Sleep.”

Exclusive Offer for My Readers

Use my code ROBHENDERSON at eightsleep.com/robhenderson for up to $350 off the Pod.

Your future well-rested self will thank you.

From the archives:

Pointless Pace Killers

2 years ago · 171 likes · 7 comments · Rob Henderson

Pointless Pace Killers

Links and recommendations:

Young Men Are Abandoning the Workforce by
Why Must Artists Starve? by
These Cameras Save Lives. But Some Want Them Banned by Rafael A. Mangual
On becoming less full of shit by
Trust, Respect, Leadership, and Belonging by Roy Baumeister
That’s Not What Cognitive Dissonance Means by

Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here

Three interesting findings:

1. Never‑married women place a much higher premium on finding a spouse with a steady job than never‑married men do, even as the pool of employed young men has been shrinking. There simply aren’t enough economically successful single men for single women to marry up. (source).

2. Polling data from the 1960s showed that young Americans were more supportive of U.S. involvement in Vietnam than older age groups. The image of youth opposition is a myth driven by media focus on campus protests. (source).

3. Despite being just 4% of the global population, Americans made up nearly 50% of the world’s new millionaires in 2025. (source).

The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.

Order your copy now:

Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)

Don't Let The Replication Crisis Fool You

Rob Henderson — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:04:22 GMT