🔷 This feels like one of the central tensions in modern psychology and neuroscience.
Clearly we are shaped by biology, conditioning, and forces outside awareness, but collapsing that entirely into determinism seems to miss something important: humans also appear capable of developing greater self-awareness, self-regulation, and coherence over time.
Agency isn’t absolute freedom from causation; it’s a developmental capacity that can strengthen or weaken.
"Researchers asked 64,000 women in 180 countries what traits they look for in a partner and above wealth, status or height, they chose kindness as the most key, followed by supportiveness. (source)." You put this at #1 in your Three Interesting Findings list. I suppose it's interesting to men because society in general and the manosphere in particular say all women are shallow or gold diggers or only want to be with "Chads", but to women, this so-called Interesting Finding isn't some bolt-from-the-blue revelation. Women (unless they're emotionally damaged) want men who treat them with kindness, as equal human beings. This shouldn't be some kind of shocking discovery.
🔷 This feels like one of the central tensions in modern psychology and neuroscience.
Clearly we are shaped by biology, conditioning, and forces outside awareness, but collapsing that entirely into determinism seems to miss something important: humans also appear capable of developing greater self-awareness, self-regulation, and coherence over time.
Agency isn’t absolute freedom from causation; it’s a developmental capacity that can strengthen or weaken.
"Researchers asked 64,000 women in 180 countries what traits they look for in a partner and above wealth, status or height, they chose kindness as the most key, followed by supportiveness. (source)." You put this at #1 in your Three Interesting Findings list. I suppose it's interesting to men because society in general and the manosphere in particular say all women are shallow or gold diggers or only want to be with "Chads", but to women, this so-called Interesting Finding isn't some bolt-from-the-blue revelation. Women (unless they're emotionally damaged) want men who treat them with kindness, as equal human beings. This shouldn't be some kind of shocking discovery.
I loved the IFS article. I think the girlboss narrative is destroying the lives of many millennials and Gen Z women.