Jordan Peterson Asks Ron DeSantis, ‘How Are You Able to Resist the Temptation to Be Liked?’
Psychologist-author Jordan Peterson interviewed Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on Monday, during which he asked DeSantis, “How are you able to resist the temptation to be liked?” and revealed that he had his own thoughts about becoming a politician.
During their conversation on The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Peterson asked DeSantis, “How are you able to resist the temptation to be liked, and how do you tolerate the stress that comes with the attacks that are inevitably going to amount, some of them reasonable and some of them not so reasonable?”
Instead of giving DeSantis a moment to answer the question, Peterson continued to talk and began to tell the Florida governor about his own political ambitions:
I mean, I’ve thought about a political career from time to time, but I’ve always– well, I haven’t chosen to go down that route for a variety of reasons. It doesn’t necessarily seem to me where I would be most effective, but I also have a certain doubt about my willingness or ability to handle the constant stream of attacks that characterize a political career, and so I’m curious about how– how those sort of attacks do affect you. I mean, one of the cardinal personality traits is neuroticism and that’s the proclivity to experience negative emotion and it’s a stress tolerance dimension, and I’m not exactly sure that I have the capacity to tolerate stress in the manner that might be delivered on the political front. Now you’ve certainly taken your fair share of heat and you’ve said that you’re trying to surround yourself with people who are capable of tolerating that and who are also not necessarily looking to be liked. So how do you manage that on the personal side of things?
DeSantis replied, “Well, part of it, I think, is that I just personally don’t really care to read about me or watch anyone on TV, even when it’s good. It’s just not something that I’m interested in. I’m much more interested in other things. I don’t need to be hearing about me.”
Watch above via The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
