Derek Barris examines a Florida State University study revealing how law school culture crushes student well-being, shifting focus from community service to status and image within a single year. Connecting these findings to Lane Brown's analysis of billionaires like Mark Cuban, Barris argues that extreme environments radically alter identity, challenging the Buddhist concept of anatta by proving the self is malleable rather than fixed. Ultimately, this bonus episode suggests that societal roles dictate our core values, urging listeners to support the show via Patreon or Apple Podcasts for full access. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Becoming Different People00:02:36
Nearly 30 years ago, Florida State University clinical professor of law Lawrence Krieger published what would become a foundational paper in behavioral economics about his students.
He noticed something odd happening to their personalities, well beyond their academic growth.
By the end of their three years of legal training, they were measurably different people.
Not their skills as lawyers, but their values, motivations, and their relationships to the world.
Krieger suspected it was the university experience, and so he created an empirical test alongside psychologist Kenan Sheldon.
The pair conducted a longitudinal study of law students at Florida State University.
They found students entering law school reported levels of well being comparable to or higher than those of undergraduate students.
Yet, within a single year, their well being plummeted.
That decline persisted through years two and three.
Outside of well being, they tracked values shifts.
Students were not just becoming unhappier, they were actually becoming different people.
They started caring about many different things.
Community service values and intrinsic motivation tanked.
Appearance values, such as concern with image, status, and the external markers of success, took over.
The researchers concluded that law school culture promotes the adoption of, quote, Material and image based values, especially in those who thrive within that culture.
I read about this study years ago in a book about behavioral psychology and was reminded of it recently while reading Lane Brown's New York Magazine article, What Does Extreme Wealth Do to the Brain?
Now, for that piece, Brown cold called dozens of billionaires to interview them about how their values have changed since becoming ultra wealthy.
He was surprised that a number of them were willing to even talk to him, even if many would not let their names be published.
One who called the same day that Brown reached out was Mark Cuban, who had no problem discussing the topic.
Now, these are very specific categories of people lawyers in the first instance, a range of billionaires in the second.
But the shifts in identity are not reserved for them, those people, or those occupations.
Bonus Episode on Self00:01:56
Two weeks ago, Julian and I recorded a brief about Marc Andreessen's belief that introspection is bullshit, and it got me thinking about the concept of self again.
I spent a year and a half researching and writing about behavioral economics and psychology for a former job, and I knew from a wide breadth of research that this change of identity is common across occupations and classes, though obviously more extreme in certain situations than in others.
So, for today's bonus episode, I want to dig back into some of that research using Brown's article as a North Star.
What can our place in society and our geographical location in space teach us about the self?
How fixed is it really, or how quickly can it change?
And to go back to my earlier studies in Buddhism, how does it relate to the doctrine of anatta, the millennia old idea that the self is not fixed, but constantly in flux depending on environment and circumstance?
I'm Derek Barris, and you're listening to a conspirituality bonus episode.
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All right, let's get into it.
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