TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST #389 WITH DR. CATHERINE SANDERSON
You are listening to the reality, Steve podcast with your host reality. Steve, he’s got all the latest info and behind the scenes juice on Jen’s upcoming season of the bachelorette and interviewing some of your favorite reality stars now here’s reality.
What’s up everybody. Welcome to podcast number three 89. I’m your host reality. Steve, thank you all for tuning in a good show for you today. We’re talking. To Dr. Catherine Sanderson, who’s a professor of psychology at Amherst college. We’ve had her on a few times before, but we have a specific topic we want to talk about for about 45, 50 minutes in today’s podcast, and that is the topic of cyber bullying, and we’ve got a lot to cover in that area, especially when it comes to bachelor nation.
We’ll get to all that momentarily, but before we get to that, I would definitely direct you to today’s daily roundup that was posted a couple hours ago, only because There is a major, major podcast that we need to go over that I went over in the daily roundup today. And that was Maria going on call her daddy.
I think there’s a lot of topics within this podcast that definitely need to be discussed. I do reveal the fact that I did speak to Maria. Over messaging, Instagram messaging back in February about one of the topics she ended up talking about and call her daddy, and that was the relationship with Nick.
I was first told about this relationship. I don’t know, within 24 hours of the women being announced on Nick season, or Nick season, Joey season, and. As always, you know, I didn’t do anything about it because Maria had already left for filming. I wasn’t going to contact Nick. I have no respect for that guy.
So I had no reason to contact him. People told me, Hey, you might want to look into the fact of Nick Vial and this Maria girl who’s on Joey season. All right. You know, I looked into it, but I couldn’t come up with anything concrete. I had no idea. And like I said, I couldn’t go to Maria. Couldn’t go to Nick.
Then. Rumors started picking up online. There was a tick talk made about the fact that they used to date. And I just flat out went to Maria and asked her on Instagram, what’s the deal with this? You know, Nick had basically kind of gone after her on one of his recap episodes, kind of went after Maria attacked her a little bit.
And I was like, I thought you guys, you know, there’s rumors that you guys dated. Can you clear the air to me now? The only reason I’m coming out with this now is because Maria finally went public and said she had a friendship that was very flirtatious with Nick. She said nothing ever happened between them, but we don’t know what happened.
It means what does nothing ever happened to mean? Does it mean no sex? Does it mean they’ve never made out before? Like, what is the deal? Because. I think there’s a lot of things that are kind of missing in this podcast that she did with Alex Cooper from call her daddy. There’s a lot of meat left on that bone because she doesn’t even go into how these two came to be.
Why would Nick 14, 15 years older than her? And this was years ago. It’s not like he contacted Maria. A year ago, this friendship started back in 2016, 2017. That’s when I was told about it. So Maria would have been right up Nick’s alley, 20, 21 years old, when he started talking to her, did she slide into his DMS?
Did he slide into her DMS? How did this start? Why was she talking to him when she wasn’t even a blip on the radar in terms of bachelor nation? If you would have told me and Maria would have said, Oh, as I was going through the audition process, I reached out to people from bachelor nation. That makes a lot of sense.
Plenty of people do that, but this isn’t the case here. Maria started speaking to Nick in 2016, 2017. I don’t know the exact year, but it was one of those two years. Like this was post Vanessa and well before Natalie, but they have remained in contact in some way, shape, or form, but it’s like, Why? What was the point?
She wasn’t somebody involved in Bachelor Nation. So, that was left, like I said, there, there’s meat left on that bone. So, I, we, maybe we’ll get an answer someday, maybe we won’t. The, the amazing thing is, all this stuff she brought up about Nick, is brought up while I believe he’s on his honeymoon. And, you know, you, you find it really weird that, Maria didn’t just say, Oh, Nick and I spoke Nick and I once messaged each other.
No, this was a friendship apparently that lasted seven years, eight years. Nick did a podcast recap for every episode of Joey’s season, starting January through mid March. At no point, at any point this season, did he ever bring up the fact that he has a friendship with one of the most polarizing figures, not only on Joey’s season, but maybe in franchise, in all of the franchise.
Maria was absolutely polarizing. We all know this. And Maria telling a story about how Nick said, I think you’re going to be the villain. You don’t think that was important to bring up when you’re recapping a show? And then, as I told you, there was one recap where he kind of went after Maria and attacked her.
And this is a guy that’s supposedly her friend. Like, there is stuff that’s being left out of this, whether it’s on Maria’s end, and now Nick is going to have to deal with this when he gets back from his honeymoon. And he absolutely Well, I don’t want to say absolutely because Nick is very good at avoiding topics, but the fact that this was brought up on the number two Spotify podcast in the world makes me think he’s not going to avoid it because it’s more relevant to him because it’s being brought up on a major, major podcast.
If Maria would have done this interview with Dave Neal or I, or she’s all bat, she wouldn’t have touched it. But the fact that she brought up the fact that she had this flirtatious relationship with Nick file for years. On the call her daddy podcast. There is no way that Nick can’t avoid this. And if he does, he’s a total chicken shit.
He has to talk about this because this isn’t just, Oh, I emailed Nick and asked him for advice as I headed on to Joey season. No, no, no, no, no. She was in a friendship that she even admitted got very, very flirtatious. So we’re like, okay. Is it really hard to think that maybe they hooked up one time, like made out or something?
I’m not even saying sex. I can’t prove any of this. My opinion is they absolutely hooked up at some point, whether that means just making out or whatever. I’m not here to say they had sex because I have no idea. And I could never prove that. She says nothing ever happened between them. Well, what does that mean?
Does she just talking about sex? Is she talking about making it like. I think a lot of people that heard that are under the assumption that something physical happened between these two at some point, maybe we’ll never know. Maybe they will come out. I don’t know, but I think it’s very, very, very telling that Nick covered this show for 11 episodes and never brought up this friendship that he had with Maria once.
And I think that speaks volumes. I think that almost answers your question. Shit. I had an indirect correlation to Daisy this season. I didn’t have to bring it up and I did. You know why? Because I had nothing to hide. My niece is best friends with Daisy’s sister. They are college roommates and BFFs.
Adeline, Daisy’s sister is coming with my niece to my fan appreciation party in five weeks. They’re that close of friends. So, I had no reason to bring it up, I was not, I had nothing to hide. So, why would Nick not bring up the fact that he was literally in contact before she left for filming with one of the most, with one of the women that ended up being one of the most polarizing figures of the season?
What are you hiding, dude? Just wanted to throw that out there, but I talk about all that plus more on today’s daily roundup. So go check that out. This podcast is brought to you by GreenChef. GreenChef is the number one meal kit for clean eating, delivering pre portioned and prepped quality whole foods with limited processed ingredients.
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All right, let’s get going. Podcast number 389. All right, let’s bring her in. She’s an author and a professor of psychology at Amherst College in Massachusetts, a multi time guest on the show. It’s great to welcome back Dr. Kathryn Sanderson. Welcome back.
Thanks for the invite. Always excited to talk about psychology.
Yes. And one of the things that we wanted to talk about in this particular podcast Because it’s been prevalent, it’s going on seemingly every season and it’s stuff that you have covered extensively in teachings and TEDx talks and stuff like that and writings that you’ve done about it is the bullying that’s going on either in real life or online.
And I think, I don’t even know if there’s a distinction because I think bullying, when you talk about, cause you’re a professor, you’ve probably seen it numerous times when it’s happening to classmates. I know you’ve written a statistic, I think I s I think I saw a statistic that you wrote 20 percent of kids 12 to 18 are bullied at school.
Is that correct?
I mean, it’s very hard to get accurate data because again, you can imagine kids, you know, not reporting it, but that is estimates are in fact that high and, and some studies actually would suggest even higher. Wow.
So. When you’ve dealt with it at school and you’ve had to deal with students, it seems like is going to their parents and telling them, Hey, your son or daughter is doing this to another student.
Do you pull the child aside first? Is it parents first? How is it handled in schools now? Because, you know, back in the eighties, when I was in middle school, you know, looking back on it, I absolutely was horrible to some other kids in my class. And just, you know, saying things, calling people names. But back then it just bullying wasn’t what it is today.
And it wasn’t called out unless it was egregious. And I don’t think I ever did anything egregious, but yeah, my friends and I would make fun of somebody who couldn’t answer a question in class. And, you know, you look back on it now, you’re like, my God, you know, I can’t believe I did that. But nowadays it’s handled completely differently.
So. Is there a protocol going around right now of how it is handled?
There isn’t a consistent way in which bullying is handled. And I think that’s in part because bullying can take lots of different forms. So the example that you just gave, you know, making fun of somebody who like doesn’t answer a question correctly is one kind of bullying.
But you could also imagine bullying taking place based on somebody’s appearance, you know, what they look like, what they dress like, you know, how much they weigh. We can talk about bullying based on sexual orientation or gender identity or race or income, you know, et cetera. And one of the challenges is that teachers, parents, school administrators may not even be aware of bullying because sometimes bullying happens without the presence of adults.
So bullying happens, you know, in the back of a school bus or bullying happens online. And so one of the real challenges is that. Often, bullying requires somebody reporting the bullying and children, teenagers are often really hesitant to do so.
And why is that? For fear of being bullied more or being called a tattletale?
I mean, I think, so yes and yes. So I think part of it is that sometimes children are worried, teenagers are worried, if I report the bullying, it’s going to get worse. So I’ll be called a tattletale, I’ll be called a snitch. Then I’ll be persecuted even more. And so there are times and cases in which people really worry that this will exacerbate the violence, the bullying, and again, will make it even harder.
And that’s one of the major factors that leads people to not report. It’s also sometimes the case in which, if there isn’t a witness, then it becomes sort of, You know, a, he said, she said, or a more commonly, a, he said, he said, or she said, she said, and therefore it becomes very hard to say, well, did this happen or did this not happen?
Yeah. And that’s always, you know, anytime you’re dealing with a, he said, she said, or like you said, he said, he said, she said, she said, again, it’s just, you have to take one person’s account over the other. It has to be like, here we are in 2024, like I bring up all the time. You know, if there’s no receipts anymore, it’s, it’s almost not good enough.
And, and that’s unfortunate because some things can definitely happen bad. Where there’s no proof of it, but it still happened. And, you know, it’s just like, how do you get around it? You know? And I think about it and I think about the bullying that’s going on and we talk about it when we talk about toxic patronation and how easy it is for someone to create account online and create a random screen name and just whale away at somebody or even just somebody’s Instagram account where some people actually use their regular Instagram accounts.
Most people don’t, and they create a fake one. To go at a person in bachelor nation and. When you see something like this, obviously there’s deep rooted issues. And we always hear all the time, hurt people, hurt people. Is it, it seems like it’s more than that. It’s not just somebody that’s hurt because I just don’t understand what someone gets out of that by doing it.
But you have more extensive. Research into this, have we, have we ever come to a, not an ultimate 100 percent conclusion, but most cases of why people attack others online?
So I think there were a couple of really important points. So one, we know from lots and lots of research historically in psychology that people are much more likely to engage in problematic behavior of all kinds.
So, you make the point regularly on your podcast, and I think this is actually why I suggested to you, maybe we should discuss it, that the things that people say online, you would never walk up to somebody in a supermarket and be like, you look really heavy, or, you know, have you gained weight, or your face looks weird, that all of these things that we see online.
That’s fine. That’s fine. People wouldn’t do in the same way face to face. So one thing is that there is a much easier chance of behaving poorly if you’re not going to be held responsible for it. And so the idea of doing something online where it’s not really face to face, it seems anonymous, but it’s also the case where people, can and often do create false names, you know, false pictures, so they’re not having to own their words in that way.
And so it becomes much easier to engage in problematic behavior when you can do so anonymously. And again, it’s much easier to engage in problematic behavior online in an anonymous way. You don’t feel like you own the behavior in the same way.
And there’s zero repercussions, you know, what happens to you if you do say that to somebody, you know, I, I know that you know, most recently, Claire Crawley posted on Instagram and.
She got some criticism back and she posted some of the things and people talking about her face being a little puffier and what’s wrong with your face. And then she ended up having to reveal like probably something she didn’t want to reveal, but having to reveal that she has, she has some autoimmune problems in her, in her body.
So she has to take a certain medicine and it puffs up her face and she’s been very self conscious about it. Yet people are here saying all she did was post a video about, Something innocuous. And it’s like, Oh, by the way, your, your face looks puffy. What’s wrong with your face? And it’s just like, my gosh.
But again, would somebody go up to Claire if they saw her at the farmer’s market and say, you know, I saw you on Instagram and my gosh, your face is really puffy right now. Is something wrong? Like. You would never, ever say that to somebody in person.
Well, and you would also never post that on somebody’s Instagram if it was your friend, your sister, you know, your next door neighbor, right?
You also wouldn’t do it online if you actually knew the person, if you had a relationship with them, if you were legitimately concerned about them, you know, do you have some kind of a medical condition, et cetera. You wouldn’t do it by posting something like your face looks puffy in that. You know, anonymously online, you just would never do it.
Do you think, I mean, do you have any, well, I guess, I guess I’m just asking more your opinion about this, but what do you think should happen to somebody? I guess there’s obviously different levels clearly of, of bullying. Like you said, just making a negative comment about somebody’s picture. Like, you don’t look good in that dress is a lot different than go kill yourself, you know?
So clearly there’s that, and there’s that difference, but how do we, how do we even get past this? Is there any way that this could ever be curbed? Because it seems like if somebody. Is willing to write that whether it behind their own Instagram account or one that is created so they can go at people.
What, what is there to do for them to stop? So,
personally I think one of the major problems is the anonymity. So, I believe that everyone should, I don’t believe that you should be able to have an Instagram account or a Twitter account. You know, Twitter or X or Facebook or whatever that you don’t have to own.
I think it should be, you know, here is your, you know, your face, your, your, you know, your name, et cetera, so that it’s actually linked up to a real person. And, and I could imagine a system in which you could still read other people’s responses. You know, you could go on and read, but you couldn’t post, right?
You couldn’t post unless you actually had an account that was tied to your name. So, I mean, I think that would be a really simple solution because I do think. People are much less likely to write something horrible if they actually have to identify themselves and if it could be traced back to them. So you made the point on your podcast that Claire easily could have taken those person’s screenshots and shared them and said, this is, you know, whatever, you know, this person who said this problematic thing about me and you could have identified the person.
So to me, I think that would be a really great solution. I think it gets very, very tricky. When you get into how do you interpret somebody’s comment and is it bullying or is it not? Because the reality is that different people might draw the line at what is bullying in different ways and we’re not good online at judging things like was that sarcastic or you know, was that intended in jest or is that really designed to be cruel?
And I think it’s very hard to start drawing those lines.
Yeah. That’s really difficult. I mean, some are blatant and some it’s very obvious. They’re just out to be mean to somebody else. But some are, Hey, I was just commenting. I wasn’t really sorry. And it, and that’s what they turn into when they come back.
If the person that is being attacked comes back to them with, why would you say that to me? And then they kind of backpedal are like, oh, I didn’t think you would read it, or something like that. It’s like they pretty much read everything. All these people, all these people you don’t think are reading, are reading every single thing written about them.
So you have to keep that in mind as well. There was one thing that popped up that you know, I was looking at and, you know, I was thinking about it and you brought this up in your last answer. I’m like, well, what about if you had, and I don’t even know if this is enforceable. I think maybe a lot of people would drop off Instagram if you had to do it, but what if to have an Instagram account, you had to present a.
Screenshot of your driver’s license or your ID.
Right. So I love that idea. I love that idea. And I also think that, that that would mean that you could still say something horrible, right? You could still say something horrible, but you’d have to own it. I remember there are times in which I had gotten into some arguments.
I can’t even remember what it was about. But on Twitter and, you know, somebody attacked something I’d said, but they did. So, you know, behind some fake name and I responded and I just said, listen, you know, here’s my email. You know, here’s, you know, here’s who I am, and I’m owning it, and I’ll be glad to debate this with anybody who will identify who they are, but I’m not going to debate it with somebody who’s not willing to own their own words, because I’m owning my words.
And so to me, that’s really the key, that if I was on, you know, Instagram as Psych Professor anonymously, then I can say whatever I want, but I’m very mindful of things that Things that I post, I have to own, I understand could be traced back to my name and that does, I think, hold me accountable in terms of comments that I make on other people’s or what I post on my own account.
So I love that idea, frankly.
