WEBVTT - Are some people just nicer? 0:00:00.009 --> 0:00:02.990 This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people, 0:00:03.240 --> 0:00:06.109 the Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd like to pay 0:00:06.110 --> 0:00:09.238 respects to their elders, past and present, and emerging. 0:00:14.550 --> 0:00:17.870 From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University 0:00:17.870 --> 0:00:20.389 of Melbourne, this is PsychTalks. 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.219 Hello and thanks for joining us again on PsychTalks. We're 0:00:25.219 --> 0:00:28.129 thrilled to be back unpacking the latest research in psychology 0:00:28.129 --> 0:00:31.969 and neuroscience. I'm Professor Nick Haslam here with my wonderful co-host, 0:00:32.090 --> 0:00:33.799 Associate Professor Cassie Hayward. 0:00:33.930 --> 0:00:36.089 Thanks, Nick. And I think what we are exploring today 0:00:36.090 --> 0:00:38.919 is really going to fascinate many of our listeners at home, 0:00:39.409 --> 0:00:42.849 particularly anyone who's ever completed an online personality test or 0:00:42.848 --> 0:00:44.610 done one in a doctor's office magazine. 0:00:45.119 --> 0:00:47.830 We're looking at what many psychologists in the field call 0:00:47.830 --> 0:00:52.080 prosocial personality. Our guest today is Professor Luke Smillie, who's 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.599 a leading researcher in this area and whose work has 0:00:54.599 --> 0:00:58.490 been very diverse, ranging from understanding the structure of personality 0:00:58.490 --> 0:01:01.639 to its role in well-being and its neural underpinnings. So, 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:02.400 let's dive in. 0:01:07.349 --> 0:01:10.529 Welcome, Luke. So what do we mean by prosocial personality? 0:01:10.790 --> 0:01:15.029 Well, prosocial personality is an umbrella term to capture a 0:01:15.029 --> 0:01:18.510 range of individual differences in, in our personality traits or 0:01:18.510 --> 0:01:23.739 psychological characteristics that are in some way other-regarding, so regarding others. 0:01:24.230 --> 0:01:26.589 People vary in how other-regarding they are. 0:01:27.449 --> 0:01:30.410 So some are more willing to help others or cooperate. 0:01:31.250 --> 0:01:33.940 Uh, they're more moved to feel empathy for a person. 0:01:34.589 --> 0:01:37.580 And these differences are relatively stable over time. 0:01:38.639 --> 0:01:41.779 Um, for many people, prosocial personality is a bit of 0:01:41.779 --> 0:01:45.739 an uncomfortable notion. We want to believe deep down that 0:01:45.739 --> 0:01:48.739 all people, we're all the same and we're all fundamentally 0:01:48.739 --> 0:01:49.660 good or decent. 0:01:50.449 --> 0:01:53.110 And that may be true to some extent, but at 0:01:53.110 --> 0:01:56.309 the same time, we recognise people aren't interchangeable. I find 0:01:56.309 --> 0:01:59.430 it hard to imagine that anyone would struggle to identify 0:01:59.430 --> 0:02:03.139 someone in their life who was exceptionally kind or helpful 0:02:03.139 --> 0:02:06.269 or generous or empathic. And if we can single out 0:02:06.269 --> 0:02:10.698 such individuals, then we acknowledge that people differ in their prosociality. 0:02:10.949 --> 0:02:13.949 Cassie's like that. I'll just say, um, I'll single her 0:02:13.949 --> 0:02:15.720 out here. But yeah, I mean, this idea that people 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.259 differ in their concern for others or in their, um, 0:02:18.270 --> 0:02:19.110 moral goodness. 0:02:19.580 --> 0:02:21.580 I, I think it is pretty intuitive for most of us, 0:02:21.660 --> 0:02:25.929 but it's also been a controversial idea within our field, right? Um, 0:02:25.979 --> 0:02:27.929 so you'll know the famous study by Hartshorne and May, 0:02:27.979 --> 0:02:30.300 where they got a bunch of kids, um, almost a 0:02:30.300 --> 0:02:33.259 century ago, uh, and found that those who are honest 0:02:33.258 --> 0:02:35.809 in one context weren't necessarily honest in another. 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:39.220 And their work's been used to challenge the very idea 0:02:39.220 --> 0:02:41.940 that there is such a thing as moral character. So 0:02:41.940 --> 0:02:44.899 what's the evidence that we do have consistent differences in 0:02:44.899 --> 0:02:46.250 how prosocial we behave? 0:02:46.500 --> 0:02:50.729 Yeah, that's right, the results of the Hartshorne and May study, um, 0:02:50.740 --> 0:02:54.059 prompted some debate that lasted well into the late 20th century. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.899 But much of the debate over its implications really came 0:02:57.899 --> 0:03:02.080 down to how that data could best be analysed and interpreted. 0:03:02.330 --> 0:03:06.478 One issue was that they had analysed individual pairs of behaviours, 0:03:06.490 --> 0:03:09.210 but we now know that we need to sample across 0:03:09.210 --> 0:03:13.679 many instances of behaviour before you can estimate consistency very well. 0:03:13.830 --> 0:03:16.690 And later studies that did this, including using Hartshorne and 0:03:16.690 --> 0:03:20.639 May's data, found much stronger evidence for consistency. 0:03:21.288 --> 0:03:25.089 The other issue was that psychologists had a pretty simplistic 0:03:25.089 --> 0:03:28.380 understanding of the idea of consistency, and thought that anything 0:03:28.380 --> 0:03:31.210 short of perfect stability implied no stability at all. 0:03:31.500 --> 0:03:33.899 Right, I hadn't realised there were so many criticisms. What 0:03:33.899 --> 0:03:35.690 about the modern evidence then? 0:03:36.559 --> 0:03:39.479 Well, the modern evidence comes from a variety of areas 0:03:39.479 --> 0:03:45.330 within and beyond psychology. So beyond psychology, in economics, behavioural 0:03:45.330 --> 0:03:50.240 economists have found stable and systematic differences in how people 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:54.960 behave towards others in controlled experiments of cooperation, generosity, sharing, 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:55.639 and so on. 0:03:56.000 --> 0:04:00.529 In psychological science, essentially every model psychologists have put forward 0:04:00.529 --> 0:04:05.139 of personality traits, uh, include one distinctly prosocial trait. People 0:04:05.139 --> 0:04:07.940 are likely to be familiar with the Big Five. This 0:04:07.940 --> 0:04:10.949 is really one of the success stories of 20th century 0:04:10.949 --> 0:04:16.100 psychology in terms of robust and replicable findings. The Big 0:04:16.100 --> 0:04:20.929 Five is a framework for organising the many, many, many 0:04:20.928 --> 0:04:24.209 different ways that people differ from one another. 0:04:24.589 --> 0:04:27.029 Um, you could think of it as like a latitude 0:04:27.029 --> 0:04:31.239 and longitude of personality space, if you like. So whereas 0:04:31.238 --> 0:04:34.339 latitude and longitude are just two dimensions, the Big Five 0:04:34.339 --> 0:04:37.359 are 5 dimensions that try to capture all the important 0:04:37.359 --> 0:04:41.440 psychological characteristics that vary between people. The Big Five includes 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.700 a trait called agreeableness, which essentially describes how cooperative and 0:04:45.700 --> 0:04:48.890 compassionate and respectful a person generally is. 0:04:49.329 --> 0:04:54.399 And in clinical psychology, psychologists have long recognised personality disorders 0:04:54.399 --> 0:04:59.268 marked by antisocial tendencies, um, such as antisocial personality disorder 0:04:59.269 --> 0:05:03.200 in the DSM and psychopathy, uh, which is assessed in 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:07.399 clinical but also forensic settings. These are traditionally studies as categories, 0:05:07.559 --> 0:05:10.279 so you either have the disorder or not, uh, but 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.040 as you would know, Nick, uh, the field is moving 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:15.480 towards more dimensional models 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.540 based on the evidence that people don't really differ according 0:05:19.540 --> 0:05:21.850 to these categories, we differ by degree. 0:05:22.220 --> 0:05:25.260 So Luke, with all of those examples, it's kind of 0:05:25.260 --> 0:05:29.329 looking at prosocial personality as if it's a single thing. 0:05:29.380 --> 0:05:33.459 Is it unitary or are there different ways of being prosocial? 0:05:33.660 --> 0:05:36.779 Yeah, as I said at the beginning, prosociality, we could 0:05:36.779 --> 0:05:39.739 think of it as a broad umbrella construct. And there's 0:05:39.738 --> 0:05:43.618 many distinctions we could make within that broad space. So 0:05:43.619 --> 0:05:45.779 if we take agreeableness that I just mentioned, 0:05:46.220 --> 0:05:49.979 That can be divided into politeness and compassion. Um, and 0:05:49.980 --> 0:05:54.540 there are some interesting distinctions between politeness and compassion. Often 0:05:54.899 --> 0:05:59.399 people have assumed, uh, interpreted a finding in terms of compassion, 0:05:59.420 --> 0:06:02.868 and it turns out to be driven by politeness. Um, 0:06:03.178 --> 0:06:06.220 so one example from my own work concerns particular moral 0:06:06.220 --> 0:06:09.700 judgments that people make about the, the wrongness of a, 0:06:09.738 --> 0:06:12.458 of a moral action. There was a literature that suggested 0:06:12.459 --> 0:06:15.549 that these were primarily driven by people's compassion. 0:06:15.988 --> 0:06:21.070 That these situations are making judgments about triggered concern and empathy, uh, 0:06:21.149 --> 0:06:23.029 but it turned out in our work at least that 0:06:23.029 --> 0:06:25.469 they were driven primarily by politeness. 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:30.320 Which is more about a person's etiquette or respectfulness, the 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.828 degree to which they adhere to salient social rules and norms. 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.909 So which is better? What should I teach my kids 0:06:36.910 --> 0:06:39.750 to do, have empathy or just have good manners? 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.678 That's a hard question and it seems unlikely that one 0:06:42.678 --> 0:06:45.679 is better than the other in all ways. Also depends 0:06:45.678 --> 0:06:48.559 on what you mean by better. Both have features and 0:06:48.559 --> 0:06:52.670 consequences we might feel are good things. People intuitively probably 0:06:52.670 --> 0:06:54.570 feel compassion is more desirable. 0:06:54.928 --> 0:06:58.419 Um, but there's some really interesting ideas about how compassion 0:06:58.899 --> 0:07:02.018 can be undesirable in unexpected ways. I'm thinking of work 0:07:02.019 --> 0:07:05.899 by Paul Bloom, the American psychologist, who suggested that compassion 0:07:05.899 --> 0:07:08.940 and empathy is something we often feel more readily for 0:07:08.940 --> 0:07:13.019 any particular targets. It's easy to feel compassion for somebody 0:07:13.019 --> 0:07:15.380 like your kids, but maybe a bit harder to feel 0:07:15.380 --> 0:07:18.899 compassion for people very dissimilar to you. So Paul Bloom 0:07:18.899 --> 0:07:21.010 argues that compassion can actually be, 0:07:21.459 --> 0:07:25.529 somewhat parochial at times, um, and not always a good thing. 0:07:25.940 --> 0:07:29.578 So can being prosocial be boiled down just to compassion 0:07:29.579 --> 0:07:31.410 and politeness then, or is there more to it? 0:07:31.540 --> 0:07:34.859 Uh, no, there are many more distinctions we could make. Um, 0:07:35.019 --> 0:07:39.100 one that I'd highlight from a different personality model to 0:07:39.100 --> 0:07:43.540 the Big Five, it's a trait called honesty-humility. Um, it's 0:07:43.540 --> 0:07:47.609 got this kind of awkward hyphenated, double-barrelled name. 0:07:47.989 --> 0:07:51.380 Um, Another simpler term for it is sometimes integrity. This 0:07:51.380 --> 0:07:56.089 describes the degree to which a person is straightforward and non-manipulative, 0:07:56.540 --> 0:08:00.500 not motivated to put themselves ahead of others, and that 0:08:00.500 --> 0:08:04.339 predicts many outcomes that we care about, such as lower 0:08:04.339 --> 0:08:09.190 likelihood of engaging in criminal behaviour or even infidelity, unethical 0:08:09.190 --> 0:08:12.220 decision making, and a range of socially consequential outcomes. But 0:08:12.220 --> 0:08:15.420 all of these constructs we're discussing are still relatively broad. 0:08:15.929 --> 0:08:18.600 There are many more specific traits that we could zoom 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.959 in on like trust, modesty, perspective taking. 0:08:22.570 --> 0:08:26.670 And interestingly, some traits that don't seem inherently concerned with 0:08:26.670 --> 0:08:30.790 prosocial behaviour can have prosocial implications. So people might have 0:08:30.790 --> 0:08:34.150 heard of a trait called openness to experience, which predicts 0:08:34.150 --> 0:08:37.299 concern for animals and the environment, for example. 0:08:37.549 --> 0:08:41.390 And Luke, your work really has clarified those personality traits 0:08:41.390 --> 0:08:44.909 that underlie being prosocial, but it's also revealed how these 0:08:44.909 --> 0:08:48.349 prosocial traits are related to real world behaviour. Can you 0:08:48.349 --> 0:08:52.228 give us some more examples of that real world behaviour research? 0:08:52.580 --> 0:08:55.039 Yeah, I mean, people have looked at a range of 0:08:55.039 --> 0:09:00.079 outcomes that these traits might predict, including how much they 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:04.440 volunteer or donate to charity, um, decisions that they might 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.520 make in terms of, for example, whether they pursue a 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.869 career that enables them to do more good in the world, um, 0:09:11.119 --> 0:09:13.630 what they want to happen after they die, uh, for example, 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.919 in the case of posthumous organ donation. 0:09:16.390 --> 0:09:18.989 So one example from my own work, we recently published 0:09:18.989 --> 0:09:23.299 a meta-analysis on personality predictors of philanthropic behaviour, looking at 0:09:23.299 --> 0:09:27.669 charitable donations and volunteering. And we're really excited to get 0:09:27.669 --> 0:09:31.190 this meta-analysis out there because the evidence with this kind 0:09:31.190 --> 0:09:35.059 of often murky real world data was quite mixed, um, 0:09:35.109 --> 0:09:38.549 but overall, what we found was that agreeableness is the 0:09:38.549 --> 0:09:42.789 strongest trait predictor of real world charitable giving, more, more 0:09:42.789 --> 0:09:44.978 agreeable people give more money to charities. 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:49.919 And interestingly, it was extroversion that predicted volunteering. This might 0:09:49.919 --> 0:09:54.039 not necessarily suggest that extroversion is a particularly prosocial tendency, 0:09:54.090 --> 0:09:56.929 maybe it says something a little bit more about the 0:09:56.929 --> 0:10:00.520 kinds of situations in which volunteering occurs. It's often very, 0:10:00.570 --> 0:10:05.650 a very social, um, outgoing activity to engage in. And 0:10:05.650 --> 0:10:09.169 I'd say that these effects were fairly modest statistically, but 0:10:09.169 --> 0:10:12.929 perhaps important in practical terms when you aggregate across uh 0:10:12.929 --> 0:10:14.200 to the population level. 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.809 Another example is a recent study where we looked at 0:10:17.809 --> 0:10:22.319 um factors that predict people's attitudes to social justice issues, 0:10:22.359 --> 0:10:25.630 so things that are really topical at the moment, um, 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:31.159 attitudes towards diversity, inclusiveness, initiatives, attitudes towards gender diversity, things 0:10:31.159 --> 0:10:34.679 like the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:35.119 so on. 0:10:35.590 --> 0:10:38.260 And we found that some of these same traits predicted 0:10:38.260 --> 0:10:42.359 people's attitudes towards those social justice concerns, traits like agreeableness. 0:10:42.570 --> 0:10:45.679 Yeah, and some of those issues are very politicised, of course. Do, 0:10:45.849 --> 0:10:50.010 do the prosocial traits like agreeableness predict them over and 0:10:50.010 --> 0:10:52.679 above people's political orientations, or 0:10:52.729 --> 0:10:56.549 are some orientations just more agreeable on average? 0:10:56.809 --> 0:11:00.320 No, we found for those highly politicised outcomes, um, it's 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.400 political attitudes that are usually, um, more important predictors, and 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.159 this makes sense. Political attitudes capture by definition, how one 0:11:08.159 --> 0:11:09.799 thinks about political issues. 0:11:10.309 --> 0:11:14.189 Whereas personality traits are these much broader descriptions of what 0:11:14.190 --> 0:11:17.270 a person is like in general across many contexts. But 0:11:17.270 --> 0:11:19.669 having said that, there's an interesting model that came out 0:11:19.669 --> 0:11:23.750 of New Zealand that suggests that personality traits predict these 0:11:23.750 --> 0:11:27.940 politically salient outcomes via our political attitudes. So the idea 0:11:27.940 --> 0:11:31.669 is that someone, for example, who is more agreeable and 0:11:31.669 --> 0:11:34.919 more open to experience, they might be more likely to 0:11:34.919 --> 0:11:38.070 cultivate liberal or progressive political attitudes. 0:11:38.469 --> 0:11:42.429 Which in turn are the um primary drivers or or 0:11:42.429 --> 0:11:45.150 strong predictors I should say, of how they think about 0:11:45.150 --> 0:11:48.380 politically salient issues like diversity and inclusiveness. 0:11:48.909 --> 0:11:51.710 So one topic you've done some work on recently is 0:11:51.710 --> 0:11:55.559 how prosocial personalities related to diet and especially vegetarian or 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:56.309 vegan diet. 0:11:56.739 --> 0:11:57.960 Can you tell us about that work? 0:11:58.219 --> 0:12:04.030 Yeah, so we've been interested in predicting adherence to specifically, uh, um, 0:12:04.059 --> 0:12:08.179 ethical vegetarianism, um, so people who have decided to adopt 0:12:08.179 --> 0:12:11.140 a vegetarian or vegan diet for ethical reasons, which we 0:12:11.140 --> 0:12:12.700 think of as another kind of prosocial 0:12:12.945 --> 0:12:15.944 behaviour. It's other-regarding, the others in this case are just 0:12:15.945 --> 0:12:19.343 non-human animals. And again, this kind of real world data, 0:12:19.544 --> 0:12:23.065 the findings have often been quite inconsistent and messy. But 0:12:23.065 --> 0:12:26.304 we did some research recently where we combined multiple samples 0:12:26.304 --> 0:12:30.304 across Australia, New Zealand and the US. We found that 0:12:30.304 --> 0:12:33.734 agreeableness was a fairly consistent predictor of adherence to a 0:12:33.734 --> 0:12:35.104 vegetarian or vegan diet. 0:12:35.489 --> 0:12:38.619 But also that trait I mentioned before, openness to experience. 0:12:39.109 --> 0:12:43.030 So does that suggest that dialling up those traits can 0:12:43.030 --> 0:12:48.210 increase someone's propensity to take a vegetarian diet? Like a, a, a, 0:12:48.380 --> 0:12:51.270 you kind of hear people talk about personality being fixed, 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.250 and we can't change it, but can you point to research 0:12:55.250 --> 0:12:58.010 that says you can kind of dial up and down 0:12:58.010 --> 0:12:59.569 those areas? 0:12:59.609 --> 0:12:59.770 Yeah, 0:12:59.929 --> 0:13:03.289 so some of these findings are definitely interesting for people 0:13:03.289 --> 0:13:07.469 who study personality change, and it's, um, it is really 0:13:07.469 --> 0:13:11.090 a persistent misconception that personality can't be changed, that it 0:13:11.090 --> 0:13:13.359 is fixed in some way. When you think about it, 0:13:13.369 --> 0:13:15.849 it would be quite mysterious if there was something that 0:13:15.849 --> 0:13:18.369 was entirely fixed, you would then have to ask, well, 0:13:18.460 --> 0:13:21.130 how is it fixed? Is it some mysterious essence within 0:13:21.130 --> 0:13:21.760 the person? 0:13:22.349 --> 0:13:27.969 Um, but these, uh, personality traits, these psychological characteristics, they 0:13:27.969 --> 0:13:32.169 change and develop over time, they can be changed for intervention. Um, 0:13:32.250 --> 0:13:35.590 they might change as a result of a significant life experience, 0:13:35.770 --> 0:13:40.119 for example, a traumatic experience that, um, profoundly changes somebody. 0:13:40.489 --> 0:13:44.848 And there are research areas called personality change and personality 0:13:44.849 --> 0:13:47.330 development that have been around for decades, so this persistent 0:13:47.330 --> 0:13:49.219 idea that personality is fixed is, 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.679 a little puzzling to me sometimes. Having said all of that, 0:13:52.789 --> 0:13:54.559 I don't want to give the impression that personality is 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:58.130 limitlessly malleable, that anyone can be whoever they wanna be, 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.358 provided they get the right nudge or they buy the 0:14:01.359 --> 0:14:04.289 right app, for example. I think that's a common message 0:14:04.289 --> 0:14:06.729 you see in the pop psych space, uh, but I 0:14:06.729 --> 0:14:10.630 don't think it's very much in touch with the evidence. Um, 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.760 indeed my hunches of the prominence of that message in 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:15.809 that self-help space 0:14:16.289 --> 0:14:18.770 might be a reflection of the fact that change is 0:14:18.770 --> 0:14:19.690 not so easy. 0:14:20.590 --> 0:14:23.559 The other thing I'd just add with applications is that 0:14:23.559 --> 0:14:26.919 we should be careful to assume that psychological stability is 0:14:26.919 --> 0:14:31.109 not practically useful to know about. So in many instances, 0:14:31.359 --> 0:14:33.609 maybe the most helpful thing is for a person to 0:14:33.609 --> 0:14:36.520 really understand the kind of person that they are and 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:40.559 learn how to, for example, regulate their behaviours or emotions 0:14:40.559 --> 0:14:44.429 or identify more appropriate goals for them as an individual. 0:14:45.020 --> 0:14:48.419 Rather than tackle the possibly more difficult task of trying 0:14:48.419 --> 0:14:51.619 to change who they are. And that's the focus of 0:14:51.619 --> 0:14:56.179 a fascinating area of research called self-knowledge, um, and in 0:14:56.179 --> 0:14:59.219 this area, the, the goal is to study how well 0:14:59.219 --> 0:15:02.700 people know themselves, um, learn whether we can improve our 0:15:02.700 --> 0:15:05.609 self-knowledge and whether there are benefits of doing so. 0:15:06.229 --> 0:15:07.739 Uh, I mean, Luke, is there any evidence that if 0:15:07.739 --> 0:15:11.539 you just practise prosocial behaviour, it does change your personality? 0:15:11.590 --> 0:15:16.979 Do you become more agreeable by practising compassion or practising um 0:15:16.979 --> 0:15:19.049 adherence to social justice values? 0:15:19.059 --> 0:15:21.570 We hope so, because that's what we do with kids, right? 0:15:22.340 --> 0:15:26.380 There's there's some evidence, not so much with these pro-social traits, 0:15:26.489 --> 0:15:28.789 but there's some evidence that by 0:15:29.530 --> 0:15:33.049 expressing high levels of a trait, uh, you often see 0:15:33.049 --> 0:15:37.450 the consequences that are usually associated with that trait. So 0:15:37.450 --> 0:15:39.969 the one that's best studied and that my colleagues and 0:15:39.969 --> 0:15:43.200 I have done some work on as well concerns extroversion, 0:15:43.409 --> 0:15:46.690 and extroversion is a trait that predicts, um, 0:15:47.270 --> 0:15:50.049 many measures of well-being, and it turns out that if 0:15:50.049 --> 0:15:54.450 you get people to enact prototypical expressions of extroversion, so 0:15:54.450 --> 0:15:58.010 getting them to be more talkative, more social and outgoing, 0:15:58.250 --> 0:16:03.049 they experience at least temporary increases in well-being. But the 0:16:03.049 --> 0:16:06.650 question is whether by doing that you could affect longer 0:16:06.650 --> 0:16:11.330 term sustained increases, um, that's, that's still probably an open question. 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.349 So Luke, being prosocial is obviously good for other people. 0:16:15.559 --> 0:16:17.559 Is it also good for ourselves? Does it improve our 0:16:17.559 --> 0:16:18.309 own wellbeing? 0:16:18.559 --> 0:16:22.349 Yeah, that's a really interesting question, and literally just yesterday 0:16:22.349 --> 0:16:25.960 I was reading about some work by a former University 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:27.559 of Melbourne student, Jessie Sun. 0:16:28.190 --> 0:16:31.179 Ah, that suggests the answer to that is yes, um, 0:16:31.340 --> 0:16:37.260 that people who are perceived by others as more, um, 0:16:37.270 --> 0:16:42.780 morally good people, actually, more so than prosocial, they report 0:16:42.780 --> 0:16:46.820 higher levels of well-being themselves. So it may be that being, 0:16:47.380 --> 0:16:51.340 more other-regarding, uh, is also beneficial to the individual in 0:16:51.340 --> 0:16:55.580 terms of their overall happiness and satisfaction in their lives. 0:16:55.780 --> 0:16:58.219 So Luke, what are some of the exciting applications of 0:16:58.219 --> 0:17:00.530 research into prosocial personality? 0:17:01.020 --> 0:17:03.659 So there are a few that I think are are 0:17:03.659 --> 0:17:07.500 really interesting. Um, one is the idea of targeted or 0:17:07.500 --> 0:17:09.050 tailored interventions. 0:17:09.530 --> 0:17:12.419 So if you think about that finding from the meta-analysis 0:17:12.420 --> 0:17:17.729 I mentioned, uh, showing that agreeableness predicts higher levels of 0:17:17.729 --> 0:17:22.420 charitable donations. So one possibility is that campaigns and messaging 0:17:22.420 --> 0:17:25.629 that tries to increase, uh, to get people to donate 0:17:25.805 --> 0:17:30.444 money to charitable causes is appealing primarily to people high 0:17:30.444 --> 0:17:33.125 in agreeableness. So one possibility is that we're, we're kind 0:17:33.125 --> 0:17:37.005 of missing a big sector of the population, and through 0:17:37.005 --> 0:17:41.005 some kind of tailored, more precision, sometimes called intervention, we 0:17:41.005 --> 0:17:44.444 could try to uh identify messaging that would be a 0:17:44.444 --> 0:17:46.604 bit more effective for people lower in agreeableness. 0:17:47.099 --> 0:17:49.680 An alternative approach would be to just double down on 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.000 the most receptive audience. So some of the work we've 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.958 done on this idea of ethical vegetarianism, we did a 0:17:55.959 --> 0:17:59.520 recent study looking at how different people respond to persuasive 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:03.400 appeals to not eat animals. And there are some characteristics 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.589 that predict just really not being persuaded by any ethical 0:18:07.599 --> 0:18:11.790 argument at all. Um, so those people may be unreachable through, uh, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.520 an ethically framed appeal to adopt a plant-based diet. 0:18:16.229 --> 0:18:20.579 So, animal advocacy groups might be more effective if rather 0:18:20.579 --> 0:18:23.399 than sending messages that are gonna fall on deaf ears 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:25.319 to target the people who are going to be the 0:18:25.319 --> 0:18:29.879 most receptive. And at a broader level, research into prosocial 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.679 personality could potentially help intervention designers think more carefully about 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:38.150 what the behaviour they're seeking to promote entails for an individual. 0:18:38.569 --> 0:18:44.300 Um, people aren't these interchangeable data points waiting just dutifully 0:18:44.300 --> 0:18:47.589 to receive whatever intervention we have in mind. Any intervention 0:18:47.589 --> 0:18:50.800 is going to potentially cut with or against the grain 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:51.670 for different people. 0:18:52.199 --> 0:18:54.079 This was the focus of some work I did with 0:18:54.079 --> 0:18:57.790 a former student of mine, Reb Rebele, and Reb wanted 0:18:57.790 --> 0:19:00.790 to get the message out there that that intervention design 0:19:00.790 --> 0:19:03.750 tends to overlook the fact that an intervention is going 0:19:03.750 --> 0:19:06.698 to entail different things for different people. So for a 0:19:06.699 --> 0:19:09.680 highly prosocial person, the way to get them to engage 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:13.239 in prosocial behaviour might be relatively simple, a simple nudge 0:19:13.239 --> 0:19:14.160 or reminder. But for a 0:19:14.314 --> 0:19:17.915 less prosocial person, it's possibly going to need something more, 0:19:18.285 --> 0:19:21.563 because what you're trying to do is potentially, you're potentially 0:19:21.564 --> 0:19:23.444 trying to get them to act in a way that's 0:19:23.444 --> 0:19:26.484 counter dispositional or at the very least, not as familiar 0:19:26.484 --> 0:19:30.204 or routine. So these are really different cases and perhaps 0:19:30.204 --> 0:19:33.204 the one size fits all approach we see in the 0:19:33.204 --> 0:19:36.395 behaviour change literature, we often see in the behaviour change literature. 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:40.800 overlooks a fundamental fact about human beings, which is which 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:41.359 we differ. 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.609 Just on that, Luke, with the increased ability to target 0:19:45.609 --> 0:19:49.989 people through online advertising, so these groups might be using, 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:54.040 you know, different social networks to target different ads about 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:58.270 becoming plant-based or whatever the, the information, the whatever the 0:19:58.280 --> 0:19:59.169 the campaign is. 0:20:00.030 --> 0:20:02.869 Do you think that they can get a read of 0:20:02.869 --> 0:20:06.869 someone's personality at this sort of level from their kind 0:20:06.869 --> 0:20:10.430 of online presence to be able to do that targeted messaging, 0:20:11.670 --> 0:20:13.180 that you're kind of outlining here? 0:20:13.420 --> 0:20:17.410 Yeah, there there's been some really impressive demonstrations of that, 0:20:17.660 --> 0:20:23.260 one primarily in the consumer marketing space actually, where essentially 0:20:23.260 --> 0:20:27.810 an algorithm provides an estimate of personality traits based on 0:20:27.810 --> 0:20:30.859 a digital footprint, uh, for example, Facebook Likes. 0:20:31.564 --> 0:20:35.805 And that is then used to select different forms of 0:20:35.805 --> 0:20:39.285 an advertisement for the same product. So, there's some research 0:20:39.285 --> 0:20:43.004 by Matz and colleagues, uh, about 5 to 10 years ago, 0:20:43.045 --> 0:20:46.284 I think, showing that by actually presenting different people, the 0:20:46.285 --> 0:20:49.484 different forms of the same advert, uh, that translated into 0:20:49.484 --> 0:20:53.354 much higher sales. So that's in a marketing context, um, 0:20:53.405 --> 0:20:54.284 you could see that 0:20:54.719 --> 0:20:57.879 Uh, same logic being applied in the case of trying 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:00.270 to promote prosocial behaviour. 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:02.439 And I think in some of our other episodes we've 0:21:02.439 --> 0:21:04.819 seen how much those algorithms know about us, so it's 0:21:04.819 --> 0:21:08.280 not beyond the scope of their targeting to, to get 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:09.079 us on personality. 0:21:09.079 --> 0:21:12.209 There's definitely a scary side to 0:21:12.415 --> 0:21:16.774 that work that um that yeah, we, we should also 0:21:16.775 --> 0:21:19.415 keep in mind in terms of the ethicality of, of 0:21:19.415 --> 0:21:20.994 using those algorithms. 0:21:21.214 --> 0:21:24.454 But let's not close on a pessimistic note. Uh, I 0:21:24.454 --> 0:21:27.344 think it's just uh such interesting work, Luke, and just 0:21:27.344 --> 0:21:29.813 showing how taking human variation seriously. 0:21:30.260 --> 0:21:33.458 Uh, really enlightens us about prosocial personality. So, can you 0:21:33.459 --> 0:21:35.109 tell us where your work's going next? 0:21:35.420 --> 0:21:37.890 One project that I'm working on at the moment that 0:21:38.099 --> 0:21:41.060 ties in nicely with something we talked about earlier, that 0:21:41.060 --> 0:21:44.540 Hartshorne and May study, which was about cheating and honesty 0:21:44.540 --> 0:21:47.260 and children. Uh, so where my colleagues and I are 0:21:47.260 --> 0:21:52.419 doing some studies on both the personality and situational predictors 0:21:52.420 --> 0:21:55.729 of lying. We were actually trying to find 0:21:56.010 --> 0:22:00.780 an interaction between the situational factors and the personality factors. 0:22:01.189 --> 0:22:04.708 We don't find those interactions, but those studies are showing 0:22:04.709 --> 0:22:08.670 us that honesty-humility that I mentioned before is a very 0:22:08.670 --> 0:22:11.949 important predictor. And a range of situational factors such as 0:22:12.229 --> 0:22:16.270 if you want somebody to behave more honestly in our studies, uh, 0:22:16.380 --> 0:22:18.430 the best way to do so is to ask them 0:22:18.430 --> 0:22:21.179 to take an oath or pledge to be honest. 0:22:21.469 --> 0:22:23.389 Well, I said we'd end on an optimistic note, but 0:22:23.390 --> 0:22:25.369 I'm now gonna prove myself a liar. 0:22:25.910 --> 0:22:29.979 Um, little provocative question to close out our episode. So, 0:22:29.989 --> 0:22:32.630 your work implies that people differ a lot and how 0:22:32.630 --> 0:22:36.109 much they care about other people's welfare. So should the 0:22:36.109 --> 0:22:39.250 more idealistic among us give up their belief that deep down, 0:22:39.589 --> 0:22:40.500 everyone is good? 0:22:40.790 --> 0:22:44.510 Yeah, it's funny to think how uncontroversial this question would 0:22:44.510 --> 0:22:49.109