Speaker 1: If you had two people trying to argue that Okay,
Speaker 1: the way I see it is the way to see it.
Speaker 1: I'm right and you're wrong, Nothing truthful really comes out
Speaker 1: of that. But if you had two people approach that
Speaker 1: same situation and say, okay, let's go shoulder to shoulder
Speaker 1: on this and try to understand why do you think
Speaker 1: we'd disagree, why would we see it differently, that's the
Speaker 1: only investigation that will lead to that amazing deeper truth
Speaker 1: of Oh, this has to do with sunlight and priors
Speaker 1: and stuff. Today, we welcome David McRaney on the show.
Speaker 1: David is a science journalist fascinated with brains, minds, and culture.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, he created the podcast You Are Not
Speaker 1: So Smart, based on his two thousand and nine internationally
Speaker 1: best selling book of the same name and its follow up,
Speaker 1: You Are Now Less Dumb. David is also an editor, photographer,
Speaker 1: voiceover artist, television host, journalism teacher, lecturer, and Tornado survivor.
Speaker 1: His most recent book is called How Minds Change, and
Speaker 1: that's the topic of our conversation today. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to David about the science of belief and
Speaker 1: persuasion in this day and age of onnoine tribes and
Speaker 1: echo chambers. Changing people's opinions seems like an impossible task.
Speaker 1: Instead of arguing over facts, David encourages us to use
Speaker 1: empathy to understand why we disagree. He explains pha's framework
Speaker 1: behind knowledge building and shares the use of technique rebuttal
Speaker 1: for sincere conversations. It was a great honor chatting with David.
Speaker 1: He's someone who's inspired my own podcast, the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: He has been in this podcast based so long and
Speaker 1: he has thought so deeply about psychological issues that it
Speaker 1: was great to riff with him on such an important topic,
Speaker 1: especially in society today. So I now bring you David mcrainey. David,
Speaker 1: so great to finally have you on those psychology podcasts.
Speaker 1: I am happy just to see who Scott. I am
Speaker 1: so comfortable doing zooms that I'll just drink coffee while
Speaker 1: we're talking. Look at this, me too, me too. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to be here. You know. I love you.
Speaker 1: I love your show. I'm seeing the puzzler and how
Speaker 1: my is changed back there in your bookshelf. You're killing it. Thanks. Wow,
Speaker 1: what a great book and how timely it is. Before
Speaker 1: we jump into it. Can you kind of tell our
Speaker 1: audience a little bit about yourself and who are you?
Speaker 1: What is your background? What does tell us about your
Speaker 1: own podcast? Sure, I'll do. I'll truly be mostly brief.
Speaker 1: I call myself an author. Now I'm a journalist. I'm
Speaker 1: a writer, I and podcaster and lecture, you know, content making,
Speaker 1: individual person thing. I started out in journalism with working
Speaker 1: in newspapers and television, but I went to school to
Speaker 1: be a psychologist. I switched to journalism at the very
Speaker 1: end of my degree after being allured by the student newspaper.
Speaker 1: My first thing I wrote, and this is how I
Speaker 1: jumped into all this was they they were asking for
Speaker 1: opinion pieces. I don't know if this is replicated or
Speaker 1: it's still around or anything, but we had learned in
Speaker 1: psychology class that when your supports team loses, that sperm
Speaker 1: counts go down. I don't know if that's actually true anymore,
Speaker 1: that ever was true, but I I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great article because our university had lost every one
Speaker 1: of its football games that year, and so I had
Speaker 1: this headline that was sperm counts reach record lows on campus,
Speaker 1: according to scientists. You know, then you read the article
Speaker 1: and it's like speculation based off this thing. I remember
Speaker 1: one of my professors like, have y' all seen this?
Speaker 1: Have you read about this? And that was it. I
Speaker 1: was like, Ah, that would be fun to write about
Speaker 1: these topics, but I didn't. I ended up going into
Speaker 1: getting that degree, and then I worked on like cops
Speaker 1: and courts and higher education, and eventually I was on
Speaker 1: TV working on the back end on like social media
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But I started a blog and
Speaker 1: they went back to my what I really wanted to
Speaker 1: write about, and it got surprisingly popular and led to
Speaker 1: a book deal, and then that led to me starting
Speaker 1: a podcast where I get to talk to people like
Speaker 1: yourself and just explore this endlessly. I tried. I carved
Speaker 1: out the niche of motivated reasoning, psychology, reasoning and judgment,
Speaker 1: decision making, biases, fallacies, uistics, that sort of stuff. And
Speaker 1: then somewhere along the way I started becoming incredibly fascinated
Speaker 1: with persuasion and opinion science. Of course, because of all
Speaker 1: the polarization and all the arguing and bickering, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to understand it better. And there's the way that
Speaker 1: led to this book. How mine's changed, So it's been
Speaker 1: years of working it. There were two incepting points for
Speaker 1: this new book, which is I was giving a lecture
Speaker 1: and someone came up to me and asked, my father
Speaker 1: has fallen into a conspiracy theory. How can I get
Speaker 1: him out of it? And I remember saying, you can't,
Speaker 1: which was not true, but I felt it as I
Speaker 1: was saying it. I knew I didn't like what was
Speaker 1: coming out of my mouth, but I also realized that
Speaker 1: I was saying it because I didn't understand it very well.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be giving advice. So I wanted to go
Speaker 1: into that. And then at the same time, the norms
Speaker 1: surrounding same sex marriage and LGBTQ issues in the United
Speaker 1: States were shifting very rapidly. Around the time I said that,
Speaker 1: I looked the polling, and at the time I looked
Speaker 1: the polling, sixty percent of the country had flipped over
Speaker 1: the last three years from being opposed to in favor.
Speaker 1: And if you weren't part of the activism that led
Speaker 1: up to that to the many decades, it seemed to
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the outside that it just
Speaker 1: happened overnight, and it really was one of the fastest
Speaker 1: changes of public opinion in American history, but it really
Speaker 1: happened over the course of a decade or twelve years,
Speaker 1: the fast part, the rapid change. And I just imagine,
Speaker 1: what if you took all those people who were the
Speaker 1: sixty percent and put them in a time machine and
Speaker 1: sent them back ten years ago. They would disagree with themselves.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to know what happened between this point
Speaker 1: and this point in their brains. And I just was
Speaker 1: just this massive thing I didn't understand. I wanted to understand.
Speaker 1: I thought if I did understand it, maybe I could
Speaker 1: suggest ways that we could catalyze that. And that led
Speaker 1: to a very long obsession that ended up being that book.
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking us through that journey. I do
Speaker 1: wonder why the interest in what's happening in the brain.
Speaker 1: I know that it sounds sexy in neuroscience people think
Speaker 1: it's but what value does that give us above and
Speaker 1: beyond knowing psychologically what's happening when we change? Why is
Speaker 1: the brain so exciting for me? It's just like how
Speaker 1: I it's the thing I've chosen, or that shows me
Speaker 1: to how I understand, how I try to make sense
Speaker 1: of being a stumbling, fumbling weirdo. In this you know,
Speaker 1: in this meat sack mix suit. I grew up very isolated,
Speaker 1: only child latchkey parents in the woods of Mississippi, like
Speaker 1: I was. I had a hermitage childhood, and it was
Speaker 1: like I was just constantly in that Like that state
Speaker 1: I think people go to the woods to be in
Speaker 1: was my whole upbringing, and I was I always have been.
Speaker 1: It was when I discovered psychology and all the things
Speaker 1: that are surrounding it in neuroscience, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a portal into understanding myself in a way
Speaker 1: that I really want to understand. And when it came
Speaker 1: to like another aspect of growing up in that world
Speaker 1: was there was a lot of racism, a lot of sexism,
Speaker 1: a lot of anti LGBT attitudes, a lot of anti
Speaker 1: science attitudes, a lot of conspiracy thinking. And I wanted
Speaker 1: a window into why that was because it seems so
Speaker 1: clear to me that for like that wasn't true of
Speaker 1: the world at large that I was finding through television,
Speaker 1: movies and books and everything the brain though it just
Speaker 1: felt I guess growing up as a sci fi nerd.
Speaker 1: It just felt like that was the way in like
Speaker 1: my dad had had a subscription to Discover magazine. And
Speaker 1: he was an electrical engineer and he had a subscription
Speaker 1: to Discover magazine. And they had the used have this
Speaker 1: cartoon in the back that would just be like a
Speaker 1: science fact, but it was like a six panel cartoon,
Speaker 1: and one of them was on like why advertising works,
Speaker 1: and it was about how they're the cookie company, Like
Speaker 1: it seems silly, like we all know that you have cookies.
Speaker 1: Cookies are great. What are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 1: But they were. They the cartoons said, yeah, but when
Speaker 1: you go to the store and it's a choice between
Speaker 1: when you've never heard of and one you've seen on
Speaker 1: TV a lot, which will you pick? I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: that's not even Like there's something way deeper than what
Speaker 1: I thought was going on is going on. And from
Speaker 1: my sensibility going into starting at neurons and then working
Speaker 1: your way up to abstractions and ideas, and working all
Speaker 1: the way back up to interactions between people, and then
Speaker 1: working all the way up to nations, it just feels
Speaker 1: like that's my version of some sort of that's under
Speaker 1: the strait. It's like a holy reductionism for me, Like
Speaker 1: I find there's something nice and as long as you're
Speaker 1: okay to go to both sides of that spectrum and
Speaker 1: play around and not always reduce. There's something, there's something
Speaker 1: there that excites me. Yeah, well, your new book, you
Speaker 1: argue that we have the power to shift our thinking
Speaker 1: in a lay of new evidence, to have conversations and
Speaker 1: staff debates, and to replace old ignorance with new wisdom.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't seem like humans have that capacity these days.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's doing that, who's utilizing those facility right now? Well?
Speaker 1: All we are? We all we are? That's true. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of this is preaching the choir because
Speaker 1: you're you're the expert on these topics and I'm the
Speaker 1: diletant journalist. But the way I've made sense of this,
Speaker 1: the ways I found we into was through Puget. I
Speaker 1: think I actually have the book closet. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is such a great geneticist. The principles of genetic epistemology
Speaker 1: is what he just telled up. I love, who are
Speaker 1: just listening? Nice? You know, most people remember pug from
Speaker 1: the If you took any CEC one of one class.
Speaker 1: He's the one that was like you pore the if
Speaker 1: you've experienced this if you're ever going to a bar
Speaker 1: and they give you the nice tall glass, like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at how much of the drink they gave me?
Speaker 1: Like like that, he would do that with kids and see,
Speaker 1: like when did they figure out that it's a wide,
Speaker 1: short glass and a tall, skinny glass have the same
Speaker 1: amount of liquid and it's not magically growth. He wanted
Speaker 1: to like understand how does knowledge build up in the mind,
Speaker 1: How do minds create a structure of understanding the world.
Speaker 1: And he wanted to understand the stages so they could
Speaker 1: understand all the stages and all the way through adulthood.
Speaker 1: And there's these two principles that came out of that
Speaker 1: that I found really compelling, assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is
Speaker 1: this all involves ambiguity and uncertainty. And when a mind
Speaker 1: approaches something that's ambiguous and uncertain, one way you can
Speaker 1: disinbiguate it and arrive at some level of certainty is
Speaker 1: just interpreted as another version of something you already understand.
Speaker 1: Whereas but sometimes that's anomalies built up or something that's
Speaker 1: so outside your understanding or counters your models so much
Speaker 1: that you need to accommodate to fit it in there.
Speaker 1: And the example that I like to use to get
Speaker 1: out of all this psychological terminology is when a child
Speaker 1: sees a dog for the first time and you say, hey,
Speaker 1: that's a dog, and they something sort of categorical might
Speaker 1: be happening there where they're thinking non human walks on
Speaker 1: the fore legs, furry dog, got it, thank you. And
Speaker 1: then they see a horse for the first time, and
Speaker 1: kids often say things like look dog or if they're
Speaker 1: you know, really advanced, and I say, big dog, And
Speaker 1: that's an attempt to assimilate, like I have this category
Speaker 1: walks the four legs, it's fury, it's non human, fits
Speaker 1: right in there, thanks a bunch. It's more of what
Speaker 1: I already understand about the world. But then you say,
Speaker 1: no, no no, that's a horse. Well now, oh, I have
Speaker 1: to create a new category for both horse and dog
Speaker 1: to fit into. And they may not articulate it yet,
Speaker 1: but it's creature or animal or something. And so you
Speaker 1: really have to expand your mind to accommodate this new concept.
Speaker 1: And so we're always doing that at all times. That's
Speaker 1: how we build up this robust model of reality to
Speaker 1: interact with that whatever's going on outside our brains. And
Speaker 1: it's as similation of accommodation all day long. And so
Speaker 1: everything we do change is our minds, every experience, everything
Speaker 1: we learn, every conversation. In some way, sometimes we're changing
Speaker 1: it to confirm what we already think, we know and
Speaker 1: understand and feel, and then sometimes we're challenged to update.
Speaker 1: But as it becomes much more robust, as that becomes
Speaker 1: much more complex, that type walk that we wrote that
Speaker 1: we walk of become dangerously incorrect by changing mind when
Speaker 1: you shouldn't, or you could remain dangerously incorrect by it
Speaker 1: and not change your mind when you should that that
Speaker 1: we start to air on the side of assimilation as
Speaker 1: a because this is such a complex model. It has
Speaker 1: taken us so long to get where we're at, and
Speaker 1: it got us here, might as well preserve it. But
Speaker 1: then there's all these other motivations that will come into play,
Speaker 1: and we can get into that where that baseline resistance
Speaker 1: is in the is in maintaining the model, But then
Speaker 1: there's other motivations that will bounce up that baseline resistance
Speaker 1: very high depending on the topic, depending on what the
Speaker 1: mental model is. That the mental structure that we're working
Speaker 1: with Brick Harrington to launch us. And to answer your question,
Speaker 1: I think she gave me something that I love repeating.
Speaker 1: She's a sociologist, she said, But her estimation the eagles
Speaker 1: mc square of social science is the fear of social
Speaker 1: death is greater than the fear of physical death. So
Speaker 1: if the if the ship is going down, we'll put
Speaker 1: our reputations on the lifeboat and we'll tow okay with
Speaker 1: our bodies going to the body of the ocean. That's
Speaker 1: such a strong motivation to avoid shame and guilt and ostracism,
Speaker 1: to maintain group identity, to keep your reputation safe, to
Speaker 1: manage reputation, to signal that you're a good member of
Speaker 1: your group. That if if that becomes the motive, if
Speaker 1: that's strong about the issue that play, it bounces the
Speaker 1: top and resistance becomes very strong in that regard. And
Speaker 1: that's what I keep trying to say in the book
Speaker 1: is that we focus a lot on the conclusions that
Speaker 1: people bring forth, the reasons they put forth as justifications
Speaker 1: and explanations for how they what they think and feel.
Speaker 1: But the motivations often get lost in that, and our
Speaker 1: conversations will kind of stay in that conclusion space where
Speaker 1: nothing fruitful will take place because no one's helping each
Speaker 1: other go backwards through that chain to well, why did
Speaker 1: I choose those facts as the ones that justify my fields?
Speaker 1: And that's that's sort of the entry point into the
Speaker 1: whole topic. Cool, So that's funny. You start off talking
Speaker 1: about what happens in the brain, and you did go
Speaker 1: to the psychological level. And we can keep going because
Speaker 1: because brains are erect with brains, and then we have
Speaker 1: social structures. Yes, but in my view, people overstate the
Speaker 1: excitement of a neuroscientific finding when it's just like a thermometer.
Speaker 1: It's just a pattern of brain activation and reflection of
Speaker 1: the psychology. So the psychology is the meat in my God,
Speaker 1: that's great. This is what you've already done to me.
Speaker 1: This pin is about to write that. Note, this is
Speaker 1: just my view. The trauma, loss, and uncertainty of our
Speaker 1: world have led many of us to ask life's biggest questions,
Speaker 1: such as who are we? What is our highest purpose?
Speaker 1: And how do we not only live through but thrive
Speaker 1: in the wake of tragedy, division, and challenges to a
Speaker 1: fundamental way of living. To help us all address these questions,
Speaker 1: process what this unique time in human history has meant
Speaker 1: for us personally and collectively an emerge hole. I've collaborated
Speaker 1: with my colleague and dear friends, doctor Jordan Feinnggeld, MD
Speaker 1: to bring you our forthcoming book. It's called Choose Growth,
Speaker 1: a workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self doubt. It's
Speaker 1: a workbook design to guide you in a journey of
Speaker 1: committing to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day.
Speaker 1: It's chock full of research from humanistic psychology, positive psychology,
Speaker 1: developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology. So lots
Speaker 1: of themes that you hear about on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's aimed to help us all integrate the many facets
Speaker 1: of ourselves and co crete our new normal with a
Speaker 1: renewed sense of strength, vitality, and hope. Whether you're healing
Speaker 1: from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking
Speaker 1: ahead to life's next chapter, Choose Growth will help steer
Speaker 1: you there too deeper connection to your values, your life vision,
Speaker 1: and ultimately your most authentic self. Choose Growth will officially
Speaker 1: hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can order your
Speaker 1: copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, and all major retailers. If
Speaker 1: you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you can go to
Speaker 1: her now at bookshop dot org dot UK. We truly
Speaker 1: hope this book helps you grow and thrive and become
Speaker 1: your best self. Okay, now back to the show. So
Speaker 1: I want you to explain to me what you found
Speaker 1: in your research and in the book as happens in
Speaker 1: our brain when our minds change, because maybe you're going
Speaker 1: to change my mind about this sure by explaining to
Speaker 1: me the neuroscience of it here an open mind. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you see the meta sort of thing happening here?
Speaker 1: I mean I will be I'm more in your camp.
Speaker 1: I mean, like most of the books, I'll move out
Speaker 1: of neuroscience very quickly. In the staying in psychological space,
Speaker 1: the neuroscience chapter focuses mostly on the dress is a
Speaker 1: way to get us through that part I want. I
Speaker 1: wanted this book to stay on the ground and be
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations when real human beings be in
Speaker 1: real situations, visiting cults and people that left cults, visiting
Speaker 1: activist groups, visiting scientists, and so my interest I think
Speaker 1: when it comes to if I discuss the neuroscience side
Speaker 1: of things, is the inevitability of the neuroscience of it.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have It's like I have toes
Speaker 1: and feet, and I can't get away from the biology
Speaker 1: of my entity. And that's also true of the substrate
Speaker 1: that is generating mind or that mind is manifested amongst
Speaker 1: or whatever. So the inevitability of it that I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about because of the processes that lead to
Speaker 1: these psychological phenomena is there's very little opportunity to introspect,
Speaker 1: if any to witness the process. It's the outcomes of
Speaker 1: the process or sort of that space we live with it.
Speaker 1: The way I got into it was through the work
Speaker 1: of Pascal Walash and Michael Karlovich at NYU. They were
Speaker 1: deeply fascinated with the dress and they wanted to know
Speaker 1: why everybody disagreed on the dress and how come they
Speaker 1: couldn't change each other's minds about the dress, and which
Speaker 1: seems like a strange topic, but the arguments that people
Speaker 1: were having about the dress were intense and very similar
Speaker 1: to how the people argue about wedge issues in the
Speaker 1: sense that when you see the dress one way, if
Speaker 1: people aren't familiar. There's a image that went around the
Speaker 1: internet in twenty fifteen. I think almost every human being
Speaker 1: seen it. Some people see this black and blues, and
Speaker 1: people see this white and gold. But whatever you see,
Speaker 1: that's how you see it. And you can't just like go, okay,
Speaker 1: now let me see it the other way. It's just
Speaker 1: your brain resolves the ambiguity of that image is in
Speaker 1: one way, and other brains resolve it in another way.
Speaker 1: And if you never meet somebody who sees it differently
Speaker 1: than you might not never know that it could be
Speaker 1: seen differently. And when you do meet someone like that,
Speaker 1: there can be like the sad existential thing that takes
Speaker 1: place where like like how can that be? How can
Speaker 1: people see something that two see different colors? And then
Speaker 1: some people take another step further, which is like your
Speaker 1: bonkers and I see it like there's something wrong with you,
Speaker 1: but or ways second, maybe there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 1: That's why I loved all that as a way to
Speaker 1: get into sort of the nature of what is the
Speaker 1: lowest level of disagreement are the most reductionist level. What
Speaker 1: they discovered was that the reason people see that differently.
Speaker 1: It was great because they had backgrounds in like vision
Speaker 1: research and sleep research, that the image was very ambiguous
Speaker 1: in the same way that a lot of those color
Speaker 1: illusions are, like the strawberries illusion and the checker shadow illusion.
Speaker 1: Most of those have are tied to color constancy in
Speaker 1: some way or another, where the luminance of the image
Speaker 1: is either there's their cues in the image that encourage
Speaker 1: you to assume a certain luminance, or the image is
Speaker 1: very ambiguous and there's a urge to resolve what the
Speaker 1: luminants must have been. And on your Behalf, this is
Speaker 1: why I talk about it in the book On Your Behalf,
Speaker 1: the brain's like, okay, but this thing is over is overexposed,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for it's hard to see things that's overexposed.
Speaker 1: I mean, anthem were warrifizing all of those because that's
Speaker 1: how I have make sense with things. The brain is like,
Speaker 1: we know a pretty good bit about how we tend
Speaker 1: to do this. And there's a lot of speculation as
Speaker 1: to why. Maybe it's was to see blood and low
Speaker 1: light conditions or identify fruit, or there's all these evolutionaries,
Speaker 1: equity speculative ideas, but we do what does seem to
Speaker 1: happen has been something's over exposed or under exposed. We will,
Speaker 1: at the level of subjective experience, take the perception that
Speaker 1: whatever's all that chain that went from electromagnetic waves to
Speaker 1: eyeballs to retinas to brain. At the level of subjectively
Speaker 1: experiencing it, the lumints will be turned up or turned down.
Speaker 1: It would be subtracted, some rooms will be subtracted or
Speaker 1: added to to try to tell us what it ought
Speaker 1: to look like, which I like to think of that
Speaker 1: as a lie your brain tells you in order for
Speaker 1: you to understand the truth that it assumes must be there.
Speaker 1: But it has to be based off something that there
Speaker 1: is a set of prior experiences you've had with overexposure
Speaker 1: and under exposure that dials in that so that in
Speaker 1: those moments of ambiguity, you can resolve it like something beforehand,
Speaker 1: and it uses all these cues in the image to
Speaker 1: do so. In this or in real life it would
Speaker 1: do so. So in this case, it was the you're
Speaker 1: determined by getting a lot of participants. I think it
Speaker 1: was thirteen thousand participants that the more exposure that a
Speaker 1: person had had over the course of their life to
Speaker 1: things being overexposed in sunlight, the more they would subtract
Speaker 1: the luminance as if it was overexposed in sunlight. So
Speaker 1: this image was overexposed, but it was ambiguous, and they
Speaker 1: disinbiguated it by saying, I think it's over supposed in sunlight,
Speaker 1: there's more blue in that spectrum. Subtract the blue, you
Speaker 1: get white and gold. If you spend more time in
Speaker 1: artificial light or incandescent light, it's more in the yellow
Speaker 1: spectrum over exposed and yellow. Subtract the yellow you get black.
Speaker 1: So what I love about that is your life experiences
Speaker 1: have led to these priors. You're in an ambiguous moment,
Speaker 1: and then you disinbiguate the ambiguous and it resolves as
Speaker 1: a subjective experience. But all you get is the last
Speaker 1: part of that processing chain, and the ambiguity never registers.
Speaker 1: The fact that you disinbguated never registers. It just seems
Speaker 1: like they're raw, true to reality. And yet this upctual
Speaker 1: prejudices of what led you to that particular interpretation of
Speaker 1: the evidence in front of you, and another person who's
Speaker 1: from has a different life experiences will do it differently
Speaker 1: than you, and they have this model called surfpad substantial
Speaker 1: uncertainty and the presence of ramified or fort pryor assumptions
Speaker 1: lead to disagreement. They love cheeky acronyms. There, it's basically
Speaker 1: a line, and above that are all your experiences leading
Speaker 1: up to that, all your nature nurture. Underneath it is
Speaker 1: an ambiguous experience. Two different people with two different life
Speaker 1: experiences disambiguate it differently, and they disagree on the conclusions
Speaker 1: they reached. And I use that as a starting point
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this is a lot of neuroscience to
Speaker 1: help you get to the point of saying, like, because
Speaker 1: we are because the brain is trapped in the skull,
Speaker 1: and subjective reality is this virtual, illusory landscape of perceptions.
Speaker 1: Everything is interpretation in this way to a degree, and
Speaker 1: then we build on that with layers and layers of
Speaker 1: abstraction and we build up minds. That's where you get
Speaker 1: in psychological space, and disagreement has a really, really reductive
Speaker 1: root in that spot. But we have, thanks to the
Speaker 1: fact that we're social animals, there are ways that we
Speaker 1: have negotiated to take advantage of that. Whereas if we're
Speaker 1: in a group. This is where I get this. We're
Speaker 1: in the book I get into the Hugo Mercy and
Speaker 1: Dans Berber stuff about the interactionist model and Tom Stafford's
Speaker 1: stuff about the truth win scenario, where Mercy Ansperber argue
Speaker 1: that the in their model that we have two systems,
Speaker 1: one for producing propositions and arguments and one for evaluating them.
Speaker 1: And the production one is very individual like from an
Speaker 1: individual perspective, we produce a bias and lazy arguments, and
Speaker 1: then in groups we offload all the cognitive labor to
Speaker 1: the group evaluation of all that, and the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of that is to are The function of it is
Speaker 1: for setting communal goals, plans of action, to disinbiguate as
Speaker 1: a group. And we need to interpret something that all
Speaker 1: of us are finding mysterious and strange. And in a way,
Speaker 1: it's like I think of it like the muscles of
Speaker 1: your arm. Weren't the selective pressures weren't such as to
Speaker 1: create a appendage for painting paintings. But we can do
Speaker 1: that with it. And these argumentative psychological mechanisms are more
Speaker 1: for like group goals and planning, but they can be
Speaker 1: employed for things like logic and philosophy and science and
Speaker 1: so on. But at it's really, it's like, it's great
Speaker 1: at deliberating, it's great at arguing in a way where
Speaker 1: we compare our perspectives and try to determine what the
Speaker 1: truth is. And the dress comes back around in that
Speaker 1: because I imagine if you had two people trying to
Speaker 1: argue that Okay, the way I see it is the
Speaker 1: way to see it. I'm right and you're wrong, nothing
Speaker 1: truthful really comes out of that. But if you had
Speaker 1: two people approach that same situation and say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: go shoulder to shoulder on this and try to understand
Speaker 1: why do you think we disagree? Why would we see
Speaker 1: it differently, that's the only investigation that will lead to
Speaker 1: that amazing deeper truth of oh, this has to do
Speaker 1: with sunlight and priors and stuff. So the debate frame
Speaker 1: people should be frustrated with that because oftentimes that is
Speaker 1: not a fruitful way to make sense of the world.
Speaker 1: Whereas the let's compare our perspectives and try to determine
Speaker 1: why we disagree, it turns out as an incredibly fruitful
Speaker 1: way to make sense of things. And it's also the
Speaker 1: way the persuasion that the kind of persuasion I talked
Speaker 1: about the book that actually works. That's almost always what
Speaker 1: it's built on top of. It just seems like it's
Speaker 1: so hard to convince people of facts that yeah, contradict
Speaker 1: their ideology. Well yeah, that makes sense though, right, Like,
Speaker 1: here's if I can keep going on a long rance
Speaker 1: with you, I can fall back on motivated reasoning for this, Scott. Look,
Speaker 1: when you fall in love with somebody, all their little nuances,
Speaker 1: the way they talk, the way they curl their lip,
Speaker 1: the way they comb their hair, the way they walk,
Speaker 1: the way they cut their food, the songs they like,
Speaker 1: the dumb joe they tell. Those are reasons why you
Speaker 1: like them. When you're in that first stage, that honeymoon,
Speaker 1: motivated by all these drives and all these emotions. If
Speaker 1: something happens with the course of that relationship falls apart
Speaker 1: and you're starting to break up, the reasons why you
Speaker 1: want to break up with that person are the way
Speaker 1: they talk, the way they walk, the way they cut
Speaker 1: their food, that stupid song they like, the dumb jokes
Speaker 1: they have the evidence, the facts of the matter remain
Speaker 1: the same, They remain as neutral as they ever were,
Speaker 1: But you're using them as reasons and justifications for one thing.
Speaker 1: In one situation, there reasons and justifications for another and
Speaker 1: another because the motivation changed, the emotion changed, the attitude changed.
Speaker 1: And this is also how we approach evidence in these
Speaker 1: political debates, where you start with some motivation. You may
Speaker 1: not even be aware of, some attitude, you may have
Speaker 1: never articulated. They may not be salient to you in
Speaker 1: all the evidence in the world you go, are you
Speaker 1: picking it and saying, that's a good justification for owl field.
Speaker 1: That's a good justification for owl field, that's a good justification.
Speaker 1: And the other person on the other side of the
Speaker 1: issue has been doing the exact same thing while you
Speaker 1: were doing that. And when you meet, if you meet
Speaker 1: saying the reason I feel this way is because of
Speaker 1: and then you produce one of these justifications, that's not
Speaker 1: the reason you felt that way. That's some justification you
Speaker 1: felt you found along the way. And we have these
Speaker 1: intractable debates because we stay in that space where we
Speaker 1: throw all our facts into a little arena and let
Speaker 1: them fight each other, as if that's why we ever
Speaker 1: thought that in the first place. But we're not having
Speaker 1: a debate or even a meeting of minds over the
Speaker 1: motivations that led us to these things. These attitudes that
Speaker 1: came from somewhere, and that's why we argue so much,
Speaker 1: is because the platforms in which we argue, like Twitter,
Speaker 1: they don't facilitate that kind of discussion. Not really. Well no, no,
Speaker 1: they're the opposite. That's really insightful. Do you really think
Speaker 1: we're living in a post truth world right now? I don't.
Speaker 1: I think we're living in a post trust world. That's
Speaker 1: what I say in the book. I think that that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good. There's a great researcher, Kate Starbird, who studies
Speaker 1: what people do during crisis. Is a crises like whether
Speaker 1: it's like a tornado or a hurricane, or a building
Speaker 1: on a fire or something like that. We seem to
Speaker 1: switch over into this like there's so much information coming
Speaker 1: at us and it's it's difficult to termine what to
Speaker 1: go with. But also the anxiety is very high, so
Speaker 1: there's a compulsion to be like, well, we do need
Speaker 1: to make a decision when you need to go with
Speaker 1: something and rumors are everywhere, are just to nonstoff. I
Speaker 1: can I remember I lived through Katrina, I lived through
Speaker 1: a tornado. I remember that the aftermath where like you know,
Speaker 1: you hear all these rumors about what's this is when
Speaker 1: the power is coming on, or this is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen next, this is when the firefighters will be here.
Speaker 1: And if your neighbor across the street is like, hey, here,
Speaker 1: the power is coming back home Tuesday, you're like, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not, maybe maybe not. I mean, I know, I
Speaker 1: know that dute. He's a pretty cool guy. Yeah. Then
Speaker 1: if like a police officer comes through, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: just let me let you know power is going to
Speaker 1: be back on Tuesday. I hope you all doing okay.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh okay, Like and we're modulating all of
Speaker 1: this at all times or just tie trading our like
Speaker 1: our skepticism. And I feel like she makes the argument that,
Speaker 1: like whether or not we we should be in a
Speaker 1: state of high anxiety, we certainly are thanks to sort
Speaker 1: of the information ecosystem getting really chaotic and new with
Speaker 1: all the new tools we have, and then the also
Speaker 1: it's very chaotic, it's nothing but information coming at you
Speaker 1: at all times. That we've sort of gotten acclimated to
Speaker 1: that rumor space where we need to modulate and tie
Speaker 1: trade by trust because and then at the same time,
Speaker 1: all that stuff got fragmented and disrupted, Like there's not
Speaker 1: just three news channels or two newspapers with all the
Speaker 1: with all the Pulitzer prizes, Like I can click right
Speaker 1: off of New York Times onto a flaming Eagle, you know,
Speaker 1: plato factory dot com, which also has some news stories
Speaker 1: on it. Like it's a it's tough, right, So how
Speaker 1: do you modulate all that? It's it's I feel like,
Speaker 1: in a very Marsha McClue in a way that we'll
Speaker 1: sort it all out. But we're in that middle phase
Speaker 1: between the old and in the next where we're modulating
Speaker 1: by trust. And I mean facts still work in places
Speaker 1: where people trade in the currency of facts, like medicine,
Speaker 1: you know, medicine science were like where they're playing that
Speaker 1: game of lots of evidence, hypothesis, hypothesis, testing the chips
Speaker 1: for all what they may. I vet you, you vet me.
Speaker 1: But in the wider scale of things, it's really I
Speaker 1: feel like it's really being modulated by trust. And since
Speaker 1: we can group up so easily on the Internet, like
Speaker 1: we can find a group of people who have the
Speaker 1: exact same anxieties we have, are the same prejudices we have,
Speaker 1: And then now we can like leave everybody and go
Speaker 1: hang out by ourselves, and then that becomes the group
Speaker 1: I trust, or that becomes in the information sources that
Speaker 1: everybody says are the good ones, that's the ones we trust.
Speaker 1: It feels like post truth, but I feel like it's
Speaker 1: more a case of like, I'm not sure who to trust,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to kind of edge my bets and
Speaker 1: that creates a strange world to pass ideas back and forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the group we should trust the least is our in group.
Speaker 1: That's true. I don't know if that's true, but I
Speaker 1: saw group. I guess yes. I saw a study recently
Speaker 1: showing that especially when a group reaches a group a
Speaker 1: point of collective narcissism, they're more likely to betray each
Speaker 1: other within Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I tweet. I tweeted that one.
Speaker 1: I tweet out some chestnuts, my friend keep up as
Speaker 1: much as I can. So much of this just seems
Speaker 1: to come down to this deeply tribal chip in our brain. Right,
Speaker 1: how do we change our minds in large groups? And
Speaker 1: can that kind of change be catalyzed. I'll take that
Speaker 1: in two different directions and an attempt to do it simultaneously.
Speaker 1: The whole tribal thing, and I understand that. I understand
Speaker 1: a lot of there's there, it's out there to not
Speaker 1: use tribal anymore. And I get that. So we can
Speaker 1: just say in group, out group if we have to.
Speaker 1: But the the thing we're talking about that in group
Speaker 1: affinity outgroup, you know, fear and skepticism, even hate, I hate.
Speaker 1: Like in the book, I talk all about taj Fell
Speaker 1: and his research into how how quickly we willformed groups
Speaker 1: over literally any identifier, the old minimal group paradigm where
Speaker 1: he was like hoping he'd he it would take forever
Speaker 1: to find it, and it was like he found it,
Speaker 1: like first try with the page of dots, it was
Speaker 1: like how many dots do you see? And then he
Speaker 1: took it away real fast and said he randomly assorted
Speaker 1: people the overestimators are under estimators. And then once they
Speaker 1: were in, once they'd been told they were in one
Speaker 1: of the other, everything that came after that was about
Speaker 1: us versus them. If the outcome of the next experiment
Speaker 1: that he did would benefit the in group, that's what
Speaker 1: they went with. If it would hurt the outgroup, that's
Speaker 1: what they went with. Even though they had just been
Speaker 1: labeled this and it wasn't even real. And particularly Leah
Speaker 1: Mason talked to me about all this, it was like
Speaker 1: they give them a chance to like was it. They
Speaker 1: weren't gonna get any money, but they were allotting money
Speaker 1: to another task that other people had done, and they
Speaker 1: told them there was over estimators, and their estimators they
Speaker 1: would choose the thing that would give less money to
Speaker 1: their in group if it gave even less money to
Speaker 1: the outgroup. Like that's we will choose the worst outcome
Speaker 1: if we think it'll hurt the outgroup more. And that's
Speaker 1: at such a minimal level. And that's been replicated so
Speaker 1: much with from like showing people different paintings and telling
Speaker 1: them what kind of fan they are just put giving
Speaker 1: people hats and armbands. It seems like it's very very foundational,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming it's gonna have It has to be
Speaker 1: something to do with our ultrasocial primate nature, the s
Speaker 1: versus them framing. Once it's there, it becomes a high
Speaker 1: motivator for everything else that comes after. Yet we still
Speaker 1: do change our minds in very large We weighs them
Speaker 1: very rapidly, and I couldn't make it's just this is
Speaker 1: the thing that took the longest for me to wrap
Speaker 1: my head around. I had to go into network science
Speaker 1: for this and talk to people like Duncan Watts. That's great,
Speaker 1: great Douga Wats was immensely helpful of all of this.
Speaker 1: And Greg Stel, if I'm saying his name correctly, has
Speaker 1: a great book about this called Cascades. Yes. The short
Speaker 1: version of this is to make sense of it, is, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you've ever tried to get into a college classroom
Speaker 1: or a restaurant or something's imagine it's a classroom and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's like a lot of people
Speaker 1: waiting to get in, and so you just go, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll stay. Something's going on, and then let's
Speaker 1: go by, and it's good bye. And then the door
Speaker 1: opens up and the professor is like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: And there's nobody in there, and everybody goes. They all
Speaker 1: rushian like this is an example of cascades affecting human behavior.
Speaker 1: So the first person that shows up, they're basing what
Speaker 1: they're going to do on an internal signal, as they
Speaker 1: put it, maybe in the past, to speak back to
Speaker 1: like priors and experiences and assimilation of accommodation. Like maybe
Speaker 1: in the past they did walk into a classroom once
Speaker 1: and there was like a whole class and they turned
Speaker 1: around and they were like, eh, and they got weirded
Speaker 1: out by it. So they have that inside them, or
Speaker 1: maybe they're just nurture has they're an anxious person in
Speaker 1: this regard. They don't even try it out. Maybe it's both,
Speaker 1: but whatever it is, they have an internal signal. They
Speaker 1: show up, the doors closed, they don't want to try
Speaker 1: it out, so they take out their phone and start
Speaker 1: playing with it. Well, the second person that shows up,
Speaker 1: they now have one external signal and one internal signal,
Speaker 1: and since we are social primates, that external signal is
Speaker 1: pretty strong and if they unless they are a super
Speaker 1: rebellious type person, they will go, well, there's somebody waiting
Speaker 1: that's got to have a reason to wait, and they
Speaker 1: play it on their phone. This is sometimes it's referred
Speaker 1: to as thresholds of conformity, sort of like that old
Speaker 1: Solomon ash stuff. So this person, you know, their threshold
Speaker 1: conformity wasn't such that they were willing to buck anything,
Speaker 1: so they just went along with it. But now once
Speaker 1: there's two people waiting. It's really you'd have to be
Speaker 1: a real rabble rouser to a real punk to be like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to walk past these people open the door,
Speaker 1: or maybe you can have to be very charismatic and say, hey,
Speaker 1: are you guys waiting? Is there anybody in there? But
Speaker 1: if you're not that person, you become person and three
Speaker 1: you start to see what's unfolding. Each person who joins
Speaker 1: the cascade makes the cascade stronger for the next person
Speaker 1: who joins, and you end up with a self perpetuating
Speaker 1: cascade that once there's three people waiting, for four people waiting,
Speaker 1: it's almost inevitable at the entire class now it was
Speaker 1: going to wait. That's a one type of cascade. The
Speaker 1: other type of cascade is sort of that's that's a
Speaker 1: cascade to not do something. There's also a cascade to
Speaker 1: do something, which would be like when a party empties
Speaker 1: and you don't know why, like especially if you're the
Speaker 1: host and you're like everybody just kind of leaves all
Speaker 1: at once, like, but it's a similar it's the same
Speaker 1: sort of phenomenon where like there's one person, you can
Speaker 1: think of them as an early adopter. If you want
Speaker 1: to go into like diffusion science, like those early adopters
Speaker 1: like I, you know what I I know, I'm ready
Speaker 1: to go. I'm out of here, and the next person
Speaker 1: to go may They were just waiting for somebody to go,
Speaker 1: and then once that one person goes, they go. Now
Speaker 1: two people left, and there's somebody who like they were
Speaker 1: okay with being there, but you know, two people are
Speaker 1: gone and they are a little tired, so this is
Speaker 1: their chance to get out. Now three people are going.
Speaker 1: There's there are people who each each person who adds
Speaker 1: to the cascade makes the cascade stronger for the next person,
Speaker 1: till people who didn't have any intentionally feel weird for
Speaker 1: not leaving, and then everybody's gone. So it looks when
Speaker 1: you get into network science, and the way I visualize
Speaker 1: it is like one of those molecule models in chemistry
Speaker 1: where the little balls connected with sticks, the balls that
Speaker 1: are human beings and the sticks of their relationships, and
Speaker 1: it's usually reduced to being strong versus week I'll help
Speaker 1: you move, versus you know, I'll give you a kidney,
Speaker 1: a kind of things. We all have these clusters of
Speaker 1: strong connections and then each one of us within that
Speaker 1: cluster is connected to other groups, usually weekly, sometimes strongly.
Speaker 1: And the way Duncan Watts made this make sense to
Speaker 1: me was he said that the tipping point model is
Speaker 1: way off. That's not how this goes because in that model,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to you're pursuing virality. And virality is
Speaker 1: fine for like passing around news or where all it
Speaker 1: takes is one contact with another person for the idea
Speaker 1: to get transferred, but it's not great a great model
Speaker 1: for changing minds or because there's risk involved in that.
Speaker 1: There's risk and reward, and there's these thresholds conformity, thresholds
Speaker 1: of conformity. Yeah, so like some people, some people are
Speaker 1: early adopters, they'll just do it because one other person
Speaker 1: is doing it. Some people, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people are in the middle that I need a lot
Speaker 1: more people in my life to do that before I'll
Speaker 1: do that. And some people are holdouts like I ain't
Speaker 1: never get in a cell phone, you know, they still
Speaker 1: have a fax machine or something like that. And the
Speaker 1: you take something like quitting smoking or even like obesity
Speaker 1: like the Farmingham study, the Great Christacus research he talked,
Speaker 1: he talks about in his book about you can just
Speaker 1: watch these things move through networks, and it's incredible how
Speaker 1: just having somebody in your net work gain weight will
Speaker 1: make everybody close to that person gain a little weight,
Speaker 1: and then that's the ripples through the notework. So these
Speaker 1: specials conforming, you're part of that. Here's how Duncan Wats
Speaker 1: made it make sense to me. He said, it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with somebody being super connected, or somebody
Speaker 1: being very charismatic, or being like just a connector or
Speaker 1: a maven or all those things. It's the susceptibility of
Speaker 1: the network itself to the particular change. And he said,
Speaker 1: imagine you're in a car and there's somebody in a car.
Speaker 1: They drive down a forest path. They drive down a
Speaker 1: road in a forest every day on the way to
Speaker 1: work at the same point. Every day, they take their
Speaker 1: cigarette and they flick it out the window, and they've
Speaker 1: been doing that for ten years, and every day it
Speaker 1: bounces lands in the brush, nothing happens, and then one
Speaker 1: day they do that, flick it lands and it causes
Speaker 1: the wildfire that burns down six counties. So their behavior
Speaker 1: and that individual and what they were doing didn't change,
Speaker 1: but the network in which they were striking as they
Speaker 1: put it in that parlance. Something happened there. Maybe there
Speaker 1: was a firefighter strike, or there was a long drought,
Speaker 1: or a tree, and that one particular spot fell over
Speaker 1: in just the right way to create just the right conditions.
Speaker 1: The fire hit it. When it caught fire, it dried
Speaker 1: out the stuff around it, it made it, and then
Speaker 1: the cascade formed. So he said, if you think of
Speaker 1: human networks in that way, all those little balls and
Speaker 1: sticks as they undulate and move and people meet and
Speaker 1: unmeet and join groups and lead groups and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: If enough early adopters catch on to switch on to
Speaker 1: something and they have neighbors who are similar and threshold
Speaker 1: level to them, and they flip over, then they become
Speaker 1: as a unit very influential to people who are a
Speaker 1: little more hesitant, And then they a little bit more
Speaker 1: hesitant will flip and now you have an even larger cascade,
Speaker 1: and so on and so on and so so. All
Speaker 1: this stuff related to like individuals when it comes to
Speaker 1: trying to persuade it one person to think in a
Speaker 1: different way. Any flip that takes place in that regard
Speaker 1: has the potential to flip their neighbors, just by the
Speaker 1: sake that person flipped, and that can lead to a situation.
Speaker 1: They call it a percolating vulnerable cluster. A group of
Speaker 1: people whose conditions are exist right everyone's thresholds or at
Speaker 1: just the right spot. They're connected in just the right strengths,
Speaker 1: and they have connections out of their group into other groups.
Speaker 1: It's just the right level that if the change takes
Speaker 1: place in that percolating vulnerable cluster, it'll be like the
Speaker 1: cigarette that lands in that one spot. And what since
Speaker 1: that percolating vulnerable cluster is always popping in and out
Speaker 1: of existence like it's like fireflies blinking in the network,
Speaker 1: because it can be percolating for a little while that
Speaker 1: it's not because people shift so quickly, our relationships move
Speaker 1: so quickly. For a big change to take root and
Speaker 1: a large group of people, you need people who are
Speaker 1: committed to that change, constantly striking at the network. And
Speaker 1: it's some and if they may have to live their
Speaker 1: entire lives striking at it and failing, and then they
Speaker 1: pass down the effort to the next group of people
Speaker 1: did the same thing, and they put their effort in,
Speaker 1: how can I get as many people as possible to
Speaker 1: be striking at the network in as many different places.
Speaker 1: That persistence often leads to that lucky strike that will
Speaker 1: lead to a massive cascade of change, And that seems
Speaker 1: to be true. Things like Stonewall were happening every week
Speaker 1: in the United States for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: and eventually happened in a place where the cascades set off.
Speaker 1: Things like massive moments in civil rights movement. Things were
Speaker 1: happening constantly, but the fact they were happening constantly and
Speaker 1: spreading to the activism was spreading made it much more
Speaker 1: likely for the cascade to take root. And you end
Speaker 1: up with something that looks a lot like and I'll
Speaker 1: stop with that with this. Is it something like puncuity
Speaker 1: equlibrium is what it looks like. I think there's something
Speaker 1: in social science called a critical juncture theory that's very similar,
Speaker 1: but it looks to me more like puncuaity calibrium. Biology
Speaker 1: where long periods of stasis where you think the status
Speaker 1: quo is forever, and then rapid moments of change, and
Speaker 1: then in stasis and then rapid moments of change, and
Speaker 1: if you're in the status quo period, it seems like,
Speaker 1: well this is forever. People in the change their minds,
Speaker 1: And if you happen to live through one of these
Speaker 1: rapid moments, you'll have that like you'll be blessed with
Speaker 1: the knowledge that, oh, no, change can happen very rapidly,
Speaker 1: so fast that it's shocking. And we've seen that all
Speaker 1: throughout humanistry. Oh yeah, we've seen in the cultural chefs
Speaker 1: in just the past couple of years. How does this
Speaker 1: nerdy information that you're presenting to me right now apply?
Speaker 1: How does it apply? It's it's how do I'm curious
Speaker 1: how it applies to cults and conspiratorial ideas. I know
Speaker 1: that you've really you've looked into both. I think the
Speaker 1: left wing is a cult and I think the right
Speaker 1: right wing is conspiratorial. Happens, man, I might edit that out.
Speaker 1: Don't edit that out. That's good. That's it. You pissed
Speaker 1: off both sides simultaneously. Yeah, that's how I would characterize
Speaker 1: both sides. It's a good characterization in that I think
Speaker 1: this is my own personal opinion. This is the same phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, it manifests differently and depending on
Speaker 1: like what's up. Like we're social primates and we group up,
Speaker 1: and one of my metaphors I'm a very storytelling metaphor
Speaker 1: Darmak and Jalade kind of guy. If you get the
Speaker 1: Darmak and Jalade reference, I will send you some delicious
Speaker 1: liquorice in the mail. That's that's a star Trek. That
Speaker 1: extra raised episode where the translators don't work. But even
Speaker 1: though we under they understood the aliens perfectly with English,
Speaker 1: they've spoken metaphor only, and so you had to understand
Speaker 1: their culture to get what they were saying. And they're
Speaker 1: like Darmak and Jelade tanagra and they're like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: like Tigo with his arms wide, like I don't. I
Speaker 1: understand the words, but not the reference. It was a
Speaker 1: great episode that like predicted meme culture because like if
Speaker 1: you just if you just duck out of meme culture
Speaker 1: for two days and come back, you have no idea
Speaker 1: what people are telling you. I remember somebody saying a
Speaker 1: wordle is the uh sour dough starter of the of
Speaker 1: the Omicron, And I was thinking, like, man, people one
Speaker 1: year before this and one year after this may not
Speaker 1: understand what the hell that means. Sounds so darmic in July.
Speaker 1: So here's one of those let's say you're in a
Speaker 1: tent in the woods and you hear a strange sound,
Speaker 1: and your compulsion is you have this negative affect, these
Speaker 1: bad feelings, and your compulsion is, I want to go
Speaker 1: get gathered some more information to confirm whether or not
Speaker 1: my anxiety is justified? Is reasonable? Well, just in that
Speaker 1: word justification and reasonable to whom to you are, It's
Speaker 1: more like you're doing it for an imaginary audience member.
Speaker 1: Because we're such social primemates, we often don't engage in
Speaker 1: behavior unless it feels like it's the most justifiable action,
Speaker 1: because it's almost like we're predicting we're going to have
Speaker 1: to defend ourselves later in front of some sort of
Speaker 1: trial of our peers. And also, if it's something that's dangerous,
Speaker 1: we want to we want to bring other people into
Speaker 1: the fold because it may be dangerous to all of us.
Speaker 1: So your first compulsion is like, let me go see
Speaker 1: if that's what that sound was, so I can either
Speaker 1: confirm or disconfirm my anxieties or justify well. It was
Speaker 1: harder to do this in the past. You had to
Speaker 1: have likearismatic, glad, handsy people moving through town to get
Speaker 1: you on board. Coming through town with a van with
Speaker 1: messages wrapped around bananas. That's literally how the Moonies used
Speaker 1: to get people. They would go to areas of town
Speaker 1: where they figure people had just moved there, like they
Speaker 1: had people that were like on their level. They'd offer
Speaker 1: bananas out of a van with a religious track wrapper
Speaker 1: around it and say, hey, come join us with this meeting.
Speaker 1: They do that here in Santa Monica. Wow. So say
Speaker 1: like the when you have an anxiety or a fear,
Speaker 1: or maybe you have a motivation for you need validation.
Speaker 1: You want that nice group hug feeling. You definitely feel
Speaker 1: a lack of those things when you don't have if
Speaker 1: you feel the lack of getting those things resolved, and
Speaker 1: usually go looking for other people who share the anxiety.
Speaker 1: We'll talk with us about the anxiety. You go looking
Speaker 1: for the validation that you desire. On the Internet. It's
Speaker 1: very easy to do that now. If you have an
Speaker 1: anxiety or a prejudice, you can go looking for other
Speaker 1: people who have that same anxiety or fear. Maybe something
Speaker 1: bad happened in your life. You're just looking for other
Speaker 1: people who are going through that to just see what
Speaker 1: they're saying, to see if you can get some meat
Speaker 1: to work through it. Yeah, there are all these motivational allures.
Speaker 1: Any Sternisco at NYU talk to me about this, and
Speaker 1: so did Joseph Yasinski at the University of Miami. One
Speaker 1: of the main motivational lures for going either into a
Speaker 1: conspiratory community or a cult, or really any organization. You
Speaker 1: don't have a strong self identity and you're trying to
Speaker 1: create it, or you have a certain anxiety or fear
Speaker 1: of prejudice that you are. It's making you feel like
Speaker 1: you might be an untrustworthy member of your community, but
Speaker 1: you want to assure that you are, and you go
Speaker 1: looking for people that can like justify you, and these
Speaker 1: allures get you into the group. You'll find your group
Speaker 1: very easily on the Internet, and the older days you
Speaker 1: would be a little bit more difficult, but there are
Speaker 1: ways to get people to find their groups or to
Speaker 1: get you into a place to meet up with other people.
Speaker 1: If it's a cult, what they will slowly do is
Speaker 1: is snip away all of your other sources of validation,
Speaker 1: all your other sources of group hugginess, and all your
Speaker 1: other ways of addressing your anxieties until they're the only place.
Speaker 1: If it's a conspiratoral community. What usually happens is it's
Speaker 1: the same effect, but as you become more aligned with
Speaker 1: the group and you're spending more time with them, and
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with them more often, you're starting to
Speaker 1: entertain more ideas. It's other people in your life. You
Speaker 1: start to get that sense that they're they're not gonna
Speaker 1: like that, they're gonna shame you for it, So you
Speaker 1: start doing the snipping on your own, and eventually it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what got you into it. You're in it
Speaker 1: because you're in the community now, and those social goals
Speaker 1: that Brick Harrington stuff, that fear of social death becomes
Speaker 1: the new motivation, and all of it goes back to
Speaker 1: groupishness in that way. Like conspiratoral communities, what they believe,
Speaker 1: what they think, what they feel pretty much irrelevant to
Speaker 1: what's keeping them in the group. What's keeping the group
Speaker 1: is the group cults. However they got into it. The
Speaker 1: things that they espouse, they proselytize pretty much relevant for
Speaker 1: while you're staying in the group. In the group, because
Speaker 1: you're in a group, it's the shame, the ostracism, the guilt,
Speaker 1: the fear, the social things that that that it doesn't.
Speaker 1: The onboarding is multifaceted, but the staying in is pretty
Speaker 1: much the same phenomena. The good news is that the
Speaker 1: off boarding, the off ramp is UH. This with the
Speaker 1: caveat this is the hardest thing in the world to
Speaker 1: change somebody's mind about to pull them out of a
Speaker 1: conspiratory community or a cult. The off ramp is is
Speaker 1: the same way they got it, and it's uh. Everyone
Speaker 1: that spoke to people at Westboro aboutist church who left,
Speaker 1: people who are in conspiratory communities who left them, people
Speaker 1: who were like pseudo conspiratoral pseudicults and conspira communities. I
Speaker 1: talked to people in anti vaxxer groups and the Moodies
Speaker 1: and nine eleven Truthers and the flat earthers. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: spent a lot time with other the other people. By
Speaker 1: the way, the flat earthers are the ones the most
Speaker 1: fun to hang out with, but everybody else not as
Speaker 1: much fun. The UH, the people who left those groups,
Speaker 1: they all had pretty much the same story. They either
Speaker 1: entertained being part of another group for a little while
Speaker 1: and we're in both groups at the same time, or
Speaker 1: someone outside of that community offered a hand of them
Speaker 1: and offered them some non judgmental, compassionate listening, and they
Speaker 1: started to get the sense that their values could be
Speaker 1: affirmed in a different place than they were being affirmed
Speaker 1: and if there is anything that they didn't like about
Speaker 1: that group, they were already in and most of the
Speaker 1: time there was a lot of stuff. It started that
Speaker 1: was sort of the crack that led in the light
Speaker 1: of I don't actually have to be here. There are
Speaker 1: other places that would welcome me. And that seems to
Speaker 1: be how you build a pretty stable off ramp to
Speaker 1: get out of a group like that. It doesn't happen
Speaker 1: to one conversation, and it takes a while to build
Speaker 1: that kind of rapport and to give a person a
Speaker 1: social safety net so they can do that kind of escape.
Speaker 1: But that seems to be pretty common. That's good to know.
Speaker 1: I think we're all part of a cult, and we
Speaker 1: don't know we're all social privates. We wanted correcked. We
Speaker 1: want to if you chance to get will store on here.
Speaker 1: I really recommend. He has a new book out called
Speaker 1: The Status Game. It just came out of the United States,
Speaker 1: and that's all it talks about, is this one thing
Speaker 1: plugging away at this deeply human, primal desire to group
Speaker 1: up and what happens once you have and how people
Speaker 1: die on that hill of reputation management so often. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for that recommendation. What is technique rebuttal and what
Speaker 1: are some of the best actionable methods for persuading people
Speaker 1: of something you want to persuade them of? This is
Speaker 1: my favorite thing in the world now. Really, it is like,
Speaker 1: as part of this investigation, I wanted to reach out
Speaker 1: to people who were actually changing minds professionally, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be hang out with people who were
Speaker 1: I felt like we're doing using coercion. I spent some
Speaker 1: time with the culpulation. Yeah, I spent time with culting programmers.
Speaker 1: I took the whole chapter out because I just it
Speaker 1: was just so gross and weird and I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like it added anything to the discussion. It's fascinating. I'll
Speaker 1: put it somewhere. But I spoke with Ted Patrick, the
Speaker 1: person who invented cult programming. He's up in his nineties now,
Speaker 1: and it's all a very pseudo scientist. Brainwashing doesn't have
Speaker 1: any like it's not well regarded as a real thing
Speaker 1: that actually has ever happened. Culting programming is mostly kidnapping
Speaker 1: somebody and saying if you stop going back and meeting
Speaker 1: those people, I'll let you have a sandwich and you
Speaker 1: can go home. Like it's coersion. It's the same coersion
Speaker 1: that they're railing against, and it's bad and it's illegal,
Speaker 1: and it's the whole thing. But I did start finding
Speaker 1: these groups who were doing something else, and I found
Speaker 1: deep canvassing from the LGBT Center of Los Angeles' Leadership Lab.
Speaker 1: I found street epistemology, which is everywhere, but it kind
Speaker 1: of really got started in San Antonio Smart Politics by
Speaker 1: with Karen Tamerius. And one of the things that astonished
Speaker 1: me was all these different groups, they had never met
Speaker 1: each other, most of them didn't have a really good
Speaker 1: understanding of any scientific literature that might be explained what
Speaker 1: they did. But they all came up with methods that
Speaker 1: were pretty much the same. And they did that because
Speaker 1: they did a bunch of a b testing. They especially
Speaker 1: the Leadership Lab, they did seventeen thousand conversations, recorded them
Speaker 1: on video, kept what worked and threw away what didn't,
Speaker 1: and they all landed on something that after I took
Speaker 1: this to experts. They said, this is very close to
Speaker 1: motivational interviewing, the therapeutic concept that is, so that arose
Speaker 1: out of like addiction and alcoholism, like dealing with those problems.
Speaker 1: Then two researchers, Cornelia Bach and her research partner, they
Speaker 1: group these up into one thing called technical rebuttle versus
Speaker 1: topic bubble. Technique rebuttle a topic a buddle is when
Speaker 1: you just trade facts back and forth the way two
Speaker 1: people behind electron in front of an audience would, or
Speaker 1: two academics who were in a good faith environment where
Speaker 1: we're all played by the same rules, would say, well, this,
Speaker 1: here's my evidence, here's this evidence, blah blah blah. We
Speaker 1: had to invent those kinds of situations. When it comes
Speaker 1: to straight up I'm just talking to you, my friend,
Speaker 1: my family member, my person on the internet who's being
Speaker 1: mean to me, the topic a buddle doesn't go so
Speaker 1: well because we're dealing with all that justifications. Though. Technical
Speaker 1: buddle is instead of focusing on conclusions, that's assis saying
Speaker 1: what you leave, instead of debating that, instead of debating
Speaker 1: how you feel about the issue, it's why do you
Speaker 1: believe that? What brought you to that feeling? What's the
Speaker 1: source of all this, what's the processing chain? The value
Speaker 1: you here? And so if you're doing some sort of
Speaker 1: copy paste thing, you open up a space that the
Speaker 1: other person introspect and explore in a way that they
Speaker 1: might not do otherwise. So it usually it goes in steps,
Speaker 1: and the steps are roughly the same. I think they
Speaker 1: shift if you're working on a differences of belief in
Speaker 1: attitude or a value. They all open up with rapport
Speaker 1: in the sense that you're trying to not stimulate reactants
Speaker 1: that push away feeling that a person gets when they
Speaker 1: feel like you're taking away their agency or their freedom
Speaker 1: to behave and the way they want to behave. If
Speaker 1: you suggest anything that along the lines, though, you should
Speaker 1: be ashamed of what you what you think, feel and
Speaker 1: believe reactance and I'm sure you felt this, like when
Speaker 1: somebody on the internet, It's like you should be ashamed
Speaker 1: of saying that, Like I don't necessarily want to engage
Speaker 1: with that person anymore. I just want them to stop.
Speaker 1: I want them to stop talking to me. Block right. Then,
Speaker 1: in the psychological parlance, they say something like you become
Speaker 1: motivationally aroused to reduce the influence of the stimulus object.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love That's a perfect description of
Speaker 1: how I feel. So yeah, And it's just the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like algorithmic, like I reduced the stimulus object's impact,
Speaker 1: and now I no longer run the algorithm. We're good.
Speaker 1: And if they stick around, then I'll run it over
Speaker 1: and over again ntil they go away. If you've ever
Speaker 1: been a teenager or had a teenager, you've felt this.
Speaker 1: Your parents may have really good advice for you. They
Speaker 1: love you and they care about you, and then they
Speaker 1: tell you this advice and you're like, don't tell me
Speaker 1: what to do, and you push away. And then if
Speaker 1: if you push in a way that makes them feel reactants,
Speaker 1: then they'll push it you and then you push back,
Speaker 1: and then they push back, and then you get into
Speaker 1: a feedback deep until you eventually like, I hate you.
Speaker 1: I never want to talk to you again. Yes, Or
Speaker 1: you say something ridiculous like let's agree to disagree, like
Speaker 1: that's you already agree to disagree. That's how this whole
Speaker 1: thing started. Is just you're just saying something to get
Speaker 1: out of talking anymore. To reduce the impact of the
Speaker 1: stimulus object. So you want to start out with that
Speaker 1: to get out of reactans. You have to say be
Speaker 1: very transparent. You have to say that this person's in
Speaker 1: control of the situation. They can leave at anytime, they
Speaker 1: choose to move forward to each step and keep saying that,
Speaker 1: so build that report. Also, it's good to just hang out,
Speaker 1: like you know, you can go watch a movie with
Speaker 1: somebody that's your friend and you can watch it and
Speaker 1: love it, and then when you get out, they hate
Speaker 1: it and you're like, oh my god, you hated it.
Speaker 1: Why did you hate it? I don't feel like I
Speaker 1: want to never talk to you again because you hate
Speaker 1: the movie that I love. We can just talk about it, right.
Speaker 1: That's that's because you've built up a lot of rapport
Speaker 1: and trust with that person. So if you have if
Speaker 1: you have a relationship with another person, your previous conversations
Speaker 1: have reached you have brought you to a spot where
Speaker 1: you are already at conflict. You're going to have to
Speaker 1: do some work to get yourself back into a trust state.
Speaker 1: So you can't even start this persuasion thing until you
Speaker 1: return to that. However, if the person's a stranger, you
Speaker 1: can generate some real good, open early trust by just
Speaker 1: being transparent, and it's telling them, I'm just here, I
Speaker 1: just want to hear what you have to say. I'm
Speaker 1: actually interested in your perspective and if it's different from mine,
Speaker 1: I wanted to down. Why give them person to all
Speaker 1: of that freedom up front? And then you open up
Speaker 1: with something very simple. If it's a fact based claim,
Speaker 1: you ask for the claim. If it's an attitude, you ask, you, know,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about this particular issue, And once
Speaker 1: they state that, ask them to sort of define it
Speaker 1: a little bit better for you so that you know
Speaker 1: that you're talking about the exact same thing. Some people
Speaker 1: like politics. If you say they're politics, your version of
Speaker 1: politics is like a Civics textbook, and there's is lizards
Speaker 1: in a dark room dividing up the country before golf.
Speaker 1: Like you make sure you're on the same page, and
Speaker 1: whatever their definitions are use there, it's not yours, because remember,
Speaker 1: all of this is going to be on their side.
Speaker 1: The point of this is your opening up space for
Speaker 1: them to introspect, and then ask for a numerical measure
Speaker 1: of either attitude or confidence. If it's a fact based claim,
Speaker 1: ask for a measure of confidence. How much do you
Speaker 1: believe to choose er or to attend. If it's an attitude,
Speaker 1: how strongly do you feel about this? And you might
Speaker 1: have to say, like all guns should be illegal, or
Speaker 1: you should get a gun on the mail every week,
Speaker 1: something to kind of get their attitude on a scale.
Speaker 1: And then this is where the magic starts. You ask
Speaker 1: whatever they say. If they say there are seven, ask
Speaker 1: why does that number feel right to you? And that
Speaker 1: lead This is a technique rebuttal in its essence because
Speaker 1: I'm going to now help you introspect and metacognate and
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a step back, and my role
Speaker 1: in this is to hold space, reflect, paraphrase and help
Speaker 1: you do that work because you're going to generate the
Speaker 1: arguments and counter arguments. I'm not going to copy and
Speaker 1: paste any of mine into you. And just that feeling
Speaker 1: right off the bat is like it's it's really fun
Speaker 1: to do. Like if you just I think the last
Speaker 1: movie you watched, like like a top Gun, Maverick, what
Speaker 1: would you give it on a scale under ten? And
Speaker 1: like you say, I give it an eight? Like why
Speaker 1: and eight? I love asking that of people and are
Speaker 1: asking of yourself because they almost always go, well, that ah,
Speaker 1: well thing is so powerful. That's a person engaging in
Speaker 1: a really different kind of thought process than that. Really quick,
Speaker 1: here's how I feel about it, well you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love it. And they start just spooling
Speaker 1: out what comes to mind. And then that's when the
Speaker 1: motivational interviewing tricks come in. Like and I shouldn't use
Speaker 1: the word tricks, but like that's like in that techniques
Speaker 1: techniques in therapeutic practices, the person wants to change, that's
Speaker 1: when they came to the to the therapy, but they're
Speaker 1: ambivalent in some way. They both want to do it
Speaker 1: and not do it. Whatever it is the thing they're
Speaker 1: trying to remove. And so what you do is you
Speaker 1: encourage them to generate self generate counter arguments in the
Speaker 1: direction of change. This is also true for a discussion
Speaker 1: of anything like like you know, flat Earth or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like you if you want them to go in the
Speaker 1: direction in one particular direction, ask them to generate counter
Speaker 1: arguments on the other side. So like if there are
Speaker 1: seven you would say, depending on the issue, you would
Speaker 1: say like one out of six, one out of five,
Speaker 1: and they start generating arguments from why they're not going
Speaker 1: that way, which end up being arguments for going the
Speaker 1: other way, and that as they generate those counter arguments,
Speaker 1: those are the first time they articulate are those things,
Speaker 1: and they become counter arguments that wait them more in
Speaker 1: that other direction, brilliant. And then if you want to
Speaker 1: go deeper, that's really as far as you have to go.
Speaker 1: But if you want to go deeper in something like
Speaker 1: street of pistemology and deep canvassing, they'll often ask things
Speaker 1: like where'd you first hear about this issue? Have you
Speaker 1: ever had any life experiences related to it? They're hoping
Speaker 1: to generate some sort of cognitive dissonance in there, because
Speaker 1: you'll remember things that aren't in line with the number
Speaker 1: that you gave earlier, and you'll further articulate it. Or
Speaker 1: if it's a fact based claim, they'll ask after you
Speaker 1: give all these reasons and justifications, you'll ask what is
Speaker 1: the method by which you're vetting that these are good reasons?
Speaker 1: These are good justifications, And oftentimes a person will feel
Speaker 1: the fragility of their epistemology in that regard, and you
Speaker 1: just repeat this as many times as a person's willing
Speaker 1: to do it, wrap up, wish them well, And I
Speaker 1: have watched so many of these conversations, and it's wild
Speaker 1: to watch someone articulate themselves out of what they think.
Speaker 1: We've probably all experienced that where you're like, did you
Speaker 1: like that play? We just watched it, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I loved it. It's like but and then like, what
Speaker 1: do you like about it? Like, well, it was good,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I didn't really like how this happened.
Speaker 1: And by the end of it say like, well, you
Speaker 1: know what I think about it. I didn't really like
Speaker 1: it that much. Actually, like you could like run some
Speaker 1: sort of YouTube slider in your mind of like I
Speaker 1: loved it, I didn't like it that much. Like that
Speaker 1: elaboration is very powerful if you can encourage that in
Speaker 1: other people, and if you disagree about the issue, you
Speaker 1: can finally get to that point where like, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a different respective without this, And it's astonishing
Speaker 1: to me how I can love you and respect you
Speaker 1: and care about you and we can see this so differently.
Speaker 1: I wonder why that is. And exploring the mystery of
Speaker 1: why we disagree can be done in a way where
Speaker 1: the other person doesn't feel threatened and you don't have
Speaker 1: to compromise your values. That's the ideal isn't it. A
Speaker 1: lot of this, A lot of this is the is ideal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't see much of it anywhere. I don't think
Speaker 1: we see much of it in the context where we're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of our engaging. But I meectually on
Speaker 1: social me. I'm optimistic that we'll sort it this out eventually.
Speaker 1: But I do agree it's difficult to get into this
Speaker 1: unless you're face to face or or something. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: people reading your book will will have their own minds
Speaker 1: changed and will find ways of helping to change other
Speaker 1: people's minds as well. Really really timely book. Like I
Speaker 1: think I said earlier as well, really timely book, important book.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the work you've done longer than me.
Speaker 1: You're on the very few podcasts out there. I say,
Speaker 1: with all due humility that that's longer than the psychology podcast.
Speaker 1: I believe you're one of the real true ogs. I
Speaker 1: view myself as an OG, but I think you're like
Speaker 1: even the grandfather o G. I think, how many years
Speaker 1: eleven years? See, I've done it over seven years, eight years,
Speaker 1: but eleven twelve. I remember when I first entered this space,
Speaker 1: you were a big model for me, and no very
Speaker 1: much so. And Scott, You've been incredibly like super influential
Speaker 1: my thinking, Like I will never forget when you came
Speaker 1: on my show, A and I had like a live
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening moment because our conversation was really injecting me
Speaker 1: from a lot of toxic self talk, I think, And
Speaker 1: that was a great chat. I really I really value
Speaker 1: as a human being. I really appreciate the work you do. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: likewise me, it's a mutual admiration in society. It's nice
Speaker 1: when someone who inspires you to do the work you do.
Speaker 1: You know, because I went there seventy eight years ago.
Speaker 1: Who else was in that space but you and me?
Speaker 1: It was you, And and to be able to hear
Speaker 1: such a thing from you that I may have played
Speaker 1: a role in your own thinking, it really touches me.
Speaker 1: It really does. So my only I have one last
Speaker 1: question is where's your pipe? My pipe? Tell you? Isn'
Speaker 1: there a picture of you? That picture I'll tell you
Speaker 1: very briefly a one minute story. That picture is of
Speaker 1: a musician named Wes Borlaani. I didn't know the backstory
Speaker 1: many years ago when I sorted you were not so smart,
Speaker 1: I knew exactly the image. I wanted, want a smarmy
Speaker 1: person from a certain time period, who's going to look
Speaker 1: at me condescendingly. And that's what I wanted the image
Speaker 1: to be. Remember, And I went to is stock Photo,
Speaker 1: typed in my search and looked and looked and looked,
Speaker 1: and finally found the perfect picture. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I wanted. I took it a
Speaker 1: little photoshopping been my logo ever since. I found out
Speaker 1: later thinks that this person has a band called the
Speaker 1: White Ghost Shivers, that great name. He is out of Austin.
Speaker 1: They is stock Photo went from town to town in
Speaker 1: the early days to build up their stock by killing bands.
Speaker 1: We will give you free band photos if you give
Speaker 1: us all the rights forever to your the pictures we
Speaker 1: take of you. Wow. And that was one of the
Speaker 1: pictures he took and his audience for it hasn't happened
Speaker 1: a long time, But in the beginning I kept getting
Speaker 1: all these messes like why are you stealing Wes's picture?
Speaker 1: Why did you do that? I was like, I bought
Speaker 1: it off I stock Photo. I had no idea. So
Speaker 1: that's how that came about. Oh my god, that is funny,
Speaker 1: is it? Still the picture. Uh cool, and in the
Speaker 1: UK version of the book it's the covers. Oh good,
Speaker 1: good to know. I think I did know that. Actually, yeah, well, David,
Speaker 1: thanks again for coming on my show and you're always
Speaker 1: welcome back. Oh thank you so much, ma'am. I hope
Speaker 1: to see you again soon me too. Good luck with
Speaker 1: the book tour. Thanks much, ma'am. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. We're on our YouTube page, the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.