WEBVTT - Ep131 "What do brains tell us about politics?" Part 2: Rehumanization 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:09.440 How do societies get out of polarized eras, and what 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:11.680 does this have to do with the brain. What does 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.280 any of this have to do with broken down trucks 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.840 or the Apollo program or the movie Watchmen, or education 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:23.880 or Iroquois Native Americans or a new idea for social 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:29.000 media algorithms or moral taste buds, And how we can 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.640 take advantage of the common threads that bind us coming 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:38.400 to see each other as fellow travelers improvising their way 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:45.080 through the same noisy world. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.760 me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.440 and in these episodes we sail deeply into our three 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.800 pound universe to understand why and how our lives look 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:15.880 the way they do. Today's episode is part two of 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:20.240 the question of what our brains have to do with politics. 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.080 Last week, in episode one thirty, we talked about polarization, 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:30.160 why brains are so predisposed for us versus them, for 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.320 in groups versus outgroups. We set the table pretty thoroughly 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:36.679 with that, but this week we're going to talk about 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.600 how we might be able to fix that. So quick 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.319 summary from last week so that we're aligned the human 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:50.400 brain is disturbingly good at polarization and dehumanization, and this 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.960 is why societies across history keep falling for the same 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.680 psychological tricks. Last week, we began with Rwanda in nineteen 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:05.240 ninety before, where constant radio messages calling the Tutsi cockroaches 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.960 reshaped how people perceived their neighbors. That kind of language 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:16.440 bypasses rational thought and dampens the brain's ability to recognize 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:21.200 others as humans with inner lives. The same pattern appeared 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:25.960 in Nazi portrayals of Jews, in American World War II 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:31.359 propaganda characterizing the Japanese, and even in ancient Rome's use 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:35.720 of the word barbarian. Across cultures and eras, the first 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:40.000 step toward violence is always a separation with some group, 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:46.679 comparing them to animals, or pests or pestilence. Why because normally, 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:52.320 the medial prefrontal cortex activates when we consider another person's 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.639 thoughts and feelings, but when we view some group as 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:04.400 less than human, this social cognition circuitry quiets down. Dehumanization 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.680 is nothing but the dimming of these circuits in your brain, 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:14.079 and once that happens, that makes harming others psychologically easier. 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:16.919 And the reason it's so easy for this to happen 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:22.639 is because we are experts at tribalism. Our ancestors survived 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:26.520 in small bands, and our brains still automatically sort the 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:32.560 world into us and the potentially dangerous them. Even arbitrary 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.440 labels create favoritism. Many studies show that all you need 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.400 to do is divide some group of people at random 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:44.440 and assign labels, and you can watch things escalate from 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.960 group bonding to aggression. And brain imaging studies from my 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.440 lab and others show the neural basis of this, which 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:58.600 is that empathy circuits respond strongly when in group members suffer, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:03.720 but that response weaker for outgroup members. Sometimes outgroup pain 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:08.960 even activates reward pathways. So last week we also talked 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:14.720 about how easily political identity fuses with our sense of self. 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:20.000 When people encounter political statements that challenge their beliefs, brain 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:24.760 regions involved in physical threat become active. This is why 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:30.800 facts rarely change minds. The brain interprets disagreement as an 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.159 attack on who you are. I have long suggested that 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.839 education is our strongest defense against all the tricks of polarization. 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.680 If young people can learn the basics of propaganda, they 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.880 can recognize it and resist it before it takes hold, 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.680 and we'll get more into that today. So in this 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.440 week's episode, we're going to focus on the good news, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.680 such as it is, how we can channel tribal tendencies 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:03.040 for better societies and reignite the circuitry of our empathy. 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.520 It can sometimes feel like polarization is an unbreakable law 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.400 of human nature. It's a reflex wired into the brain, 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:17.240 fueled by emotions, amplified by technology, exploited by propaganda. But 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:20.760 if neuroscience teaches us anything it's that the brain is 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.320 not fixed. It is live wired. It's always changing, it's 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:29.560 always adapting, and that means that polarization is not destiny. 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.320 When we get to the end of today's episode, I 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:36.000 will hope to have convinced you that a polarized society 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:40.200 is not destiny, because brains are capable of much more, 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.400 and I'm going to propose some brand new ways that 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.000 we might turn down the heat. So last episode, we 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.880 saw lots of things to be depressed about regarding the 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.080 tribal nature of our neural machinery. But here's the hopeful part. 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.880 Our notions of who is in and out of our tribes. 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:01.320 This is not fixed. The line of us them is malleable, 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:06.000 and under various circumstances, it can get redrawn. So here's 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:09.119 an example. Last week we talked about the Robbers Cave 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.400 experiment in the nineteen fifties. This was a group of 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.960 eleven year old boys who got divided into two arbitrary 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.120 groups and given names, the Rattlers and the Eagles, and 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:25.240 the experimenters watched how quickly tribal conflict formed. Once the 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.720 two groups developed their own identities and were put into competition. 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:35.000 They escalated from friendly rivalry to open hostility, despite having 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:39.040 no prior differences. So this was a famous demonstration that 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.599 even arbitrary group labels can trigger us versus them dynamics. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.080 But what I didn't tell you last week was the 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:51.640 important part, the turning point. Once hostility reached a fevered pitch, 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:57.760 the researchers changed the game. They introduced problems too big 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.599 for any one team to solve alone. These are called 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:05.640 superordinate goals. So think of a truck that stalled and 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.680 needs to be moved, but it takes all the boys 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.120 to get the job done. Or think of a broken 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:15.000 water supply that requires all hands on deck to fix it. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.280 When these problems were presented, now the boys found themselves 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:21.960 in a situation where they had to cooperate. They had 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.960 to pull together to move the truck or get the 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:30.280 clean water. And slowly, grudgingly, they began to soften towards 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.480 each other. They worked side by side. Then they ended 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.320 up sharing meals together, and by the end of camp, 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.440 the boys insisted on riding home together in the same bus. 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.520 The same circuitry that had driven them into conflict was 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.240 rerooted by collaboration. And this is one of the key 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.080 points we see in the research is that who your 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:56.040 tribe is is pretty flexible. So one strategy is to 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:01.760 create goals which become superordinate identities that are larger and 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:06.840 more encompassing. This is what happened when Franklin Roosevelt introduced 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.880 the New Deal. This was in the early nineteen thirties. 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.240 The United States was fracturing under the pressures of the 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:17.640 Great Depression. Unemployment was that record highs, the banking system 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.440 was collapsing, and regions and classes were turning inward, and 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.720 everyone was blaming one another for the catastrophe. It was 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:29.720 a moment of deep polarization. But instead of leaning into division, 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.840 Roosevelt pulled a robbers Cave maneuver on a national scale. 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:39.360 He created superordinate goals projects that were so large and 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.040 so urgent that no single group could solve them on 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.800 its own. He launched massive public works projects like the 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:51.360 Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority and the 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:56.280 Works Progress Administration. And these required Americans from very different 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:01.920 backgrounds to cooperate. You had far and city dwellers, You 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.800 had immigrants and veterans and young people. All these people 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.600 suddenly had to work side by side to build dams, 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:15.439 to restore forests, to pave roads, to electrify rural America. 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.079 The Social Security Act gave everyone a shared stake in 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:24.000 the same national project. These programs obviously don't erase every division, 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:28.640 but they did expand the sense of us. People who 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.320 might have seen each other as competitors or strangers now 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.319 became teammates in a collective effort to rebuild the country. 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.000 In exactly the same way that the campers bonded over 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.040 the shared struggle to move a stalled truck. Americans began 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.319 to feel that their fate was linked to the fate 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.920 of others across the country. The New Deal created a 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:54.640 broader identity. It wasn't rattlers versus eagles, It wasn't farmers 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:58.680 versus city workers. It was now citizens cooperating under a 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:03.760 common banner to climb out of disaster. So with the 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.960 robbers Cave experiment and with the New Deal, we see 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:13.120 that groups can shift identity boundaries. You might be conservative 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.480 or progressive, but you're also an American. You might be 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.120 religious or secular, but you're also a human. The larger 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.880 the circle, the more empathy gets extended in the brain. 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:27.960 When we expand the category of who counts as us, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:32.160 the circuits involved in seeing others as humans start to 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:37.160 crank back up. These empathy networks brighten, and the silhouette 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:41.800 we made of the other person regains a mind. We 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.160 see this throughout history. Think of the Apollo program in 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.320 the nineteen sixties. America was deeply polarized at that point, 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.960 divided over civil rights, over Vietnam, over generational change. But 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.400 for a moment, the space race offered a superordinate goal. 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.319 The effort to land a human being on the Moon 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:07.120 pulled together scientists and engineers and politicians and ordinary citizens 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:12.800 into a project bigger than any one side. When Neil 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:16.520 Armstrong took his first steps in nineteen sixty nine, millions 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:21.520 of Americans, regardless of party or identity, celebrated the same story. 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.800 And consider what happens after natural disasters. Whenever societies get 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:31.320 hit with earthquakes or hurricanes or wildfires, people who might 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:35.679 otherwise mistrust each other suddenly find themselves working side by side. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:40.040 They're clearing debris, they're distributing food, they're searching for survivors. 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:44.840 The amygdala recalibrates to the new, bigger threat, and the 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:49.840 reward circuitry fires. When cooperation succeeds, the brain recognizes in 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.199 real time that the circle of us has to expand. 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.040 The general story from decades of research is that when 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.920 people from different political or racial or religion are put 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:05.079 into situations where they have to collaborate solving puzzles or 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:10.360 building structures or managing scarce resources, their biases towards one 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:14.280 another's shrink. Their medial prefrontal cortex, which I keep mentioning, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:20.480 dims for outgroups. This reactivates the circuitry of humanness comes 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.800 back online. Of course, this is not easy, and we'll 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.599 come back to this in a bit, And the challenge 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:31.199 is that in everyday politics there aren't that many superordinate goals. 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:36.960 Partisanship thrives on smaller battles of taxes and policies and 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:41.240 culture wars. It's rare that we face a problem so big, 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:45.520 so undeniable, that it forces us to see the humanity 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:48.200 on the other side of the aisle. But when those 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.480 moments come, and they always do, we need to recognize 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:56.360 them as opportunities for repair because the circuitry is there. 0:12:56.400 --> 0:13:01.439 The same brain that DIM's empathy for rival can reignite 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.720 it when cooperation is necessary, the same biology that fuel's 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:10.079 division can, under the right circumstances, fuel unity. And when 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.680 we understand that, we can design more moments of shared goals, 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:16.760 like Roosevelt did with the New Deal, not just wait 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.600 for the moments to arrive in the form of disasters 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.680 or wars. So when we ask what pulls us back 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.600 from the brink, one of the answers is this problems 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:29.240 too big for any one side to solve alone. If 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.800 history is any guide, our best shot at healing polarization 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.960 won't come from continuing to shout at each other, but 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:42.800 instead finding the trucks that won't budge unless we push together. Now, 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.160 as I flagged a moment ago, it's not just shared 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:50.520 goals that can bind people. This also happens with shared threats. 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:53.480 So let's unpack what this can look like. I told 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:55.960 you in the last episode about an experiment we ran 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.120 in my lab where we had people lie in a 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:03.199 brain scanner fMRI and they watch images of six hands 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:06.760 on the screen, each labeled with a different religion. The 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.400 computer randomly selects one of the hands, and you see 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.880 that hand get stabbed with a syringe needle. And what 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:17.120 we find is activity in the brain's pain matrix, this 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:22.080 network that generates empathic responses when we see others in distress. 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.200 This comes on when you see the hand getting stabbed. 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.400 But the key finding was that the brain reacts more 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.800 strongly when the stabbed hand has your religious label, and 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.880 it reacts a lot less when the hand is labeled 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.080 as any of your outgroups. In other words, even though 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:41.800 all the hands look exactly the same, just adding a 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:46.440 one word label causes the brain to care more or less. 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:51.440 And this reveals how deeply and automatically our neural systems 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.120 follow in group and outgroup boundaries. Okay, but now I 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:57.440 want to tell you about the second part of the experiment. 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.120 I wanted to see how flexible these responses can be. 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.240 So now imagine this. You're still in the scanner, but 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.120 now you see a line on the screen that says 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.720 the year is twenty thirty two, and these three religions 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.400 are teamed up against these three religions. So you're seeing 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:17.400 the same six hands on the screen with the same 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:23.000 six labels. But suddenly you've got teammates religions that you 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:27.200 didn't care about a minute ago. They're now on your side. 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:31.040 And the question becomes what happens in the brain when 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.280 a hand is stabbed that belongs to an outgroup that 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.800 you've just been told is now your ally. And what 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.640 we see is that this pain matrix responds to this 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:46.120 newly formed alliance. Five minutes ago, you had no empathy 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.280 for that outgroup, but after a single sentence establishing them 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:54.040 as a shared team with you, your brain cares a 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.920 little more when their hand is harmed. So what does 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.560 this tell us? Even though religious labels run deep, the 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:07.800 brain's empathy boundaries can shift surprisingly quickly. Now this is 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.680 not particularly wonderful news for the world because your new 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.120 in group is still defined by a common enemy. But 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.800 the important clue I want to surface for now is 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:22.760 that outgroups can change. They're flexible. Now, sometimes this sort 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:26.560 of shifting allegiance is going to have strange consequences. For example, 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.880 in the world of fiction, there's a comic in a 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:35.160 movie called Watchmen, which unfolds in an alternate nineteen eighty 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:39.360 five where aging superheroes who are now outlawed or retired. 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.640 They're grappling with the looming threat of nuclear war between 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.200 the US and the Soviet Union. Now, one of the 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.720 characters believes that humanity is on the brink of self destruction, 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.080 and so what he does is he stages a catastrophic 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.880 fake alien attack and he kills millions of people in 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.240 New York. And his logic is that that only an 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:07.960 overwhelming external threat can shock the warring superpowers into unity 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:10.960 with each other. And in the end, the US and 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:14.760 the USSR do in fact halt their march toward nuclear 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.520 war and they join forces against what they believe is 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.600 a common enemy. So again this taps into the idea 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:25.320 that ourtgroups are flexible and that with a common threat, 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:29.199 suddenly enemies can end up on the same side. And 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:31.880 all of this leads to an idea that I've been 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:36.000 working on for a while, and that is, can we 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:42.160 build a better society by complexifying our allegiances? So let 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:44.640 me explain this. I've been proposing for several years now 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.639 that one of our best defenses against polarization and dehumanization 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.800 is clever social structuring. So to explain this, let's turn 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.840 to the Iroquoied Native Americans who lived up around what's 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.560 now upstate New York. Own currently is the League of 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:03.840 Peace and Power, but they weren't known as that four 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.000 hundred years ago. Four hundred years ago, they were made 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.160 up of six tribes who were always fighting with each other, 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:14.760 really bloody battles. But then in the sixteen hundreds, they 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.360 were brought together by a man named Deaganaweda, who became 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.560 known as the Great Peacemaker. He combined them into one nation. 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.320 But of course that's not enough. If you simply push 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.199 people together that can fall back apart easily. Degan Aweda 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:34.560 did something much more clever. He structured clans so that 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:39.320 each tribe member ended up belonging to one of nine clans. 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.000 So I might be a member of the Seneca tribe, 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:45.840 but I'm a member of the Wolf clan, and you're 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.840 a member of the Mohawk tribe, but you're also a 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.199 member of the Wolf clan. The key is that the 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:57.000 membership to tribes and clans cross cut. So how is 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.000 the Seneca tribe going to fight against the Mohawk tribe? 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.000 Vibe when I'm a wolf and you're a wolf. And 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.800 by the way, my Seneca friend is in the Hawk clan, 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:08.120 and your Mohawk friend is in the Hawk clan too, 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.720 And so when we all consider waging war, we think, 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:13.720 I don't want to do that. I got friends over there, 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:19.040 I've got fellow clansmen. So by cleverly structuring things in 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:24.280 a society, by making cross cutting ties, that tamps down 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:29.800 people's natural predilection for easy outgroups. In other words, you 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:35.200 can complexify our allegiances. On the other side of the Atlantic, 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.240 this kind of cross cutting allegiances. This was common. European 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:44.080 royalty often married their daughters to husbands and neighboring countries, 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.399 or even in enemy countries, and this was done to 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:52.560 cement alliances, as with the marriage of Charles to Isabella 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.520 in fifteen twenty six to bind the rival kingdoms of 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:01.480 Spain and Portugal. Sometimes these marriage contracts were to strengthen 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.760 a power base, but more often they were designed to 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:09.960 constrain a contender from attacking. If you force two groups 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:15.000 to intertwine, that can subdue the antagonism in the same 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:19.679 way that the clash between Shakespeare's fictional montagues and Capulates 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:24.840 was overshadowed by a relationship between their children. I think 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.520 that it's likely to be naive for us to think 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.760 about everyone in a society getting along, because we're very 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.560 hardwired in groups and out groups. But we can structure 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:38.119 things carefully like the Iroquois chief did, so that things 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:43.040 have counterbalance, so that it's not so easy for people 0:20:43.119 --> 0:21:02.080 to raise arms against one another. So I'll give you 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:04.880 a very specific way that I'm working on this right 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:09.320 now with social media algorithms. So currently these algorithms are 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:14.399 optimized for engagement at any cost, but they surface increasingly 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:19.600 extreme content. They push users into political echo chambers. They 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.199 amplify outrage and division, and what we get out of 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.600 that is a slightly more fractured society. We get diminished 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.399 trust across the aisle, we get reduced ability for people 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:35.119 to engage constructively across differences. So, as a neuroscientists have 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:37.879 spent a lot of my career studying how the brain 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:43.359 forms bonds and how social identity shapes perception, and how 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.960 we might build trust across these divides. And one of 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:52.119 the conclusions is that when people first connect over non 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.600 political shared interests like sports or hobbies or art or 0:21:55.680 --> 0:22:00.280 music or brands or locations or whatever, they develop these 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:06.399 multi dimensional relationships, and later, when political differences emerge, the 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.919 relationships are more resilient. People are far more likely to 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.920 converse than dehumanize. So my recent research is in how 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:20.600 to redesign social media to match the realities of the 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:24.160 human brains. So I just patented an algorithm that flips 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:29.719 the traditional method on its head. Instead of inadvertently clustering 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:34.800 users by political alignment as happens now, the new algorithm 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:40.000 surfaces information to users through shared interests like running or 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:44.120 gardening or surfing, or classic films or chests or sports 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:48.800 teams or baking or whatever. In this way, the algorithm 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:54.280 builds bonds, creating a rich web of shared interests, and 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.960 then at some later point users might come to see 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:02.200 that there are differences in political stances, but they've already 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:07.320 established connections and that's what allows them to converse. When 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:10.399 we like each other and then find out that we 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.879 have opposite views on some hot button issue, we both 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.080 tilt our heads and we're more willing to hear the 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:22.000 perspective of the other person because we're already pals. So 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:27.199 by taking advantage of the common threads that bond, it 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:30.760 makes it less easy to write off the other person. 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:35.600 It's just an issue of temporal sequencing. The idea is 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:39.840 bond first and debate later, and in this way you 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.639 meet the whole person. You're not just distracted by the 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:46.800 flash of their politics. This algorithm isn't hiding anything. It's 0:23:46.800 --> 0:23:50.919 simply spooling out information in a particular order so that 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:55.959 you have a chance at having a complexified relationship because 0:23:56.240 --> 0:24:00.160 you generally like the person, and now you're slightly more 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:04.879 likely to lean in and listen rather than write them off. 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:09.439 So this whole idea of complexification and new ideas for 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:12.240 social media algorithms, these are some of the things that 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:15.919 I'm working on to reduce polarization in society. But the 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:20.040 good news is there are lots of approaches that researchers study. 0:24:20.280 --> 0:24:23.840 For example, one approach to break the cycle of polarization 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:29.119 comes from psychology's contact hypothesis, and the idea is just that, 0:24:29.480 --> 0:24:33.399 under the right conditions, if you have personal contact with 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:37.919 members of an outgroup, that reduces prejudice. But and this 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:40.879 is crucial, it's not just any contact. If two groups 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:44.560 are forced into contact where one holds power over the other, 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:48.879 then hostility usually increases. The key is to structure the 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:55.480 contact so they have equal status, cooperation, common goals, institutional support. 0:24:55.760 --> 0:25:00.160 When you meet those conditions the brains social cognition circuits, 0:25:00.320 --> 0:25:03.439 like the medial prefederal cortexs and the temporo pridal junction, 0:25:03.840 --> 0:25:08.040 these begin to reawaken. For the outgroup, people stop seeing 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:11.960 the other as an abstract category and start seeing them 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:16.720 as individuals. The silhouette of the other person regains a mind. 0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:20.280 There are lots of real world examples. For example, there 0:25:20.280 --> 0:25:24.840 are several beautiful projects where Israeli and Palestinian kids are 0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:28.320 in musical groups together or go camping together, and that's 0:25:28.359 --> 0:25:31.159 the kind of future we need. More generally, there have 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:34.360 been lots of studies run in schools where children from 0:25:34.359 --> 0:25:39.560 different backgrounds work together on collaborative projects. And biases shrink 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:44.159 in neighborhoods where police officers live and interact with residents, 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:50.600 trust grows. In workplaces where heterogeneous teams share responsibility, you 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:55.360 can measure that stereotypes fade. Obviously, none of this happens overnight, 0:25:55.720 --> 0:26:00.640 but repeated contact under the right conditions chips away as division. 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:05.200 And there's another avenue that people have studied called compassion training. 0:26:05.720 --> 0:26:08.919 For example, Tanya Singer and her colleagues have studied what 0:26:09.040 --> 0:26:13.920 happens when people deliberately practice extending compassion not just to 0:26:13.960 --> 0:26:17.120 their loved ones, but to strangers and even to rivals. 0:26:17.440 --> 0:26:19.960 They do this for some weeks of training, and you 0:26:20.040 --> 0:26:24.200 can see their brains change. The regions involved in empathy 0:26:24.760 --> 0:26:28.879 begin to fire more broadly. The medial prefedal cortex shows 0:26:28.920 --> 0:26:33.800 stronger activation for outgroups. In other words, compassion can be 0:26:33.840 --> 0:26:37.920 practiced like a muscle. Now, the problem is that most 0:26:37.920 --> 0:26:39.760 of the world is not going to sign up for 0:26:39.840 --> 0:26:44.239 compassion training right because that requires an active investment on 0:26:44.280 --> 0:26:47.400 your part. But I'll tell you another thing that has 0:26:47.440 --> 0:26:51.280 been studied, which I think is much easier to sneak in, 0:26:51.720 --> 0:26:56.159 and that is simply about perspective taking. So lots of 0:26:56.200 --> 0:27:00.240 experiments show that when people are asked to write about 0:27:00.240 --> 0:27:02.919 a day in the life of someone from an opposing group, 0:27:03.280 --> 0:27:08.200 their biases soften. The act of imagining another person's experience 0:27:08.640 --> 0:27:12.760 recruits theory of mind circuits in the brain, in other words, 0:27:12.960 --> 0:27:18.080 circuits that make the others inner life visible. Now, if 0:27:18.080 --> 0:27:20.280 you can't get people to do compassion training, how are 0:27:20.320 --> 0:27:23.200 you going to get them to do perspective taking? Well, 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:26.120 that is not so hard. This is what I teach 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:29.520 about in one of my classes at Stanford called Literature 0:27:29.680 --> 0:27:34.360 and the Brain. The trick is that stories give us 0:27:34.359 --> 0:27:37.720 a way to see the humanity of the other side 0:27:37.760 --> 0:27:42.480 by seducing us into perspectives we would otherwise never occupy. 0:27:43.080 --> 0:27:45.679 You read these books, or you watch these movies, and 0:27:45.720 --> 0:27:48.880 you are in the shoes of the protagonist, and that 0:27:49.480 --> 0:27:54.240 reawakens this circuitry that you have for understanding another person. 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:58.600 You're cranking up this neural machinery that lets you imagine 0:27:58.680 --> 0:28:03.040 another person's inner life. Think about the impact of a 0:28:03.080 --> 0:28:06.959 book like Uncle Tom's Cabin. This book was written at 0:28:06.960 --> 0:28:11.560 a time when half of America viewed enslaved people as property, 0:28:11.960 --> 0:28:17.240 and Harriet Beecher Stowe drew readers into the home of 0:28:17.280 --> 0:28:22.200