1
00:00:05,160 --> 00:00:08,600
Speaker 1: How does your brain decide that some other person has

2
00:00:08,680 --> 00:00:12,600
Speaker 1: their own inner life? And how does this sometimes go

3
00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:15,320
Speaker 1: in a different direction where you end up viewing another

4
00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:19,520
Speaker 1: person more like an object. This is what neuroscientists mean

5
00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:23,319
Speaker 1: when they talk about dehumanization. It means that your brain

6
00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:27,840
Speaker 1: is not cranking up its social machinery to understand that

7
00:00:27,920 --> 00:00:30,840
Speaker 1: the other person has a mind like you do.

8
00:00:31,240 --> 00:00:32,360
Speaker 2: We're gonna dive deep.

9
00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:36,720
Speaker 1: Into this today with social neuroscientist Lessana Harris, will ask

10
00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:41,440
Speaker 1: is dehumanization a cause of violence or is it the

11
00:00:41,800 --> 00:00:45,040
Speaker 1: fuel that keeps it burning? Do people who think of

12
00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:50,879
Speaker 1: themselves as highly empathic sometimes dehumanize.

13
00:00:49,880 --> 00:00:50,920
Speaker 2: More than other people?

14
00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:54,160
Speaker 1: And on the flip side, why do we sometimes think

15
00:00:54,200 --> 00:01:00,280
Speaker 1: that chatbots or robots are people with interior minds? Little

16
00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:04,640
Speaker 1: children raised with AI grow up to fight for AI rights.

17
00:01:05,080 --> 00:01:07,559
Speaker 1: Today we're going to dive deep into how your brain

18
00:01:07,720 --> 00:01:11,080
Speaker 1: sees others. So get ready for a great brain stretch.

19
00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:17,200
Speaker 1: Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a

20
00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:20,880
Speaker 1: neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we

21
00:01:20,959 --> 00:01:24,640
Speaker 1: sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand how

22
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:28,440
Speaker 1: we see the world, and importantly, today, how we see

23
00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:46,520
Speaker 1: each other. Every second of your life, your brain is

24
00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:49,880
Speaker 1: working to figure out something very important in the space

25
00:01:49,960 --> 00:01:54,720
Speaker 1: around you, what is alive in the sense that it

26
00:01:54,840 --> 00:02:00,040
Speaker 1: has intentions and feelings and plans. In other words, it

27
00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:06,080
Speaker 1: has a mind. We are mind detectors, and so whenever

28
00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:10,160
Speaker 1: you walk into a room, your social antenna are up.

29
00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:12,560
Speaker 1: You're not conscious of this, but your brain is putting

30
00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:15,120
Speaker 1: tons of effort into figuring out where there are people.

31
00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:19,720
Speaker 1: And you are watching faces, and you're registering postures, and

32
00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:23,519
Speaker 1: you're listening to the tones of voice, and your brain

33
00:02:23,639 --> 00:02:27,839
Speaker 1: is building models like okay, I think that person is irritated,

34
00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:31,880
Speaker 1: and that person is curious, and that person is hiding something,

35
00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:35,480
Speaker 1: and that person wants approval. This is one of the

36
00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:40,440
Speaker 1: brain's deepest talents is mind perception. Think of this as

37
00:02:40,480 --> 00:02:47,400
Speaker 1: your ability to infer an inner movie playing behind someone's eyes.

38
00:02:47,960 --> 00:02:51,080
Speaker 1: As I said, this is typically done automatically without any

39
00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:54,120
Speaker 1: conscious awareness. But you do this all day long with

40
00:02:54,200 --> 00:02:57,240
Speaker 1: friends and family. You do this with strangers, you do

41
00:02:57,280 --> 00:03:00,399
Speaker 1: this with people you've never met. And by the way,

42
00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:04,040
Speaker 1: we don't do this just for other humans. Our neural

43
00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:09,120
Speaker 1: mechanisms for making this happen. It applies more broadly, so

44
00:03:09,639 --> 00:03:15,079
Speaker 1: we anthropomorphize, meaning we assign human like minds to non

45
00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:18,480
Speaker 1: human things. You might treat your car like it has

46
00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:22,799
Speaker 1: a personality. We certainly do this with robots, and we

47
00:03:22,919 --> 00:03:26,920
Speaker 1: root for the animated toys in a Pixar film. You

48
00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:31,200
Speaker 1: can even watch a film with some animated triangles and

49
00:03:31,240 --> 00:03:33,760
Speaker 1: circles moving around no words at all, and you end

50
00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:37,200
Speaker 1: up narrating a story about what the shapes are doing.

51
00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:42,520
Speaker 1: In all these scenarios, your brain lights up its social machinery,

52
00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:47,480
Speaker 1: and things around you become characters with motivations. Our brains

53
00:03:47,480 --> 00:03:51,960
Speaker 1: are always eager to find agency and intention, to find

54
00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:56,200
Speaker 1: minds that it can predict. So if our brains are

55
00:03:56,240 --> 00:03:59,920
Speaker 1: so ready to see minds, how do we ever fail

56
00:04:00,160 --> 00:04:02,760
Speaker 1: to see them? Now you've heard me talk about this

57
00:04:02,840 --> 00:04:06,600
Speaker 1: before on the podcast, because history shows us over and

58
00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:11,119
Speaker 1: over that humans have the capacity to stop seeing other

59
00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:16,640
Speaker 1: humans as having an entire cosmos going on on the inside.

60
00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:20,560
Speaker 1: We can treat other humans as objects. And when you

61
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:23,440
Speaker 1: look at any conflict, Let's say we're talking about the

62
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:27,320
Speaker 1: communist revolutions in China and Russia, or we're talking about

63
00:04:27,440 --> 00:04:31,760
Speaker 1: Nazism in Germany or fascism in Italy, or the camer

64
00:04:31,880 --> 00:04:36,159
Speaker 1: rouge in Cambodia, or the Hutu taking up machetes against

65
00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:40,200
Speaker 1: their neighbors, the Tutsi in Rwanda. Wherever we look, we

66
00:04:40,240 --> 00:04:42,720
Speaker 1: see that it is possible for people to look at

67
00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:48,279
Speaker 1: their neighbors and feel nothing, to feel no tug of empathy,

68
00:04:48,440 --> 00:04:53,760
Speaker 1: no sense of shared humanity. Now how does that happen. Well,

69
00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:58,479
Speaker 1: it's typically helped along by propaganda that trains people to

70
00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:03,320
Speaker 1: see their neighbors as as vermin as contagion, as something

71
00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:06,040
Speaker 1: that can be crushed with no moral cost, the way

72
00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:09,280
Speaker 1: you might treat a bug. So we essentially have this

73
00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:12,520
Speaker 1: dial in the brain that makes us see a thing

74
00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:16,560
Speaker 1: in the world as a person within inner life or not.

75
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:19,599
Speaker 2: Today's episode is about that dial.

76
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:24,440
Speaker 1: It's about the neural machinery that supports social cognition and

77
00:05:24,520 --> 00:05:28,520
Speaker 1: what it means when that machinery gets dialed down. It's

78
00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:32,720
Speaker 1: about dehumanization, which is when the brain does not engage

79
00:05:32,800 --> 00:05:36,200
Speaker 1: its social machinery for considering another person's mind.

80
00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:38,920
Speaker 2: And as we'll see, a slight.

81
00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:42,280
Speaker 1: Dialing down in the brain can have big consequences for

82
00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:44,960
Speaker 1: our behavior. And we're also going to talk about the

83
00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:50,760
Speaker 1: mirror image of this anthropomorphism, because in our new landscape,

84
00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:54,800
Speaker 1: we have all the things around us growing mind like

85
00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:58,640
Speaker 1: in their behavior. So what happens when the cues that

86
00:05:58,839 --> 00:06:03,400
Speaker 1: trigger mind person become cheap and ubiquitous. We're going to

87
00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:06,280
Speaker 1: cover all this and much more today. My guest is

88
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:09,600
Speaker 1: Lasana Harris. He for many years has been at the

89
00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:14,960
Speaker 1: forefront of mapping all these questions about humanization and dehumanization

90
00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:20,480
Speaker 1: onto the brain. He's a social neuroscientist and an experimental

91
00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:25,159
Speaker 1: psychologist at University College London, where he leads the Boundaries

92
00:06:25,160 --> 00:06:29,880
Speaker 1: of Social Cognition Lab. Lasaana studies how we perceive other

93
00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:33,840
Speaker 1: minds and how this connects to moral behavior and intergroup

94
00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:38,080
Speaker 1: conflict and the emerging world of AI agents. Here is

95
00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:45,159
Speaker 1: Lasana Harris. So, Lasana, let's start with a little bit

96
00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,200
Speaker 1: of an origin story. What first drew you to the

97
00:06:48,720 --> 00:06:52,640
Speaker 1: issue of understanding how we perceive other minds?

98
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:57,360
Speaker 3: I think I was always fascinated in how other people

99
00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:02,919
Speaker 3: experience emotions and how a lack of emotion regulation effect

100
00:07:03,080 --> 00:07:07,480
Speaker 3: social interactions. Once I got into graduate school, I realized

101
00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:11,360
Speaker 3: the emotion literature was a mass, and so I had

102
00:07:11,400 --> 00:07:15,400
Speaker 3: the sort of crisis point. Lots of potential PhD students

103
00:07:15,480 --> 00:07:18,560
Speaker 3: had where I realized the thing I really wanted to

104
00:07:18,600 --> 00:07:20,440
Speaker 3: study seemed impossible to study.

105
00:07:21,080 --> 00:07:21,760
Speaker 4: At that time.

106
00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:25,240
Speaker 3: I happened to take a social cognition class where they

107
00:07:25,280 --> 00:07:30,080
Speaker 3: talked interestingly about anthropomorphism, some of the very classic hydro

108
00:07:30,160 --> 00:07:34,400
Speaker 3: and similar research where you had these geometric shapes colliding

109
00:07:34,440 --> 00:07:37,080
Speaker 3: into each other and chasing each other and people were

110
00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:39,640
Speaker 3: bringing them to life, and that really fascinated me.

111
00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:41,760
Speaker 1: Let me jump in for one second for any listeners

112
00:07:41,800 --> 00:07:44,800
Speaker 1: who don't know. Heiner and Simmer were two psychologists who

113
00:07:45,280 --> 00:07:48,400
Speaker 1: made a little movie where there's what was it? It

114
00:07:48,440 --> 00:07:50,800
Speaker 1: was a triangle in a circle and then another bigger

115
00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:52,760
Speaker 1: triangle and they're moving around.

116
00:07:52,800 --> 00:07:53,720
Speaker 2: The shapes are moving around.

117
00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:58,360
Speaker 1: There's no sound, but when viewers watch this, there's a

118
00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:01,160
Speaker 1: whole story that they on to what's going on.

119
00:08:01,200 --> 00:08:02,200
Speaker 2: It looks like a love story.

120
00:08:02,240 --> 00:08:04,600
Speaker 1: And then the bigger triangle is a bully who's trying

121
00:08:04,600 --> 00:08:07,720
Speaker 1: to break up their relationship. And by the way, listen,

122
00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:10,080
Speaker 1: define for us social cognition.

123
00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:11,080
Speaker 4: Sure.

124
00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:16,120
Speaker 3: Social cognition is how we consider other people's minds, essentially

125
00:08:16,200 --> 00:08:19,200
Speaker 3: in the shortcut, so it's the psychological tools that lets

126
00:08:19,280 --> 00:08:22,520
Speaker 3: us interact with other people. So if I want to

127
00:08:22,520 --> 00:08:25,400
Speaker 3: have a conversation with someone. In order for that to happen,

128
00:08:25,480 --> 00:08:27,720
Speaker 3: I have to have some inference about what it is

129
00:08:27,760 --> 00:08:31,440
Speaker 3: they're thinking. Without that inference, it's near impossible for me

130
00:08:31,520 --> 00:08:34,520
Speaker 3: to have that conversation. So this is an ability we

131
00:08:34,679 --> 00:08:38,320
Speaker 3: have that we use all of the time constantly to

132
00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:41,200
Speaker 3: not only figure out what other people are thinking, but

133
00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:44,080
Speaker 3: to also predict what someone might say or do in

134
00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:47,120
Speaker 3: a given situation. So it's crucial for any kind of

135
00:08:47,160 --> 00:08:51,800
Speaker 3: social interaction. So what fascinated me about those cartoons from

136
00:08:51,840 --> 00:08:55,160
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties of shapes moving around is that we

137
00:08:55,240 --> 00:08:58,800
Speaker 3: would use this ability for something as simple as shapes

138
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:02,400
Speaker 3: sort of acting in funny ways. And that really juxtapose

139
00:09:02,520 --> 00:09:06,600
Speaker 3: with me when considering processes like dehumanization, where you have

140
00:09:06,760 --> 00:09:10,199
Speaker 3: this failure to engage these processes. I was struck by

141
00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:13,400
Speaker 3: how it is that something that seems so prevalent, that

142
00:09:13,559 --> 00:09:18,200
Speaker 3: happened in such a benign environment wasn't actually coming to

143
00:09:18,280 --> 00:09:20,920
Speaker 3: bear when people needed it the most. Right, So, when

144
00:09:20,920 --> 00:09:24,600
Speaker 3: I actually have someone who might be suffering, who might

145
00:09:24,640 --> 00:09:27,679
Speaker 3: be having some type of negative experience, why was it

146
00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:31,040
Speaker 3: that we couldn't seem to get this mechanism going. Yet

147
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:33,600
Speaker 3: we watched some shapes running around in the screen, and

148
00:09:33,679 --> 00:09:38,360
Speaker 3: suddenly we imagine this whole complex story about their lives, right,

149
00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:41,640
Speaker 3: And so that juxtaposition is really what got me hooked

150
00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:43,240
Speaker 3: on the stuff that I study.

151
00:09:43,520 --> 00:09:46,680
Speaker 1: So tell us about dehumanization and give us an example

152
00:09:46,679 --> 00:09:46,880
Speaker 1: of that.

153
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:52,600
Speaker 3: Sure, So, dehumanization is one of those psychological terms where

154
00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,000
Speaker 3: everybody has an idea what it is, but psychologists tend

155
00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:58,880
Speaker 3: to think of it a little differently. So for most people,

156
00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:02,600
Speaker 3: dehumanization this horrible thing that only happens in cases of

157
00:10:02,679 --> 00:10:06,320
Speaker 3: human atrocities, and we've never been able to get any

158
00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:08,960
Speaker 3: evidence that's actually the case. Right, we can't go in

159
00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:12,000
Speaker 3: the lab and do unethical things to people to know

160
00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:15,600
Speaker 3: that dehumanization is present. So for a long time there

161
00:10:15,640 --> 00:10:19,720
Speaker 3: was all of this theoretical philosophical work about dehumanization and

162
00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:24,680
Speaker 3: human horribleness, but as psychologists, we tended to define dehumanization

163
00:10:24,800 --> 00:10:28,280
Speaker 3: a lot more simply. We basically said, when you encounter

164
00:10:28,360 --> 00:10:32,880
Speaker 3: other people, you tend to spontaneously get these social cognitive

165
00:10:32,920 --> 00:10:36,440
Speaker 3: processes going, right. You tend to spontaneously think about what's

166
00:10:36,480 --> 00:10:39,720
Speaker 3: going on in their minds in order to interact with them,

167
00:10:39,720 --> 00:10:44,800
Speaker 3: to understand them. Potentially to have empathy towards them. Dehumanization

168
00:10:44,960 --> 00:10:47,680
Speaker 3: then was a case where you didn't get this process

169
00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:50,600
Speaker 3: going in the presence of another person. So you encounter

170
00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:55,320
Speaker 3: another person and instead of that person triggering this psychological process,

171
00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:57,960
Speaker 3: there was an absence of it. So it was a

172
00:10:58,080 --> 00:11:01,800
Speaker 3: very simple definition of humanization, what we like to call

173
00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:04,760
Speaker 3: not your grandpa's definition of dehumanization.

174
00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:05,200
Speaker 4: Right.

175
00:11:05,679 --> 00:11:09,400
Speaker 3: It's the definition that is detached from the human atrocities,

176
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:12,559
Speaker 3: and it makes it much more of an everyday process.

177
00:11:12,600 --> 00:11:14,120
Speaker 3: And a lot of the work we've done in the

178
00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:17,319
Speaker 3: last twenty years or so really has established it as

179
00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:20,840
Speaker 3: an everyday process which can be used to do horrible things, right,

180
00:11:20,840 --> 00:11:23,479
Speaker 3: but so can lots of other psychological processes.

181
00:11:23,679 --> 00:11:25,400
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that you did is

182
00:11:25,480 --> 00:11:28,760
Speaker 1: you looked at what was happening in social psychology, and

183
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:31,680
Speaker 1: then you asked, what is happening in the brain?

184
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 2: So tell us what you found when you did those studies.

185
00:11:35,280 --> 00:11:39,440
Speaker 3: Sure, so, in the brain, there's this large network of

186
00:11:39,480 --> 00:11:42,680
Speaker 3: regions that supports us figuring out what's going on in

187
00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:47,480
Speaker 3: other people's minds. These brain regions are mainly in the neocortex,

188
00:11:47,559 --> 00:11:50,640
Speaker 3: that's the more recently evolved parts of the brain. So

189
00:11:50,760 --> 00:11:54,480
Speaker 3: the parts of the brain that separates us from other species,

190
00:11:54,800 --> 00:11:56,720
Speaker 3: and what you tend to see is that these brain

191
00:11:56,760 --> 00:12:00,520
Speaker 3: regions are tonically active, which means if I suddenly took

192
00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:03,439
Speaker 3: a picture of your brain, now, I'd probably see activation

193
00:12:03,600 --> 00:12:04,920
Speaker 3: in that large network.

194
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:06,400
Speaker 4: What we did is.

195
00:12:06,360 --> 00:12:10,360
Speaker 3: We had people look at other dehumanized targets. So these

196
00:12:10,400 --> 00:12:16,200
Speaker 3: are groups in society that you wouldn't typically humanize, that is,

197
00:12:16,280 --> 00:12:18,920
Speaker 3: you would treat as more like an object than a

198
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:22,800
Speaker 3: human being, homeless people being one example. And what we

199
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:25,920
Speaker 3: found was that this network was not engaged when our

200
00:12:25,960 --> 00:12:29,280
Speaker 3: participants just looked at pictures of these people. And I

201
00:12:29,400 --> 00:12:32,360
Speaker 3: was shocking to us again because shapes running around in

202
00:12:32,360 --> 00:12:34,800
Speaker 3: a screen can sort of trigger some of this engagement

203
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:35,439
Speaker 3: as well.

204
00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:36,800
Speaker 4: And so the.

205
00:12:36,800 --> 00:12:40,680
Speaker 3: Brain research was the place we first discovered this effect

206
00:12:40,880 --> 00:12:45,080
Speaker 3: because we found this failure of these networks to engage. Now,

207
00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:48,640
Speaker 3: at the time when we first made that discovery, almost

208
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:52,880
Speaker 3: every study in social neuroscience got these brain regions coming

209
00:12:52,920 --> 00:12:55,480
Speaker 3: on right because whenever I stuck someone in an MRI

210
00:12:55,679 --> 00:12:58,280
Speaker 3: machine and I showed them a person, I had them

211
00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:01,040
Speaker 3: think about a person, I had them think about themselves,

212
00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:04,959
Speaker 3: you would see this network lighting up. But for these targets, right,

213
00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:08,120
Speaker 3: like homeless people, you didn't quite see the same pattern

214
00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:08,800
Speaker 3: of activation.

215
00:13:09,080 --> 00:13:11,400
Speaker 1: So just give us a slight bit more color on

216
00:13:11,440 --> 00:13:14,120
Speaker 1: the experiment. People are in the scanner. You're showing them

217
00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:18,000
Speaker 1: pictures of other humans. But some of the humans were

218
00:13:18,040 --> 00:13:23,040
Speaker 1: let's say, athletes or successful businessmen, some were homeless people

219
00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,360
Speaker 1: or drug addicts. And so give us a sense of

220
00:13:26,679 --> 00:13:28,040
Speaker 1: what you presented and what you saw.

221
00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:29,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly right.

222
00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:33,120
Speaker 3: So participants would lie there, we'd flash these pictures up,

223
00:13:33,200 --> 00:13:37,280
Speaker 3: these what we call stereotypical representations of social groups, So

224
00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:39,120
Speaker 3: a picture where you look at it and you know

225
00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:42,079
Speaker 3: exactly who it is you're looking at, be it an athlete,

226
00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:46,200
Speaker 3: a college student, a business person, or a homeless person.

227
00:13:46,760 --> 00:13:48,680
Speaker 3: And what we would find is that for all of

228
00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:52,120
Speaker 3: the other social groups, the ones that aren't typically dehumanized,

229
00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:55,560
Speaker 3: you'd get engagement of this network of brain regions. But

230
00:13:55,640 --> 00:14:00,120
Speaker 3: when it came to the traditionally dehumanized social groups, that is,

231
00:14:00,120 --> 00:14:03,320
Speaker 3: the homeless people or the drug addicts, you wouldn't see

232
00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:07,160
Speaker 3: this naturally engaging in quite the same way. So this

233
00:14:07,440 --> 00:14:10,760
Speaker 3: absence of engagement is where we've sort of picked up

234
00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:13,520
Speaker 3: in this dehumanization response.

235
00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:15,880
Speaker 1: And So when I first read this work, first of all,

236
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:18,280
Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing for several reasons. One is

237
00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:23,000
Speaker 1: that this is different than simply disliking somebody. This is

238
00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:27,120
Speaker 1: actually the networks that understand that person as a human.

239
00:14:27,720 --> 00:14:28,920
Speaker 1: These are diminished.

240
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:32,640
Speaker 3: They're absolutely right. This is not dislike or simple prejudice.

241
00:14:32,680 --> 00:14:36,080
Speaker 3: For instance, So let's take prejudice as an example. Let's

242
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:39,520
Speaker 3: say I hate a particular racial outgroup. I would see

243
00:14:39,520 --> 00:14:43,280
Speaker 3: an activation in the brain that's correlated with sort of

244
00:14:43,280 --> 00:14:46,080
Speaker 3: a threat response, because you tend to feel threatened by

245
00:14:46,120 --> 00:14:47,360
Speaker 3: the groups data.

246
00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:49,160
Speaker 4: I'm not the old group, right.

247
00:14:49,280 --> 00:14:53,360
Speaker 3: People that belong to a different political ideology, have different opinions,

248
00:14:53,800 --> 00:14:56,680
Speaker 3: come from a different racial or ethnic group. You tend

249
00:14:56,720 --> 00:14:59,080
Speaker 3: to feel threatened by them, and there's a very clear

250
00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:02,960
Speaker 3: brain response in those cases. That's a typical prejudice response.

251
00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:06,400
Speaker 3: This is not that. This is not just a dislike

252
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:09,720
Speaker 3: response or prejudice response. This is a failure to process

253
00:15:09,720 --> 00:15:12,600
Speaker 3: as a person, because when you see people, you tend

254
00:15:12,600 --> 00:15:15,720
Speaker 3: to turn on these networks so you can understand something

255
00:15:15,800 --> 00:15:19,600
Speaker 3: about their minds. And that's really important, right, because interacting

256
00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:22,720
Speaker 3: with a person is very different from interacting with an object.

257
00:15:23,160 --> 00:15:25,440
Speaker 3: So if I see a table, I'm not wondering what

258
00:15:25,480 --> 00:15:28,600
Speaker 3: the table's thinking. I'm not wondering what does the table

259
00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:31,440
Speaker 3: think about me. I'm not guessing at the intentions of

260
00:15:31,480 --> 00:15:33,360
Speaker 3: the table. I'm not doing any of the stuff I

261
00:15:33,440 --> 00:15:36,360
Speaker 3: do with other human beings. But even if I see

262
00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:38,800
Speaker 3: a stranger, I'm going to have those thoughts, right because

263
00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:41,840
Speaker 3: I might have to interact with that person. That person

264
00:15:41,920 --> 00:15:44,760
Speaker 3: might be a potential friend someday in the future, and

265
00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:48,040
Speaker 3: ouri they may have information I need. So when you

266
00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:51,000
Speaker 3: see other people, we tend to always engage these networks

267
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,960
Speaker 3: because it's useful. It gives us information that facilitates any

268
00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:57,840
Speaker 3: interaction I may have with them. So to see human

269
00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:00,600
Speaker 3: beings and to not even switch these processes someone was

270
00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:02,160
Speaker 3: stunning for us as well.

271
00:16:04,040 --> 00:16:06,920
Speaker 1: How do you think it happens that we can go

272
00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:11,240
Speaker 1: from engaging these networks with other people to not doing

273
00:16:11,280 --> 00:16:15,240
Speaker 1: it anymore. For example, let's say in Nazi Germany, when

274
00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:18,960
Speaker 1: people had Jewish neighbors and friends and then things changed,

275
00:16:19,160 --> 00:16:22,880
Speaker 1: or in Rwanda where you had intermarriage and friendships between

276
00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:25,720
Speaker 1: the Hutu and the Tutsi, and then there was lots

277
00:16:25,760 --> 00:16:30,160
Speaker 1: of propaganda about the Tutsi being like talkroaches and then

278
00:16:30,280 --> 00:16:33,840
Speaker 1: these things, presumably these networks turned down.

279
00:16:34,120 --> 00:16:34,920
Speaker 2: How does that happen?

280
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:38,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the million dollar question, isn't it. I think,

281
00:16:39,080 --> 00:16:42,080
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, propaganda does play a role in those

282
00:16:42,160 --> 00:16:47,120
Speaker 3: cases of genocide and human atrocities, because what the propaganda

283
00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:49,400
Speaker 3: does is it puts the idea in your head that

284
00:16:49,520 --> 00:16:52,120
Speaker 3: this person isn't quite a human being in the way

285
00:16:52,160 --> 00:16:54,720
Speaker 3: that I am a human being, right, And so you

286
00:16:54,800 --> 00:16:58,600
Speaker 3: might have interacted with them before, but now the propaganda

287
00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:02,800
Speaker 3: suggests to you that there's something about their fundamental nature

288
00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:06,080
Speaker 3: that's just different. And it turns out that we still

289
00:17:06,119 --> 00:17:09,679
Speaker 3: have a lot of beliefs about other human beings not

290
00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 3: being human. This is something that has been kicking around

291
00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:16,520
Speaker 3: science for centuries, right. So there's a lot of what

292
00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:20,560
Speaker 3: you can call of dustbin science, where scientists were trying

293
00:17:20,600 --> 00:17:23,679
Speaker 3: to prove right, members of different groups weren't quite human

294
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,680
Speaker 3: like the human beings of interest, right, people like themselves.

295
00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:31,639
Speaker 3: And so these ideas are really old ideas that have

296
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:35,480
Speaker 3: stuck with us as a society and as a civilization.

297
00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:39,480
Speaker 3: And so once the propaganda makes it salient that that

298
00:17:39,520 --> 00:17:42,440
Speaker 3: particular group might not quite be human in the way

299
00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:46,159
Speaker 3: that you're human It's not impossible to think that you

300
00:17:46,240 --> 00:17:49,200
Speaker 3: can now switch off the network. But that's the sort

301
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:52,679
Speaker 3: of kind of answer where we have no evidence. The

302
00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:55,840
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff we do have evidence for suggests that

303
00:17:56,040 --> 00:17:59,919
Speaker 3: you switch off these networks because it serves a particular function.

304
00:18:00,920 --> 00:18:04,480
Speaker 3: It gives you a particular benefit in a moment that.

305
00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:05,760
Speaker 4: You want to enjoy.

306
00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:07,879
Speaker 3: So let me give you an example of some of

307
00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:11,639
Speaker 3: these benefits. Let's take the case of the homeless person.

308
00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:14,600
Speaker 3: Let's say you live in a big city and you're

309
00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:17,400
Speaker 3: on your way to work, and you're rushing there. You're

310
00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:20,560
Speaker 3: worried about the important meeting that you have, and you

311
00:18:20,640 --> 00:18:22,919
Speaker 3: come across a homeless person sitting at the side of

312
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:25,959
Speaker 3: the road. Chances are that's not the first homeless person

313
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:29,520
Speaker 3: you've seen today. If you stop and fell sorry for

314
00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:32,760
Speaker 3: that homeless person and every other such homeless person you see,

315
00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:34,480
Speaker 3: you would probably not get to work.

316
00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:34,720
Speaker 4: Right.

317
00:18:34,800 --> 00:18:37,480
Speaker 3: The amount of human suffering in the world is overwhelming,

318
00:18:38,040 --> 00:18:40,560
Speaker 3: So in order to focus on the tasks at hand

319
00:18:40,600 --> 00:18:43,240
Speaker 3: and do the things we need to do, we sometimes

320
00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:46,240
Speaker 3: shut out that suffering because it's useful for us, right,

321
00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:48,919
Speaker 3: It's useful for us not to be delayed as we

322
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:52,720
Speaker 3: rush about our daily lives. That's not a novel finding.

323
00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:55,960
Speaker 3: We've known that since the nineteen seventies. Research and the

324
00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:00,240
Speaker 3: bystander effect, for instance, demonstrated that. So the buyside under

325
00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:02,760
Speaker 3: a fact. There's a really fun set of studies where,

326
00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:06,119
Speaker 3: in the most famous case, they brought in a bunch

327
00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:09,800
Speaker 3: of theology students, people practicing to be pastors and priests,

328
00:19:10,359 --> 00:19:13,479
Speaker 3: and they had them think about the Good Samaritan and

329
00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:15,720
Speaker 3: come up with a samon around the theme of the

330
00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:19,360
Speaker 3: Good Samaritan. So they're thinking about helping people, and then

331
00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:22,359
Speaker 3: they tell them, oh, we're sorry. This room booking we

332
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:24,679
Speaker 3: have with the experiment, we lost it, so we have

333
00:19:24,760 --> 00:19:27,600
Speaker 3: to switch you to another room across campus. But we're

334
00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 3: running out of time, so could you hurry over there.

335
00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:33,920
Speaker 3: And these theology students hurrying out the building came across

336
00:19:33,920 --> 00:19:36,679
Speaker 3: someone lying on the street who seemed to need help,

337
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:39,879
Speaker 3: and very few of them stopped to help this person,

338
00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:42,360
Speaker 3: even though they were thinking about helping as they were

339
00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:46,040
Speaker 3: doing it, because again, it would have been inconvenient in

340
00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:48,439
Speaker 3: that moment to help, right, you're sort of focused on

341
00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:52,239
Speaker 3: your task at hand, which is rushing across campus. And

342
00:19:52,320 --> 00:19:55,240
Speaker 3: so I think that's one of the reasons you might

343
00:19:55,320 --> 00:20:00,359
Speaker 3: dehumanize someone because it saves a particular function. Reason you

344
00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:03,879
Speaker 3: might do it is because if I start thinking about

345
00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:07,040
Speaker 3: you as a human being, that brings with it a

346
00:20:07,040 --> 00:20:09,720
Speaker 3: bunch of moral obligations, and I think this is what

347
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:11,760
Speaker 3: might happen in the genocide cases.

348
00:20:12,359 --> 00:20:13,320
Speaker 4: So when I.

349
00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:15,240
Speaker 3: See you as a human being, there's a bunch of

350
00:20:15,320 --> 00:20:18,359
Speaker 3: rules that come with how I treat human beings. And

351
00:20:18,440 --> 00:20:22,160
Speaker 3: one rule says that I empathize with you if you're suffering, right,

352
00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:24,119
Speaker 3: I try to help you if I can. That's what

353
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:27,040
Speaker 3: human beings tend to do with other human beings. It's

354
00:20:27,080 --> 00:20:30,320
Speaker 3: in our very nature. In fact, some researchers think it's

355
00:20:30,320 --> 00:20:32,720
Speaker 3: why we evolve to be the species that we are,

356
00:20:32,840 --> 00:20:37,240
Speaker 3: because we're so helpful to other human beings. But I

357
00:20:37,359 --> 00:20:40,720
Speaker 3: may not have the capacity to be empathic towards you, right,

358
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:45,399
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm emotionally taxed, maybe I'm drained. And this is

359
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,199
Speaker 3: the sort of evidence we see when you look at

360
00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:52,200
Speaker 3: medical professionals, for instance, Right, they're dealing with suffering all day.

361
00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:56,440
Speaker 3: If they felt terrible for each suffering person they encountered, again,

362
00:20:56,480 --> 00:20:59,800
Speaker 3: they wouldn't get through the day, And so dehumanizing some

363
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:03,199
Speaker 3: and shutting down that part of the brain allows me

364
00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:07,160
Speaker 3: to not have to expand those resources and empathize with you,

365
00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:09,560
Speaker 3: and I can go about my business. And now the

366
00:21:09,680 --> 00:21:12,719
Speaker 3: morality isn't salient, So I don't have to feel guilty

367
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:15,200
Speaker 3: about not helping you, Right, I don't have to worry

368
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,879
Speaker 3: about the fact that I might see myself as a

369
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 3: terrible person.

370
00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:20,280
Speaker 4: Always, Yeah, you might think of.

371
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:22,920
Speaker 3: Me as a terrible person because I didn't even process

372
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:25,119
Speaker 3: you as a person to begin with, right, I didn't

373
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:27,879
Speaker 3: get those parts of my brain going. And so we

374
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:30,920
Speaker 3: have a lot of evidence for those kinds of explanations

375
00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 3: for why dehumanization happens. But again, we can't study it

376
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:37,639
Speaker 3: in the genoci context because that's an ethical so we

377
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:42,000
Speaker 3: do things like liquid medical care professionals look at cases

378
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:43,879
Speaker 3: with homeless people, that sort of stuff.

379
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:03,160
Speaker 1: This argues what you have argued is that social cognition

380
00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:08,199
Speaker 1: is actually quite flexible, and what are some of the

381
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:11,639
Speaker 1: other key factors that dial it down.

382
00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:17,920
Speaker 3: Another key factor is that feeling of negative moral feelings. Right,

383
00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:21,359
Speaker 3: So if I feel like I've done something horrible to someone,

384
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:24,000
Speaker 3: or I feel like my group has done something horrible

385
00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:26,919
Speaker 3: to another group, and I don't want to feel that guilt.

386
00:22:27,119 --> 00:22:29,440
Speaker 3: An easy way of getting rid of it is by saying, well,

387
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:32,439
Speaker 3: those people didn't really suffer because they're not quite human

388
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:35,359
Speaker 3: in the same way. And so you often see with

389
00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:38,320
Speaker 3: our groups who are subject to a lot of suffering,

390
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 3: narratives pop up around their capacity to endure that suffering,

391
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:43,240
Speaker 3: for instance.

392
00:22:43,359 --> 00:22:44,360
Speaker 4: Right, so you.

393
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:48,560
Speaker 3: Get these stories about some types of groups being superhuman,

394
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:52,040
Speaker 3: for instance, and having a great capacity to deal with

395
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,880
Speaker 3: pain and suffering. So the actual suffering the experiencing isn't

396
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 3: that bad because they're not quite human. Right, So if

397
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 3: it will me going through what they went through, I

398
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,359
Speaker 3: would feel horrible. But because they're not quite human the

399
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 3: way I am, it's not really that bad. So I

400
00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 3: don't have to feel that terrible about the horrible thing

401
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:11,399
Speaker 3: that I did. So I can sort of dehumanize as

402
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:14,840
Speaker 3: a way to protect myself in the face of evidence

403
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 3: that I haven't been a great person, for instance.

404
00:23:17,800 --> 00:23:21,440
Speaker 1: From your perspective, what are the main roots the main

405
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 1: psychological roots to dehumanization. Is it things like unfamiliarity, or

406
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: is it perceived immorality, or is it the borders of

407
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:32,400
Speaker 1: our own in groups?

408
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 3: I think they are multiple roots to dehumanization because it's

409
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 3: a very useful tool for a range of situations. So

410
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:43,959
Speaker 3: these days we've been doing some interesting work. I'm going

411
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:49,160
Speaker 3: into caring domains beyond just medical professionals, and we're looking

412
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 3: at parents and their kids, for instance. And so imagine

413
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 3: you have a five year old and you've already given

414
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:57,639
Speaker 3: you a five year old some treat for the afternoon,

415
00:23:58,160 --> 00:24:00,920
Speaker 3: and they've come back to you begging for more, tears

416
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 3: streaming down their face. What that kid is doing is

417
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 3: tugging at your empathic strings, right, You're trying to get

418
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:08,639
Speaker 3: you to feel sorry for them, so you do what

419
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:10,919
Speaker 3: they want you to do. If you want to be

420
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 3: a responsible parent, you have to somehow shut that out

421
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:17,359
Speaker 3: right and find a way to stick to your guns

422
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 3: and tell them that's the limit for today. And so

423
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 3: doing that means you have to ignore their perceived suffering,

424
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,399
Speaker 3: right because the tears streaming down their face makes it

425
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 3: seem like they're suffering. And so having a flexibility, having

426
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 3: a tool that lets us shut that out and say nope,

427
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 3: that's final, allows you to stick to your goal in

428
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 3: the particular case of taking care of that kid. So

429
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:44,879
Speaker 3: we've been interested in cases where dehumanization needs the benefits.

430
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 3: For instance, right, because I've shut out your mind, it

431
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 3: allows me to do some stuff that I wouldn't have

432
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,440
Speaker 3: otherwise been able to do because now I'm not quite

433
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 3: processing you in the same way. That's exactly what we

434
00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,119
Speaker 3: see with domadical professionals who are actually.

435
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 4: Trained interview human beings like that. Right.

436
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 3: They're taught to view the body as that machinery, a

437
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 3: biological machinery, and the medico curriculum really pounds that in,

438
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 3: and so they learn, both sort of explicitly and just

439
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 3: true practice that they need to shut these people suffering out.

440
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,919
Speaker 3: And shutting out the suffering requires you to shortsake at

441
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 3: these social cognitive processes.

442
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: I want to return to this question about, let's say,

443
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: on a larger political cultural level, what are the things

444
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: that make it easy to dehumanize another groups? So the

445
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 1: examples I gave you know, I'm unfamiliar with them, I

446
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:40,440
Speaker 1: just don't know enough about them, or I perceive them

447
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: as immoral in some way, or I have boundaries to

448
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: my group, you know, my in group and my outgroup,

449
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: and they are clearly on the other side of the outgroup.

450
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: What are the important things and what else do you

451
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: see is the roots to dehumanization.

452
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 3: I think in the end to group space, we have

453
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 3: to be careful because we have these ideas about dehumanization

454
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 3: doing a lot of heavy lifting when we don't have

455
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 3: a lot of scientific evidence for it. And I think

456
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:13,640
Speaker 3: that's because there are multiple processes operating. So if there's

457
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 3: a group that I'm unfamiliar with, yes, unfamiliarity might promote dehumanization,

458
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 3: but unfamiliarity can also permit a desire to learn more

459
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:26,160
Speaker 3: about this particular group, right, So it can go both ways.

460
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,160
Speaker 3: I think what sort of helps is when you have

461
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:33,360
Speaker 3: a combination of these processes coming together, then dehumanization can

462
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 3: be useful. So let's say that this outgroup you have

463
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,360
Speaker 3: in the past has done some wrong to you, so

464
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 3: you know that they're established as a particular threat. Here,

465
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 3: dehumanization is not going to be helpful because if someone

466
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,680
Speaker 3: is threatening you, you kind of want to know their intentions, right,

467
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 3: You want to know what it is that they have

468
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 3: in store for you. So dehumanization on its own isn't

469
00:26:56,119 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 3: going to do the work. Now, let's assume that the

470
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 3: same our group that you view is threatening, you're able

471
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,240
Speaker 3: to do something about it. So now I've done some

472
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:09,920
Speaker 3: horrible thing to them to mitigate the potential threat. When

473
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 3: I reflect on that behavior, I might feel terrible. Now,

474
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 3: dehumanization becomes useful to shut out those negative feelings I

475
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 3: have around the thing I did to the group. So

476
00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:25,479
Speaker 3: I often tell people I don't think dehumanization motivates things

477
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 3: like political violence. I think we have other psychological mechanisms

478
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 3: that are much better at getting us to be cruel

479
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 3: and violent to other human beings. But I think dehumanization

480
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 3: is able to sustain it, right, because what it does

481
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:41,719
Speaker 3: is it shuts out the suffering of the group that

482
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 3: you've now done something horrible too, so it lets the

483
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 3: violence keep going. So for me, dehumanization is really problematic

484
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 3: when you're already in a bad place. So if there's

485
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 3: already animosity between groups and you get political violence going,

486
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 3: now I worry about dehumanism because the horse has already

487
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,879
Speaker 3: left the stable, so to speak, and dehumanization is going

488
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 3: to keep.

489
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 4: That violence going.

490
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 3: So I don't see it as the motivator.

491
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 4: Right.

492
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 3: The analogy I often use is, I don't think dehumanization

493
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 3: is going to cause you to pick up a machete

494
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:19,120
Speaker 3: and go to your neighbor's front door. But when you're

495
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:22,120
Speaker 3: in the process of kicking that door in dehumanization might

496
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:24,400
Speaker 3: be useful, right to shut out their mind when you're

497
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 3: doing the horror black We have no evidence for that scientifically.

498
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,479
Speaker 3: But then afterwards you have to live with yourself, and

499
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 3: here's where dehumanization is particularly useful, because it allows you

500
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 3: to live with the things that you've done. Because you've

501
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 3: now viewed the other person as not quite human, morality

502
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 3: goes out the window. So in these cases of integroup conflict,

503
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 3: we tend to focus on dehumanization because it has a

504
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 3: bad reputation and it is playing a role, but I

505
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 3: feel like it can often mask some of these other

506
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 3: psychological processes like threat, for instance, which is really what

507
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 3: drives a lot of the violence and the animosity. But

508
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 3: they were hand in hand, right Our job as psychologists

509
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 3: is picking these things apart, but in reality, they often

510
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,000
Speaker 3: occur in sequence, they co occur, and that's the part

511
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 3: of it that we're working actively to figure out.

512
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: I totally agree with your intuition on this, because you know,

513
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: when I look at a squirrel that is dehumanized, for me,

514
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: it's more like an object.

515
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 2: But I have no desire to harm that squirrel. But

516
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 2: if the squirrel were.

517
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 1: Rabid and charging at me, and I felt a threat

518
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: and so on, that might lead me to feel like

519
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: I need to do something in a way that I

520
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't feel terrible about.

521
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 2: So I agree with you on that.

522
00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: You have other studies about putting a price on people

523
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: and what that does in terms of these networks that

524
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 1: are involved in dehumanization.

525
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 2: Tell us about that.

526
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, once we did the classic dehumanization, we're GRAVI

527
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 3: loked at it in a group context. I really wanted

528
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 3: some evidence of this being more of an everyday thing.

529
00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 3: So I didn't just I didn't imagine dehumanization just evolving

530
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 3: and functioning because we have to deal with our groups.

531
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 3: I thought it might occur in cases where you didn't

532
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 3: just need to process people's minds for a host of reasons,

533
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 3: and one reason might be because you're actually outcome dependent

534
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 3: in someone. So what we did is we looked at

535
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 3: a labor market context, and to do this we used

536
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 3: essentially a fantasy football league.

537
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 4: So the idea really came.

538
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 3: From an interview I heard an NFL player give many

539
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 3: years ago, where he was injured and he couldn't play,

540
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 3: and he received all of this horrible abuse from fans

541
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 3: online because he couldn't play, and a lot of the

542
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 3: fans were abusing him because their fantasy teams would suffer,

543
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 3: right because he wasn't going to make any points for

544
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 3: them that particular week. And he said that he felt

545
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 3: very dehumanized. Now, no one's going to shed a tear

546
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 3: for a very highly paid professional athlete saying that they're dehumanized,

547
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 3: But it did suggest that there's something about being in

548
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 3: a labor market that might promote that kind of outlet.

549
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 3: So what we did in our studies we essentially created

550
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 3: a fantasy league, a fantasy time estimation league. We didn't

551
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 3: have athletes available. We took regular people off the street

552
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 3: and sort of put them in a league where they

553
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 3: had to guess different intervals of time. We then brought

554
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 3: other people in, gave them some money and had them

555
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 3: purchase some of these people to be on their team.

556
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 3: And then these people they purchased, these players would go

557
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 3: out and compete, and if they won, they want money

558
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 3: for the owners, just as it works in sports leagues

559
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 3: or any other type of labor market. And what we

560
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 3: found is that the owners, the ones who had purchased.

561
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 3: These players were dehumanizing the players, but just the ones

562
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 3: that they had purchased, not all of them, right, because

563
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 3: the ones they had purchased they are now outcome dependent on.

564
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 3: What matters for them winning money is that they get

565
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 3: these guesses correct, just like that football player.

566
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 4: Right.

567
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 3: What matters is that you go out there and you perform.

568
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 3: I don't care what's in your head. Is win me

569
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 3: any money? I don't care what your intentions are. All

570
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 3: that matters is that you're competent in the thing that

571
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 3: I'm paying you for, essentially, And so we found some

572
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 3: evidence that in these labor market context right, people become

573
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 3: sort of cogs in a machine. Now, again, there's not

574
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 3: a lot of novelty there. People like Marks have been

575
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 3: saying that for quite some time, but it's fun to

576
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 3: get some brain imaging evidence for it as well.

577
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: Do you find that certain people are more or less

578
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 1: prone to dehumanization of others?

579
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it goes in the opposite way you might think.

580
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 3: So the people who believe that they are very good

581
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 3: people and they never do anything wrong, those are the

582
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 3: ones most likely to dehumanize others, because those are the

583
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 3: ones that have this need to protect this idea of

584
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 3: themselves that they are a morally good person. If you

585
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 3: accept that sometimes you're good and sometimes you're not, then

586
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 3: you don't tend to dehumanize as much because you're not

587
00:32:56,840 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 3: as invested in protecting this self image you have of

588
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 3: being being a morally good person. So it's actually an

589
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 3: ironic effect whether people that think of themselves as being

590
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 3: very good people are the most likely to dehumanize.

591
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 4: At Lisnawa Resarch.

592
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: You know, this is really interesting because so I did

593
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: a study years ago where I was looking at in

594
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: groups and outgroups and essentially you're looking at hands getting

595
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: stabbed on the screen, and they all have a label Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Scientologist, atheists,

596
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 1: and depending on your in group, you have a larger response.

597
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: And let's summarize this as the pain matrix to your

598
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: own in group hand getting stabbed then any of your outgroups.

599
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: And this was true across everybody, including atheists, by the way,

600
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: who care more when they see atheist hands getting stabbed.

601
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: But we also did questionnaires about how people saw themselves

602
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: in terms of their empathy, and we actually found something

603
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: very similar, which is that the people who felt they

604
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: were more empathic actually had a larger difference between their

605
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: in group recons response and their outgroup response. This very

606
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: low level neural response. So one interpretation that we considered

607
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: was that maybe when they're being asked the question about empathy,

608
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:14,360
Speaker 1: they are thinking about their in group.

609
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 2: You know, how would you.

610
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 1: Feel if you saw someone twist their ankle and fall

611
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: off the sidewalk. Maybe they're just thinking about their own

612
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 1: in group, and that's why they rate themselves as empathic.

613
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: But this is very interesting what you're saying, because you

614
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:29,319
Speaker 1: found something similar here that people's responses seem to run

615
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 1: counter to what's actually happening in their brains.

616
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I think you've seen evidence of this in

617
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 3: other places as well.

618
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 4: Right.

619
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,479
Speaker 3: So I have a collaborator that studies compassion. He gets

620
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 3: a very similar result, Right, the people that identify as

621
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 3: the most compassionate and the least likely to engage in compassion.

622
00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 3: You see it also with things like racism. Right, there's

623
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 3: a really interesting study where people that say, well, I

624
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 3: don't like black people, for instance, I'm the ones that

625
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 3: show huge implicit bias scores. This is a measure of

626
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 3: people sort of subtle racist beliefs. But the ones that

627
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 3: say they love black people and they have a bunch

628
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 3: of friends and they egalitarian, they're the ones that tend

629
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 3: to show these bigger differences. So I think it speaks

630
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 3: to a commonality about some of these psychological processes and

631
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 3: how they function.

632
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 4: Right.

633
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 3: That is, if you view yourself in a particular way,

634
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 3: you're invested in protecting that view of yourself and that

635
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 3: might obscure some of these other biases that you might have. Now,

636
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,719
Speaker 3: saying that has become very unpopular because it seems to

637
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 3: be an attack against people that who are very positive

638
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:41,400
Speaker 3: views of themselves. But the goal here isn't necessarily to

639
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 3: criticize those people. It's simply to make people aware that

640
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:49,879
Speaker 3: their self perceptions have an impact in the psychological processes

641
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 3: that they're able to then display towards others. And so

642
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 3: it's really important, I think, when we think about ourselves

643
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 3: to be honest with ourselves, right, and to realize that

644
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 3: we're just here and we're going to have good sides

645
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:04,879
Speaker 3: and bad sides and that's okay, right.

646
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 4: Yeah.

647
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: So is it possible that the neural responses we're seeing,

648
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 1: at least in some cases, are rivalries between different networks,

649
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:18,280
Speaker 1: some of which are saying, Hey, I'm actually feeling this way,

650
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 1: but I perceive myself that way and I like to

651
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,239
Speaker 1: present myself socially that way. And what we're seeing is

652
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: a big response because of this conflict.

653
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 3: Quite possibly, quite possibly, it's hard to rule that out.

654
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 3: I think of it in a very straightforward sense, and

655
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 3: the fact that what's really important to us as human beings,

656
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,480
Speaker 3: one of the many goals we have is to maintain

657
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 3: a positive self image and a positive view of ourselves.

658
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 3: If you don't have a positive view of yourself, you

659
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 3: tend to slip into mental illness, depression, those sort of issues,

660
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 3: and so it's really important we maintain that, and there

661
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 3: are lots of ways we can do it. We do

662
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 3: it through groups, right, if we belong to groups that

663
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 3: are prestigious. Those prestigious groups allow us to sort of

664
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:04,400
Speaker 3: for any negativity about ourselves, which is why everyone puts

665
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 3: on their team's football t shirt when they're winning, right,

666
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 3: And so you want that positivity that comes with it.

667
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 3: This desire we have to maintain this positive view of

668
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 3: our selves can now get in the way, right, So

669
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 3: it gets in the way of our typical psychological functioning.

670
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,360
Speaker 3: So if I've done something horrible. I want to feel

671
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 3: better about myself. An easy way to do that might

672
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 3: be to engage in some of these processes we've been

673
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 3: talking about. So I always give the anecdote of let's

674
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 3: imagine that you have a house that you would like

675
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 3: to sell. So you're living in this house, you decide

676
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 3: you need to move.

677
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 4: You want to sell.

678
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 3: It till happens your best friend is a realtor. Now

679
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:47,400
Speaker 3: they're your best friends, so you know that they're a

680
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 3: terrible realtor. They never get asking price, they always complain

681
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 3: about it, They worry about their job security because of it.

682
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:57,799
Speaker 3: Do you go to your friend and say, can you

683
00:37:57,840 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 3: sell my house?

684
00:37:59,520 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: Now?

685
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,239
Speaker 3: If you're thinking about the friendship and the way your

686
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 3: friend might view you, you might say, Okay, I'm going

687
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 3: to go talk to them to sell my house, knowing

688
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 3: you'll make a huge loss. But if you focus on

689
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 3: the fact that I need to make a profit from

690
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 3: selling this house so I can buy the next one,

691
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 3: you'll probably keep that away from your friend.

692
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 4: Right, you might go.

693
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 3: Elsewhere that doesn't make you a terrible place or a

694
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:24,920
Speaker 3: terrible friend. Right, you're doing the thing that sort of

695
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 3: sensible and rational. But if you hold this view of

696
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 3: yourself as being a good friend, right, that can eat

697
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 3: you inside. Right, you're probably going to be led as straight.

698
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 3: And so oftentimes these self perceptions we have leaders astray

699
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 3: lead us into paths that are suboptimal for ourselves but

700
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:43,840
Speaker 3: also people around us as well.

701
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: I want to return to one point before we move

702
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: on to the next thing, which is you mentioned that

703
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 1: dehumanization may not be sufficient for groups of people to

704
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,800
Speaker 1: take violent action against their neighbors. What are the psychological

705
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: factors that are involved in that, because threat obviously is one.

706
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: But you know, when I think about dehumanization, probably for

707
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 1: many of us, we think about things like just as

708
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: one example, there's this famous picture of a Nazi soldier

709
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: who's got his rifle aimed at a woman holding her baby,

710
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: and he's about to execute them both, and the woman

711
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: and baby are obviously terrified he's about to shoot them.

712
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: His colleague took the photograph and he proudly sent this

713
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: photograph back to his family. And the only way that

714
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:37,319
Speaker 1: sort of behavior is possible is with total dehumanization. But

715
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: clearly the woman and the baby are not a threat

716
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 1: to him. So what are the psychological factors that allow

717
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 1: for that sort of violence.

718
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's hard because there's a timeline here,

719
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 3: a timeline element that we never really talk about. So

720
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 3: it could be that that soldier who has taken the

721
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 3: picture and his friend have already gotten to the point

722
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 3: where they've dehumanized the enemy. And this is something that

723
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 3: we see a lot in police forces, in militaries, where

724
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 3: as part of your training, much like the medical professionals,

725
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 3: you're taught to view the enemy in a particular sort

726
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,760
Speaker 3: of way, again, because it makes it easier to engage

727
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 3: in these types of behaviors. Now that doesn't mean it's

728
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 3: motivating you to shoot the person, right, but it means

729
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:28,359
Speaker 3: that upon shooting the person, you don't have the negativity

730
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 3: that would typically come from it. And so sorting out

731
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 3: that timeline is one of the challenges that we haven't

732
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 3: quite cracked in the psychology literature. Which process comes first

733
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 3: in that task? Gape there's a wonderful book written by

734
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 3: a historian Browning is his last name, where he interviewed

735
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 3: a bunch of people at Nazi dead squads and he

736
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,239
Speaker 3: basically asks them, why did you do some of the

737
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 3: horrible things that you did? And for a lot of them,

738
00:40:55,680 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 3: their story starts with threats from the Nazi regime where

739
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 3: they had to enlist and they had to engage in

740
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,359
Speaker 3: these behaviors or their own families were threatened, so they

741
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 3: got into these behaviors initially for their own sort of

742
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 3: self protection and preservation. It's essentially because they were threatened.

743
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 3: Once they got into the behaviors and they started engaging

744
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 3: in these behaviors, now they needed a mechanism to keep going,

745
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:25,240
Speaker 3: to keep doing these behaviors, and that's where dehumanization is handy.

746
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 4: Now.

747
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 3: A lot of people in those interviews also said, well,

748
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 3: I always miss my shot, right, so I never aimed

749
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 3: at the people. I always shot outswhere, knowing that in

750
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 3: a firing squad somebody would probably shoot them didn't have

751
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 3: to be me. So not everyone was going directly to

752
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 3: this place where you're now dehumanizing. But in these contexts,

753
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:47,799
Speaker 3: dehumanization is very useful because it allows you to keep

754
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 3: engaging in behaviors that you may have started because you

755
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,279
Speaker 3: felt threatened. But now that you've already engaged in them,

756
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 3: you need a way of living with yourself. There's a

757
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 3: time course element where dehumanization comes later. It's not the

758
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 3: motive right at the front. That may just seem like

759
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 3: an academic distinction, but I think it's really important. And

760
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 3: you think about prosecuting people for war crimes, for instance,

761
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:15,760
Speaker 3: where they view dehumanization as demotive, but you can't really

762
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 3: get evidence of that because people in the Dutch squad

763
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 3: say I didn't do it because I dehumanize them.

764
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:22,800
Speaker 4: I felt like I have no choice.

765
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: Well, let's take something like, for example, in America and

766
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 1: in many places in the world, we happen to be

767
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 1: in a very polarized era and there is violence that

768
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: keeps cropping up. This violence doesn't happen because somebody feels

769
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:40,240
Speaker 1: that they're being recruited and the government is threatening their family.

770
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,719
Speaker 1: This is happening for other sorts of reasons. I often

771
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: think about in group and out group issues. But what

772
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: do you see as the main psychological dribes that allow violence.

773
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:53,280
Speaker 1: We agree that dehumanization might be a later piece.

774
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 3: I think part of it is identity. So people in

775
00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 3: a particular group may feel that they have to engage

776
00:42:59,880 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 3: in certain behaviors to be a good member of that group,

777
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 3: and that's one thing we can't ignore. So sociologists have

778
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 3: done some interesting work looking at propaganda and the themes

779
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 3: in propaganda, Right, the kinds of things that propaganda's talk about.

780
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 3: Dehumanization is present, but it's not the most popular thing.

781
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:23,360
Speaker 3: What ends up happening is a lot more talk about threat,

782
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 3: obviously how threatening the other group are, but also a

783
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:29,399
Speaker 3: lot of talk about what you do as a good

784
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 3: member of this group. Right, if you are really a

785
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 3: good member of this group, these are the kinds of

786
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 3: behaviors you engage in. So I feel like a lot

787
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 3: of the political violence you see in the US is

788
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 3: motivated by identity, right, people believing that as a good

789
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 3: member of this group, these are the kinds of things

790
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:50,280
Speaker 3: I should do. So, for instance, why would I sign

791
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 3: up to an organization like ICE. It's not because someone

792
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 3: has forced me to do it. It's because I feel like,

793
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:00,040
Speaker 3: as a good American, there's this real problem in the

794
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 3: country around immigrants, and I should do something about it

795
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 3: if I'm able to. And one way I can do

796
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:08,319
Speaker 3: that is joining this organization which is working towards.

797
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 4: Addressing this problem.

798
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,279
Speaker 3: So those are identity issues that get you signed up

799
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 3: in the first place. Now, when you're out in the

800
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 3: field and you're happening to be engaging in violence because

801
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 3: you're caught in that particular situation where violence becomes necessary.

802
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 3: Maybe you feel threatened at a riot, for instance, how

803
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 3: do you make sense of that. That's when I think

804
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 3: dehumanization is handy. So now I have to explain why

805
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 3: I've done these things that my identity says I must do.

806
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 3: It's because they're not quite people in the way that

807
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:40,800
Speaker 3: way people. And so you often see in the propagandis

808
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 3: rhetoric dehumanization occurring, but strong messages around identity that really

809
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 3: gives you information about what a good member of this

810
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 3: group does, and strong messaging around the threat that the

811
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 3: art group presents as well, right, which potentially motivates you

812
00:44:57,360 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 3: to feel like you have to defend yourself open your country.

813
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 3: So I think the multiple psychological factors that go into

814
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 3: these kinds of political violence, and I don't think there's

815
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 3: one that we can point at and say it's the

816
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,880
Speaker 3: most critical one, because they're all having a role at

817
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 3: different points in the cascade.

818
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: Okay, now I want to switch gears to talk about anthropomorphization,

819
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: which is the flip side of dehumanization. We often attribute

820
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 1: minds to things that don't have them, like our pets

821
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,760
Speaker 1: or characters in the Pixar film or the moving shapes

822
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier. Why what's going on with

823
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: anthromorphization and what does this have to do with dehumanization.

824
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that juxtaposition between the two is what I

825
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 3: find really fascinating. So anthwer momorphism occurs because it's so

826
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 3: useful to get these mechanisms going, Right, Like, when I

827
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 3: think about what's going on inside of your head, it

828
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 3: allows me to explain your behavior. Right, I can attribute

829
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 3: it to your personality, or your psychological mood or your

830
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 3: emotional state. Right, I can say you threw that chair

831
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,240
Speaker 3: across the room because you were upset, and that gives

832
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:29,360
Speaker 3: me a reason to explain your potentially erratic behavior. But

833
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 3: it also lets me predict your behavior. It lets me

834
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,439
Speaker 3: say what you're likely to do the next time you're

835
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:38,359
Speaker 3: in a situation where you potentially get into that psychological state. Right,

836
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 3: you're the kind of person that flings chairs about. That's

837
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 3: really useful, and we want to use that when we

838
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,799
Speaker 3: encounter things in the world that we might want to

839
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 3: explain and predict the behavior of as well. So I

840
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 3: think you saw a lot of anthropomorphism throughout human history.

841
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 3: When it came to things like weather. Right, if there's

842
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 3: suddenly a storm or a drought, we usually pray to

843
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 3: the race God so that there's more rain, because it

844
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 3: helps us explain and predict the occurrence of the weather.

845
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 3: And we still do it right. We anthropomorphize hurricanes and

846
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 3: give them names and talk about their behavior as if

847
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,359
Speaker 3: they were people because it's a handy explanatory mechanism. So

848
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 3: we have this psychological process in our head that gives

849
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 3: us explanations and allows us to predict.

850
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 4: Stuff that's really handy to you.

851
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 3: So if I'm interacting with my pet, of course I'm

852
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 3: going to infer a mind there one because the pet

853
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 3: actually has a mind, And pets are a gray area

854
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 3: for us for exactly this reason, because there is a

855
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 3: mind there. But even when there isn't, for instance, when

856
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 3: I'm talking to chat GPT, right, it's better for me

857
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 3: to think of it like a person and sort of

858
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 3: triggered the social cognitive processes because I can better understand

859
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 3: it and predict what it might do. And that's really important.

860
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 3: As I move around the will interacting with stuff that

861
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 3: seem to have minds of their own.

862
00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: And so you recently wrote a review where you looked

863
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 1: at the way we've you humans and the way we

864
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: view AI agents, and what do you find there and

865
00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:08,959
Speaker 1: what's interesting and surprising given the increasing presence of AI

866
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: in our lives.

867
00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the early in my career philosopher once

868
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 3: gave me a challenge that he said, if you're anthropomorphizing,

869
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 3: don't you still know the thing isn't actually a human?

870
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 3: And it turns out he's right. When the brain anthropomorphise,

871
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 3: it tends to use a slightly separate network so that

872
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 3: you can still maintain that distinction. Right, because even when

873
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 3: you're anthropomorphizing, you're still not treating it quite like a

874
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:41,240
Speaker 3: human being. So I could play against a computer in chess,

875
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 3: and if the computer is beating me, I could unplug

876
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 3: the computer. Right, I could do something that I wouldn't

877
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:48,959
Speaker 3: do it another human being. Right, if a human being

878
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,240
Speaker 3: is beating me, I'm not going to upset the chess board.

879
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:55,280
Speaker 3: That's horrible. That's going to damage my potential reputation because

880
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 3: when I'm interacting with the human, I'm also worrying about

881
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 3: what does this human think about me. When I'm anthropomorphizing

882
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 3: the computer, I don't care what it thinks about me, Right,

883
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 3: that's irrelevant because it's not a person. It's not going

884
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 3: to tell anybody that I'm a horrible loser. And so

885
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:14,760
Speaker 3: there are these such a differences that occuld for things

886
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 3: that are human and things that aren't human that the

887
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 3: brain still preserves as it's anthropomorphizing. So it's using some

888
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 3: of the mechanisms, some of the social cognition, but not

889
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 3: all of it. If it were a complete overlapping processes,

890
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, and then

891
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 3: there'd be much more talk about the rights of pets

892
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 3: and the rights of AI. But we don't have big

893
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 3: conversations about the rights of AI because we don't quite

894
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 3: see them as human beings. Despite the fact I can

895
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 3: have an hour long conversation with Alexa and tell her

896
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 3: about all of my problems and asks for advice, right

897
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 3: as I might with another human being, at the end

898
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:54,319
Speaker 3: of the day, the brain knows the difference and preserves it.

899
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 3: The worry for me with your question about the prevalence

900
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 3: of AI is whether that distinction is eventually going to

901
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 3: go away. So will future generations of humans who have

902
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 3: now been interacting with AI as long as they've been

903
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 3: interacting with people suddenly lose that distinction, right, and suddenly

904
00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:16,360
Speaker 3: will we see a rising cases of people fighting for

905
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,839
Speaker 3: AI rights right. That to me is fascinating, very sci

906
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 3: fi stuff, but a potential possibility given how plastic de

907
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 3: brain is and how it's willing to adapt or circumstances.

908
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:32,560
Speaker 3: So these are the kinds of things that I think

909
00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 3: about in the AI ethics space that I don't see

910
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 3: tons of conversations about.

911
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: It strikes me that maybe part of the difference in

912
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:44,719
Speaker 1: the way we humanize another person and humanize CHETCHPT might

913
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: have to do with all the consequences that we might

914
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,399
Speaker 1: envelop in this, like, oh, it's another person, so it's

915
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: a repeated game where we're going back and forth and

916
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,960
Speaker 1: their legal consequences if I kill my chest opponent as

917
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: opposed to unplug the computer and so on. So as

918
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: long as those other consequences remain the same as in

919
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: I'll still get busted for hurting a human, but I

920
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 1: won't for a computer, then you know, maybe maybe we

921
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: won't come to ANTHROPOMORPHISEI in the same way.

922
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 3: You have great faith. You have great faith in the law.

923
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 3: I have less faith in its ability to drive behavior.

924
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 3: I think reputation is a big one, right, So I think,

925
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:31,759
Speaker 3: for instance, why do you why are you polite to strangers?

926
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 3: There's no reason for you to be polite to a stranger.

927
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 3: We live in a world of eight billion people. Chances

928
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:41,959
Speaker 3: are that stranger will never see you again, We'll never

929
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:44,399
Speaker 3: know who your friends are, won't be able to tell

930
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 3: people that you were impolite to them, therefore affect your reputation.

931
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 3: But we evolved in very small groups of human beings

932
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 3: where reputation was paramount, right, it really mattered, and so

933
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 3: we learned to treat other people nicely whilst there were

934
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:04,279
Speaker 3: damaging consequences for our reputation. That has somehow held on

935
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 3: in our brain, and we still have this belief that

936
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:09,760
Speaker 3: when we encounter another human being we have to treat

937
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 3: them in a particular sort of way to manage potential

938
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 3: damage to our reputation. That's not a concern we have

939
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 3: with AI, for instance. But what could change is if

940
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 3: AI now goes about spreading information about your reputation. So

941
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 3: if every time my interaction with Alexa was recorded in

942
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 3: her memory bank somewhere, and the next time somebody used

943
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:34,640
Speaker 3: Alexa it said, you know that guy David Eagelman, He.

944
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 4: Was really mean to me.

945
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,240
Speaker 3: I think we will start caring about, right, what Alexa

946
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 3: thinks about us, And so I don't know if the

947
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 3: legal changes will drive us to have the neural changes,

948
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 3: but I think it's an issue of what is the

949
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,680
Speaker 3: technology capable of and how it's being used that's going

950
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 3: to drive these changes.

951
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:56,760
Speaker 2: Well, great, and this is a great segue to something.

952
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:04,279
Speaker 1: You have argued that legal systems should explicitly account for dehumanizations.

953
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,080
Speaker 1: So what's an example of one policy that you would

954
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: like to see Given your expertise in the neuroscience, what's

955
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:13,280
Speaker 1: something you would like to see changed in our legal system.

956
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 3: I think I've spent a lot of time talking about

957
00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 3: the stories that we tell with in a society and

958
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:24,440
Speaker 3: the things that are allowed to be said. So we

959
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:28,120
Speaker 3: have a censorship system, right that doesn't allow us to

960
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:31,720
Speaker 3: go on television or make media that does particular things.

961
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 3: Usually it's a wrong swearing and sexuality, things coming from

962
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:39,759
Speaker 3: our Protestant past that are holdovers. Nobody cares about those

963
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,919
Speaker 3: things today in quite the same way. I think we're

964
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 3: focused on the wrong stuff. I think we should be

965
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 3: focusing on stories that promote dehumanization of particular groups because

966
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 3: what it does is it facilitates any kind of violence

967
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 3: that might be occurring against them. So if you say

968
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 3: a particular group is eating dogs and cats, for instance,

969
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,720
Speaker 3: that's a dehumanizing image you've put out of that group.

970
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 3: That's very dangerous to me. And that's the kind of

971
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:08,680
Speaker 3: stuff I wish legal systems would pay more attention to,

972
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,120
Speaker 3: because those stories, whether you believe it or not, whether

973
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 3: you endorse them or not, they get into your heads,

974
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 3: and your brain is this powerful machine that's taking in

975
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 3: all of this information and holding it relevant. When you're

976
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:25,799
Speaker 3: in a situation where that information is potentially useful, that is,

977
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,960
Speaker 3: it can facilitate dehumanization of that group, it's going to

978
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 3: kick in, and that's what I really worry about. So

979
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 3: I really am one who promotes not necessarily a lack

980
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 3: of freedom of speech per se, but the kind of

981
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 3: careful monitoring that we use for domains that quite frankly

982
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 3: were relevant three hundred years ago that I think aren't

983
00:54:47,800 --> 00:54:50,240
Speaker 3: relevant today. So I would like to see less attention

984
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 3: to swear words, for instance, and more attention to dehumanizing

985
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 3: rhetoric about groups. Because even though someone says, oh Wes

986
00:54:56,800 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 3: said it ingest, it's a joke. Your brain doesn't register

987
00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:04,360
Speaker 3: that it makes that association, and that association can pop

988
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 3: out at any point. It's convenient to influence your psychological processing.

989
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:12,040
Speaker 3: So that's one of the sort of policy legal things

990
00:55:12,040 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 3: that I've been sort of promoting for for quite some time.

991
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 3: And that doesn't mean you take away the ability to

992
00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 3: say those things from people. You at least give people

993
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 3: the option to know that this content they might consume

994
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 3: does contain this kind of messaging, so they can make

995
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:29,360
Speaker 3: a conscious choice whether they want to be exposed.

996
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 4: To that or not.

997
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:32,680
Speaker 3: And we do that already with our rating system, right

998
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:35,319
Speaker 3: we say this is for mature audiences because it has

999
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:39,920
Speaker 3: sexually explicit language or scenes in it. Why can't we

1000
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:43,280
Speaker 3: do it with things that promote negative stereotypes about groups,

1001
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:47,319
Speaker 3: for instance, or has them in a dehumanized like And

1002
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:50,840
Speaker 3: this was my pet peeve with Disney for the longest time,

1003
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 3: and then recently I noticed that Disney started doing that

1004
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 3: right on some of their older programming. They now put

1005
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 3: up a warning saying there's a bunch of stereotypics representations

1006
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 3: in this programming. And so as the consumer, I can

1007
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:06,360
Speaker 3: make a choice. I can say I want to expose

1008
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 3: myself to that or I don't, And I think that's

1009
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,560
Speaker 3: a very simple change we can make that would have

1010
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 3: enormous consequences, positive consequence.

1011
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 1: Now switching from legal system to individuals. So if a

1012
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:24,840
Speaker 1: listener wants to reduce the amount of dialing down on

1013
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:27,839
Speaker 1: other people that they're doing, what are some practical take

1014
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:30,280
Speaker 1: home lessons that they can take away from this conversation.

1015
00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 3: I think depends on the contacts that they're in, but

1016
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 3: there are lots of strategies. And the case of homeless people,

1017
00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:42,319
Speaker 3: I always tell people just make eye contact, because that's

1018
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 3: the first thing you'll notice that people don't do right,

1019
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 3: and looking at someone's eyes gives you a lot of

1020
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 3: information about what might be going on inside of their heads.

1021
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 3: So if you simply looked at them in the face,

1022
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 3: that right there is going to make it less likely

1023
00:56:56,080 --> 00:57:00,600
Speaker 3: that you will shortsake these processes. If you're rave enough,

1024
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 3: have a conversation, ask them a question, ask them what

1025
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 3: they were planning to do today, Right, Like, those very

1026
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:12,160
Speaker 3: simple things that don't seem to matter much actually trigger

1027
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:13,720
Speaker 3: these processes.

1028
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 4: In a very rich sort of way.

1029
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:19,560
Speaker 3: In another context, and let's take the political violence context,

1030
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 3: where things are very polarized. I think another very simple

1031
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:26,040
Speaker 3: thing you could do is instead of listening to other

1032
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 3: people's opinions or points of view, is finding the commonalities right,

1033
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:33,480
Speaker 3: figuring out, well, what's the same thing that we have

1034
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:38,000
Speaker 3: in common. For instance, we're all Americans. We have a

1035
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 3: lot more in common with other human beings than we

1036
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 3: are different from them, and identifying these commonalities is often

1037
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 3: quite powerful for shifting how our brain process is people.

1038
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 3: And I'll give you an example of a case where

1039
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 3: I think this actually happens. So a few years ago,

1040
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:59,000
Speaker 3: we did a project with a charity in the UK

1041
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 3: called the Museum of Homelessness, and what they did was

1042
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:05,919
Speaker 3: this wonderful performance are piece where they got a bunch

1043
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:09,120
Speaker 3: of stories from homeless people about their daily lives, and

1044
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:12,600
Speaker 3: they got objects that these people donated, And one object

1045
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:15,680
Speaker 3: I really remember was a pack of cigarettes, and the

1046
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 3: guy who donated it said, oh, this is so meaningful

1047
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 3: to me because I need a coffee and a cigarette

1048
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 3: to start the day. And that resonates with lots of

1049
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 3: people who also have a similar experience, and so considering

1050
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 3: that person has a similar experience to you is sufficient

1051
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 3: to now trigger processing of them in a way that's very,

1052
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 3: very different. So in the polarization context, I often encourage

1053
00:58:38,600 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 3: people to look for the similarities if you're finding with

1054
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,440
Speaker 3: members of your own family. While that's in some sense

1055
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 3: easy to resolve because you have so many similarities you

1056
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 3: could talk about instead rather than the differences and the

1057
00:58:50,560 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 3: stuff that you know is going to cause friction. And

1058
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 3: then in some cases, I don't think we want to

1059
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,800
Speaker 3: get rid of the dehumanization. In the care context, for instance,

1060
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:03,160
Speaker 3: I think the dehumanization is very useful. I think what

1061
00:59:03,240 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 3: we want to do is be aware of when we're

1062
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 3: dehumanizing so it doesn't spiral out of control. So if

1063
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,560
Speaker 3: you're a physician and you're seeing a patient and you're

1064
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:16,040
Speaker 3: checking up on their treatment, that's when dehumanization is not relevant, right.

1065
00:59:16,560 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 3: You want to sort of care about them as a

1066
00:59:18,560 --> 00:59:21,040
Speaker 3: human being in that context, so you can ensure that

1067
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 3: whatever it is you're prescribing them is actually benefiting their

1068
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 3: psychological experience as a human being. You're not just treating

1069
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,560
Speaker 3: them as a number on a sheet or a person

1070
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 3: with a particular disease or ailment. When you're now operating

1071
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 3: on the operating table, dehumanization is useful there, right, because

1072
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 3: they're the broken machine. Analogy actually helps you get the

1073
00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 3: task done. So just being more aware of the context

1074
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:48,080
Speaker 3: in which we might be dehumanizing bass not, I think

1075
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 3: is powerful as.

1076
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 1: Well excellent if you think forward ten or twenty years,

1077
00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:56,200
Speaker 1: what would you like to understand the most about these

1078
00:59:56,280 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: issues of what causes us to turn on or turn

1079
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:01,200
Speaker 1: off onnderstanding someone else's mind.

1080
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 3: The timeline is a big one for me, especially in

1081
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 3: the context of violence, Like I really feel like that's

1082
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 3: the next not we have to crack to really understand

1083
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:16,120
Speaker 3: how these processes interact and how they can facilitate or

1084
01:00:16,160 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 3: inhibit violence. I think that's really crucial, especially in the

1085
01:00:19,360 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 3: time that we're living in. So for dehumanization, that's the big.

1086
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 4: One for me.

1087
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 3: The other one, which is not as big but also

1088
01:00:28,640 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 3: very interesting, is really trying to understand something about how

1089
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:35,200
Speaker 3: it is that we regulate these processes. So I've given

1090
01:00:35,240 --> 01:00:38,120
Speaker 3: you a bunch of reasons that you might regulate it,

1091
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:40,840
Speaker 3: but we don't have a lot of evidence in these

1092
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 3: heart circumstances where there's active violence or genocide occurring, political violence,

1093
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:49,440
Speaker 3: any of that stuff. So knowing how it is that

1094
01:00:49,480 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 3: some people are able not to engage in these behaviors

1095
01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 3: when all of the forces are pushing you to doing it.

1096
01:00:56,360 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 3: It's really important for providing us some strategies that might

1097
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:03,440
Speaker 3: help help the majority of people who fall victim to

1098
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 3: these psychological processes. So those are the two big ones

1099
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:09,800
Speaker 3: for me that we're trying to work on in the lab.

1100
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 3: They're very, very difficult, of course, because again you can't

1101
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:16,080
Speaker 3: do this work ethically quite well.

1102
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:18,480
Speaker 4: Right on, our.

1103
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 3: Lab studies feel like toy studies compared to what happens

1104
01:01:21,480 --> 01:01:22,400
Speaker 3: out in the real will.

1105
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 4: You talked about showing people.

1106
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:27,360
Speaker 3: Pictures of people getting their arms smashed, Right, if you

1107
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 3: did that in the real will and you actually witnessed that,

1108
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 3: they'd probably be so much more happening. And we're always

1109
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:35,520
Speaker 3: going to be constrained in that way. But I think

1110
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:38,280
Speaker 3: there are ways and methodologies who are developing to get

1111
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 3: around some of these hurdles where we can still do

1112
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:42,960
Speaker 3: the research in an ethical way and answer some of

1113
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:44,640
Speaker 3: these very important questions.

1114
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 1: That was my interview with social neuroscientist Lasana Harris. We

1115
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:56,040
Speaker 1: focused on this single superpower of the human brain, which

1116
01:01:56,080 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: is the ability to see minds in others. We have

1117
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 1: this machinery that lets us infer intentions, and that's how

1118
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,240
Speaker 1: we predict behavior, and we build trust and we coordinate.

1119
01:02:08,800 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: All of that depends on this neural infrastructure that models

1120
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:18,520
Speaker 1: other people as beings with interiority. This allows us to

1121
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: look at a face and hear a voice, and those

1122
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:26,560
Speaker 1: things become a portal into an imagined inner world. Now,

1123
01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:29,880
Speaker 1: Lasauna's work puts a spotlight on the fact that sometimes

1124
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:33,840
Speaker 1: these networks fail to engage in the presence of another

1125
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: human being. When his participants viewed images of stigmatized social

1126
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: groups like drug addicts or the homeless, the usual mind

1127
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 1: perception machinery cranks way down. So you can see this

1128
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:51,840
Speaker 1: in our everyday cognition, and you also see the issue

1129
01:02:51,880 --> 01:02:57,080
Speaker 1: writ larger in history's worst crimes. The brain can turn

1130
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 1: this dial, and once we see this, we start noticing

1131
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: the logic that makes it possible. Part of it is

1132
01:03:03,760 --> 01:03:09,360
Speaker 1: just triage. Human suffering is infinite, and your bandwidth is finite.

1133
01:03:09,680 --> 01:03:12,960
Speaker 1: If you were to fully simulate the inner world of

1134
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:16,800
Speaker 1: every person that you passed by, you would collapse under

1135
01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:20,480
Speaker 1: the weight of this. So the brain conserves and keeps

1136
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:23,480
Speaker 1: on trucking past most of it. And by the way,

1137
01:03:23,520 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: as we talked about if you are in a profession

1138
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:30,640
Speaker 1: where you get repeated exposure to suffering, that makes full

1139
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: empathy psychologically very expensive. So some professions like surgery train

1140
01:03:36,960 --> 01:03:41,800
Speaker 1: a style of perception that focuses on bodies as systems

1141
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:45,720
Speaker 1: and solvable mechanisms, because you have to dial those networks

1142
01:03:45,840 --> 01:03:48,760
Speaker 1: down to get the job done. Another part of the

1143
01:03:48,840 --> 01:03:52,200
Speaker 1: logic of dialing these networks around has to do with

1144
01:03:52,360 --> 01:03:56,720
Speaker 1: moral self protection. If you see someone as fully human

1145
01:03:57,160 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 1: and that brings moral obligations, then dampening your mind perception

1146
01:04:01,600 --> 01:04:05,360
Speaker 1: can reduce your guilt and internal conflict. Lasana and I

1147
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 1: both talked about the irony in our studies that people

1148
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:14,080
Speaker 1: who strongly view themselves as morally good or highly empathic

1149
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:19,720
Speaker 1: sometimes show stronger patterns of dehumanization, and his interpretation was

1150
01:04:19,760 --> 01:04:24,920
Speaker 1: that the psyche has to defend its self image. And finally,

1151
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:28,920
Speaker 1: one of Lasana's key points is about sequencing in time.

1152
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:32,720
Speaker 1: In his model, violent action gets driven by things like

1153
01:04:33,280 --> 01:04:38,000
Speaker 1: threat and in group out group identity issues, and dehumanization

1154
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 1: can sustain the violence the exact timeline of when each

1155
01:04:42,640 --> 01:04:46,880
Speaker 1: process enters this cascade. This really matters for science and

1156
01:04:46,960 --> 01:04:51,440
Speaker 1: society because it points to different sorts of interventions is

1157
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:56,760
Speaker 1: the important part about reducing threat perception, or reshaping stories

1158
01:04:56,760 --> 01:05:02,840
Speaker 1: about identity, or changing our media environments, or training awareness

1159
01:05:03,040 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 1: around the moments when mind perception starts to get dialed down.

1160
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 1: And we also talked about the flip side, which is anthropomorphism.

1161
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:15,280
Speaker 1: And this is timely because we are surrounding ourselves with

1162
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 1: synthetic entities that emit the cues that our social brains

1163
01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:24,840
Speaker 1: have evolved for. So Lasauna asks whether children who grow

1164
01:05:24,920 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 1: up with AI agents and robots will have a shift

1165
01:05:28,720 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: in their human machine distinction and whether that will lead

1166
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:36,880
Speaker 1: to new moral intuitions and new political movements and new

1167
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:42,400
Speaker 1: fights over rights. Finally, the question raised by today's podcast

1168
01:05:42,560 --> 01:05:46,760
Speaker 1: is what do you do as a single person walking

1169
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:51,680
Speaker 1: around in this enormous social world. Lasana offered some simple

1170
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:58,280
Speaker 1: suggestions more eye contact, more conversation, more small acknowledgments that

1171
01:05:58,560 --> 01:06:03,400
Speaker 1: activate the mind perception machinery. As I've talked about in

1172
01:06:03,440 --> 01:06:08,640
Speaker 1: several episodes, search for commonalities as a way to reshape

1173
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: how the brain categorizes people. There are contexts where dampening

1174
01:06:14,520 --> 01:06:17,479
Speaker 1: mind perception can serve a function, but you don't want

1175
01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:21,480
Speaker 1: that to become your default stance. So the big picture

1176
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 1: is this. Your brain is a three pound universe that

1177
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:29,560
Speaker 1: constantly builds models of the world, and one of its

1178
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:33,760
Speaker 1: most consequential models is its model of other minds.

1179
01:06:34,320 --> 01:06:35,360
Speaker 2: Now, that model can.

1180
01:06:35,280 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 1: Be richly detailed, or it can be thin, or it

1181
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:43,000
Speaker 1: can be absent. Also, it can be projected onto pets,

1182
01:06:43,040 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 1: onto storms, onto chatbots, and it can be withdrawn from

1183
01:06:47,520 --> 01:06:51,040
Speaker 1: groups of people. And I think that if we want

1184
01:06:51,080 --> 01:06:56,200
Speaker 1: to go mining for the mother load of morality, much

1185
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,000
Speaker 1: of it lives right there in.

1186
01:06:58,920 --> 01:07:00,400
Speaker 2: The fidelity of the.

1187
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:08,800
Speaker 1: Model that you build of someone else's inner world. Go

1188
01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:11,640
Speaker 1: to eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information and

1189
01:07:11,680 --> 01:07:15,520
Speaker 1: to find further reading. Join the weekly discussions on my substack,

1190
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:18,720
Speaker 1: and check out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube

1191
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:22,000
Speaker 1: for videos of each episode and to leave comments Until

1192
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:25,600
Speaker 1: next time. I'm David Eagleman, and this is inner Cosmos.