WEBVTT - Ep146 "Who Counts as Human in Your Mind?" with Lasana Harris 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:08.600 How does your brain decide that some other person has 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.600 their own inner life? And how does this sometimes go 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.320 in a different direction where you end up viewing another 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:19.520 person more like an object. This is what neuroscientists mean 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.319 when they talk about dehumanization. It means that your brain 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.840 is not cranking up its social machinery to understand that 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.840 the other person has a mind like you do. 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:32.360 We're gonna dive deep. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.720 Into this today with social neuroscientist Lessana Harris, will ask 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:41.440 is dehumanization a cause of violence or is it the 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.040 fuel that keeps it burning? Do people who think of 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:50.879 themselves as highly empathic sometimes dehumanize. 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:50.920 More than other people? 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.160 And on the flip side, why do we sometimes think 0:00:54.200 --> 0:01:00.280 that chatbots or robots are people with interior minds? Little 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:04.640 children raised with AI grow up to fight for AI rights. 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.559 Today we're going to dive deep into how your brain 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.080 sees others. So get ready for a great brain stretch. 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.200 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.880 neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.640 sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand how 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.440 we see the world, and importantly, today, how we see 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:46.520 each other. Every second of your life, your brain is 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:49.880 working to figure out something very important in the space 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.720 around you, what is alive in the sense that it 0:01:54.840 --> 0:02:00.040 has intentions and feelings and plans. In other words, it 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:06.080 has a mind. We are mind detectors, and so whenever 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:10.160 you walk into a room, your social antenna are up. 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.560 You're not conscious of this, but your brain is putting 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.120 tons of effort into figuring out where there are people. 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.720 And you are watching faces, and you're registering postures, and 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.519 you're listening to the tones of voice, and your brain 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.839 is building models like okay, I think that person is irritated, 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.880 and that person is curious, and that person is hiding something, 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.480 and that person wants approval. This is one of the 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:40.440 brain's deepest talents is mind perception. Think of this as 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:47.400 your ability to infer an inner movie playing behind someone's eyes. 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.080 As I said, this is typically done automatically without any 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.120 conscious awareness. But you do this all day long with 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.240 friends and family. You do this with strangers, you do 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.399 this with people you've never met. And by the way, 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:04.040 we don't do this just for other humans. Our neural 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:09.120 mechanisms for making this happen. It applies more broadly, so 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:15.079 we anthropomorphize, meaning we assign human like minds to non 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.480 human things. You might treat your car like it has 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:22.799 a personality. We certainly do this with robots, and we 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.920 root for the animated toys in a Pixar film. You 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:31.200 can even watch a film with some animated triangles and 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.760 circles moving around no words at all, and you end 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.200 up narrating a story about what the shapes are doing. 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:42.520 In all these scenarios, your brain lights up its social machinery, 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.480 and things around you become characters with motivations. Our brains 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.960 are always eager to find agency and intention, to find 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.200 minds that it can predict. So if our brains are 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.920 so ready to see minds, how do we ever fail 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.760 to see them? Now you've heard me talk about this 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:06.600 before on the podcast, because history shows us over and 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:11.119 over that humans have the capacity to stop seeing other 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:16.640 humans as having an entire cosmos going on on the inside. 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.560 We can treat other humans as objects. And when you 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.440 look at any conflict, Let's say we're talking about the 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.320 communist revolutions in China and Russia, or we're talking about 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:31.760 Nazism in Germany or fascism in Italy, or the camer 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:36.159 rouge in Cambodia, or the Hutu taking up machetes against 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:40.200 their neighbors, the Tutsi in Rwanda. Wherever we look, we 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:42.720 see that it is possible for people to look at 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:48.279 their neighbors and feel nothing, to feel no tug of empathy, 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:53.760 no sense of shared humanity. Now how does that happen. Well, 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.479 it's typically helped along by propaganda that trains people to 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:03.320 see their neighbors as as vermin as contagion, as something 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.040 that can be crushed with no moral cost, the way 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.280 you might treat a bug. So we essentially have this 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.520 dial in the brain that makes us see a thing 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.560 in the world as a person within inner life or not. 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:19.599 Today's episode is about that dial. 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:24.440 It's about the neural machinery that supports social cognition and 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.520 what it means when that machinery gets dialed down. It's 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.720 about dehumanization, which is when the brain does not engage 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.200 its social machinery for considering another person's mind. 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:38.920 And as we'll see, a slight. 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.280 Dialing down in the brain can have big consequences for 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:44.960 our behavior. And we're also going to talk about the 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:50.760 mirror image of this anthropomorphism, because in our new landscape, 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.800 we have all the things around us growing mind like 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.640 in their behavior. So what happens when the cues that 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:03.400 trigger mind person become cheap and ubiquitous. We're going to 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.280 cover all this and much more today. My guest is 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.600 Lasana Harris. He for many years has been at the 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:14.960 forefront of mapping all these questions about humanization and dehumanization 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:20.480 onto the brain. He's a social neuroscientist and an experimental 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:25.159 psychologist at University College London, where he leads the Boundaries 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.880 of Social Cognition Lab. Lasaana studies how we perceive other 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.840 minds and how this connects to moral behavior and intergroup 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:38.080 conflict and the emerging world of AI agents. Here is 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:45.159 Lasana Harris. So, Lasana, let's start with a little bit 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.200 of an origin story. What first drew you to the 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.640 issue of understanding how we perceive other minds? 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.360 I think I was always fascinated in how other people 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:02.919 experience emotions and how a lack of emotion regulation effect 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:07.480 social interactions. Once I got into graduate school, I realized 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:11.360 the emotion literature was a mass, and so I had 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.400 the sort of crisis point. Lots of potential PhD students 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.560 had where I realized the thing I really wanted to 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:20.440 study seemed impossible to study. 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:21.760 At that time. 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.240 I happened to take a social cognition class where they 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:30.080 talked interestingly about anthropomorphism, some of the very classic hydro 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:34.400 and similar research where you had these geometric shapes colliding 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.080 into each other and chasing each other and people were 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.640 bringing them to life, and that really fascinated me. 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:41.760 Let me jump in for one second for any listeners 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.800 who don't know. Heiner and Simmer were two psychologists who 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.400 made a little movie where there's what was it? It 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:50.800 was a triangle in a circle and then another bigger 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:52.760 triangle and they're moving around. 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:53.720 The shapes are moving around. 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:58.360 There's no sound, but when viewers watch this, there's a 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.160 whole story that they on to what's going on. 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:02.200 It looks like a love story. 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:04.600 And then the bigger triangle is a bully who's trying 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.720 to break up their relationship. And by the way, listen, 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.080 define for us social cognition. 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:11.080 Sure. 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:16.120 Social cognition is how we consider other people's minds, essentially 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.200 in the shortcut, so it's the psychological tools that lets 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.520 us interact with other people. So if I want to 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.400 have a conversation with someone. In order for that to happen, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.720 I have to have some inference about what it is 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.440 they're thinking. Without that inference, it's near impossible for me 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.520 to have that conversation. So this is an ability we 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.320 have that we use all of the time constantly to 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.200 not only figure out what other people are thinking, but 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:44.080 to also predict what someone might say or do in 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:47.120 a given situation. So it's crucial for any kind of 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:51.800 social interaction. So what fascinated me about those cartoons from 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.160 the nineteen forties of shapes moving around is that we 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.800 would use this ability for something as simple as shapes 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.400 sort of acting in funny ways. And that really juxtapose 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.600 with me when considering processes like dehumanization, where you have 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.199 this failure to engage these processes. I was struck by 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.400 how it is that something that seems so prevalent, that 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:18.200 happened in such a benign environment wasn't actually coming to 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:20.920 bear when people needed it the most. Right, So, when 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:24.600 I actually have someone who might be suffering, who might 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.679 be having some type of negative experience, why was it 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.040 that we couldn't seem to get this mechanism going. Yet 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.600 we watched some shapes running around in the screen, and 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:38.360 suddenly we imagine this whole complex story about their lives, right, 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.640 And so that juxtaposition is really what got me hooked 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:43.240 on the stuff that I study. 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.680 So tell us about dehumanization and give us an example 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:46.880 of that. 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:52.600 Sure, So, dehumanization is one of those psychological terms where 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.000 everybody has an idea what it is, but psychologists tend 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:58.880 to think of it a little differently. So for most people, 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.600 dehumanization this horrible thing that only happens in cases of 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:06.320 human atrocities, and we've never been able to get any 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:08.960 evidence that's actually the case. Right, we can't go in 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.000 the lab and do unethical things to people to know 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.600 that dehumanization is present. So for a long time there 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.720 was all of this theoretical philosophical work about dehumanization and 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:24.680 human horribleness, but as psychologists, we tended to define dehumanization 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:28.280 a lot more simply. We basically said, when you encounter 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.880 other people, you tend to spontaneously get these social cognitive 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:36.440 processes going, right. You tend to spontaneously think about what's 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.720 going on in their minds in order to interact with them, 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:44.800 to understand them. Potentially to have empathy towards them. Dehumanization 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.680 then was a case where you didn't get this process 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.600 going in the presence of another person. So you encounter 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:55.320 another person and instead of that person triggering this psychological process, 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:57.960 there was an absence of it. So it was a 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.800 very simple definition of humanization, what we like to call 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.760 not your grandpa's definition of dehumanization. 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:05.200 Right. 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:09.400 It's the definition that is detached from the human atrocities, 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:12.559 and it makes it much more of an everyday process. 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:14.120 And a lot of the work we've done in the 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.319 last twenty years or so really has established it as 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.840 an everyday process which can be used to do horrible things, right, 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.479 but so can lots of other psychological processes. 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.400 And so one of the things that you did is 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.760 you looked at what was happening in social psychology, and 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:31.680 then you asked, what is happening in the brain? 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.840 So tell us what you found when you did those studies. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:39.440 Sure, so, in the brain, there's this large network of 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.680 regions that supports us figuring out what's going on in 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.480 other people's minds. These brain regions are mainly in the neocortex, 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:50.640 that's the more recently evolved parts of the brain. So 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.480 the parts of the brain that separates us from other species, 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:56.720 and what you tend to see is that these brain 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.520 regions are tonically active, which means if I suddenly took 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.439 a picture of your brain, now, I'd probably see activation 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:04.920 in that large network. 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:06.400 What we did is. 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:10.360 We had people look at other dehumanized targets. So these 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:16.200 are groups in society that you wouldn't typically humanize, that is, 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.920 you would treat as more like an object than a 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.800 human being, homeless people being one example. And what we 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.920 found was that this network was not engaged when our 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.280 participants just looked at pictures of these people. And I 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.360 was shocking to us again because shapes running around in 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.800 a screen can sort of trigger some of this engagement 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:35.439 as well. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:36.800 And so the. 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:40.680 Brain research was the place we first discovered this effect 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.080 because we found this failure of these networks to engage. Now, 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.640 at the time when we first made that discovery, almost 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.880 every study in social neuroscience got these brain regions coming 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.480 on right because whenever I stuck someone in an MRI 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.280 machine and I showed them a person, I had them 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.040 think about a person, I had them think about themselves, 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.959 you would see this network lighting up. But for these targets, right, 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:08.120 like homeless people, you didn't quite see the same pattern 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:08.800 of activation. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.400 So just give us a slight bit more color on 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.120 the experiment. People are in the scanner. You're showing them 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:18.000 pictures of other humans. But some of the humans were 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:23.040 let's say, athletes or successful businessmen, some were homeless people 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.360 or drug addicts. And so give us a sense of 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:28.040 what you presented and what you saw. 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:29.880 Yeah, that's exactly right. 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.120 So participants would lie there, we'd flash these pictures up, 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.280 these what we call stereotypical representations of social groups, So 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.120 a picture where you look at it and you know 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.079 exactly who it is you're looking at, be it an athlete, 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:46.200 a college student, a business person, or a homeless person. 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.680 And what we would find is that for all of 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.120 the other social groups, the ones that aren't typically dehumanized, 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.560 you'd get engagement of this network of brain regions. But 0:13:55.640 --> 0:14:00.120 when it came to the traditionally dehumanized social groups, that is, 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.320 the homeless people or the drug addicts, you wouldn't see 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:07.160 this naturally engaging in quite the same way. So this 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.760 absence of engagement is where we've sort of picked up 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.520 in this dehumanization response. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.880 And So when I first read this work, first of all, 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.280 I thought it was amazing for several reasons. One is 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:23.000 that this is different than simply disliking somebody. This is 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:27.120 actually the networks that understand that person as a human. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:28.920 These are diminished. 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:32.640 They're absolutely right. This is not dislike or simple prejudice. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.080 For instance, So let's take prejudice as an example. Let's 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.520 say I hate a particular racial outgroup. I would see 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:43.280 an activation in the brain that's correlated with sort of 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.080 a threat response, because you tend to feel threatened by 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:47.360 the groups data. 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.160 I'm not the old group, right. 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:53.360 People that belong to a different political ideology, have different opinions, 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.680 come from a different racial or ethnic group. You tend 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.080 to feel threatened by them, and there's a very clear 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.960 brain response in those cases. That's a typical prejudice response. 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.400 This is not that. This is not just a dislike 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.720 response or prejudice response. This is a failure to process 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.600 as a person, because when you see people, you tend 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.720 to turn on these networks so you can understand something 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.600 about their minds. And that's really important, right, because interacting 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.720 with a person is very different from interacting with an object. 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:25.440 So if I see a table, I'm not wondering what 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.600 the table's thinking. I'm not wondering what does the table 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.440 think about me. I'm not guessing at the intentions of 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:33.360 the table. I'm not doing any of the stuff I 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.360 do with other human beings. But even if I see 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.800 a stranger, I'm going to have those thoughts, right because 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.840 I might have to interact with that person. That person 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.760 might be a potential friend someday in the future, and 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.040 ouri they may have information I need. So when you 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.000 see other people, we tend to always engage these networks 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.960 because it's useful. It gives us information that facilitates any 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.840 interaction I may have with them. So to see human 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:00.600 beings and to not even switch these processes someone was 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:02.160 stunning for us as well. 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:06.920 How do you think it happens that we can go 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:11.240 from engaging these networks with other people to not doing 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.240 it anymore. For example, let's say in Nazi Germany, when 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.960 people had Jewish neighbors and friends and then things changed, 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.880 or in Rwanda where you had intermarriage and friendships between 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.720 the Hutu and the Tutsi, and then there was lots 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:30.160 of propaganda about the Tutsi being like talkroaches and then 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.840 these things, presumably these networks turned down. 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:34.920 How does that happen? 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.960 Yeah, that's the million dollar question, isn't it. I think, 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.080 as you mentioned, propaganda does play a role in those 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:47.120 cases of genocide and human atrocities, because what the propaganda 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:49.400 does is it puts the idea in your head that 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.120 this person isn't quite a human being in the way 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.720 that I am a human being, right, And so you 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.600 might have interacted with them before, but now the propaganda 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:02.800 suggests to you that there's something about their fundamental nature 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:06.080 that's just different. And it turns out that we still 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.679 have a lot of beliefs about other human beings not 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.480 being human. This is something that has been kicking around 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.520 science for centuries, right. So there's a lot of what 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.560 you can call of dustbin science, where scientists were trying 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.679 to prove right, members of different groups weren't quite human 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.680 like the human beings of interest, right, people like themselves. 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.639 And so these ideas are really old ideas that have 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.480 stuck with us as a society and as a civilization. 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:39.480 And so once the propaganda makes it salient that that 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:42.440 particular group might not quite be human in the way 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.159 that you're human It's not impossible to think that you 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.200 can now switch off the network. But that's the sort 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.679 of kind of answer where we have no evidence. The 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.840 kinds of stuff we do have evidence for suggests that 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.919 you switch off these networks because it serves a particular function. 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.480 It gives you a particular benefit in a moment that. 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:05.760 You want to enjoy. 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:07.879 So let me give you an example of some of 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:11.639 these benefits. Let's take the case of the homeless person. 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.600 Let's say you live in a big city and you're 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.400 on your way to work, and you're rushing there. You're 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.560 worried about the important meeting that you have, and you 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:22.919 come across a homeless person sitting at the side of 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:25.959 the road. Chances are that's not the first homeless person 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.520 you've seen today. If you stop and fell sorry for 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.760 that homeless person and every other such homeless person you see, 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:34.480 you would probably not get to work. 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:34.720 Right. 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.480 The amount of human suffering in the world is overwhelming, 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.560 So in order to focus on the tasks at hand 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.240 and do the things we need to do, we sometimes 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.240 shut out that suffering because it's useful for us, right, 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.919 It's useful for us not to be delayed as we 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.720 rush about our daily lives. That's not a novel finding. 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.960 We've known that since the nineteen seventies. Research and the 0:18:56.000 --> 0:19:00.240 bystander effect, for instance, demonstrated that. So the buyside under 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.760 a fact. There's a really fun set of studies where, 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.119 in the most famous case, they brought in a bunch 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.800 of theology students, people practicing to be pastors and priests, 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.479 and they had them think about the Good Samaritan and 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.720 come up with a samon around the theme of the 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:19.360 Good Samaritan. So they're thinking about helping people, and then 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.359 they tell them, oh, we're sorry. This room booking we 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.679 have with the experiment, we lost it, so we have 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.600 to switch you to another room across campus. But we're 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:29.800 running out of time, so could you hurry over there. 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.920 And these theology students hurrying out the building came across 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.679 someone lying on the street who seemed to need help, 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.879 and very few of them stopped to help this person, 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:42.360 even though they were thinking about helping as they were 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.040 doing it, because again, it would have been inconvenient in 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.439 that moment to help, right, you're sort of focused on 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.239 your task at hand, which is rushing across campus. And 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.240 so I think that's one of the reasons you might 0:19:55.320 --> 0:20:00.359 dehumanize someone because it saves a particular function. Reason you 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.879 might do it is because if I start thinking about 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.040 you as a human being, that brings with it a 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.720 bunch of moral obligations, and I think this is what 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:11.760 might happen in the genocide cases. 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:13.320 So when I. 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:15.240 See you as a human being, there's a bunch of 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.359 rules that come with how I treat human beings. And 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:22.160 one rule says that I empathize with you if you're suffering, right, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.119 I try to help you if I can. That's what 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.040 human beings tend to do with other human beings. It's 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.320 in our very nature. In fact, some researchers think it's 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:32.720 why we evolve to be the species that we are, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:37.240 because we're so helpful to other human beings. But I 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:40.720 may not have the capacity to be empathic towards you, right, 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.399 Maybe I'm emotionally taxed, maybe I'm drained. And this is 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.199 the sort of evidence we see when you look at 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.200 medical professionals, for instance, Right, they're dealing with suffering all day. 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.440 If they felt terrible for each suffering person they encountered, again, 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.800 they wouldn't get through the day, And so dehumanizing some 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.199 and shutting down that part of the brain allows me 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.160 to not have to expand those resources and empathize with you, 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.560 and I can go about my business. And now the 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.719 morality isn't salient, So I don't have to feel guilty 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.200 about not helping you, Right, I don't have to worry 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.879 about the fact that I might see myself as a 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:18.720 terrible person. 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:20.280 Always, Yeah, you might think of. 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:22.920 Me as a terrible person because I didn't even process 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.119 you as a person to begin with, right, I didn't 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.879 get those parts of my brain going. And so we 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.920 have a lot of evidence for those kinds of explanations 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.600 for why dehumanization happens. But again, we can't study it 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:37.639 in the genoci context because that's an ethical so we 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:42.000 do things like liquid medical care professionals look at cases 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:43.879 with homeless people, that sort of stuff. 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.160 This argues what you have argued is that social cognition 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:08.199 is actually quite flexible, and what are some of the 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.639 other key factors that dial it down. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:17.920 Another key factor is that feeling of negative moral feelings. Right, 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:21.359 So if I feel like I've done something horrible to someone, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.000 or I feel like my group has done something horrible 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:26.919 to another group, and I don't want to feel that guilt. 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:29.440 An easy way of getting rid of it is by saying, well, 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.439 those people didn't really suffer because they're not quite human 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.359 in the same way. And so you often see with 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:38.320 our groups who are subject to a lot of suffering, 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:42.600 narratives pop up around their capacity to endure that suffering, 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:43.240 for instance. 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:44.360 Right, so you. 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:48.560 Get these stories about some types of groups being superhuman, 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.040 for instance, and having a great capacity to deal with 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.880 pain and suffering. So the actual suffering the experiencing isn't 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:58.760 that bad because they're not quite human. Right, So if 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:00.639 it will me going through what they went through, I 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:03.359 would feel horrible. But because they're not quite human the 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:05.760 way I am, it's not really that bad. So I 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:08.440 don't have to feel that terrible about the horrible thing 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.399