WEBVTT - New Year's Resolutions: Science and Moral Behavior 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.160 Welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind from housetop works 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:14.320 dot com. Hey, welcome the stuff to go in your mind. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.200 My name is Robert Lamb and bad John mc comick. So, Robert, 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.079 I want to ask you a question. Are you the 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:25.599 kind of person who makes New Year's resolutions? Oh? I 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.360 try to be very careful about it these days, and 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.559 I also exclusively begin my New year on Chinese New 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.360 Year these days. Oh, what day is that it's gonna be? Uh? 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.200 I want to stay February eight this year. I could 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:42.360 be wrong, but it's yeah. It generally occurs like one 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.440 month out from from Western New Year because I feel 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:49.440 mainly I feel that like if you're if you're gonna 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.320 get excited about like turning over a new leaf, for 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.680 getting back in the role of things. However you choose 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:57.600 to take on a new year, like I try not 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.840 to to, you know, strap my self to the mask 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.640 too much, uh and make any kind of you know, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.840 a weird bargain about the future. But it's like just 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.280 coming off the holidays, it's just too much chaos. Everything's 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:14.319 out of order. It's the worst time in the world 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:16.920 to decide you're going to start a new habit or 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:19.480 a new cycle of doing things, or are you gonna 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.840 or that you're gonna engage in any level of betterment, 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:27.560 Better to wait until January is over and try that 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.000 stuff out in February. That's that's my approach. Yeah, I 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.080 think if you're going to make a resolution, you should 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.920 do it in the spring. Yeah, But have you ever 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.920 made a New Year's resolution and like actually followed through 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:41.200 with it, Like if you've tried it? Was it always 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:42.640 just kind of a thing you thought about for a 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.160 bit and then u um, maybe in the you know, 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:51.200 earlier on. But like I think last year, I decided 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:55.840 to stick to a basic yoga schedule, like decide what 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:57.880 classes I was going to go to and make a 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.560 point to go to them, and and worked out well. 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.080 But that was a reasonable goal, like something that that 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.880 I was already sort of halfway meeting, and then I 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:09.040 just said, all right, we're gonna just roll with this 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.519 this routine once things get going in February. I don't 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:14.119 know if you've ever noticed this to be the case 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.440 at a GEM or y m c A or something 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.400 that you go to, but they're just horrible in like January, 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:23.480 first half of February you just it's it's they're packed 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.799 and then there and then the herd thins out. You know, 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.400 suddenly nobody's coming anymore by March. Yeah, yeah, I definitely 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.160 noticed that because I go to yoga at a y 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.080 m c A and and I love it. I love 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.480 my yoga teachers, all of the classes. But you do 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.560 see that influx of new faces, and a lot of 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:41.840 them are not gonna, not gonna stick around. And some 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.440 of them will show up with their genes on in 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.880 socks and with no understanding of what they're about to 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.440 get into. Some will show up fifteen or twenty minutes 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.200 late or leave fifteen or twenty minutes early. But it's yeah, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:55.240 it's just part of the process of people setting goals, 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:57.920 trying new things, and not everything works out, and that's 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.519 not necessarily a bad thing, but of course that that's 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:02.760 always the kind of goal you see, right when people 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:07.080 make New Year's resolutions, they it seems like they're almost 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:11.840 always inherently narcissistic, like they are for personal improvement. But 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.000 there for that kind of personal improvement, like I'm going 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.960 to quit smoking, I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna get 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.240 in shape. There for things that that aren't bad. I mean, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.160 they're good for you, but they're they're you know, sort 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.560 of self focused. Yeah, I mean those seem to be 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.520 the ones that dominate all the lists and advice columns 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.079 that come out around this time of year. We want 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.160 to you know, we want to look sexier and feel 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.680 stronger and live forever. This is gonna be the year 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.800 I live forever, exactly right, and really locking down eternity 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.720 this year. Um. But instead of these kind of self gratifying, uh, 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:53.320 you know, self improvement projects, I wondered about the personal 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.680 betterment project of of trying to be a better person. 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.520 I know sometimes people think about this in New Year's 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.120 and and and why shouldn't we think about it? Like, 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:04.800 if we're going to try to commit to changing our 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.160 lives in some way for the better, why not try 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.640 to be better humans? Yeah? And you know, and I 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.360 know some individuals do engage in, uh in this kind 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:20.240 of goal setting. But but it's it's also just as 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.320 if not more difficult. It's more it's just as challenging 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:25.960 as trying to change your body. You're going to try 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.680 and change your your mind state. Instead, you're gonna change 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:31.520 the way you interact with those around you and what 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.120 you care about, and and try and do so in 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:39.080 a in a meaningful way that actually lasts beyond January. Yeah, 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.880 I mean, how realistic is it to say this is 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.040 the year I stopped kicking strangers down flights of stairs, 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.080 because if that's already your thing, I mean, people really 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.360 don't change all that much. People change, but it it 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.640 takes a little bit more to to really turn over 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.280 a new leaf. Well, that's an interesting thing. You point out. 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.960 People don't change engine by and large. That's the extent 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.960 to which that's true is depressing. It's very, very difficult 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.840 to truly change our behavior in an effective, significant and 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:16.719 permanent way. But fortunately we do have some science about 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.120 the mind. And this is what we're gonna end up 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.000 talking about today. If you make a New Year's resolution 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.160 that you actually want to be a better person, you 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.200 want to live a more moral life and treat others better, 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.760 and not just in this vague form of you know, 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.320 I'm gonna do it some kind kind of promise, but 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.920 in a way that actually gets results and changes your behavior. 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.239 How can we do it? It seems like we should 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.640 look to science. Yeah, because we were talking about leveling 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.240 up the old d n D character sheet. Here we're 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:51.760 talking about changing our stats. Uh, what does science have 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.520 to say about stat adjustments on the real life character sheet? Right? 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.520 And I can already hear people objecting and saying, wait 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.520 a minute, you can't do that, because science is about 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:09.200 empirical facts and morality is about values, and those things 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.720 don't mix. Now, one of the things I'd say is 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.520 that there, in fact, is an ongoing debate about whether 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.400 you can derive moral values from science. I'm not saying 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.720 you can, but we don't need to go there for 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.160 the purpose of this discussion. Like that, that's a debate 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:26.080 we don't even have to enter, because I would put 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.920 up an analogy of engineering, like let's say you're building 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:36.359 a hydroelectric dam. There is nothing about physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.880 any of that that tells you that it's best to 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.560 build a dam that produces the most electricity, cost the 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.200 least money to build, has the lowest ecological impact on 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.280 the river that you put it in, and has the 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.800 least likelihood of failing and flooding everybody downstream. But if 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.600 you start with those priorities as your assumptions, you can 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.360 most definitely use scientific fields like physics and chemistry and 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.200 fluid dynam amics to build the best possible dam to 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.040 achieve those goals. And I think you can sort of 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.280 approach morality in the same way. If you start with 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.840 some given goals of improving moral behavior, and especially you 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.120 want to start with specific ones like uh, like maybe 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:21.040 making yourself more generous or being more honest, you can 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:25.680 use research in neuroscience and psychology and related fields to 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.400 optimize your moral behavior and use what we know about 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:33.160 the human mind and the brain to fix the problem 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.880 and get results, sort of trick your brain and making 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.040 you the person you want to be. Yeah, So before 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:42.640 we get into the actual research, I do definitely want 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:47.280 to start with some caveats because the scientific study of 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.040 moral behavior is far from perfect and there are a 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.400 lot of potential difficulties we encounter when entering this field. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.880 One example would be a sort of lack of agreement 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:02.560 on moral goal, like if a study is being conducted 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.680 by a member of a religion that says tomatoes or 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.320 minor gods and eating them as a heinous sin. Abstention 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.520 from tomato products is a crucial part of moral behavior, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.400 and this is why it's important to study clearly specified 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.680 types of behavior one at a time, like studying how 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.720 much money someone gives to a charity as opposed to 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.040 just studying how good of a person are you? Yeah, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.480 and and also in this getting into things that are 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:34.920 more or less universally considered moral positives. Yeah. Um. Another 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.959 thing would be that I think morality is an area 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.679 where you have to be especially careful about experiment or bias. 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:46.000 For example, it's probably no surprise that, uh, if your 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.839 experiment ers are a group of liberals, they might find 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.120 that liberals are more moral than conservatives, and vice versa. 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.920 If their conservatives, they might find conservatives are more moral. Um, 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.240 So you have to be especially cognizant of your of 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.640 your you know, experimental controls put in place to limit 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.920 the fact that the extent to which bias can affect 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.720 the outcomes. And then you've got methodological difficulties like how 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.360 do you test to see how moral somebody's behavior is? 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.760 You know, you can invite them into a lab and 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:19.920 have them play a game or do some kind of 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:24.880 interaction under controlled conditions, but people might behave very differently 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.800 under controlled conditions than they do in the wild. It's 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:30.040 one thing to give somebody a questionnaire, or have to 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.319 read a story and tell you how they feel about it, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.880 or put some pebbles in a cup, But ultimately we're 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.600 talking about the real morality takes place in outside the lab. Yeah, 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.080 but then if you want to track people's morality outside 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.040 the lab, you're pretty much gonna have to use self reporting, right, 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:48.000 people are going to have to report to you what 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.600 they did. And there is a pretty obvious problem there. 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.240 How honest can we expect people to be about what 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.800 their moral behaviors are. So, despite all those difficulties, I 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.000 think this is still a field we can study and 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:04.480 a place where we can try to look at some 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.160 studies and apply them to our moral behaviors to see 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.520 if we can hack our morals and and get under 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.439 the get under the bedrock there and move some things around. 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:16.680 So I think maybe the first place we should start 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.720 is by looking at some traditional answers to the question 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.079 of how to be a better person. Like, this is 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.640 not a new question, obviously, people have been talking about 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:30.160 this for thousands of years. You could look back to Socrates, Plato, 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:32.360 and Aristotle, or you know, all the way up to 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.360 more recent moral philosophers go a couple hundred years ago 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.600 to Emmanuel Kant. These are people who had very strong 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:43.079 opinions about how you could derive from first principles what 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.360 the moral life was and how to live it. So 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:51.760 the question is does moral philosophy or studying ethics make 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.839 you a better person? And this is where a really 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.760 interesting article from Ian magazine comes into play, written by 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:04.240 Eric Gushway skivel Uh titled Well, the Ian magazine titles 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.079 kind of shift, but I think the cheeseburger ethics with 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.520 kind of a subhead how often do ethics professors call 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:14.560 their mothers right? And it attempts to answer this question 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.160 where Schwitz cable and he he chronicles his work and 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.120 his work with another person named Joshua Rust over the 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:25.800 years to study how exactly do people who study ethics 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.640 and moral philosophy behave in their lives? Does does studying 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.360 ethics make you a better person? And they seem to 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.880 have found time and time again that the answer is no. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.000 Ethicists who are you know, professors who study ethics and 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:44.360 moral philosophy for a living don't seem to be any 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:49.400 better or worse than other professors. So professors of chemistry, history, 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.840 et cetera, by a huge list of measures. Uh, they give, 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.680 they give a list. In this article, Schwitz Cable says 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:00.599 he looked at whether or not you vote in public collections, 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.400 how often you call your mother, eating the meat of mammals, 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:11.920 donating to charity, littering, disruptive chatting, and door slamming during 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:18.120 philosophy presentation, responding to student emails, attending conferences without paying 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:22.640 registration fees. There's a real killer there. Um organ donation, 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:28.920 blood donation, theft of library books, and overall moral evaluation 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:32.719 by one's departmental peers based on personal impressions. So there 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:36.560 you get at least some third party info. Their honesty 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:41.079 and responding to survey questions and joining the Nazi Party 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:45.280 in nineteen thirties Germany. And what they found is that 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:49.599 the ethicists uh and the moral philosophers just they're like 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.400 everybody else. They're like the other professors studying. This doesn't 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:56.880 make them do any better on these tests. Now, one 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.240 thing that they did find it was different, is that 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:06.079 ethicists tend to accept more rigorous moral standards than non ethicists, 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:08.760 Yet they don't seem to be any more likely to 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.400 actually follow them. So a couple of examples they give. 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.520 One is that ethicists are way more likely than other 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:19.439 people to say that eating the meat of mammals is 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.400 morally wrong, yet they don't eat the meat of mammals 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.760 any less than anybody else. They're also more likely to 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.400 say that you should give more of your income a 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.720 higher percentage to charity than other people say, but they 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.280 don't give more than other people do. So it's like 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:41.839 they tend to accept higher standards, but they can't meet them. 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.880 So they have a more precise understanding of the sort 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.760 of the ethical suit of armor we all should be wearing, 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.199 but they're they're no more likely than we are to 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.839 slip it on exactly. Yeah, that's a good way of 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:56.920 putting it. And there are a lot of explanations. This 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.440 is actually Schwitz Gables article is a really good one, 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.199 and I h recommend reading it. It's very interesting. But 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.640 and he gives lots of explanations for why this might 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.480 be the case. But yeah, it appears that studying ethics 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:12.440 and moral philosophy is not the answer to not necessarily bad. 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:14.360 It's not that you shouldn't do it, but it's not 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.160 going to make you behave more and morally at least statistically. 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:23.080 Now there's another very traditional, classic answer to this question, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.760 how to be a better person, you get some religion 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.080 in you. And the Udian magazine article went into that 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.800 a little bit and mentioning members of the clergy and 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.680 in questioning us and members of the clergy that asking them, hey, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.960 is they member of the clergy? Are they a better 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:43.360 person than the the average person outside um, the church? 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.440 And they said, um, you know it's probably about the same, 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:49.160 maybe the clergy a little worse. Uh yeah, And and 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.200 of course he could chalk that he chalked that up 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.560 to It's possible they were just being humble about their 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:56.880 own profession, but at least as as far as they 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.240 presented publicly, they didn't think that they were any better 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:04.480 than anybody else. And there have been plenty of studies 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:08.640 that have looked into the relationship between levels of religiosity 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.640 and moral behavior. Now, when we get into this, it's 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.840 of course worth thing that this is a super loaded topic. 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.840 People often have very strong feelings about whether or not 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:21.760 religion is a good thing or a bad thing, So 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.560 it's again very easy to see how bias could creep 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.520 into scientific research on this subject if we're not careful. 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:31.360 But like we said, there have been lots of studies. Uh, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.600 the answers seem to be I would say, very complicated 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.200 and contradictory. You see stuff going on both sides in 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:42.320 both directions on this. Uh. For example, I I know 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.160 you found one study that a religious belief in Hell 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:50.200 is linked to lower crime. Right, Yeah, that was awous. 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.080 Twelve paper diversion Effects of Belief in Heaven and Hell 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.880 and National Crime Rates by A. Zem F Sharif um Well, 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.080 he co authored it at any rate psychologist, and he 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.920 compared national crime rates with rates of belief in Heaven 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.640 and Hell in sixty seven countries, and it came back 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.960 with some interesting findings. First of all, Heaven's belief rate 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.480 is almost always higher than Hell's belief rate um. And 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:15.960 that kind of collaborates my personal theory that Hell is 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:20.200 always an unwanted and add on for many religions or 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.040 for even just semi religious people. It's the side dish 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.240 we didn't order, and generally we don't want to eat it. 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.760 But the papers major statistical finding was that nations with 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.160 higher belief rates in Hell predicted the lower crime rates, 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.880 while higher belief rates and heaven predicted higher crime rates. 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.760 Wait what Yeah, so essentially that the idea here, I 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.800 guess that you could say that the the stick was 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.400 more effective than the carrot um as far as the 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.200 religious worldview goes. Uh, And that health fearing citizens are 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:52.680 more mindful of screwing up in this life, while the 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.600 heaven crowd think they've got it knocked in the next life. 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:59.400 No matter what. It's um. But but even this study 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.360 underlying some of the problems here, because when you just 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.600 talk about religion, what are you talking about religion? Has 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.320 the one religion or even one slice of a particular 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.159 faith might tweak the carrot stick scenario a little bit 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.720 in one direction or the other. How is this system 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.200 of faith enforcing more behavior? Is it? You know, is 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:23.320 it really cutting you off from the world around you? 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:27.680 And and uh? And focusing inward? Is it focusing outward? 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.440 And it's going to vary from faith to faith. Yeah, 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:32.359 and it's going to vary from person to person. I mean, 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.440 part of the problem here is that when we're dealing 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:38.040 with science, we're always dealing with broad statistical phenomena. So 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:40.880 it might be the case that in general, religion makes 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.720 people better, but it actually makes you worse, or vice versa. 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.200 In general, it makes people worse, but it makes you better. 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.760 You could be the anomaly, you could be different than 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.600 the average. Yeah. And I also want to mention that 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:56.119 there's a two thousand three Harvard study that determined economic 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.800 growth responds positible but positively to the extent of religious 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:02.760 but leaves notably those in heaven and hell. So their 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:07.280 take was that high religious beliefs stimulate growth, stimulate economic 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.840 growth because they help sustain behavior. But again that's a 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.320 an economic view. But then again, there there's no We 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.200 read some research this year about the effects of religious 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:23.040 belief or at least correlations between religious religiosity and children 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:28.200 and altruism, right, Yeah, this was Yeah, a new study 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.639 that came out titled the Negative Association between religiousness and 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.760 Children's Altruism across the World, and this was published in 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:39.720 the journal Current Biology. Was a study of one thousand, 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:44.080 one hundred seventy children in Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, South Africa, 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.800 and the United States and included five Muslims, two Christians, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.680 and three d twenty three non religious children. And what 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.920 do they find. Their key findings were that, first of all, 0:18:54.040 --> 0:19:00.399 family religious identification decreases children's altruistic behaviors decreases decreases it uh, 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:05.640 And that religiousness predicts parent reported child sensitivity to injustices 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:10.120 and empathy, and that children from religious households are harsher 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.879 in their punitive tendencies. Okay, so so this found at 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.440 least in this one study, this broad survey of of 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.760 religious and non religious children, and the children were from 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.680 a couple of different religions, the religious kids did not 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.679 do better in terms of being kinder to others being 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.960 more altruistic. In fact, they did worse. Yeah, I imagine. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:30.520 I mean, you can sort of view it as the 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.800 religion just provides a framework in which we make sense 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:38.359 of our own moral achievements and failings, rather than a 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.119 guideline that holds us up. Yeah. But then again, there 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.200 have been other studies that, of course found religious spurring, 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.280 a sort of religious priming, caused people to behave better right. Yeah, 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.879 there was a two thousand studies two thousand seven paper 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.280 in Psychological Science that found both religious and non religious 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:58.040 people shared more money with a stranger after reading sentences 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.960 containing various whigious words such as spirit and God. But 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.920 people were also more generous after reading words associated with 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.320 secular authorities such as police. Uh. And then there's another 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.000 study that was published in seventy three in the Journal 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:13.840 of Personality and Social Psychology, and they found that more 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.520 religious people were just as likely as rest less religious 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:21.080 people to bypass a stranger in distress. Yeah, and and 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.560 that parody does seem to come through in the literature 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:25.400 a good bit. I want to look at one more 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:30.520 statistical study on religious behavior, and it wasn't just on 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.399 religious behavior, but it included that. And that was a 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:37.440 two thousand and fourteen study in in Science called Morality 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:42.439 in Everyday Life by Wilhelm Hoffman, Daniel C. Waizenski, Mark J. Brandt, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.159 and Linda J. Skitka. And this is where they got 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:49.080 a group of twelve hundred and fifty two participants and 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.760 they were each participant received five text messages a day 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.879 for three days. Each text message had a link to 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.680 the studies website, which prompted them to record moral and 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:03.320 in world experiences they'd gone through in the previous hour. So, 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:08.240 did anything interestingly moral immoral just happened in your life? 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:11.240 Did somebody do something moral or immoral to you, did 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:16.400 you do something moral or immoral? Just some examples from 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.440 a These were some great examples I read on a 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.880 news release about this. The of the good deeds reported 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.200 included sharing an extra sandwich with a homeless man. That's 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.920 guys good. But examples of the types of bad deeds 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:35.119 reported were arranging an adulterous encounter and quote hired someone 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:40.240 to kill a musk rat that's not ultimately causing any harm. Well, 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:43.399 I feel I can feel good then that I have 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.320 not done either of those things this week, right, So 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.160 maybe you should license yourself to do something evil because 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:51.959 you haven't had a muskrat assassinated. I like that they 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:54.760 were just arranging an adulterous encounter that because that brings 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:56.680 to mind and maybe they were not engaged in it, 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:01.399 but they just orchestrated the the rendezvous. Oh well, I 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.600 mean that was the A lot of after the Ashley 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:07.400 Madison leak, A lot of people had this defense, right, 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.080 like I was sort of seeking an affair, but I 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:14.280 never actually had one. Um. But anyway, so what did 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:16.399 they find in this study? They found over the broad 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:20.240 statistics of the study, religious and non religious people committed 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:24.000 both moral and immoral acts with about the same frequency. 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.560 There just really wasn't a big difference in how they acted. 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.600 So these are what we've just talked about moral philosophy 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:35.680 and ethics and in religion. These are not arguments against 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.680 adhering to a religion or studying moral philosophy. It's not 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.200 like saying you know that those are bad things to do. 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:44.400 It's just certainly not clear that either of these will 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:46.840 put you on the path to moral excellence. Yeah. I 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.680 keep coming back to the suit of armor um analogy 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:51.440 I made earlier. It's I guess the way to look 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:55.040 at it is taking on a religious faith or even 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:57.600 just kind of pseudo religious faith, or a new age 0:22:57.720 --> 0:22:59.680 a way of looking at it, any kind of worldview. 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:02.840