WEBVTT - David Dunning on the Dunning-Kruger Effect 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:06.840 This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:10.840 This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest, 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:13.520 and what can I tell you? His name is on 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.720 the tip of your tongue. You know all about his research, 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.239 You know all about the charts that the Internet created 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.080 based on his research. You probably didn't know that that 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:27.480 wasn't originally his work. David Dunning, famous for the Dunning 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:33.320 Kruger Effect, professor of psychology at Michigan. We talk about 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:37.280 everything his research, why people don't know what they don't know, 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.080 how we could get better at decision making. Just absolutely 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:43.760 a fascinating conversation. If you're at all interested in human 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.800 cognition and psychology in why we think we're better at 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.280 tasks than we really are, then you're gonna find this 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:55.120 to be an absolutely fascinating discussion. So, with no further ado, 0:00:55.760 --> 0:01:02.080 my conversation with David Dunning. This is Masters in Business 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:07.360 with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.680 this week is David Dunning. He is a professor of 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:14.880 psychology at the University of Michigan, where he focuses on 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:20.320 the psychology underlying human misbelief He is best known for 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:26.080 his study with colleague Justin Krueger, Unskilled and unaware of it, 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:31.800 how difficulties and recognizing one's own incompetence lead to self 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.920 inflated assessments. Dunning Krueger showed that people who were the 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:41.320 worst performers significantly overestimated how good they were. He is 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.080 also the author of the book Self Insight, Roadblocks and 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:49.320 Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself. David Dunning, Welcome 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.560 to Bloomberg. It's a pleasure to be here. I have 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.919 been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.560 I am a giant fan of your work, and I 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:02.800 have to start with a really simple question. What's the 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.880 origin of the study? What led you to a thesis 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:10.000 that we're really bad at self evaluation? Well, if you're 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:13.880 an academic, you meet up with many students, and you 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.640 meet up with many colleagues who say outrageous things, and 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.520 you just have to wonder, don't they know what they're saying? 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:26.359 Is let me say this diplomatically odd, suboptimal. And over 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.079 the years I just was intrigued with finding out whether 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.560 or not people knew when they were saying things that 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:35.400 were outrageous. We're obviously wrong on the face of it. 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.080 And so one day Justin Krueger walked into my office 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.720 said he wanted to a study with me, and I said, well, 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.880 I have this high high risk reward study to do, 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:46.760 and it has to do with a question I've often 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.760 wondered about. And so we did the first original series 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.600 of studies and were astonished at how little people who 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.720 didn't know I didn't know about how little they knew. 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.399 So I was on the impression and that most academics 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.480 have a thesis and there's some data supporting it, and 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.680 when they go out and test it, they have a 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.200 little confirmation bias and they see what they expected to see. 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.120 You're saying, you guys were just shocked by the results 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:17.160 of this study. That's right. I mean we expected it 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:18.880 to work, because if you think about the logic of it, 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.799 it has to work. The question was one of magnitude. 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.919 When a student was failing the course, for example, or 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.960 were giving them a pop quiz on grammar, uh, did 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.320 they have some inkling that they were performing really poorly? 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.000 And the answer was maybe a little, but not much, 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.880 and they were missing their true performance level by a 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:42.680 mile by a mile. So so how much of this that? 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.280 That really raises um a number of questions. So I 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:51.160 love the phrase metacognition, the ability to self evaluate your 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.840 skill set and your findings. Essentially find that this is 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.360 highly correlated with an underlying skill. Whenever I try and 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.440 explain this to a lay person, it's pro golfers know 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:04.119 how good they are and where the weaknesses in their 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:08.320 games are. Amateurs have no idea that they're not remotely 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.080 as good as they think they are. That is that 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.240 a fair Oh I'm a perfect example of this. So 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.039 when I go out in golf, I often end up 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.360 in the in the rough when I when I drive 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.000 the ball and then I see the ball going the 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:22.680 roof and I go out to find it later on, 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.280 and I'm always over guessing how far the ball went 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.000 in the rough by about thirty yards. And I know this, 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:31.480 yet every time I drive the ball into the rough, 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.359 I'm looking in the wrong plates. Uh so, yeah, I 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.960 mean amateur golfers don't know such terms as of course 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.280 management for example. Uh there's a number of concepts and 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:43.760 number of ideas they just simply don't have available to them. 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:45.880 And as a consequence, I think they're they're doing the 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.480 best possible job, when in fact there's a whole realm 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:50.719 of competency as they don't know about. They're just wholly 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.240 unaware of what they don't know about. That's right. So 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:59.920 you begin theer with a amusing anecdote. Tell us about 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:04.560 out the Pittsburgh bank robber MacArthur Wheeler. Well, MacArthur Wheeler 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:11.159 was a aspirant bank robber who decided to go out 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.400 and rob, but needed a disguise. And he had heard 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.560 that if you rub your face with lemon juice, it 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:22.880 renders the face um uh, fuzzy or even uh invisible 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:27.320 to bank security cameras, and so he actually did test 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.080 it out. He actually rubbed his face with uninduced at home, 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.960 pointed a polaroid camera or whatever at his face, and 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.240 then he wasn't there. He miss aimed the camera is 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.960 he thought he was insible, but he thought he was invisible. 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.720 He went out with no actual disguise, rob to Pittsburgh 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:49.039 area banks during the daytime, um uh, was immediately caught 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:53.480 on security cameras. Uh. Those tapes were broadcast on the news, 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:58.159 and he himself was caught before the eleven o'clock news hour, 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.320 and he was incredulous because, as he said, I wore 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:06.280 the juice. I wore the juice. Uh. So um thus 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.560 ended his career. But these are sorts of mistakes we 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:11.200 make all the time. We think we we have a 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.960 strategy that's going to work, and to our surprise, the 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:17.040 world has a different lesson for us to learn. So 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:22.400 medic cognition sometimes looks a little bit like over confidence. 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.960 How similar or different are the two? Well, metic cognition 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.040 is a number of things, a number of skills that 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:35.000 underlie um being able to evaluate your judgments, evaluate your decisions. 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:38.040 So some often it's over confidence. Usually it's over confidence. 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:40.880 It can be under confidence, thinking you can't do something 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:44.479 that you can do. Uh. It might be over confidence 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.880 or under confidence. But does your confidence rise and fall 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.120 with the accuracy of your judgment? So is there a 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.920 relationship whether or not your confidences is a speed dometer 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.919 that overstates or understates how well uh you're doing. But 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:03.000 there it also is knowing how to make a judgment, uh, 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:08.240 knowing when to stop thinking and start acting. So knowing 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:12.360 when uh, there's a doubt that you really should be 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.120 following up on. So over confidence as a phenomenon I 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.760 think lies within a whole family of skills that you 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:23.120 can call metacognition, which is basically skill in knowing how 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.960 to evaluate your thinking and control you're thinking. Quite fascinating, 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:32.600 Let's talk a little bit about your unskilled and unaware 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.320 of it. This blew up into one of the most 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:39.480 famous psychology papers ever. When when you and Krueger were 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.480 writing this, did you have any idea that it was 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.800 going to be this explosive? No, because I thought it 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.040 was going to have trouble being published, because it actually 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.840 is an unusual piece of work given the usual structure 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.000 of a paper in the journal we ultimately submitted to. 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.160 So the fact that it blew up was a big surprise. 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.160 The fact that it got published was also a big surprise, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:04.600 which was very very happy because internally I thought it 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:05.840 was a good piece of work, but I didn't know 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.520 if the world was going to agree. So I I've 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.640 seen your work misstated in a variety of ways. I'm 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.040 sure you have. Also. The one that I noticed all 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:20.280 the time is stupid people don't know they're stupid. And 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.680 while that could very well be true, that is not 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:26.880 the basic theme of of your research. Is it no, 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.120 we were very clear from the outset that the Dunne 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.079 Ruger effect is something that can visit anybody at any time. 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:36.960 That is, each of us has our own pockets of 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.520 incompetence and we just don't know when we wander into them. 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:44.839 So it uh well. Often the one mistake that people 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.520 make is thinking about the Dunne Krueger effect is about them, 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.880 those as you say, stupid people out there, and the 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:55.480 paper really was really about us and ourselves and being 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.000 vigilant about the fact that sometimes we're going to wander 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.800 into our own little personal disaster. Is not knowing that 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.480 a disaster is imminent. So people trying to explain Dunning 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.760 Krueger themselves are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effects in 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.560 many different ways. So if you give me a moment, 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:16.120 two different ways um that people get it wrong. First 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:19.240 is to think about other people and it's not about me. 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.320 The second is thinking that incompetent people are the most 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.400 confident people in the room. That's not necessarily true. Occasionally 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:28.960 that shows up in our data, but they are usually 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:33.760 less confident than the really competent people, but not that much. 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.839 And but the real thing that I think is fascinating 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:38.640 and this has only happened in the past five years. 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.640 Is that if you google images of the Dunning Kruger effect, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.760 the charts, the chart, well we did that. Those aren't 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.439 our charts. So you didn't do Mount Stupid or the 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.640 value of despair, and no, we did not. That has 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.440 nothing to do whatsoever with our ninety paper or anything 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:01.160 that we did subsequently. And uh, two notes of At first, 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.120 I think it's it's delicious that a lot of people 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.160 think of the Dunning Kruger effect. They're talking about the 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.320 Dunning Kruger effect, their videotaping talks and Dunning Kruger effect, 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.760 and what they're talking about is not the Dunning Kruger effect. Um, 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:19.199 they're suffering the effect, about the effect itself. Um, that's 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.800 the first. The second note, though, is given this situation, 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:27.000 we did face a dilemma in the lab, how do 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:30.280 we fix this? How do we correct this? And so 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.080 this is true. In part we decided the most efficient 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.520 ethical thing to do was to steal the idea from 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.719 the internet, because the other problem with the idea, other 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:41.480 than it not being the Dunning Kuger effect, is that's 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:44.120 it's more interesting than the Dunning Kruger effect. So but 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:46.200 we stole the idea, tested it, and it turns out 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.840 that mount stupid value of despair a plateau of enlightenment 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.840 time course of people see that. We pretty much get 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.040 that um pattern as we pay people through a completely 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.199 novel task. So internet is right. So so in other words, 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:05.760 and I'm I'm intrigued and fascinated by this. You never 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:09.800 put out a chart. I always assumed that that chart 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:12.679 had to come from your data, because what are people 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:16.280 just brewing lines and making it up and ps it 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:21.240 intuitively looks right. You would assume, Hey, when so I 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.080 play tennis, I only started recently, less than ten years ago. 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:27.440 And when you start out and you're starting hit the 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:29.240 ball and you feel like you have some control and 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.400 you have some skill, and and then you're you're working 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.280 your way up that mount stupid. And then when you 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.960 actually start to develop some skill, not that I really have, 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.160 but I'm better than I was five years ago, you realize, oh, 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:43.880 I didn't know what the heck I was doing, not 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.240 just a ball and getting lucky when it catches the tape, 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:49.720 and all of a sudden you realize, oh, I'm way 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.520 down this And then you continue playing, you get a 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:54.560 little better and a little better. I don't know if 0:11:54.600 --> 0:12:00.160 this is all rationalization, but it intuitively seems to make sense. Well, 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:02.079 not only does it intuitively make sense, it turns out 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:06.560 to make sense. Uh. And in a paper with Carmen Sanchez, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:10.240 we were able to demonstrate that basically what happens is 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:12.400 when you start a task. And what we did is 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.679 we had people. We put people in a post apocalyptic 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:19.240 world where they had to without supervision, but with feedback 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:25.120 diagnose who was infected with a zombie disease I hope, 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:27.640 hoping that that wasn't something that people had experienced with. 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.959 And basically what happens is if you're a beginner, you 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.760 start out way at the beginning, being appropriately conscious. You 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:37.080 really don't know what you're doing, and you know it. 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:39.760 But the problem is that you have a few successes 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.360 they're probably due to luck more than skill, and you 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.040 think you have it. That is, people arrive at a 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.880 theory based on data which is far too early, far 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.240 too sparse, and far too unreliable, but they think I 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.720 got it, and then the next phase that they have 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.600 to go through is realizing, oh, that theory really doesn't work. Uh, 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:00.120 and so we've been able to track that a to 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:04.000 show that uh and a number of studies. So the 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.120 internet is right. UM. I'm very pleased with its intuition 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:11.040 on this one. UM, but it is a little bit 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:13.840 odd to get credit for an insight that we never had, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.720 but we're very happy to steal. So essentially, when you 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:23.200 run the data showing UM the correlation between skill and 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.079 UM ability to self evaluate, you end up with a 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:32.800 chart that looks in this paper, looks remarkably similar to 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:37.080 all the various pop psychology uh mount stupid charts that 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:39.719 are out there. Well. Yeah, as you gain experience, you 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.640 unfortunately start with a burst of overconfidence. I got this 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.679 you No, you don't. And then experience basically is correcting 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.280 your flattering impression of your skill as time goes on, 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:55.960 until at some point learning stops because of experiences, not 0:13:56.120 --> 0:14:02.320 new or learning does experience human limits. But that that 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.720 is a pattern. By the way, if anybody flies an airplane, 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:09.080 they perfectly understand this pattern. It's not beginning pilots who 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.520 are the most dangerous. It's pilots with let's say six 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:17.480 hundred UM flight hours. They have enough experience. I think 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:19.800 that they've got this, and they enter into what's referred 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.200 to as the killing zone where accents are most likely 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:27.000 to happen. All of this raises the question of how 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:31.320 much of an independent skill is self assessment? Or asked differently, 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:34.720 do you have to be skilled at the underlying task 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.920 in hands in order to have any skill set in 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.440 evaluating it or can they be learned independently. I think 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:45.560 research actually has to look at this a little bit more. Uh. 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:47.800 One of the things that we know, and we followed 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:51.880 up on this is there's um direct skill in doing 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.040 the task, direct skill and doing the judgment, and then 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:59.160 there is potentially another layer which is evaluating the judgment. 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.640 The question is how much does that second judgment rely 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:06.000 on knowledge in the first And from our data it no, 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:11.160 It's clear that accuracy in knowing whether or not you're 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:15.400 right is very correlated with accuracy in the first place. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:17.760 Are you really good at the skill? Can you reach 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:21.000 an accurate judgment? Now? It's not true in everything. It's 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.960 not true in golf. Um, I know just how bad 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:27.600 my golf game is because I tend to score my 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:30.320 rounds not in terms of shots, but in terms of 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:34.400 how many balls did I lose, of course, and that's 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.160 a that's a metric that gives me a pretty good 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:39.800 indication of how bad I am. So you could self 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:44.200 evaluate without even seeing your skill, your your actual scorecard score. 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.000 You just count the lost balls. That yeah, that's the 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:51.400 real thing. Um And but there are a lot of 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:56.080 skills though that uh, accuracy at the medicaguntive task. Judging 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.440 whether or not you're right that skill really depends on 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:00.960 your skill in the first test, which is gaining a 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:06.840 right judgment. And for example of financial forecasting would be 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:11.800 an example. That's easy pickings, that's fishing a barrel from 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.760 what I hear. And giving a good lecture in my world, well, 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:20.640 you do have to judge internally, am I really giving 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:22.480 a good lecture or not? You can't really depend on 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.400 the audience. Audiences can be good, audiences can be bad. 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:30.920 And so but the choices you make, um, well, they 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.200 depend on skill. But your evaluation of those choices probably 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:36.200 depend on how good you are and knowing what a 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.160 good lecture looks like, what a good lecture sounds like. 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.000 So let's talk a little bit about academic psychology and 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.440 your background and what it's like teaching these days. You 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:52.600 got your PhD at Stanford at a time when I 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:54.600 guess you could still say it today. It was the 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:58.120 mecca of psychology, wasn't it? Yes? It was. So who 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.920 would you study under? I studied under Ross primarily was 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.480 also mentored a little bit by Phoebe Elsworth, whose last 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:08.320 few years I've been a colleague of at Michigan. But 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.920 it really was a village um. Everybody among the faculty 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:15.600 was on the same page, so to speak. And so 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.440 I'd have to say that entire faculty raised me as 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:21.240 it did a lot of other people. Quite interesting. So 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.960 you've been studying psychology for a long time. Have you 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:30.480 found in the rest of your life's decision making that 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:35.760 you've become more rational and a bitter decision maker. I 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:40.040 think life has provided those lessons. Yes, and I've certainly 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:44.200 become more experienced in my work. So, Um, I bear 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.239 the scars, Uh, I bear the wounds, but I do 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:50.240 think that I am a little wiser because of it. 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.880 I One of the things, or one of the principles 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.439 I often live by, is are you vaguely embarrassed by 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:02.000 something you did five ten years go? And so I'll 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.760 read things that I did five or ten years ago, 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.040 and I find myself I shouldn't have done it that way, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.119 and I take that as a pleasant emotion. It's suggests 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.720 I'm in a different place now than I was back then. 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.080 So I go through something similar in every five years. 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:20.720 I'm mortified of the five year younger version of me. Um. 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.000 But I never took the next step to say, well, 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.919 I guess this means I'm growing. I always been just 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:30.880 so horrified at at the younger version. Um, I didn't 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:32.760 make the leap that. Oh, I guess this means that 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:37.000 that's progress. Um. So let's talk a little bit about 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.399 about things like that, about learning and norms. You write 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.240 a lot about social norms. Why do you find this 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:46.760 topic so so fascinating? Well, social norms, I think is 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:51.600 the surprisingly understudying thing in the behavioral sciences. There are 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.720 people who study it, but social norms are an incredible 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.960 guide both to successful human behavior, not only for individuals 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:04.919 but for society but also at times, um, the source 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:09.200 of the greatest calamity, if you will, so, Um, why 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.919 is it? Give us some examples to better understand that? Well? 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.879 I think that the clearest example that comes to mind is, 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.199 let's take norms of politeness. And let's talk about the 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:24.399 fact that the FAA has recorded I believe, I'm not 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:27.720 sure the numbers sixteen times where the crew in the 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:32.160 cockpit of a of an airliner knew that the pilot 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.000 was doing something wrong and they were going to crash 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.520 into a mountain. The pilot didn't seem to know, but 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.480 they're polite, and so they indirectly keep telling the pilot 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.600 you better change things up, but they don't say it directly. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.760 And if you listen to the black box recordings, those 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:52.280 planes crash. Uh, So there's a there's a norm that we, 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.639 uh try not to embarrass the other person. It's a 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.000 very important norm for day to day life. Imagine day 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.000 to day life without it. But it can go to 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.960 extremes in terms of not telling pilots that, uh, they're 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:09.280 on a course to disaster, or not telling doctors that 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.440 they're operating on the wrong leg for example. Really, and 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:15.120 so to me, that sounds a lot like just deferral 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.520 to authority. How much of that is just being a 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.720 good little soldier and how much of that is social norms? 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.080 Were they you know, two sides of the same coin, Well, 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:26.520 they're two sides of the same coin. I mean, we 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.680 defer to authority, but we also defer to each other, 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.240 and by and large sets there because it has an 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.960 overall positive impact. But it can go too far. Um 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.160 so uh. And the question becomes knowing when it's going 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.480 too far and being able to break the norm. And 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.800 what I find interesting though, is that norms permeate our life. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.080 For example, there are norms that we know that we 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:52.280 don't know that we know. So, for example, just just 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.679 give you a one example. We know it's a teenage 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.359 ninja turtles as opposed to a teenage ninja to turtles 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:05.280 as opposed to mutant ninja teenage turtles. That sounds odd. 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:08.760 There's a rule in how you stack up adjectives before 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:11.480 and now uh, and we all follow that rule and 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:13.240 we know when that rules being violated, but we don't 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:15.919 know that rule. But there are a lot of rules 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.040 in our language, a lot of rules in our behavior, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.200 a lot of rules in our etiquette that we're following, 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:23.040 but we're so skilled at them we don't know that 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.320 we're following. We just internalize them and we're not aware 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.879 of that. That's right, And so so how does that 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:30.679 come back? How do you deal with that when you 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:34.480 have a deferring co pilot and the pilots about to 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.199 hit them out. You have to train people to have 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:40.680 a different norm. So you just completely break the underlying 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.959 norm and replace it with something for safety purposes. That's right. 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.040 Either you invent a procedure or you invent a piece 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:48.639 of equipment, so it's going to tell the pilot that 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.360 they're in error, UM or a piece of equipment that 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:55.000 prevents the error in the first place. So, for example, 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.040 in terms of wrong side surgery, and this is a 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.600 thing that can happen, but it happens much less than 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.360 it used to basically because the medical profession has instituted 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:07.000 procedures to just avoid the error another norm, if you will. 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:10.280 So I remember when I had eye surgery. I'm having 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:14.560 a pleasant conversation with the eye surgeon um beforehand, and 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:16.520 at the end he has, oh, by the way, it's 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:20.919 your right eye we're doing today, right, and uh, I 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:22.840 go yes, And well he knew it was the right eye, 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:26.040 but he had to check and then he signed, you know, 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:30.359 the forehead and above my right just to make sure 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.200 that to avoid wrong side surgery. So I'm just horrified 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.679 at the thought that there's a room full of surgeons 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:39.840 and someone starts sawing off the wrong leg and nobody 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:44.840 says anything. Yes, well, because it is the case that 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:49.320 people may be uncertain, they don't know how to intervene. Hey, 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:53.800 that's the wrong leg. Not to be funny, but I'm 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:57.280 it's just terrifying. Oh I know. But but remember this 0:22:57.520 --> 0:22:58.840 in some sense, it goes all the way back to 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:02.119 the Pilgrim experiment. Uh. And the key about the Pilgrim 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:04.920 experiment is not that people gleefully went all the way 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:08.920 to shock another person and basically a commit involuntary manslaughter. 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:11.719 That's what the moment experiment was. They didn't know how 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:16.399 to get out. And what I'm intrigued by the film 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:20.800 of the Milgram experiment, for example, is that the second thing, uh, 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:22.760 the subjects tend to say when they're trying to get 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:24.840