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PROFESSOR: So last time, we
talked about spectacular

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things about human nature
in terms of problems or

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difficulties when we overly
obey, when we're overly

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conformist, and the tendency
for us to do that much more

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than we imagine we would.

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And the experimental
evidence is pretty

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powerful, that is true.

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You could call that the dark
side of things like obedience

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a and conformity.

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The upside of it is that's how
we work together and get along

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as a society.

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And today, I'm going to focus
more on individual, everyday

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experiences.

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But again, I think you'll see
in terms of self-concept and

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impressions of others,
those are more

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everyday kinds of things.

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But you'll see how they populate
our lives, how we

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think about ourselves, how we
think about people in everyday

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interactions, impressions
of others.

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We've talked a little bit,
just a little bit, about

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cultural differences.

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Our course has been very focused
on American, European

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type cultures.

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We talked a little about
different ones.

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I'll say a bit more
about that.

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And then, I'll talk about maybe
the most thought about

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disorder of social interaction,
autism.

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So enhancing our views
of ourselves, OK?

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So most US college students rank
themselves as better than

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average students.

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So you can sit there in your
chair and you could go, no,

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I'm a pretty modest person.

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But really, I'm probably
better than the average

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student, right?

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And by the way, I'll tell you
faculty are the same.

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So a million high school
students rated their

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leadership ability
in one example.

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28% said they were average.

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70% rated themselves as above
average in leadership.

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You understand that only 50%
could be at most above

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average, or 49%.

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Only 2% said they were
below average.

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60% of the high school students
of these million said

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were in the top 10% in
their ability to

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get along with others.

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And by the way, just in case
you think it's picking on

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students, 94% of college
instructors rated themselves

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as better than average
teachers.

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So whether you're sitting there
or standing here, we all

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polish our image to ourselves.

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And we can decide, is
that a bad thing?

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Is that vanity or egoism?

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Or is that maybe a pretty
healthy way to

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bump through life?

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Is overrating yourself, short
of putting yourself in

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destructive situations, is that
a way to be happy and

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optimistic?

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Are we resilient?

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So people call this
self-serving

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attributional biases.

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And this will play out
a little bit like the

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fundamental attribution error.

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Let me remind you
of what that is.

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The fundamental attribution
error is when other people do

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things, it's their character,
and especially failings are

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because of failings of
their character.

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When we do things we're not
especially proud of or don't

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think are awesome, that's the
situation that made us do it.

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And we don't provide that same
understanding of the situation

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to understand the behaviors
of others.

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It's not intuitive to do so.

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So they did experiments where
the experimenter set up how

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well you would do on tests.

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They made a test super difficult
or easier, sensory

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or perceptual discrimination,
social sensitivity,

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competitive games.

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It's all set up by
the experimenter.

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They can make tests brutally
hard or pretty easy.

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They can make you do well
or make you do badly.

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And when people did well and
they were asked to say why

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they thought they did well,
the usual description was,

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because I'm a particularly
social person.

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I'm very competitive.

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I'm extra good at sensory
perception.

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You pick it.

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When they did badly, that
was a tough test.

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It's rare for people to say,
that was an easy test!

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Who wouldn't do well?

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If you do well, people tend to
ascribe it to their character,

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and when they do badly,
the situation.

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even within ourselves.

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And it extends to families,
social and political groups,

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and sports teams.

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You may know I'm very proud and
happy to be a member of

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the MIT community.

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Something happens bad
at MIT, I don't go,

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well, then, MIT stinks.

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I go, oh, there was a situation
that wasn't

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well-handled by an individual.

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Same thing you might
think about the

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country you belong to.

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We don't say, US did
something bad.

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Most of us don't go, well,
the US stinks.

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We go, that's situation
wasn't very good.

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We've got to change things.

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Yeah?

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AUDIENCE: Do you think this is
saying more about how people

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explain things to others
or about what

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they actually believe?

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PROFESSOR: So the question was,
is it what they actually

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believe, or say to others?

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I think the evidence is it's
about what they say to

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themselves truly about how they

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explain success or failure.

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OK?

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People are biased to attribute
their successes to their

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wonderful traits and their
failures to situations.

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But we talked earlier that that
can be a healthy thing.

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Because then, you
can bounce back.

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You can say, well,
I did badly.

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But, hey, I'm a winner.

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And tomorrow morning,
I'll get up.

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And I'm back at bat, right?

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Instead of saying,
oh, I'm a loser.

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It's all just pointless.

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So in what sense is it
good to have this?

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It's not a good thing
or a bad thing.

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It's probably a thing of
positive mental health but it

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can make us overlook
causes of things.

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So an example of that as we
construct social realities,

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and you may know this is
the original study.

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But there's a million since.

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An undefeated Princeton
team played Dartmouth

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in a football game.

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Princeton won.

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And then, they looked
at the newspaper

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accounts of the games--

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totally different.

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They showed the film
to students

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from the two campuses.

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And depending on which team
you were rooting for, you

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tended to view the other team
as dirty, not playing fair,

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not doing the right thing.

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You don't have to be much of a
sports fan to notice things

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where the other team is not
doing the right thing and your

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team, when it doesn't do the
right thing, well, they were

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under pressure.

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It was atypical.

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And that makes it, of
course, hard for

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people to get together.

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We don't too much worry about
Princeton/Dartmouth

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tension in the world.

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But we do worry about tensions
in the Middle East between

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Palestinians and Israelis.

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When they see the same news
story, how do they interpret

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what happened in that
news story?

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So this question of if we have
illusions that we're better

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than we are a little bit, is
that a bad thing or is that a

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good thing was tested in an
ironic study by Alloy and

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Abramson looking at patients
with actual clinical

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depression.

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So they gave depressed and
non-depressed students tasks

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that varied in the degree of
contingency, that is how much

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the performance of the
participant actually

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influenced the outcome.

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They controlled that.

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And then, they asked people
afterwards to estimate the

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degree of contingency between
a button press and a green

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light going on.

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How much of it was you, and how
much of it seemed to be

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randomly done by the
experimenter?

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Depressed students in this
particular setting were more

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accurate in knowing when it
would depend on them.

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And non-depressed students
overestimated the contingency.

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They overestimated their
influence on the situation

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when the outcomes
were desired.

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Awesome, that's because
I'm awesome.

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And when things didn't go so
well, again, not really under

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their control.

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But they don't know that.

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It's the situation.

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Something was screwed up
with the experiment.

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So they're more variable--

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they interpret the situation
much more,

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again, on these things.

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And you could say they're
less accurate.

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But you could also say that's
a way, again, to have

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confidence in yourself and
optimism about the future.

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Another way in which we believe
and justify our

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choices but a way in which we're
socially influenced is

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this, the phenomenon called
false consensus.

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People choose to engage in a
behavior that those people who

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do that believe that it's more
common and that more people do

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that, that when you do
something, the more you do it,

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the more you think other
people do it, too.

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What's the big deal?

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You might know that feeling.

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So the original experiment on
the Stanford campus for this

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phenomenon from Lee Ross was he
asked people carry around a

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sign on campus that said "Eat
at Joe's" for 30 minutes.

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Some people said
no, thank you.

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Some people said yes because
they were obedient.

00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:30.670
Compliance.

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Now, of the people who said yes,
I'll carry that sign for

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30 minutes, they thought the
majority of other people when

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asked to do so will do so.

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They thought, well, that's
the way most people are.

00:08:41.210 --> 00:08:42.730
And I'm going to behave
like most people.

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That's a false consensus.

00:08:44.350 --> 00:08:47.540
The people who said no, I won't
do it, they thought the

00:08:47.540 --> 00:08:49.280
majority would not do it.

00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:51.450
So part of their thinking about
deciding if they'll do

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something or not is their
estimate of whether people in

00:08:55.640 --> 00:08:58.250
general would do it.

00:08:58.250 --> 00:09:01.380
But what you can see happens
is that driven by whether

00:09:01.380 --> 00:09:03.140
they're going to do it or not.

00:09:03.140 --> 00:09:05.830
So for example, teenage smokers
estimate higher rates

00:09:05.830 --> 00:09:08.620
of smoking than nonsmokers.

00:09:08.620 --> 00:09:11.200
Domestically abusive men
estimate that about 28% of men

00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:13.300
have violently thrown things
at their partner.

00:09:13.300 --> 00:09:16.460
Best estimates are
it's down to 12%.

00:09:16.460 --> 00:09:19.690
So we tend to overly believe
that other people will do the

00:09:19.690 --> 00:09:21.560
same behaviors that we do.

00:09:21.560 --> 00:09:23.155
And that's part of justifying
those behaviors.

00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:28.630
A demonstration of that was from
Phil Zimbardo, the social

00:09:28.630 --> 00:09:30.180
psychologist who did the
prison experiment.

00:09:30.180 --> 00:09:33.020
This has some of the same
flavor, not quite as dramatic.

00:09:33.020 --> 00:09:36.500
But he worked in New York before
he moved to Stanford.

00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:38.920
So he compared the Bronx
to Palo Alto.

00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:41.840
In 1980, the paper
was published.

00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:46.050
And he left out cars, one in
upper middle class Palo Alto--

00:09:46.050 --> 00:09:49.380
very suburban area if you
haven't been there-- and one

00:09:49.380 --> 00:09:51.180
in a tough Bronx area.

00:09:51.180 --> 00:09:53.080
As you could imagine, you
leave a car out there by

00:09:53.080 --> 00:09:56.520
itself in the Bronx area without
a license plate and

00:09:56.520 --> 00:09:59.610
the hood was up, it was
stripped within a day.

00:09:59.610 --> 00:10:02.130
So you park the car, you push
up the hood, no license

00:10:02.130 --> 00:10:04.160
plate-- stripped within a day.

00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:08.000
In Palo Alto, it's untouched
for a week.

00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.530
So that's obviously to do with
the environment you're in.

00:10:11.530 --> 00:10:13.100
But here's the false
consensus.

00:10:13.100 --> 00:10:14.550
So then, they smash a window.

00:10:14.550 --> 00:10:16.170
And within an hour,
it's stripped.

00:10:16.170 --> 00:10:18.310
As soon as you smash the
window-- we talked about

00:10:18.310 --> 00:10:19.000
broken windows.

00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:19.950
Here it is literally.

00:10:19.950 --> 00:10:22.480
Soon as somebody says,
all rules are off.

00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:24.790
This car is smash, wrecked--

00:10:24.790 --> 00:10:26.370
that's the behavior
I can engage in.

00:10:29.800 --> 00:10:32.990
What you perceive as the
relevance, the environment of

00:10:32.990 --> 00:10:36.150
behaviors are appropriate,
hugely influences and

00:10:36.150 --> 00:10:38.510
justifies and drives
your own behavior.

00:10:41.910 --> 00:10:45.660
Now one of the tasks people have
to try to convince people

00:10:45.660 --> 00:10:48.090
to do public goods
in various ways--

00:10:48.090 --> 00:10:51.380
and this is an ad that when I
was younger was very famous.

00:10:51.380 --> 00:10:53.800
For you, it's so long ago
in history that you may

00:10:53.800 --> 00:10:54.530
not even know it.

00:10:54.530 --> 00:10:56.930
But it was one of the most
famous ones when the United

00:10:56.930 --> 00:10:59.670
states was first confronting
issues with environmental

00:10:59.670 --> 00:11:01.420
problems and pollution.

00:11:01.420 --> 00:11:03.140
You may not believe this, but
there was an era when there

00:11:03.140 --> 00:11:06.670
was fantastic pollution in the
air and the water and the land

00:11:06.670 --> 00:11:08.820
and nobody seemed to care about
it at all because land

00:11:08.820 --> 00:11:09.430
seemed endless.

00:11:09.430 --> 00:11:11.460
It wasn't even a thought.

00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:14.160
So Earth Day was
from the 1970s.

00:11:14.160 --> 00:11:17.920
That was the marking of a wider
consciousness of the

00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:20.970
consequence of ruining
the environment.

00:11:20.970 --> 00:11:23.270
And so in the very earliest
stages, when people weren't

00:11:23.270 --> 00:11:27.040
used almost any discussions of
that, there was this ad with a

00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:29.770
Native American with a tear
running down his face.

00:11:29.770 --> 00:11:31.020
And let me show you the ad.

00:11:39.020 --> 00:11:44.630
A very powerful ad at a time,
and one that I'll show you in

00:11:44.630 --> 00:11:46.890
a minute that social
psychologists believe was

00:11:46.890 --> 00:11:49.720
completely counterproductive
to the goal of reducing

00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:50.840
pollution--

00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:54.200
exactly the thing you don't
want to do because we just

00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:57.650
talked about false consensus and
about these environmental

00:11:57.650 --> 00:11:58.800
justifications.

00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:01.960
So I'll tell you, but
what does that mean?

00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:03.960
So if you see a lot of people
throwing garbage onto the

00:12:03.960 --> 00:12:07.710
beach, onto the street, into
the river, what are you

00:12:07.710 --> 00:12:10.150
allowed to do?

00:12:10.150 --> 00:12:10.900
Pollute yourself.

00:12:10.900 --> 00:12:12.490
Hey, everybody else
is doing it.

00:12:12.490 --> 00:12:13.590
What's the big deal?

00:12:13.590 --> 00:12:15.430
That's the mode of
behavior, right?

00:12:15.430 --> 00:12:17.880
Broken window, steal the car.

00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:20.200
Litter everywhere, OK,
somebody is saying

00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:20.880
it's not a good idea.

00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:22.540
But the behavior that I see is

00:12:22.540 --> 00:12:24.070
littering, littering, littering.

00:12:24.070 --> 00:12:25.500
It's OK to litter.

00:12:25.500 --> 00:12:27.550
So they literally showed
this in experiments.

00:12:27.550 --> 00:12:29.690
They took people into
areas, into parks.

00:12:29.690 --> 00:12:33.320
They surrounded them with
different amounts of trash.

00:12:33.320 --> 00:12:35.610
Here's the percentage of
people who litter.

00:12:35.610 --> 00:12:37.120
Here's how much trash
was around them.

00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:39.000
They went into parks and they
put a little trash and they

00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.140
watched somebody come by.

00:12:41.140 --> 00:12:42.620
Still, some people
are littering.

00:12:42.620 --> 00:12:43.640
Maybe less would now.

00:12:43.640 --> 00:12:44.370
I don't know.

00:12:44.370 --> 00:12:47.430
But as soon as there was four
pieces or eight pieces of

00:12:47.430 --> 00:12:50.700
littering, then you more than
double the littering when

00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:52.330
there's zero.

00:12:52.330 --> 00:12:57.800
So the very example of showing
littering drives littering.

00:12:57.800 --> 00:12:59.890
You say, nobody's saying
it's a good thing.

00:12:59.890 --> 00:13:02.060
But hey, it's what everybody's
doing.

00:13:02.060 --> 00:13:02.810
And why do we litter?

00:13:02.810 --> 00:13:06.370
Because we're lazy and most of
us just don't want to bother

00:13:06.370 --> 00:13:09.300
to walk to the garbage can.

00:13:09.300 --> 00:13:13.730
So they did an experiment with
public service announcements

00:13:13.730 --> 00:13:16.310
where they said the important
thing is to see behavior, the

00:13:16.310 --> 00:13:18.230
behavior you want.

00:13:18.230 --> 00:13:21.080
Like in this case, it was
a recycling thing.

00:13:21.080 --> 00:13:25.460
And then, you show one example
of a person who doesn't do it.

00:13:25.460 --> 00:13:27.550
And you say, bad person!

00:13:27.550 --> 00:13:29.240
You don't say bad person, but
you send that message.

00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:30.700
You say, here's the
behavior we want.

00:13:30.700 --> 00:13:31.640
There's somebody doing that.

00:13:31.640 --> 00:13:33.890
Uh-uh.

00:13:33.890 --> 00:13:36.000
And what they found
is that 25%--

00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:37.260
this is truly in
the community--

00:13:37.260 --> 00:13:39.180
increase in recycling.

00:13:39.180 --> 00:13:42.270
So if you want to get people to
do things, showing them bad

00:13:42.270 --> 00:13:46.510
behavior unfortunately makes
them think that bad behavior

00:13:46.510 --> 00:13:49.440
is widespread and an acceptable
way to go.

00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:52.960
So you have to show them good
behavior and then give maybe

00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:55.030
one example of bad things
because you don't want to be

00:13:55.030 --> 00:13:56.040
labeled bad.

00:13:56.040 --> 00:13:58.860
But mostly, they have to see the
behavior you want, not the

00:13:58.860 --> 00:14:01.340
behavior you're trying
to discourage.

00:14:01.340 --> 00:14:05.970
So for a social psychologist,
exactly the opposite outcome

00:14:05.970 --> 00:14:08.850
of the intended ad.

00:14:08.850 --> 00:14:12.130
So this speaks to a gap
almost all of us have.

00:14:12.130 --> 00:14:14.980
Some of you may be more perfect
than I. Many of you

00:14:14.980 --> 00:14:17.080
may be more perfect than I.
But here's the gap we face

00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:19.140
every morning when we get up,
which is the difference

00:14:19.140 --> 00:14:20.920
between our attitudes
and our actions--

00:14:20.920 --> 00:14:23.120
the things we know are the way
we wish we were, the right

00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:25.580
thing to do, and the way in
which sometimes we don't

00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:28.760
always do the rightest thing
we know we could.

00:14:28.760 --> 00:14:32.260
So daffodil days, you may know,
occurs in many places

00:14:32.260 --> 00:14:34.510
including universities where you
buy a daffodil and there's

00:14:34.510 --> 00:14:36.910
a four day campus
event to benefit

00:14:36.910 --> 00:14:38.320
American Cancer Society.

00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:39.840
So it's a nice thing.

00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:40.830
It's buying a flower.

00:14:40.830 --> 00:14:44.450
It's a good cause, fighting
cancer, very positive.

00:14:44.450 --> 00:14:49.040
So they did a study with
251 Cornell students.

00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:52.370
And they asked them, when
daffodil day comes up and you

00:14:52.370 --> 00:14:54.020
just spend a tiny bit of money--
it's a very small

00:14:54.020 --> 00:14:56.150
amount of money they
ask from students--

00:14:56.150 --> 00:14:58.000
will you buy at least
one flower?

00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.190
And over 80% said,
yes, I will.

00:15:00.190 --> 00:15:02.870
For a cause like that, buying
a beautiful flower to fight

00:15:02.870 --> 00:15:05.530
cancer, I'll spend $1.

00:15:05.530 --> 00:15:07.010
How about the other students?

00:15:07.010 --> 00:15:08.510
Well, they're kind of lazy.

00:15:08.510 --> 00:15:09.590
And they have good intentions.

00:15:09.590 --> 00:15:11.610
But probably only about half
of them will do it.

00:15:11.610 --> 00:15:14.860
That's a little bit of
the self-affirmation.

00:15:14.860 --> 00:15:15.520
I'm a good person.

00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:17.710
Other people will be flawed.

00:15:17.710 --> 00:15:19.130
So how many people
actually buy it?

00:15:19.130 --> 00:15:20.590
43%.

00:15:20.590 --> 00:15:23.140
So what happened to this 40%?

00:15:23.140 --> 00:15:24.290
Well, it's a little bit
like the story.

00:15:24.290 --> 00:15:24.850
Things were busy.

00:15:24.850 --> 00:15:25.990
Things were happening.

00:15:25.990 --> 00:15:30.020
They weren't for cancer
and against flowers,

00:15:30.020 --> 00:15:31.200
just they got busy.

00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:31.840
There were exams.

00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:33.380
There was stuff going on.

00:15:36.500 --> 00:15:39.970
And how do we explain to
ourselves this gap between the

00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:43.480
attitudes we hold
and truly hold?

00:15:43.480 --> 00:15:45.220
We want to do good things and
be a good person, and the

00:15:45.220 --> 00:15:50.470
actions we do, which are often
a little bit below that?

00:15:50.470 --> 00:15:54.080
So this gap between our
attitudes and our actions has

00:15:54.080 --> 00:15:55.840
led to the phenomenon of
cognitive dissonance.

00:15:55.840 --> 00:15:58.460
You now hear this term
used widely.

00:15:58.460 --> 00:15:59.800
Originally, it had a pretty
narrow meaning.

00:15:59.800 --> 00:16:01.440
And I'm going to
be just talking

00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:02.105
about that narrow meaning.

00:16:02.105 --> 00:16:04.390
It's become a term that's
used much more widely.

00:16:04.390 --> 00:16:07.360
But here's the original
work from Festinger.

00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:10.180
He said that we have a problem
all the time that we have a

00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:13.820
gap between our attitudes and
our behaviors and that, as

00:16:13.820 --> 00:16:17.100
humans, we have to solve this
because we don't feel good

00:16:17.100 --> 00:16:19.510
about that gap.

00:16:19.510 --> 00:16:22.980
And so here's how we approached
showing how we

00:16:22.980 --> 00:16:24.220
solve that problem.

00:16:24.220 --> 00:16:26.510
Of course, the nice thing would
be just to do the right

00:16:26.510 --> 00:16:27.210
thing all the time.

00:16:27.210 --> 00:16:29.730
But that's not within, most
of us, somehow our grasp.

00:16:29.730 --> 00:16:30.580
OK

00:16:30.580 --> 00:16:31.930
So here's what he
had people do.

00:16:31.930 --> 00:16:35.290
He had people come in and do
a purposefully boring task.

00:16:35.290 --> 00:16:37.860
So they would pack and unpack
spools in a tray.

00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:40.000
Or they would turn tiny
little screws,

00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:40.810
each of them a quarter.

00:16:40.810 --> 00:16:42.580
It was purposefully boring.

00:16:42.580 --> 00:16:44.700
You could tell it was boring,
and it was boring.

00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:47.430
This was the goal.

00:16:47.430 --> 00:16:50.100
And then, either nothing
would happen--

00:16:50.100 --> 00:16:51.180
that's one group--

00:16:51.180 --> 00:16:53.180
or you would get paid $1--

00:16:53.180 --> 00:16:54.290
not much money--

00:16:54.290 --> 00:16:55.740
or $20--

00:16:55.740 --> 00:16:57.400
considerably better--

00:16:57.400 --> 00:17:00.235
to lie and tell the next person
who's coming in that

00:17:00.235 --> 00:17:02.620
this was an interesting
and worthwhile task.

00:17:02.620 --> 00:17:04.310
So you imagine you go in there,
you do something that's

00:17:04.310 --> 00:17:05.220
really boring.

00:17:05.220 --> 00:17:06.109
Imagine you're in this group.

00:17:06.109 --> 00:17:07.880
They say, here, here's $1.

00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:10.890
Will you lie to the
next person?

00:17:10.890 --> 00:17:13.130
Or here's $20, will you lie to
the next person saying this

00:17:13.130 --> 00:17:14.520
was a pretty cool task?

00:17:14.520 --> 00:17:18.260
I can't believe how lucky you
are to have the next turn.

00:17:18.260 --> 00:17:20.525
And then they say, OK, now we
know you lied to that person.

00:17:20.525 --> 00:17:21.960
We asked you to do it.

00:17:21.960 --> 00:17:23.819
But really, really,
how was the task?

00:17:23.819 --> 00:17:26.089
Really, really, how
was the task?

00:17:26.089 --> 00:17:28.730
And here's the amazing
finding.

00:17:28.730 --> 00:17:31.440
If you don't lie, you say I
didn't like it very much at

00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:34.020
all, here's zero,
less than zero.

00:17:34.020 --> 00:17:40.800
If you are paid $1 to lie,
whoa, it really was good!

00:17:40.800 --> 00:17:45.210
If you're paid $20 to lie, you
pretty much agree it stinks.

00:17:45.210 --> 00:17:46.670
So how does that work?

00:17:46.670 --> 00:17:49.370
You have to see the irony
of this, right?

00:17:49.370 --> 00:17:52.120
So the interpretation is this.

00:17:52.120 --> 00:17:55.590
If somebody pays you $20 to make
a white lie-- you don't

00:17:55.590 --> 00:17:58.240
see this as a brutal lie, just
telling the next student that

00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:01.250
this is a pretty cool task--

00:18:01.250 --> 00:18:04.590
is $20 worth a white lie?

00:18:04.590 --> 00:18:05.780
You can live with that.

00:18:05.780 --> 00:18:08.050
You know why you did it.

00:18:08.050 --> 00:18:09.110
But $1?

00:18:09.110 --> 00:18:11.330
Would you sacrifice your
integrity for $1?

00:18:13.980 --> 00:18:14.920
You understand--

00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:16.540
$1?

00:18:16.540 --> 00:18:18.970
How cheap can you be?

00:18:18.970 --> 00:18:20.430
So their idea is this.

00:18:20.430 --> 00:18:22.910
But now they're asking them
really, really, really, really

00:18:22.910 --> 00:18:26.220
the way that people put together
their attitudes, like

00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:29.120
I lied for a mere dollar, is to
say, hey, it must have been

00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:31.200
more interesting than
I first thought.

00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:34.510
Come to think of it, it was
pretty interesting.

00:18:34.510 --> 00:18:34.785
Boom.

00:18:34.785 --> 00:18:36.000
Do you understand that?

00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:39.770
So the effort to match up the
discrepancy between your

00:18:39.770 --> 00:18:43.000
attitudes and actions,
you solve--

00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:44.390
you can't let them
go like this.

00:18:44.390 --> 00:18:45.350
You can explain this.

00:18:45.350 --> 00:18:46.830
I lied because I got
paid a bunch.

00:18:46.830 --> 00:18:48.280
But this, you can't explain.

00:18:48.280 --> 00:18:49.870
It's too hard to understand.

00:18:49.870 --> 00:18:52.760
And you really create a
rationalization that puts it

00:18:52.760 --> 00:18:53.390
all together.

00:18:53.390 --> 00:18:55.480
And you really, really report
now that this was

00:18:55.480 --> 00:18:56.730
a pretty good task.

00:18:59.870 --> 00:19:00.590
Here's another one.

00:19:00.590 --> 00:19:03.655
And this is not high
tech experiments.

00:19:03.655 --> 00:19:07.140
You can do amazing experiments
without zapping people.

00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:10.930
But by the time I tell you the
end of this one experiment--

00:19:10.930 --> 00:19:12.540
let's see if I have
one more on this.

00:19:12.540 --> 00:19:16.270
Nah, I'll mention it now
and then the next one.

00:19:16.270 --> 00:19:19.790
It pretty much ruins it whenever
anybody tells you how

00:19:19.790 --> 00:19:22.270
satisfied they are with almost
anything they've

00:19:22.270 --> 00:19:23.330
done in their life.

00:19:23.330 --> 00:19:24.580
This has ruined it for me.

00:19:24.580 --> 00:19:26.750
And I'll tell you why.

00:19:26.750 --> 00:19:28.640
Although I know that
you're better off

00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:30.700
polishing your happiness.

00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:32.530
So here's a simple experiment.

00:19:32.530 --> 00:19:34.880
This guy, Jack Brehm, had a
bunch of wedding gifts.

00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:36.580
And he took his wedding
gifts to the lab.

00:19:36.580 --> 00:19:37.980
It was not very high tech.

00:19:37.980 --> 00:19:40.970
And he had people rate how
much they wanted them.

00:19:40.970 --> 00:19:43.590
So he had stuff like a desk
lamp, a toaster, a stopwatch,

00:19:43.590 --> 00:19:46.100
a radio, a bunch of stuff
you got in the

00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:48.580
1950s as wedding gifts.

00:19:48.580 --> 00:19:51.390
People rated how much
did they like them.

00:19:51.390 --> 00:19:53.720
And then, he picked two that
were in the middle of the list

00:19:53.720 --> 00:19:56.160
and rated right next
to each other.

00:19:56.160 --> 00:19:58.840
And he said, will you pick
one of these two?

00:19:58.840 --> 00:20:00.090
You get to take it home.

00:20:02.760 --> 00:20:04.740
Will you pick one of these two
that you rated in the middle

00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:06.220
right next to each other?

00:20:06.220 --> 00:20:07.120
And you pick one.

00:20:07.120 --> 00:20:09.730
He says, OK, do one more thing
before you take it home.

00:20:09.730 --> 00:20:12.890
Tell me again your rating for
the different things here.

00:20:12.890 --> 00:20:16.120
And here's what they find,
that the items that

00:20:16.120 --> 00:20:18.580
you chose move up.

00:20:18.580 --> 00:20:19.600
You already have it.

00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:22.750
But let's say it was rated one
to 10, it was rated a five, it

00:20:22.750 --> 00:20:24.680
now becomes a two.

00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:28.430
Man, that stopwatch, that's
pretty awesome.

00:20:28.430 --> 00:20:30.330
I thought it was a five.

00:20:30.330 --> 00:20:32.040
But it's a two, maybe a one.

00:20:32.040 --> 00:20:34.880
I can't believe how lucky
I am that I picked that.

00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:36.410
And how about the one
you didn't pick?

00:20:36.410 --> 00:20:39.260
Say the toaster was number
six or number four.

00:20:39.260 --> 00:20:40.870
That moved to nine or 10.

00:20:40.870 --> 00:20:42.180
That toaster stinks.

00:20:42.180 --> 00:20:46.390
That would have been such a bad
choice to attend Harvard.

00:20:46.390 --> 00:20:47.850
It would have been a disaster.

00:20:47.850 --> 00:20:51.150
Thank goodness I picked MIT.

00:20:51.150 --> 00:20:53.190
So the idea is even something
like this-- and everything

00:20:53.190 --> 00:20:55.360
they do, college
choices, cars--

00:20:55.360 --> 00:20:58.700
any experiment you do, if you
have people rate after they

00:20:58.700 --> 00:21:01.230
made a decision about what
they're going to do, they

00:21:01.230 --> 00:21:04.930
always rate the thing they
picked as awesome on average

00:21:04.930 --> 00:21:07.380
and the thing they didn't pick
as much worse than they

00:21:07.380 --> 00:21:09.130
initially rated it.

00:21:09.130 --> 00:21:11.110
And again, you can say,
is that a way we can

00:21:11.110 --> 00:21:12.460
have a happy life?

00:21:12.460 --> 00:21:14.940
Would you want to be at MIT
every day going, if only I'd

00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:16.480
gone to Princeton!

00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:19.340
Would you want to get married
to somebody and say, if only

00:21:19.340 --> 00:21:22.870
I'd waited a little
bit longer.

00:21:22.870 --> 00:21:25.420
For your career, could you have
said, I went right to

00:21:25.420 --> 00:21:27.150
medical school or law school
or engineering.

00:21:27.150 --> 00:21:28.570
If only I waited longer!

00:21:28.570 --> 00:21:30.360
So you want to say no,
thank goodness

00:21:30.360 --> 00:21:31.160
I picked that college.

00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:32.510
Thank goodness I picked
that career.

00:21:32.510 --> 00:21:35.670
Thank goodness I picked that
spouse or partner because the

00:21:35.670 --> 00:21:38.150
other choices that were vaguely
in my head were awful.

00:21:38.150 --> 00:21:41.320
I don't know how I was even
thinking about them.

00:21:41.320 --> 00:21:43.560
So this has ruined it for me
every time anyone tells me how

00:21:43.560 --> 00:21:45.750
happy they are with a choice
they've made in their life

00:21:45.750 --> 00:21:47.790
because I look at this and go,
yeah, once you make that

00:21:47.790 --> 00:21:51.926
choice, you're going to rate it
as awesome no matter what.

00:21:51.926 --> 00:21:54.520
And a famous example is now many
of you are taking pretty

00:21:54.520 --> 00:21:55.960
tough courses.

00:21:55.960 --> 00:21:59.700
Years later when you come back
for alumni events-- and

00:21:59.700 --> 00:22:01.830
hopefully many of you will have
good feelings about MIT

00:22:01.830 --> 00:22:03.550
and come back and see
your classmates--

00:22:03.550 --> 00:22:06.870
and you'll get around and say,
oh, that course was so brutal.

00:22:06.870 --> 00:22:09.220
I know that won't
be this course.

00:22:09.220 --> 00:22:11.410
That course was so brutal
with the problem sets.

00:22:11.410 --> 00:22:14.960
But it made me a stronger
person, a better person.

00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:17.570
Thank goodness I did it.

00:22:17.570 --> 00:22:18.490
And maybe it does.

00:22:18.490 --> 00:22:21.100
But let me tell you
why you will think

00:22:21.100 --> 00:22:23.690
that in large numbers.

00:22:23.690 --> 00:22:26.880
So 1959, there's a little bit
of a sociological experiment

00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:29.820
in the sense you have to think
of people in 1959.

00:22:29.820 --> 00:22:32.260
And they were told to qualify
for a research study, some

00:22:32.260 --> 00:22:35.250
women were required to read
aloud a list of obscene words

00:22:35.250 --> 00:22:36.930
which are seen as extremely
embarrassing and

00:22:36.930 --> 00:22:38.340
inappropriate in 1959.

00:22:38.340 --> 00:22:40.560
Nowadays, it might be
the preferred mode.

00:22:40.560 --> 00:22:42.340
But in 1959, it was like,
I don't know.

00:22:42.340 --> 00:22:43.930
This is not right--

00:22:43.930 --> 00:22:44.930
or mild words.

00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:46.650
So that's the experimenter.

00:22:46.650 --> 00:22:49.785
Then, you got the privilege, if
you did this, to listen to

00:22:49.785 --> 00:22:53.290
a lecture on mating habits
of lower animals.

00:22:53.290 --> 00:22:56.910
But they made it the most
boring they could.

00:22:56.910 --> 00:22:58.680
This could go a couple different
ways, mating habits

00:22:58.680 --> 00:22:59.800
of lower animals.

00:22:59.800 --> 00:23:03.180
They made it super boring
on purpose.

00:23:03.180 --> 00:23:04.130
Lecture's over.

00:23:04.130 --> 00:23:07.320
And they ask the students
to rate the lecture, an

00:23:07.320 --> 00:23:09.870
intentionally super
boring lecture.

00:23:09.870 --> 00:23:11.980
And the women were either in the
group with the unpleasant

00:23:11.980 --> 00:23:15.090
experience of having to read
aloud uncomfortable word lists

00:23:15.090 --> 00:23:16.940
or just neutral words,
no big deal.

00:23:16.940 --> 00:23:19.680
Who rated the lecture better?

00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:24.800
The women who read the obscene
list of words because they

00:23:24.800 --> 00:23:26.630
were saying, well, why would
I do this if the

00:23:26.630 --> 00:23:29.000
lecture weren't terrific?

00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:33.410
So the worse the experience
where you've had some sense of

00:23:33.410 --> 00:23:38.290
choice in it, the more people
will explain to themselves I

00:23:38.290 --> 00:23:40.630
took it for an extremely
good reason.

00:23:40.630 --> 00:23:43.030
I would not do a
painful thing.

00:23:43.030 --> 00:23:44.370
I'm not that incompetent.

00:23:44.370 --> 00:23:46.070
It must've been a
wise decision.

00:23:46.070 --> 00:23:48.980
And in fact, I should tell you
that if the examiner picks

00:23:48.980 --> 00:23:52.350
these items, you don't have
much of an effect.

00:23:52.350 --> 00:23:54.900
So if you rate items four and
five or five and six and the

00:23:54.900 --> 00:23:57.480
examiner gives you the
stopwatch, it doesn't change

00:23:57.480 --> 00:23:59.530
your ratings because you
didn't choose it.

00:23:59.530 --> 00:24:00.990
The examiner did.

00:24:00.990 --> 00:24:03.100
The stopwatch is a
mediocre gift?

00:24:03.100 --> 00:24:04.630
It's still a mediocre gift.

00:24:04.630 --> 00:24:08.500
But if you chose it, you have
to justify the choice.

00:24:08.500 --> 00:24:11.250
And there's 1,000 experiments
like this.

00:24:11.250 --> 00:24:13.490
Why did I do something
so painful?

00:24:13.490 --> 00:24:16.390
It must've been for a
very good reason.

00:24:16.390 --> 00:24:18.440
And then, you figure out what
that reason was, like the

00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:20.460
lecture was more awesome
than I thought.

00:24:20.460 --> 00:24:22.850
That physics course, that math
course, that computer science

00:24:22.850 --> 00:24:25.330
course just made me the
person I am today.

00:24:28.070 --> 00:24:30.320
We're going to switch gears
now, first impressions.

00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:32.850
So there's a book from Malcolm
Gladwell, Blink, which is

00:24:32.850 --> 00:24:34.900
really driven by this
phenomenon.

00:24:34.900 --> 00:24:37.590
The first impressions we take
of other people, how

00:24:37.590 --> 00:24:38.500
powerful are they?

00:24:38.500 --> 00:24:41.570
How valid are they?

00:24:41.570 --> 00:24:44.520
How accurate are they?

00:24:44.520 --> 00:24:47.440
So here's how we're going to
start the story, all the way

00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:48.510
back in 1966.

00:24:48.510 --> 00:24:50.410
They had students rate people's
personality on the

00:24:50.410 --> 00:24:52.980
first day of class before
they met each other.

00:24:52.980 --> 00:24:55.250
So if we had done this in this
course, imagine the first day

00:24:55.250 --> 00:24:58.470
of this course, imagine you're
not sitting with a friend and

00:24:58.470 --> 00:25:01.050
you're asked to people around
you on various personality

00:25:01.050 --> 00:25:02.110
dimensions.

00:25:02.110 --> 00:25:04.570
And the two that popped
out were sociable and

00:25:04.570 --> 00:25:05.610
responsibility.

00:25:05.610 --> 00:25:08.095
The people who said they were
sociable people tended to rate

00:25:08.095 --> 00:25:10.600
them as sociable just from
sitting next to them for a

00:25:10.600 --> 00:25:13.740
moment or as highly
responsible.

00:25:13.740 --> 00:25:17.490
So this is outgoingness and
personality psychology or

00:25:17.490 --> 00:25:18.340
extraversion.

00:25:18.340 --> 00:25:20.410
And this is something like
conscientiousness.

00:25:20.410 --> 00:25:22.710
Just talk to a person for
a couple of moments.

00:25:22.710 --> 00:25:27.600
You rate them pretty much like
they rate themselves.

00:25:27.600 --> 00:25:29.080
You don't know anything about
their background.

00:25:29.080 --> 00:25:30.490
You haven't had a
big interaction.

00:25:30.490 --> 00:25:32.770
Literally, it's moments next
to each in a course.

00:25:32.770 --> 00:25:36.680
Here's another one, 250 students
divided into groups

00:25:36.680 --> 00:25:39.810
of four who didn't know each
other and had not spoken.

00:25:39.810 --> 00:25:41.260
And they rated each other.

00:25:41.260 --> 00:25:43.480
And there was pretty good
correlations between moments

00:25:43.480 --> 00:25:48.230
of sitting together and how
sociable or extroverted people

00:25:48.230 --> 00:25:50.970
were, how responsible,
or conscientiousness.

00:25:50.970 --> 00:25:56.050
So a few moments with somebody
correlates pretty well your

00:25:56.050 --> 00:25:58.580
rating, on average, with how
they know themselves from a

00:25:58.580 --> 00:26:01.220
lifetime of personal
experience-- a few moments,

00:26:01.220 --> 00:26:02.470
pretty well.

00:26:02.470 --> 00:26:05.010
Now, we could say how well
do we rate ourselves?

00:26:05.010 --> 00:26:06.950
You could already pretty well
because it's pretty well

00:26:06.950 --> 00:26:08.410
adjusted with what other
people think.

00:26:08.410 --> 00:26:11.550
But here's another example where
they put strangers into

00:26:11.550 --> 00:26:17.040
groups, videotaped them, had
other people later on view the

00:26:17.040 --> 00:26:19.440
video tapes and rate things
like how extroverted they

00:26:19.440 --> 00:26:22.620
were, how much time did they
talk, how many arm movements.

00:26:22.620 --> 00:26:24.850
The impressions of the judges
watching the videotape

00:26:24.850 --> 00:26:28.240
correlated pretty well with
self-ratings and with ratings

00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:30.000
of other people who saw them
just for a few moments

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:30.600
personally.

00:26:30.600 --> 00:26:32.340
So all these things line up.

00:26:32.340 --> 00:26:34.870
Just from a few moments of
experience, you get a

00:26:34.870 --> 00:26:39.470
surprisingly strong consensus
about how outgoing somebody is

00:26:39.470 --> 00:26:43.630
and how conscientious or
responsible they are.

00:26:43.630 --> 00:26:45.770
And it lines up pretty much with
the person's own judgment

00:26:45.770 --> 00:26:48.370
about themselves that way.

00:26:48.370 --> 00:26:51.835
So this reached a huge moment
from Nalani Ambady who's now

00:26:51.835 --> 00:26:54.870
at Tufts having this famous
experiment, thin slices.

00:26:54.870 --> 00:26:56.800
And it's a fantastic
experiment.

00:26:56.800 --> 00:26:58.620
And if you ever teach,
it makes you nervous.

00:26:58.620 --> 00:27:00.730
Then, we'll discuss whether
it should or not.

00:27:00.730 --> 00:27:02.540
So at Harvard, here's
what she did.

00:27:02.540 --> 00:27:06.350
She took videotapes of 13
graduate teaching assistants.

00:27:06.350 --> 00:27:07.940
And they were horrible
video tapes.

00:27:07.940 --> 00:27:08.840
This is 1990.

00:27:08.840 --> 00:27:09.960
They were horrible videotape.

00:27:09.960 --> 00:27:11.280
I'm just going to tell you--

00:27:11.280 --> 00:27:13.780
you don't even see them around
very much because the quality,

00:27:13.780 --> 00:27:15.830
when you see them, you can't
believe people even

00:27:15.830 --> 00:27:18.500
saw things in them.

00:27:18.500 --> 00:27:24.320
And she got a random 10 second
clip, 30 seconds per teaching

00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:26.940
assistant, 30 seconds.

00:27:26.940 --> 00:27:28.620
She shows a silent
clip to students.

00:27:28.620 --> 00:27:29.605
There's no sound even.

00:27:29.605 --> 00:27:32.270
You're just seeing silently
some teaching assistant in

00:27:32.270 --> 00:27:34.750
front of students saying
something.

00:27:34.750 --> 00:27:37.840
And then, she has these students
rate from the silent

00:27:37.840 --> 00:27:40.520
film clip how accepting,
active, competent, or

00:27:40.520 --> 00:27:44.070
confident the teaching assistant
is who they've never

00:27:44.070 --> 00:27:45.450
met and, of course,
they don't know.

00:27:45.450 --> 00:27:46.370
And they don't know
what the teaching

00:27:46.370 --> 00:27:48.240
assistant's talking about.

00:27:48.240 --> 00:27:49.880
Here's the impressive thing.

00:27:49.880 --> 00:27:52.410
Then, they correlate the ratings
with the actual end of

00:27:52.410 --> 00:27:54.720
semester rating with students.

00:27:54.720 --> 00:27:57.250
They take the students who sat
through the entire course with

00:27:57.250 --> 00:28:00.200
a teaching assistant, that's
one set of values.

00:28:00.200 --> 00:28:03.870
They take the students
who see 30 seconds of

00:28:03.870 --> 00:28:07.030
silent, grainy videotape.

00:28:07.030 --> 00:28:09.510
And they say, how well do these
things do together?

00:28:09.510 --> 00:28:13.980
And they correlate 0.76,
which is really high.

00:28:13.980 --> 00:28:16.410
It's really high in our
field of research.

00:28:16.410 --> 00:28:21.480
That momentary, uninformed
impression correlates

00:28:21.480 --> 00:28:24.500
extremely high with what
students rate the teaching

00:28:24.500 --> 00:28:27.030
assistant after a full semester,
back and forth,

00:28:27.030 --> 00:28:30.030
seeing the teaching assistant
day in, day out, week in, week

00:28:30.030 --> 00:28:32.420
out for an entire semester and
all the interactions--

00:28:32.420 --> 00:28:35.000
super high correlation.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:37.230
And it stays if it's cut
from 30 seconds to

00:28:37.230 --> 00:28:39.410
15, or even six seconds.

00:28:39.410 --> 00:28:44.180
So this is a thin slice, a tiny
viewing of somebody, has

00:28:44.180 --> 00:28:45.620
this profound effect.

00:28:45.620 --> 00:28:50.160
So one impression you can have
from this is something like,

00:28:50.160 --> 00:28:53.030
gee, we form our first
impression--

00:28:53.030 --> 00:28:55.430
and I'll come back to that--
and once we form that first

00:28:55.430 --> 00:28:57.180
impression, that's it.

00:28:57.180 --> 00:29:00.980
The ship has sailed to
a remarkable degree.

00:29:00.980 --> 00:29:02.410
We can learn new things
about people.

00:29:02.410 --> 00:29:03.520
We can change our impressions.

00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:04.720
It's not that we can't.

00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:08.450
But to a remarkable degree,
we've set our final impression

00:29:08.450 --> 00:29:12.970
of that person within seconds
of interaction.

00:29:12.970 --> 00:29:14.610
Now, you could say, and of
course that's going to be

00:29:14.610 --> 00:29:17.280
fraught with every kind of
social prejudice you can

00:29:17.280 --> 00:29:19.010
imagine and complicating
prejudice you can imagine.

00:29:19.010 --> 00:29:19.750
Six seconds?

00:29:19.750 --> 00:29:22.210
Not a lot to sort through
intellectually.

00:29:22.210 --> 00:29:24.210
And it shows up in real life.

00:29:24.210 --> 00:29:26.310
For example, listen to 20
seconds of a physician

00:29:26.310 --> 00:29:28.230
speaking during a routine
office visit, they tape

00:29:28.230 --> 00:29:29.620
recorded them.

00:29:29.620 --> 00:29:32.140
Above chance prediction of who
was sued for malpractice or

00:29:32.140 --> 00:29:35.320
not because if you like a
doctor, you tend to forgive an

00:29:35.320 --> 00:29:36.740
error as a human error.

00:29:36.740 --> 00:29:39.210
If you don't like a doctor,
you're going to sue that

00:29:39.210 --> 00:29:41.970
person because you're
pretty mad at them.

00:29:41.970 --> 00:29:43.400
So do you give them
the benefit of the

00:29:43.400 --> 00:29:44.600
doubt they made a mistake?

00:29:44.600 --> 00:29:47.050
Or do you think they ought to
be sued and punished for the

00:29:47.050 --> 00:29:48.790
bad thing they did to you?

00:29:48.790 --> 00:29:51.690
Depends how much you like the
person to start with.

00:29:51.690 --> 00:29:53.600
Now, so one thing could
be that we go by first

00:29:53.600 --> 00:29:54.500
impressions.

00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:56.300
What's the other possibility
you could imagine?

00:30:00.510 --> 00:30:02.340
The pessimistic view
of this is--

00:30:02.340 --> 00:30:03.820
and it's somewhere, I think,
really in the middle, it's

00:30:03.820 --> 00:30:04.540
just human nature.

00:30:04.540 --> 00:30:07.590
The pessimistic view
is six seconds?

00:30:07.590 --> 00:30:09.650
When we talk about this, the
teaching assistants and I as

00:30:09.650 --> 00:30:11.860
we'd be in the course go, oh,
please, have that first six

00:30:11.860 --> 00:30:14.830
seconds go OK because that's
going to be 3/4 of your

00:30:14.830 --> 00:30:15.700
teaching evaluations--

00:30:15.700 --> 00:30:17.040
which are due Monday
by 9:00 AM.

00:30:19.810 --> 00:30:22.790
So please fill those out, by
the way, this reminds me.

00:30:22.790 --> 00:30:24.480
The first six seconds, and
that's pretty much it.

00:30:24.480 --> 00:30:26.240
And everything we do for the
rest of the semester,

00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:28.170
everything we do for the rest of
the semester, is only going

00:30:28.170 --> 00:30:30.180
to be about a quarter
of your rating.

00:30:30.180 --> 00:30:32.200
That's hard to believe, right?

00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:35.490
So one thing is it's all a big
confusion and humans just--

00:30:35.490 --> 00:30:38.310
what's the other possibility
that's a little bit more

00:30:38.310 --> 00:30:41.900
optimistic and maybe accurate?

00:30:41.900 --> 00:30:44.100
We know what we like.

00:30:44.100 --> 00:30:46.620
We know what we like, OK?

00:30:46.620 --> 00:30:49.850
And amazingly, we can tell
within seconds under many

00:30:49.850 --> 00:30:52.240
circumstance whether there's
something about a person that

00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:54.550
we like or don't.

00:30:54.550 --> 00:30:55.890
It's not that the six
seconds are just

00:30:55.890 --> 00:30:58.210
superficial in a dumb way.

00:30:58.210 --> 00:31:01.690
It's that we detect things about
that person that truly

00:31:01.690 --> 00:31:04.170
are something about
who they are.

00:31:04.170 --> 00:31:06.130
And that tends to carry all
the way through our human

00:31:06.130 --> 00:31:08.630
interactions with them.

00:31:08.630 --> 00:31:13.010
So I think it's somewhere
in that range.

00:31:13.010 --> 00:31:13.970
And does it matter?

00:31:13.970 --> 00:31:15.890
Is it all just about popularity
contests?

00:31:15.890 --> 00:31:17.140
Or does it affect
other things?

00:31:17.140 --> 00:31:20.980
So just staying within the realm
of teaching, they asked

00:31:20.980 --> 00:31:26.670
if you perceive somebody as more
likable or conscientious,

00:31:26.670 --> 00:31:28.180
are they more effective
teachers?

00:31:28.180 --> 00:31:30.220
Does it circle around
like that?

00:31:30.220 --> 00:31:32.220
So they have five students
in random groups.

00:31:32.220 --> 00:31:34.600
One was randomly chosen
to be a teacher.

00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:36.630
And these teachers prepared
brief math lessons.

00:31:36.630 --> 00:31:37.980
The students then
took the test.

00:31:37.980 --> 00:31:41.155
And strangers rated 10 seconds
of videos of these teachers.

00:31:41.155 --> 00:31:42.650
So people prepared
math lessons.

00:31:42.650 --> 00:31:45.250
Some better, some worse,
as you would imagine.

00:31:45.250 --> 00:31:49.020
The higher these were rated in
these 10 second thin slice

00:31:49.020 --> 00:31:52.330
videos by an external group, the
better the test scores of

00:31:52.330 --> 00:31:55.520
the actual participants because
something about

00:31:55.520 --> 00:31:56.950
effective teaching is something

00:31:56.950 --> 00:31:58.320
about engaging students.

00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:01.540
Something about engaging
students is something about

00:32:01.540 --> 00:32:05.130
being outgoing or something like
that to a certain degree.

00:32:05.130 --> 00:32:07.630
So it's not just arbitrary.

00:32:07.630 --> 00:32:11.760
There's something real in
the world that happens.

00:32:11.760 --> 00:32:14.390
And here's a few examples
where people have messed

00:32:14.390 --> 00:32:17.140
around with that because there's
two things that happen

00:32:17.140 --> 00:32:17.670
that are tricky.

00:32:17.670 --> 00:32:21.310
One is we know what we like
and we detect it amazingly

00:32:21.310 --> 00:32:24.130
quickly in people on average
to a large extent--

00:32:24.130 --> 00:32:27.920
certainly with error, but to a
surprisingly vigorous extent.

00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:30.240
On the other hand-- and we'll
come back to this--

00:32:30.240 --> 00:32:33.390
once we have that first
impression, as faulty as it

00:32:33.390 --> 00:32:37.490
may be in part, we keep
interpreting things in terms

00:32:37.490 --> 00:32:39.550
of that first impression.

00:32:39.550 --> 00:32:42.800
We give you the benefit of the
doubt or we don't behavior

00:32:42.800 --> 00:32:43.390
after behavior.

00:32:43.390 --> 00:32:46.530
So this was a study that
was done at MIT.

00:32:46.530 --> 00:32:49.120
Now, you're going to get
some prior information.

00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:51.290
Half the students were told,
the lecture you're about to

00:32:51.290 --> 00:32:54.690
have, people know him and
consider him to be--

00:32:54.690 --> 00:32:55.480
and then here's the--

00:32:55.480 --> 00:32:57.690
you're in the group that's told
he's a very warm person,

00:32:57.690 --> 00:32:59.430
industrious, critical,
practical, and determined.

00:32:59.430 --> 00:33:03.210
Or half of you would get the
information that he's a cold

00:33:03.210 --> 00:33:06.920
person, industrious, critical,
practical, and determined.

00:33:06.920 --> 00:33:09.860
So you just got an impression,
a warm or cold person.

00:33:09.860 --> 00:33:11.830
You haven't even seen
the person.

00:33:11.830 --> 00:33:14.450
Person gets up and leads
a 20 minute discussion.

00:33:14.450 --> 00:33:16.560
Then, you're asked to fill
out evaluations.

00:33:16.560 --> 00:33:19.230
Let me just pick the example
of the warm person.

00:33:19.230 --> 00:33:21.450
The lecturer is rated
as better.

00:33:21.450 --> 00:33:23.470
But here's the really
cool part--

00:33:23.470 --> 00:33:27.380
students took more part
in discussion.

00:33:27.380 --> 00:33:28.450
And do you see how
that probably

00:33:28.450 --> 00:33:30.530
made the section better?

00:33:30.530 --> 00:33:32.320
Because if you think this
is a nice person, so

00:33:32.320 --> 00:33:33.300
I can make a comment.

00:33:33.300 --> 00:33:35.740
I won't get my head bit off that
I didn't do the reading

00:33:35.740 --> 00:33:38.320
or whatever, it makes
a section better.

00:33:38.320 --> 00:33:41.360
They think it's better, but they
make it better because

00:33:41.360 --> 00:33:43.070
they think the person's a person
they want to interact

00:33:43.070 --> 00:33:45.580
with simply because they were
told on a piece of paper the

00:33:45.580 --> 00:33:46.650
person's warm or cold.

00:33:46.650 --> 00:33:49.470
The person's identical
time after time.

00:33:49.470 --> 00:33:52.470
So the first impression,
we know what we like.

00:33:52.470 --> 00:33:54.500
It's surprisingly accurate
in certain ways.

00:33:54.500 --> 00:33:56.960
But it's hard to change because
new information is

00:33:56.960 --> 00:33:58.830
interpreted to be consistent
with already formed

00:33:58.830 --> 00:34:00.080
impressions.

00:34:00.080 --> 00:34:02.540
So first impressions are
unbelievably interesting

00:34:02.540 --> 00:34:05.660
because they seem to be so
powerful in how we choose who

00:34:05.660 --> 00:34:08.679
we like and don't like, who we
hire and don't hire, who we

00:34:08.679 --> 00:34:11.230
work with and don't work with,
who we have relationships and

00:34:11.230 --> 00:34:12.570
don't have relationships with.

00:34:12.570 --> 00:34:14.389
And they're based on incredibly
little bits of

00:34:14.389 --> 00:34:16.469
information which are
tantalizingly

00:34:16.469 --> 00:34:18.030
accurate in one sense.

00:34:18.030 --> 00:34:23.540
But once we have them, it's
hard to override them.

00:34:23.540 --> 00:34:27.270
So here's a famous experiment
on the self-fulfilling

00:34:27.270 --> 00:34:29.639
prophecy that happens from this
first impression that you

00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:31.900
create, or the experimenter
creates.

00:34:31.900 --> 00:34:34.770
So a famous study where
elementary school children

00:34:34.770 --> 00:34:36.350
gave a test to students.

00:34:36.350 --> 00:34:38.980
The researchers said, we're
going to tell you whether this

00:34:38.980 --> 00:34:41.870
student is going to have-- we
believe, based on our research

00:34:41.870 --> 00:34:43.179
at Harvard--

00:34:43.179 --> 00:34:45.590
a good or bad year.

00:34:45.590 --> 00:34:47.870
So you're an elementary
school teacher.

00:34:47.870 --> 00:34:48.850
And then, you wonder.

00:34:48.850 --> 00:34:49.840
But they say, oh,
no, we've done

00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:51.239
fantastic research at Harvard.

00:34:51.239 --> 00:34:52.870
We're the top scholars
in the field.

00:34:52.870 --> 00:34:54.920
And we've developed an algorithm
that tells you is

00:34:54.920 --> 00:34:57.420
this student going to have a
good year or a bad year?

00:34:57.420 --> 00:34:59.950
The teacher gets that
information back.

00:34:59.950 --> 00:35:03.190
And at the end of the year,
better scores for those kids

00:35:03.190 --> 00:35:07.590
randomly described as going to
have a good year, worse scores

00:35:07.590 --> 00:35:09.210
for those kids randomly
described as they're going to

00:35:09.210 --> 00:35:11.580
have a bad year.

00:35:11.580 --> 00:35:13.210
Now, they didn't tape
everything.

00:35:13.210 --> 00:35:15.010
Nowadays, we could
tape everything.

00:35:15.010 --> 00:35:16.550
But what do you guess
that happened?

00:35:16.550 --> 00:35:18.520
And this might remind you of an
experiment we talked about

00:35:18.520 --> 00:35:20.110
with rats, except now
it's children in

00:35:20.110 --> 00:35:21.360
school in real life.

00:35:24.340 --> 00:35:26.690
First impression, right?

00:35:26.690 --> 00:35:29.130
When you've been told by
a crack team of Harvard

00:35:29.130 --> 00:35:31.750
researchers that some kid is
going to be slumpy, when they

00:35:31.750 --> 00:35:34.690
make a mistake answering a math
question, you go, oh, why

00:35:34.690 --> 00:35:38.000
am I spending my time
on this student?

00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:41.420
It's not worth my
teaching skills.

00:35:41.420 --> 00:35:43.280
Somebody else gives
a good answer or

00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:44.070
makes the same mistake.

00:35:44.070 --> 00:35:46.220
And you go, oh, we're going
to help this student.

00:35:46.220 --> 00:35:48.660
They're one inch away from
being perfect on their

00:35:48.660 --> 00:35:50.370
multiplication table.

00:35:50.370 --> 00:35:51.780
So the very same behavior gets

00:35:51.780 --> 00:35:53.330
interpreted as pretty different.

00:35:53.330 --> 00:35:56.260
Or maybe just remember when
they gave the right answer

00:35:56.260 --> 00:35:58.910
really well because you think,
that's that student that got

00:35:58.910 --> 00:35:59.890
three and four correctly.

00:35:59.890 --> 00:36:02.180
But once you that first
impression, all of the other

00:36:02.180 --> 00:36:04.035
behaviors start to be
interpreted in that context.

00:36:08.370 --> 00:36:12.210
So one category of things mixed
into first impressions

00:36:12.210 --> 00:36:15.330
that have been studied a lot
is consensus physical

00:36:15.330 --> 00:36:15.900
attractiveness.

00:36:15.900 --> 00:36:18.470
Of course, different people
think differently about

00:36:18.470 --> 00:36:19.400
physical attractiveness.

00:36:19.400 --> 00:36:21.070
But in the cultures we live
in, there tends to be

00:36:21.070 --> 00:36:24.830
consensus about the average
movie star or beauty

00:36:24.830 --> 00:36:28.360
contestant or whatever
is the era's way of a

00:36:28.360 --> 00:36:29.670
people being seen.

00:36:29.670 --> 00:36:32.045
So people have shown again and
again, this will not surprise

00:36:32.045 --> 00:36:34.070
you, that physically attractive
people are judged

00:36:34.070 --> 00:36:38.180
as more intelligent, competent,
social, and moral.

00:36:38.180 --> 00:36:41.470
Now, why is that?

00:36:41.470 --> 00:36:42.430
So here's an example.

00:36:42.430 --> 00:36:44.160
Fifth grade teachers were
given report cards and

00:36:44.160 --> 00:36:46.720
photographs of children
they did not know.

00:36:46.720 --> 00:36:49.380
The photographs were picked to
be of children who looked, by

00:36:49.380 --> 00:36:52.060
consensus, to be attractive or,
by consensus, to be not so

00:36:52.060 --> 00:36:53.650
attractive.

00:36:53.650 --> 00:36:55.970
And they're asked to rate, based
on the report cards and

00:36:55.970 --> 00:36:57.490
the photos, the intelligence
and

00:36:57.490 --> 00:36:58.990
achievement of the children.

00:36:58.990 --> 00:37:01.470
The attractive children ended
up on average rated as

00:37:01.470 --> 00:37:03.940
brighter and more successful
than the unattractive children

00:37:03.940 --> 00:37:05.980
with identical report cards.

00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:07.640
They're sitting there with
all the information.

00:37:07.640 --> 00:37:09.360
They're making these
vague judgments.

00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:11.280
And the attractiveness element,
even from the photo,

00:37:11.280 --> 00:37:14.300
is coming in to the teachers.

00:37:14.300 --> 00:37:18.420
A child's misbehavior is
attributed to environmental

00:37:18.420 --> 00:37:22.200
circumstances if it's a more
attractive child and to

00:37:22.200 --> 00:37:24.030
personality if it's a less
attractive child.

00:37:24.030 --> 00:37:26.900
Again, this trade off between
character and situation.

00:37:26.900 --> 00:37:28.930
The attractive child
did something bad.

00:37:28.930 --> 00:37:31.160
Oh, there must have been
something in this situation

00:37:31.160 --> 00:37:32.760
that wasn't well done.

00:37:32.760 --> 00:37:35.060
The less attractive child
does poorly, and you

00:37:35.060 --> 00:37:38.010
go, oh, that loser!

00:37:38.010 --> 00:37:38.770
Right?

00:37:38.770 --> 00:37:41.070
I'm overstating, but you see
how what's happening is

00:37:41.070 --> 00:37:42.170
basically-- well, we'll
talk about it in a

00:37:42.170 --> 00:37:43.460
moment, court cases.

00:37:43.460 --> 00:37:45.370
People have done studies
on court cases.

00:37:45.370 --> 00:37:47.550
Shorter sentence for more
attractive people, longer

00:37:47.550 --> 00:37:50.290
sentence for less attractive
people for what seem to be

00:37:50.290 --> 00:37:53.650
comparable crimes.

00:37:53.650 --> 00:37:56.630
So people call this a halo
effect, that you take one

00:37:56.630 --> 00:37:58.720
positive dimension
of a person--

00:37:58.720 --> 00:37:59.470
it could be any.

00:37:59.470 --> 00:38:03.200
Physical attractiveness is one
of the easiest ones to

00:38:03.200 --> 00:38:04.800
experimentally study.

00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:07.735
And once you say one thing is
positive, you tend to rate

00:38:07.735 --> 00:38:08.740
other things as positive.

00:38:08.740 --> 00:38:10.410
It's just human nature.

00:38:10.410 --> 00:38:12.470
She's likable, so she's
intelligent.

00:38:12.470 --> 00:38:15.610
He's attractive,
so he's smart.

00:38:15.610 --> 00:38:17.450
People do this.

00:38:17.450 --> 00:38:20.020
You could argue it's not a wise
thing to, an accurate

00:38:20.020 --> 00:38:21.725
thing to do, definitely not.

00:38:21.725 --> 00:38:23.060
But people tend to do it.

00:38:23.060 --> 00:38:24.450
They'd leak categories.

00:38:24.450 --> 00:38:26.720
Once they have positive
information in one dimension,

00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:28.230
they start to make positive
assumptions in other

00:38:28.230 --> 00:38:30.180
dimensions.

00:38:30.180 --> 00:38:31.520
And there's all kinds
of examples.

00:38:31.520 --> 00:38:34.220
There's 1,000 of these studies
because they're easy to do and

00:38:34.220 --> 00:38:35.670
they're popular to do.

00:38:35.670 --> 00:38:39.110
But anyway, so here's one
example where they were told

00:38:39.110 --> 00:38:43.880
that the goal was to study
teacher evaluations.

00:38:43.880 --> 00:38:47.600
And what they really saw were
videos of a lecture of a

00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:49.150
person with a strong
Belgian accent.

00:38:49.150 --> 00:38:52.760
This accent matters for this.

00:38:52.760 --> 00:38:55.280
And they saw the videos of a
person answering questions in

00:38:55.280 --> 00:38:57.820
a warm and friendly manner or
a cold and distant manner.

00:38:57.820 --> 00:38:58.810
This was done on purpose.

00:38:58.810 --> 00:39:03.510
Now, in these two videos, they
rated the person in the warm--

00:39:03.510 --> 00:39:06.940
the same person, in one set of
videos they were warm in

00:39:06.940 --> 00:39:08.740
answering and the other, they
were cold and distance.

00:39:08.740 --> 00:39:10.910
So same person, but
in two videos.

00:39:10.910 --> 00:39:13.740
Now, they're asked to rate other
dimensions besides the

00:39:13.740 --> 00:39:15.630
warmness of the person.

00:39:15.630 --> 00:39:17.785
They said, oh, the person who
is warm was more attractive.

00:39:17.785 --> 00:39:18.780
Now, it's run the other way.

00:39:18.780 --> 00:39:20.540
The nicer person was
more attractive,

00:39:20.540 --> 00:39:22.450
more likable, and--

00:39:22.450 --> 00:39:23.660
kind of impressively--

00:39:23.660 --> 00:39:26.760
had less of an accent.

00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:27.070
You understand?

00:39:27.070 --> 00:39:30.250
Because accents, the challenge
of accents is sometimes

00:39:30.250 --> 00:39:32.010
they're a little hard
to understand.

00:39:32.010 --> 00:39:33.750
So you say, how hard was
it to understand?

00:39:33.750 --> 00:39:35.820
Oh, that nice person?

00:39:35.820 --> 00:39:39.530
Handsome and pretty easy
to understand.

00:39:39.530 --> 00:39:44.610
Less nice person, on purpose
acting out, not so attractive.

00:39:44.610 --> 00:39:48.920
And who could understand that
thick Belgian accent?

00:39:48.920 --> 00:39:52.020
They pick the accent because
they say that's ridiculous.

00:39:52.020 --> 00:39:54.120
It's ridiculous that an accent
would differ on the basis of

00:39:54.120 --> 00:39:55.770
whether a person's
nice or not.

00:39:55.770 --> 00:39:59.320
But this is thought to be the
reason why you see so many

00:39:59.320 --> 00:40:03.860
athletes and movie stars doing
ads because they're asking you

00:40:03.860 --> 00:40:07.740
to leak that same way.

00:40:07.740 --> 00:40:11.210
Oh, if Kobe Bryant uses that
deodorant, that deodorant must

00:40:11.210 --> 00:40:13.450
be awesome.

00:40:13.450 --> 00:40:18.190
So that's why they care that
actors, celebrities, that's

00:40:18.190 --> 00:40:19.990
why they have those ads because
many people have

00:40:19.990 --> 00:40:21.810
positive feelings about them.

00:40:21.810 --> 00:40:23.930
And if they can leak into
actions, they can certainly

00:40:23.930 --> 00:40:27.890
leak into what beer you drink
or what make up you get.

00:40:27.890 --> 00:40:36.370
So now, the problems with
these what we might call

00:40:36.370 --> 00:40:40.110
shortcuts to judging people,
first impressions and that

00:40:40.110 --> 00:40:43.420
kind of stuff, is when we're
making judgements of other

00:40:43.420 --> 00:40:47.210
people is that we do this very
quickly and unconsciously.

00:40:47.210 --> 00:40:50.200
Nobody thinks, if you ask them,
that they go around

00:40:50.200 --> 00:40:53.970
misjudging people by the basis
of very superficial things.

00:40:53.970 --> 00:40:56.250
But 1,000 experiments show
that, on average,

00:40:56.250 --> 00:40:57.760
we tend to do that.

00:40:57.760 --> 00:41:01.770
So these stereotypes
have effects.

00:41:01.770 --> 00:41:03.760
Once we make the decision,
in influences our actual

00:41:03.760 --> 00:41:04.840
behavioral.

00:41:04.840 --> 00:41:08.450
So here's one example where
people tried to show this idea

00:41:08.450 --> 00:41:12.060
that we might have some sort of
negative idea of somebody

00:41:12.060 --> 00:41:14.320
for some reason.

00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:16.640
Now, here's the self-fulfilling
prophecy.

00:41:16.640 --> 00:41:19.110
Because we have a negative
thought about them, we don't

00:41:19.110 --> 00:41:22.060
behave with them as nicely
as we might.

00:41:22.060 --> 00:41:24.460
Now, that person who we haven't
treated nicely, of

00:41:24.460 --> 00:41:26.400
course, is responding to feeling
like they're not

00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:27.400
treated nicely.

00:41:27.400 --> 00:41:29.720
And they go, aha!

00:41:29.720 --> 00:41:30.520
Just what I thought.

00:41:30.520 --> 00:41:32.260
This person stinks.

00:41:32.260 --> 00:41:35.720
And so you have this circle, a
positive or a negative spiral,

00:41:35.720 --> 00:41:38.130
in how you treat somebody, how
they respond to how you treat

00:41:38.130 --> 00:41:40.490
them, and how you think
more about them.

00:41:40.490 --> 00:41:45.180
So an example they did
of this, again using

00:41:45.180 --> 00:41:48.830
attractiveness, the dating
discussion, is they gave in

00:41:48.830 --> 00:41:52.050
this case male participants a
picture that suggested a woman

00:41:52.050 --> 00:41:54.780
they were talking who they did
not see was either more or

00:41:54.780 --> 00:41:56.700
less conventionally
attractive.

00:41:56.700 --> 00:42:00.990
And then, they had a 10 minute
conversation back and forth.

00:42:00.990 --> 00:42:03.720
Then, they brought in some other
males in this study.

00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:05.130
And they asked them to listen.

00:42:05.130 --> 00:42:06.850
They don't know anything
about the experiment.

00:42:06.850 --> 00:42:08.850
They just hear a conversation.

00:42:08.850 --> 00:42:11.280
And they say, listen to this
conversation with this woman.

00:42:11.280 --> 00:42:13.330
Tell us from your impression,
how animated is she?

00:42:13.330 --> 00:42:14.830
How enthusiastic is she?

00:42:14.830 --> 00:42:18.760
How much is she enjoying herself
in this conversation?

00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:19.880
And this will not
surprise you.

00:42:19.880 --> 00:42:21.670
In fact, in some sense
it's almost trivial.

00:42:21.670 --> 00:42:25.030
But in the more attractive
condition-- now, the raters

00:42:25.030 --> 00:42:25.650
don't know that.

00:42:25.650 --> 00:42:26.270
They don't know anything.

00:42:26.270 --> 00:42:28.760
They just hear a discussion
going back and forth.

00:42:28.760 --> 00:42:31.240
The women were more sociable,
poised, humorous,

00:42:31.240 --> 00:42:32.380
and socially adept.

00:42:32.380 --> 00:42:33.750
They were rated that
way by the raters.

00:42:33.750 --> 00:42:35.000
Why?

00:42:37.110 --> 00:42:39.370
Because the men who got the more
attractive pictures were

00:42:39.370 --> 00:42:41.500
being nicer in their
conversational style.

00:42:41.500 --> 00:42:43.610
The women were responding,
having a better conversation

00:42:43.610 --> 00:42:44.490
back and forth.

00:42:44.490 --> 00:42:47.390
And so this is an example of
the cycle between, in this

00:42:47.390 --> 00:42:51.010
case, random and misleading
information and the

00:42:51.010 --> 00:42:52.530
behavior you have.

00:42:52.530 --> 00:42:54.660
And then once you have that
thing, you really start to

00:42:54.660 --> 00:42:55.600
alter the situation.

00:42:55.600 --> 00:42:57.720
That impression changes
how you behave.

00:42:57.720 --> 00:42:59.130
The other person responds
to that behavior.

00:42:59.130 --> 00:43:02.480
And that's a self-fulfilling
style.

00:43:06.140 --> 00:43:08.590
Let me switch for just a couple
minutes to talk about

00:43:08.590 --> 00:43:11.880
this idea we mentioned before
that the vast majority of

00:43:11.880 --> 00:43:14.780
experimental psychology of the
kind I just described to you

00:43:14.780 --> 00:43:17.400
is conducted in what people call
WEIRD societies, Western,

00:43:17.400 --> 00:43:20.240
Educated, Industrial, Rich,
and Democratic.

00:43:20.240 --> 00:43:23.060
There's not a lot of research
in impoverished countries.

00:43:23.060 --> 00:43:23.800
There's no research.

00:43:23.800 --> 00:43:27.730
There's no places to do it
or support to do it.

00:43:27.730 --> 00:43:30.510
So a tremendous amount of
research comes from some

00:43:30.510 --> 00:43:32.730
countries like the
United states,

00:43:32.730 --> 00:43:34.800
Europe, Australia, Japan.

00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:38.010
And in the coming years, more
and more will come of course

00:43:38.010 --> 00:43:41.400
from China and India, South
America and Africa probably

00:43:41.400 --> 00:43:42.790
after that.

00:43:42.790 --> 00:43:46.040
Now, it happens that the
countries that produce a lot

00:43:46.040 --> 00:43:47.950
of the research are the
countries that, when people

00:43:47.950 --> 00:43:52.120
study societal attitudes towards
individuality versus

00:43:52.120 --> 00:43:57.520
fitting in, United States, parts
of Europe, Australia,

00:43:57.520 --> 00:44:00.700
are in the extreme in the
world in emphasizing

00:44:00.700 --> 00:44:01.800
individuality.

00:44:01.800 --> 00:44:04.460
In fact, the United states is
seen as a fantastic outlier

00:44:04.460 --> 00:44:05.940
among other cultures.

00:44:05.940 --> 00:44:07.770
Maybe Canada's close.

00:44:07.770 --> 00:44:11.530
And here's a model that social
psychologists talk about.

00:44:11.530 --> 00:44:13.630
It's a very simple
story in a way.

00:44:13.630 --> 00:44:15.710
And certainly it's averaging
across lots of people.

00:44:15.710 --> 00:44:17.360
So a trouble with cultural
psychology--

00:44:17.360 --> 00:44:19.130
which is where we're at now--

00:44:19.130 --> 00:44:20.120
you can do one or two things.

00:44:20.120 --> 00:44:22.350
You can say culture doesn't
matter, which we think is

00:44:22.350 --> 00:44:23.590
probably unlikely.

00:44:23.590 --> 00:44:26.240
Cultures are huge, the culture
of your home, your community,

00:44:26.240 --> 00:44:27.870
your country, your religion.

00:44:27.870 --> 00:44:30.470
All those things influence
people.

00:44:30.470 --> 00:44:32.260
But then, when you study it,
you tend to reduce it to

00:44:32.260 --> 00:44:34.840
simple things that people
can experimentalize.

00:44:34.840 --> 00:44:36.710
And you tend to, in some
sense, stereotype it.

00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:39.640
But anyway, the idea is that
cultures that emphasize

00:44:39.640 --> 00:44:42.400
individuality say you've
got to be yourself.

00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:44.390
And then, you have some
people around you

00:44:44.390 --> 00:44:46.000
you've got to deal with.

00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:47.540
But be yourself!

00:44:47.540 --> 00:44:48.420
Move across the country.

00:44:48.420 --> 00:44:49.950
Follow that opportunity.

00:44:49.950 --> 00:44:51.240
Be the one.

00:44:51.240 --> 00:44:53.600
And that countries that
emphasize interdependent

00:44:53.600 --> 00:44:56.210
relations are much more talking
about, you'll fulfill

00:44:56.210 --> 00:44:58.700
yourself to the extent that you
find some sort of synergy

00:44:58.700 --> 00:45:02.150
with those people who
surround you.

00:45:02.150 --> 00:45:04.090
And so when they've done more
organized studies-- and I'll

00:45:04.090 --> 00:45:07.620
show you now on ads,
on average--

00:45:07.620 --> 00:45:09.740
most of this research previously
has been in Japan

00:45:09.740 --> 00:45:11.350
and South Korea relative
to the United states.

00:45:11.350 --> 00:45:13.970
But it's spreading to
other countries.

00:45:13.970 --> 00:45:18.050
Many ads in Japan will focus on
groups enjoying themselves.

00:45:18.050 --> 00:45:21.950
And the US version is you're
special, you're the one.

00:45:21.950 --> 00:45:23.320
Be all that you can be.

00:45:23.320 --> 00:45:25.750
It's you, you, you,
and individuation.

00:45:25.750 --> 00:45:29.080
And most of us on average are
brought up in this culture

00:45:29.080 --> 00:45:32.300
where we zip across the country
leaving people and

00:45:32.300 --> 00:45:33.895
pursuing opportunities
to be ourselves.

00:45:37.460 --> 00:45:41.430
Sleeping arrangements in other
countries or in the US tend to

00:45:41.430 --> 00:45:43.300
emphasize this.

00:45:43.300 --> 00:45:45.750
Beginning textbook Dick.

00:45:45.750 --> 00:45:46.200
See Dick.

00:45:46.200 --> 00:45:47.500
See Dick run.

00:45:47.500 --> 00:45:51.060
Jane is somewhere
in this story.

00:45:51.060 --> 00:45:52.900
And so I'll leave these
notes for you.

00:45:52.900 --> 00:45:55.730
But it's this idea, again, what
counts is that you're

00:45:55.730 --> 00:45:59.000
independent or what counts is
that you fit in with others.

00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:00.780
What's the important thing?

00:46:00.780 --> 00:46:04.430
So it's very hard in these kinds
of studies like with ads

00:46:04.430 --> 00:46:06.510
or anything else to talk about
cultures as a whole.

00:46:06.510 --> 00:46:07.700
Things are very complicated.

00:46:07.700 --> 00:46:08.870
The worlds are different
in different

00:46:08.870 --> 00:46:10.000
countries and all that.

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:11.880
So people have tried to
do these very simple

00:46:11.880 --> 00:46:12.280
experiments--

00:46:12.280 --> 00:46:14.960
I'll show you-- to try to
convince you that at the most

00:46:14.960 --> 00:46:18.100
fundamental level, very
fundamental levels, depending

00:46:18.100 --> 00:46:21.970
on the culture you come from,
your mind is tuned to see the

00:46:21.970 --> 00:46:25.140
world one way or the other
way relatively speaking.

00:46:25.140 --> 00:46:27.720
And there's variations within
cultures of course.

00:46:27.720 --> 00:46:29.350
But here's a very simple
experiment.

00:46:29.350 --> 00:46:31.910
They show you a box like
this with a line.

00:46:31.910 --> 00:46:34.270
The size of the box and
the line change

00:46:34.270 --> 00:46:36.850
from trial to trial.

00:46:36.850 --> 00:46:38.730
They take it away.

00:46:38.730 --> 00:46:40.070
And now, you see an empty box.

00:46:40.070 --> 00:46:41.530
The empty box could
be the same size,

00:46:41.530 --> 00:46:42.910
or bigger, or smaller.

00:46:42.910 --> 00:46:47.560
And they say, draw a line that
either has the absolute same

00:46:47.560 --> 00:46:50.390
size as this, even though
the box is different.

00:46:50.390 --> 00:46:53.280
Or in other trials, they'll say
draw it so it has the same

00:46:53.280 --> 00:46:56.100
relative, the same ratio,
the same relative size.

00:46:56.100 --> 00:46:57.610
Does that makes sense?

00:46:57.610 --> 00:47:01.260
So here, this would be the same
absolute size, the same

00:47:01.260 --> 00:47:01.990
relative size.

00:47:01.990 --> 00:47:05.300
Here, this would be the same
relative size or absolute.

00:47:05.300 --> 00:47:06.640
Does that makes sense?

00:47:06.640 --> 00:47:09.190
That's all your job
is, draw a line.

00:47:09.190 --> 00:47:12.570
And you're told as it's taken
away, draw the same absolute

00:47:12.570 --> 00:47:15.220
size in the box or the same
relative size, same

00:47:15.220 --> 00:47:17.570
ratio, to the box.

00:47:17.570 --> 00:47:20.480
So here's the first thing to
show you, which is that on

00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:24.740
average people in Japan are
more accurate when they're

00:47:24.740 --> 00:47:27.930
drawing-- this is mean error,
so it's good to be low--

00:47:27.930 --> 00:47:29.770
they're more accurate for
the relative size.

00:47:29.770 --> 00:47:32.340
People in the US, for
the absolute size.

00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:34.990
And I think that's amazing,
a line in a box.

00:47:34.990 --> 00:47:37.610
And we know that's not
culturally taught.

00:47:37.610 --> 00:47:39.170
In United States, we don't have
anybody getting up and

00:47:39.170 --> 00:47:41.040
saying, be all that
you can be!

00:47:41.040 --> 00:47:43.970
Draw that line in
absolute length!

00:47:43.970 --> 00:47:45.850
So the idea is it's not
a taught thing.

00:47:45.850 --> 00:47:46.950
It's a way of thinking.

00:47:46.950 --> 00:47:49.150
And when you get a new example,
you apply your

00:47:49.150 --> 00:47:52.850
culture's way of thinking, many
people much of the time.

00:47:56.470 --> 00:47:58.180
How malleable is that?

00:47:58.180 --> 00:48:00.300
Is that fixed in you
from birth or not?

00:48:00.300 --> 00:48:01.840
And then, you will help
me discover the one

00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:03.190
flaw in this study.

00:48:03.190 --> 00:48:06.010
So here's again the
absolute size.

00:48:06.010 --> 00:48:08.650
Here's the Americans in America

00:48:08.650 --> 00:48:11.120
having the reverse direction.

00:48:11.120 --> 00:48:13.470
Here's Americans who
are students--

00:48:13.470 --> 00:48:14.590
graduate students typically--

00:48:14.590 --> 00:48:16.630
who have been in Japan
for a year or two.

00:48:16.630 --> 00:48:18.810
Here's Japanese graduate
students who've been in the

00:48:18.810 --> 00:48:20.770
United states for a year
or two for studies.

00:48:20.770 --> 00:48:22.620
And you can see that just
a year or two makes the

00:48:22.620 --> 00:48:25.000
Americans look like the
Japanese in Japan.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:28.360
And a year or two makes the
Japanese look like Americans

00:48:28.360 --> 00:48:28.890
in America.

00:48:28.890 --> 00:48:30.950
Does that make sense?

00:48:30.950 --> 00:48:34.810
So one interpretation is this
is shockingly malleable.

00:48:34.810 --> 00:48:38.920
20 years, 24 years of one
culture, and one or two years

00:48:38.920 --> 00:48:41.800
later, you're shifted into the
mindset of the other culture.

00:48:41.800 --> 00:48:43.460
And maybe that's true.

00:48:43.460 --> 00:48:46.940
If you're a very hard nosed
researcher, what do you wish

00:48:46.940 --> 00:48:47.855
would have happened
in the study to

00:48:47.855 --> 00:48:49.105
convince you that's true?

00:48:52.040 --> 00:48:52.500
Yeah?

00:48:52.500 --> 00:48:53.946
AUDIENCE: Would they
have gone back?

00:48:53.946 --> 00:48:54.910
PROFESSOR: Sorry?

00:48:54.910 --> 00:48:56.840
AUDIENCE: Would they have gone
back when they [INAUDIBLE]?

00:48:56.840 --> 00:48:58.670
PROFESSOR: You could
think about that.

00:48:58.670 --> 00:48:59.930
That's not the way
I'm thinking.

00:48:59.930 --> 00:49:00.990
I know I'm doing 20 questions.

00:49:00.990 --> 00:49:04.320
So that would be a part
of the story.

00:49:04.320 --> 00:49:06.820
Let me ask you this one.

00:49:06.820 --> 00:49:09.570
If you go to MIT and say,
please, all students from

00:49:09.570 --> 00:49:10.740
Japan, come and participate.

00:49:10.740 --> 00:49:12.700
Or you go somewhere in Tokyo and
say, please, all students

00:49:12.700 --> 00:49:15.410
from the US come and
participate, is that a random

00:49:15.410 --> 00:49:16.660
assignment?

00:49:19.390 --> 00:49:19.730
No.

00:49:19.730 --> 00:49:22.800
Maybe the American students
who want to spend time in

00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:26.790
Japan are kind of culturally
attuned with Japan.

00:49:26.790 --> 00:49:28.010
That's why they went there.

00:49:28.010 --> 00:49:31.820
And maybe they are easily swayed
by that because that's

00:49:31.820 --> 00:49:32.630
why they're there.

00:49:32.630 --> 00:49:35.630
And maybe these Japanese
students on average are swayed

00:49:35.630 --> 00:49:38.990
by American mores because they
came to the US because they

00:49:38.990 --> 00:49:40.510
like that way of thinking.

00:49:40.510 --> 00:49:43.080
So to really convince yourself
this is really true, you'd

00:49:43.080 --> 00:49:45.480
want to do random assignment
where two people come up to

00:49:45.480 --> 00:49:47.690
you from the US and go,
OK, you go to Japan.

00:49:47.690 --> 00:49:51.130
You stay in Flagstaff.

00:49:51.130 --> 00:49:53.670
But nobody will agree to
do that reasonably.

00:49:53.670 --> 00:49:56.090
So we just have to make
this impression.

00:49:56.090 --> 00:49:58.150
But it's a suggestion that
cultural things could be

00:49:58.150 --> 00:50:00.050
pretty malleable.

00:50:00.050 --> 00:50:02.980
And a brain imaging study that
suggests for this line and box

00:50:02.980 --> 00:50:09.220
task that it's harder work for
people from East Asia to do

00:50:09.220 --> 00:50:10.220
the absolute task.

00:50:10.220 --> 00:50:12.120
There's more activation, working
harder, to do the

00:50:12.120 --> 00:50:13.190
absolute task.

00:50:13.190 --> 00:50:15.750
And for people from the United
States, working harder to do

00:50:15.750 --> 00:50:17.720
the relative task.

00:50:17.720 --> 00:50:19.480
It's not that you
can't see both.

00:50:19.480 --> 00:50:21.040
As you sit there, you understand
what a relative

00:50:21.040 --> 00:50:23.370
size and what an absolute
size is.

00:50:23.370 --> 00:50:26.670
It's just harder to take the
culturally non-preferred

00:50:26.670 --> 00:50:29.170
perspective.

00:50:29.170 --> 00:50:34.780
So here's a kind of weird
experiment like this.

00:50:34.780 --> 00:50:37.930
So knowing now what you know,
imagine you walked up to

00:50:37.930 --> 00:50:41.960
people, on average, from Japan,
South Korea, China, or

00:50:41.960 --> 00:50:45.780
on average born and grew up
in the United states.

00:50:45.780 --> 00:50:48.220
And you said to them, here's
a funny question.

00:50:48.220 --> 00:50:50.390
Which is your favorite
shape here, the

00:50:50.390 --> 00:50:52.060
diamond or the square?

00:50:52.060 --> 00:50:55.620
If you're a rugged United
States Marine Corps

00:50:55.620 --> 00:50:59.030
individualist, which
one do you like?

00:51:02.570 --> 00:51:04.420
Who's the individualist
in this picture?

00:51:04.420 --> 00:51:05.540
The diamond.

00:51:05.540 --> 00:51:08.510
I'm a diamond, now
just stand back.

00:51:08.510 --> 00:51:10.740
Who's the we're all trying to
get along here correctly, help

00:51:10.740 --> 00:51:13.210
each other be interdependent and
form a greater shape from

00:51:13.210 --> 00:51:15.310
our synergy?

00:51:15.310 --> 00:51:16.850
The squares.

00:51:16.850 --> 00:51:18.420
As ridiculous as that is--

00:51:18.420 --> 00:51:21.880
or here's the triangle.

00:51:21.880 --> 00:51:23.560
Here's one shape wrong,
different.

00:51:23.560 --> 00:51:24.440
Here's the triangles.

00:51:24.440 --> 00:51:27.730
As ridiculous as that question
is, as simple, non-cultural as

00:51:27.730 --> 00:51:31.920
it feels, people from the US
like the outstanding figure.

00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:36.100
People from Korea tend to like
the more typical figure.

00:51:36.100 --> 00:51:37.020
Here's another one.

00:51:37.020 --> 00:51:38.270
This was done in the airport.

00:51:38.270 --> 00:51:39.300
Imagine you're in an airport.

00:51:39.300 --> 00:51:42.250
This was in the days before 9/11
so we weren't as worried

00:51:42.250 --> 00:51:44.630
about people running around
airports running up to us.

00:51:44.630 --> 00:51:45.460
Here's how they literally
did it.

00:51:45.460 --> 00:51:47.450
At the San Francisco airport,
they would ask you where

00:51:47.450 --> 00:51:47.960
you're from.

00:51:47.960 --> 00:51:51.290
And if you were from the US or
from Japan or Korea, they

00:51:51.290 --> 00:51:53.530
would open a pencil box
like you might have

00:51:53.530 --> 00:51:54.830
had as a little kid.

00:51:54.830 --> 00:51:56.070
And there'd be a set of
pencils in there.

00:51:56.070 --> 00:51:57.320
And they go, please take one.

00:51:57.320 --> 00:51:59.250
And your first thought is,
OK, what's the deal?

00:51:59.250 --> 00:52:01.020
What's the scam?

00:52:01.020 --> 00:52:02.680
Are there any security
people around?

00:52:02.680 --> 00:52:04.100
They go, no, no, just please
take a pencil.

00:52:04.100 --> 00:52:04.550
And you go, OK.

00:52:04.550 --> 00:52:05.120
And you take one.

00:52:05.120 --> 00:52:06.130
And you think something
bad's going to

00:52:06.130 --> 00:52:06.890
happen, and it doesn't.

00:52:06.890 --> 00:52:08.330
All they want to know is this.

00:52:08.330 --> 00:52:11.330
Do you take the out, the
individualist pencil or the

00:52:11.330 --> 00:52:14.170
collectivist pencil?

00:52:14.170 --> 00:52:16.360
And there's a one in
four condition or a

00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:17.370
two in three condition.

00:52:17.370 --> 00:52:18.730
Which pencil do you take?

00:52:18.730 --> 00:52:22.090
Ridiculous as this experiment
is, it depends

00:52:22.090 --> 00:52:23.450
where you come from.

00:52:23.450 --> 00:52:29.680
East Asians on average picked
the majority pen.

00:52:29.680 --> 00:52:32.180
And people born in the US,
European Americans, picked the

00:52:32.180 --> 00:52:34.610
minority pen, the stand-out
individual pen.

00:52:34.610 --> 00:52:37.380
So to a ludicrous degree,
the experiments

00:52:37.380 --> 00:52:38.490
are almost too cute.

00:52:38.490 --> 00:52:40.110
But the idea is they want
to get rid of a

00:52:40.110 --> 00:52:41.080
lot of cultural overlay.

00:52:41.080 --> 00:52:42.950
And so you're just
picking a pencil.

00:52:42.950 --> 00:52:44.610
It's not something that anybody
taught you at home or

00:52:44.610 --> 00:52:47.420
in school how to be
or how to do.

00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:48.330
There's a similar one.

00:52:48.330 --> 00:52:50.070
They would show a picture
like this.

00:52:50.070 --> 00:52:51.590
This is an example picture.

00:52:51.590 --> 00:52:54.170
First, they would ask people
to describe the picture.

00:52:54.170 --> 00:52:58.270
And they noticed that the North
Americans tended to

00:52:58.270 --> 00:52:59.460
focus on the fish.

00:52:59.460 --> 00:53:00.970
There's a really big one.

00:53:00.970 --> 00:53:02.510
He's going to eat the
really small one.

00:53:02.510 --> 00:53:03.840
That's the way of capitalism.

00:53:03.840 --> 00:53:05.050
I'm being facetious.

00:53:05.050 --> 00:53:08.220
But their story was on
the fish on average.

00:53:08.220 --> 00:53:11.860
And on average, the people they
studied from Japan talked

00:53:11.860 --> 00:53:14.240
about not only the fish, but the
plants in the background

00:53:14.240 --> 00:53:15.770
and things like this
on average.

00:53:15.770 --> 00:53:17.310
That's just the average
description.

00:53:17.310 --> 00:53:20.700
Then, they give them a memory
test for the fish where the

00:53:20.700 --> 00:53:23.700
fish had the same background,
the same context they were in,

00:53:23.700 --> 00:53:27.840
or no background, or they
got a new background.

00:53:27.840 --> 00:53:29.670
And take a look at
the accuracy.

00:53:29.670 --> 00:53:32.650
If it's the original background,
so if you took in

00:53:32.650 --> 00:53:37.270
the fish with that background,
the context, people from Japan

00:53:37.270 --> 00:53:39.390
did better than people from
the United States.

00:53:39.390 --> 00:53:42.490
If it's no background, the
individual fish, you stripped

00:53:42.490 --> 00:53:45.370
away the background, it
exactly reverses.

00:53:45.370 --> 00:53:47.300
And who does better with
no background?

00:53:47.300 --> 00:53:50.730
The people from the
United States.

00:53:50.730 --> 00:53:54.500
So such a simple thing like
this, again, seems to be

00:53:54.500 --> 00:53:56.670
driven by this.

00:53:56.670 --> 00:53:57.620
Here's one more.

00:53:57.620 --> 00:54:01.130
You could say, which is
more similar to this?

00:54:01.130 --> 00:54:03.540
So this is similar
by one standout

00:54:03.540 --> 00:54:06.300
rule, the common stem.

00:54:06.300 --> 00:54:09.950
These actually share more
similarities if you talk about

00:54:09.950 --> 00:54:12.010
the shape of the flower,
the shape of the petal.

00:54:12.010 --> 00:54:14.570
But they're different
one from the other.

00:54:14.570 --> 00:54:16.610
And again, the European
Americans go for

00:54:16.610 --> 00:54:17.790
the one stand out.

00:54:17.790 --> 00:54:20.880
That stem looks solid to me.

00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:22.560
That's the European American.

00:54:22.560 --> 00:54:25.610
And here's the East Asians, not
completely reversed, but

00:54:25.610 --> 00:54:28.740
tending to pick the ones that
have the more contextual

00:54:28.740 --> 00:54:30.170
similarity.

00:54:30.170 --> 00:54:32.570
So here's a half
dozen examples.

00:54:32.570 --> 00:54:34.820
And there's 100 more.

00:54:34.820 --> 00:54:40.910
And it's just a reminder that
many of the conclusions

00:54:40.910 --> 00:54:42.980
throughout this course,
including the ones in social

00:54:42.980 --> 00:54:47.490
psychology, focused on people
from North American

00:54:47.490 --> 00:54:49.400
universities.

00:54:49.400 --> 00:54:50.990
So let's talk about some
of these ones.

00:54:50.990 --> 00:54:52.830
So for example, we talked
about the fundamental

00:54:52.830 --> 00:54:54.580
attribution error.

00:54:54.580 --> 00:54:57.880
It turns out the US is
really big on this.

00:54:57.880 --> 00:55:00.820
It's a little bit worldwide,
but the US is an outlier.

00:55:00.820 --> 00:55:03.720
We really like to attribute the
actions of others to their

00:55:03.720 --> 00:55:07.470
characters and not
their situations.

00:55:07.470 --> 00:55:10.390
The attractiveness bias, very
pronounced in the United

00:55:10.390 --> 00:55:13.120
States compared to
East Asians.

00:55:13.120 --> 00:55:16.000
So we really just find that
one outstanding thing and

00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:19.170
generalize it.

00:55:19.170 --> 00:55:20.580
Then, of course, there's
variations within

00:55:20.580 --> 00:55:22.270
each culture of course.

00:55:22.270 --> 00:55:26.510
But there's cultural teachings
that seem to manifest

00:55:26.510 --> 00:55:29.660
themselves in these
experiments.

00:55:29.660 --> 00:55:33.240
Any questions on that?

00:55:33.240 --> 00:55:36.990
OK, for the last few minutes,
I want to talk about a

00:55:36.990 --> 00:55:39.740
disorder that you hear
a lot about.

00:55:39.740 --> 00:55:42.660
And if you have questions, I can
answer some questions on

00:55:42.660 --> 00:55:45.640
it, autism.

00:55:45.640 --> 00:55:47.940
When I was a graduate student
here, you practically never

00:55:47.940 --> 00:55:49.330
heard of it.

00:55:49.330 --> 00:55:51.840
Now when you go to the
pediatrician's office,

00:55:51.840 --> 00:55:53.720
practically every parent
is worried about

00:55:53.720 --> 00:55:54.490
it for their child.

00:55:54.490 --> 00:55:57.970
It used to be thought of as
a very rare disorder.

00:55:57.970 --> 00:56:03.610
Autism spectrum disorders are
now thought to occur one out

00:56:03.610 --> 00:56:09.440
of every something like
that, approaching 1%.

00:56:09.440 --> 00:56:11.490
Have you seen the ads on TV
about the odds of having

00:56:11.490 --> 00:56:14.370
autism versus the odds
of making the NBA?

00:56:14.370 --> 00:56:16.470
Have any of you seen that?

00:56:16.470 --> 00:56:21.460
Incredibly higher by far to have
autism than to make the

00:56:21.460 --> 00:56:25.070
NBA or many other things
you can think of.

00:56:25.070 --> 00:56:28.060
That's autism awareness efforts
to make people realize

00:56:28.060 --> 00:56:29.970
it's shockingly common.

00:56:29.970 --> 00:56:31.560
Lots of arguments about
why there's

00:56:31.560 --> 00:56:32.490
been a dramatic increase.

00:56:32.490 --> 00:56:34.760
I can tell you that for a while
they thought it was

00:56:34.760 --> 00:56:38.830
awareness only, that people
didn't realize that certain

00:56:38.830 --> 00:56:42.620
children were best understood
as having autism spectrum

00:56:42.620 --> 00:56:45.980
disorders, a range of disorders
that share some

00:56:45.980 --> 00:56:48.870
properties of difficulties
in social cognition,

00:56:48.870 --> 00:56:49.560
communication, and

00:56:49.560 --> 00:56:52.110
stereotyped, repetitive movements.

00:56:52.110 --> 00:56:55.950
But now, most epidemiologic--

00:56:55.950 --> 00:56:57.600
you can't really do
the experiment.

00:56:57.600 --> 00:57:00.300
But most people think there
truly is an increasing number

00:57:00.300 --> 00:57:03.350
for reasons that are not well
understood on top of

00:57:03.350 --> 00:57:04.530
increasing awareness.

00:57:04.530 --> 00:57:07.380
Nowadays, they can diagnose
it by age three.

00:57:07.380 --> 00:57:11.010
A huge mystery is why there's
four boys to every girl with

00:57:11.010 --> 00:57:14.630
autism as far as people have
observed, total mystery.

00:57:14.630 --> 00:57:15.880
Nobody has any idea
why that is.

00:57:21.470 --> 00:57:23.020
So I'm just going to show you
a few things that have been

00:57:23.020 --> 00:57:25.020
found with individuals
with autism.

00:57:25.020 --> 00:57:28.330
So one thing is in terms of the
individual with autism,

00:57:28.330 --> 00:57:32.190
they don't seem to have a
natural desire to socially

00:57:32.190 --> 00:57:34.450
interact with their parents,
their siblings, their

00:57:34.450 --> 00:57:35.270
caretakers.

00:57:35.270 --> 00:57:38.160
It's hard to get them to do
what's easy for most infants,

00:57:38.160 --> 00:57:39.960
which is interact with
people around you.

00:57:39.960 --> 00:57:43.110
That's easy for most infants,
hard for people with autism.

00:57:43.110 --> 00:57:44.910
This is eye tracking.

00:57:44.910 --> 00:57:45.690
When people--

00:57:45.690 --> 00:57:48.020
so this is a path that you
look at when you look at

00:57:48.020 --> 00:57:49.500
somebody else.

00:57:49.500 --> 00:57:52.170
And what's very common as we
look at people is that we

00:57:52.170 --> 00:57:55.880
focus a lot of our attention
to other people's eyes.

00:57:55.880 --> 00:57:57.110
Well, that makes sense.

00:57:57.110 --> 00:57:59.330
You know that from your
everyday experience.

00:57:59.330 --> 00:58:01.070
OK, you look at the mouth and
the ear here and there.

00:58:01.070 --> 00:58:03.080
But it's the eyes of the other
person that seem very

00:58:03.080 --> 00:58:04.760
communicative socially.

00:58:04.760 --> 00:58:07.530
And so you see this triangle
where people go between the

00:58:07.530 --> 00:58:10.010
mouth, the speaking mouth, and
the eyes naturally to figure

00:58:10.010 --> 00:58:11.510
out what's going on
with the person.

00:58:11.510 --> 00:58:13.110
Here's a typical person
with autism.

00:58:13.110 --> 00:58:16.340
You see it's like they don't
even look at this eye, don't

00:58:16.340 --> 00:58:18.960
focus on the eyes, don't
focus on the eyes.

00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:22.910
The original interpretation of
this was a lack of interest in

00:58:22.910 --> 00:58:26.360
looking at these faces
as social targets.

00:58:26.360 --> 00:58:28.640
There's an additional thought
that maybe, for some

00:58:28.640 --> 00:58:30.900
individuals or many with autism,
there's something

00:58:30.900 --> 00:58:34.850
uncomfortable with
dealing with a

00:58:34.850 --> 00:58:37.140
social agent or a person.

00:58:37.140 --> 00:58:39.580
So that's eye tracking.

00:58:39.580 --> 00:58:42.880
And by the way, the same
thing when they were--

00:58:42.880 --> 00:58:44.830
this is spontaneous,
the first picture,

00:58:44.830 --> 00:58:45.590
wherever you want to look.

00:58:45.590 --> 00:58:47.410
Now they said, tell us what
the expression is.

00:58:47.410 --> 00:58:49.010
So you have a task to do.

00:58:49.010 --> 00:58:52.040
And again, pretty much like
before, typically developing

00:58:52.040 --> 00:58:54.820
people focus on the eyes, a
little bit on the mouth.

00:58:54.820 --> 00:58:59.350
And again, you can see these
very wayward locations of

00:58:59.350 --> 00:59:03.450
where individuals with autism
put their glances.

00:59:03.450 --> 00:59:05.710
So you can just imagine a very
different social interaction

00:59:05.710 --> 00:59:08.490
if somebody's looking here or
here at somebody versus the

00:59:08.490 --> 00:59:09.740
person's eyes.

00:59:13.020 --> 00:59:15.340
There's been a fantastic amount
of research about what

00:59:15.340 --> 00:59:17.870
are brain differences in people
with autism spectrum

00:59:17.870 --> 00:59:19.200
disorders and those without.

00:59:19.200 --> 00:59:23.180
There's a fantastic variation
among every disorder, but you

00:59:23.180 --> 00:59:24.730
might say autism even
more, or every

00:59:24.730 --> 00:59:25.950
difference, autism even more.

00:59:25.950 --> 00:59:28.880
It seems like there's just a
fantastic variation among

00:59:28.880 --> 00:59:30.290
people with autism.

00:59:30.290 --> 00:59:33.110
But the one finding that's held
up is this, which is that

00:59:33.110 --> 00:59:35.750
if you measure the total
brain size--

00:59:35.750 --> 00:59:37.950
which is a very gross measure
of the brain--

00:59:37.950 --> 00:59:41.120
that there seems to be early in
development, up until age

00:59:41.120 --> 00:59:44.630
five, an overgrowth of the brain
size in individuals with

00:59:44.630 --> 00:59:47.580
autism that gets back
in development

00:59:47.580 --> 00:59:49.390
to the typical size.

00:59:49.390 --> 00:59:50.930
This is the most replicated.

00:59:50.930 --> 00:59:53.830
Every number here is a different
research study.

00:59:53.830 --> 00:59:56.900
So you can see all of these
up here are clumped here.

00:59:56.900 --> 00:59:58.530
This is the single
most replicable

00:59:58.530 --> 01:00:00.350
finding by far in autism.

01:00:00.350 --> 01:00:03.760
There's an early, apparent
overgrowth of the brain.

01:00:03.760 --> 01:00:06.700
What that means, why that's
associated with difficulties

01:00:06.700 --> 01:00:10.300
in social interaction or
repetitive movements,

01:00:10.300 --> 01:00:12.320
stereotyped interests
is hard to know.

01:00:15.460 --> 01:00:17.340
Early in the course, we
mentioned and we talked about

01:00:17.340 --> 01:00:20.410
theory of mind, understanding
what thoughts

01:00:20.410 --> 01:00:21.410
another person holds.

01:00:21.410 --> 01:00:23.690
And sometimes it's not even
consistent with the physical,

01:00:23.690 --> 01:00:24.830
real world.

01:00:24.830 --> 01:00:30.490
I mentioned to you that it's
severely delayed in autism,

01:00:30.490 --> 01:00:31.770
years later.

01:00:31.770 --> 01:00:33.940
So this is comparing
four-year-olds typically

01:00:33.940 --> 01:00:37.230
developing versus 6 to
12-year-olds with autism.

01:00:37.230 --> 01:00:38.865
And the four-year-olds
outperform the individuals

01:00:38.865 --> 01:00:40.800
with autism on theory
of mind tasks.

01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:46.830
So huge delay in understanding
what the independent mental

01:00:46.830 --> 01:00:48.660
life is like of another
person.

01:00:48.660 --> 01:00:49.337
Yeah?

01:00:49.337 --> 01:00:52.840
AUDIENCE: How do you find, in
general, IQs of people with

01:00:52.840 --> 01:00:54.362
autism compared to--?

01:00:54.362 --> 01:00:57.730
PROFESSOR: So the question
is how are IQs in autism?

01:00:57.730 --> 01:01:00.690
So the answer is you measure--

01:01:00.690 --> 01:01:03.570
so half of individuals with
autism are non-verbal.

01:01:03.570 --> 01:01:06.500
You can't even give
them a test.

01:01:06.500 --> 01:01:08.360
Those are not the ones who
tend to be represented in

01:01:08.360 --> 01:01:12.560
research, behavioral research or
brain research, because you

01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:14.620
can't even ask them
to do things.

01:01:14.620 --> 01:01:18.430
So all the research is skewed
towards the higher functioning

01:01:18.430 --> 01:01:20.610
individuals with autism.

01:01:20.610 --> 01:01:25.210
If you just took their average
IQ, it would be lowish.

01:01:25.210 --> 01:01:29.790
But there's many individuals
with very high IQs also.

01:01:29.790 --> 01:01:32.860
And in fact, what's called
Asperger's syndrome

01:01:32.860 --> 01:01:35.510
specifically refers to
individuals who have the

01:01:35.510 --> 01:01:40.240
social difficulties
characteristic of autism, but

01:01:40.240 --> 01:01:43.510
have a very high functioning
cognitive and IQ level.

01:01:43.510 --> 01:01:46.020
So it runs the whole range.

01:01:46.020 --> 01:01:47.670
If you just took the average,
it'd be low.

01:01:47.670 --> 01:01:51.060
But there's many individuals
who are very high in IQ.

01:01:51.060 --> 01:01:53.580
And so in this study, for
example, they matched IQ by

01:01:53.580 --> 01:01:55.850
having, in this case,
four year olds and

01:01:55.850 --> 01:01:56.516
six to 12 year olds.

01:01:56.516 --> 01:01:58.140
The IQ was even.

01:01:58.140 --> 01:02:00.560
And still, the theory of mind
was much weaker in the

01:02:00.560 --> 01:02:02.010
individuals with autism.

01:02:02.010 --> 01:02:03.590
But it's incredibly
variable, the IQs.

01:02:07.320 --> 01:02:12.060
So here's another way that
people have studied two things

01:02:12.060 --> 01:02:13.810
at once we talk about--

01:02:13.810 --> 01:02:18.790
the human nature to ascribe
social things, social stories

01:02:18.790 --> 01:02:20.470
to things and then how
that plays out

01:02:20.470 --> 01:02:21.590
differently in autism.

01:02:21.590 --> 01:02:24.980
So this is famous work from
Heider and Simmel.

01:02:24.980 --> 01:02:27.970
And you're going to see these
two triangles do something.

01:02:27.970 --> 01:02:30.540
And I want you to figure
out what they're doing.

01:02:33.110 --> 01:02:34.875
What happened there, socially?

01:02:38.214 --> 01:02:40.340
I need somebody to put their
hand up, and the other

01:02:40.340 --> 01:02:41.295
people-- help me out.

01:02:41.295 --> 01:02:42.555
Somebody, put your hand
up and tell me what

01:02:42.555 --> 01:02:44.140
you thought you saw.

01:02:44.140 --> 01:02:45.810
Second last quarter left
of the whole course.

01:02:45.810 --> 01:02:46.970
We gotta have somebody put--

01:02:46.970 --> 01:02:48.110
OK, what do you think you saw?

01:02:48.110 --> 01:02:49.050
AUDIENCE: They were dancing.

01:02:49.050 --> 01:02:49.750
PROFESSOR: They were
kind of dancing.

01:02:49.750 --> 01:02:51.330
Anything else?

01:02:51.330 --> 01:02:52.908
Yeah?

01:02:52.908 --> 01:02:53.886
Go ahead.

01:02:53.886 --> 01:02:56.036
AUDIENCE: That the big one was
trying to get the little one

01:02:56.036 --> 01:02:58.330
to go outside, but the little
one was scared.

01:02:58.330 --> 01:03:01.040
PROFESSOR: Yeah, there's no
right answer, by the way.

01:03:01.040 --> 01:03:04.270
But one I heard, which is
coaxing, that the little one

01:03:04.270 --> 01:03:04.820
was scared.

01:03:04.820 --> 01:03:05.950
They were playing together.

01:03:05.950 --> 01:03:07.880
They're having a nice
relationship.

01:03:07.880 --> 01:03:09.590
Then, the little one doesn't
want to go outside the box.

01:03:09.590 --> 01:03:11.440
Then, the big one has to
coax and support them.

01:03:11.440 --> 01:03:12.910
Were you going to
say that, too?

01:03:12.910 --> 01:03:15.980
Any other thoughts
or feelings?

01:03:15.980 --> 01:03:17.900
So yeah, the most common
interpretation of this-- and

01:03:17.900 --> 01:03:20.120
Heider and Simmel, their
original point was that humans

01:03:20.120 --> 01:03:23.580
want to give social descriptions
to everything.

01:03:23.580 --> 01:03:25.640
Two triangles, what are
you talking about?

01:03:25.640 --> 01:03:28.640
But almost, if we just let our
mind go just a little bit,

01:03:28.640 --> 01:03:30.410
we're almost giving
them animacy.

01:03:30.410 --> 01:03:32.180
They're moving themselves
around.

01:03:32.180 --> 01:03:34.030
They're having social
interactions.

01:03:34.030 --> 01:03:36.300
They have stories where
sometimes there's a bully

01:03:36.300 --> 01:03:38.930
beating up the little, big
circle beating up a little

01:03:38.930 --> 01:03:40.590
circle or dot.

01:03:40.590 --> 01:03:44.140
And we tend to make up these
little stories very easily.

01:03:44.140 --> 01:03:45.445
So the first thing to tell you
is that individuals with

01:03:45.445 --> 01:03:49.330
autism on average, again a big
range on average, don't see

01:03:49.330 --> 01:03:50.920
these stories so much.

01:03:50.920 --> 01:03:55.200
They say on average the two
triangles, what do you mean?

01:03:55.200 --> 01:03:57.950
And you could say that's
not even wrong.

01:03:57.950 --> 01:04:01.590
It's just not the way people
typically interpret things

01:04:01.590 --> 01:04:03.560
that we typically look
for socially.

01:04:03.560 --> 01:04:05.620
And then, you look
in the brain.

01:04:05.620 --> 01:04:06.620
And what happens is this.

01:04:06.620 --> 01:04:09.490
This is brain responses to these
social stories where we

01:04:09.490 --> 01:04:12.090
tend to give it a social
explanation

01:04:12.090 --> 01:04:13.080
versus random displays.

01:04:13.080 --> 01:04:14.650
They can also display where
things whizzing around and

01:04:14.650 --> 01:04:16.680
nobody thinks anything's
happening.

01:04:16.680 --> 01:04:19.230
And what they see is in the
visual cortex, this part of

01:04:19.230 --> 01:04:21.790
the brain that sees the
things, there's equal

01:04:21.790 --> 01:04:24.130
activation in the two groups.

01:04:24.130 --> 01:04:26.420
But in parts of the brain that
we think are involved in

01:04:26.420 --> 01:04:29.740
social interaction, like the
superior temporal sulcus,

01:04:29.740 --> 01:04:32.570
medial prefrontal cortex, areas
from a lot of research

01:04:32.570 --> 01:04:35.770
that we believe is involved in
thinking about other people

01:04:35.770 --> 01:04:38.530
and their feelings and thoughts,
there's very little

01:04:38.530 --> 01:04:41.330
engagement of these areas in
individuals with autism in

01:04:41.330 --> 01:04:42.630
this study.

01:04:42.630 --> 01:04:44.030
So they don't see the
same stories.

01:04:44.030 --> 01:04:47.210
And they don't turn on social
parts of the brain that are

01:04:47.210 --> 01:04:50.800
spontaneously turned on by
typically developing people.

01:04:50.800 --> 01:04:56.420
And here's the last experiment
I'll show you which is this.

01:04:56.420 --> 01:05:00.000
So it turns out our brains
respond and our minds respond

01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:04.355
very strongly to where people
are looking, where their gaze

01:05:04.355 --> 01:05:05.660
is falling.

01:05:05.660 --> 01:05:08.870
So imagine that you're
talking to somebody.

01:05:08.870 --> 01:05:10.370
You're telling them something.

01:05:10.370 --> 01:05:11.410
And their eyes are here.

01:05:11.410 --> 01:05:12.615
Does that bother you?

01:05:12.615 --> 01:05:15.940
OK, yes because we think their
eyes tell us where their

01:05:15.940 --> 01:05:17.300
attention is.

01:05:17.300 --> 01:05:20.190
And if they're not focused on
us, they're not interested.

01:05:20.190 --> 01:05:21.630
And we're offended.

01:05:21.630 --> 01:05:25.750
So here's the experiment now
where they have a computer

01:05:25.750 --> 01:05:26.920
model like this.

01:05:26.920 --> 01:05:29.860
And they throw on suddenly
a display.

01:05:29.860 --> 01:05:31.470
And the person either
looks this way

01:05:31.470 --> 01:05:32.490
or looks the opposite.

01:05:32.490 --> 01:05:35.310
Which would you think is the
natural way a person would

01:05:35.310 --> 01:05:38.210
look naturally if something
interesting

01:05:38.210 --> 01:05:40.220
happened over here?

01:05:40.220 --> 01:05:41.610
They would look towards it.

01:05:41.610 --> 01:05:44.340
It'd be kind of weird to
look away from it.

01:05:44.340 --> 01:05:46.170
And when you look at brain
imaging at what happens in

01:05:46.170 --> 01:05:49.060
those conditions in the superior
temporal sulcus and

01:05:49.060 --> 01:05:51.430
other places, typically
developing people for the

01:05:51.430 --> 01:05:54.200
weird looking away, it's like
a mystery to be solved.

01:05:54.200 --> 01:05:54.730
What's going on?

01:05:54.730 --> 01:05:56.290
Why aren't they looking
at this?

01:05:56.290 --> 01:05:56.750
Are they angry?

01:05:56.750 --> 01:05:58.730
Is there something better
over there?

01:05:58.730 --> 01:05:59.770
it's a social mystery.

01:05:59.770 --> 01:06:01.550
Why is this person
not looking?

01:06:01.550 --> 01:06:03.450
And there's no difference in
those two conditions in the

01:06:03.450 --> 01:06:08.000
study for individuals with
autism as if eyes are looking

01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:10.440
here, eyes are looking there.

01:06:10.440 --> 01:06:11.540
It's just where eyes
are looking.

01:06:11.540 --> 01:06:13.310
What's the difference?

01:06:13.310 --> 01:06:16.640
There's not the spontaneous
social interpretation or

01:06:16.640 --> 01:06:18.660
mystery that needs
to be understood.

01:06:18.660 --> 01:06:20.470
So these are just some of the
differences that people have

01:06:20.470 --> 01:06:23.050
observed looking at the
brains and behavior

01:06:23.050 --> 01:06:24.300
of people with autism.

01:06:24.300 --> 01:06:25.870
Any questions about autism?

01:06:32.310 --> 01:06:32.750
Yeah?

01:06:32.750 --> 01:06:34.121
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

01:06:34.121 --> 01:06:36.410
in the brain activates
[INAUDIBLE]?

01:06:36.410 --> 01:06:37.170
PROFESSOR: Yes.

01:06:37.170 --> 01:06:39.160
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]?

01:06:39.160 --> 01:06:39.960
PROFESSOR: That's
a good question.

01:06:39.960 --> 01:06:43.330
Do those parts of the brain,
the areas that in typical

01:06:43.330 --> 01:06:45.880
people are turned on for social
cognition, when we

01:06:45.880 --> 01:06:48.070
think about what another
person's thinking or feeling,

01:06:48.070 --> 01:06:49.890
do they ever turn on in
individuals with autism?

01:06:49.890 --> 01:06:51.800
The answer is yes, they do.

01:06:51.800 --> 01:06:52.960
I can tell you that I'm showing
you some of the

01:06:52.960 --> 01:06:55.660
simplest things and probably
roughly correct.

01:06:55.660 --> 01:06:58.080
But there's such a fantastic
variety among people with

01:06:58.080 --> 01:07:00.770
autism and even within
the person.

01:07:00.770 --> 01:07:03.080
Just a very little bit of
different of a condition, all

01:07:03.080 --> 01:07:05.060
of a sudden, some of these
areas will turn on.

01:07:05.060 --> 01:07:07.340
It's been a very big mystery.

01:07:07.340 --> 01:07:08.930
And we don't know whether that's
because we just don't

01:07:08.930 --> 01:07:11.650
understand it right or whether
the variety among patients is

01:07:11.650 --> 01:07:13.990
so great that we're making the
wrong conclusions, saying

01:07:13.990 --> 01:07:15.970
autism is like this.

01:07:15.970 --> 01:07:18.710
And that may be true of 5% of
individuals with autism.

01:07:18.710 --> 01:07:22.300
So it's a huge mystery in many
ways, and an important one

01:07:22.300 --> 01:07:26.440
because all of a sudden, it's
almost 1%, one out of every

01:07:26.440 --> 01:07:27.690
100 children.