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PROFESSOR: So today I want to
talk with you about how it is

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that we can do research of a
scientific kind for something

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as complex as human behavior as
opposed to things that you

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measure out in space or test
tubes or under microscopes.

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People are complex
organisms, right?

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And to do research on them, to
understand human nature, how

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the mind works, how the
brain supports it, is

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a challenging story.

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So the usual thing
is an experiment.

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You have a group of
participants.

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And we'll talk about that.

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But in the reading for today,
and I know it's the first time

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we've done this so you may not
have read it, but if you have,

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that'd be great, is a kind of
another thread of the kind of

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way that people are studied,
which is dramatic individual

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stories, case studies, single
stories that are illustrative

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of something that we think
are broader principles.

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And a lot of our biggest
discoveries-- and we'll come

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to that later in the course--
have been made on very unusual

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single individuals who turn out
to have a lesson that's

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pretty broad, for example,
for the organization

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of the human brain.

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So in the Oliver Sacks book,
there's a story about Donald.

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And what did Donald do that
got him in big trouble?

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AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

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PROFESSOR: Yeah, he murdered
his girlfriend

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while he was on PCP.

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He's in a psychiatric
hospital.

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They try hypnosis to help
him remember it.

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He says he doesn't
remember it.

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Many of you may know that an
astounding number of criminals

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under interrogation tell you
they don't remember anything

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about the episode involved.

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So people are suspicious, at
first, for many reasons.

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Because the easiest thing
to say is I don't

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remember what happened.

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And then you can't catch
yourself in a lie or any

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complexity, right?

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Because you don't remember
what happened.

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And sometimes you
don't remember.

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And sometimes you do.

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But in this case, they
tried hypnosis.

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That doesn't help.

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He's in there for four years.

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And he knows conceptually that
he murdered his girlfriend.

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And he says, I'm not
fit for society.

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He knows it's a terrible
thing he did.

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But it's kind of like an
intellectual knowledge, right?

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It's not a feeling.

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It's not a memory.

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And then he goes biking and
something happens, which is he

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gets hit by a car.

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And so there's what appears to
be a drug-induced amnesia of

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the original murderous
episode.

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He gets hit by a car.

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He has a severe head injury.

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He's in a coma for two weeks.

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He has left-sided weakness as
he comes out of it, which

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means the biggest injury was
in the right side of his

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brain, weakness and numbness.

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And he has frontal
lobe contusions.

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He has injury and bleeding
around the frontal lobes of

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the cortex that sits in the
front of the brain.

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But now a remarkable
thing happens.

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It's as if two insults, two
wrongs, made a right, the

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first wrong being the
PCP, the second

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wrong being the accident.

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And now what happens?

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He remembers in vivid, in florid
detail the horror that

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he actually committed
this murder.

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It's as if two insults to the
brain, one drug-induced, one a

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focal injury, repressed the
memory and then unrepressed

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the memory.

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And one of the first things they
have to do is discover

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whether he really has his memory
or he just thinks he

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has his memory.

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And how do they figure out to
their satisfaction whether

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it's a really recovered memory
or a fabrication of his mind?

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AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

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PROFESSOR: Right.

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It's really important.

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He remembers details of the
murder that are not publicly

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available, that were not
in the information that

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was given to him.

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That's a really huge issue
in these kinds of memory.

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So this is a really recovered
memory, not an inadvertently

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fabricated memory.

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And they discover he has deep
seizure activity in his limbic

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structures, the parts of his
brain that are involved in

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emotion, are having seizures.

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In epilepsy, neurons are firing
for no good reason.

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And that's part of
his disorder.

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They give him medications
to help with that.

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But here's the question
for you from a

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moment to think about.

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And it's now such a common
question because our society

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is moving that way that
it's on many TV shows.

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I see it like every couple of
weeks there's a Law & Order

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episode that has something like
this, which is the more

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you know about the biology that
underlies really criminal

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terrible behavior, should
that be a cause for

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understanding it or not?

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So in this case, he
took the drugs.

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He killed the person.

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You think he's pretty
responsible.

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But how about somebody who kills
somebody and it turns

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out, and there's such a case, a
man with no history, a grown

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man with no history of criminal
activity of any kind,

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shoved his wife out of a high
window to her death in the

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course of a standard argument.

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Then they discover that he has
a big tumor growing in the

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basal part of his
frontal cortex.

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Now is the man responsible
for what he did?

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It's a really interesting
question.

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And the more we understand about
the neuroscience of our

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brains, what makes us do things,
what lets us control

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impulses, what makes
us murderous--

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There's a guy, Kent Kiehl, the
University of Mexico, he's

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driving around in a big van
with an MRI scanner.

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And he goes from penitentiary
to penitentiary.

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And he images the brains
of serial murderers, of

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psychopathic murderers.

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And he's getting things that
are pretty systematically

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different about their brains.

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And the question is, what
does that mean?

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Does that mean those people
were prone to do it for

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reasons of their early
environment or genes or some

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incident that happened?

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If that's the case, do you
forgive them differently?

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Should we have a different moral
code or legal code as we

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discover the brain basis for
some of these things?

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Or is that irrelevant?

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What counts is the action.

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So this is the kind of thing
you can think about, maybe

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discuss in your sections some.

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The more we understand about
the human brain, the more

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we'll understand
about behaviors

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that we find terrible.

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And what does that mean about
legal and moral decisions

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about how to punish those
or think about those?

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So that's coming in
your lifetime.

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Because there's steady
progress on this.

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And how to think about that
is really a big question.

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So I'm going to talk with you
today about research in

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psychology.

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And a funny thing about
psychology, and I'll come back

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to this, is everybody is an
amateur psychologist.

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They have to be.

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If you deal with people,
you're an amateur

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psychologist.

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Moreover, we live in a world
with Oprah Winfrey and Dr.

00:06:38.350 --> 00:06:39.320
Phil, right?

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So in case you're only an
amateur one, you hear all

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kinds of stuff, newspaper,
internet, magazines.

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Everywhere you go, friends
will tell you stuff about

00:06:46.130 --> 00:06:47.550
psychologists have
found this or

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psychologists have found that.

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So you have your own intuitions
to deal with people

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in everyday life.

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And here's a kind of a sentence
from Time Magazine

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that drives psychologists crazy

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if you take it seriously.

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So here's the literal
sentence.

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"Almost half of children of
divorces enter adulthood as

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worried, underachieving,
self-deprecating, and

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sometimes angry young
men and women."

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So that sounds kind of like a
psychological study of some

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kind, kind of, right?

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Somebody who wants to argue
about the importance of

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divorce and breakdown
of the family, this

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is the kind of thing.

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So let's think about
this for a moment.

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Almost half of children
of divorce enter

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adulthood as worried.

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Are you guys worried about
global warming?

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A little.

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Are you worried about peace in
the Middle East and how that

00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:37.530
influences the Middle
East and the US?

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A little.

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Are you worried about an economy
that may not have jobs

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waiting for you?

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A little.

00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:46.710
Who's not worried a little
bit of the time?

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So it doesn't even tell you that
half of children in the

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world, for example,
are who come from

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families without divorce.

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Because that's the only
relevant question.

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It's not are people worried
about stuff.

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Underachieving, compared
to what?

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How would you prove somebody's
underachieving scientifically?

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Most of you probably have
had days where you've

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underachieved and days where
you've achieved pretty well.

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But how would you measure
and prove that?

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Self-deprecating, well,
sometimes I think that's

00:08:12.290 --> 00:08:14.310
actually kind of nice if
a person's modest.

00:08:14.310 --> 00:08:17.020
What's the difference between
modest and self-deprecation?

00:08:17.020 --> 00:08:19.930
And I like this one, sometimes
angry young men and women.

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Are you sometimes angry about
something or another?

00:08:27.180 --> 00:08:29.730
And if you are, does that tell
us that society's breaking

00:08:29.730 --> 00:08:31.350
down and your parents
did something

00:08:31.350 --> 00:08:33.120
bad that you're sometimes?

00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:35.500
Who as a human being is
not sometimes angry?

00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:38.980
So here's a kind of
psychology-sounding sentence

00:08:38.980 --> 00:08:42.120
on a serious topic, which is
what is consequences of

00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:43.700
divorce in families?

00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:46.900
Should we be thinking about
things that encourage

00:08:46.900 --> 00:08:49.810
marriages to stay stable
and things like that?

00:08:49.810 --> 00:08:55.020
But there's really no
information at all from a

00:08:55.020 --> 00:08:56.640
research or science
perspective.

00:08:56.640 --> 00:08:58.300
So I'm going to talk about a
little bit just reminding you

00:08:58.300 --> 00:09:00.530
what science is, we're at a
university, obviously, that

00:09:00.530 --> 00:09:03.570
thinks about science and does
science all the time, remind

00:09:03.570 --> 00:09:05.870
you of what an experiment is,
a very brief history of

00:09:05.870 --> 00:09:08.290
psychology experimentation, and
then walk you through a

00:09:08.290 --> 00:09:11.730
few experiments that I find kind
of interesting, and then

00:09:11.730 --> 00:09:13.100
some topics related
to psychology.

00:09:13.100 --> 00:09:14.280
So let me start with this.

00:09:14.280 --> 00:09:16.730
How do you know what is true?

00:09:16.730 --> 00:09:20.040
How do you know what is true,
that you take to be true?

00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:26.020
What is the answer?

00:09:26.020 --> 00:09:27.173
Everybody's looking like
how do I know it.

00:09:27.173 --> 00:09:28.920
Please tell me.

00:09:28.920 --> 00:09:31.040
Well, when people try to analyze
this, and you can

00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:33.510
think about it for
your own self,

00:09:33.510 --> 00:09:35.220
one of them is authority.

00:09:35.220 --> 00:09:38.790
Parents, teachers, textbooks,
scientists, professors, and

00:09:38.790 --> 00:09:41.320
courses, we tell you
this is the truth.

00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:45.030
And if you remember the truth
correctly, you get an A. So

00:09:45.030 --> 00:09:46.420
authority is a huge
source, right?

00:09:46.420 --> 00:09:47.820
It would be costly to go around
and kind of have your

00:09:47.820 --> 00:09:49.060
own idea about everything.

00:09:49.060 --> 00:09:50.060
12 inches in a foot?

00:09:50.060 --> 00:09:51.830
I'm not taking that piece
of information without

00:09:51.830 --> 00:09:53.180
skepticism, right?

00:09:53.180 --> 00:09:55.250
You couldn't lead your life
without kind of believing a

00:09:55.250 --> 00:09:55.820
lot of stuff.

00:09:55.820 --> 00:09:57.600
But you don't want to believe
everything, right, just

00:09:57.600 --> 00:09:58.420
because you hear it.

00:09:58.420 --> 00:10:02.280
Repetition or tenacity, you hear
something often enough,

00:10:02.280 --> 00:10:05.440
and people tend to
believe stuff.

00:10:05.440 --> 00:10:06.465
A priori, what's reasonable?

00:10:06.465 --> 00:10:07.530
You think things through.

00:10:07.530 --> 00:10:12.280
Just by thought, what's
possible, rational, and so on?

00:10:12.280 --> 00:10:14.900
Then maybe a fourth brand of
knowledge, too, something is

00:10:14.900 --> 00:10:17.610
scientific analysis where we
have hypotheses and we test

00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:19.900
them and some version of
experiments or at least

00:10:19.900 --> 00:10:22.580
correlations among data.

00:10:22.580 --> 00:10:28.130
Now, there's another view, which
is kind of whatever we

00:10:28.130 --> 00:10:30.510
think makes something science
is what the scientific

00:10:30.510 --> 00:10:34.400
community decides as a
community is true.

00:10:34.400 --> 00:10:37.590
Roughly speaking that is the
mainstay of faculty of places

00:10:37.590 --> 00:10:40.500
like MIT and Stanford and
Harvard and so on and around

00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:42.090
the world at universities
tell you, this

00:10:42.090 --> 00:10:43.360
is how science works.

00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:45.550
You go, OK, that's how
science works.

00:10:45.550 --> 00:10:48.850
I remember some years ago there
was a lot of excitement

00:10:48.850 --> 00:10:53.000
about a satirical article
written by a scientist where

00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:55.205
he said, oh, this is all just
societal authority.

00:10:55.205 --> 00:10:57.350
The scientists tell you what's
true just because they believe

00:10:57.350 --> 00:10:59.290
in it just like a sports
writer says the

00:10:59.290 --> 00:11:00.940
Celtics are the best.

00:11:00.940 --> 00:11:02.450
You don't really think that
the sportswriter know

00:11:02.450 --> 00:11:04.360
scientifically the Celtics
are the best, right?

00:11:07.130 --> 00:11:10.040
He wrote a paper saying that
gravity is simply a consensus

00:11:10.040 --> 00:11:12.550
among scientists and a
particular view they're

00:11:12.550 --> 00:11:14.860
foisting on society.

00:11:14.860 --> 00:11:16.840
But none of us would want to
really go up there and jump

00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:18.630
out the window going,
well, gravity is

00:11:18.630 --> 00:11:19.540
one person's opinion.

00:11:19.540 --> 00:11:22.040
And now here's my
opinion, right?

00:11:22.040 --> 00:11:23.100
But it's kind of interesting.

00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:25.850
Because for those of you who
go to medical school, for

00:11:25.850 --> 00:11:28.770
example, you learn lots of
procedures and so on that the

00:11:28.770 --> 00:11:30.260
medical committee believes
is true.

00:11:30.260 --> 00:11:32.310
But there's not much scientific
evidence behind it.

00:11:32.310 --> 00:11:34.810
But they have to use
it every day.

00:11:34.810 --> 00:11:37.190
So you're used to hearing about
the scientific method.

00:11:37.190 --> 00:11:40.830
It applies to psychology in many
ways just like it applies

00:11:40.830 --> 00:11:43.230
to chemistry, physics,
or biology.

00:11:43.230 --> 00:11:45.970
We have to test things
that are falsifiable.

00:11:45.970 --> 00:11:48.350
We have to deal in probabilities
of outcomes in

00:11:48.350 --> 00:11:51.100
terms of statistics
in some sense.

00:11:51.100 --> 00:11:53.970
The kinds of data we can have
are descriptive or correlative

00:11:53.970 --> 00:11:55.540
or experimental.

00:11:55.540 --> 00:11:57.450
I'll talk about those
in a moment.

00:11:57.450 --> 00:12:00.140
We are always trying to disprove
the null hypothesis

00:12:00.140 --> 00:12:01.470
statistically as you know.

00:12:01.470 --> 00:12:02.900
We can't prove that
something is true.

00:12:02.900 --> 00:12:05.470
But we can prove that
it's not true.

00:12:05.470 --> 00:12:10.080
And then finally, like all
fields of science, today's

00:12:10.080 --> 00:12:12.470
most exciting breakthroughs
are tomorrow's things that

00:12:12.470 --> 00:12:15.450
have to be apologized for
and rediscovered, right?

00:12:15.450 --> 00:12:18.300
I mean what makes something
breaking science is not that

00:12:18.300 --> 00:12:19.100
it's known with certainty.

00:12:19.100 --> 00:12:20.430
What's known with certainty
is what's in your

00:12:20.430 --> 00:12:22.440
textbook kind of.

00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:24.160
What makes something breaking
science is it

00:12:24.160 --> 00:12:25.460
moves the field forward.

00:12:25.460 --> 00:12:27.180
So what's the difference between
the cutting edge and

00:12:27.180 --> 00:12:31.220
the bleeding edge is
a very close call.

00:12:31.220 --> 00:12:34.710
So here's a cartoon that says,
he's constantly proving his

00:12:34.710 --> 00:12:36.910
experiments wrong.

00:12:36.910 --> 00:12:38.530
And the guy's kind of
glum looking over.

00:12:38.530 --> 00:12:41.370
He's proving the null hypothesis
to be correct.

00:12:41.370 --> 00:12:44.630
Now, that's sort of funny
for scientists.

00:12:44.630 --> 00:12:47.590
But it's sort of funny in the
sense that, no, we don't

00:12:47.590 --> 00:12:51.140
really go around going, I hope
with all of my heart for this

00:12:51.140 --> 00:12:53.260
research project I worked on for
the last five years that

00:12:53.260 --> 00:12:55.360
it will prove the
null hypothesis.

00:12:55.360 --> 00:12:57.910
There's no difference between
things I'm studying.

00:12:57.910 --> 00:13:01.220
In fact, scientists, like all
humans, have agendas and hopes

00:13:01.220 --> 00:13:03.000
like everybody else.

00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.130
So they observe, hypothesize,
experiment.

00:13:05.130 --> 00:13:09.000
So the data, it doesn't always
go perfectly, right?

00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.230
And the last thing I want to say
is I'm going to emphasize

00:13:11.230 --> 00:13:15.620
today a scientific approach to
the human mind and behavior.

00:13:15.620 --> 00:13:18.870
But of course, there's many
other paths of knowledge for

00:13:18.870 --> 00:13:21.260
important things in our life:
religion, philosophy,

00:13:21.260 --> 00:13:22.280
arts, and so on.

00:13:22.280 --> 00:13:24.210
There's many things that
science cannot address.

00:13:24.210 --> 00:13:26.250
And I don't want to pretend
that it does.

00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:27.710
That's not a problem
too much when

00:13:27.710 --> 00:13:28.740
you think about chemistry.

00:13:28.740 --> 00:13:30.340
It's kind of an interesting
problem when you think about

00:13:30.340 --> 00:13:31.140
psychology.

00:13:31.140 --> 00:13:34.010
Because when we think about
happiness or values or things

00:13:34.010 --> 00:13:37.800
like that, those topics cut
across psychology and things

00:13:37.800 --> 00:13:41.400
like religion, philosophy,
and topics like that.

00:13:41.400 --> 00:13:44.250
So what makes something an
experiment is you have to have

00:13:44.250 --> 00:13:46.910
sort of two things conceptually
especially, the

00:13:46.910 --> 00:13:50.140
dependent variable, what you
measure, the outcome, and the

00:13:50.140 --> 00:13:52.440
independent variable,
what you vary.

00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:54.630
Once you have those things in an
experiment, you're kind of

00:13:54.630 --> 00:13:57.370
an experiment in
a broad sense.

00:13:57.370 --> 00:13:59.470
So in psychology, it
took a long time.

00:13:59.470 --> 00:14:01.430
It wasn't until the 1800's that
people had kind of an

00:14:01.430 --> 00:14:05.070
approach to doing experiments
in psychology and figuring

00:14:05.070 --> 00:14:08.860
out, for example, how to use the
simple measurement of time

00:14:08.860 --> 00:14:12.890
to measure how long a mental
operation lasts in your mind.

00:14:12.890 --> 00:14:14.060
So that's pretty cool.

00:14:14.060 --> 00:14:16.000
If you were to come to a fifth
grader and say, how would you

00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:21.800
measure, not a brick or a stone,
but how long a thought

00:14:21.800 --> 00:14:24.840
takes, you would say, well,
that would be pretty hard.

00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:28.430
But it turns out it's not
as hard in a simple way.

00:14:28.430 --> 00:14:31.750
So Wilhelm Wundt, big figure in
psychology, first textbook

00:14:31.750 --> 00:14:34.440
in psychology, first laboratory
in psychology, did

00:14:34.440 --> 00:14:37.520
the following test of mental
chronometry, simply measuring

00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:39.220
how long it takes you
to do things.

00:14:39.220 --> 00:14:41.120
So he would show you a light.

00:14:41.120 --> 00:14:42.410
And you'd simply press
the button.

00:14:42.410 --> 00:14:45.760
And that would take about
1/5 of a second.

00:14:45.760 --> 00:14:48.090
And then he would say,
instead, you do this.

00:14:48.090 --> 00:14:50.730
If the light turns on and it's
red, you push one button.

00:14:50.730 --> 00:14:52.480
And if it's green,
you push another.

00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:55.490
So his idea was the motor system
to push the button is

00:14:55.490 --> 00:14:56.560
about the same.

00:14:56.560 --> 00:14:59.870
The time to observe the light
is about the same.

00:14:59.870 --> 00:15:02.770
But the difference between these
two is how long it takes

00:15:02.770 --> 00:15:06.920
to make a choice, how long it
takes to make a choice.

00:15:06.920 --> 00:15:09.420
And that difference, when he
subtracts them, took about

00:15:09.420 --> 00:15:11.940
1/10 of a the second by
that measurement.

00:15:11.940 --> 00:15:13.800
So all of sudden you could
start to measure, in an

00:15:13.800 --> 00:15:17.330
objective sense, how long
a mental operation

00:15:17.330 --> 00:15:20.260
takes in your mind.

00:15:20.260 --> 00:15:21.880
Then psychology went a lot
of different directions.

00:15:21.880 --> 00:15:24.190
A famous one from Titchener,
who worked with Wundt,

00:15:24.190 --> 00:15:26.670
developed a psychology
department at Cornell, was

00:15:26.670 --> 00:15:28.060
introspection, look
inside yourself

00:15:28.060 --> 00:15:29.530
and think very carefully.

00:15:29.530 --> 00:15:33.360
When you think about a topic,
how do I think about it?

00:15:33.360 --> 00:15:36.340
That lost its way as a
scientific method.

00:15:36.340 --> 00:15:38.980
The trouble is one person
thinks one way.

00:15:38.980 --> 00:15:40.420
And one person thinks
another way.

00:15:40.420 --> 00:15:42.470
And you can't really
settle it, right?

00:15:42.470 --> 00:15:45.610
So introspection about your
thoughts is a private process.

00:15:45.610 --> 00:15:47.800
It's not a public measure that
you can exchange among

00:15:47.800 --> 00:15:50.570
scientists, like time
or measurements.

00:15:50.570 --> 00:15:52.530
But we still introspect a
lot when we think about

00:15:52.530 --> 00:15:54.230
psychology, whether it feels
right to us, what are the

00:15:54.230 --> 00:15:55.120
questions to ask.

00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:57.540
But still just being human, you
can't help but introspect

00:15:57.540 --> 00:15:59.680
about psychology topics.

00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:04.210
In the US, there was a sort
of a huge response to

00:16:04.210 --> 00:16:07.230
introspection as being
too loosey goosey.

00:16:07.230 --> 00:16:09.070
One famous name in this
is John Watson.

00:16:09.070 --> 00:16:11.640
He said the mind is
unobservable.

00:16:11.640 --> 00:16:15.020
So we can only study behavior,
things that people do,

00:16:15.020 --> 00:16:15.800
actions they take.

00:16:15.800 --> 00:16:16.620
Their mouth moves.

00:16:16.620 --> 00:16:18.290
Their hand presses.

00:16:18.290 --> 00:16:20.800
And then we identify what in
the environment influences

00:16:20.800 --> 00:16:22.190
those behaviors.

00:16:22.190 --> 00:16:24.540
The principles of the mind
should be similar between

00:16:24.540 --> 00:16:25.900
animals and humans.

00:16:25.900 --> 00:16:28.390
And that the only thing a
responsible experimental

00:16:28.390 --> 00:16:29.870
scientist can do is relate

00:16:29.870 --> 00:16:33.370
environmental factors to actions.

00:16:33.370 --> 00:16:34.640
And so there's a stimulus.

00:16:34.640 --> 00:16:36.410
And you can control the stimulus
as a scientist.

00:16:36.410 --> 00:16:37.100
There's a response.

00:16:37.100 --> 00:16:38.280
You measure the response.

00:16:38.280 --> 00:16:41.270
And that's your psychology
experiment.

00:16:41.270 --> 00:16:44.820
And then the 1980's became
the cognitive revolution.

00:16:44.820 --> 00:16:47.910
Partly this path lead to not,
after a while, to not very

00:16:47.910 --> 00:16:48.970
interesting science.

00:16:48.970 --> 00:16:50.490
That was the biggest problem.

00:16:50.490 --> 00:16:53.670
And people said, no, we can make
inferences about the mind

00:16:53.670 --> 00:16:56.750
as it translates what it hears
or sees into what a person

00:16:56.750 --> 00:17:01.280
does so representations or
knowledge in the mind or in

00:17:01.280 --> 00:17:03.900
the brain later on and how that
translates what's out

00:17:03.900 --> 00:17:06.420
there and how you act upon it.

00:17:06.420 --> 00:17:09.440
So I'll remind you of a
couple more things.

00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:10.930
And then we'll get
to specifics.

00:17:10.930 --> 00:17:14.410
So correlations you can only get
in an experiment, right,

00:17:14.410 --> 00:17:16.490
where you have an independent
variable.

00:17:16.490 --> 00:17:17.030
Sorry.

00:17:17.030 --> 00:17:18.819
Correlations you can look
at all the time.

00:17:18.819 --> 00:17:22.700
Experiments only allows
us to infer causation.

00:17:22.700 --> 00:17:25.900
So let's pick an example when
I read that struck me as

00:17:25.900 --> 00:17:29.240
slightly relevant so age
of parent and risk for

00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:30.960
disease in a child.

00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:33.350
So most of you are young enough
that you're not too

00:17:33.350 --> 00:17:34.130
worried about this yet.

00:17:34.130 --> 00:17:35.430
And you have no reason to be.

00:17:35.430 --> 00:17:37.490
But for those of us who are
in my generation and some

00:17:37.490 --> 00:17:41.810
generations back, many people
are postponing childbirth as

00:17:41.810 --> 00:17:44.240
they do their careers and
complete different tasks.

00:17:44.240 --> 00:17:46.170
And parents are getting older.

00:17:46.170 --> 00:17:47.790
They don't only seem old.

00:17:47.790 --> 00:17:51.060
They are old.

00:17:51.060 --> 00:17:55.590
It's the case statistically
that, the older the mother is,

00:17:55.590 --> 00:17:57.190
the higher the risk of
Down's Syndrome.

00:17:57.190 --> 00:17:59.720
So the statistics are, if a
mother is age 20 to 24, it's

00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.410
very rare to have
Down's Syndrome.

00:18:02.410 --> 00:18:05.370
And the number goes up
dramatically if the mother is

00:18:05.370 --> 00:18:06.960
over age 42.

00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:09.970
So this is simple observation
and measurement.

00:18:09.970 --> 00:18:11.880
But it's something a lot of
women giving birth in their

00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:15.070
30s and 40s are thinking about
and worrying about.

00:18:15.070 --> 00:18:17.750
And it's a thing
on their mind.

00:18:17.750 --> 00:18:21.780
Up until relatively recently men
said, oh, it's too bad for

00:18:21.780 --> 00:18:22.270
those women.

00:18:22.270 --> 00:18:24.470
But no problem for us.

00:18:24.470 --> 00:18:27.890
So you have the movie star,
right, who's 90 years old and

00:18:27.890 --> 00:18:30.630
marries a 20-year-old actress,
right, that kind of model that

00:18:30.630 --> 00:18:32.930
you see all the time.

00:18:32.930 --> 00:18:34.410
Because it doesn't matter
how old the guy is.

00:18:34.410 --> 00:18:37.320
Well, it turns out
it does matter.

00:18:37.320 --> 00:18:39.060
And here's some data for that.

00:18:39.060 --> 00:18:43.230
So here's the probability of
developing schizophrenia, a

00:18:43.230 --> 00:18:46.450
disease that's typically
diagnosed in a person's late

00:18:46.450 --> 00:18:51.040
adolescence or 20s depending
on the age of the father.

00:18:51.040 --> 00:18:53.200
And you can see if the father
is less than 25,

00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:55.790
it's one out of 141.

00:18:55.790 --> 00:18:59.240
If the father is in his 50s,
it becomes one out of 50, a

00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:02.420
dramatic growth in the
likelihood of an offspring

00:19:02.420 --> 00:19:05.130
child having schizophrenia
depending on

00:19:05.130 --> 00:19:06.380
the age of the father.

00:19:08.580 --> 00:19:12.480
Now, there's a correlation
between age and whether a

00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:14.760
child expresses schizophrenia.

00:19:14.760 --> 00:19:19.570
So let's guess about the
possible causes of that.

00:19:19.570 --> 00:19:20.910
I can tell you, it's unknown.

00:19:20.910 --> 00:19:24.870
But let's even begin
to guess about it.

00:19:24.870 --> 00:19:26.120
Let me ask you to
guess about it.

00:19:32.810 --> 00:19:33.630
Yeah?

00:19:33.630 --> 00:19:38.040
AUDIENCE: Maybe the gametes
become damaged by age.

00:19:38.040 --> 00:19:41.990
PROFESSOR: Yeah, bad sperm,
right, for some reason, in

00:19:41.990 --> 00:19:45.440
some way, and sperm that leads
more likely to be risk for

00:19:45.440 --> 00:19:47.530
schizophrenia.

00:19:47.530 --> 00:19:48.700
That's your first intuition.

00:19:48.700 --> 00:19:51.660
And that may turn out to be
right, something problematic

00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:52.910
about the sperm from the male.

00:19:55.630 --> 00:19:56.840
Here's another one, though.

00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:03.860
And this shows you the
challenges with correlational

00:20:03.860 --> 00:20:05.920
research on something even so
important as this, which is

00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:08.050
how about an alternative,
which is who

00:20:08.050 --> 00:20:09.860
marries later in life?

00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:15.360
Maybe the desirable men are
plucked off the market on

00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:18.550
average in large statistics
by age 30 or something.

00:20:18.550 --> 00:20:20.800
And a bunch of us-- and
I'm a late marrier--

00:20:20.800 --> 00:20:24.300
limp to find some woman around
the world who will accept us.

00:20:24.300 --> 00:20:28.300
And finally, out of pity, some
woman says, OK, drag yourself

00:20:28.300 --> 00:20:30.510
into your 50s and
I'll take you.

00:20:33.400 --> 00:20:35.510
Because it's not random
probably.

00:20:35.510 --> 00:20:37.010
We're averaging over
many people.

00:20:37.010 --> 00:20:40.260
But it's not random probably who
marries at 25 in a given

00:20:40.260 --> 00:20:41.720
society and who marries at 50.

00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:43.240
It's not random.

00:20:43.240 --> 00:20:45.510
It could be big differences
among the--

00:20:45.510 --> 00:20:46.840
and how can we tell
that difference?

00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:48.340
Maybe it's nothing to
do with the sperm.

00:20:48.340 --> 00:20:52.860
Maybe it's something about the
genes and environment that

00:20:52.860 --> 00:20:56.330
goes with being a parent in your
50s versus being a parent

00:20:56.330 --> 00:20:57.430
in your 20s.

00:20:57.430 --> 00:21:00.030
Completely different
explanations, someday maybe

00:21:00.030 --> 00:21:00.850
we'll know.

00:21:00.850 --> 00:21:02.410
But we don't know now.

00:21:02.410 --> 00:21:03.810
So this is the limits
of correlations.

00:21:03.810 --> 00:21:05.460
And both could be
true, neither.

00:21:05.460 --> 00:21:08.360
It could be a third
story altogether.

00:21:08.360 --> 00:21:12.850
So that was about me, my
becoming a parent late in life

00:21:12.850 --> 00:21:13.810
and marrying late in life.

00:21:13.810 --> 00:21:15.390
Let's talk about you.

00:21:15.390 --> 00:21:18.200
So let's talk about the level
of stress you have and how

00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:22.210
empathetic you are on average,
your college generation

00:21:22.210 --> 00:21:25.370
relative to ones five or
10 or 20 years ago.

00:21:25.370 --> 00:21:26.380
So let's ask that question.

00:21:26.380 --> 00:21:28.190
Why would people want to
know such a thing?

00:21:31.910 --> 00:21:34.930
Well, you might want to
understand what pressures are

00:21:34.930 --> 00:21:38.260
we putting young people under
as they go through grade

00:21:38.260 --> 00:21:40.760
school and high school
and college.

00:21:40.760 --> 00:21:41.610
What's the world like?

00:21:41.610 --> 00:21:42.680
Is it pretty much the same?

00:21:42.680 --> 00:21:45.900
Is it pretty much changing?

00:21:45.900 --> 00:21:47.210
Now, how would we figure that?

00:21:47.210 --> 00:21:48.660
How would we begin
to measure that?

00:21:51.820 --> 00:21:53.440
It's a very simple question.

00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:57.930
Are you more stressed than
people 10 years ago at MIT on

00:21:57.930 --> 00:22:00.310
average across the country?

00:22:00.310 --> 00:22:02.230
And are you more or
less empathetic

00:22:02.230 --> 00:22:03.480
towards other people?

00:22:06.350 --> 00:22:09.550
How might one answer that
kind of a question?

00:22:09.550 --> 00:22:10.507
Yeah?

00:22:10.507 --> 00:22:11.501
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

00:22:11.501 --> 00:22:13.986
we know a little bit about
hormones to the extent

00:22:13.986 --> 00:22:16.980
[INAUDIBLE].

00:22:16.980 --> 00:22:19.110
PROFESSOR: That would be a
very interesting path.

00:22:19.110 --> 00:22:20.350
It's a tough research path.

00:22:20.350 --> 00:22:21.010
But you're right.

00:22:21.010 --> 00:22:23.400
If we had some biological
signature of stress, that

00:22:23.400 --> 00:22:23.930
would be a good one.

00:22:23.930 --> 00:22:25.550
But let's ask this question.

00:22:25.550 --> 00:22:27.570
Let's say I measured everybody
in here and got your average

00:22:27.570 --> 00:22:29.850
stress hormone or something
like that.

00:22:29.850 --> 00:22:34.570
Now what's my answer about
whether 10 years ago people

00:22:34.570 --> 00:22:36.500
were more or less stressed?

00:22:36.500 --> 00:22:37.280
Yeah?

00:22:37.280 --> 00:22:40.370
AUDIENCE: We could look
at suicide rates.

00:22:40.370 --> 00:22:42.050
PROFESSOR: That would
be an outcome of it.

00:22:42.050 --> 00:22:43.550
Yeah, that would be sadly
an extreme outcome

00:22:43.550 --> 00:22:44.950
of stress of a kind.

00:22:44.950 --> 00:22:47.050
But there's a lot of things
that are going--

00:22:47.050 --> 00:22:50.090
So you have to worry
about two things.

00:22:50.090 --> 00:22:52.340
One thing we know is-- let
me ask another one.

00:22:52.340 --> 00:22:56.850
You could compare your level of
stress to people who are 10

00:22:56.850 --> 00:22:59.110
years older than you or 20
years older than you.

00:22:59.110 --> 00:23:00.360
What do you think about that?

00:23:03.540 --> 00:23:05.380
Yeah?

00:23:05.380 --> 00:23:06.196
Yeah?

00:23:06.196 --> 00:23:09.668
AUDIENCE: It would actually be
more accurate if you measured,

00:23:09.668 --> 00:23:12.148
if you want to know for college
students specifically,

00:23:12.148 --> 00:23:15.620
you'd have to be the baseline
of yourself from somewhere

00:23:15.620 --> 00:23:17.620
[INAUDIBLE].

00:23:17.620 --> 00:23:21.260
PROFESSOR: Yeah, because maybe
people who are 30 or 40 are

00:23:21.260 --> 00:23:23.690
more stressed for other reasons
because they have more

00:23:23.690 --> 00:23:26.120
bills and mortgages to pay or
less stressed for other

00:23:26.120 --> 00:23:27.410
reasons or whatever, right?

00:23:27.410 --> 00:23:30.300
Maybe it's not about the
generation you're in.

00:23:30.300 --> 00:23:32.530
Maybe it's about being
a person with more

00:23:32.530 --> 00:23:34.980
responsibilities at 40, right?

00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:37.430
So for some things you
get some luck.

00:23:37.430 --> 00:23:39.470
And you have it in your hands.

00:23:39.470 --> 00:23:43.100
So here's an emotional health
questionnaire where students

00:23:43.100 --> 00:23:47.420
across the country for the last
25 years have been given

00:23:47.420 --> 00:23:49.110
the identical questionnaire.

00:23:49.110 --> 00:23:51.730
It's a questionnaire, it's not a
biology measure, about their

00:23:51.730 --> 00:23:54.640
self-reported measure
of stress.

00:23:54.640 --> 00:23:57.780
And this was on the New York
Times just a few weeks ago.

00:23:57.780 --> 00:24:01.230
It's you guys on average across
the country, US college

00:24:01.230 --> 00:24:04.610
students, are at an all
time high level of

00:24:04.610 --> 00:24:07.970
self-reported stress.

00:24:07.970 --> 00:24:09.220
Sorry about that.

00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:14.930
It's not the perfect measurement
in every way.

00:24:14.930 --> 00:24:16.610
But it's the same questionnaire
to college

00:24:16.610 --> 00:24:18.080
students year in and year out.

00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:21.130
By self-report, people say,
I feel more stressed.

00:24:21.130 --> 00:24:23.300
You can also see that
there's a difference

00:24:23.300 --> 00:24:24.650
between men and women.

00:24:24.650 --> 00:24:30.270
Women, on average, report
feeling more stressed.

00:24:30.270 --> 00:24:32.860
And it may be relevant that on
average, for example, there's

00:24:32.860 --> 00:24:37.220
a higher rate of depression
among women than men.

00:24:37.220 --> 00:24:39.850
There's a much higher rate of
autism among men than women.

00:24:39.850 --> 00:24:45.310
So being one sex or the other
is not a gift certificate of

00:24:45.310 --> 00:24:48.880
avoiding mental health
challenges.

00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:50.740
So you're more stressed
than ever.

00:24:50.740 --> 00:24:51.850
Good luck.

00:24:51.850 --> 00:24:53.690
We'll try to do the best we
can in this course to not

00:24:53.690 --> 00:24:54.980
worry that way worse.

00:24:54.980 --> 00:24:56.795
But it's something
to think about.

00:24:56.795 --> 00:24:59.340
I got a call the other day from
somebody who said there's

00:24:59.340 --> 00:25:03.040
a lot of curiosity about whether
the shift from book

00:25:03.040 --> 00:25:07.460
learning and book reading to
internet worlds and Twitter

00:25:07.460 --> 00:25:10.570
and Facebook worlds are
fundamentally changing how

00:25:10.570 --> 00:25:12.580
people think.

00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:14.880
And that sounds kind
of possible.

00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:16.970
And there are people who give
amazingly entertaining

00:25:16.970 --> 00:25:19.550
lectures about these things.

00:25:19.550 --> 00:25:22.210
Scientifically, it's
unbelievably hard to imagine

00:25:22.210 --> 00:25:24.010
how we would ever answer that.

00:25:24.010 --> 00:25:26.260
So when I get occasional phone
calls like what do

00:25:26.260 --> 00:25:28.040
neuroscientists know about
that, what could

00:25:28.040 --> 00:25:29.140
they know about it?

00:25:29.140 --> 00:25:32.260
Is that even an answerable
question?

00:25:32.260 --> 00:25:34.540
If I take you now and say, well,
you've probably done

00:25:34.540 --> 00:25:37.670
more Facebook than a 50-year-old
and compare you to

00:25:37.670 --> 00:25:40.860
a 50-year-old on some other
thing, is that going to answer

00:25:40.860 --> 00:25:44.340
the question of how you think
about ideas given the world

00:25:44.340 --> 00:25:47.310
you live in versus the world
the 50-year-old lived in?

00:25:47.310 --> 00:25:48.760
No.

00:25:48.760 --> 00:25:51.650
So there's just a lot of huge
deep things about changes in

00:25:51.650 --> 00:25:53.650
the world that we can't
even begin to get at.

00:25:53.650 --> 00:25:54.490
Sometimes we get lucky.

00:25:54.490 --> 00:25:55.890
And people have been giving
some particular

00:25:55.890 --> 00:25:57.910
measure for some time.

00:25:57.910 --> 00:26:01.120
Empathy, by self-report--

00:26:01.120 --> 00:26:03.250
and now I wouldn't
fill it out now.

00:26:03.250 --> 00:26:04.390
But you can take a look
just to get a

00:26:04.390 --> 00:26:06.010
feeling at your leisure.

00:26:06.010 --> 00:26:08.150
This is the questionnaire
they used for

00:26:08.150 --> 00:26:09.410
self-reported empathy.

00:26:09.410 --> 00:26:15.080
It's self-report, 40% lower
today than 20 years ago.

00:26:15.080 --> 00:26:18.500
So on average you guys,
literally, on average by these

00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:20.360
measures, are more
stressed and less

00:26:20.360 --> 00:26:22.600
empathetic towards others.

00:26:22.600 --> 00:26:23.850
Sorry.

00:26:25.570 --> 00:26:26.680
This is not an individual.

00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:27.720
This is an average, right?

00:26:27.720 --> 00:26:31.930
So the levels that society
operates, things are going on

00:26:31.930 --> 00:26:34.310
and moving for some reason.

00:26:34.310 --> 00:26:36.920
By the way, I can tell you that,
when I'm stressed, I

00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:39.150
have less room to
be empathetic.

00:26:39.150 --> 00:26:40.440
So maybe these things
are related.

00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:42.740
If you're feeling stressed, your
first thought is not how

00:26:42.740 --> 00:26:45.720
can I help others but how can
I just get through the day?

00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:49.040
So these things might
be related.

00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:53.950
So let's turn a little bit to
experimentation and some of

00:26:53.950 --> 00:26:57.590
the challenges of relating
psychology to real world

00:26:57.590 --> 00:27:00.070
policies that are meant to make
the world better or safer

00:27:00.070 --> 00:27:01.280
in some way.

00:27:01.280 --> 00:27:03.410
So there's a famous broken
window theory from the

00:27:03.410 --> 00:27:05.590
political scientist James Wilson
and the criminologist

00:27:05.590 --> 00:27:06.150
George Kelling.

00:27:06.150 --> 00:27:09.460
And their idea was this that,
especially in neighborhoods

00:27:09.460 --> 00:27:13.370
that are not immaculately kept
or to say it the other way

00:27:13.370 --> 00:27:16.040
where there's a lot of damage
around you, things like broken

00:27:16.040 --> 00:27:19.130
windows is the phrase they used,
that this promotes in

00:27:19.130 --> 00:27:21.180
people who live in that
community or work around that

00:27:21.180 --> 00:27:23.970
community to sense that
the rules don't count.

00:27:23.970 --> 00:27:25.580
Anybody can do anything.

00:27:25.580 --> 00:27:29.180
And then it fosters the growth
of petty crimes.

00:27:29.180 --> 00:27:31.510
And once you do a petty crime,
you're more vulnerable or

00:27:31.510 --> 00:27:35.650
willing to do a major crime,
a slippery slope.

00:27:35.650 --> 00:27:42.010
And in fact, Rudy Giuliani and
Commissioner Bill Bratton

00:27:42.010 --> 00:27:42.600
employed this.

00:27:42.600 --> 00:27:46.380
They asked the police to write
lots of tickets and make lots

00:27:46.380 --> 00:27:49.180
of sort of minor arrests for
things where people weren't

00:27:49.180 --> 00:27:52.090
upkeeping the environment to
where they were littering or

00:27:52.090 --> 00:27:53.310
things like that.

00:27:53.310 --> 00:27:54.260
And this is a huge debate.

00:27:54.260 --> 00:27:57.320
Because in a police department
you can only do so much.

00:27:57.320 --> 00:28:00.110
So if they have a person working
on jaywalking and

00:28:00.110 --> 00:28:03.790
littering, that's a person not
working on major crime rings

00:28:03.790 --> 00:28:06.790
so to try to make a choice where
they think they can make

00:28:06.790 --> 00:28:09.650
community safer in the
most effective way.

00:28:09.650 --> 00:28:11.860
And the crimes went way
down in New York.

00:28:11.860 --> 00:28:16.430
In most cities now, you don't
hear crime discussed as a big

00:28:16.430 --> 00:28:17.800
topic nationally.

00:28:17.800 --> 00:28:19.960
In some local areas, like
in Boston, some

00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:22.010
specific areas, you do.

00:28:22.010 --> 00:28:24.810
I don't think in the State of
the Union there was a word

00:28:24.810 --> 00:28:27.050
about crime that I can
remember a week ago.

00:28:27.050 --> 00:28:28.870
It's not a big national topic.

00:28:28.870 --> 00:28:32.260
In some local places, it is a
big topic, but not nationally.

00:28:32.260 --> 00:28:35.390
So you don't know some years ago
when people said New York

00:28:35.390 --> 00:28:37.990
City was this horrible place
to go because there was so

00:28:37.990 --> 00:28:40.310
much crime that you'd walk out
from your airplane and get

00:28:40.310 --> 00:28:43.660
mugged before you made
it to your taxi.

00:28:43.660 --> 00:28:45.590
It was like the whole country
was saying big cities were

00:28:45.590 --> 00:28:49.300
just crime-ridden
and dangerous.

00:28:49.300 --> 00:28:50.430
They do this policy.

00:28:50.430 --> 00:28:51.830
Things get better.

00:28:51.830 --> 00:28:53.240
So everybody says, hmm, that
sounds pretty good.

00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:54.540
But of course, it's
not an experiment.

00:28:54.540 --> 00:28:56.110
It's a real life policy.

00:28:56.110 --> 00:28:59.560
And then people had these kind
of incredibly clever

00:28:59.560 --> 00:29:03.410
reinterpretations of why
crime went down.

00:29:03.410 --> 00:29:07.400
So the wildest one was in
Freakononimics was discussed

00:29:07.400 --> 00:29:09.890
in that, which said,
well, abortion was

00:29:09.890 --> 00:29:11.810
legalized in 1973.

00:29:11.810 --> 00:29:15.780
That gave women who didn't have
access to legal abortions

00:29:15.780 --> 00:29:20.310
the ability to have them, that
the children, on average, in

00:29:20.310 --> 00:29:22.730
these communities that had at
least access to safe and legal

00:29:22.730 --> 00:29:25.850
abortions would be poor,
unstable, addiction-ridden

00:29:25.850 --> 00:29:28.610
communities statistically.

00:29:28.610 --> 00:29:32.460
And so that if you imagined the
reduced abortion rate in

00:29:32.460 --> 00:29:36.380
poor areas could, when you
count out the number of

00:29:36.380 --> 00:29:39.630
possible criminals in those
areas, account for the

00:29:39.630 --> 00:29:42.840
reduction in crime all by
itself, a completely different

00:29:42.840 --> 00:29:46.050
interpretation that has nothing
to do with the policy.

00:29:46.050 --> 00:29:50.210
It just said we can have a
demographic shift, which will

00:29:50.210 --> 00:29:53.710
have a weird unexpected
consequence of lowering the

00:29:53.710 --> 00:29:58.060
crime rate because it's the
finding that young men, in

00:29:58.060 --> 00:30:00.760
particular, are most likely to
engage in violent criminal

00:30:00.760 --> 00:30:01.015
activities.

00:30:01.015 --> 00:30:04.900
It's not an all rule but
a statistical average.

00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:08.890
Or there was a big crack
epidemic that reduced.

00:30:08.890 --> 00:30:12.530
Or lots of states put in laws
that put people into jail for

00:30:12.530 --> 00:30:15.730
much higher, longer periods,
much more severe penalties

00:30:15.730 --> 00:30:17.290
with new drug laws.

00:30:17.290 --> 00:30:20.810
So it's very hard to know if the
policy that was initiated

00:30:20.810 --> 00:30:23.370
really worked or whether
completely other things were

00:30:23.370 --> 00:30:25.750
happening that moved
the crime rate.

00:30:25.750 --> 00:30:29.410
And here's some very sort
of perverse or other

00:30:29.410 --> 00:30:30.850
explanations.

00:30:30.850 --> 00:30:33.550
So that left the question,
is broken

00:30:33.550 --> 00:30:34.840
windows even a good idea?

00:30:34.840 --> 00:30:36.480
Just because Harvard--

00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:37.910
and we know Harvard
is always right--

00:30:37.910 --> 00:30:39.720
but just because a Harvard
psychologist says pretty

00:30:39.720 --> 00:30:42.160
interestingly, that sounds right
to me, is that even a

00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:43.670
right idea?

00:30:43.670 --> 00:30:45.200
So let's take a step back.

00:30:45.200 --> 00:30:46.840
Can we test that
experimentally?

00:30:46.840 --> 00:30:49.800
So here's the experiment.

00:30:49.800 --> 00:30:51.320
And the idea is, again, that,
when people observe that

00:30:51.320 --> 00:30:54.290
others violate a social norm or
legitimate rule, are they

00:30:54.290 --> 00:30:55.240
more likely to violate it?

00:30:55.240 --> 00:30:57.780
If you see people around you
breaking rules, are you more

00:30:57.780 --> 00:30:59.640
likely to do it?

00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:00.910
And you could say, it
seems like it is.

00:31:00.910 --> 00:31:02.720
But let's do the science.

00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:04.310
So here's an independent
measure.

00:31:04.310 --> 00:31:05.670
I'll show you the environment.

00:31:05.670 --> 00:31:07.400
The dependent measure is
the number of people

00:31:07.400 --> 00:31:08.220
who perform a violation.

00:31:08.220 --> 00:31:10.460
Now, you can't go getting people
murdering each other

00:31:10.460 --> 00:31:11.195
and stuff for an experiment.

00:31:11.195 --> 00:31:13.530
But you can do this.

00:31:13.530 --> 00:31:14.510
You can have two conditions.

00:31:14.510 --> 00:31:17.330
So on the top condition, do you
ever go back to your car

00:31:17.330 --> 00:31:19.470
or bike, usually it's cars, I
think, and they put leaflets

00:31:19.470 --> 00:31:20.190
in your car?

00:31:20.190 --> 00:31:21.010
And now what are you
going to do?

00:31:21.010 --> 00:31:21.720
You're running away.

00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:24.600
They'll leave the leaflet on
your windshield wiper.

00:31:24.600 --> 00:31:25.730
So they put it out.

00:31:25.730 --> 00:31:28.130
And they either had a wall like
this, which was clean.

00:31:28.130 --> 00:31:30.230
There's a sign that
says no graffiti.

00:31:30.230 --> 00:31:31.710
And they put on those
white pieces of

00:31:31.710 --> 00:31:33.100
paper onto the bikes.

00:31:33.100 --> 00:31:36.540
Or they put a lot of graffiti
on the wall.

00:31:36.540 --> 00:31:39.540
And people came out from
their classes.

00:31:39.540 --> 00:31:40.390
They parked their bike.

00:31:40.390 --> 00:31:41.060
They ran into class.

00:31:41.060 --> 00:31:41.820
They came out.

00:31:41.820 --> 00:31:43.260
And they got all these
white leaflets.

00:31:43.260 --> 00:31:44.970
And what they did is watched.

00:31:44.970 --> 00:31:47.890
And they said, how many people
put the leaflet away?

00:31:47.890 --> 00:31:49.680
And how many people crumpled
it up and threw it right on

00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:51.280
the ground?

00:31:51.280 --> 00:31:53.090
So we don't know what they're
going to do with the leaflet

00:31:53.090 --> 00:31:53.720
after they put it away.

00:31:53.720 --> 00:31:55.130
But we could hope they're
going to throw it out.

00:31:55.130 --> 00:31:57.060
But the one thing we know for
sure, if you crumple it up and

00:31:57.060 --> 00:31:58.840
throw it on the ground, it's
littering and not a good

00:31:58.840 --> 00:31:59.760
social norm.

00:31:59.760 --> 00:32:04.390
And sure enough, 1/3 of the
people littered if the wall

00:32:04.390 --> 00:32:05.480
had no graffiti.

00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:08.530
But it more than doubled if
the wall had graffiti.

00:32:08.530 --> 00:32:09.550
So that's a small thing.

00:32:09.550 --> 00:32:11.490
That's not a broken down,
complicated neighborhood.

00:32:11.490 --> 00:32:14.210
But just at that moment, as you
roar out of class, you get

00:32:14.210 --> 00:32:15.720
that piece of paper
on your bike.

00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:17.760
And you see like, wow, this
is a pretty crummy place.

00:32:17.760 --> 00:32:20.210
People are breaking the rules
all the time, twice as likely

00:32:20.210 --> 00:32:21.570
to throw a piece of paper
on the ground.

00:32:21.570 --> 00:32:24.440
So that shows that people very
easily are influenced by very

00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:27.320
mild perceptions of whether
people are following rules or

00:32:27.320 --> 00:32:30.500
not and will be their better
selves or their worse selves

00:32:30.500 --> 00:32:33.740
depending on that sense
of are all rules on or

00:32:33.740 --> 00:32:34.790
are all rules off.

00:32:34.790 --> 00:32:35.890
And there's a pretty good
bet they're not

00:32:35.890 --> 00:32:37.080
thinking about it, right?

00:32:37.080 --> 00:32:40.280
They're not sitting there
thinking, OK, here's

00:32:40.280 --> 00:32:43.900
littering, not as bad
as killing somebody.

00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:44.600
Here's the wall.

00:32:44.600 --> 00:32:45.750
Well, there's 30% graffiti.

00:32:45.750 --> 00:32:46.630
I mean nobody does that.

00:32:46.630 --> 00:32:48.250
They have an emotion
quick response.

00:32:48.250 --> 00:32:51.510
But the environment makes a
difference in that regard.

00:32:51.510 --> 00:32:55.390
So an important thing about
studies like this, so let me

00:32:55.390 --> 00:32:56.440
tell you about this one.

00:32:56.440 --> 00:32:58.330
Here's a study to look at a
drug that was supposed to

00:32:58.330 --> 00:33:00.960
lower mortality from coronary
artery disease.

00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:03.040
So those who took the drug, 80%
or more, because people

00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:05.090
follow whether you take the
drug, if you don't take the

00:33:05.090 --> 00:33:08.370
drug, of course, the drug
won't work, had a 15%

00:33:08.370 --> 00:33:11.060
mortality rate within
five years.

00:33:11.060 --> 00:33:14.850
Those who took the drug less
than 80% had a 25% mortality.

00:33:14.850 --> 00:33:18.020
So you'd say, well, 10% better
chance of living for five

00:33:18.020 --> 00:33:20.860
years, that's worth it.

00:33:20.860 --> 00:33:22.470
The nice thing is they
had a placebo.

00:33:22.470 --> 00:33:26.370
And there was no difference
whatsoever between those who

00:33:26.370 --> 00:33:29.720
took the active drug and those
who took the placebo.

00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:32.900
The difference was those who
followed the instructions to

00:33:32.900 --> 00:33:37.170
take the pill and those
who didn't.

00:33:37.170 --> 00:33:38.420
So what does that mean?

00:33:38.420 --> 00:33:40.500
How do you interpret that?

00:33:40.500 --> 00:33:42.010
It's not the drug.

00:33:42.010 --> 00:33:42.410
Yeah?

00:33:42.410 --> 00:33:44.083
AUDIENCE: It could be the stress
of not following the

00:33:44.083 --> 00:33:46.575
directions, meaning
it's not working.

00:33:46.575 --> 00:33:47.770
PROFESSOR: It could be that.

00:33:47.770 --> 00:33:49.520
It could be the stress.

00:33:49.520 --> 00:33:50.770
It could be that.

00:33:50.770 --> 00:33:51.990
But let me make a guess.

00:33:51.990 --> 00:33:53.840
There's no scientific
answer to this.

00:33:53.840 --> 00:33:55.970
People who tend not to follow
instructions, are they mostly

00:33:55.970 --> 00:33:59.310
stressed by not following
instructions?

00:33:59.310 --> 00:34:01.000
The intuition is they're
blowing it off.

00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:02.320
They're like, yeah, that's
the instructions.

00:34:02.320 --> 00:34:04.520
But I got things to do
and places to go.

00:34:04.520 --> 00:34:06.420
But you could be right.

00:34:06.420 --> 00:34:09.310
So anyway, the idea is, what you
pick up is, are people who

00:34:09.310 --> 00:34:11.659
tried to take care
of themselves.

00:34:11.659 --> 00:34:13.520
They have a health condition.

00:34:13.520 --> 00:34:16.310
And the people who are following
the pill instruction

00:34:16.310 --> 00:34:19.969
are probably also doing the
best they can in terms of

00:34:19.969 --> 00:34:23.679
exercise and diet, all the
things they could do to

00:34:23.679 --> 00:34:25.820
maximize their health, right?

00:34:25.820 --> 00:34:26.960
And they're taking
their placebo.

00:34:26.960 --> 00:34:27.719
Or they're taking the drug.

00:34:27.719 --> 00:34:28.989
They don't know.

00:34:28.989 --> 00:34:30.340
But they're doing everything
they can.

00:34:30.340 --> 00:34:33.305
And the people who blowing off
stuff, they're the ones who

00:34:33.305 --> 00:34:34.969
are doing all the things that
aren't healthy, including not

00:34:34.969 --> 00:34:35.960
even taking your pills.

00:34:35.960 --> 00:34:37.909
I mean, if you don't even
take your pills, right--

00:34:37.909 --> 00:34:39.080
Exercise is work.

00:34:39.080 --> 00:34:39.949
Diet is work.

00:34:39.949 --> 00:34:43.380
Popping a pill that's been
handed to you that you're told

00:34:43.380 --> 00:34:46.750
might help you is probably
not that much work.

00:34:46.750 --> 00:34:48.530
It's what's called
self-selection bias, that you

00:34:48.530 --> 00:34:51.530
stand out if you tend to take
care of yourself or not.

00:34:54.570 --> 00:34:57.960
So when we run experiments at
universities that involve

00:34:57.960 --> 00:35:01.540
people, a huge issue for us is
the idea is this, that we

00:35:01.540 --> 00:35:03.050
randomly recruit people.

00:35:03.050 --> 00:35:04.690
And we'll come back to
this in a moment.

00:35:04.690 --> 00:35:07.090
Then we randomly assign them to
one condition or another,

00:35:07.090 --> 00:35:08.430
for example, the placebo

00:35:08.430 --> 00:35:09.660
condition or the drug condition.

00:35:09.660 --> 00:35:13.340
We randomly assign them to the
messy wall or the clean wall.

00:35:13.340 --> 00:35:14.460
We discover something.

00:35:14.460 --> 00:35:17.800
And then we try to generalize it
as far as we can to people

00:35:17.800 --> 00:35:18.240
as a whole.

00:35:18.240 --> 00:35:20.240
We've discovered something
fundamental about how humans

00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:23.820
work, generalizable principles
of human mind or behavior.

00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:25.580
So what really happens
in the world?

00:35:25.580 --> 00:35:28.670
And you're in between sort of
the best possible world and

00:35:28.670 --> 00:35:30.680
the world we actually live in.

00:35:30.680 --> 00:35:34.710
So is it really random who
participates in research

00:35:34.710 --> 00:35:37.650
studies in psychology
departments where a lot of the

00:35:37.650 --> 00:35:38.400
research gets done.

00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:41.040
Is it really random?

00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:42.560
No.

00:35:42.560 --> 00:35:44.100
So who volunteers?

00:35:44.100 --> 00:35:45.835
Have any of you volunteered
to be a subject in

00:35:45.835 --> 00:35:47.030
an experiment anywhere?

00:35:47.030 --> 00:35:49.420
Yeah.

00:35:49.420 --> 00:35:52.020
So it's not random.

00:35:52.020 --> 00:35:54.520
Some people, they either need
to make a few bucks.

00:35:54.520 --> 00:35:56.220
Or they're very curious
about psychology.

00:35:56.220 --> 00:35:58.090
Or they have a friend
who's in psychology.

00:35:58.090 --> 00:35:59.090
It's not random.

00:35:59.090 --> 00:36:02.730
And in fact, population-wide,
people have said that

00:36:02.730 --> 00:36:04.850
psychology could be described
as WEIRD research for the

00:36:04.850 --> 00:36:08.350
following reason, that the vast
majority of the findings

00:36:08.350 --> 00:36:11.520
you'll read about everywhere,
including in your textbook,

00:36:11.520 --> 00:36:15.060
but everywhere are from nations
that are westernized,

00:36:15.060 --> 00:36:20.050
educated, industrialized, and
relatively rich democracies.

00:36:20.050 --> 00:36:22.216
The vast majority are
between 17 and 25.

00:36:22.216 --> 00:36:23.990
They're undergraduates or
graduate students who

00:36:23.990 --> 00:36:27.250
participate in research.

00:36:27.250 --> 00:36:29.250
It's been estimated that, if
you're a US college student,

00:36:29.250 --> 00:36:32.960
you're 4,000 times more likely
to show up in a scientifically

00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:36.540
reported experiment than if
you're a person anywhere else

00:36:36.540 --> 00:36:39.300
on the planet, 4,000 times.

00:36:39.300 --> 00:36:40.600
Because why?

00:36:40.600 --> 00:36:44.160
Because it's changing a little
bit but for many, many years

00:36:44.160 --> 00:36:46.380
the huge amount of research
happened in the US at

00:36:46.380 --> 00:36:49.290
universities, pretty much at
better universities, pretty

00:36:49.290 --> 00:36:52.750
much at highly selected
students.

00:36:52.750 --> 00:36:54.090
And then we never
publish that.

00:36:54.090 --> 00:36:57.210
We never say MIT students
did the following thing.

00:36:57.210 --> 00:36:58.570
Because people will say,
yeah, MIT students.

00:36:58.570 --> 00:37:00.300
Because then we have a different
report from Stanford

00:37:00.300 --> 00:37:02.260
or from UMass or from
Michigan or Texas.

00:37:02.260 --> 00:37:05.020
We say, no, humans did
an experiment.

00:37:05.020 --> 00:37:08.640
And humans are like this.

00:37:08.640 --> 00:37:11.680
And it's just something to think
about as you see studies

00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:12.220
and stuff like that.

00:37:12.220 --> 00:37:14.450
And people are more and more
sensitized to that.

00:37:14.450 --> 00:37:19.900
As more and more of the world
gets somewhat industrializes,

00:37:19.900 --> 00:37:21.380
there's more and more research
around the world.

00:37:21.380 --> 00:37:23.960
But still the vast majority
of findings are you guys.

00:37:26.460 --> 00:37:29.056
Now, that's just to start with
who's in the subject pool or

00:37:29.056 --> 00:37:30.800
the participant pool.

00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:33.370
How normal are you when
you do an experiment?

00:37:33.370 --> 00:37:34.290
Are you like yourself?

00:37:34.290 --> 00:37:35.430
Or are you doing weird stuff?

00:37:35.430 --> 00:37:37.930
And people use this idea that
you're really weird when you

00:37:37.930 --> 00:37:39.520
do an experiment in
another sense.

00:37:39.520 --> 00:37:40.900
Because you don't know
what's going on.

00:37:40.900 --> 00:37:42.530
You're following instructions.

00:37:42.530 --> 00:37:46.210
So they do experiments to show
how ridiculously people behave

00:37:46.210 --> 00:37:47.510
when they're doing an experiment
like they would

00:37:47.510 --> 00:37:47.940
never do it.

00:37:47.940 --> 00:37:49.280
So they ask them to come in.

00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:51.260
And they say, will you fill out
200 sheets of paper filled

00:37:51.260 --> 00:37:53.210
with random digits,
add them pairwise?

00:37:53.210 --> 00:37:55.090
And I'll come back
in a few hours.

00:37:55.090 --> 00:37:58.570
Now, if a friend asked you to do
that, add random digits for

00:37:58.570 --> 00:38:01.530
a couple hours, you would
go no, thank you.

00:38:01.530 --> 00:38:03.260
I've got about eight million
better things to

00:38:03.260 --> 00:38:04.240
do than that, right?

00:38:04.240 --> 00:38:07.500
I could multiply random digits
just to start with.

00:38:07.500 --> 00:38:08.850
But people will do
it for hours.

00:38:08.850 --> 00:38:11.450
Because they're in this weird
like that's the instruction.

00:38:11.450 --> 00:38:12.500
And that's what my mission is.

00:38:12.500 --> 00:38:14.190
Or even more ridiculous,
they pick up a

00:38:14.190 --> 00:38:15.420
card after each page.

00:38:15.420 --> 00:38:18.100
They've added all these numbers
for no good reason.

00:38:18.100 --> 00:38:19.980
And the instruction tells them,
when you've done the

00:38:19.980 --> 00:38:21.930
page, tear the page
up into 32 pieces.

00:38:21.930 --> 00:38:23.580
And here's the next page
and the next page.

00:38:23.580 --> 00:38:27.280
It's obviously fruitless and
pointless, ridiculously so.

00:38:27.280 --> 00:38:29.030
But because you're in an
experiment and somebody told

00:38:29.030 --> 00:38:31.720
you do that, you just keep
barreling forward.

00:38:31.720 --> 00:38:34.020
How much are we who we are when
we do experiments versus

00:38:34.020 --> 00:38:35.090
people following weird
instructions?

00:38:35.090 --> 00:38:37.510
And we'll come back to that
in some serious context.

00:38:37.510 --> 00:38:38.200
That's the subjects.

00:38:38.200 --> 00:38:39.000
How about experimenters?

00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:40.910
Experimenters are
never objective.

00:38:40.910 --> 00:38:43.210
We try to be as scientists
as objective as we can.

00:38:43.210 --> 00:38:45.760
We're never, we believe
certain hypotheses.

00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:47.040
We have certain goals.

00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:49.310
We recognize results that
would be super exciting.

00:38:49.310 --> 00:38:51.900
We recognize results that
would be boring.

00:38:51.900 --> 00:38:53.160
We're humans, too.

00:38:53.160 --> 00:38:54.370
We want to do stuff
that matters.

00:38:54.370 --> 00:38:56.720
We want to do stuff that
people reward us for.

00:38:56.720 --> 00:38:57.660
I mean it's just human.

00:38:57.660 --> 00:39:02.040
So here's a lowest case example
of how, once you're an

00:39:02.040 --> 00:39:04.180
experimenter, you produce
your own results.

00:39:04.180 --> 00:39:06.600
And believe me, it's much more
when your result matters for

00:39:06.600 --> 00:39:09.500
things like your career
advancement or your

00:39:09.500 --> 00:39:10.720
status in the field.

00:39:10.720 --> 00:39:14.740
So students were told that rats
were either maze-bright

00:39:14.740 --> 00:39:15.310
or maze-dull.

00:39:15.310 --> 00:39:18.290
They were told that these rats
were bred to be smart learners

00:39:18.290 --> 00:39:19.540
or not so smart.

00:39:19.540 --> 00:39:21.730
The rats were all just
random rats.

00:39:21.730 --> 00:39:24.220
It's a fake story to
undergraduates.

00:39:24.220 --> 00:39:26.770
Then they had them
test on a maze.

00:39:26.770 --> 00:39:28.810
And they said for your
laboratory exercise write down

00:39:28.810 --> 00:39:31.675
how quickly the rat
runs the maze.

00:39:31.675 --> 00:39:36.600
And amazingly, the smart
rats did way better

00:39:36.600 --> 00:39:39.080
than the dull rats.

00:39:39.080 --> 00:39:41.265
Now, these are not students
trying to become famous or

00:39:41.265 --> 00:39:41.680
have a career.

00:39:41.680 --> 00:39:43.772
They're handing in
an assignment.

00:39:43.772 --> 00:39:46.810
And how did that happen?

00:39:46.810 --> 00:39:47.530
Well, they went back.

00:39:47.530 --> 00:39:48.826
And it wasn't that anyone
faked data or

00:39:48.826 --> 00:39:49.350
anything like that.

00:39:49.350 --> 00:39:52.170
But when they looked at films or
discussed stuff with kids,

00:39:52.170 --> 00:39:55.650
students in the course, every
little thing that the students

00:39:55.650 --> 00:40:00.820
did that moved the data in tiny,
tiny ways always favored

00:40:00.820 --> 00:40:04.420
finding the maze-bright rats
being brilliant maze runners.

00:40:04.420 --> 00:40:07.440
So for example, they would put
the rat-- if you've ever run a

00:40:07.440 --> 00:40:09.290
rat in a maze, has anyone
run a rat in a maze?

00:40:09.290 --> 00:40:09.730
Yeah?

00:40:09.730 --> 00:40:12.120
Is it easy?

00:40:12.120 --> 00:40:14.210
Have you picked them up and
put them in the maze?

00:40:14.210 --> 00:40:15.810
It's more automated now.

00:40:15.810 --> 00:40:16.930
Is it physically easy?

00:40:16.930 --> 00:40:19.800
Are rats like, please, show
me the starting line?

00:40:19.800 --> 00:40:20.500
I'm ready to go.

00:40:20.500 --> 00:40:20.810
No.

00:40:20.810 --> 00:40:21.440
What are they like?

00:40:21.440 --> 00:40:24.990
Help me out here for you guys
who have done this.

00:40:24.990 --> 00:40:25.785
Are they kind of really--

00:40:25.785 --> 00:40:28.140
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

00:40:28.140 --> 00:40:28.930
PROFESSOR: And they
don't like to be

00:40:28.930 --> 00:40:31.385
handled that much really.

00:40:31.385 --> 00:40:32.160
And they're fighting.

00:40:32.160 --> 00:40:33.380
And these are undergraduates
who've hardly

00:40:33.380 --> 00:40:34.550
ever touched a rat.

00:40:34.550 --> 00:40:37.220
They're like, please, don't
attack me or something.

00:40:37.220 --> 00:40:38.340
So they're holding up.

00:40:38.340 --> 00:40:39.460
And the rat's fighting back.

00:40:39.460 --> 00:40:40.730
And because it's really
uncomfortable, the rat's

00:40:40.730 --> 00:40:41.290
really unhappy.

00:40:41.290 --> 00:40:44.130
And the student's
like really--

00:40:44.130 --> 00:40:45.410
So what happens is--

00:40:45.410 --> 00:40:47.030
and then they plunk
the rat down.

00:40:47.030 --> 00:40:48.820
And they go, oh, my gosh, it's
facing the wrong direction.

00:40:48.820 --> 00:40:49.600
And it's a smart one.

00:40:49.600 --> 00:40:51.960
Wait, stop the clock.

00:40:51.960 --> 00:40:52.680
Let's get him--

00:40:52.680 --> 00:40:56.030
But if it's a dull one facing
the wrong direction, it's OK.

00:40:56.030 --> 00:40:56.750
It's a dull one.

00:40:56.750 --> 00:40:59.160
Let the maze-- so lots
of little things.

00:40:59.160 --> 00:41:00.090
Are you sure you wrote
this down.

00:41:00.090 --> 00:41:01.655
Was it 12 seconds or 11?

00:41:01.655 --> 00:41:02.910
I guess it was 11.

00:41:02.910 --> 00:41:04.700
Oh, because it's a smart one.

00:41:04.700 --> 00:41:07.840
So completely innocently,
completely innocently as far

00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:11.630
as we understand, they made the
result to match up with

00:41:11.630 --> 00:41:13.520
what the expectation was.

00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:14.940
And it's not just that.

00:41:14.940 --> 00:41:17.770
And if you know this example,
cognitive psychologists have

00:41:17.770 --> 00:41:19.290
studied a phenomenon
like this.

00:41:19.290 --> 00:41:20.690
So try this at your desk.

00:41:20.690 --> 00:41:22.640
Each card is a letter on
one side and a number

00:41:22.640 --> 00:41:24.110
on the other side.

00:41:24.110 --> 00:41:27.010
Your job is to figure out what's
the smallest number of

00:41:27.010 --> 00:41:29.380
cards you have to pick
up to discover if

00:41:29.380 --> 00:41:31.110
this rule is right.

00:41:31.110 --> 00:41:34.530
If a card has a vowel on one
side, then it has an even

00:41:34.530 --> 00:41:35.840
number on the other side.

00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:37.200
So think about this
for a moment.

00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:41.020
If a card has a vowel on one
side, then it has to have an

00:41:41.020 --> 00:41:42.070
even number on the other side.

00:41:42.070 --> 00:41:45.290
What's the smallest number of
cards you can pick up to test

00:41:45.290 --> 00:41:46.540
that hypothesis?

00:41:48.500 --> 00:41:50.740
So here's what people
have found.

00:41:50.740 --> 00:41:54.130
The correct answer
is E and seven.

00:41:54.130 --> 00:41:57.780
And about 10% of people on
average come up with that.

00:41:57.780 --> 00:42:03.690
Many, many more people pick
E alone or E and six.

00:42:03.690 --> 00:42:06.540
Why?

00:42:06.540 --> 00:42:09.580
Well, everybody gets that you
have to look at E. Because if

00:42:09.580 --> 00:42:12.760
it's an even number, so
you flipped E over.

00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:16.200
And if that one turns out to
have, it's a vowel, if it has

00:42:16.200 --> 00:42:19.620
an odd number, the hypothesis
is wrong, right?

00:42:19.620 --> 00:42:22.920
Everybody gets that you should
check E. Pretty much everybody

00:42:22.920 --> 00:42:24.770
gets that J is irrelevant.

00:42:24.770 --> 00:42:26.750
Because it's a consonant.

00:42:26.750 --> 00:42:30.300
Now comes the interesting
six and seven.

00:42:30.300 --> 00:42:33.050
Because the sentence is talking
about a vowel and an

00:42:33.050 --> 00:42:35.270
even number, sometimes people
feel like I got to check the

00:42:35.270 --> 00:42:36.880
even number.

00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:39.130
But it doesn't say anything
about even numbers couldn't go

00:42:39.130 --> 00:42:41.030
with consonants.

00:42:41.030 --> 00:42:42.350
It doesn't tell you anything.

00:42:42.350 --> 00:42:45.990
That's not part of
the hypothesis.

00:42:45.990 --> 00:42:50.230
But if you flipped over number
seven and you discovered a

00:42:50.230 --> 00:42:53.650
vowel, you'd violate the rule.

00:42:53.650 --> 00:42:56.310
So what happens is they're
tempted to go for things that

00:42:56.310 --> 00:42:59.500
feel like they confirm
the question.

00:42:59.500 --> 00:43:00.980
And it feels like
E confirms it.

00:43:00.980 --> 00:43:04.420
And it feels like
six confirms it.

00:43:04.420 --> 00:43:06.800
It's what is called confirmatory
bias that when

00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:10.660
you look at stuff, if you see
what you think confirms it,

00:43:10.660 --> 00:43:12.570
then you tend to go for that,
even when there's evidence in

00:43:12.570 --> 00:43:17.870
front if you that could
contradict your expectation.

00:43:17.870 --> 00:43:22.130
So now I'm going to give you a
practical suggestion for how

00:43:22.130 --> 00:43:24.900
to win somebody over if you
have a brewing romantic

00:43:24.900 --> 00:43:27.090
interest in that person.

00:43:27.090 --> 00:43:28.260
So finally we get practical,
right?

00:43:28.260 --> 00:43:30.270
Everything was like, I look at
you, I'm not running rats.

00:43:33.570 --> 00:43:35.380
And I think it's very
interesting.

00:43:35.380 --> 00:43:38.010
Because when we think about how
people make decisions in

00:43:38.010 --> 00:43:39.330
their lives, we tend to think

00:43:39.330 --> 00:43:41.120
intuitively about big decisions.

00:43:41.120 --> 00:43:42.570
What's my career going to be?

00:43:42.570 --> 00:43:43.880
Where do I go to college?

00:43:43.880 --> 00:43:45.100
We think those are the
big decisions.

00:43:45.100 --> 00:43:46.610
But a huge amount of
life is little

00:43:46.610 --> 00:43:47.995
decisions, moment to moment.

00:43:47.995 --> 00:43:49.520
If somebody asks you
for something, did

00:43:49.520 --> 00:43:50.810
you say yes or no?

00:43:50.810 --> 00:43:52.490
Somebody walks up to
you at a party.

00:43:52.490 --> 00:43:53.960
They want to talk with you.

00:43:53.960 --> 00:43:55.910
Do you feel like talking or
not feel like talking?

00:43:55.910 --> 00:43:57.870
Maybe you talk with them and
it's a lifetime friend or

00:43:57.870 --> 00:43:59.630
romantic partner or whatever.

00:43:59.630 --> 00:44:02.920
So I think we make constantly
little decisions that turn out

00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:04.350
to big effects in our lives.

00:44:04.350 --> 00:44:06.750
So here's some evidence about
things like that that

00:44:06.750 --> 00:44:07.720
influence that.

00:44:07.720 --> 00:44:10.010
And this is worked on at Yale.

00:44:10.010 --> 00:44:13.290
So we describe people as warm.

00:44:13.290 --> 00:44:16.390
Or we can define them as
cold or aloof, right?

00:44:16.390 --> 00:44:18.690
And we could think those words
are kind of arbitrary.

00:44:18.690 --> 00:44:20.770
And most of us, if you met
somebody at a party, would you

00:44:20.770 --> 00:44:25.020
rather hang out with somebody
who's warm or cold?

00:44:25.020 --> 00:44:29.460
Warm, OK, just checking.

00:44:29.460 --> 00:44:34.700
Now sometimes there's an idea
of embodied cognition.

00:44:34.700 --> 00:44:36.060
And here's what it is.

00:44:36.060 --> 00:44:40.020
We can't really know how warm or
cold that person is or even

00:44:40.020 --> 00:44:41.480
that's an abstract idea.

00:44:41.480 --> 00:44:44.060
But we know we're comfortable
when we're kind of warm.

00:44:44.060 --> 00:44:46.330
And we know we're not
comfortable physically inside

00:44:46.330 --> 00:44:48.230
us when we're kind of cold.

00:44:48.230 --> 00:44:51.380
So there's an idea that when we
think about other people's

00:44:51.380 --> 00:44:53.580
feelings, other people's
thoughts or abstract things in

00:44:53.580 --> 00:44:56.520
the world, we base them on
physical experiences that we

00:44:56.520 --> 00:45:00.790
have inside, that there's a more
direct link between what

00:45:00.790 --> 00:45:02.220
we know inside us.

00:45:02.220 --> 00:45:04.170
And we use that to interpret
the world out there.

00:45:04.170 --> 00:45:07.060
Embodied cognition, your
body is the vehicle for

00:45:07.060 --> 00:45:08.630
understanding things
out there.

00:45:08.630 --> 00:45:09.970
So here's the experiments.

00:45:09.970 --> 00:45:11.730
It's really clever.

00:45:11.730 --> 00:45:14.240
There's two temperature
conditions.

00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:16.340
So what happens is you
go into a building.

00:45:16.340 --> 00:45:19.570
And the examiner, an
undergraduate usually or a

00:45:19.570 --> 00:45:21.770
graduate student, meets a
subject in the lobby.

00:45:21.770 --> 00:45:24.780
And she's carrying or he's
carrying a cup of coffee,

00:45:24.780 --> 00:45:28.550
sometimes it's hot coffee,
sometimes it's cold coffee, a

00:45:28.550 --> 00:45:30.860
clipboard, two textbooks.

00:45:30.860 --> 00:45:31.960
So you can imagine.

00:45:31.960 --> 00:45:32.900
It's a set-up, right?

00:45:32.900 --> 00:45:33.610
The person's walking.

00:45:33.610 --> 00:45:34.640
They're juggling with
the coffee, the

00:45:34.640 --> 00:45:36.490
textbook, oh, the clipboard.

00:45:36.490 --> 00:45:38.690
And he says, on the elevator he
says, could you just hold

00:45:38.690 --> 00:45:41.670
my cup while I write down your
name on my list of subjects in

00:45:41.670 --> 00:45:42.660
the experiment?

00:45:42.660 --> 00:45:45.510
It's very innocent, right,
on the elevator.

00:45:45.510 --> 00:45:48.300
And so you hold the cup of
coffee, which half the people

00:45:48.300 --> 00:45:51.750
get a hot cup, half the
people get a cold cup.

00:45:51.750 --> 00:45:53.180
Then you read a description
of a person.

00:45:53.180 --> 00:45:54.020
It's just a paragraph.

00:45:54.020 --> 00:45:57.690
And you have to rate whether you
find the person described

00:45:57.690 --> 00:45:59.300
as warm or cold.

00:45:59.300 --> 00:46:02.070
And if you had the warm cup of
coffee, you're more likely to

00:46:02.070 --> 00:46:05.560
describe that person as a
warm kind of a person.

00:46:05.560 --> 00:46:06.890
Now, these subjects
have no idea.

00:46:06.890 --> 00:46:07.810
They held a cup of coffee.

00:46:07.810 --> 00:46:08.660
They probably didn't
even think whether

00:46:08.660 --> 00:46:10.160
it was warm or cold.

00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:12.660
But something in their body
that got warmed up to the

00:46:12.660 --> 00:46:16.200
least degree possible,
that thought is

00:46:16.200 --> 00:46:16.940
still in their head.

00:46:16.940 --> 00:46:18.050
So when they read a description
of something, you

00:46:18.050 --> 00:46:19.710
go, oh, this seems like
a warm person.

00:46:19.710 --> 00:46:23.560
Of if it was a cold cup of
coffee, they say, oh, this

00:46:23.560 --> 00:46:25.780
seems like a cold, aloof kind
of person as far as I can

00:46:25.780 --> 00:46:28.330
tell, that little bit
of difference.

00:46:28.330 --> 00:46:30.670
So here's the lesson
just so you got it.

00:46:30.670 --> 00:46:33.730
If you want to take somebody
because you have a possible

00:46:33.730 --> 00:46:35.890
friendship or romantic interest
in that person, are

00:46:35.890 --> 00:46:38.700
you better off going out for a
warm cup of coffee or giving

00:46:38.700 --> 00:46:40.590
them a cold glass of beer?

00:46:44.060 --> 00:46:48.880
For that first impression,
scientific research shows it's

00:46:48.880 --> 00:46:52.340
something warm will
work it out.

00:46:52.340 --> 00:46:53.300
It's not that powerful.

00:46:53.300 --> 00:46:56.880
You're not going to be able
to control the world.

00:46:56.880 --> 00:47:00.350
But what it says is when we are
in ambiguous situations,

00:47:00.350 --> 00:47:02.130
ambiguous situations, we
first meet somebody.

00:47:02.130 --> 00:47:03.130
We don't really know them.

00:47:03.130 --> 00:47:05.210
Little things can start
us off on one path.

00:47:05.210 --> 00:47:06.290
Or it can start us
off another path,

00:47:06.290 --> 00:47:09.370
surprisingly little things.

00:47:09.370 --> 00:47:11.260
Now, then they have to worry
about a confound.

00:47:11.260 --> 00:47:13.050
Can you imagine a
confound here?

00:47:13.050 --> 00:47:14.090
Think of the rats.

00:47:14.090 --> 00:47:17.660
Who knows if the cup is cold
or hot besides the person

00:47:17.660 --> 00:47:18.910
holding it?

00:47:20.680 --> 00:47:23.150
The examiner, right?

00:47:23.150 --> 00:47:25.500
Now, maybe the examiner doesn't
try to do this, but

00:47:25.500 --> 00:47:27.870
maybe the examiner, no matter
what, says, oh, we're in the

00:47:27.870 --> 00:47:28.690
warm condition.

00:47:28.690 --> 00:47:30.890
And I'm smiling because this
is going to be nice.

00:47:30.890 --> 00:47:32.850
I'm helping this person
feel good.

00:47:32.850 --> 00:47:34.700
Here's the aloof condition
I'm giving.

00:47:34.700 --> 00:47:36.040
We're all going to
be miserable.

00:47:36.040 --> 00:47:36.980
And the examiner knows it.

00:47:36.980 --> 00:47:39.180
Because they know if they have
a hot or cold cup of coffee.

00:47:39.180 --> 00:47:41.720
So maybe the person's not
vibing to the coffee.

00:47:41.720 --> 00:47:44.260
They're vibing to the expression
or feeling or

00:47:44.260 --> 00:47:47.670
sentiment of the examiner who
understands what's going on.

00:47:47.670 --> 00:47:49.450
So they do one more experiment
where they give-- have you

00:47:49.450 --> 00:47:51.380
seen these hot and icy
therapeutic packs that you can

00:47:51.380 --> 00:47:52.560
make hot or cold?

00:47:52.560 --> 00:47:54.735
Now somebody else makes
it hot or cold.

00:47:54.735 --> 00:47:57.520
The experimenter has no idea
whether it was hot or cold.

00:47:57.520 --> 00:47:58.920
So it's what we call
double blind.

00:47:58.920 --> 00:48:01.050
A person doesn't know it's
relevant, the experimenter.

00:48:01.050 --> 00:48:02.030
They rate the pad.

00:48:02.030 --> 00:48:04.870
And now, this moves it a little
bit, they either get,

00:48:04.870 --> 00:48:06.710
after this thing's over, they're
told it's a product

00:48:06.710 --> 00:48:08.010
evaluation of the pad.

00:48:08.010 --> 00:48:10.650
But they either got a hot
pad or a cold pad.

00:48:10.650 --> 00:48:13.720
And they can either choose one
of two rewards, a Snapple

00:48:13.720 --> 00:48:15.720
beverage or a $1 gift
certificate, whichever you

00:48:15.720 --> 00:48:16.520
like better.

00:48:16.520 --> 00:48:18.220
You had two little things
you could do.

00:48:18.220 --> 00:48:19.190
But here's the big decision.

00:48:19.190 --> 00:48:20.410
Do you get it for yourself?

00:48:20.410 --> 00:48:23.280
Or we can send it for
you to a friend.

00:48:23.280 --> 00:48:26.490
We can send them the Snapple
or the certificate.

00:48:26.490 --> 00:48:30.350
If the people got a cold pad,
75% of the times they say,

00:48:30.350 --> 00:48:31.380
please, give it to
me right now.

00:48:31.380 --> 00:48:32.540
I'll take it.

00:48:32.540 --> 00:48:36.850
If they had a warm pad, the
majority of the time they

00:48:36.850 --> 00:48:39.250
actually send it to
their friend.

00:48:39.250 --> 00:48:43.250
That pad difference moved
quite substantially the

00:48:43.250 --> 00:48:45.710
likelihood that you take it for
yourself or you give it

00:48:45.710 --> 00:48:47.820
away, quite substantially.

00:48:47.820 --> 00:48:49.990
If you're a charity trying to
get people to donate or you

00:48:49.990 --> 00:48:54.460
want to get help from somebody,
25% success rate is

00:48:54.460 --> 00:48:57.620
a lot worse than a 54%, right?

00:48:57.620 --> 00:49:00.360
It's a doubling, a doubling,
of whether you keep it for

00:49:00.360 --> 00:49:05.100
yourself or you're generous
to your friend, just that

00:49:05.100 --> 00:49:07.030
therapeutic pad.

00:49:07.030 --> 00:49:08.800
I'm going to give you two
more and then go to--

00:49:08.800 --> 00:49:10.600
How about money?

00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:12.730
When you think about money, I
don't mean traumatic things

00:49:12.730 --> 00:49:14.820
about money, just a little bit
about money, how does that

00:49:14.820 --> 00:49:17.710
influence how you relate
to other people?

00:49:17.710 --> 00:49:19.860
OK, here's the experiment.

00:49:19.860 --> 00:49:22.120
The idea is that money, on
average, when you just think a

00:49:22.120 --> 00:49:24.150
little bit about it-- and I'll
show you how ridiculously

00:49:24.150 --> 00:49:27.380
little they think about it--

00:49:27.380 --> 00:49:29.230
their hypothesis is that money
makes you think about

00:49:29.230 --> 00:49:32.650
self-reliance, you earn your
money, your bank account,

00:49:32.650 --> 00:49:34.400
compared to situations
where you're not

00:49:34.400 --> 00:49:36.300
thinking about money.

00:49:36.300 --> 00:49:37.320
So here's what they did.

00:49:37.320 --> 00:49:39.700
They have people come in
in three conditions.

00:49:39.700 --> 00:49:41.280
And they had to unscramble
sentences.

00:49:41.280 --> 00:49:43.360
You have no idea what's
going on.

00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:47.260
You got a sentence like, cold it
desk outside is, which you

00:49:47.260 --> 00:49:50.950
would make into a good sentence,
or high a salary

00:49:50.950 --> 00:49:52.430
desk paying.

00:49:52.430 --> 00:49:54.180
So you just make those, you
scramble those words around.

00:49:54.180 --> 00:49:57.630
But the money condition has
a word like salary in it.

00:49:57.630 --> 00:50:00.180
Or you get the neutral
sentences that

00:50:00.180 --> 00:50:01.140
have no money reference.

00:50:01.140 --> 00:50:05.090
And you see Monopoly money in
the corner of the room.

00:50:05.090 --> 00:50:07.580
So we're not talking like people
just sent you your

00:50:07.580 --> 00:50:09.770
tuition bill or whatever.

00:50:09.770 --> 00:50:14.710
Or you just found out that
something terrible happened

00:50:14.710 --> 00:50:16.220
financially or you
won the lottery.

00:50:16.220 --> 00:50:18.110
It's Monopoly money.

00:50:18.110 --> 00:50:21.920
It's just like the
idea of money.

00:50:21.920 --> 00:50:23.200
And then they give
you a task to do.

00:50:23.200 --> 00:50:25.350
And the experimenter, as he or
she leaves the room, they say,

00:50:25.350 --> 00:50:26.570
it's a pretty hard task.

00:50:26.570 --> 00:50:27.940
You may want some help.

00:50:27.940 --> 00:50:28.750
So just come and get me.

00:50:28.750 --> 00:50:30.970
I'm glad to help you,
not a problem.

00:50:30.970 --> 00:50:32.310
So what happens?

00:50:32.310 --> 00:50:34.200
Here's the probability
of getting help.

00:50:34.200 --> 00:50:37.290
And it's incredibly more for the
control group that did the

00:50:37.290 --> 00:50:40.300
sentences without money and
way less not only for the

00:50:40.300 --> 00:50:43.020
people who unscrambled the
sentence with the word salary

00:50:43.020 --> 00:50:47.420
but also way less if they saw
Monopoly money in the corner.

00:50:47.420 --> 00:50:50.570
The mere idea of money, not
money given to you, not

00:50:50.570 --> 00:50:54.960
financial trauma or financial
gain, the mere idea of money

00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:58.010
makes you less willing to
get up and get help.

00:50:58.010 --> 00:51:00.600
So the positive it makes
you more self-reliant.

00:51:00.600 --> 00:51:03.930
The negative is people were less
willing to help somebody.

00:51:03.930 --> 00:51:07.080
So now at the end as the
examiner comes and says, I'm

00:51:07.080 --> 00:51:08.340
an undergraduate like you.

00:51:08.340 --> 00:51:10.100
I've got huge pressure
to get this paper in.

00:51:10.100 --> 00:51:11.455
Can you help me code?

00:51:11.455 --> 00:51:14.160
Can you help me score
up a few sheets?

00:51:14.160 --> 00:51:18.555
People were twice as much
willing to help if they just

00:51:18.555 --> 00:51:22.770
did the neutral things than if
they unscrambled the money

00:51:22.770 --> 00:51:25.030
sentences or saw the Monopoly
money in the

00:51:25.030 --> 00:51:26.430
corner of the room.

00:51:26.430 --> 00:51:29.710
Because just that thought about
money goes like, man,

00:51:29.710 --> 00:51:33.190
self-reliance, we're all
in it for ourselves.

00:51:33.190 --> 00:51:33.770
I've got my money.

00:51:33.770 --> 00:51:35.000
You've got your money.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:37.910
Good luck.

00:51:37.910 --> 00:51:39.700
Self-reliance can
be a good thing.

00:51:39.700 --> 00:51:41.260
But it doesn't actually
go with helping

00:51:41.260 --> 00:51:42.500
people very much also.

00:51:42.500 --> 00:51:43.241
Yeah?

00:51:43.241 --> 00:51:45.165
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

00:51:45.165 --> 00:51:48.772
because the Monopoly money and
he's suspicious of why this

00:51:48.772 --> 00:51:51.899
money's over there, that's why
you're not going to help.

00:51:51.899 --> 00:51:52.880
PROFESSOR: It could be.

00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:54.710
Yeah, the Monopoly money,
I agree with you.

00:51:54.710 --> 00:51:56.430
Maybe that's why they also had
the one where you just get the

00:51:56.430 --> 00:51:59.160
scrambled sentences.

00:51:59.160 --> 00:52:00.100
I agree with you.

00:52:00.100 --> 00:52:03.250
You could think there's many,
many ways to think about this.

00:52:03.250 --> 00:52:06.370
The last example of this kind
that I want show you is dating

00:52:06.370 --> 00:52:10.970
behavior and the way, again,
an experiment can challenge

00:52:10.970 --> 00:52:12.770
various ideas.

00:52:12.770 --> 00:52:15.100
And this is specifically about
dating between men and women.

00:52:15.100 --> 00:52:17.300
The story, to the extent it's
been studied, would be a

00:52:17.300 --> 00:52:19.160
little bit different if you're
dating within a sex.

00:52:19.160 --> 00:52:22.170
So if we're dating between men
and women, who is more

00:52:22.170 --> 00:52:25.440
selective in their dating
choices do you think?

00:52:25.440 --> 00:52:31.560
Who's more willing to date
widely or a lot or less?

00:52:31.560 --> 00:52:34.980
What's your thought if you have
to generalize about men

00:52:34.980 --> 00:52:37.340
and women on average in your--

00:52:37.340 --> 00:52:38.340
AUDIENCE: Men.

00:52:38.340 --> 00:52:39.590
PROFESSOR: Thank you.

00:52:43.290 --> 00:52:45.850
And evolutionary psychologists,
and I love

00:52:45.850 --> 00:52:46.750
evolutionary psychology.

00:52:46.750 --> 00:52:48.130
But it drives me crazy, too.

00:52:48.130 --> 00:52:50.960
Evolutionary psychologists
will go, well, because by

00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:53.370
evolutionary theory men have
to go and make as many

00:52:53.370 --> 00:52:55.560
offspring as they can to
keep their genes going.

00:52:55.560 --> 00:52:56.730
Women have to be
more selective.

00:52:56.730 --> 00:52:58.290
It takes nine months
to bear a baby.

00:52:58.290 --> 00:53:00.170
It takes nine seconds
to do the male

00:53:00.170 --> 00:53:03.880
part, right, estimated.

00:53:08.670 --> 00:53:09.840
So this might or might
not be true.

00:53:09.840 --> 00:53:10.370
It's kind of fun.

00:53:10.370 --> 00:53:11.190
We all laugh about it.

00:53:11.190 --> 00:53:12.330
All of us find it kind
of amusing to

00:53:12.330 --> 00:53:14.480
sort of think about.

00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:17.770
But how would we actually
know if this is

00:53:17.770 --> 00:53:20.080
vaguely true on average?

00:53:20.080 --> 00:53:23.920
How would we actually know if
men for dating behavior?

00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:26.120
How would we even,
is that true?

00:53:26.120 --> 00:53:29.460
Is that a bad myth, bad
rap, or whatever?

00:53:29.460 --> 00:53:30.205
Yeah?

00:53:30.205 --> 00:53:31.135
AUDIENCE: Dating websites?

00:53:31.135 --> 00:53:33.010
PROFESSOR: Yeah, thank
you very much.

00:53:33.010 --> 00:53:37.370
So there's an entire research
enterprise out there now that

00:53:37.370 --> 00:53:39.690
uses online dating sites, which,
of course, it's only in

00:53:39.690 --> 00:53:42.540
the last 20 years or something
that they've existed, I think.

00:53:42.540 --> 00:53:44.190
So it wasn't before.

00:53:44.190 --> 00:53:46.630
And the other one that's been
a treasure trove of data is

00:53:46.630 --> 00:53:49.990
speed dating environments where
you can observe things

00:53:49.990 --> 00:53:50.990
and measure things.

00:53:50.990 --> 00:53:54.250
And those studies have shown,
for example, that online

00:53:54.250 --> 00:53:56.890
dating on average men are 1.5
times more likely to send

00:53:56.890 --> 00:53:59.460
email offerings dates to a
woman than the other way

00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:01.230
around compared to women.

00:54:01.230 --> 00:54:05.110
And in speed dating, too, men
are more likely to indicate

00:54:05.110 --> 00:54:08.410
they would be happy to date a
person they met than women.

00:54:08.410 --> 00:54:11.230
So there's objective evidence
that this is true on average

00:54:11.230 --> 00:54:14.100
in this society at this time.

00:54:14.100 --> 00:54:16.170
And so everybody, oh, yeah, this
shows the evolutionary

00:54:16.170 --> 00:54:16.840
psychology.

00:54:16.840 --> 00:54:18.200
Evolutionary psychology
drives you crazy.

00:54:18.200 --> 00:54:20.390
Because, on the one hand, it's
certainly the case that our

00:54:20.390 --> 00:54:24.090
minds and brains evolved
through evolution.

00:54:24.090 --> 00:54:27.190
So there's something about the
history we went through as a

00:54:27.190 --> 00:54:29.110
species that matters
for who we are now.

00:54:29.110 --> 00:54:30.510
That's got to be the case.

00:54:30.510 --> 00:54:32.860
On the other hand, it was
a different world before

00:54:32.860 --> 00:54:34.750
internet dating and speed
dating, right?

00:54:34.750 --> 00:54:37.230
It's hard to know how those
things line up exactly.

00:54:37.230 --> 00:54:38.390
So here's the fun thing.

00:54:38.390 --> 00:54:41.460
It turns out that on average
in speed dating a typical

00:54:41.460 --> 00:54:43.470
speed dating event will have
four minutes, right?

00:54:43.470 --> 00:54:45.830
So you typically have women
sitting at desks.

00:54:45.830 --> 00:54:47.700
Almost always they set
it up that way.

00:54:47.700 --> 00:54:49.870
And the men are sitting in
chairs in front of the desk.

00:54:49.870 --> 00:54:50.270
And they meet.

00:54:50.270 --> 00:54:51.220
And they talk for
four minutes.

00:54:51.220 --> 00:54:51.960
The bell rings.

00:54:51.960 --> 00:54:52.570
The men jump up.

00:54:52.570 --> 00:54:54.610
And they shift over
one station.

00:54:54.610 --> 00:54:57.160
And then what happens is, for
each time you meet a person,

00:54:57.160 --> 00:54:59.080
you fill out a card that says
yes or no I'd be willing to

00:54:59.080 --> 00:55:00.260
have a date with the person.

00:55:00.260 --> 00:55:03.930
And if you have two yeses from
the man and the woman, the

00:55:03.930 --> 00:55:07.020
speed dating organizer exchanges
the information so

00:55:07.020 --> 00:55:08.520
they can make direct contact.

00:55:08.520 --> 00:55:09.970
Does that sound OK?

00:55:09.970 --> 00:55:13.050
And men make more
yes responses.

00:55:13.050 --> 00:55:16.040
And it turns out, it doesn't
have to be this way, but

00:55:16.040 --> 00:55:19.480
almost, from my reading, that
almost every speed dating

00:55:19.480 --> 00:55:22.460
thing has the men rotating
around and the women sitting

00:55:22.460 --> 00:55:24.540
there waiting for the men
to rotate around.

00:55:24.540 --> 00:55:26.810
So let's just ask
this question.

00:55:26.810 --> 00:55:29.770
What happens if the women
rotate, which

00:55:29.770 --> 00:55:30.770
almost never happens?

00:55:30.770 --> 00:55:32.430
But they did this
experimentally.

00:55:32.430 --> 00:55:36.040
They said for half of the speed
dating sessions the men

00:55:36.040 --> 00:55:37.310
will be sitting at the table.

00:55:37.310 --> 00:55:39.380
And the women will stand up and
move a chair over every

00:55:39.380 --> 00:55:39.810
four minutes.

00:55:39.810 --> 00:55:40.570
The bell rings.

00:55:40.570 --> 00:55:43.280
So the women are moving
and rotating.

00:55:43.280 --> 00:55:45.900
And here's the results.

00:55:45.900 --> 00:55:48.880
Basically, what's showing on
the left are when the men

00:55:48.880 --> 00:55:51.250
rotate, the standard
condition.

00:55:51.250 --> 00:55:52.690
First, it's romantic desire.

00:55:52.690 --> 00:55:55.640
Men feel more romantic desire,
on average, for the partner

00:55:55.640 --> 00:55:56.580
they sit with.

00:55:56.580 --> 00:55:59.680
They feel that more chemistry
is happening with the person

00:55:59.680 --> 00:56:00.490
they sit with.

00:56:00.490 --> 00:56:07.620
And on the bottom left corner,
they also are more likely to

00:56:07.620 --> 00:56:11.530
give a yes response, I would
like a date with this person.

00:56:11.530 --> 00:56:14.590
But reverse the roles, have the
women rotating, and look

00:56:14.590 --> 00:56:16.330
at these bars.

00:56:16.330 --> 00:56:18.570
There's no difference at all.

00:56:18.570 --> 00:56:22.220
You completely wipe out the
male female difference and

00:56:22.220 --> 00:56:26.140
self-reported romantic desire
per person, self-reported

00:56:26.140 --> 00:56:28.790
chemistry they think is
happening, and the yes no

00:56:28.790 --> 00:56:30.020
responses that I would
have a date.

00:56:30.020 --> 00:56:33.750
You completely eliminate it when
the women are rotating.

00:56:33.750 --> 00:56:35.440
It's flat even.

00:56:35.440 --> 00:56:38.690
So that's the result.

00:56:38.690 --> 00:56:39.940
What does this suggest?

00:56:41.980 --> 00:56:43.520
What happened to the
evolutionary psychology?

00:56:48.150 --> 00:56:49.600
It disappeared just by
having the women

00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:50.350
rotate around the room.

00:56:50.350 --> 00:56:52.630
It suggests, and we don't know
this with certainty.

00:56:52.630 --> 00:56:54.680
But people are following this up
who are interested in this.

00:56:54.680 --> 00:56:57.770
It suggests that there's
something about getting up and

00:56:57.770 --> 00:57:02.240
approaching that person, your
body going here I come, I'm

00:57:02.240 --> 00:57:06.230
not sitting in my chair hanging
out, it's like here I

00:57:06.230 --> 00:57:10.500
come, that makes a person
energized, feel more romantic,

00:57:10.500 --> 00:57:12.610
feel more chemistry is
happening, and more likely to

00:57:12.610 --> 00:57:13.340
ask on a date.

00:57:13.340 --> 00:57:14.740
And it doesn't matter
whether you're a man

00:57:14.740 --> 00:57:16.820
or a woman at all.

00:57:16.820 --> 00:57:20.060
It's the getting up and that
physical approach.

00:57:20.060 --> 00:57:20.880
You're more invested.

00:57:20.880 --> 00:57:21.530
You're more out there.

00:57:21.530 --> 00:57:24.160
Who knows what it is, completely
eliminates what

00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:27.220
everybody had said is an
ancient, inevitable,

00:57:27.220 --> 00:57:29.670
evolutionary difference
between men and women.

00:57:29.670 --> 00:57:31.610
And this isn't to say there
might not be some of those

00:57:31.610 --> 00:57:32.320
streaks in us.

00:57:32.320 --> 00:57:33.340
Who knows.

00:57:33.340 --> 00:57:34.690
But speed dating is
not showing that.

00:57:34.690 --> 00:57:36.325
All you got to do is have
the women rotate.

00:57:36.325 --> 00:57:38.740
And you completely eliminate
what's thought to be some

00:57:38.740 --> 00:57:42.620
hard-wired biological difference
on this dimension.

00:57:42.620 --> 00:57:45.190
Now, talking about that, when
we do experiments like this

00:57:45.190 --> 00:57:49.640
that look at sort of fun things
like dating around a

00:57:49.640 --> 00:57:52.110
thing or age difference between
a five-year-old and a

00:57:52.110 --> 00:57:54.810
20-year-old or a 20-year-old and
a 80-year-old, cultures,

00:57:54.810 --> 00:57:57.670
there's lots of experiments
that compare say Western

00:57:57.670 --> 00:58:01.510
cultures verses Eastern Asian
cultures, we'll talk about

00:58:01.510 --> 00:58:04.110
that later in the course in
terms of behaviors, genes,

00:58:04.110 --> 00:58:07.720
whether you have one gene or
another, all those things, are

00:58:07.720 --> 00:58:08.970
those independent variables?

00:58:13.960 --> 00:58:14.850
No.

00:58:14.850 --> 00:58:18.850
We can't assign you randomly to
be a man or a woman, young

00:58:18.850 --> 00:58:22.040
or old, to come from the United
States or Japan or

00:58:22.040 --> 00:58:25.370
China, or to have this
gene or that gene.

00:58:25.370 --> 00:58:29.690
It's not that we couldn't do
stuff in some monstrous world

00:58:29.690 --> 00:58:30.630
but not ethically.

00:58:30.630 --> 00:58:32.970
And it's never going
to happen, right?

00:58:32.970 --> 00:58:35.590
So whenever you have science
that talks about differences

00:58:35.590 --> 00:58:39.560
between men and women or young
and old or cultures or genes,

00:58:39.560 --> 00:58:42.350
it's not really a completely
independent manipulation.

00:58:42.350 --> 00:58:44.340
We can't assign you randomly.

00:58:44.340 --> 00:58:46.510
And so it means everything in
the world about what it means

00:58:46.510 --> 00:58:49.120
to be a man or a woman, a
20-year-old or an 80-year old,

00:58:49.120 --> 00:58:51.730
come from this continent or that
continent, have this gene

00:58:51.730 --> 00:58:53.830
or that gene, those are not
things we can freely

00:58:53.830 --> 00:58:54.155
manipulate.

00:58:54.155 --> 00:58:56.920
And we have to be extra cautious
in interpreting those

00:58:56.920 --> 00:58:57.740
kinds of studies.

00:58:57.740 --> 00:59:00.200
Because we can't randomly assign
you to conditions.

00:59:00.200 --> 00:59:02.560
We just can't.

00:59:02.560 --> 00:59:06.230
And I didn't talk about the
fact that, up until this

00:59:06.230 --> 00:59:08.570
moment, we've made every
conclusion a complete

00:59:08.570 --> 00:59:10.380
generality about human nature.

00:59:10.380 --> 00:59:12.280
And people are different one
from the other, individual

00:59:12.280 --> 00:59:12.670
differences.

00:59:12.670 --> 00:59:15.040
We'll talk about that later
in the course, too.

00:59:15.040 --> 00:59:17.210
So for the last couple minutes
I want to talk about this,

00:59:17.210 --> 00:59:18.310
folk psychology.

00:59:18.310 --> 00:59:19.560
Everybody has ideas
about psychology.

00:59:19.560 --> 00:59:22.280
So if you have this piece of
paper, if you would zoom

00:59:22.280 --> 00:59:26.620
through it, ideas about people
in psychology and just where

00:59:26.620 --> 00:59:30.403
there is some scientific
evidence, if you just zoom

00:59:30.403 --> 00:59:32.560
down and mark yes or no--

00:59:32.560 --> 00:59:35.730
On average, do opposites
attract?

00:59:35.730 --> 00:59:38.050
On average, does familiarity
breed contempt?

00:59:38.050 --> 00:59:40.120
On average, more people present
in an emergency, are

00:59:40.120 --> 00:59:42.680
you more likely to
get some help?

00:59:42.680 --> 00:59:45.080
On average, are there such
things as visual learners and

00:59:45.080 --> 00:59:46.490
verbal learners, and if they
got the right kind of

00:59:46.490 --> 00:59:48.890
instruction that would
help them in school?

00:59:48.890 --> 00:59:50.440
Is hypnosis baloney?

00:59:50.440 --> 00:59:52.170
Does subliminal advertising
work?

00:59:52.170 --> 00:59:54.690
When things are presented so
you don't see them below

00:59:54.690 --> 00:59:58.320
consciousness, does it help
you buy something?

00:59:58.320 --> 01:00:01.030
Does playing Mozart to
an infant boost their

01:00:01.030 --> 01:00:03.070
intelligence, Mozart effect?

01:00:03.070 --> 01:00:04.570
Is old age, on average,
associated with

01:00:04.570 --> 01:00:05.710
dissatisfaction?

01:00:05.710 --> 01:00:07.975
If you're unsure of your answer
when taking a test, I'm

01:00:07.975 --> 01:00:09.950
going to tell you the
science about this.

01:00:09.950 --> 01:00:12.030
It's best to stick with
your first hunch.

01:00:12.030 --> 01:00:14.120
Practically every website
tells you that.

01:00:14.120 --> 01:00:16.170
Have you heard that
many times?

01:00:16.170 --> 01:00:17.782
I'm going to tell you what the
actual evidence is about that

01:00:17.782 --> 01:00:20.130
and how they get that
in a moment.

01:00:20.130 --> 01:00:21.790
Ulcers are caused primarily
by stress.

01:00:21.790 --> 01:00:24.030
A positive attitude can
stave off cancer.

01:00:24.030 --> 01:00:26.520
Raising children similarly leads
to similarities in their

01:00:26.520 --> 01:00:28.940
adult personalities.

01:00:28.940 --> 01:00:30.460
Low self-esteem is
a major cause of

01:00:30.460 --> 01:00:31.530
psychological problems.

01:00:31.530 --> 01:00:34.050
People's responses on the ink
blot test tells us a lot about

01:00:34.050 --> 01:00:35.330
their personalities.

01:00:35.330 --> 01:00:37.960
Interviews help identify those
most likely to succeed in

01:00:37.960 --> 01:00:39.210
medical school.

01:00:44.200 --> 01:00:46.780
OK?

01:00:46.780 --> 01:00:48.030
I'll give you a minute.

01:00:51.290 --> 01:00:52.810
A bunch of these we'll come
back to in the course.

01:00:52.810 --> 01:00:54.810
But the answer for all
these is this.

01:00:54.810 --> 01:00:55.990
And there's evidence
to it all.

01:00:55.990 --> 01:01:01.280
So I'm going to tell you about
four of them for 10 minutes.

01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:03.620
One of the ones you might want
to know most about is the

01:01:03.620 --> 01:01:05.480
changing your initial
hunch answer.

01:01:05.480 --> 01:01:06.630
How do you know that?

01:01:06.630 --> 01:01:08.720
So the people have gone back
over test scores and looked

01:01:08.720 --> 01:01:11.180
where people crossed out an
answer or erased an answer.

01:01:11.180 --> 01:01:12.330
That's the best source
of evidence they

01:01:12.330 --> 01:01:13.530
have in large samples.

01:01:13.530 --> 01:01:17.260
And people are twice as likely
to give a better, the correct

01:01:17.260 --> 01:01:19.300
answer, than to move
to a wrong answer.

01:01:19.300 --> 01:01:21.870
That's the empirical evidence.

01:01:21.870 --> 01:01:25.830
So it's a fantastically
interesting disconnect that

01:01:25.830 --> 01:01:27.310
you see so many places.

01:01:27.310 --> 01:01:30.210
In teachers' advice, you go
with your first hunch when

01:01:30.210 --> 01:01:31.300
you're unsure.

01:01:31.300 --> 01:01:34.570
The empirical evidence is you're
much more likely to be

01:01:34.570 --> 01:01:38.550
correct when you go with
your best final answer.

01:01:38.550 --> 01:01:40.780
I mean, of course,
you're not sure.

01:01:40.780 --> 01:01:42.430
So you're going to
miss a fair bit.

01:01:42.430 --> 01:01:44.390
But you're twice as likely to
come out with the correct

01:01:44.390 --> 01:01:46.930
answer when you go with your
best possible answer.

01:01:46.930 --> 01:01:48.940
So that people who crossed out
their answers or erased their

01:01:48.940 --> 01:01:51.270
answers, they were twice as
likely to move to a good

01:01:51.270 --> 01:01:54.770
answer than leave behind
a good answer.

01:01:54.770 --> 01:01:56.084
Yeah?

01:01:56.084 --> 01:01:59.423
AUDIENCE: Do you know that
maybe it's they picked an

01:01:59.423 --> 01:02:02.285
answer and then they switched
their answer and then picking

01:02:02.285 --> 01:02:03.716
their best and going
back later--

01:02:03.716 --> 01:02:04.500
PROFESSOR: Yeah, that's
an excellent question.

01:02:04.500 --> 01:02:04.860
We don't know.

01:02:04.860 --> 01:02:07.760
They've kind of gone like five
times back and forth.

01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:11.050
The assumption has been, on
average, that people will go

01:02:11.050 --> 01:02:11.900
once back and forth.

01:02:11.900 --> 01:02:13.580
But you're right.

01:02:13.580 --> 01:02:15.160
But ask yourself the other
question, too.

01:02:15.160 --> 01:02:17.650
What's the evidence ever that
going with your hunches?

01:02:17.650 --> 01:02:19.560
And nobody's been able
to show that.

01:02:19.560 --> 01:02:21.300
So where there's evidence,
it's all in

01:02:21.300 --> 01:02:23.600
favor of best answer.

01:02:23.600 --> 01:02:26.480
And nobody's shown evidence that
hunch is the best way to

01:02:26.480 --> 01:02:28.720
go empirically.

01:02:28.720 --> 01:02:30.190
That doesn't mean that sometimes
it doesn't happen.

01:02:30.190 --> 01:02:31.940
But on average, that's
the way the ends go.

01:02:31.940 --> 01:02:34.880
But your point's excellent.

01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:36.090
How about Rorschach tests?

01:02:36.090 --> 01:02:39.090
Every psychology program,
clinical psychologist in the

01:02:39.090 --> 01:02:41.850
country, is required to learn
how to administer and evaluate

01:02:41.850 --> 01:02:42.320
a Rorschach.

01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:42.990
You know this?

01:02:42.990 --> 01:02:47.110
So this obviously shows,
obviously it shows, some sort

01:02:47.110 --> 01:02:48.825
of horrible sex act
between animals.

01:02:55.830 --> 01:02:56.770
You know these kinds of tests.

01:02:56.770 --> 01:02:57.610
You're supposed to read it.

01:02:57.610 --> 01:02:58.660
And then the examiner
listens to you.

01:02:58.660 --> 01:03:01.270
And they figure out
something, right?

01:03:01.270 --> 01:03:03.800
There's been about 10,000
publications about this.

01:03:03.800 --> 01:03:06.420
There's no evidence that there's
anything predictive or

01:03:06.420 --> 01:03:08.920
correct about this test,
none, zero, none.

01:03:08.920 --> 01:03:09.630
People argue it.

01:03:09.630 --> 01:03:10.730
People give it.

01:03:10.730 --> 01:03:13.830
People have to learn how
to give this test.

01:03:13.830 --> 01:03:16.090
So this is a disconnect that
happens a lot between clinical

01:03:16.090 --> 01:03:17.550
stuff and experimental work.

01:03:17.550 --> 01:03:22.420
I mean researchers can't grasp
why people still give this.

01:03:22.420 --> 01:03:24.280
Medical school interviews, those
of you who will apply to

01:03:24.280 --> 01:03:29.070
medical school will
get interviews.

01:03:29.070 --> 01:03:30.280
You'll get interviews
for jobs.

01:03:30.280 --> 01:03:31.970
You'll get interviews for all
kinds of things in your life.

01:03:31.970 --> 01:03:33.030
What's the evidence that
interviews are

01:03:33.030 --> 01:03:34.280
any good for anything?

01:03:36.610 --> 01:03:38.820
How could you know whether
interviews

01:03:38.820 --> 01:03:41.550
are good for anything?

01:03:41.550 --> 01:03:42.950
A company interviews you.

01:03:42.950 --> 01:03:45.040
A university interviews you.

01:03:45.040 --> 01:03:46.210
How would you even
decide whether?

01:03:46.210 --> 01:03:47.010
So I can tell you this.

01:03:47.010 --> 01:03:48.760
Social psychologists have
shown repeatedly that

01:03:48.760 --> 01:03:52.220
interviews are cesspools
for discrimination.

01:03:52.220 --> 01:03:55.600
Because people tend to like
people who are like them.

01:03:55.600 --> 01:03:56.910
Oh, you went to MIT?

01:03:56.910 --> 01:03:58.500
Yeah, course nine.

01:03:58.500 --> 01:04:01.710
Then you go, oh, man, this is
going to be good, right?

01:04:01.710 --> 01:04:02.490
I went to CalTech.

01:04:02.490 --> 01:04:03.480
We didn't like MIT people.

01:04:03.480 --> 01:04:05.020
We thought they were a little
bit snobby or something.

01:04:05.020 --> 01:04:06.720
And you go that's not
going to be so good.

01:04:09.290 --> 01:04:10.980
Social psychologists have shown
that, if you just vary

01:04:10.980 --> 01:04:14.130
information in practice
interviews, people tend to

01:04:14.130 --> 01:04:16.000
like people who are like
them, by background, by

01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:16.580
appearance, and so on.

01:04:16.580 --> 01:04:17.830
On average, they try not to.

01:04:17.830 --> 01:04:19.680
They try to be fair.

01:04:19.680 --> 01:04:21.960
So we know that.

01:04:21.960 --> 01:04:23.180
So here's what they did.

01:04:23.180 --> 01:04:25.170
Yale compared students who were
accepted or rejected on

01:04:25.170 --> 01:04:26.220
the basis of an interview.

01:04:26.220 --> 01:04:29.520
So they all had scores that
got them to the interview.

01:04:29.520 --> 01:04:32.180
And then they looked at them
where they went in pairs or

01:04:32.180 --> 01:04:33.810
larger than pairs to other
medical schools.

01:04:33.810 --> 01:04:36.660
So let's say you got
accepted by Yale.

01:04:36.660 --> 01:04:38.720
And you were accepted or
rejected on the interview.

01:04:38.720 --> 01:04:42.060
But you ended up as two students
at Penn or two

01:04:42.060 --> 01:04:44.530
students at Michigan.

01:04:44.530 --> 01:04:46.510
You're sitting next
to each other.

01:04:46.510 --> 01:04:48.450
One of you was accepted
by interview at Yale.

01:04:48.450 --> 01:04:49.890
One of you was not.

01:04:49.890 --> 01:04:53.310
Who does better at
that other place?

01:04:53.310 --> 01:04:54.670
They're dead even.

01:04:54.670 --> 01:04:57.170
The interview added nothing
for predicting grade point

01:04:57.170 --> 01:05:00.320
average or completion
of medical school.

01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:03.800
Here's one more example,
University of Texas enlarged

01:05:03.800 --> 01:05:06.560
in the midst of their, at
Houston, in the midst of their

01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:10.760
interviews, it enlarged from
150 to 200 students.

01:05:10.760 --> 01:05:12.728
They had interviewed 800.

01:05:12.728 --> 01:05:15.380
The 150 who came were among
their top ones.

01:05:15.380 --> 01:05:15.770
They interviewed them.

01:05:15.770 --> 01:05:16.290
They liked them.

01:05:16.290 --> 01:05:17.450
They came.

01:05:17.450 --> 01:05:19.570
And then all of a sudden because
the state legislation

01:05:19.570 --> 01:05:22.980
said, by law, mandating that you
take 50 more, they took 50

01:05:22.980 --> 01:05:26.740
more who didn't do so well
in the interview.

01:05:26.740 --> 01:05:30.650
Those 50 more performed
identically to the ones who

01:05:30.650 --> 01:05:32.770
got in with the successful
interview.

01:05:32.770 --> 01:05:35.000
They couldn't find a difference
between them.

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:37.630
Now, there's at least one thing
you might think the

01:05:37.630 --> 01:05:39.370
interview might have done.

01:05:39.370 --> 01:05:41.040
But we don't know.

01:05:41.040 --> 01:05:42.670
What do you think it
might have done?

01:05:42.670 --> 01:05:45.610
So the outcome was your grades
in medical school and your

01:05:45.610 --> 01:05:47.330
likelihood of completing
medical school.

01:05:47.330 --> 01:05:51.682
What else could an interview
have been relevant for?

01:05:51.682 --> 01:05:55.930
Maybe, maybe, maybe something
about bedside manner or how

01:05:55.930 --> 01:05:58.700
you relate to people, maybe,
maybe, maybe, but there's no

01:05:58.700 --> 01:06:00.070
evidence that that's true.

01:06:00.070 --> 01:06:02.070
Now you're starting to
grasp at straws.

01:06:02.070 --> 01:06:04.070
So there's no evidence that
interview processes make any

01:06:04.070 --> 01:06:04.850
difference anywhere.

01:06:04.850 --> 01:06:06.680
But everybody does interviews
all the ways.

01:06:06.680 --> 01:06:08.950
Because we always think we're
kind of good judges of human

01:06:08.950 --> 01:06:11.020
nature or something.

01:06:11.020 --> 01:06:13.080
So interviews, it's very
hard to tell that

01:06:13.080 --> 01:06:14.070
they ever do anything.

01:06:14.070 --> 01:06:15.510
So here's my last thing.

01:06:15.510 --> 01:06:20.080
Self-esteem, you cannot watch
Oprah or Dr. Phil without some

01:06:20.080 --> 01:06:22.390
discussion of self-esteem
at some moment.

01:06:22.390 --> 01:06:23.440
And it sounds good
to everybody.

01:06:23.440 --> 01:06:25.366
I mean nobody would wish for you
as a parent or friend for

01:06:25.366 --> 01:06:26.950
you to have low self-esteem.

01:06:26.950 --> 01:06:29.540
And in fact, higher self-esteem
is correlated with

01:06:29.540 --> 01:06:31.580
higher initiative and
persistence, happiness and

01:06:31.580 --> 01:06:34.240
emotional resilience, and also,
unfortunately, with

01:06:34.240 --> 01:06:35.860
people who are narcissistic
and bullies.

01:06:39.300 --> 01:06:41.550
And how they measure it, just so
you know, because this is a

01:06:41.550 --> 01:06:44.500
problem, too, how do
you measure it?

01:06:44.500 --> 01:06:45.320
There's several scales.

01:06:45.320 --> 01:06:47.910
But the most widely used scale
is this Rosenberg scale.

01:06:47.910 --> 01:06:49.330
So you have that, too,
if you want to

01:06:49.330 --> 01:06:51.530
try it out on yourself.

01:06:51.530 --> 01:06:55.290
Self-report, and when they
reviewed 15,000 studies some

01:06:55.290 --> 01:06:57.920
years ago, they could find
no evidence that higher

01:06:57.920 --> 01:07:00.340
self-esteem leads to
better things.

01:07:00.340 --> 01:07:03.430
It all seemed the other way
around that doing better at

01:07:03.430 --> 01:07:05.920
things led to higher
self-esteem.

01:07:05.920 --> 01:07:07.660
They could never find
that pushing your

01:07:07.660 --> 01:07:08.320
self-esteem up doesn't.

01:07:08.320 --> 01:07:11.760
Having said that, I can tell you
as a parent of two young

01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:14.093
kids or if you have friends and
you care about them and

01:07:14.093 --> 01:07:16.020
you know this, we like to praise
people to build up

01:07:16.020 --> 01:07:16.980
their self-esteem.

01:07:16.980 --> 01:07:18.280
We tell you you're awesome.

01:07:18.280 --> 01:07:19.220
Someday you'll go to MIT.

01:07:19.220 --> 01:07:20.230
I know you will.

01:07:20.230 --> 01:07:21.170
You're a wonderful person.

01:07:21.170 --> 01:07:21.870
And you're smart.

01:07:21.870 --> 01:07:23.370
And you're beautiful.

01:07:23.370 --> 01:07:26.430
Parents want their children and
teachers, too, to grow up

01:07:26.430 --> 01:07:29.610
and thrive and build up
that self-esteem.

01:07:29.610 --> 01:07:32.070
And the easiest way to do that
is praise, right, just telling

01:07:32.070 --> 01:07:35.410
your kid how awesome he or she
is or your younger sibling how

01:07:35.410 --> 01:07:36.600
awesome her or she is.

01:07:36.600 --> 01:07:38.180
Get their self-esteem up.

01:07:38.180 --> 01:07:39.570
So the last thing I'm going to
tell you and then we'll be

01:07:39.570 --> 01:07:42.030
done in about three minutes is
work from Carol Dweck that

01:07:42.030 --> 01:07:45.850
shows you how dangerous it is
and counterproductive it is to

01:07:45.850 --> 01:07:51.400
have praise where you
don't think through

01:07:51.400 --> 01:07:52.590
its relation to people.

01:07:52.590 --> 01:07:55.540
And in one sense we'll talk
about, are you going to

01:07:55.540 --> 01:07:57.980
succeed in life by your
effort or your talent?

01:07:57.980 --> 01:07:59.590
What's a bigger question
than that?

01:07:59.590 --> 01:08:01.520
Wherever you get to in your
life, it's going to be based

01:08:01.520 --> 01:08:03.400
on your effort or your
talent or both.

01:08:03.400 --> 01:08:04.930
I'll just have a sentence
about that now.

01:08:04.930 --> 01:08:07.120
So here's the experiments she
did with fifth graders.

01:08:07.120 --> 01:08:09.460
She had them perform
a pretty hard task.

01:08:09.460 --> 01:08:12.530
And afterwards, randomly, they
were either praised for their

01:08:12.530 --> 01:08:12.825
intelligence.

01:08:12.825 --> 01:08:15.710
So a person said to
them, you, fifth

01:08:15.710 --> 01:08:17.540
grader, you are so smart.

01:08:17.540 --> 01:08:20.310
I can't believe how great you
did on that, fifth grader.

01:08:20.310 --> 01:08:22.100
Or they were praised for
their hard work.

01:08:22.100 --> 01:08:24.260
This shows a lot of hard
work, different kids.

01:08:24.260 --> 01:08:29.380
And some kids got no praise
at all in this experiment.

01:08:29.380 --> 01:08:33.550
Then they get a task that's
even a little bit harder.

01:08:33.550 --> 01:08:35.970
How does the different kind of
praise influence things?

01:08:35.970 --> 01:08:37.470
And here was the finding.

01:08:37.470 --> 01:08:41.060
If you were praised for your
intelligence, you did worse on

01:08:41.060 --> 01:08:41.930
the second test.

01:08:41.930 --> 01:08:44.310
If you were praised for your
hard work, you did better.

01:08:44.310 --> 01:08:47.370
If nobody said anything, your
performance didn't change.

01:08:47.370 --> 01:08:48.410
And the idea is this.

01:08:48.410 --> 01:08:50.210
You understand, praised for
your intelligence, you did

01:08:50.210 --> 01:08:51.649
worse on a hard task.

01:08:51.649 --> 01:08:53.290
Praised for your effort,
you did better.

01:08:53.290 --> 01:08:56.810
And here's the idea that, if
we praise people for their

01:08:56.810 --> 01:08:59.500
intelligence to build up their
self-esteem, they start to

01:08:59.500 --> 01:09:02.850
care more about how their
performance reflects on them

01:09:02.850 --> 01:09:04.840
than the performance itself.

01:09:04.840 --> 01:09:07.459
Because you're trying
to prove that you're

01:09:07.459 --> 01:09:10.200
an intelligent person.

01:09:10.200 --> 01:09:12.010
The students who get that
kind of praise for their

01:09:12.010 --> 01:09:15.069
intelligence, they persist
less in a difficult task.

01:09:15.069 --> 01:09:17.210
They say they don't
enjoy challenges.

01:09:17.210 --> 01:09:18.090
Why?

01:09:18.090 --> 01:09:19.779
They just want to ace everything
to keep proving

01:09:19.779 --> 01:09:22.200
they're smart.

01:09:22.200 --> 01:09:24.899
The kids who got praised for
effort, they're kind of like,

01:09:24.899 --> 01:09:26.029
OK, I'm going to make
some mistakes.

01:09:26.029 --> 01:09:26.960
But I'm just going
to keep going.

01:09:26.960 --> 01:09:29.069
Because with effort I can
do things sometimes.

01:09:29.069 --> 01:09:31.140
And it turns out that it makes
a remarkable thing.

01:09:31.140 --> 01:09:33.390
And so Dweck, and we'll come
back to this, talks about you

01:09:33.390 --> 01:09:37.600
can imbue your intelligence as
a trait, I have only so much,

01:09:37.600 --> 01:09:41.109
or as a growth, the harder I
work, the smarter I get.

01:09:41.109 --> 01:09:43.630
But I have to do the hard
work to get there.

01:09:43.630 --> 01:09:48.090
And we live in a society that
often goes by fixed traits.

01:09:48.090 --> 01:09:51.810
American Idol, the harder the
work, the better you sing or

01:09:51.810 --> 01:09:54.710
who has the talent
is discovered?

01:09:54.710 --> 01:09:57.890
Who has the talent is
discovered, right?

01:09:57.890 --> 01:09:59.900
Because the idea is
you have a certain

01:09:59.900 --> 01:10:01.000
amount of musical talent.

01:10:01.000 --> 01:10:01.960
And now the judges show.

01:10:01.960 --> 01:10:03.030
And you break into the world.

01:10:03.030 --> 01:10:05.590
And you're a famous
singer, right?

01:10:05.590 --> 01:10:08.410
So ask yourself this.

01:10:08.410 --> 01:10:11.600
When you are good at what you
do, is it because something in

01:10:11.600 --> 01:10:14.410
your genes and environment made
you good at it or is it

01:10:14.410 --> 01:10:16.410
because you try really hard?

01:10:16.410 --> 01:10:19.200
So Malcolm Gladwell has this
statement that's floating

01:10:19.200 --> 01:10:21.550
around, gets a lot of attention,
that anybody can

01:10:21.550 --> 01:10:23.280
become great at anything
if they work on

01:10:23.280 --> 01:10:27.020
it for 10,000 hours.

01:10:27.020 --> 01:10:29.990
So how much of your success in
the past, currently, and in

01:10:29.990 --> 01:10:32.960
the future is going be
based on your effort?

01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:35.960
And how much is it going to
be based on your talents?

01:10:35.960 --> 01:10:37.020
And how would we know that?

01:10:37.020 --> 01:10:40.172
And we're a very talent-oriented
society.

01:10:40.172 --> 01:10:43.180
And it seems like, the more we
encourage effort, maybe the

01:10:43.180 --> 01:10:44.510
more people might flourish.

01:10:44.510 --> 01:10:47.110
So we talked about how
psychology and science,

01:10:47.110 --> 01:10:50.170
experiments, brief history of
psychology experimentation,

01:10:50.170 --> 01:10:51.660
some issues in experimentation,
and some

01:10:51.660 --> 01:10:54.340
psychological topics, and some
practical information for

01:10:54.340 --> 01:10:56.890
being generous and kind and
winning friends rapidly.

01:10:56.890 --> 01:10:58.140
OK, thanks very much.