1 00:00:00,530 --> 00:00:02,960 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,960 --> 00:00:04,370 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,370 --> 00:00:07,410 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to 4 00:00:07,410 --> 00:00:11,060 offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:11,060 --> 00:00:13,960 To make a donation or view additional materials from 6 00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:19,790 hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at 7 00:00:19,790 --> 00:00:21,040 ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:38,090 PROFESSOR: OK, so up until now in many ways we've thought 9 00:00:38,090 --> 00:00:40,610 about people as individuals-- 10 00:00:40,610 --> 00:00:44,360 how they see, how they remember, their personality, 11 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:48,810 things you can measure by IQ tests, if they have 12 00:00:48,810 --> 00:00:50,000 psychopathology or not. 13 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:53,540 We've primarily focused on people as an individual agents 14 00:00:53,540 --> 00:00:54,590 in the world. 15 00:00:54,590 --> 00:00:56,370 And for this lecture and for the next lecture, we're going 16 00:00:56,370 --> 00:00:59,780 to flip over and think about people as they interact with 17 00:00:59,780 --> 00:01:00,840 other people. 18 00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:04,890 And all the way back from 1962, here's an example-- 19 00:01:04,890 --> 00:01:08,000 and you know so much from your life-- 20 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:11,820 of how powerfully we're influenced by other people in 21 00:01:11,820 --> 00:01:12,990 our behaviors. 22 00:01:12,990 --> 00:01:16,810 So this is a story of elevator rules. 23 00:01:16,810 --> 00:01:18,080 You guys know elevator rules, right? 24 00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:21,040 You get in an elevator, what are you supposed to be so you 25 00:01:21,040 --> 00:01:23,050 don't make other people uncomfortable or where they 26 00:01:23,050 --> 00:01:23,930 don't make you? 27 00:01:23,930 --> 00:01:24,120 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 28 00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:25,560 PROFESSOR: Yeah, which way you're facing. 29 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:27,300 Not too close in space. 30 00:01:27,300 --> 00:01:29,450 If there's only two of you and the person huddles right next 31 00:01:29,450 --> 00:01:30,880 to you, you go, hmm. 32 00:01:30,880 --> 00:01:32,950 OK. 33 00:01:32,950 --> 00:01:34,330 So anyway here we go. 34 00:01:41,940 --> 00:01:45,430 So I was a graduate student in brain and cognitive science 35 00:01:45,430 --> 00:01:47,600 and I got minimally exposed to social psychology. 36 00:01:47,600 --> 00:01:48,860 I was actually a teaching assistant. 37 00:01:48,860 --> 00:01:50,930 I must have heard something about it. 38 00:01:50,930 --> 00:01:52,830 But it wasn't until I was teaching at Stanford which is 39 00:01:52,830 --> 00:01:56,140 full of famous social psychologists and I was 40 00:01:56,140 --> 00:01:57,800 hearing them give their introductory psychology 41 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,770 lectures that I got amazed by what social psychologists have 42 00:02:01,770 --> 00:02:03,720 discovered about human nature. 43 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,550 And maybe because I was exposed to it in one shot, it 44 00:02:06,550 --> 00:02:09,789 really changed for me personally how I try to think 45 00:02:09,789 --> 00:02:11,240 about people from that day forward. 46 00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:13,160 So let's see if it does it for you. 47 00:02:13,160 --> 00:02:16,290 And in many ways, we're going to do today the core, core 48 00:02:16,290 --> 00:02:18,450 famous, most famous things in psychology-- 49 00:02:18,450 --> 00:02:22,610 that the Stanford Zimbardo prison experiment, the Milgram 50 00:02:22,610 --> 00:02:24,120 obedience experiment. 51 00:02:24,120 --> 00:02:27,170 And a theme you'll see is how funny we are as humans in our 52 00:02:27,170 --> 00:02:29,460 desire to want to fit in. 53 00:02:29,460 --> 00:02:30,860 So what is social psychology? 54 00:02:30,860 --> 00:02:32,840 The scientific study of the way in which our thoughts, 55 00:02:32,840 --> 00:02:35,460 feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or 56 00:02:35,460 --> 00:02:37,130 imagined presence of other people. 57 00:02:37,130 --> 00:02:39,330 So it's how we relate to other people. 58 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:43,560 And to a certain extent, if you compare it to things like 59 00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:48,290 linguistics or other aspects of psychology, social things 60 00:02:48,290 --> 00:02:50,670 have seems weakish. 61 00:02:50,670 --> 00:02:54,040 But people have been thinking in the last decade, more and 62 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:57,880 more, that maybe many things that make humans humans have 63 00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:01,030 been pulled by powerful social relations that occur 64 00:03:01,030 --> 00:03:02,450 in groups of humans. 65 00:03:02,450 --> 00:03:04,920 And so for example, looking across primate species-- 66 00:03:04,920 --> 00:03:06,110 just across primates-- 67 00:03:06,110 --> 00:03:08,800 here is the average size of the social group. 68 00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:10,610 Here's the average size of the neocortex. 69 00:03:10,610 --> 00:03:12,830 And it's a pretty good fit. 70 00:03:12,830 --> 00:03:15,280 And so you could think back in the course of examples. 71 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:18,140 For example, the infant who's willing to crawl across a 72 00:03:18,140 --> 00:03:22,450 dangerous visual cliff if the mother has a positive facial 73 00:03:22,450 --> 00:03:23,840 expression. 74 00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:28,900 Risking injury, or worse, because you have a social 75 00:03:28,900 --> 00:03:30,340 queue that says it's OK. 76 00:03:30,340 --> 00:03:32,720 And you're just an infant interpreting that. 77 00:03:32,720 --> 00:03:35,330 So more and more, the thought that many of the abilities we 78 00:03:35,330 --> 00:03:38,450 have, how we work together, how we communicate together, 79 00:03:38,450 --> 00:03:42,910 are driven by our fundamental social character. 80 00:03:42,910 --> 00:03:46,760 And so we'll talk today about the power of the situation. 81 00:03:46,760 --> 00:03:50,460 This is a big idea in social psychology is that people's 82 00:03:50,460 --> 00:03:53,950 behavior can be phenomenally altered by the situation 83 00:03:53,950 --> 00:03:55,670 they're in. 84 00:03:55,670 --> 00:03:57,120 And we'll talk about attribution-- 85 00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:01,800 how we decide whether a person behaves a certain way because 86 00:04:01,800 --> 00:04:04,620 of their character or the situation they're in-- 87 00:04:04,620 --> 00:04:08,250 the fundamental attribution error, conformity, compliance, 88 00:04:08,250 --> 00:04:10,510 obedience, and bystanders. 89 00:04:10,510 --> 00:04:13,510 There are so many experiments here that amaze me and that 90 00:04:13,510 --> 00:04:15,730 are still completely relevant today, and I'll 91 00:04:15,730 --> 00:04:16,930 convince you of that. 92 00:04:16,930 --> 00:04:20,000 So I think we engage in all the time as humans as 93 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:22,570 interpreting the actions and words of others. 94 00:04:22,570 --> 00:04:24,700 Why did somebody do something. 95 00:04:24,700 --> 00:04:24,890 Right? 96 00:04:24,890 --> 00:04:27,570 That fills our lives-- our families, our teachers, our 97 00:04:27,570 --> 00:04:28,620 friends, or coworkers-- 98 00:04:28,620 --> 00:04:31,190 why did somebody do something or say something. 99 00:04:31,190 --> 00:04:35,170 Why is that person looking at me friendly across the room? 100 00:04:35,170 --> 00:04:38,060 So the causal attribution-- 101 00:04:38,060 --> 00:04:40,080 what is driving that person's thoughts? 102 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:41,760 What's in their mind that's making them 103 00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:43,320 to behave that way? 104 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:48,040 And there's at least two kinds of the explanations. 105 00:04:48,040 --> 00:04:49,330 One of them is character. 106 00:04:49,330 --> 00:04:51,250 So personality psychology is all about that. 107 00:04:51,250 --> 00:04:53,500 The character of the person is making them behave that way 108 00:04:53,500 --> 00:04:54,910 because they're outgoing or because 109 00:04:54,910 --> 00:04:56,800 they're shy or whatever. 110 00:04:56,800 --> 00:04:59,030 So Jeremiah helps the elderly person across the street 111 00:04:59,030 --> 00:05:00,950 because he's a really nice guy. 112 00:05:00,950 --> 00:05:03,060 Sven had a hard time solving the puzzle because he's kind 113 00:05:03,060 --> 00:05:04,460 of a dummy. 114 00:05:04,460 --> 00:05:05,500 Tamae gave money to the boy. 115 00:05:05,500 --> 00:05:07,140 Boy is she nice and generous. 116 00:05:07,140 --> 00:05:12,000 That's the personality predisposition interpretation. 117 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:15,130 So that's the who she is or he is. 118 00:05:15,130 --> 00:05:17,500 Or they're behaving that way because they're in a 119 00:05:17,500 --> 00:05:20,090 particular situation. 120 00:05:20,090 --> 00:05:23,310 So Jeremiah helped the elderly man across the street because 121 00:05:23,310 --> 00:05:26,020 his friends are breaking in to the apartment the guy's 122 00:05:26,020 --> 00:05:27,320 leaving behind. 123 00:05:27,320 --> 00:05:28,890 Or there's another person there and he's trying to 124 00:05:28,890 --> 00:05:31,850 impress that person what a swell guy he is. 125 00:05:31,850 --> 00:05:34,080 Sven had a hard time solving the puzzle because it was an 126 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:36,480 impossible puzzle. 127 00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:38,180 He didn't get nearly enough sleep-- 128 00:05:38,180 --> 00:05:39,490 the situation. 129 00:05:39,490 --> 00:05:45,620 She gave money to the boy because he's the drug dealer. 130 00:05:45,620 --> 00:05:47,040 He's a courier running-- 131 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:47,550 whatever. 132 00:05:47,550 --> 00:05:48,880 It's the situation, OK? 133 00:05:48,880 --> 00:05:51,760 So you pick it, but all of a sudden the interpretation 134 00:05:51,760 --> 00:05:53,520 completely changes as to what's going on. 135 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:55,730 It's about character versus situation. 136 00:05:55,730 --> 00:05:58,440 So where does the behavior come from-- 137 00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:00,670 the dispositions of an individual or the situation 138 00:06:00,670 --> 00:06:01,920 they're in? 139 00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:04,270 Personality psychologists focus on this. 140 00:06:04,270 --> 00:06:06,920 Social psychologists focus on this. 141 00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:10,040 And they will argue that this dominates everything. 142 00:06:10,040 --> 00:06:12,300 This dominates everything. 143 00:06:12,300 --> 00:06:14,740 Not the only thing, but it dominates everything. 144 00:06:14,740 --> 00:06:17,970 So let's consider them in one other way. 145 00:06:17,970 --> 00:06:22,090 So let's say that you are late for an appointment with me. 146 00:06:22,090 --> 00:06:24,480 So what do I start to think as I'm sitting there waiting for 147 00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:28,200 you and you don't email me, you don't call me. 148 00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:30,720 You might think, well, this person is a bit inconsiderate, 149 00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:32,820 a bit disorganized, a bit unmotivated. 150 00:06:32,820 --> 00:06:35,390 It would not be a good idea, for example, to show up for 151 00:06:35,390 --> 00:06:37,940 job interview late for your appointment, right? 152 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:38,370 Why? 153 00:06:38,370 --> 00:06:41,020 Because we don't want them to think we're disorganized, 154 00:06:41,020 --> 00:06:44,380 inconsiderate, or unmotivated until we're hired. 155 00:06:44,380 --> 00:06:46,410 So that's the other person. 156 00:06:46,410 --> 00:06:47,700 Like why aren't they here? 157 00:06:47,700 --> 00:06:49,210 They're messing up, and there's something not good 158 00:06:49,210 --> 00:06:50,690 about their character. 159 00:06:50,690 --> 00:06:52,920 But imagine when you're late. 160 00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:53,790 Why are you late? 161 00:06:53,790 --> 00:06:55,750 Because you're disorganized, inconsiderate, and 162 00:06:55,750 --> 00:06:57,380 unmotivated? 163 00:06:57,380 --> 00:06:59,100 No, because something came up. 164 00:06:59,100 --> 00:07:00,930 The situation, right? 165 00:07:00,930 --> 00:07:04,470 The traffic was worse than you could have imagined. 166 00:07:04,470 --> 00:07:07,020 Last minute, there was an email that you have to respond 167 00:07:07,020 --> 00:07:08,670 to or your parent called or whatever. 168 00:07:08,670 --> 00:07:10,560 Some situation made you late. 169 00:07:10,560 --> 00:07:13,230 And what I'm going to show you in a moment is that a very 170 00:07:13,230 --> 00:07:15,070 fundamental thing about people-- in fact, called the 171 00:07:15,070 --> 00:07:17,390 fundamental attribution error-- 172 00:07:17,390 --> 00:07:19,840 is that we're biased to interpret the actions of 173 00:07:19,840 --> 00:07:23,800 others as revealing their character, whereas we're 174 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:27,950 biased to interpret our own actions as being driven by the 175 00:07:27,950 --> 00:07:31,380 situation we're in. 176 00:07:31,380 --> 00:07:34,870 So Lee Ross was the one who came up with this term, the 177 00:07:34,870 --> 00:07:36,450 fundamental attribution error. 178 00:07:36,450 --> 00:07:40,230 The other person is driven by character and that's how we 179 00:07:40,230 --> 00:07:41,900 interpret why they do things. 180 00:07:41,900 --> 00:07:45,180 We give ourselves a break by the situation. 181 00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:47,500 And so what they did is, they ran experiments where they 182 00:07:47,500 --> 00:07:49,830 wanted to make it incredibly clear to Stanford 183 00:07:49,830 --> 00:07:53,710 undergraduate research participants, incredibly clear 184 00:07:53,710 --> 00:07:55,910 that the situation was dominant. 185 00:07:55,910 --> 00:07:58,440 And show that even then, even when you know for certain it's 186 00:07:58,440 --> 00:08:01,620 the situation, and you know as much as you can possibly know, 187 00:08:01,620 --> 00:08:04,910 you tend to ascribe character to people. 188 00:08:04,910 --> 00:08:05,690 OK? 189 00:08:05,690 --> 00:08:08,150 So they had students run in pairs. 190 00:08:08,150 --> 00:08:10,700 And they were truly randomly selected to be a quiz master 191 00:08:10,700 --> 00:08:11,980 or a contestant. 192 00:08:11,980 --> 00:08:13,190 Two students at a time. 193 00:08:13,190 --> 00:08:16,200 The quiz master comes up with questions and the contestant 194 00:08:16,200 --> 00:08:17,610 has to answer. 195 00:08:17,610 --> 00:08:20,360 So they can answer who were the two inventors of calculus. 196 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:23,470 And you know the answer might be-- 197 00:08:23,470 --> 00:08:25,180 and probably you could argue some things 198 00:08:25,180 --> 00:08:26,720 about those, right? 199 00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:28,710 But look, you know this as students-- 200 00:08:28,710 --> 00:08:30,695 it's sort of unfair that we get to ask you the questions. 201 00:08:30,695 --> 00:08:33,809 So I get to ask you something like what's the structure just 202 00:08:33,809 --> 00:08:35,360 in front of the hippocampus that's important 203 00:08:35,360 --> 00:08:36,950 for emotional memory? 204 00:08:36,950 --> 00:08:40,064 And you might answer, oh no, oh no. 205 00:08:40,064 --> 00:08:41,429 [LAUGHS] 206 00:08:41,429 --> 00:08:42,390 That was on the previous test. 207 00:08:42,390 --> 00:08:43,400 It's not cumulative. 208 00:08:43,400 --> 00:08:45,940 [LAUGHS] 209 00:08:45,940 --> 00:08:47,900 and I go, it's the amygdala. 210 00:08:47,900 --> 00:08:49,620 And I've worked in that field for 30 years and I feel pretty 211 00:08:49,620 --> 00:08:51,360 proud of knowing that little fact. 212 00:08:51,360 --> 00:08:56,380 Now, I need a student hand to go up? 213 00:08:56,380 --> 00:08:56,960 OK. 214 00:08:56,960 --> 00:08:58,530 Now you asked me a question that you think I might 215 00:08:58,530 --> 00:08:59,830 struggle on. 216 00:08:59,830 --> 00:09:02,820 And believe me, there's an infinite number outside the 217 00:09:02,820 --> 00:09:04,170 location of the amygdala. 218 00:09:04,170 --> 00:09:07,580 Pick one from physics or math or chemistry. 219 00:09:07,580 --> 00:09:08,990 You're going to embarrass me. 220 00:09:08,990 --> 00:09:10,770 Make it really hard so I don't look so bad. 221 00:09:10,770 --> 00:09:13,902 AUDIENCE: There was a football match 222 00:09:13,902 --> 00:09:15,000 this weekend in England-- 223 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:15,980 PROFESSOR: There's what, sorry? 224 00:09:15,980 --> 00:09:17,800 AUDIENCE: A football match this weekend in England. 225 00:09:17,800 --> 00:09:18,940 PROFESSOR: A football match this weekend in England. 226 00:09:18,940 --> 00:09:19,915 AUDIENCE: Between two of the top of teams 227 00:09:19,915 --> 00:09:21,030 in the Premier League. 228 00:09:21,030 --> 00:09:21,840 Who won? 229 00:09:21,840 --> 00:09:23,090 PROFESSOR: Manchester? 230 00:09:23,090 --> 00:09:23,830 No? 231 00:09:23,830 --> 00:09:25,170 OK, I just made that up. 232 00:09:25,170 --> 00:09:25,910 No, I don't know. 233 00:09:25,910 --> 00:09:26,650 So here's the point. 234 00:09:26,650 --> 00:09:29,020 If I ask questions, I know the answer. 235 00:09:29,020 --> 00:09:30,550 I picked the question, right? 236 00:09:30,550 --> 00:09:32,590 And you may or may not know it. 237 00:09:32,590 --> 00:09:35,610 If you create the question, there's a pretty good chance I 238 00:09:35,610 --> 00:09:36,880 won't know it. 239 00:09:36,880 --> 00:09:40,240 OK, so inherently when somebody is the quiz master, 240 00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:42,160 they're going to know the answer and the other person 241 00:09:42,160 --> 00:09:42,860 may or may not it. 242 00:09:42,860 --> 00:09:44,150 A pretty good chance they don't as 243 00:09:44,150 --> 00:09:44,870 they make up questions. 244 00:09:44,870 --> 00:09:45,830 You know that. 245 00:09:45,830 --> 00:09:47,570 Logically you know that. 246 00:09:47,570 --> 00:09:50,500 So the setup was-- 247 00:09:50,500 --> 00:09:52,840 and the students were only correct 40% of the time-- not 248 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:55,270 bad-- who were answering the questions spontaneously made 249 00:09:55,270 --> 00:09:57,700 up by the randomly selected quiz master. 250 00:09:57,700 --> 00:09:59,570 So this is an experiment-- 251 00:09:59,570 --> 00:10:01,950 knowing this, does it tell you anything about the knowledge 252 00:10:01,950 --> 00:10:02,580 or intelligence-- 253 00:10:02,580 --> 00:10:04,810 let's call it, just an easy label-- 254 00:10:04,810 --> 00:10:06,950 of the person asking the questions or the person 255 00:10:06,950 --> 00:10:08,960 answering the questions? 256 00:10:08,960 --> 00:10:09,140 No. 257 00:10:09,140 --> 00:10:10,110 Does that make sense? 258 00:10:10,110 --> 00:10:12,710 They were randomly put into positions where one person 259 00:10:12,710 --> 00:10:14,010 gets to ask and one answers. 260 00:10:14,010 --> 00:10:18,060 Yet even seeing all this right in front of them, then 261 00:10:18,060 --> 00:10:21,610 students were asked, compared to a person in general, to the 262 00:10:21,610 --> 00:10:25,380 average student, are the people up there, the quizzer 263 00:10:25,380 --> 00:10:28,800 and the receiver, are they less knowledgeable, about 264 00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:31,200 average, or more knowledgeable than the average other 265 00:10:31,200 --> 00:10:32,470 Stanford student? 266 00:10:32,470 --> 00:10:35,550 And in a pure scientific sense you should say I have no idea. 267 00:10:35,550 --> 00:10:37,410 Because you created a situation where one person had 268 00:10:37,410 --> 00:10:39,910 a hopeless advantage compared to the other. 269 00:10:39,910 --> 00:10:40,760 You told me you were doing that. 270 00:10:40,760 --> 00:10:41,670 I saw you do that. 271 00:10:41,670 --> 00:10:43,670 But human beings can help us say-- including the 272 00:10:43,670 --> 00:10:46,430 contestants say, I guess I'm a bit dumb, but that other 273 00:10:46,430 --> 00:10:47,900 person was really smart. 274 00:10:47,900 --> 00:10:51,450 The one who knew about the soccer match in England and 275 00:10:51,450 --> 00:10:53,040 other questions. 276 00:10:53,040 --> 00:10:55,760 Or the other person observing-- 277 00:10:55,760 --> 00:10:58,090 that quiz master seems to know a lot, that student. 278 00:10:58,090 --> 00:10:59,540 And this other one-- the one who was answering the 279 00:10:59,540 --> 00:11:01,180 questions-- 280 00:11:01,180 --> 00:11:03,540 not quite an average MIT student. 281 00:11:03,540 --> 00:11:04,510 All right? 282 00:11:04,510 --> 00:11:08,240 Because people can't help but say if I see behavior, it's 283 00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:10,200 because of the content of your character-- 284 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:12,170 smarter or dumber in this case. 285 00:11:12,170 --> 00:11:16,970 Even though I know logically, your mind goes to that 286 00:11:16,970 --> 00:11:19,940 analysis of behavior in others by their character or 287 00:11:19,940 --> 00:11:21,320 disposition. 288 00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:22,750 Here's another one. 289 00:11:22,750 --> 00:11:26,860 Participants read essays that were in favor of Castro, who 290 00:11:26,860 --> 00:11:29,900 is the leader of Cuba, or against Castro. 291 00:11:29,900 --> 00:11:32,510 In the US, we're mostly against Castro. 292 00:11:32,510 --> 00:11:34,510 The opinions expressed in the essays were presented as 293 00:11:34,510 --> 00:11:35,190 either chosen-- 294 00:11:35,190 --> 00:11:36,980 so the person could choose to speak what 295 00:11:36,980 --> 00:11:37,930 they want to speak-- 296 00:11:37,930 --> 00:11:40,450 or they were assigned by the experimenter. 297 00:11:40,450 --> 00:11:43,150 So you were asked, please give a pro-Castro speech or please 298 00:11:43,150 --> 00:11:44,830 give an anti-Castro speech. 299 00:11:44,830 --> 00:11:46,490 That's your job here. 300 00:11:46,490 --> 00:11:50,000 And then the people listening said, OK, what do they really 301 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:51,140 think about Castro? 302 00:11:51,140 --> 00:11:52,160 What do they really think? 303 00:11:52,160 --> 00:11:54,670 OK, even in a situation where you're told they're going to 304 00:11:54,670 --> 00:11:55,720 be assigned that. 305 00:11:55,720 --> 00:11:57,990 So what happens? 306 00:11:57,990 --> 00:12:02,490 Here's how much they believe that the essay writer was 307 00:12:02,490 --> 00:12:07,030 pro-Castro or anti-Castro in the case where they 308 00:12:07,030 --> 00:12:08,540 chose what to do. 309 00:12:08,540 --> 00:12:10,990 But when they were given the assignment, and now you know 310 00:12:10,990 --> 00:12:13,440 it's really truly random, it's not quite as much as this, but 311 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:16,860 they still believed that if you write a pro-Castro essay, 312 00:12:16,860 --> 00:12:19,790 even though you're told the person was assigned that 313 00:12:19,790 --> 00:12:23,560 essay, as you read it you go, this person seems to really 314 00:12:23,560 --> 00:12:24,860 believe it. 315 00:12:24,860 --> 00:12:26,570 I think they're really for it because that's their 316 00:12:26,570 --> 00:12:27,540 predisposition. 317 00:12:27,540 --> 00:12:30,370 You're told fully this is a situation that's assigned, but 318 00:12:30,370 --> 00:12:33,300 humans can't help but think, I see through this a little bit. 319 00:12:33,300 --> 00:12:35,850 And that essay is just a little too well written, a 320 00:12:35,850 --> 00:12:38,610 little too convincing, for a person just to be randomly 321 00:12:38,610 --> 00:12:39,760 writing it. 322 00:12:39,760 --> 00:12:42,495 So humans, even when you give them all the information, that 323 00:12:42,495 --> 00:12:46,130 it's 100% situational, they can't help but interpret 324 00:12:46,130 --> 00:12:49,420 things as being built out of character or predisposition in 325 00:12:49,420 --> 00:12:50,920 that person. 326 00:12:50,920 --> 00:12:53,960 So people have also thought to this idea of understanding 327 00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:56,880 another person's behavior in terms of their predispositions 328 00:12:56,880 --> 00:12:59,010 versus the situation. 329 00:12:59,010 --> 00:13:01,020 That the disposition on one is made automatically, 330 00:13:01,020 --> 00:13:02,290 reflexively. 331 00:13:02,290 --> 00:13:04,350 That the situational information sort of follows in 332 00:13:04,350 --> 00:13:06,420 a controlled, slow, thoughtful way the 333 00:13:06,420 --> 00:13:07,890 takes energy to correct. 334 00:13:07,890 --> 00:13:12,470 That humans on the whole first interpret automatically, 335 00:13:12,470 --> 00:13:15,770 reflexively, the behavior of others as their character. 336 00:13:15,770 --> 00:13:19,380 And then second, optionally, can correct it thinking about 337 00:13:19,380 --> 00:13:21,150 the situation. 338 00:13:21,150 --> 00:13:25,630 So the idea is you see something, you immediately 339 00:13:25,630 --> 00:13:27,820 decide what the person's character is. 340 00:13:27,820 --> 00:13:31,360 And then maybe, maybe, we'll slowly, effort-fully and 341 00:13:31,360 --> 00:13:33,850 consciously, think about what the situation 342 00:13:33,850 --> 00:13:35,040 is that led to that. 343 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:37,540 So these are automatic, and this is controlled, 344 00:13:37,540 --> 00:13:38,580 thoughtful, and deliberative. 345 00:13:38,580 --> 00:13:39,510 So it may not happen. 346 00:13:39,510 --> 00:13:41,630 So the people to show this-- and it's a slightly 347 00:13:41,630 --> 00:13:43,230 complicated experiment, but let me show you how. 348 00:13:43,230 --> 00:13:47,620 They wanted to prove that thinking about the situation 349 00:13:47,620 --> 00:13:51,490 demands a lot of extra mental resources to overcome the 350 00:13:51,490 --> 00:13:53,110 initial interpretation. 351 00:13:53,110 --> 00:13:55,330 So they had participants watched silent video clips. 352 00:13:55,330 --> 00:13:56,730 They said it was silent because they wanted to 353 00:13:56,730 --> 00:14:00,040 preserve the privacy of the woman who was being videotaped 354 00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:01,470 having a discussion with a stranger. 355 00:14:01,470 --> 00:14:03,030 You just see the woman. 356 00:14:03,030 --> 00:14:04,680 And she looked extremely anxious in some 357 00:14:04,680 --> 00:14:06,640 clips and not others. 358 00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:10,270 The task is we want you to rate how anxious is this 359 00:14:10,270 --> 00:14:11,110 person basically. 360 00:14:11,110 --> 00:14:14,000 Rate your impression in terms of their character. 361 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,580 Are they an anxious type of person? 362 00:14:16,580 --> 00:14:18,550 Some of the research people who were the subjects were 363 00:14:18,550 --> 00:14:22,530 told the target was discussing what the topics were. 364 00:14:22,530 --> 00:14:24,550 And then they also did one other thing which was some of 365 00:14:24,550 --> 00:14:27,360 the people we're asked to just watch and rate. 366 00:14:27,360 --> 00:14:29,620 And other people were told, not only do you watch and 367 00:14:29,620 --> 00:14:32,550 rate, but we're going to test your memory for the content of 368 00:14:32,550 --> 00:14:33,860 what she said. 369 00:14:33,860 --> 00:14:34,870 Because of that, they're trying to 370 00:14:34,870 --> 00:14:36,520 memorize what they hear. 371 00:14:36,520 --> 00:14:38,640 And the idea is that your filling up their attention 372 00:14:38,640 --> 00:14:41,560 with what they're memorizing, they can't make the 373 00:14:41,560 --> 00:14:42,272 correction. 374 00:14:42,272 --> 00:14:44,350 They're out of mental resources to make the 375 00:14:44,350 --> 00:14:46,810 situational correction. 376 00:14:46,810 --> 00:14:48,470 So you're watching these films on anxious 377 00:14:48,470 --> 00:14:51,060 topics or relaxing topics. 378 00:14:51,060 --> 00:14:55,470 So the relaxing topics might be these things-- tell me 379 00:14:55,470 --> 00:14:57,640 about a foreign film you like or a favorite hobby. 380 00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:00,500 Or speak about your worst public humiliation, a sexual 381 00:15:00,500 --> 00:15:03,360 fantasy you have, a personal failure you had. 382 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:06,320 And of course, these things in red, you could expect a person 383 00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:08,230 talking about that to see more anxious. 384 00:15:08,230 --> 00:15:10,520 Those are personal, anxiety provoking topics, OK? 385 00:15:14,170 --> 00:15:15,620 So here's what happens. 386 00:15:15,620 --> 00:15:17,340 So again, the topics were either anxiety 387 00:15:17,340 --> 00:15:18,600 provoking or not. 388 00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:21,270 And you were either just watching the film or 389 00:15:21,270 --> 00:15:23,920 memorizing what you were hearing as well. 390 00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:27,240 And the hypothesis is that this would happen. 391 00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:30,800 So if you were doing one task and you were told 392 00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:32,080 what the topic is-- 393 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:34,730 it has a relaxing topic or an anxious topic-- 394 00:15:34,730 --> 00:15:39,350 you could separate out what the task is versus the person. 395 00:15:39,350 --> 00:15:43,430 But if you were trying to memorize simultaneously what 396 00:15:43,430 --> 00:15:47,510 the content of the film was, that difference disappears. 397 00:15:47,510 --> 00:15:49,070 The rating is identical. 398 00:15:49,070 --> 00:15:51,610 The people are not taking into account the topic that's being 399 00:15:51,610 --> 00:15:54,110 talked about. 400 00:15:54,110 --> 00:15:57,180 Because they're memorizing, their mind is occupied with 401 00:15:57,180 --> 00:16:00,080 the content of the scene. 402 00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:04,300 And they're not able to sort of correct the intuitive, 403 00:16:04,300 --> 00:16:08,880 automatic, reflexive, habitual interpretation of a person's 404 00:16:08,880 --> 00:16:10,370 actions based on their character. 405 00:16:14,810 --> 00:16:20,120 So in the news today, as if it were organized for our course, 406 00:16:20,120 --> 00:16:22,560 there's a fantastic debate about what pictures to release 407 00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:25,370 or not release from what? 408 00:16:25,370 --> 00:16:27,760 Yeah, the killing of Osama bin Laden. 409 00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:30,160 A huge debate going on about whether it should 410 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:31,840 be released or not. 411 00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:34,400 That's gotten the public attention. 412 00:16:34,400 --> 00:16:36,940 One of the biggest reasons why among several, but a big 413 00:16:36,940 --> 00:16:39,060 reason why there's such a huge debate is another set of 414 00:16:39,060 --> 00:16:41,260 pictures some years ago from Abu Ghraib prison. 415 00:16:41,260 --> 00:16:44,070 I'm going to show you those pictures and the consequences 416 00:16:44,070 --> 00:16:46,260 that were felt to follow from the release. 417 00:16:46,260 --> 00:16:48,280 So this is one of the soldiers who was there, Private Lynndie 418 00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:50,330 England, who was said to have participated in maltreating 419 00:16:50,330 --> 00:16:52,960 and torturing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. 420 00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:55,860 So you know, when the United States went into Iraq, they 421 00:16:55,860 --> 00:16:58,590 very much had the thought that they were liberating the 422 00:16:58,590 --> 00:17:02,530 country from tyranny, which in some sense everybody agrees I 423 00:17:02,530 --> 00:17:03,130 think just about. 424 00:17:03,130 --> 00:17:04,990 They were in some sense. 425 00:17:04,990 --> 00:17:08,359 But one of the goals was to convince the population of 426 00:17:08,359 --> 00:17:11,150 Iraq that the United States was not there to occupy and 427 00:17:11,150 --> 00:17:14,380 take over but to liberate and free the people of Iraq. 428 00:17:14,380 --> 00:17:16,859 That was a big message the United States wanted to send 429 00:17:16,859 --> 00:17:19,470 to the world and to the Iraqis, right? 430 00:17:19,470 --> 00:17:22,410 Regardless of whatever else you know or believe or have 431 00:17:22,410 --> 00:17:24,839 political opinion, that was a message the United States 432 00:17:24,839 --> 00:17:25,950 wanted to send to everybody. 433 00:17:25,950 --> 00:17:27,470 That was huge for them to do. 434 00:17:27,470 --> 00:17:32,020 That they were there to help free Iraqi citizens not to 435 00:17:32,020 --> 00:17:34,300 occupy and take over Iraq. 436 00:17:34,300 --> 00:17:39,980 So imagine when these pictures came out, a very large prison 437 00:17:39,980 --> 00:17:42,200 that was run by Americans in Iraq-- 438 00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:47,060 and these pictures were put on the internet-- of various, 439 00:17:47,060 --> 00:17:50,880 what looked like and probably were, torturous situations. 440 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:54,290 Here's an Iraqi person with this hood on their head with 441 00:17:54,290 --> 00:17:57,830 wires connected to the body. 442 00:17:57,830 --> 00:18:01,370 Here is that soldier holding a leash, and here's a prisoner 443 00:18:01,370 --> 00:18:04,600 on the leash. 444 00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:09,050 Here's a smiling picture with her and another soldier. 445 00:18:09,050 --> 00:18:13,075 There's a pyramid of naked prisoners piled up, one on top 446 00:18:13,075 --> 00:18:15,060 of the other in a humiliating position. 447 00:18:15,060 --> 00:18:18,260 Here's another picture of her, thumbs up, pointing at hooded, 448 00:18:18,260 --> 00:18:21,840 naked prisoners' genitals. 449 00:18:21,840 --> 00:18:25,830 OK, and then she was tried in court for these things. 450 00:18:25,830 --> 00:18:27,550 It was devastating for the United States. 451 00:18:27,550 --> 00:18:28,690 These pictures were devastating for the United 452 00:18:28,690 --> 00:18:31,700 States because they were exactly the opposite of the 453 00:18:31,700 --> 00:18:34,590 picture the US wanted to present, which is one of 454 00:18:34,590 --> 00:18:37,860 liberation and friendliness and democracy and freedom. 455 00:18:37,860 --> 00:18:43,050 And here's tyranny, brutality, and prison torture. 456 00:18:43,050 --> 00:18:48,670 And it figures hugely in the mind of people in Washington 457 00:18:48,670 --> 00:18:50,070 now as they're debating about these pictures. 458 00:18:50,070 --> 00:18:51,150 And for the moment, they decided not 459 00:18:51,150 --> 00:18:52,320 to release any picture. 460 00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:54,925 The power of these pictures as they floated around to inflame 461 00:18:54,925 --> 00:18:57,185 and incite arguments. 462 00:18:57,185 --> 00:18:59,920 And so here two ways you could do it from the viewpoint of 463 00:18:59,920 --> 00:19:00,740 social psychology. 464 00:19:00,740 --> 00:19:02,160 The disposition attribution. 465 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:05,760 You imagine you're a juror where she's being tried. 466 00:19:05,760 --> 00:19:07,550 So the accused knew what she was doing. 467 00:19:07,550 --> 00:19:08,610 She was laughing and joking. 468 00:19:08,610 --> 00:19:11,450 She is enjoying participating, all for her own sick humor. 469 00:19:11,450 --> 00:19:12,670 So here's the crime. 470 00:19:12,670 --> 00:19:14,990 You get angry and you're not very sympathetic because it's 471 00:19:14,990 --> 00:19:16,110 from controllable factors. 472 00:19:16,110 --> 00:19:17,520 She should've controlled herself. 473 00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:18,165 She's held responsible. 474 00:19:18,165 --> 00:19:20,450 She should get a severe punishment. 475 00:19:20,450 --> 00:19:21,820 Or you could ask-- 476 00:19:21,820 --> 00:19:24,880 and we'll come back to this at the end of the lecture-- 477 00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:27,870 were there uncontrollable factors well beyond what a 478 00:19:27,870 --> 00:19:30,710 person could be reasonably asked to control. 479 00:19:30,710 --> 00:19:32,260 Then you're not so angry at them if you think the 480 00:19:32,260 --> 00:19:34,010 situation was very problematic. 481 00:19:34,010 --> 00:19:38,890 For example, she had a boyfriend who was not only 482 00:19:38,890 --> 00:19:43,430 superior to her militarily, but also was the ring leader. 483 00:19:43,430 --> 00:19:44,190 She was a follower. 484 00:19:44,190 --> 00:19:45,980 She was an individual smitten. 485 00:19:45,980 --> 00:19:48,860 She did whatever he wanted her to do. 486 00:19:48,860 --> 00:19:52,010 Somewhat more sympathy, person not held responsible, and the 487 00:19:52,010 --> 00:19:54,740 punishment is more about rehabilitation than 488 00:19:54,740 --> 00:19:56,010 punishment. 489 00:19:56,010 --> 00:19:58,070 So those would be two approaches. 490 00:19:58,070 --> 00:20:00,720 She was found guilty of one count of conspiracy and four 491 00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:02,280 counts of maltreating detainees, one count of 492 00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:03,180 committing an indecent act. 493 00:20:03,180 --> 00:20:04,910 She was acquitted on a conspiracy count. 494 00:20:04,910 --> 00:20:06,690 So I'm going to come back to this in a little bit after we 495 00:20:06,690 --> 00:20:09,600 talk about the Stanford prison experiment and ask you your 496 00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:12,450 thoughts about this individual from the information you have. 497 00:20:15,260 --> 00:20:18,540 So we'll come back to that in a little bit, thinking about 498 00:20:18,540 --> 00:20:21,490 what is a person responsible for versus the situation. 499 00:20:21,490 --> 00:20:23,340 So let's start to talk about social influence, which is 500 00:20:23,340 --> 00:20:25,390 again a change in a person's behavior or beliefs in 501 00:20:25,390 --> 00:20:27,790 response to the intentional or unintentional 502 00:20:27,790 --> 00:20:29,730 influences of others. 503 00:20:29,730 --> 00:20:30,820 And we'll talk about three kinds. 504 00:20:30,820 --> 00:20:33,560 Conformity, which is changing your behavior or beliefs in 505 00:20:33,560 --> 00:20:35,850 response to explicit or implicit pressure from others. 506 00:20:35,850 --> 00:20:38,170 That's the person turning in the elevator. 507 00:20:38,170 --> 00:20:41,170 Compliance, changing one's behavior to avoid conflict. 508 00:20:41,170 --> 00:20:45,250 And obedience, which is following the demands of more 509 00:20:45,250 --> 00:20:48,130 powerful people or organizations. 510 00:20:48,130 --> 00:20:49,310 So conformity. 511 00:20:49,310 --> 00:20:52,100 I mean, conformity sounds like a bad word, but we conform to 512 00:20:52,100 --> 00:20:54,100 implicit and explicit social rules. 513 00:20:54,100 --> 00:20:57,100 It's pretty useful for social groups operating. 514 00:20:57,100 --> 00:20:59,650 If everybody here was talking and walking in and out and 515 00:20:59,650 --> 00:21:02,290 stuff like that, we couldn't have a class. 516 00:21:02,290 --> 00:21:04,650 I mean, if we didn't conform in some ways, we couldn't do 517 00:21:04,650 --> 00:21:07,390 very much that took more than one person to do. 518 00:21:07,390 --> 00:21:09,690 And it's seen across people and lifespans and cultures. 519 00:21:09,690 --> 00:21:15,530 It's how, in certain ways, we work together as people. 520 00:21:15,530 --> 00:21:18,150 Now the original experiment on this came from a very 521 00:21:18,150 --> 00:21:19,850 perceptual effect. 522 00:21:19,850 --> 00:21:22,560 Participants supported for study on visual perception-- 523 00:21:22,560 --> 00:21:23,990 Muzafer Sherif. 524 00:21:23,990 --> 00:21:25,930 They were seated in a dark room and saw point of light 525 00:21:25,930 --> 00:21:27,840 appear, then move, and then disappear. 526 00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:30,660 And they were asked to judge how far the light moved. 527 00:21:30,660 --> 00:21:33,410 This was based on a perceptual illusion. 528 00:21:33,410 --> 00:21:36,730 Because if you stare at a light in a totally dark room, 529 00:21:36,730 --> 00:21:39,550 you'll start to interpret it moving, even though it does 530 00:21:39,550 --> 00:21:41,660 not physically move. 531 00:21:41,660 --> 00:21:42,940 It has to be a blacked out room. 532 00:21:42,940 --> 00:21:44,440 You have to sit there for a while. 533 00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:46,740 And then you start to get signals about movement that 534 00:21:46,740 --> 00:21:47,750 are incorrect. 535 00:21:47,750 --> 00:21:49,880 And this perceptual illusion that a dot is moving was 536 00:21:49,880 --> 00:21:51,800 called the autokinetic effect. 537 00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:52,300 And that's OK. 538 00:21:52,300 --> 00:21:53,900 You've see an amazing allusions, and that would be 539 00:21:53,900 --> 00:21:56,890 another amazing illusion of a single dot of light in a dark 540 00:21:56,890 --> 00:21:59,600 room, and you start to think it moves. 541 00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:01,550 But what the astounding thing was this-- 542 00:22:01,550 --> 00:22:04,820 here's three individuals who are tested and their rating of 543 00:22:04,820 --> 00:22:05,610 how much it moved. 544 00:22:05,610 --> 00:22:08,050 It didn't move, so there are some differences. 545 00:22:08,050 --> 00:22:10,600 Now the three of them are tested together on day two, 546 00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:12,200 day three, and day four. 547 00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:14,670 And you can see that these three different people start 548 00:22:14,670 --> 00:22:20,280 to converge on the identical, imagined illusory movement, as 549 00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:22,920 if the responses of the others were influencing one and 550 00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:25,430 another on such a simple thing. 551 00:22:25,430 --> 00:22:28,540 And then this experiment was made even more ridiculous by 552 00:22:28,540 --> 00:22:31,400 one of the most spectacular experiments just in the 553 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,980 simplicity and power and replicability. 554 00:22:34,980 --> 00:22:36,870 So this is from Asch. 555 00:22:36,870 --> 00:22:40,180 Imagine that you walk into a room and your task is this-- 556 00:22:40,180 --> 00:22:41,790 now get ready because I'm going to ask for a 557 00:22:41,790 --> 00:22:44,360 volunteer right now. 558 00:22:44,360 --> 00:22:45,370 OK, thanks. 559 00:22:45,370 --> 00:22:47,505 Get ready, this is going to be pretty tough, OK? 560 00:22:47,505 --> 00:22:49,450 And everybody else will be nice to you because you 561 00:22:49,450 --> 00:22:50,860 volunteered. 562 00:22:50,860 --> 00:22:52,430 You see this line here? 563 00:22:52,430 --> 00:22:55,246 Which of these three lines has the same length? 564 00:22:55,246 --> 00:22:56,240 AUDIENCE: Number one. 565 00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:56,860 PROFESSOR: Number one. 566 00:22:56,860 --> 00:22:58,175 That looks good to you? 567 00:22:58,175 --> 00:23:00,960 Does that look like a really tough thing? 568 00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:01,570 No? 569 00:23:01,570 --> 00:23:02,130 OK, thanks. 570 00:23:02,130 --> 00:23:03,840 OK, I was being a little facetious. 571 00:23:03,840 --> 00:23:05,110 Thank you. 572 00:23:05,110 --> 00:23:06,860 But you have to understand, this is the gist of the 573 00:23:06,860 --> 00:23:07,540 experiment. 574 00:23:07,540 --> 00:23:11,250 Not such a tough thing, pretty obvious. 575 00:23:11,250 --> 00:23:12,330 Here's what they did. 576 00:23:12,330 --> 00:23:14,300 Now you are brought into a room and there were six 577 00:23:14,300 --> 00:23:14,850 confederates. 578 00:23:14,850 --> 00:23:17,150 So that's the word in social psychology that's used for 579 00:23:17,150 --> 00:23:19,260 people who are in on the experiment. 580 00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:19,460 OK? 581 00:23:19,460 --> 00:23:21,090 They're not really subjects. 582 00:23:21,090 --> 00:23:22,770 So you walk into a room. 583 00:23:22,770 --> 00:23:24,390 You don't know what's going on. 584 00:23:24,390 --> 00:23:26,800 There are six other students sitting there. 585 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:28,630 And they do exactly what we did now. 586 00:23:28,630 --> 00:23:30,810 They show you a line like this and three other lines and say 587 00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:32,400 you pick it. 588 00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:33,940 The six other people go first. 589 00:23:33,940 --> 00:23:35,210 So you're sitting there-- imagine this. 590 00:23:35,210 --> 00:23:37,610 Imagine the first one says, one, you go, OK. 591 00:23:37,610 --> 00:23:40,960 Then somebody goes, eh, uh, two. 592 00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,650 And you go, hm. 593 00:23:43,650 --> 00:23:46,800 The next person says, oh yeah, two. 594 00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:50,240 And by the time they get to you, four of the six have said 595 00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:51,170 number two. 596 00:23:51,170 --> 00:23:52,670 What do you do? 597 00:23:52,670 --> 00:23:56,250 Now to an astounding extend what you do is this-- 598 00:23:56,250 --> 00:23:57,980 you also say two. 599 00:23:57,980 --> 00:23:59,410 OK, and it's not-- 600 00:23:59,410 --> 00:24:00,910 like you're saying, I'm just fitting in. 601 00:24:00,910 --> 00:24:03,130 When they show you the pictures, people are turning 602 00:24:03,130 --> 00:24:03,580 their head. 603 00:24:03,580 --> 00:24:04,450 Is there an angle? 604 00:24:04,450 --> 00:24:05,820 Is it the lighting? 605 00:24:05,820 --> 00:24:07,870 Why do I think it's number one when 606 00:24:07,870 --> 00:24:09,070 everybody else is pretty-- 607 00:24:09,070 --> 00:24:12,070 for such a simple thing, pretty much the same. 608 00:24:12,070 --> 00:24:14,470 So the confederates are not always wrong, but they're 609 00:24:14,470 --> 00:24:16,690 pretty often wrong, and in a consistent way. 610 00:24:16,690 --> 00:24:18,020 It's all set up. 611 00:24:18,020 --> 00:24:19,540 But you as an individual-- 612 00:24:19,540 --> 00:24:20,290 and here's one of these. 613 00:24:20,290 --> 00:24:22,840 You see this person like, OK, if I look hard enough, I'm 614 00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:23,360 going to figure it out. 615 00:24:23,360 --> 00:24:25,830 How did they figure out that line number one equals line 616 00:24:25,830 --> 00:24:27,450 number two? 617 00:24:27,450 --> 00:24:29,550 If you do it by yourself, less than 1% errors. 618 00:24:29,550 --> 00:24:31,770 Obviously, the only error you make is if you're not paying 619 00:24:31,770 --> 00:24:33,830 attention, right? 620 00:24:33,830 --> 00:24:37,820 With group pressure, not every single time, but all of a 621 00:24:37,820 --> 00:24:42,650 sudden, 37 times more often, you say it's the wrong the 622 00:24:42,650 --> 00:24:44,020 line length. 623 00:24:44,020 --> 00:24:46,860 And almost always, the impression is you really 624 00:24:46,860 --> 00:24:47,930 believe it. 625 00:24:47,930 --> 00:24:49,220 The people are really struggling. 626 00:24:49,220 --> 00:24:50,470 They're really hemming and hawing. 627 00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:58,950 Not everybody's the same, but only 25% give the correct 628 00:24:58,950 --> 00:25:00,260 answer throughout the experiment. 629 00:25:00,260 --> 00:25:04,340 75% of people at least once will give the obviously wrong 630 00:25:04,340 --> 00:25:07,890 answer because they feel that conformity. 631 00:25:07,890 --> 00:25:10,990 They need to respond to the other answers given by the 632 00:25:10,990 --> 00:25:12,950 other students around them. 633 00:25:12,950 --> 00:25:16,490 Such a simple thing as line length, we cannot help but 634 00:25:16,490 --> 00:25:20,930 want to fit in and figure out a way to do that. 635 00:25:20,930 --> 00:25:23,110 What effects this conformity? 636 00:25:23,110 --> 00:25:25,650 Well, the more confederates, the more powerful it is. 637 00:25:25,650 --> 00:25:27,910 That makes sense, right? 638 00:25:27,910 --> 00:25:29,590 So here's the group size effect. 639 00:25:29,590 --> 00:25:32,240 So if only one person is making it, you just figure 640 00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,040 they're not too swift and you can get the line. 641 00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:36,430 Two people, you're already moving up. 642 00:25:36,430 --> 00:25:38,620 By the time you get to four people, you're 643 00:25:38,620 --> 00:25:39,620 all the way up there. 644 00:25:39,620 --> 00:25:41,650 4 to 15 is about the same. 645 00:25:41,650 --> 00:25:45,770 So four other people giving you obviously wrong answers, 646 00:25:45,770 --> 00:25:48,920 you decide there must be something interestingly going 647 00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,220 on and you could figure it like they did. 648 00:25:51,220 --> 00:25:53,650 OK 649 00:25:53,650 --> 00:25:54,630 Presence of an ally. 650 00:25:54,630 --> 00:25:57,140 We'll come back to this a couple times. 651 00:25:57,140 --> 00:26:02,090 All it takes is one person to break the conformity and 652 00:26:02,090 --> 00:26:03,970 you're willing to break that, too. 653 00:26:03,970 --> 00:26:05,610 In these experiments, that's set up. 654 00:26:05,610 --> 00:26:08,340 The ally is one of the confederates who's now told to 655 00:26:08,340 --> 00:26:09,940 give the right length. 656 00:26:09,940 --> 00:26:14,240 So one brave person can really change what you do, but it's 657 00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:15,790 hard to be that brave person. 658 00:26:15,790 --> 00:26:18,060 These allies are set up by the experimenter. 659 00:26:18,060 --> 00:26:18,650 So what happens? 660 00:26:18,650 --> 00:26:19,570 Here you go. 661 00:26:19,570 --> 00:26:22,780 Here's the mistakes being made when all the other people are 662 00:26:22,780 --> 00:26:23,930 saying the wrong length. 663 00:26:23,930 --> 00:26:26,660 And if one person is giving the right answers, only 664 00:26:26,660 --> 00:26:27,140 occasionally. 665 00:26:27,140 --> 00:26:30,640 Still you do it sometimes, but a dramatic difference from one 666 00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:31,850 person giving the right answer. 667 00:26:31,850 --> 00:26:35,980 One dissenter opens up your chance to go with the answer 668 00:26:35,980 --> 00:26:39,490 you know intellectually is correct. 669 00:26:39,490 --> 00:26:41,230 Embarrassment. 670 00:26:41,230 --> 00:26:43,240 It's amazing the stuff we all do. 671 00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:47,230 It's amazing the stuff we all do to avoid being embarrassed. 672 00:26:47,230 --> 00:26:49,580 Embarrassment is such a powerful thing for 673 00:26:49,580 --> 00:26:50,470 almost all of us. 674 00:26:50,470 --> 00:26:52,570 There are some exceptions, but for almost all of us. 675 00:26:52,570 --> 00:26:55,600 So part of what's going on in conformity is to not to be 676 00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:57,340 embarrassed to be different. 677 00:26:57,340 --> 00:27:00,670 And so here's the way they show you that. 678 00:27:00,670 --> 00:27:03,170 They have you arrive late. 679 00:27:03,170 --> 00:27:04,550 You're not really arriving late. 680 00:27:04,550 --> 00:27:06,180 They tell you, oh, you should have been here. 681 00:27:06,180 --> 00:27:07,220 We had a miscommunication. 682 00:27:07,220 --> 00:27:08,290 All the other people are here. 683 00:27:08,290 --> 00:27:09,310 They knew. 684 00:27:09,310 --> 00:27:11,750 Well, because you arrived late, why don't you just write 685 00:27:11,750 --> 00:27:12,700 down your answers. 686 00:27:12,700 --> 00:27:13,980 You don't have to say them out loud. 687 00:27:13,980 --> 00:27:16,750 Because we can't have you mess up the experiment now. 688 00:27:16,750 --> 00:27:20,720 Then it's still not perfect, but people reduced by a third 689 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:22,750 the number of their incorrect answers. 690 00:27:22,750 --> 00:27:24,090 Because they don't have to tell other 691 00:27:24,090 --> 00:27:25,330 people what they saw. 692 00:27:25,330 --> 00:27:28,030 OK, it's not perfect, but all of a sudden, at least that. 693 00:27:28,030 --> 00:27:29,110 And a few other things. 694 00:27:29,110 --> 00:27:31,250 It peaks in ninth grade. 695 00:27:31,250 --> 00:27:33,500 Women on average a bit more than men. 696 00:27:33,500 --> 00:27:35,590 Cultures that are more interdependent showed a bit 697 00:27:35,590 --> 00:27:38,390 more than cultures like the US that emphasize independence. 698 00:27:38,390 --> 00:27:42,320 But these are all variations on a relatively small thing. 699 00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:44,640 Fundamentally, humans want to conform. 700 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:46,560 And they don't form superficially. 701 00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:49,540 They convince themselves there's something going on and 702 00:27:49,540 --> 00:27:51,210 then the right thing to do is to conform. 703 00:27:54,030 --> 00:27:55,060 Why do we conform? 704 00:27:55,060 --> 00:27:56,210 There's all kinds of hypotheses. 705 00:27:56,210 --> 00:27:58,240 We want to be right. 706 00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:01,910 Everybody knew that line length, I want to be right. 707 00:28:01,910 --> 00:28:02,640 I want to be popular. 708 00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:05,760 I don't want to be the weird person not doing this stuff. 709 00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,930 So anyway, let's come to compliance which is even more 710 00:28:08,930 --> 00:28:10,276 oppositional. 711 00:28:10,276 --> 00:28:14,240 You know this from your life if you have ever spent money 712 00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:16,010 on something you didn't mean to because there's an 713 00:28:16,010 --> 00:28:17,570 effective salesperson. 714 00:28:17,570 --> 00:28:19,090 It's called a foot-in-the-door technique, 715 00:28:19,090 --> 00:28:20,770 and here's an example. 716 00:28:20,770 --> 00:28:22,730 Here's what they did in 1962 in California. 717 00:28:22,730 --> 00:28:25,010 Freedman and Fraser drove to homes-- 718 00:28:25,010 --> 00:28:28,440 random homes-- show a large unattractive sign that says 719 00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,060 drive carefully. 720 00:28:30,060 --> 00:28:33,170 Now we can all agree that it's pretty non-controversial to 721 00:28:33,170 --> 00:28:34,740 drive carefully. 722 00:28:34,740 --> 00:28:37,060 And they knock on the door and they ask the person will you 723 00:28:37,060 --> 00:28:39,270 place this on your lawn. 724 00:28:39,270 --> 00:28:42,000 Now think if somebody comes up to you, knocks on the door, 725 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,290 and says, would you place this large unattractive sign to 726 00:28:44,290 --> 00:28:46,130 drive carefully? 727 00:28:46,130 --> 00:28:47,920 And less than 20% say yes. 728 00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:49,630 OK that's not a shocking number. 729 00:28:49,630 --> 00:28:53,020 They're picking something that's like apple pie, right? 730 00:28:53,020 --> 00:28:54,800 I mean, drive carefully, who could be against that? 731 00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,130 But who wants a weird sign on your lawn, right? 732 00:28:57,130 --> 00:28:59,990 And they made it unattractive on purpose. 733 00:28:59,990 --> 00:29:01,390 So 20%. 734 00:29:01,390 --> 00:29:02,530 Here's the other group. 735 00:29:02,530 --> 00:29:03,910 They go up to your door, they knock on the door, and they 736 00:29:03,910 --> 00:29:06,300 say, I have a petition here-- you've had that experience on 737 00:29:06,300 --> 00:29:07,105 the street or somewhere-- 738 00:29:07,105 --> 00:29:08,460 I have a petition here. 739 00:29:08,460 --> 00:29:10,570 Will you sign up to support legislation to 740 00:29:10,570 --> 00:29:12,750 reduce traffic accidents. 741 00:29:12,750 --> 00:29:14,870 OK, do you think there's some gimmick here? 742 00:29:14,870 --> 00:29:17,200 I mean, who's for traffic accidents? 743 00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:18,260 The person says yes. 744 00:29:18,260 --> 00:29:20,130 OK, I'm going to sign that one. 745 00:29:20,130 --> 00:29:22,020 So a lot of people sign that one. 746 00:29:22,020 --> 00:29:23,980 Then you go back to the same house a few weeks later and 747 00:29:23,980 --> 00:29:26,700 you ask the sign, it moves up to over 50% 748 00:29:26,700 --> 00:29:28,780 say yes for the sign. 749 00:29:28,780 --> 00:29:30,450 That's literally the foot-in-the-door. 750 00:29:30,450 --> 00:29:34,060 Once you sign this petition, then you're incredibly more 751 00:29:34,060 --> 00:29:36,290 likely to say yes for the sign. 752 00:29:36,290 --> 00:29:40,090 And what we understand that to be through other experiments, 753 00:29:40,090 --> 00:29:41,590 we want to be consistent in our behavior. 754 00:29:41,590 --> 00:29:43,860 Well gee, if we're willing to sign a petition for fewer 755 00:29:43,860 --> 00:29:48,050 accidents, why wouldn't we put a sign on our lawn to further 756 00:29:48,050 --> 00:29:51,060 promote people not getting run over. 757 00:29:51,060 --> 00:29:54,410 All right, but once you make the small agreement, then 758 00:29:54,410 --> 00:29:56,570 you're willing to do something way larger that by itself you 759 00:29:56,570 --> 00:29:57,810 would never do. 760 00:29:57,810 --> 00:30:00,450 And I can't tell you from my own experience how much that 761 00:30:00,450 --> 00:30:03,380 when people end up doing something they really wish 762 00:30:03,380 --> 00:30:06,590 they hadn't done, it often starts-- and you may know this 763 00:30:06,590 --> 00:30:09,740 in yourself-- with a small thing, good or bad. 764 00:30:09,740 --> 00:30:11,770 It seems small, then you do a little bit more, and then a 765 00:30:11,770 --> 00:30:14,090 little more, and then all of a sudden, you're surrounded by a 766 00:30:14,090 --> 00:30:17,550 SWAT team in your dorm room. 767 00:30:17,550 --> 00:30:19,840 And you say, how did this happen, right? 768 00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:23,720 It's amazing how often things, good and bad, start with small 769 00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:26,960 steps, another small step, and all of a sudden you're on a 770 00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:28,990 slippery slope to doing something you could never have 771 00:30:28,990 --> 00:30:33,020 imagined if it would have been posed as strongly as you ended 772 00:30:33,020 --> 00:30:33,910 up doing it. 773 00:30:33,910 --> 00:30:34,300 Does that make sense? 774 00:30:34,300 --> 00:30:36,580 OK, so this is compliance. 775 00:30:36,580 --> 00:30:38,310 Little question, little question, all of a sudden, 776 00:30:38,310 --> 00:30:41,890 you're doing something you would never do by itself. 777 00:30:41,890 --> 00:30:42,520 Obedience. 778 00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:44,570 Now obedience, we think, well, we're not 779 00:30:44,570 --> 00:30:46,095 going to be that obedient. 780 00:30:46,095 --> 00:30:48,350 We, to a certain extent, obey our parents, the police, our 781 00:30:48,350 --> 00:30:49,840 bosses, and firefighters. 782 00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:53,000 Again, a certain amount of obedience logically we think 783 00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,580 is necessary for social order and civilization so that we're 784 00:30:55,580 --> 00:30:58,510 all organized in some non-chaotic way. 785 00:30:58,510 --> 00:31:02,290 And it varies across groups and times and so on. 786 00:31:02,290 --> 00:31:06,010 But we know there are horrible examples where obedience is 787 00:31:06,010 --> 00:31:09,430 associated with genocide. 788 00:31:09,430 --> 00:31:12,730 The defense of many Nazis in Germany was that they were 789 00:31:12,730 --> 00:31:15,080 simply following orders, right? 790 00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:19,020 And in genocides all over the world, tragically, tragically, 791 00:31:19,020 --> 00:31:21,140 people will say why do they do that? 792 00:31:21,140 --> 00:31:23,180 Why would they end up-- and if you had posed it that way to 793 00:31:23,180 --> 00:31:27,230 people, why would you end up murdering many people, 794 00:31:27,230 --> 00:31:29,680 innocent people, defenseless people? 795 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:33,820 So often, part of it is being obedient to some group. 796 00:31:33,820 --> 00:31:36,880 So now comes one of the all time amazing experiments that 797 00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:38,950 we can't pull off-- although I'm going to tell you it was 798 00:31:38,950 --> 00:31:41,230 pulled off in a certain way recently-- 799 00:31:41,230 --> 00:31:42,580 from Stanley Milgram. 800 00:31:42,580 --> 00:31:44,810 So it works like this. 801 00:31:44,810 --> 00:31:47,460 This is the actual flyer that Milgram at Yale sent out, 802 00:31:47,460 --> 00:31:49,640 "Persons Needed for a Study of Memory." And 803 00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:50,680 they'll pay you $4. 804 00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:53,080 At that time that was something. 805 00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,050 And you would come into Professor Stanley Milgram, the 806 00:31:55,050 --> 00:31:58,110 Department of psychology at Yale University. 807 00:31:58,110 --> 00:31:59,460 And here was the gimmick. 808 00:31:59,460 --> 00:32:01,790 It was a newspaper add like that. 809 00:32:01,790 --> 00:32:02,510 And you would come in. 810 00:32:02,510 --> 00:32:03,800 And there would be two people in the room. 811 00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:07,970 One was a confederate and one was you, who naively, honestly 812 00:32:07,970 --> 00:32:09,680 just shows up to do an experiment. 813 00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:12,270 They tell you they're here to help science improve learning 814 00:32:12,270 --> 00:32:14,590 and memory through punishment. 815 00:32:14,590 --> 00:32:17,820 Can we improve learning and memory through punishment? 816 00:32:17,820 --> 00:32:20,620 And we're going to say that one of you will randomly 817 00:32:20,620 --> 00:32:23,060 become the teacher and one will become the learner. 818 00:32:23,060 --> 00:32:24,480 And they make it look like a lottery. 819 00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:25,620 They hand out a piece of paper. 820 00:32:25,620 --> 00:32:27,190 But it's all a set up. 821 00:32:27,190 --> 00:32:29,310 You will become the teacher. 822 00:32:29,310 --> 00:32:31,340 The other person will become the learner. 823 00:32:31,340 --> 00:32:33,880 You will become the teacher. 824 00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:35,900 And you get sets of word pairs to memorize. 825 00:32:39,170 --> 00:32:40,980 As a teacher, you give a word and the student is supposedly 826 00:32:40,980 --> 00:32:41,940 to give you the right answer. 827 00:32:41,940 --> 00:32:43,690 You have the answer in front of you. 828 00:32:43,690 --> 00:32:47,210 And you tell them whether they were right or wrong. 829 00:32:47,210 --> 00:32:49,120 If they give you the correct answer, you're supposed to say 830 00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:52,450 "good" or "that's right" to encourage good learning. 831 00:32:52,450 --> 00:32:54,630 If they give you the incorrect response, you're supposed to 832 00:32:54,630 --> 00:32:58,720 press a button that delivers a shock. 833 00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:00,570 Here is the device they used. 834 00:33:00,570 --> 00:33:03,670 And with every one of these buttons, the voltage goes up. 835 00:33:03,670 --> 00:33:09,430 And you, as the teacher, sample a 45 volt shock which I 836 00:33:09,430 --> 00:33:12,960 can tell you is moderately uncomfortable. 837 00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:15,270 It's not terrible, but you know it's not fun. 838 00:33:15,270 --> 00:33:16,320 OK, so you know that. 839 00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,020 In case you had some illusion about that, you know 45 volts 840 00:33:19,020 --> 00:33:20,210 is already pretty uncomfortable. 841 00:33:20,210 --> 00:33:22,350 So you say that's how it feels, OK? 842 00:33:22,350 --> 00:33:22,840 OK. 843 00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:24,290 Now the other person goes into the room. 844 00:33:24,290 --> 00:33:27,000 And you're sitting there as the teacher. 845 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:28,380 So here's the set up. 846 00:33:28,380 --> 00:33:31,550 Here you are getting your $4. 847 00:33:31,550 --> 00:33:34,860 Here's the scientist in a white jacket 848 00:33:34,860 --> 00:33:36,440 telling you what to do-- 849 00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:37,450 the researcher. 850 00:33:37,450 --> 00:33:40,140 Here's the so-called learner, but that's really a 851 00:33:40,140 --> 00:33:40,880 confederate. 852 00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,100 They're not really getting shocked in the other room. 853 00:33:43,100 --> 00:33:46,160 But they're going to play act a lot. 854 00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,040 And you're sitting there in front of this device that goes 855 00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:54,110 from 15 to 450 volts in small steps of 15 volts. 856 00:33:54,110 --> 00:33:56,450 30 switches across here. 857 00:33:56,450 --> 00:33:58,670 150 has a label that says strong shock. 858 00:33:58,670 --> 00:34:00,140 255, intense. 859 00:34:00,140 --> 00:34:03,000 375, danger, severe shock. 860 00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,110 At 435 and 450, there's no word left for the 861 00:34:06,110 --> 00:34:06,910 intensity of shock. 862 00:34:06,910 --> 00:34:08,060 They just put XXX. 863 00:34:08,060 --> 00:34:09,310 All right? 864 00:34:11,510 --> 00:34:12,770 Initially, the learner does well. 865 00:34:12,770 --> 00:34:13,320 Again, it's a set up. 866 00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,159 The learner knows what they're supposed to do. 867 00:34:15,159 --> 00:34:16,860 But then, errors start to make. 868 00:34:16,860 --> 00:34:17,860 The learner starts-- 869 00:34:17,860 --> 00:34:21,310 and with every error, you're supposed to go one worse. 870 00:34:21,310 --> 00:34:23,630 The learner complains that the shocks are starting to hurt as 871 00:34:23,630 --> 00:34:25,989 they move up to about 100. 872 00:34:25,989 --> 00:34:29,320 Then they scream in the other room when you give the shock. 873 00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:30,670 And the participants-- 874 00:34:30,670 --> 00:34:33,170 I can tell you, they're just like you would think, just 875 00:34:33,170 --> 00:34:33,770 like you would do. 876 00:34:33,770 --> 00:34:35,270 You go like, I really don't like this, This 877 00:34:35,270 --> 00:34:36,389 doesn't seem right. 878 00:34:36,389 --> 00:34:40,210 And the person running the experiment says, your job is 879 00:34:40,210 --> 00:34:41,790 to do the next thing. 880 00:34:41,790 --> 00:34:42,540 OK? 881 00:34:42,540 --> 00:34:43,569 And the people are suffering. 882 00:34:43,569 --> 00:34:45,130 And like, this can't be right? 883 00:34:45,130 --> 00:34:46,489 And how is this happening at Yale? 884 00:34:46,489 --> 00:34:47,810 And so on. 885 00:34:47,810 --> 00:34:50,690 So think what you would do. 886 00:34:50,690 --> 00:34:52,280 The learner complains about his or her 887 00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:53,750 condition the other room. 888 00:34:53,750 --> 00:34:54,739 More errors. 889 00:34:54,739 --> 00:34:58,700 Now the teacher is often begging the other person, 890 00:34:58,700 --> 00:35:00,020 please listen and pay attention. 891 00:35:00,020 --> 00:35:01,440 I don't want to shock you any more. 892 00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:02,345 Come on, get it together. 893 00:35:02,345 --> 00:35:04,000 I don't want to do it any more. 894 00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,500 Then the person starts to scream from the other room. 895 00:35:06,500 --> 00:35:09,710 "You have no right to keep me here!" Another shock. 896 00:35:09,710 --> 00:35:10,780 "I refuse to answer anymore. 897 00:35:10,780 --> 00:35:12,660 You can't hold me here!" The person's shouting this from 898 00:35:12,660 --> 00:35:13,480 the other room. 899 00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:17,100 "My heart is bothering me!" At 300 volts, the person says 900 00:35:17,100 --> 00:35:19,830 they refuse to answer. 901 00:35:19,830 --> 00:35:22,060 You turn your head to the experimenter and you say, the 902 00:35:22,060 --> 00:35:24,140 person's not even answering at 300 volts, what do I do? 903 00:35:24,140 --> 00:35:28,290 And the scientist in the white jacket says, if there's no 904 00:35:28,290 --> 00:35:31,100 response, that's a wrong response. 905 00:35:31,100 --> 00:35:32,350 So you give another shock. 906 00:35:34,750 --> 00:35:37,750 And at 350 volts, the person's not even responding anymore. 907 00:35:37,750 --> 00:35:39,790 As far as you know, they're sort of dead. 908 00:35:39,790 --> 00:35:42,050 I mean, you don't know what they're doing, but you think 909 00:35:42,050 --> 00:35:43,200 something horrible has happened. 910 00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:44,430 This is fully play acted. 911 00:35:44,430 --> 00:35:46,380 And the people who went through this were miserable. 912 00:35:46,380 --> 00:35:48,860 So much so that it's been almost impossible to do this 913 00:35:48,860 --> 00:35:49,290 ever since. 914 00:35:49,290 --> 00:35:52,440 People think it's too dangerous for the naive 915 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:54,580 research participant who thinks they're nearly shocking 916 00:35:54,580 --> 00:35:55,830 somebody to death. 917 00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:00,470 So how many people go all the way up? 918 00:36:00,470 --> 00:36:03,710 And this person's screaming, begging, saying their heart is 919 00:36:03,710 --> 00:36:06,720 starting to give out, and finally going silent. 920 00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:10,100 How many people go all the way up to 450, all the way up? 921 00:36:10,100 --> 00:36:12,730 Long after the person has stopped responding and you get 922 00:36:12,730 --> 00:36:15,080 these incredibly bad times? 923 00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:18,360 So they asked experts and they said, it'll be about 1 to 3%, 924 00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:19,510 and that's a good way to identify 925 00:36:19,510 --> 00:36:21,866 psychopaths in the world. 926 00:36:21,866 --> 00:36:24,510 And you could certainly sit there and you could say what 927 00:36:24,510 --> 00:36:26,110 I'm going to say, like I would never do that. 928 00:36:26,110 --> 00:36:28,920 And I'm going to convince you in a minute, guaranteed in 929 00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,780 this room most of you would do that all the way, guaranteed, 930 00:36:32,780 --> 00:36:33,965 by any scientific evidence. 931 00:36:33,965 --> 00:36:36,550 And all of us will say I would never do that. 932 00:36:36,550 --> 00:36:38,640 The power of the situation. 933 00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,590 So how many people went all the way? two thirds 934 00:36:41,590 --> 00:36:42,870 went all the way. 935 00:36:42,870 --> 00:36:43,380 Two thirds. 936 00:36:43,380 --> 00:36:44,160 Look at around. 937 00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:45,815 Look to your left and to your right. 938 00:36:45,815 --> 00:36:47,760 If there's three of you, two of you will 939 00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:49,370 go all the way until-- 940 00:36:49,370 --> 00:36:51,540 I know, no, not me, not me, not me. 941 00:36:54,700 --> 00:36:56,810 So here's what experts said. 942 00:36:56,810 --> 00:36:59,040 Once you get to some intensity level, practically nobody's 943 00:36:59,040 --> 00:36:59,860 going to do it. 944 00:36:59,860 --> 00:37:04,510 Here's the two thirds of people who went all the way. 945 00:37:04,510 --> 00:37:08,690 And so two thirds went all the way, but 946 00:37:08,690 --> 00:37:09,940 everybody went to 100 volts. 947 00:37:09,940 --> 00:37:12,280 Almost nobody stopped early on. 948 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:14,970 But one third stopped around a third through. 949 00:37:14,970 --> 00:37:19,320 Two thirds went all the way. 950 00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:22,260 So people have said, oh, that's the 1950s. 951 00:37:22,260 --> 00:37:25,370 People were much more conformist and obedient. 952 00:37:25,370 --> 00:37:30,200 That was before Vietnam, before rock 'n' roll, before 953 00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:32,280 Watergate, and all this stuff that has 954 00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:33,700 made us distrust authority. 955 00:37:33,700 --> 00:37:38,400 And before the internet, we know what's going on. 956 00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,920 So now, you guys go like it's not us. 957 00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:43,710 That's some sad 1950s people who are just following 958 00:37:43,710 --> 00:37:44,200 instructions. 959 00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:47,000 We're independent people of the 21st century. 960 00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:50,000 So they almost redid this experiment in some reduced way 961 00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,900 a couple years ago and it doesn't make a difference. 962 00:37:53,900 --> 00:37:57,580 So 2009, here are some things they did to 963 00:37:57,580 --> 00:37:59,000 get approval of this. 964 00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:00,000 First of all, they carefully-- 965 00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,110 even more carefully than before-- screened the subjects 966 00:38:02,110 --> 00:38:03,790 to make sure they were in good mental health so they weren't 967 00:38:03,790 --> 00:38:06,120 breaking down people. 968 00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,360 They were told three times they could stop and still get 969 00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:09,830 $50 for participating. 970 00:38:09,830 --> 00:38:12,490 They were told multiple times, you can stop, you can stop, 971 00:38:12,490 --> 00:38:14,260 you can stop. 972 00:38:14,260 --> 00:38:16,170 After the experiment they were instantly told what the whole 973 00:38:16,170 --> 00:38:18,880 thing was about, which wasn't that well organized before. 974 00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,080 They had a clinical psychologist sitting there to 975 00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:24,810 make sure that the person seems not to distressed. 976 00:38:24,810 --> 00:38:26,920 And they said, look since we know that pretty much 977 00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:28,390 everybody who went to 150 went all the way, 978 00:38:28,390 --> 00:38:29,430 we'll stop at 150 volts. 979 00:38:29,430 --> 00:38:31,430 We won't torture a person all the way through. 980 00:38:31,430 --> 00:38:33,030 But 150 is pretty big. 981 00:38:33,030 --> 00:38:34,960 You're doing it for quite a bit of time. 982 00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,720 So what happens in 2009? 983 00:38:38,720 --> 00:38:41,260 For Milgram, 79% went 150 volts. 984 00:38:41,260 --> 00:38:45,810 In 2009, 70% of undergraduates go to that same length. 985 00:38:45,810 --> 00:38:47,990 It looks pretty much the same. 986 00:38:47,990 --> 00:38:49,520 And by the way, in case you thought women were more 987 00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,760 merciful, or not, they are identical to men in these 988 00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,140 studies in 2009. 989 00:38:55,140 --> 00:38:57,160 It's stunning. 990 00:38:57,160 --> 00:39:00,350 And so everybody who worries about situations in the world 991 00:39:00,350 --> 00:39:04,040 where people do horrible things to other people is 992 00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,530 incredibly impressed by this experiment. 993 00:39:06,530 --> 00:39:11,500 Where so a little pressure, as a volunteer experiment, where 994 00:39:11,500 --> 00:39:14,890 you can stop any time and walk out, it's not your boss, it"s 995 00:39:14,890 --> 00:39:17,950 not a general, it's not your culture, it's not your parents 996 00:39:17,950 --> 00:39:20,770 and schools, just an experimenter-- 997 00:39:20,770 --> 00:39:22,970 almost everybody goes all the way. 998 00:39:22,970 --> 00:39:25,360 And that's true in 2009 as well. 999 00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,670 We're incredibly prone, if we have the right situation, to 1000 00:39:28,670 --> 00:39:32,910 be obedient beyond what our humanitarian spirits suggest 1001 00:39:32,910 --> 00:39:35,140 they would be. 1002 00:39:35,140 --> 00:39:37,600 So nobody really knows why we're so obedient. 1003 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:39,220 Although I'll show you some things that people have 1004 00:39:39,220 --> 00:39:40,280 discovered. 1005 00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:42,340 Does the status of the authority figure matter? 1006 00:39:42,340 --> 00:39:44,310 Does it matter that the person seems like a scientist who 1007 00:39:44,310 --> 00:39:45,970 knows what he or she is doing? 1008 00:39:45,970 --> 00:39:48,940 Is it belief that the source of authority, because they 1009 00:39:48,940 --> 00:39:52,480 know what they're doing, it must be OK? 1010 00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:55,110 How much does it matter that you can't quite figure out how 1011 00:39:55,110 --> 00:39:57,080 to get out of this situation? 1012 00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,090 And how much of it is a slippery slope like we've 1013 00:39:59,090 --> 00:39:59,550 talked about? 1014 00:39:59,550 --> 00:40:01,160 Well if I can do five volts, I can do 10. 1015 00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:02,290 If I can do 10, I can 20. 1016 00:40:02,290 --> 00:40:03,720 If I can do 20, I can do 30. 1017 00:40:03,720 --> 00:40:07,730 And somehow, five by five, you end up at 400. 1018 00:40:07,730 --> 00:40:09,020 So these are all ideas. 1019 00:40:09,020 --> 00:40:10,420 So people have looked at this. 1020 00:40:10,420 --> 00:40:12,600 What if the person gives no instructions? 1021 00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:13,520 Almost nobody does it. 1022 00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,270 If the person just says, here's the experiment, please 1023 00:40:16,270 --> 00:40:18,660 do it, and then doesn't talk with you when you say you want 1024 00:40:18,660 --> 00:40:20,210 to stop, people stop. 1025 00:40:20,210 --> 00:40:22,090 All they have to say though is "please 1026 00:40:22,090 --> 00:40:25,020 continue" and that's enough. 1027 00:40:25,020 --> 00:40:26,360 Men and women aren't different. 1028 00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:28,960 If you do the experiment not in a psychology-- 1029 00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:32,010 here's the baseline, the 70% that go all the way. 1030 00:40:32,010 --> 00:40:33,150 In an office building, it's less. 1031 00:40:33,150 --> 00:40:33,840 Why do you think that? 1032 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,090 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 1033 00:40:36,090 --> 00:40:37,010 PROFESSOR: People's interpretation of the 1034 00:40:37,010 --> 00:40:40,480 situation is not quite as officially scientific. 1035 00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:42,340 Still, you get a lot. 1036 00:40:42,340 --> 00:40:44,060 If the person in charge doesn't seem like they know 1037 00:40:44,060 --> 00:40:46,020 what they're doing, particularly in a white coat, 1038 00:40:46,020 --> 00:40:48,950 doesn't seem like an advanced scientist, pushes way back the 1039 00:40:48,950 --> 00:40:50,310 authority the person. 1040 00:40:50,310 --> 00:40:54,490 If the experimenter is more formal but away from you so 1041 00:40:54,490 --> 00:40:55,930 you don't see them-- they're talking to you over an 1042 00:40:55,930 --> 00:40:57,130 intercom or something-- 1043 00:40:57,130 --> 00:40:59,610 that pushes you back to do it less likely. 1044 00:40:59,610 --> 00:41:01,970 If the victim is in the same room as you are, 1045 00:41:01,970 --> 00:41:02,880 that reduces it. 1046 00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,820 Although still 40% go all the way. 1047 00:41:05,820 --> 00:41:07,920 If you have to touch the person while the person's 1048 00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,050 being shocked, that reduces it. 1049 00:41:10,050 --> 00:41:11,640 And if you have a confederate-- 1050 00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:13,510 another person working with you on this-- 1051 00:41:13,510 --> 00:41:15,800 who rebels, that also has a huge effect. 1052 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,870 This idea again if there's one dissenter, that frees you 1053 00:41:18,870 --> 00:41:22,430 sometimes to follow your own ideas and thoughts. 1054 00:41:22,430 --> 00:41:25,190 But these one dissenters are set up who 1055 00:41:25,190 --> 00:41:27,170 becomes that one dissenter. 1056 00:41:27,170 --> 00:41:31,890 OK, the famous Stanford prison experiment. 1057 00:41:31,890 --> 00:41:33,500 Same idea, roughly speaking. 1058 00:41:33,500 --> 00:41:35,860 And unbelievably relevant to Abu Ghraib. 1059 00:41:35,860 --> 00:41:38,070 It's almost as if from the viewpoint of psychologists 1060 00:41:38,070 --> 00:41:41,640 they had rerun the Stanford experiment except in Iraq with 1061 00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,240 real prisoners and American soldiers. 1062 00:41:44,240 --> 00:41:46,420 But in the Stanford prison experiment, there was a social 1063 00:41:46,420 --> 00:41:48,770 situation where they basically told people that they would be 1064 00:41:48,770 --> 00:41:51,050 either the prisoners or the guards, Stanford 1065 00:41:51,050 --> 00:41:53,500 undergraduates. 1066 00:41:53,500 --> 00:41:56,300 And they would put them in the basement of their psychology 1067 00:41:56,300 --> 00:41:58,300 building and they would use various closets 1068 00:41:58,300 --> 00:42:01,010 as the pretend cells. 1069 00:42:01,010 --> 00:42:02,150 You were assigned to be randomly 1070 00:42:02,150 --> 00:42:03,500 a guard or a prisoner. 1071 00:42:03,500 --> 00:42:05,780 To make it a little bit more realistic, they surprised you 1072 00:42:05,780 --> 00:42:06,480 when they picked you up. 1073 00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:07,720 You had signed up. 1074 00:42:07,720 --> 00:42:10,110 But they would run to your house and a guy would grab you 1075 00:42:10,110 --> 00:42:12,720 and say, you're coming now and you're the prisoner. 1076 00:42:12,720 --> 00:42:14,690 There's a little play acting in this as well. 1077 00:42:14,690 --> 00:42:16,400 And what they found was that the guards-- 1078 00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:18,390 the Stanford students who were randomly assigned to be 1079 00:42:18,390 --> 00:42:22,160 guards-- became so sadistic, and the Stanford students who 1080 00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,710 were the prisoners were so stressed-- that the study was 1081 00:42:24,710 --> 00:42:25,530 stopped in six days. 1082 00:42:25,530 --> 00:42:26,780 They were going to do 24 days. 1083 00:42:26,780 --> 00:42:30,500 Because people were sobbing, people were doing horrible 1084 00:42:30,500 --> 00:42:32,280 things to one another. 1085 00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,230 Here's pictures of the Stanford-- this reminds you of 1086 00:42:35,230 --> 00:42:35,920 Abu Ghraib, right? 1087 00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:37,660 All lined up like that. 1088 00:42:37,660 --> 00:42:39,920 Typical Stanford students who were dressed 1089 00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:41,280 up and given a baton. 1090 00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:45,100 And they were just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. 1091 00:42:45,100 --> 00:42:49,250 Playing the role of the prison guards, they became abusive 1092 00:42:49,250 --> 00:42:53,390 and mean to an astounding degree. 1093 00:42:53,390 --> 00:42:57,090 And so again, this idea now-- 1094 00:42:57,090 --> 00:42:59,470 weirdly enough, the only authority here is Phil 1095 00:42:59,470 --> 00:43:00,940 Zimbardo, the social psychologist, who said your 1096 00:43:00,940 --> 00:43:02,560 job is to be the guard and your job 1097 00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:04,260 is to be the prisoner. 1098 00:43:04,260 --> 00:43:06,180 So anybody could have stopped sort of at anything. 1099 00:43:06,180 --> 00:43:09,120 But once they got playing these roles, it took them only 1100 00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:13,450 a few hours to really occupy the life of the sadistic guard 1101 00:43:13,450 --> 00:43:16,660 and the life of the victimized prisoner. 1102 00:43:16,660 --> 00:43:21,230 So think of this thing in Abu Ghraib where you had a huge 1103 00:43:21,230 --> 00:43:24,690 number of prisoners, a very small number of American 1104 00:43:24,690 --> 00:43:27,800 soldiers, very few of the American soldiers had any 1105 00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,840 training about how to think about being a guard. 1106 00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,340 It was almost as if you had rerun the Stanford prison 1107 00:43:33,340 --> 00:43:34,480 experiment. 1108 00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,670 Add to it fear on both sides of harm that's intended by the 1109 00:43:38,670 --> 00:43:39,560 other groups. 1110 00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:41,470 Add to it the cultural divisions between the 1111 00:43:41,470 --> 00:43:45,020 Americans and the Iraqis, so they really felt like the 1112 00:43:45,020 --> 00:43:46,210 other group was another group. 1113 00:43:46,210 --> 00:43:48,490 I mean, you know here at Stanford in the basement that 1114 00:43:48,490 --> 00:43:50,780 these were your other students. 1115 00:43:50,780 --> 00:43:52,675 Half the room could be the guards here, Half the room 1116 00:43:52,675 --> 00:43:53,840 could be the prisoners here. 1117 00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,640 Nobody has been allowed to rerun this because the 1118 00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,770 behavior was so horrible, so fast, that there's nobody-- 1119 00:43:59,770 --> 00:44:01,083 that you're simply just not allowed to do an experiment 1120 00:44:01,083 --> 00:44:02,333 like that again. 1121 00:44:04,420 --> 00:44:07,390 And here again is a picture of the guards, the students 1122 00:44:07,390 --> 00:44:09,120 randomly chosen to be the guards. 1123 00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:10,190 And here's one of the students randomly 1124 00:44:10,190 --> 00:44:12,050 chosen to be the prisoner. 1125 00:44:12,050 --> 00:44:13,290 It looks just like Abu Ghraib. 1126 00:44:13,290 --> 00:44:18,080 It's as if the Army should have heard about that 1127 00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:20,755 experiment before that. 1128 00:44:20,755 --> 00:44:23,330 And here's more pictures of the sort of abuse. 1129 00:44:23,330 --> 00:44:26,460 And you could find lots of videos online about that. 1130 00:44:26,460 --> 00:44:28,550 OK so I'm going to jump forward to this. 1131 00:44:28,550 --> 00:44:30,970 So again we could think, again, the more you know about 1132 00:44:30,970 --> 00:44:34,800 this, how free was this person to do the right thing. 1133 00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,690 And how situationally dominated were they by 1134 00:44:37,690 --> 00:44:39,900 authority and by the situation that around them. 1135 00:44:39,900 --> 00:44:42,430 If you think about the Milgram experiment, who's your 1136 00:44:42,430 --> 00:44:43,920 commander in charge of you. 1137 00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:46,580 If you think about the Zimbardo experiment, you have 1138 00:44:46,580 --> 00:44:51,270 the job of being the guard. 1139 00:44:51,270 --> 00:44:54,490 And is she really a bad person, or did you put her a 1140 00:44:54,490 --> 00:44:59,140 hopeless situation to do a good job? 1141 00:44:59,140 --> 00:45:02,320 So the last thing I want to talk-- let's talk about that 1142 00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:02,750 for one second. 1143 00:45:02,750 --> 00:45:03,420 Any thoughts? 1144 00:45:03,420 --> 00:45:04,670 How would you find her? 1145 00:45:07,090 --> 00:45:08,040 Yes? 1146 00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:10,730 AUDIENCE: What kind of torture [INAUDIBLE]? 1147 00:45:10,730 --> 00:45:12,350 PROFESSOR: What kind of abuse was in the prison? 1148 00:45:12,350 --> 00:45:15,630 Well, from what one reads, and who knows how accurate exactly 1149 00:45:15,630 --> 00:45:21,460 that is, one person did die. 1150 00:45:21,460 --> 00:45:24,670 Not much of it was the torture of the sort of water boarding 1151 00:45:24,670 --> 00:45:25,720 that you hear about. 1152 00:45:25,720 --> 00:45:28,690 It was more scaring the heck out of them and embarrassing 1153 00:45:28,690 --> 00:45:30,520 them horribly. 1154 00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,140 Taking a bunch of people, having them all be naked, and 1155 00:45:33,140 --> 00:45:37,160 piling them up, putting them on a leash, I'm sure it wasn't 1156 00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:38,180 physically nice. 1157 00:45:38,180 --> 00:45:40,680 It wasn't brutal in the most sense. 1158 00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,410 It was more taunting and humiliating. 1159 00:45:44,410 --> 00:45:48,210 But there was some pain involved as well. 1160 00:45:48,210 --> 00:45:49,680 It wasn't murderous. 1161 00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:52,230 You could say that limit. 1162 00:45:52,230 --> 00:45:52,520 Yes? 1163 00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:54,734 AUDIENCE: Has anyone been able to do a follow up? 1164 00:45:54,734 --> 00:45:56,660 I mean, I know given the circumstances [INAUDIBLE]. 1165 00:45:56,660 --> 00:45:57,880 PROFESSOR: It's almost impossible. 1166 00:45:57,880 --> 00:45:58,750 The same thing with the Milgram. 1167 00:45:58,750 --> 00:46:01,860 We did a little bit in 2009 with these limitations, right. 1168 00:46:01,860 --> 00:46:03,890 But the amazing thing is it looks just like-- 1169 00:46:03,890 --> 00:46:07,240 as far as they took it-- just like the 1950s Milgram. 1170 00:46:07,240 --> 00:46:12,080 The Stanford experiment, people now think ethically you 1171 00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:12,820 can't do that. 1172 00:46:12,820 --> 00:46:16,360 Because not only is the behavior of the guards 1173 00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,500 abysmal, but the people who were the prisoners were really 1174 00:46:20,500 --> 00:46:23,000 depressed afterwards, were really anxious afterwards. 1175 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,730 It wasn't like stepping in and out of an experiment. 1176 00:46:25,730 --> 00:46:28,070 As were, by the way, the Milgram subjects who went all 1177 00:46:28,070 --> 00:46:28,760 the way up. 1178 00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:31,350 They reported being haunted by this experience for 1179 00:46:31,350 --> 00:46:32,490 many years to come. 1180 00:46:32,490 --> 00:46:34,250 So these kinds of things people would not do now, 1181 00:46:34,250 --> 00:46:38,450 because it's just considered too risky for the 1182 00:46:38,450 --> 00:46:38,990 participants. 1183 00:46:38,990 --> 00:46:39,488 Yes? 1184 00:46:39,488 --> 00:46:44,468 AUDIENCE: So the Stanford people, the students that were 1185 00:46:44,468 --> 00:46:48,706 participating in it, did they go on to live normal lives 1186 00:46:48,706 --> 00:46:48,960 [INAUDIBLE]? 1187 00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:50,260 PROFESSOR: Oh, what's the long-term damage? 1188 00:46:50,260 --> 00:46:51,130 That's a very good question. 1189 00:46:51,130 --> 00:46:53,090 I don't know they're being followed up or-- that's a very 1190 00:46:53,090 --> 00:46:53,690 good question. 1191 00:46:53,690 --> 00:46:56,210 I know for months, the people, especially with the prisoners, 1192 00:46:56,210 --> 00:46:58,900 said they felt very, very, very bad. 1193 00:46:58,900 --> 00:47:01,410 But I don't know if decades later they 1194 00:47:01,410 --> 00:47:02,150 followed them up or not. 1195 00:47:02,150 --> 00:47:05,820 And that would be an interesting question. 1196 00:47:05,820 --> 00:47:06,751 Yes? 1197 00:47:06,751 --> 00:47:10,679 AUDIENCE: Do they consider [INAUDIBLE] 1198 00:47:10,679 --> 00:47:14,116 for instance, if someone were knowledgeable in psychology 1199 00:47:14,116 --> 00:47:15,366 [INAUDIBLE] 1200 00:47:18,490 --> 00:47:20,430 they had been trained for in psychology? 1201 00:47:20,430 --> 00:47:21,680 PROFESSOR: Yes. 1202 00:47:24,770 --> 00:47:27,150 It's not so much psychology, I'd say. 1203 00:47:27,150 --> 00:47:28,740 I'm going to give you my impression, because I don't 1204 00:47:28,740 --> 00:47:29,645 have a good answer. 1205 00:47:29,645 --> 00:47:32,280 It's if you get the right kind of training so you're prepared 1206 00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,360 for situation, you have much better chance. 1207 00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,490 So remember earlier we talked about-- now it seems very 1208 00:47:36,490 --> 00:47:38,150 academic compared to these experiments-- 1209 00:47:38,150 --> 00:47:40,550 we talked about cognitive busyness. 1210 00:47:40,550 --> 00:47:44,810 That if your mind is not free to evaluate the situation, you 1211 00:47:44,810 --> 00:47:46,830 interpret it in terms of disposition. 1212 00:47:46,830 --> 00:47:48,490 So what does that mean? 1213 00:47:48,490 --> 00:47:52,200 In a scary, complicated situation, we go by our guts. 1214 00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,240 And our guts are, the other person is different. 1215 00:47:56,240 --> 00:47:59,140 I'm in charge of them as the guard, right? 1216 00:47:59,140 --> 00:48:01,990 If we're trained so that we have a second habit we can 1217 00:48:01,990 --> 00:48:04,910 fall back on, then we have a better chance of doing the 1218 00:48:04,910 --> 00:48:08,350 right thing when the situation arises. 1219 00:48:08,350 --> 00:48:09,380 This is a general point. 1220 00:48:09,380 --> 00:48:11,370 But yes, just sending in people kind of unprepared-- 1221 00:48:11,370 --> 00:48:13,720 it's not that they have to know psychology, it's that 1222 00:48:13,720 --> 00:48:16,430 they have to be told again and again and again, when you're 1223 00:48:16,430 --> 00:48:20,630 the guard, keep in mind that it's so easy to be abusive. 1224 00:48:20,630 --> 00:48:24,490 It's so easy to be humiliating, that you have to 1225 00:48:24,490 --> 00:48:25,740 guard against that in yourself. 1226 00:48:25,740 --> 00:48:26,770 Does that seem OK? 1227 00:48:26,770 --> 00:48:27,020 Yes. 1228 00:48:27,020 --> 00:48:30,200 So it's training we think is-- 1229 00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:31,400 it's not the intellectual knowledge. 1230 00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,450 It's practicing so that when the moment arises, you're 1231 00:48:34,450 --> 00:48:37,780 ready, is I think what people believe is right thing. 1232 00:48:37,780 --> 00:48:38,580 OK. 1233 00:48:38,580 --> 00:48:40,780 So last thing I want to talk about, a couple of things, is 1234 00:48:40,780 --> 00:48:41,735 bystanders and helping. 1235 00:48:41,735 --> 00:48:44,040 And these are just amazing experiments. 1236 00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:47,170 And in many ways, they're all about embarrassment, and how 1237 00:48:47,170 --> 00:48:50,530 embarrassment makes us incredibly less helpful and 1238 00:48:50,530 --> 00:48:54,100 kind to others than we can imagine. 1239 00:48:54,100 --> 00:48:58,030 So the most famous case that began a lot of this research 1240 00:48:58,030 --> 00:49:00,650 was they murder in New York City of Kitty Genovese. 1241 00:49:00,650 --> 00:49:01,970 And I'm going to read to you just a 1242 00:49:01,970 --> 00:49:03,320 minute about her murder. 1243 00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:06,720 It got a fantastic amount of newspaper coverage. 1244 00:49:06,720 --> 00:49:10,540 And this was the walk home she had to her apartment. 1245 00:49:10,540 --> 00:49:13,970 So at approximately 3:20 in the morning of March 13, 1964, 1246 00:49:13,970 --> 00:49:17,000 28-year old Catherine Genovese was returning to her home a 1247 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:19,210 nice middle-class area of Queens from her 1248 00:49:19,210 --> 00:49:20,410 job as a bar manager. 1249 00:49:20,410 --> 00:49:23,240 She parked her red Fiat at a nearby parking lot, turned off 1250 00:49:23,240 --> 00:49:25,010 the lights and started the walk to her second floor 1251 00:49:25,010 --> 00:49:27,690 apartment some 35 yards away. 1252 00:49:27,690 --> 00:49:30,580 She got as far as a street light when a man grabbed her. 1253 00:49:30,580 --> 00:49:31,490 She screamed. 1254 00:49:31,490 --> 00:49:33,930 The lights went on in a 10 floor apartment building 1255 00:49:33,930 --> 00:49:35,570 nearby, so a lot of people. 1256 00:49:35,570 --> 00:49:36,770 She yelled, "Oh, my God. 1257 00:49:36,770 --> 00:49:37,480 He stabbed me. 1258 00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,100 Please help me." Windows opened in 1259 00:49:39,100 --> 00:49:39,870 the apartment building. 1260 00:49:39,870 --> 00:49:43,230 A man's voice shouted, "Let that girl alone." The attacker 1261 00:49:43,230 --> 00:49:46,470 looked up, shrugged, and walked off down the street. 1262 00:49:46,470 --> 00:49:48,000 Ms. Genovese struggled to her feet. 1263 00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:49,860 Lights went back off in the apartment. 1264 00:49:49,860 --> 00:49:53,140 The attacker comes immediately back and stabs her again. 1265 00:49:53,140 --> 00:49:54,680 She again cries out, "I'm dying. 1266 00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:57,490 I'm dying." Again, the lights come on, and the windows open 1267 00:49:57,490 --> 00:49:59,760 in many of the nearby apartments. 1268 00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:01,860 The assailant again left and got into his 1269 00:50:01,860 --> 00:50:03,040 car and drove away. 1270 00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,760 She staggers to her feet as a city bus drives by. 1271 00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:07,250 It's 3:30 in the morning now. 1272 00:50:07,250 --> 00:50:09,290 The attacker returns again. 1273 00:50:09,290 --> 00:50:11,880 He finds her in the doorway at foot of the stairs and he 1274 00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:14,075 stabs her a third time, this time with a fatal consequence. 1275 00:50:14,075 --> 00:50:16,560 It's 3:50, OK? 1276 00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:21,100 Half an hour when the police received the first call. 1277 00:50:21,100 --> 00:50:23,490 They responded quickly, and within two minutes they were 1278 00:50:23,490 --> 00:50:24,170 at the scene. 1279 00:50:24,170 --> 00:50:25,370 She was already dead. 1280 00:50:25,370 --> 00:50:26,110 The only person-- 1281 00:50:26,110 --> 00:50:28,830 well, the one person to call was a neighbor who revealed 1282 00:50:28,830 --> 00:50:31,900 that he had phoned only after much thought and an earlier 1283 00:50:31,900 --> 00:50:33,100 phone call to a friend. 1284 00:50:33,100 --> 00:50:34,330 So he doesn't call the police. 1285 00:50:34,330 --> 00:50:36,220 He calls a friend and says, hmm, I wonder what I should do 1286 00:50:36,220 --> 00:50:37,560 here, right? 1287 00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,050 And he said, I didn't want to get involved. 1288 00:50:40,050 --> 00:50:42,280 Later, it was learned that there were 37 other witnesses 1289 00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,700 to the stalking and stabbing over the half hour period. 1290 00:50:44,700 --> 00:50:47,450 Why did no one offer any help or call the police? 1291 00:50:47,450 --> 00:50:48,860 The story and question were front page 1292 00:50:48,860 --> 00:50:49,890 news across the country. 1293 00:50:49,890 --> 00:50:52,430 Urban and moral decay, apathy, indifference where some of the 1294 00:50:52,430 --> 00:50:53,970 many offered explanations. 1295 00:50:53,970 --> 00:50:56,390 This was one of these cases that people said, this shows 1296 00:50:56,390 --> 00:50:59,420 you how bad off we are, especially in cities, where 1297 00:50:59,420 --> 00:51:02,070 people just don't care about other people. 1298 00:51:02,070 --> 00:51:02,720 OK. 1299 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:06,380 They won't make a phone call to the police, except one 1300 00:51:06,380 --> 00:51:10,200 person hemming and hawing his way for half an hour. 1301 00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:14,000 So the lack of the bystanders helping this woman, is it 1302 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:15,950 because people are selfish? 1303 00:51:15,950 --> 00:51:18,380 Nowadays, you can bet you'd have a video of that on 1304 00:51:18,380 --> 00:51:19,100 YouTube, right? 1305 00:51:19,100 --> 00:51:21,710 The question was what about the rest of it? 1306 00:51:21,710 --> 00:51:22,210 [INAUDIBLE] 1307 00:51:22,210 --> 00:51:25,360 my life, fear of getting hurt, what would you have done? 1308 00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:27,460 Now, let me tell you-- 1309 00:51:27,460 --> 00:51:29,570 you'll see the punch line in a moment-- is the more people 1310 00:51:29,570 --> 00:51:31,400 around who could help, the more certain you are that 1311 00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:33,690 nobody's going to help. 1312 00:51:33,690 --> 00:51:37,450 The last thing you want to get help is a bunch of people. 1313 00:51:37,450 --> 00:51:38,200 OK? 1314 00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:40,860 The best chance you have is one person, 1315 00:51:40,860 --> 00:51:42,910 counter-intuitively and against the 1316 00:51:42,910 --> 00:51:44,260 math of multiple people. 1317 00:51:44,260 --> 00:51:45,430 So here we go. 1318 00:51:45,430 --> 00:51:47,750 So the most famous studies-- and show you about three of 1319 00:51:47,750 --> 00:51:50,320 them, because they're just amazing-- 1320 00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,900 about how we won't help people. 1321 00:51:52,900 --> 00:51:55,670 Because if we're not sure what the right thing to do is, and 1322 00:51:55,670 --> 00:51:58,750 there's other people there, it's too embarrassing to do 1323 00:51:58,750 --> 00:52:02,930 the most obvious humanitarian gesture. 1324 00:52:02,930 --> 00:52:04,310 They did a series of experiments, most of them 1325 00:52:04,310 --> 00:52:06,590 around Princeton, looking at ideas 1326 00:52:06,590 --> 00:52:07,850 about pluralistic ignorance. 1327 00:52:07,850 --> 00:52:09,750 They say, each witness is uncertain whether there's a 1328 00:52:09,750 --> 00:52:11,155 real emergency, they look around, if 1329 00:52:11,155 --> 00:52:12,330 the others not reacting-- 1330 00:52:12,330 --> 00:52:14,020 this probably part of the story-- decide it must not be 1331 00:52:14,020 --> 00:52:14,990 real emergency. 1332 00:52:14,990 --> 00:52:18,160 Social evaluation of others, what are they doing? 1333 00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:20,280 Diffusion of responsibility, each person felt that somebody 1334 00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:21,170 else is going to get help. 1335 00:52:21,170 --> 00:52:23,470 So these are parts of the story, but here's the 1336 00:52:23,470 --> 00:52:24,820 experiments. 1337 00:52:24,820 --> 00:52:27,410 You arrive for an experiment to discuss personal problems. 1338 00:52:27,410 --> 00:52:27,930 You signed up. 1339 00:52:27,930 --> 00:52:28,745 You're a Princeton undergraduate. 1340 00:52:28,745 --> 00:52:29,850 You show up. 1341 00:52:29,850 --> 00:52:31,830 There's one to four people put in 1342 00:52:31,830 --> 00:52:33,470 different rooms over intercoms. 1343 00:52:33,470 --> 00:52:36,860 So it's one person sometimes alone or two at 1344 00:52:36,860 --> 00:52:39,200 two different intercoms. 1345 00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:42,400 One person, the confederate, over the intercom, 1346 00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,800 dramatically enacts a person having a seizure. 1347 00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:46,090 All right. 1348 00:52:46,090 --> 00:52:47,770 So imagine you're a student. 1349 00:52:47,770 --> 00:52:49,980 And one of these people, who you believe is randomly 1350 00:52:49,980 --> 00:52:52,390 another student, starts to say, I think I 1351 00:52:52,390 --> 00:52:53,870 need somebody here-- 1352 00:52:53,870 --> 00:52:54,370 dramatically. 1353 00:52:54,370 --> 00:52:55,410 I can do well enough-- 1354 00:52:55,410 --> 00:52:57,350 because I've got one of the seizures coming on. 1355 00:52:57,350 --> 00:52:59,790 I could really use some help, if somebody could help me, 1356 00:52:59,790 --> 00:53:00,890 somebody could help. 1357 00:53:00,890 --> 00:53:01,630 Choking sounds. 1358 00:53:01,630 --> 00:53:02,300 I'm going to die. 1359 00:53:02,300 --> 00:53:03,640 I'm going to die. 1360 00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:04,500 Choking sound. 1361 00:53:04,500 --> 00:53:07,250 The intercom goes quiet. 1362 00:53:07,250 --> 00:53:10,430 What do you do? 1363 00:53:10,430 --> 00:53:14,810 Well, if there's two of you, about 80% of the time, you're 1364 00:53:14,810 --> 00:53:16,200 going to do something. 1365 00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:19,020 If there are six if you, only 30% of the time will anybody 1366 00:53:19,020 --> 00:53:20,780 do anything. 1367 00:53:20,780 --> 00:53:22,042 Yes? 1368 00:53:22,042 --> 00:53:24,838 AUDIENCE: I think sometimes it's also people 1369 00:53:24,838 --> 00:53:25,770 can be really selfish. 1370 00:53:25,770 --> 00:53:30,390 I heard recently in a Johns Hopkins examination that was 1371 00:53:30,390 --> 00:53:32,840 just a few months ago, somebody started having a 1372 00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:35,780 seizure in the middle of the exam, and not a single person 1373 00:53:35,780 --> 00:53:40,515 stopped their test to help them, not even the TA. 1374 00:53:40,515 --> 00:53:42,140 PROFESSOR: So you're saying people can be really selfish, 1375 00:53:42,140 --> 00:53:43,100 because at Johns Hopkins-- 1376 00:53:43,100 --> 00:53:44,340 AUDIENCE: It was their exam. 1377 00:53:44,340 --> 00:53:44,990 They didn't want to stop. 1378 00:53:44,990 --> 00:53:45,870 PROFESSOR: They had an exam. 1379 00:53:45,870 --> 00:53:47,360 And somebody started having a seizure. 1380 00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:49,630 And neither the students nor the teaching assistant did 1381 00:53:49,630 --> 00:53:50,680 anything to help the person. 1382 00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:51,480 AUDIENCE: For a long time. 1383 00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:52,290 PROFESSOR: For a long time. 1384 00:53:52,290 --> 00:53:53,270 OK. 1385 00:53:53,270 --> 00:53:55,120 So you're going to call it selfish. 1386 00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:57,520 And I'm going to agree, in some sense, that's true. 1387 00:53:57,520 --> 00:53:58,890 But I'm going to tell you, it's amazingly-- 1388 00:53:58,890 --> 00:54:00,080 I didn't hear about the story-- it's 1389 00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:02,770 exactly this thing. 1390 00:54:02,770 --> 00:54:04,285 Everything-- and I'll show you, I 1391 00:54:04,285 --> 00:54:05,480 think, three more examples-- 1392 00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,410 every experiment shows that if it's just you and one person, 1393 00:54:08,410 --> 00:54:11,846 you are incredibly more likely to help that person than if 1394 00:54:11,846 --> 00:54:14,210 it's you among five people or 10 people. 1395 00:54:14,210 --> 00:54:17,900 The more people, the more certain you are to do nothing. 1396 00:54:17,900 --> 00:54:19,120 And I'm going to tell you in a moment-- this 1397 00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:20,300 is an amazing example-- 1398 00:54:20,300 --> 00:54:22,260 why the exam matters, too. 1399 00:54:22,260 --> 00:54:22,680 OK? 1400 00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:25,030 Because these experiments will show you that this is deeply 1401 00:54:25,030 --> 00:54:26,370 human, unfortunately. 1402 00:54:26,370 --> 00:54:26,950 OK. 1403 00:54:26,950 --> 00:54:27,810 Deeply human. 1404 00:54:27,810 --> 00:54:31,090 And I think it's not that we're more selfish. 1405 00:54:31,090 --> 00:54:32,950 It's that that were terrible at knowing-- 1406 00:54:32,950 --> 00:54:34,630 this is a question about this-- we're terrible about 1407 00:54:34,630 --> 00:54:37,720 knowing what to do under unusual circumstances. 1408 00:54:37,720 --> 00:54:41,450 And we're overcome by wanting to fit in. 1409 00:54:41,450 --> 00:54:42,810 You look at that person, they're not doing anything. 1410 00:54:42,810 --> 00:54:44,070 They look at you, you're not doing anything. 1411 00:54:44,070 --> 00:54:45,450 You look at that person. 1412 00:54:45,450 --> 00:54:47,490 And you guys are-- you're having a face-off of not doing 1413 00:54:47,490 --> 00:54:48,970 anything while the person's sort of 1414 00:54:48,970 --> 00:54:50,770 sinking into their seizure. 1415 00:54:50,770 --> 00:54:53,050 And you could think it's all about selfishness not helping. 1416 00:54:53,050 --> 00:54:57,230 But we think it's something weirdly about humans that in 1417 00:54:57,230 --> 00:55:00,250 groups, they don't know how to act if it's unusual. 1418 00:55:00,250 --> 00:55:01,900 They just don't know how to do it. 1419 00:55:01,900 --> 00:55:03,720 By themselves, incredibly more likely to help. 1420 00:55:03,720 --> 00:55:04,470 So here's an example. 1421 00:55:04,470 --> 00:55:05,160 I'll show you a couple more. 1422 00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:05,770 Was there a hand? 1423 00:55:05,770 --> 00:55:07,045 Yes? 1424 00:55:07,045 --> 00:55:09,570 AUDIENCE: Is this showing the-- 1425 00:55:09,570 --> 00:55:10,410 PROFESSOR: This is a percentage of 1426 00:55:10,410 --> 00:55:11,130 participants who helped. 1427 00:55:11,130 --> 00:55:12,200 So are you asking the math? 1428 00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:13,992 Are you still better off-- 1429 00:55:13,992 --> 00:55:16,813 AUDIENCE: Is this the percentage of the time the 1430 00:55:16,813 --> 00:55:17,930 person received help or-- 1431 00:55:17,930 --> 00:55:18,370 PROFESSOR: Yes. 1432 00:55:18,370 --> 00:55:19,640 This is a percentage of help. 1433 00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:21,740 You're right that you're still better off with six, but I'll 1434 00:55:21,740 --> 00:55:24,210 show you that very often, it doesn't play out that way. 1435 00:55:24,210 --> 00:55:25,900 But you're right. 1436 00:55:25,900 --> 00:55:27,940 There's a trade-off between the sheer number of people and 1437 00:55:27,940 --> 00:55:28,870 the likelihood per person. 1438 00:55:28,870 --> 00:55:30,390 You're absolutely right. 1439 00:55:30,390 --> 00:55:31,470 That varies a little bit. 1440 00:55:31,470 --> 00:55:34,580 Here's another one called lady in distress. 1441 00:55:34,580 --> 00:55:37,590 A subject walks alone or with a passive confederate, so the 1442 00:55:37,590 --> 00:55:39,360 confederate is set up to do nothing. 1443 00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:42,470 Or with a friend, a real friend, you come as a pair. 1444 00:55:42,470 --> 00:55:44,900 And used you go into a room that's separated by a curtain. 1445 00:55:44,900 --> 00:55:46,930 The experimenter goes to the other room. 1446 00:55:46,930 --> 00:55:49,780 In this case, they made it a woman at the time. 1447 00:55:49,780 --> 00:55:53,060 Turns on a tape recording of a huge fall, 1448 00:55:53,060 --> 00:55:54,060 much bigger than that. 1449 00:55:54,060 --> 00:55:55,130 Boom. 1450 00:55:55,130 --> 00:55:56,580 She's around a curtain. 1451 00:55:56,580 --> 00:56:01,180 And she start moaning, a pre-recorded, painful moan. 1452 00:56:01,180 --> 00:56:03,800 You are sitting on the other side of the curtain. 1453 00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:07,490 Who gets up to go see what happened to the experimenter 1454 00:56:07,490 --> 00:56:09,870 who sounds like they had a huge fall and are 1455 00:56:09,870 --> 00:56:11,350 moaning with pain. 1456 00:56:11,350 --> 00:56:12,370 This is very much like the example you 1457 00:56:12,370 --> 00:56:13,720 said almost, right? 1458 00:56:13,720 --> 00:56:15,120 What do the people do? 1459 00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,170 So here's what happens. 1460 00:56:17,170 --> 00:56:20,900 If you're by yourself, a 70% chance you'll go there. 1461 00:56:20,900 --> 00:56:22,590 You could wonder what's happening to the other 30%, 1462 00:56:22,590 --> 00:56:23,940 but OK, that's still-- 1463 00:56:23,940 --> 00:56:25,190 OK. 1464 00:56:26,990 --> 00:56:29,750 If the other person sits there who's set up to not do 1465 00:56:29,750 --> 00:56:35,260 anything, practically nobody ever go and helps. 1466 00:56:35,260 --> 00:56:36,560 Because you're sitting there, and the other 1467 00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:37,260 person's not doing it. 1468 00:56:37,260 --> 00:56:38,680 And you're going, well, I don't know. 1469 00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:40,090 It's kind of weird situation. 1470 00:56:40,090 --> 00:56:42,940 Am I invading a person's privacy? 1471 00:56:42,940 --> 00:56:44,430 Maybe that wasn't what I thought I was. 1472 00:56:44,430 --> 00:56:45,720 Because the other person doesn't seem to be doing 1473 00:56:45,720 --> 00:56:47,780 anything, because they're set up. 1474 00:56:47,780 --> 00:56:49,230 If there's two people who are naive, you're 1475 00:56:49,230 --> 00:56:50,460 somewhere in between. 1476 00:56:50,460 --> 00:56:53,060 If you come with a friend, somewhere in between. 1477 00:56:53,060 --> 00:56:54,570 But here's the weird thing. 1478 00:56:54,570 --> 00:56:56,760 The more people, the more you kind of try to figure out, 1479 00:56:56,760 --> 00:56:57,800 what's the right thing to do? 1480 00:56:57,800 --> 00:56:58,822 And you're not doing anything, so I'm 1481 00:56:58,822 --> 00:56:59,620 not going to do anything. 1482 00:56:59,620 --> 00:57:01,460 The other person's saying you-- does that make sense? 1483 00:57:01,460 --> 00:57:03,920 Every one of these, the more people there are, the more 1484 00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:06,090 people don't know what to do, and they do nothing. 1485 00:57:06,090 --> 00:57:08,110 Because they don't want to do something weird and 1486 00:57:08,110 --> 00:57:10,440 embarrassing like make trouble or not do what 1487 00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:11,620 you're supposed to do. 1488 00:57:11,620 --> 00:57:12,640 Here's another one. 1489 00:57:12,640 --> 00:57:13,880 Where there's smoke, there's fire. 1490 00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:14,920 Subjects filling out survey. 1491 00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,410 Smoke enters through a vent. 1492 00:57:18,410 --> 00:57:20,365 You're doing this survey alone, in a group of three or 1493 00:57:20,365 --> 00:57:23,460 with two confederate's who notice but ignore the smoke, 1494 00:57:23,460 --> 00:57:25,040 or a friend you bring with you. 1495 00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:28,270 So who leaves the room within six minutes to go get help 1496 00:57:28,270 --> 00:57:32,720 when smoke is billowing into your room? 1497 00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:34,480 As you sit there again-- this is like the Milgram 1498 00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:35,700 experiment-- you go, well, of course I would do it. 1499 00:57:35,700 --> 00:57:38,130 But amazingly, people are sitting there trying to figure 1500 00:57:38,130 --> 00:57:41,810 out, should I finish this first, is this really a fire, 1501 00:57:41,810 --> 00:57:42,970 what's going on here? 1502 00:57:42,970 --> 00:57:46,080 Alone, 75% of the people get up within six minutes and go 1503 00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:48,590 tell somebody, there's smoke billowing into here. 1504 00:57:48,590 --> 00:57:50,410 With two passive confederate-- so people set up to do 1505 00:57:50,410 --> 00:57:52,840 nothing-- only 10% of the time does the individual get up and 1506 00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:53,780 go tell anybody. 1507 00:57:53,780 --> 00:57:55,530 You look around the other two people aren't doing anything, 1508 00:57:55,530 --> 00:57:59,290 you figure well, that must be the right thing to do. 1509 00:57:59,290 --> 00:58:01,850 Two naive subjects-- 1510 00:58:01,850 --> 00:58:03,500 now that we're doing the math this way-- 1511 00:58:03,500 --> 00:58:07,680 12% by individuals, so a third of the groups 1512 00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:09,690 approximately do something. 1513 00:58:09,690 --> 00:58:11,760 That's still pretty low. 1514 00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:14,600 But if you go interestingly in with a friend, that number 1515 00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:16,580 goes up-- a person you really know and trust. 1516 00:58:16,580 --> 00:58:19,100 Because the interpretation is, if it's somebody, you know, 1517 00:58:19,100 --> 00:58:20,110 you're not going to be embarrassed. 1518 00:58:20,110 --> 00:58:22,090 You can say to that person, well, this is a little wacky, 1519 00:58:22,090 --> 00:58:24,760 but shouldn't we go tell somebody there's smoke here or 1520 00:58:24,760 --> 00:58:26,760 somebody collapsed next door? 1521 00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:28,660 And then the friend goes, yes, it's probably a good idea. 1522 00:58:28,660 --> 00:58:30,250 I don't know, but maybe we should do that, right? 1523 00:58:30,250 --> 00:58:31,730 But if you don't know the person, you're not to have 1524 00:58:31,730 --> 00:58:32,700 that conversation. 1525 00:58:32,700 --> 00:58:36,480 So a friend is very powerful to release you from this. 1526 00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:38,900 But if you don't know the other people-- 1527 00:58:38,900 --> 00:58:39,772 yes? 1528 00:58:39,772 --> 00:58:40,756 AUDIENCE: Does it make a difference if 1529 00:58:40,756 --> 00:58:41,371 it's a family member? 1530 00:58:41,371 --> 00:58:43,216 Like if you [INAUDIBLE]? 1531 00:58:43,216 --> 00:58:45,350 PROFESSOR: I don't know that they've done this. 1532 00:58:45,350 --> 00:58:48,010 So these are usually done with undergraduates, so you just 1533 00:58:48,010 --> 00:58:50,030 bring your roommate or your pal. 1534 00:58:50,030 --> 00:58:51,990 I don't if it matters at other levels. 1535 00:58:51,990 --> 00:58:52,970 So that's a very good question. 1536 00:58:52,970 --> 00:58:53,820 And maybe people looked at that. 1537 00:58:53,820 --> 00:58:56,990 I just don't know. 1538 00:58:56,990 --> 00:58:58,320 This is the last experiment. 1539 00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:00,060 And this is kind of the topper of all of this. 1540 00:59:00,060 --> 00:59:01,740 So this gets back to being in an exam situation. 1541 00:59:01,740 --> 00:59:03,650 I'm glad you brought up the --. 1542 00:59:03,650 --> 00:59:06,730 Because this is almost an ironic experiment 1543 00:59:06,730 --> 00:59:07,830 in a deepest sense. 1544 00:59:07,830 --> 00:59:09,670 It's again Darley at Princeton. 1545 00:59:09,670 --> 00:59:10,550 A Good Samaritan. 1546 00:59:10,550 --> 00:59:15,590 So what's the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible 1547 00:59:15,590 --> 00:59:16,310 for those-- 1548 00:59:16,310 --> 00:59:16,770 yes? 1549 00:59:16,770 --> 00:59:19,530 AUDIENCE: Pretty much this guy who's dying 1550 00:59:19,530 --> 00:59:21,840 of thirst on a highway. 1551 00:59:21,840 --> 00:59:23,920 PROFESSOR: Somebody really injured on the side of the 1552 00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:24,435 road, right? 1553 00:59:24,435 --> 00:59:24,720 AUDIENCE: Yes. 1554 00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:25,970 It was somebody who needs help in life. 1555 00:59:25,970 --> 00:59:29,534 And a bunch of people go by one person at a time. 1556 00:59:29,534 --> 00:59:32,468 First person goes by, doesn't do anything. 1557 00:59:32,468 --> 00:59:33,446 Second person doesn't do anything. 1558 00:59:33,446 --> 00:59:35,900 Third person called the Good Samaritan -- 1559 00:59:35,900 --> 00:59:37,300 PROFESSOR: He's from Samaria. 1560 00:59:37,300 --> 00:59:38,220 AUDIENCE: All right. 1561 00:59:38,220 --> 00:59:38,550 PROFESSOR: OK. 1562 00:59:38,550 --> 00:59:38,640 No. 1563 00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:40,443 I'm just telling you that's it. 1564 00:59:40,443 --> 00:59:42,898 AUDIENCE: Sorry--. 1565 00:59:42,898 --> 00:59:43,389 PROFESSOR: No, it's good. 1566 00:59:43,389 --> 00:59:43,715 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 1567 00:59:43,715 --> 00:59:47,480 The third guy looks down at the injured man, and 1568 00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:48,310 he helps him out. 1569 00:59:48,310 --> 00:59:48,740 PROFESSOR: Yes. 1570 00:59:48,740 --> 00:59:51,810 Now, I'm going to tell you one more thing, which is 1571 00:59:51,810 --> 00:59:55,630 Samaritans we're not the most affluent members of 1572 00:59:55,630 --> 00:59:56,610 society at the time. 1573 00:59:56,610 --> 00:59:59,730 This matters for the story in a way you're about to hear. 1574 00:59:59,730 --> 01:00:01,600 So a Good Samaritan. 1575 01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:03,600 So they took students-- now, think about this. 1576 01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:07,770 Because they want to show you how absurdly weird it is when 1577 01:00:07,770 --> 01:00:10,410 it is we're willing to step forward and help a person. 1578 01:00:10,410 --> 01:00:12,280 And I don't think it's about goodness. 1579 01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:14,860 It's about the weirdness of our minds and not 1580 01:00:14,860 --> 01:00:16,220 embarrassing ourselves. 1581 01:00:16,220 --> 01:00:20,090 And how preoccupied we are with our other business. 1582 01:00:20,090 --> 01:00:22,590 So social psychologists are going to tell you the reason 1583 01:00:22,590 --> 01:00:25,750 the Good Samaritan stopped was not because he 1584 01:00:25,750 --> 01:00:26,950 was such a good guy. 1585 01:00:26,950 --> 01:00:31,090 It's because he didn't have so much to do. 1586 01:00:31,090 --> 01:00:32,040 And here's the experiment. 1587 01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:33,290 They're going to tell you why. 1588 01:00:35,770 --> 01:00:38,950 These are seminary students studying to become ministers. 1589 01:00:38,950 --> 01:00:40,590 So this is the group. 1590 01:00:40,590 --> 01:00:43,270 They picked this group because they want to show you-- social 1591 01:00:43,270 --> 01:00:46,600 psychologists get irritated by personality psychologists. 1592 01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:48,840 They say, can you pick a nicer group than people studying to 1593 01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:51,520 be ministers? 1594 01:00:51,520 --> 01:00:52,770 That's the disposition. 1595 01:00:56,500 --> 01:00:57,560 They're filling out surveys about 1596 01:00:57,560 --> 01:00:59,630 religious values in a room. 1597 01:00:59,630 --> 01:01:01,210 They're told that they're going to have to present a 1598 01:01:01,210 --> 01:01:06,350 talk about either seminary jobs or-- 1599 01:01:06,350 --> 01:01:07,990 so this is careerism-- 1600 01:01:07,990 --> 01:01:12,040 or a sermon on the Good Samaritan. 1601 01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:13,670 So you're sitting there going, help people, help 1602 01:01:13,670 --> 01:01:16,430 people, help people. 1603 01:01:16,430 --> 01:01:17,970 All right. that's their speech. 1604 01:01:17,970 --> 01:01:19,910 They're prepared. 1605 01:01:19,910 --> 01:01:23,130 Then they're released to go give this talk in front of 1606 01:01:23,130 --> 01:01:25,450 other faculty members and their students, so they want 1607 01:01:25,450 --> 01:01:26,770 to do a good job. 1608 01:01:26,770 --> 01:01:29,090 Either they're sent to the building across the campus 1609 01:01:29,090 --> 01:01:31,340 ahead of time, plenty of time. 1610 01:01:31,340 --> 01:01:32,950 On time, they have-- or they're late. 1611 01:01:32,950 --> 01:01:34,370 They go, oh, my gosh, you didn't go over? 1612 01:01:34,370 --> 01:01:35,355 We told you you should be-- 1613 01:01:35,355 --> 01:01:36,690 you're going to be-- if you don't run, 1614 01:01:36,690 --> 01:01:38,010 you're going to be late. 1615 01:01:38,010 --> 01:01:41,100 You don't want to be late to give your practice sermon or 1616 01:01:41,100 --> 01:01:42,730 speech to the faculty committee 1617 01:01:42,730 --> 01:01:46,100 waiting for you, right. 1618 01:01:46,100 --> 01:01:47,680 And then here's one more thing to keep in mind. 1619 01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:49,470 Some of you probably have visited Princeton, New 1620 01:01:49,470 --> 01:01:51,390 Jersey-- just to give you a sense of this. 1621 01:01:51,390 --> 01:01:55,880 This is even back in the 1960s, but even now-- 1622 01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:58,920 so who's been to Princeton University? 1623 01:01:58,920 --> 01:01:59,350 You have? 1624 01:01:59,350 --> 01:01:59,790 OK. 1625 01:01:59,790 --> 01:02:06,300 Scary urban environment full of threatening noises, the 1626 01:02:06,300 --> 01:02:08,410 campus itself? 1627 01:02:08,410 --> 01:02:13,040 Pastoral place full of eating clubs and references F. Scott 1628 01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:15,490 Fitzgerald. 1629 01:02:15,490 --> 01:02:17,290 I'm just adding in that Princeton is a pretty 1630 01:02:17,290 --> 01:02:20,000 nonthreatening place, the campus itself. 1631 01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:21,170 I'm just adding this in, because you've got 1632 01:02:21,170 --> 01:02:21,500 to keep this in. 1633 01:02:21,500 --> 01:02:23,470 OK. 1634 01:02:23,470 --> 01:02:24,550 Here's the confederate. 1635 01:02:24,550 --> 01:02:29,230 It's a man slumped in a doorway moaning in obvious 1636 01:02:29,230 --> 01:02:32,670 pain, hunched over on the ground going, uh, uh, uh. 1637 01:02:32,670 --> 01:02:36,260 Now, on the path to giving the speech, who stops to help? 1638 01:02:39,590 --> 01:02:42,000 Anything they could measure about the personalities in 1639 01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:46,840 individuals made no difference whether you stopped to help. 1640 01:02:46,840 --> 01:02:50,130 Whether you were saying stop to help, stop to help, stop to 1641 01:02:50,130 --> 01:02:52,110 help, because you were going to give a talk about the Good 1642 01:02:52,110 --> 01:02:57,260 Samaritan or going to talk about career paths doesn't 1643 01:02:57,260 --> 01:02:58,900 make any difference at all. 1644 01:02:58,900 --> 01:03:01,490 So amazingly, the people's zooming by this injured person 1645 01:03:01,490 --> 01:03:03,440 are saying, stop and help the person, stop and-- the guy's 1646 01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:06,790 moaning in the doorway next to them-- 1647 01:03:06,790 --> 01:03:09,510 as they're walking, sorry. 1648 01:03:09,510 --> 01:03:12,270 What counts as to who stops? 1649 01:03:12,270 --> 01:03:12,780 They're by themselves. 1650 01:03:12,780 --> 01:03:13,910 So it's not a group thing now. 1651 01:03:13,910 --> 01:03:15,520 They're by themselves, right? 1652 01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:17,590 It's if they're ahead of time. 1653 01:03:17,590 --> 01:03:20,610 If they have time, because they know they can stop and 1654 01:03:20,610 --> 01:03:25,670 help somebody and still make their talk on time, 63% stop, 1655 01:03:25,670 --> 01:03:30,370 45% if it's going to be close call, 10% if they're rushing, 1656 01:03:30,370 --> 01:03:31,725 because they're going to be late. 1657 01:03:35,220 --> 01:03:38,020 The description you set up, a big group of people taking an 1658 01:03:38,020 --> 01:03:39,460 exam, they're like this. 1659 01:03:39,460 --> 01:03:41,500 They're pressured, their pressured, they're pressured. 1660 01:03:41,500 --> 01:03:42,560 And there's a lot of us. 1661 01:03:42,560 --> 01:03:44,640 Somebody's going to take care this if they need to. 1662 01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:48,090 And I've got things to do, like take an exam. 1663 01:03:48,090 --> 01:03:51,920 Or run over and explain how incredibly important it is 1664 01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:55,960 morally to help those who are injured and around you, right? 1665 01:03:55,960 --> 01:04:01,970 So it can have a more sort of literary experiment showing 1666 01:04:01,970 --> 01:04:06,780 you how weird it is when we stop and help people. 1667 01:04:06,780 --> 01:04:07,682 Yes? 1668 01:04:07,682 --> 01:04:09,158 AUDIENCE: This happened on campus. 1669 01:04:09,158 --> 01:04:10,634 I was walking back to one of the dorms. 1670 01:04:10,634 --> 01:04:14,324 And I walked by and I saw feet sticking out of a bush, like 1671 01:04:14,324 --> 01:04:15,554 someone had collapsed into a bush. 1672 01:04:15,554 --> 01:04:17,891 I didn't quite believe it at first, so I stopped the next 1673 01:04:17,891 --> 01:04:19,982 person and asked, are there feet there? 1674 01:04:19,982 --> 01:04:21,700 Is that actually what I'm seeing? 1675 01:04:21,700 --> 01:04:23,943 So eventually, we called the police, but the response from 1676 01:04:23,943 --> 01:04:25,306 most of the people going by, one was, I'm 1677 01:04:25,306 --> 01:04:26,028 sorry, I can't stop. 1678 01:04:26,028 --> 01:04:27,471 I'm late for MITSO. 1679 01:04:27,471 --> 01:04:28,914 I have to go pset. 1680 01:04:28,914 --> 01:04:31,800 So a lot of people just went by and didn't stop. 1681 01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:31,910 PROFESSOR: OK. 1682 01:04:31,910 --> 01:04:33,960 So you're giving a story in real life, on the campus here. 1683 01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:34,470 AUDIENCE: Yes, exactly. 1684 01:04:34,470 --> 01:04:36,250 PROFESSOR: Where two feet were sticking out from a bush. 1685 01:04:36,250 --> 01:04:37,250 AUDIENCE: Yes [INAUDIBLE]. 1686 01:04:37,250 --> 01:04:37,550 AUDIENCE: All right. 1687 01:04:37,550 --> 01:04:39,960 PROFESSOR: No, no, no, no. 1688 01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:41,190 This is not a set up. 1689 01:04:41,190 --> 01:04:44,280 You're not a confederate. 1690 01:04:44,280 --> 01:04:45,570 So first, you wanted to ask somebody else. 1691 01:04:45,570 --> 01:04:46,600 And but this really interesting. 1692 01:04:46,600 --> 01:04:46,955 I mean-- 1693 01:04:46,955 --> 01:04:47,700 AUDIENCE: To make sure [INAUDIBLE]. 1694 01:04:47,700 --> 01:04:47,900 PROFESSOR: Yes, yes. 1695 01:04:47,900 --> 01:04:48,890 Because that's the first thing, right? 1696 01:04:48,890 --> 01:04:50,310 Like, yes, what do you think? 1697 01:04:50,310 --> 01:04:51,380 Good idea to have a body here? 1698 01:04:51,380 --> 01:04:54,970 Bad idea to have a body here? 1699 01:04:54,970 --> 01:04:56,960 And another person walks by and say what-- we'd like your 1700 01:04:56,960 --> 01:04:58,110 opinion before we do anything. 1701 01:04:58,110 --> 01:05:00,280 And the person says, I can't stop. 1702 01:05:00,280 --> 01:05:01,470 I have things to do, right? 1703 01:05:01,470 --> 01:05:02,570 I have homework. 1704 01:05:02,570 --> 01:05:03,250 Yes. 1705 01:05:03,250 --> 01:05:04,550 It's astounding. 1706 01:05:04,550 --> 01:05:08,630 So I'll just stop with saying, it makes you think-- you used 1707 01:05:08,630 --> 01:05:09,880 the word selfish. 1708 01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:10,840 And that-- no, no. 1709 01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:11,670 I don't mean to pick on you. 1710 01:05:11,670 --> 01:05:14,840 But it's just weird how humans are like this. 1711 01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:16,010 You see this all the time. 1712 01:05:16,010 --> 01:05:20,120 For me personally, all of these things have really 1713 01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:23,050 changed how I interpret situations, and how much I 1714 01:05:23,050 --> 01:05:25,110 think a person's a crummy person. 1715 01:05:25,110 --> 01:05:27,110 Because up until the fundamental attribution error, 1716 01:05:27,110 --> 01:05:28,990 although I always gave myself every break for doing 1717 01:05:28,990 --> 01:05:32,230 everything wrong, I always interpreted other people's 1718 01:05:32,230 --> 01:05:34,930 failings as deep character flaws, right? 1719 01:05:34,930 --> 01:05:39,610 And it has made me personally stop and think. 1720 01:05:39,610 --> 01:05:41,960 If somebody's not doing something I wish they did or 1721 01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:44,730 that I think would be better, maybe from their perspective, 1722 01:05:44,730 --> 01:05:49,690 they're in a situation that's compelling them to perform 1723 01:05:49,690 --> 01:05:52,030 less well than I think they should or something like that. 1724 01:05:52,030 --> 01:05:54,650 So these are unbelievably fascinating things and very 1725 01:05:54,650 --> 01:05:56,100 convincing. 1726 01:05:56,100 --> 01:05:59,370 And it's very sad when they set up prisons not remembering 1727 01:05:59,370 --> 01:06:01,050 these lessons that are so clear cut. 1728 01:06:01,050 --> 01:06:03,380 And I think the huge thing to know about this, as far as we 1729 01:06:03,380 --> 01:06:07,650 possibly understand, this is true of everybody, all of us. 1730 01:06:07,650 --> 01:06:09,300 None of us think we would do this. 1731 01:06:09,300 --> 01:06:11,400 All of us are prone to do this. 1732 01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:14,940 Through many, many, many experiments, without any 1733 01:06:14,940 --> 01:06:17,520 evidence to the contrary, from a scientific viewpoint, it's 1734 01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:20,330 about as convincing a story as you can possibly have. 1735 01:06:20,330 --> 01:06:21,580 Thanks very much.