# Ep164 "Why Do We Act Differently Around Different People?" With Claude Steele

An episode of [Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1677842672), 27 Jul 2026, 1 h 11 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/534dc725-2971-42a1-b1bf-afaa0107416e/1775537a-4773-47f3-9a29-b4940039d2ae/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=bee00526-7528-4581-b6b6-afaa01083a3d

Does your identity and performance change in different situations? What does this have to do with wondering how you’re being judged? What if polarization grows from uncertainty more than hatred? Might social uncertainty be more common than prejudice? Why do strangers become enemies so easily? Can we engineer more trust into society? Today Eagleman sits down with Stanford social psychologist Claude Steele to explore the hidden psychological forces that shape who we become whenever we wonder how other people see us.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Why do we become different people around different people? Does
[0:04] Speaker 1: your performance change in different situations? And what does this
[0:08] Speaker 1: have to do with wondering how you're being judged? What
[0:13] Speaker 1: if polarization grows from uncertainty more than hatred, can uncertainty
[0:18] Speaker 1: be more damaging than prejudice? Why do strangers become enemies
[0:23] Speaker 1: so easily? And can we engineer more trust into society?
[0:28] Speaker 1: Today we sit down with social psychologist Claude Steel to
[0:32] Speaker 1: explore the hidden psychological forces that shape who we become
[0:37] Speaker 1: whenever we wonder how other people see us. Welcome to
[0:44] Speaker 1: inner Cosmos with me David Eglman. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford,
[0:48] Speaker 1: and in these episodes we sail deeply into our three
[0:51] Speaker 1: pound universe to understand why and how our lives look
[0:55] Speaker 1: the way they do. Imagine you walk into a room
[1:13] Speaker 1: where nothing bad has happened, No one has insulted you,
[1:16] Speaker 1: or looked at you strangely or excluded you. But you
[1:19] Speaker 1: note that your heart is beating a little faster and
[1:23] Speaker 1: you're burning a lot of effort monitoring every word that
[1:27] Speaker 1: comes out of your mouth. You wonder whether that mistake
[1:30] Speaker 1: you just made is going to be seen as a mistake,
[1:33] Speaker 1: or whether it's going to somehow be interpreted as something
[1:37] Speaker 1: larger about who you are now. Most everyone has experienced
[1:41] Speaker 1: some version of this. Maybe there was a situation where
[1:45] Speaker 1: you were the youngest person in the room and you
[1:47] Speaker 1: were aware of that, or maybe you were the oldest
[1:50] Speaker 1: person in the room and you felt that people were
[1:53] Speaker 1: seeing you that way. Maybe you were the only woman
[1:56] Speaker 1: in a meeting full of men, or the only man
[2:00] Speaker 1: in a profession dominated by women. Or maybe you were
[2:03] Speaker 1: the only person in the meeting from your ethnicity or
[2:06] Speaker 1: your religion or your political tribe, or maybe you were
[2:11] Speaker 1: even just the newcomer who didn't yet know the rules,
[2:14] Speaker 1: and you're burning lots of energy wondering what other people
[2:18] Speaker 1: are thinking about you. Now, When you're in a situation
[2:21] Speaker 1: like this, your intelligence hasn't suddenly disappeared, and your memories
[2:25] Speaker 1: are perfectly intact. Your neurons that solved yesterday's problems are
[2:30] Speaker 1: still the same neurons, But your performance can change in
[2:34] Speaker 1: these situations. Why you hear me talk about this all
[2:38] Speaker 1: the time on this podcast. How the brain's main job
[2:42] Speaker 1: is to make predictions every moment of every day. It's
[2:45] Speaker 1: trying to estimate what's going to happen next. It tries
[2:48] Speaker 1: to predict where that tennis ball is going to land,
[2:51] Speaker 1: or what's going to be inside the cabinet when you
[2:54] Speaker 1: open it, or what some other driver on the road
[2:57] Speaker 1: is about to do. A lot of neuroscience can be
[3:00] Speaker 1: understood through this lens. The brain is constantly working to
[3:05] Speaker 1: try to reduce uncertainty, and social uncertainty is among the
[3:11] Speaker 1: most powerful things that we face, like whether the expression
[3:16] Speaker 1: on someone's face is a signal that they're going to
[3:18] Speaker 1: welcome you or reject you. When you are uncertain about
[3:23] Speaker 1: how other people are responding to you and interpreting you,
[3:26] Speaker 1: your brain allocates its resources differently. Your attention is not
[3:32] Speaker 1: where it needs to be, your vigilance is cranked up,
[3:35] Speaker 1: your working memory is running along with questions that have
[3:40] Speaker 1: nothing to do with the task at hand. So every
[3:43] Speaker 1: conversation gets this other invisible layer, like some random pause
[3:49] Speaker 1: in the conversation becomes information that you're trying to decode,
[3:54] Speaker 1: or some random glance acquires all.
[3:57] Speaker 2: These possible meanings.
[3:59] Speaker 1: So your brain gets busy spending its limited computational resources
[4:05] Speaker 1: trying to understand the social landscape instead of solving the
[4:09] Speaker 1: actual problems. Sitting in front of it in the classroom
[4:13] Speaker 1: or the meeting. And this idea actually has big implications
[4:16] Speaker 1: when it comes to how we all interact with one another.
[4:21] Speaker 1: Today's guest has spent decades uncovering this otherwise invisible landscape.
[4:27] Speaker 1: Claude Steel is a social psychologist. He's an emeritus professor
[4:31] Speaker 1: at Stanford University, and the former provost at Columbia University,
[4:36] Speaker 1: and the former vice chancellor and provost at UC Berkeley,
[4:40] Speaker 1: and the scientist whose work introduced the concept of stereotype threat,
[4:46] Speaker 1: which is the observation that awareness of a negative stereotype
[4:50] Speaker 1: can interfere with performance. His research has changed many of
[4:54] Speaker 1: the ways that we think about achievement and identity, and
[4:57] Speaker 1: more recently, he's expanded this new a broader framework. In
[5:01] Speaker 1: his new book called Urn, Claude uses the word churn
[5:06] Speaker 1: to describe all this mental effort that revs up when
[5:09] Speaker 1: we're not sure how our identities are being interpreted by
[5:14] Speaker 1: other people. One of the reasons I was eager to
[5:16] Speaker 1: have Claude on the podcast is that today's conversation reaches
[5:21] Speaker 1: beyond any single political moment. It is a deeply fundamental
[5:25] Speaker 1: facet of human psychology. Our brains evolved inside social groups
[5:31] Speaker 1: where belonging mattered tremendously, acceptance meant safety, and rejection typically
[5:38] Speaker 1: carried major costs. Those ancient circuits are still with us,
[5:42] Speaker 1: and they're still making noise inside every classroom and office
[5:46] Speaker 1: and neighborhood. But as you'll hear, Claude's optimism is that
[5:51] Speaker 1: human beings can flourish whenever they get to devote their
[5:54] Speaker 1: minds to the task in front of them instead of
[5:57] Speaker 1: wondering how they'll be seen. So to understand how how
[6:00] Speaker 1: we get there. Here's my conversation with Claude Steel. So, Claude,
[6:08] Speaker 1: you introduced this notion of stereotype threat some years ago.
[6:13] Speaker 1: What did you see that started making you feel like, Hey,
[6:16] Speaker 1: this is part of a bigger phenomenon that deserves a name.
[6:19] Speaker 3: That came from seeing a pattern of data about college achievement,
[6:23] Speaker 3: that concept of stereotype threat and trying to understand it,
[6:27] Speaker 3: and in trying to understand what I was seeing, I'll
[6:29] Speaker 3: describe that in a second. That concept of stereotype threat
[6:33] Speaker 3: arose out of that effort to explain it. What I
[6:36] Speaker 3: was trying to explain was a finding at the University
[6:38] Speaker 3: of Michigan. I was on a faculty committee to look
[6:42] Speaker 3: at the experience of minorities at Michigan, and in front
[6:46] Speaker 3: of me was a pattern of grade point averages for
[6:48] Speaker 3: all of the students at Michigan grafted out as a
[6:52] Speaker 3: function of the SAT scores they had when they came in,
[6:56] Speaker 3: and so grows up gradually that kids who came in
[6:59] Speaker 3: with higher scores tended to get higher grades. But for
[7:03] Speaker 3: African Americans, that line of their grade point average at
[7:07] Speaker 3: every level of SAT score was always lower than it
[7:11] Speaker 3: was for other students at Michigan. And that was a
[7:13] Speaker 3: puzzle because I would have thought I wouldn't have been
[7:16] Speaker 3: surprised if you said grades were a little lower, because
[7:20] Speaker 3: generally speaking, their preparation schools they'd gone to didn't prepare
[7:24] Speaker 3: them as well, so maybe you'd expect that, but not
[7:27] Speaker 3: among the high range of SAT scores. Black students were
[7:31] Speaker 3: getting lower grades than other students at Michigan with the
[7:34] Speaker 3: same SAT scores. And then we found the same thing
[7:38] Speaker 3: was true for women in advanced stem fields. They were
[7:42] Speaker 3: getting lower grades than men with the same test scores,
[7:47] Speaker 3: entry test scores and credentials in general. So there was
[7:51] Speaker 3: the phenomenon and we wrestled with how to understand it,
[7:54] Speaker 3: and I would say three or four years of research
[7:58] Speaker 3: before the concept of stereotype threat emerged.
[8:01] Speaker 2: And so what is stereotype threat?
[8:03] Speaker 3: Yes, So, stereotype threat is you're in a situation or
[8:07] Speaker 3: you're doing something for which a negative stereotype about one
[8:10] Speaker 3: of your identities is relevant. And when that's the case,
[8:14] Speaker 3: you know that you could be judged or treated in
[8:17] Speaker 3: terms of that stereotype. And if the situation is important
[8:21] Speaker 3: to you, the prospect of being judged and treated in
[8:24] Speaker 3: terms of a negative stereotype about one of your identities
[8:27] Speaker 3: could be your race, your gender, your age, your sexual orientation.
[8:32] Speaker 3: The prospect of being reduced to the negative stereotypes about
[8:36] Speaker 3: one of those identities is very upsetting and it can
[8:39] Speaker 3: interfere with your performance right there in the immediate situation,
[8:43] Speaker 3: and it can make you want to avoid places in
[8:47] Speaker 3: areas of life, walks of life, careers, professions, college majors
[8:52] Speaker 3: where you might feel that pressure. So that's what it is.
[8:56] Speaker 3: It's just being under the threat of being seen in
[8:59] Speaker 3: terms of a nationative stereotypis.
[9:01] Speaker 2: So, can you give us a specific example of stereotype threat.
[9:04] Speaker 3: I'll give you a specific one in the academic context,
[9:07] Speaker 3: and then maybe a more general one. So if I'm
[9:09] Speaker 3: a woman and I'm really good at math and I
[9:11] Speaker 3: really love stem field, let's say physics.
[9:15] Speaker 2: But as I go.
[9:16] Speaker 3: Farther and farther in that area, I'm now in upper
[9:20] Speaker 3: level classes in college, maybe I'm in graduate school, there
[9:23] Speaker 3: are fewer women around in my classes now, And I
[9:27] Speaker 3: know in this society there is a stereotype about women
[9:30] Speaker 3: not being as good in those areas as men. So
[9:34] Speaker 3: when I'm sitting there in the classroom or taking a
[9:37] Speaker 3: test or talking to my professor, I have maybe an
[9:40] Speaker 3: extra pressure there that maybe my failures or frustrations in
[9:46] Speaker 3: that area are going to be taken as characteristic of me,
[9:49] Speaker 3: and my successes are going to be seen as exceptions
[9:52] Speaker 3: to the rule. And so the man sitting next to me,
[9:55] Speaker 3: he's got pressures too, but he doesn't have that one,
[9:59] Speaker 3: and there's no negative stereotype about his abilities that's relevant
[10:03] Speaker 3: in that situation, whereas there is for women. So they can,
[10:08] Speaker 3: especially for women that really care about that. If they
[10:10] Speaker 3: don't care much about math and they've identified in other domains,
[10:14] Speaker 3: then it's not going to mean that much to them.
[10:17] Speaker 3: But for those that really committed, they could feel this
[10:21] Speaker 3: pressure and it becomes a factor in their life, in
[10:24] Speaker 3: their career, experience that as an extra pressure, and sometimes
[10:28] Speaker 3: it can be a pretty intense pressure.
[10:30] Speaker 2: That would be an academic example.
[10:32] Speaker 3: Another example would be let's say I'm gay and I
[10:35] Speaker 3: live in a conservative town and I'm trying to succeed
[10:38] Speaker 3: there in a workplace in a company, and I know
[10:41] Speaker 3: the people in that company or maybe have religious beliefs
[10:44] Speaker 3: that aren't open to my sexual orientation, but I want
[10:47] Speaker 3: to succeed there.
[10:48] Speaker 2: It's important, I've got I want to make it.
[10:51] Speaker 3: I know that if they knew my identity could really
[10:54] Speaker 3: interfere with my life and my progress there. That would
[10:57] Speaker 3: be another example identity threat or stereotypes threat, where in
[11:02] Speaker 3: general I feel under that kind of pressure.
[11:05] Speaker 1: And so thinking about this, and you've been doing research
[11:07] Speaker 1: on this in your lab for years. This let me
[11:09] Speaker 1: to your latest book called Churn. Yes, so tell us
[11:12] Speaker 1: what churn means here.
[11:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, churn is the psychological reaction the experience of being
[11:20] Speaker 3: under the threat I just described. That's really all is
[11:23] Speaker 3: in the other part of the same phenomenon. I know
[11:27] Speaker 3: that I could be seen this way and it's really important,
[11:29] Speaker 3: and so I'm thinking and figuring out. I'm vigilant to
[11:33] Speaker 3: whether that's going to actually happen to me, whether I'll
[11:36] Speaker 3: be devalued in this situation based on my identity, and
[11:40] Speaker 3: how can I cope with that? And how important is
[11:42] Speaker 3: this to me? Should I stick around? Is this manageable?
[11:46] Speaker 3: And it kind of helps put a light on how
[11:49] Speaker 3: commonness threat can be. Let's say I'm a white male
[11:52] Speaker 3: and I'm in a diversity training class in my workplace.
[11:56] Speaker 3: That's important, been told this is an important place to be,
[12:00] Speaker 3: but in that situation, it could be under considerable identity threat.
[12:04] Speaker 3: If I make a mistake here, I could be seen
[12:06] Speaker 3: in really dark terms, like as a racist or something.
[12:09] Speaker 3: And it's something that happens in everybody's life. And these
[12:13] Speaker 3: two ideas, stereotype threat or identity threat more generally and
[12:17] Speaker 3: churn are aimed at capturing that experience.
[12:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, you give a lovely example at the beginning of
[12:23] Speaker 1: your book turn to illustrate the point about a black
[12:27] Speaker 1: couple with a kid in junior high and they go
[12:29] Speaker 1: into a meeting with a white teacher and both sides
[12:33] Speaker 1: are feeling this churn.
[12:34] Speaker 2: Both sides are feeling aware.
[12:37] Speaker 1: Of the stereotypes they might be under in the scenario.
[12:41] Speaker 3: I think it's a useful example that the black parents
[12:44] Speaker 3: on the way over to the parent teacher conference, they
[12:47] Speaker 3: know how African Americans can be stereotypes, and maybe they
[12:52] Speaker 3: don't want their son to be seen as having less
[12:54] Speaker 3: ability or be invested in less by the school. They
[12:58] Speaker 3: don't want a little transgression to be taken as indications
[13:02] Speaker 3: of some aggressive tendency. And this is their chance. This
[13:05] Speaker 3: is an important situation. This meeting is important to them.
[13:08] Speaker 3: So as they come in to the meeting, they're trying
[13:11] Speaker 3: to be cheery and so on, but they're in turn,
[13:14] Speaker 3: what kind of teacher is this?
[13:16] Speaker 2: Is she open to the realities of race relations in
[13:20] Speaker 2: the United States?
[13:20] Speaker 3: Is she close to those? Is she soft expectations? Is
[13:24] Speaker 3: she tough love? What are we dealing with? And the teacher,
[13:27] Speaker 3: for her part in this situation, is under an equally
[13:30] Speaker 3: maybe even more intense form of stereotype threat or identity threat.
[13:34] Speaker 3: She's committed to her students and she invests in their
[13:38] Speaker 3: development and so on, but she worries that if she
[13:42] Speaker 3: says in this meeting something even slightly negative about the
[13:45] Speaker 3: young man, that she could be seen in terms of
[13:48] Speaker 3: this negative stereotype about her group that is relevant in
[13:52] Speaker 3: this situation, that she's racist, and that would just be
[13:55] Speaker 3: so upsetting to her. So here they are meeting, and
[14:00] Speaker 3: the interaction to the meeting is quite fraught. And one
[14:03] Speaker 3: of the things that interests me about it is that
[14:05] Speaker 3: this doesn't have anything to do with prejudice or bias.
[14:08] Speaker 3: I think when we think about these kinds of interactions,
[14:12] Speaker 3: we tend to think in terms of prejudice and bias.
[14:15] Speaker 3: And if I got rid of prejudice and bias, this
[14:18] Speaker 3: meeting would go very easily. But you can see from
[14:21] Speaker 3: the example that if we did that, if we got
[14:24] Speaker 3: rid of all the prejudice in the world, and they'd
[14:26] Speaker 3: still feel this pressure given the stereotypes in our society
[14:31] Speaker 3: and their relevance in this situation.
[14:33] Speaker 1: And so your book is about reaching for solutions. They're
[14:37] Speaker 1: both on the individual and the institutional levels. Yes, what
[14:40] Speaker 1: kind of solutions are there here?
[14:43] Speaker 3: That's where the book gets optimistic. I think what I
[14:46] Speaker 3: just described as the darker part trying to understand what
[14:49] Speaker 3: this tension is and give a clear explanation of what
[14:54] Speaker 3: this is, because I do think we don't have the
[14:56] Speaker 3: language for it, and we're over using the concept stereotype
[15:01] Speaker 3: and bias and trying to understand this tension. So the
[15:04] Speaker 3: effort is to clear that away. And in doing that
[15:08] Speaker 3: I get optimistic because I think what that tension is,
[15:11] Speaker 3: I can't trust, I can't quite trust the situation that
[15:15] Speaker 3: may be more remediable than prejudice and bias. I think
[15:20] Speaker 3: that's the core optimism of the book, that here's another
[15:24] Speaker 3: way for these two parties to connect as human beings
[15:29] Speaker 3: and to accept each other as human beings, with a
[15:31] Speaker 3: focus on building trust as opposed to a focus of
[15:36] Speaker 3: always thinking it's a matter of bias and prejudice.
[15:39] Speaker 2: So how do they do that?
[15:40] Speaker 3: Yes, the book goes through several levels of analysis. How
[15:44] Speaker 3: do you do that between individuals? How do I build
[15:47] Speaker 3: that kind of trust? Then how do I make a
[15:49] Speaker 3: setting like a classroom or a workplace a place where
[15:53] Speaker 3: people feel they can trust more? And then how to
[15:57] Speaker 3: whole institutions come to function ways that build that trust.
[16:02] Speaker 3: And as an academic administrator, as a provost of a
[16:07] Speaker 3: couple of institutions, I had that responsibility and so I
[16:10] Speaker 3: could look at what an institution like a university or
[16:15] Speaker 3: a corporation might do to build that kind of trust
[16:19] Speaker 3: between people.
[16:19] Speaker 2: So let's start with individuals. Yeah, so what would an
[16:22] Speaker 2: individual do?
[16:24] Speaker 3: I think the goal is to be able to see
[16:26] Speaker 3: full humanity and full potential in human difference. It's easy
[16:33] Speaker 3: to see it in similarity people who are like me.
[16:35] Speaker 3: It may be harder to see it in people who
[16:37] Speaker 3: are different. But I think that's the goal. When we
[16:40] Speaker 3: can do that, I think people will trust us. That's
[16:44] Speaker 3: one goal of that kind of of an approach.
[16:47] Speaker 2: How do we get there?
[16:49] Speaker 3: I think there are several things that are practical on
[16:52] Speaker 3: both sides of a relationship like that.
[16:55] Speaker 2: In general, you.
[16:57] Speaker 3: Toward difference, it's very helpful to take a learning mindset,
[17:01] Speaker 3: a kind of growth mindset. That difference is an opportunity
[17:05] Speaker 3: to learn about another group's another identities, life experiences. And
[17:11] Speaker 3: if we take the approach of trying to understand what
[17:15] Speaker 3: they are dealing with, what they contend with because of
[17:18] Speaker 3: their identity, we will develop an empathy and we will
[17:23] Speaker 3: be recognized as by the other party, will be recognized
[17:28] Speaker 3: as somebody who really does see there, you man, and
[17:30] Speaker 3: does appreciate them. That's a powerful signal. I can give
[17:34] Speaker 3: some examples of that and experiments and in real life
[17:37] Speaker 3: in general. I use the term wise, and I get
[17:40] Speaker 3: the term wise from Irving Goffman, who was a great sociologist.
[17:44] Speaker 3: He did an ethnography of gay life in the nineteen
[17:47] Speaker 3: fifties in San Francisco, and you found that gay men
[17:50] Speaker 3: in that world had a term for straight people who
[17:55] Speaker 3: they trusted, who they knew that they were safe with
[17:58] Speaker 3: that person. That these people wouldn't see them in terms
[18:01] Speaker 3: of the intense stigma they were under in those days.
[18:06] Speaker 3: So they would say he's wise, man, he's wise.
[18:08] Speaker 2: Meaning they see your full humanity.
[18:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, somebody who can. African Americans have tons of
[18:14] Speaker 3: terms for this. He's cool man, he's cool, he's down,
[18:17] Speaker 3: he gets it, he sees that we're fully you.
[18:20] Speaker 2: That maybe illustrates that.
[18:36] Speaker 1: I just have a general question, which is to understand
[18:39] Speaker 1: someone else's fully human. Does that mean you need to
[18:42] Speaker 1: understand their trials and tribulations given their sexuality, or their
[18:47] Speaker 1: race or their gender, or does it mean not caring
[18:51] Speaker 1: about that? Because I can imagine either way you might
[18:55] Speaker 1: see someone's humanity by either understanding them deeply or just
[19:00] Speaker 1: not caring that they're gay or a female in science
[19:03] Speaker 1: or black or Muslim or whatever the issue is that
[19:06] Speaker 1: you're dealing with.
[19:07] Speaker 3: That's a really good question. The reason I think you
[19:10] Speaker 3: do have to go a little deeper than that, it's
[19:13] Speaker 3: because it's hard to know people without knowing the part
[19:16] Speaker 3: of their life that they have to deal with because
[19:19] Speaker 3: of that identity. If it's you, and let's say I'm
[19:23] Speaker 3: gay and I'm living under this incredible pressure on a
[19:27] Speaker 3: daily basis, it causes depression, It causes all kinds of
[19:31] Speaker 3: because I can't I'm afraid of how people are going
[19:33] Speaker 3: to react to that identity. And so if you approach
[19:37] Speaker 3: me and say I'm just going to ignore that, then
[19:41] Speaker 3: I worry that you're not going to really understand me
[19:44] Speaker 3: in a complete way, and it's hard to trust then
[19:48] Speaker 3: that your behavior towards me, your feelings about me are
[19:52] Speaker 3: really informed as opposed to performative, or maybe they're coming
[19:57] Speaker 3: from really good intentions, but they're missing them because they're
[20:00] Speaker 3: not seeing the stress I'm under, the pain I'm under.
[20:03] Speaker 1: Does it depend on the context, for example, in the
[20:07] Speaker 1: workplace or on the athletic field, Maybe it matters less
[20:12] Speaker 1: in some context as opposed to, hey, you're my friend
[20:15] Speaker 1: just coming over to dinner at the house, and I
[20:17] Speaker 1: need to understand that about you.
[20:19] Speaker 2: I don't know, what do you think?
[20:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's possible that we don't have to
[20:22] Speaker 3: you're in a basketball team together, or you're in a
[20:25] Speaker 3: software writing team together, and that's the extent of your relationship.
[20:29] Speaker 3: I'm not sure then that you have to really probe deeply.
[20:34] Speaker 3: But if you're going to have a relationship with a person, yeah,
[20:37] Speaker 3: if you're going to be friends, then I think it
[20:39] Speaker 3: is critical for me to know that you have some
[20:42] Speaker 3: idea of what I'm contending with in my life. How
[20:46] Speaker 3: do you.
[20:47] Speaker 1: Find that out about the other person? How do you
[20:50] Speaker 1: ask the right questions about that?
[20:53] Speaker 3: I'll give you an experiment, which I think one of
[20:55] Speaker 3: the conditions that the experiment identifies that. So this is
[20:59] Speaker 3: something that a study that Jeff Cohen, who's a colleague
[21:02] Speaker 3: at Stanford, and Lee Ross, the late Lee Ross, and
[21:05] Speaker 3: I did a number of years ago, and we asked
[21:07] Speaker 3: the question of how does a white professor give critical
[21:11] Speaker 3: feedback to a black student and have that feedback be trusted. Remember,
[21:16] Speaker 3: trust the foundation of our relationships with each other, and
[21:21] Speaker 3: that's what identity threat can interfere with.
[21:23] Speaker 2: It makes it harder for me to trust. So that
[21:26] Speaker 2: was our question.
[21:27] Speaker 3: So we had students come in black and white Stanford
[21:30] Speaker 3: students and write an essay about their favorite teacher, and
[21:34] Speaker 3: we told them if it was good, we might publish
[21:36] Speaker 3: it in a new magazine. We were starting on campus
[21:38] Speaker 3: on teaching. So put their best foot forward, come back
[21:42] Speaker 3: in two days, and we'll give them feedback on the essay.
[21:46] Speaker 3: And our big measure was how much did they trust
[21:48] Speaker 3: the feedback. That's what the purpose of the experiment was.
[21:51] Speaker 3: Sam a questionnaire afterwards that point. Yeah, we measured it
[21:55] Speaker 3: that way, and we varied how we gave the feedback,
[21:58] Speaker 3: and that's where he becomes an illustration of this how
[22:02] Speaker 3: to deal with this threat. What we found, what we expected,
[22:05] Speaker 3: and what we found as unsettling was as it was
[22:08] Speaker 3: that when we gave the feedback straightforwardly we regi essay,
[22:12] Speaker 3: here's your feedback, or we did what teachers often do
[22:15] Speaker 3: when they're giving them feedback. They say something nice about
[22:18] Speaker 3: the person first and then give the feedback. In those
[22:21] Speaker 3: two conditions of the experiment, white students trusted the feedback,
[22:27] Speaker 3: but black students didn't. White students are not under a
[22:30] Speaker 3: stereotype about having less ability. But black students in this
[22:35] Speaker 3: society still are under that. They know that stereotype is
[22:39] Speaker 3: out there. They don't know for sure whether the feedback
[22:42] Speaker 3: giver is using that stereotype and evaluating their essay, but
[22:46] Speaker 3: he could be, and that's an ambiguity in that situation.
[22:51] Speaker 3: They don't know for sure, is it my essay that
[22:53] Speaker 3: he's responding to, or is it the feedback giver's opinions
[22:57] Speaker 3: of my group's abilities that is driving this feedback. And
[23:01] Speaker 3: so with that ambiguity, it's hard to trust the feedback completely,
[23:07] Speaker 3: and they didn't. So White students in that condition trusted
[23:11] Speaker 3: the feedback much more than Black students did, but there
[23:15] Speaker 3: was turning toward an optimistic.
[23:20] Speaker 2: Condition.
[23:20] Speaker 3: The third condition a very simple thing that will sound
[23:25] Speaker 3: ordinary too. In that condition, the experimenter said, look, we're
[23:29] Speaker 3: using high standards and evaluating these essays because we might
[23:32] Speaker 3: publish them, as I explained to you, but I read
[23:35] Speaker 3: your essay and I think you might be able to
[23:37] Speaker 3: meet those standards.
[23:38] Speaker 2: Here's the feedback.
[23:40] Speaker 3: In that instance, black students really trusted the feedback more
[23:44] Speaker 3: than students in any other condition. Three times more of
[23:47] Speaker 3: them took the essay home to improve use the feedback
[23:51] Speaker 3: to improve the essay than any other condition of the experiment,
[23:55] Speaker 3: So that is wise. That's called the wise feedback study.
[23:59] Speaker 3: Just with the those phrases, they could see that the
[24:03] Speaker 3: feedback giver wasn't seeing them stereotypically. First, I'm using if
[24:09] Speaker 3: you're seeing me stereotypically, He wouldn't have said, I'm using
[24:12] Speaker 3: high standards. And then he certainly wouldn't have said, I
[24:15] Speaker 3: think you can meet those standards. And I think for
[24:18] Speaker 3: anybody at any time, coming from an adult who was
[24:22] Speaker 3: an expert in an area, that's a profound kind of feedback.
[24:25] Speaker 3: It can shift a person into a whole walk of
[24:29] Speaker 3: life if somebody says that to you at an important time.
[24:33] Speaker 3: But it makes it clear several things. One is that
[24:37] Speaker 3: if you looked at just the first two conditions of
[24:39] Speaker 3: the experiment, you might think Black students just aren't Why
[24:43] Speaker 3: don't they trust what is that? That's just silly on
[24:46] Speaker 3: their part not to do that. But you can see
[24:48] Speaker 3: the ambiguity that makes it hard for them to trust it.
[24:51] Speaker 3: And you can see that when that ambiguity is cleared
[24:53] Speaker 3: up by the way the feedback giver gives the feedback,
[24:57] Speaker 3: they really want to trust it, and they did try
[25:01] Speaker 3: so all the time. There was this latent capacity to
[25:04] Speaker 3: really trust this feedback, trust this situation. They just needed
[25:07] Speaker 3: to signal that they weren't going to be seen in
[25:10] Speaker 3: terms of stereotypes about them. It's something that in a
[25:13] Speaker 3: society was different where there weren't the same racial stereotypes.
[25:16] Speaker 2: This the whole thing wouldn't exist at all.
[25:18] Speaker 3: If they were in Lagos, Nigeria and they got feedback
[25:22] Speaker 3: this would be there wouldn't be such a thing. But
[25:25] Speaker 3: in the United States, given our history the existence of
[25:28] Speaker 3: those stereotypes, they are under a pressure, an identity pressure
[25:33] Speaker 3: that affects them in an important situation like that.
[25:37] Speaker 1: Did you see any difference between African American students and
[25:40] Speaker 1: African students.
[25:41] Speaker 2: I'm sure yes.
[25:43] Speaker 3: There is research showing that, especially in the first generation
[25:47] Speaker 3: of black immigrants from the Caribbean or from Africa, they don't.
[25:51] Speaker 2: Show these effects.
[25:53] Speaker 3: But by the second generation, then those kids they know
[25:57] Speaker 3: the stereotypes that exist in America and you do see
[26:01] Speaker 3: these effects.
[26:02] Speaker 1: Okay, so we're addressing trust in individuals and how to
[26:06] Speaker 1: build that. What about institutions and institutions most excited about
[26:12] Speaker 1: this because I think people really haven't thought about this
[26:14] Speaker 1: in the same way before, or at least I haven't.
[26:17] Speaker 3: They can do the same thing. Clear up ambiguity. Ambiguity
[26:22] Speaker 3: gets to be when you have a diverse clientele, so
[26:26] Speaker 3: to speak, ambiguity it gets to be toxic very quickly.
[26:30] Speaker 3: Let's say I'm African American, I'm going to a university.
[26:34] Speaker 3: As I just illustrated in that experiment, I'm going to
[26:37] Speaker 3: be experiencing a lot of ambiguity. Why are these people,
[26:41] Speaker 3: how are they responding to me? What does it mean?
[26:43] Speaker 3: And just oh my goodness, did he why was he?
[26:47] Speaker 3: Was that cynicism or was that really? What was that?
[26:50] Speaker 3: And I'm on the edge of my sea, so to speak,
[26:53] Speaker 3: trying to read the cues to see just how my
[26:56] Speaker 3: identity will affect me in this situation that's so important
[26:59] Speaker 3: to me.
[27:00] Speaker 2: I think it really helps.
[27:01] Speaker 3: The book presents as good an evidence as I currently
[27:05] Speaker 3: have to illustrate that when that ambiguity is cleared up,
[27:10] Speaker 3: so that I really know where I stand, because they're
[27:12] Speaker 3: kind of concrete measures or indicators of how well I'm doing,
[27:16] Speaker 3: and people have genuinely tried to understand what my needs
[27:20] Speaker 3: were and respond to them, as opposed to give me
[27:24] Speaker 3: something they think is good for me. They've actually listened
[27:26] Speaker 3: to me first, and they've actually tried to address those needs.
[27:31] Speaker 3: I start to trust that institute. I trust it. My
[27:35] Speaker 3: vigilance relaxes, my churn relaxes.
[27:38] Speaker 2: What would be a specific example.
[27:41] Speaker 3: There's a university that I study, Georgia State University, that
[27:45] Speaker 3: I think really dramatically illustrates this. It's a huge university,
[27:50] Speaker 3: fifty five thousand students in Atlanta, and it transformed itself
[27:54] Speaker 3: from being just the kind of big commuter place in
[27:58] Speaker 3: the center of the city where you go and get
[28:00] Speaker 3: a degree in some useful thing or another. The demography changed,
[28:05] Speaker 3: it had to become a real university, and it improved.
[28:09] Speaker 3: Its graduation rate was dramatically low, like about twenty seven
[28:13] Speaker 3: percent or twenty eight percent graduating for African American males
[28:17] Speaker 3: is about eighteen percent was the graduation rate. So they
[28:22] Speaker 3: had a problem. So what they did, I'll skip how
[28:25] Speaker 3: they did it in all wonderful people, in particular one
[28:28] Speaker 3: named Tim Rennick, who I especially admire because I think
[28:32] Speaker 3: he intellectually and kind of spiritually led this transformation in a.
[28:36] Speaker 2: Variety of ways.
[28:38] Speaker 3: They figured out what was making these kids drop out,
[28:42] Speaker 3: talk to them. They he'd lived with them for a
[28:46] Speaker 3: decade or so, he had a good sense of what
[28:48] Speaker 3: the problems were that a lot had to do with money,
[28:52] Speaker 3: a lot had to do with a lack of social capital.
[28:56] Speaker 3: Many of the students who were coming to Georgia State
[28:59] Speaker 3: were coming low income families. Sixty some percent of them
[29:03] Speaker 3: were pel grant students. That means students in a family
[29:07] Speaker 3: of four making less than thirty thousand a year, coming
[29:10] Speaker 3: from communities that didn't have a lot of contact or
[29:12] Speaker 3: knowledge about higher education. Didn't know what it could do
[29:15] Speaker 3: for you, didn't know how to use it, and so
[29:18] Speaker 3: they'd come into this big university and they were kind
[29:20] Speaker 3: of like deer in the headlights. They just didn't know
[29:23] Speaker 3: what to do, and they would fail to turn in
[29:26] Speaker 3: some bureaucratic form and they'd be told that I'm sorry,
[29:29] Speaker 3: but you're out for a while, and they'd go away
[29:31] Speaker 3: and never come back. They brought them in seven weeks
[29:35] Speaker 3: before school, the freshmen is who were admitted, and they
[29:39] Speaker 3: gave them a really thorough orientation toward American life and
[29:44] Speaker 3: its opportunities and the role that higher education can play
[29:46] Speaker 3: in it. They gave them financial literacy training gave them
[29:50] Speaker 3: clear pathways that you could get to this profession, that profession,
[29:53] Speaker 3: this profession. They gave them the social capital, the understandings
[29:58] Speaker 3: that they needed to function, and so they come out
[30:01] Speaker 3: of those seven weeks pretty transformed. They redesigned financial aids
[30:06] Speaker 3: so that rather than give low income kids a block
[30:08] Speaker 3: grant of money, they gave them money their mother needed
[30:13] Speaker 3: rent money, or when they couldn't pay their tuition bill,
[30:15] Speaker 3: or when they needed their car fixed. You could quickly
[30:18] Speaker 3: get money appearing in your account based on that. It
[30:21] Speaker 3: was actually cheaper than giving the big block rants. They
[30:25] Speaker 3: had early detection systems where if you got in trouble
[30:29] Speaker 3: and you took a calculus course maybe and you blew
[30:32] Speaker 3: the first quiz, you would hear from three adults, and
[30:37] Speaker 3: what they would do is explain to you, this is
[30:39] Speaker 3: what it takes to succeed in calculus to get this.
[30:42] Speaker 3: What were you doing the weekend before that quiz? It
[30:45] Speaker 3: takes this number of hours to do this, And they
[30:48] Speaker 3: would kind of give the kids some of the cultural capital,
[30:52] Speaker 3: so to speak. The nohows that kids coming from homes
[30:56] Speaker 3: with where parents were more educated would know on their
[31:00] Speaker 3: own are having much better sense of So with these
[31:04] Speaker 3: kind of practices in this huge university, their graduation rates
[31:08] Speaker 3: are like sixty seven percent. They went up that much
[31:11] Speaker 3: in a period less than ten years. Wow, that's an
[31:15] Speaker 3: American story that I think is profoundly important. The implications
[31:19] Speaker 3: that it can be done. That's where my optimism comes from.
[31:22] Speaker 3: And some of the classic achievement gaps between men and women,
[31:26] Speaker 3: between blacks and whites, between low income and higher incomes
[31:30] Speaker 3: eliminated in this school. Wow, as many women, as many
[31:34] Speaker 3: minorities were in STEM classes, as were whites, for example.
[31:38] Speaker 2: Inations.
[31:39] Speaker 3: So there's something in responding to the needs of people,
[31:44] Speaker 3: listening to them, listening again, and trying to actually in
[31:50] Speaker 3: appreciation of their full humanity and potential, finding.
[31:54] Speaker 2: A way to help them.
[31:56] Speaker 3: It's so much easier for institutions of that is, to
[32:00] Speaker 3: just blame it on the if they don't do well,
[32:02] Speaker 3: it didn't have the ability. And what Georgia state, They
[32:06] Speaker 3: realized ability is not the issue here. It's a kind
[32:09] Speaker 3: of a fit issue and a background issue. These kids
[32:13] Speaker 3: are coming in and they just don't know how to
[32:14] Speaker 3: cope with this big university the way it's set up.
[32:17] Speaker 3: They don't know what it means they don't come from
[32:19] Speaker 3: communities where many people have even done it, so they
[32:23] Speaker 3: just they're at a loss. And if we meet those needs,
[32:26] Speaker 3: we can begin to So those kids who go there,
[32:30] Speaker 3: they trust that university. They're grateful for that university.
[32:33] Speaker 1: Did you have people in your life who you trusted
[32:36] Speaker 1: or trusted you, both individuals and institutions.
[32:40] Speaker 3: Yes, indeed all the way through, because at different stages
[32:44] Speaker 3: of life you have to learn what the hell you
[32:46] Speaker 3: are into. Now I'm on the faculty, My goodness, I
[32:49] Speaker 3: don't know what this is. You need models of how
[32:51] Speaker 3: to do this and how to manage the whole thing.
[32:54] Speaker 3: But I can remember I talked about it in the
[32:56] Speaker 3: book Going to When I was in college. I came
[32:58] Speaker 3: from a big high school in the Chicago area, and
[33:02] Speaker 3: I'm sure it was largely my fault, but I didn't
[33:05] Speaker 3: get a lot out of that academic last and five.
[33:07] Speaker 3: I was a reader, That's what I But I think
[33:10] Speaker 3: that that steed me.
[33:12] Speaker 2: Well going forward.
[33:13] Speaker 3: But I didn't know how to be a student in
[33:16] Speaker 3: a really demanding environment, and my freshman grades illustrated that.
[33:21] Speaker 3: Then my sophore I had a roommate who was a
[33:23] Speaker 3: really good student, and my father was warming up to
[33:27] Speaker 3: pull me out and get me into being a good
[33:29] Speaker 3: an electrician or something, which is some profession I admire,
[33:32] Speaker 3: but nonetheless it meant failing at this college thing. So
[33:36] Speaker 3: I quit. I was a swimmer, a competitive swimmer. I
[33:39] Speaker 3: quit the swim team, and I just said, I'm just
[33:42] Speaker 3: going to do what my roommate does. I'm going to
[33:44] Speaker 3: follow what he does. I'm going to go to class.
[33:47] Speaker 3: I'm going to read the book before I go to class.
[33:50] Speaker 3: I'm going to take notes and read it. He just
[33:53] Speaker 3: taught me how to be a student and my grades
[33:56] Speaker 3: I almost got straight a's after that. So I have
[33:59] Speaker 3: a personal appreciation for that, And I would say several
[34:03] Speaker 3: points in my life in my career, I've had versions
[34:07] Speaker 3: of that kind of experience where the issue was, know
[34:10] Speaker 3: how how do you become a really productive faculty member,
[34:15] Speaker 3: get those research grants, get the publications out. At the
[34:19] Speaker 3: same time, you're trying to teach and learn how to
[34:21] Speaker 3: make this material appealing and communicate, communicate it well to students,
[34:26] Speaker 3: and you model yourself after people who know how to
[34:30] Speaker 3: do it well, and that builds a trust in the
[34:32] Speaker 3: whole situation.
[34:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, So going back to institutions, why do you think
[34:39] Speaker 1: that the diversity training programs over the last six years
[34:42] Speaker 1: have been so.
[34:43] Speaker 2: Fraught in many case failures. So here's a two cent analysis.
[34:48] Speaker 3: I do think we've overused this notion of prejudice and bias.
[34:52] Speaker 3: So when you bring up diversity, people think implicit in it.
[34:56] Speaker 3: Challenged to you about whether you're prejudiced or biased makes
[35:00] Speaker 3: people defensive and on guard and in churn. It comes
[35:05] Speaker 3: as intense churn and resistance and avoidance, and you worry
[35:10] Speaker 3: that my identity is going to be under a lot
[35:12] Speaker 3: of pressure here. Now I can be seen as a
[35:15] Speaker 3: racist just like that, or as a sexist just like that,
[35:18] Speaker 3: or as one little thing I'm under the gun, and
[35:22] Speaker 3: the stakes have gotten higher and higher, So that pressure
[35:25] Speaker 3: is no mild pressure. So we're approaching a problem. The
[35:29] Speaker 3: intention may be good, but the exercise, our approach to
[35:33] Speaker 3: it may be misguided in a way that actually worsens
[35:36] Speaker 3: things in the way that the sense of threats identity
[35:39] Speaker 3: threat and the resulting churn. So I think that's one
[35:43] Speaker 3: of the realities that has made this era tense.
[35:47] Speaker 1: And why do you think that has happened? Politically? I've
[35:50] Speaker 1: watched on Twitter and now X somebody says something trying
[35:55] Speaker 1: to show that they're not racist or not sexist or something,
[35:58] Speaker 1: and the next person says, for you to say that
[36:01] Speaker 1: indicates that you are a racist to your sex and
[36:03] Speaker 1: then the next person says for you to have said
[36:05] Speaker 1: that mean and it's a race to the bottom. This
[36:09] Speaker 1: appears to be something of the left side of politics generally,
[36:13] Speaker 1: is where I see it. But people try to out
[36:17] Speaker 1: do each other in saying you're a racist, sexist, religionist,
[36:21] Speaker 1: whatever it is.
[36:22] Speaker 2: And the question is why has it happened politically?
[36:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know so much politically because psychologically, as
[36:29] Speaker 3: a psychologist, I think what people are trying, they're trying
[36:31] Speaker 3: to demonstrate their own innocence by maybe condemning or canceling
[36:36] Speaker 3: somebody else.
[36:37] Speaker 2: I'm good on this dimension, and you've just said this thing.
[36:41] Speaker 3: So I'm called upon now to confront you about this
[36:45] Speaker 3: and to maybe with an element of oostelization of you,
[36:49] Speaker 3: because punish you because you said that and are that way,
[36:54] Speaker 3: and that makes me cool.
[36:56] Speaker 2: I'm good.
[36:57] Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think it's a perverse for phenomenon that
[37:01] Speaker 3: it has backfired, and then it contributes to our polarization.
[37:06] Speaker 3: I'm a liberal, but I think that aspect to the
[37:09] Speaker 3: extent that we're identified with that has been a mistake.
[37:13] Speaker 3: There has to be a different kind of connection between
[37:17] Speaker 3: people for us to all grow together. I have a
[37:19] Speaker 3: certain as a psychologist. Social psychologists have a certain view
[37:23] Speaker 3: about prejudice and bias.
[37:25] Speaker 2: It is a reality.
[37:27] Speaker 3: You can still hand out an essay and you put
[37:31] Speaker 3: a girl's name on it is going to get a
[37:33] Speaker 3: lower evaluation. And you put a boy's name on it.
[37:37] Speaker 3: I still have to worry about traffic stops. I still
[37:40] Speaker 3: have to worry about getting in an elevator and having
[37:43] Speaker 3: people back off and get a little tense. So I'm
[37:46] Speaker 3: not trying to diminish this importance of human prejudice and
[37:50] Speaker 3: so on, but I do think that it's very hard
[37:54] Speaker 3: to change that going directly at it, because to do
[37:57] Speaker 3: that almost means a cue using you of having it.
[38:01] Speaker 3: And then you are going to be defensive about that,
[38:04] Speaker 3: and we're not going to get anywhere, and you're going
[38:07] Speaker 3: to try to avoid that, and you're going to things
[38:10] Speaker 3: that you might be open to you're not going to
[38:12] Speaker 3: be open to, like history and reality is racial and
[38:15] Speaker 3: class organization of our society. You're going to be reluctant
[38:19] Speaker 3: to enter into that because all it's going to mean
[38:22] Speaker 3: for you is that you're going to be put on
[38:23] Speaker 3: the defensive. So I think that paradigm of thinking about
[38:27] Speaker 3: the problem entirely that way has that problem to it,
[38:30] Speaker 3: and part of what excites me about the analysis of
[38:34] Speaker 3: churn and really why I decided to write that book.
[38:38] Speaker 3: The work on stereotype treagedy focused on the effects of
[38:41] Speaker 3: stereotype threat on performance athletic performance, academic performance. But what
[38:47] Speaker 3: I could see, as especially from my administrative jobs, is
[38:51] Speaker 3: that the real tension here isn't so much that people
[38:54] Speaker 3: are prejudice that teacher in that example, is she's not
[39:00] Speaker 3: communicating well with those parents because she's prejudiced and doesn't
[39:04] Speaker 3: like them, or because she's threatened herself about the interaction.
[39:08] Speaker 3: I think in many instances at least it's the latter.
[39:12] Speaker 3: She just feels a lot of pressure in that situation,
[39:15] Speaker 3: and so I wanted to bring that part of the
[39:17] Speaker 3: phenomenon out and offer a new path forward on these matters.
[39:21] Speaker 2: Excellent.
[39:22] Speaker 1: What interesting is that there's this question of can it
[39:27] Speaker 1: be both? So, for example, there are these implicit association
[39:32] Speaker 1: tests where you ask is somebody let's say a racist
[39:36] Speaker 1: or a religionist or a sexist. To get something by associating,
[39:40] Speaker 1: there are two buttons. You had a yes buttoner or
[39:42] Speaker 1: no button, depending on the question. You hit as fast
[39:43] Speaker 1: as you can, and then there's another set of questions,
[39:46] Speaker 1: and you're answering let's say men or women with the
[39:49] Speaker 1: right button or left or black and white or whatever,
[39:52] Speaker 1: to gay or straight, whatever the thing is.
[39:54] Speaker 2: Okay.
[39:55] Speaker 1: What is being looked for is if you've associated the
[39:59] Speaker 1: left button with something good and the right button with
[40:02] Speaker 1: something bad, let's say, with the yes or no or
[40:04] Speaker 1: good or bad, and then you also have to, at
[40:06] Speaker 1: the same time associate that left button with one group
[40:09] Speaker 1: and the right button with another group.
[40:11] Speaker 2: Do you see a reaction time difference here? Yes.
[40:15] Speaker 1: So let's imagine that when you're answering good or bad,
[40:19] Speaker 1: or gay or straight, that you're faster if gay goes
[40:24] Speaker 1: with the bad button and straight goes with the good button.
[40:27] Speaker 2: Okay.
[40:27] Speaker 1: So this is called the implicit association test, and this
[40:32] Speaker 1: has been tested with race, religion, gender, everything.
[40:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Here's the interesting part.
[40:37] Speaker 1: Is that the results seem to indicate that everyone has
[40:43] Speaker 1: prejudices of some sort. The part that I think didn't
[40:47] Speaker 1: get talked about so much, at least not until years later,
[40:50] Speaker 1: was that this doesn't actually map onto behavior necessarily.
[40:53] Speaker 2: No, And that's the really interesting bit.
[40:56] Speaker 1: I'll mention a study that we did in my lab.
[40:59] Speaker 1: Six hands on the screen and one hand get picked
[41:02] Speaker 1: at random and stablish a syringe needle, and you've got
[41:05] Speaker 1: this reaction that lights up what we summarize is the
[41:08] Speaker 1: pain matrix in the brain. It's not your hand gettingtabed.
[41:11] Speaker 1: You're seeing a handgutting stab and you have an empathic response. Okay,
[41:14] Speaker 1: Now what we do is we add a one word
[41:15] Speaker 1: label to each hand Christian, Jewish, Muslim, scientologist, Hindu, atheist,
[41:20] Speaker 1: and the computer goes around picks the hand.
[41:22] Speaker 2: You see the handguts stabbed.
[41:23] Speaker 1: And the question is do you care as much about
[41:25] Speaker 1: what you just saw if it's not your in group,
[41:27] Speaker 1: whatever your in group is.
[41:29] Speaker 2: And that's the answer.
[41:30] Speaker 1: People have a much larger response when they see their
[41:32] Speaker 1: religion get stabbed.
[41:34] Speaker 2: And by the way, this is true even for atheists.
[41:36] Speaker 1: If they declare themselves an atheists, they care more about
[41:38] Speaker 1: the atheist's hand getting stab You see a bigger response
[41:40] Speaker 1: in fMRI brain imaging. And here's the interesting part. I
[41:45] Speaker 1: don't think it maps onto behavior at all, which is
[41:48] Speaker 1: to say.
[41:49] Speaker 3: This is so refreshing because it's so true. Yeah, it's
[41:53] Speaker 3: so true. One of the biggest facts if you got
[41:56] Speaker 3: to thirty five thousand feet and you looked at social
[41:58] Speaker 3: psychology and all those findings, one of the really surprising
[42:01] Speaker 3: things is that attitudes and beliefs and prejudices follow behavior
[42:07] Speaker 3: rather than drive behavior. They follow it. They have a
[42:12] Speaker 3: very weak If I hate somebody, that feeling could be
[42:14] Speaker 3: quite intense, but it might not have much effect on
[42:17] Speaker 3: my behavior towards them. I'm segregated from them. That's I
[42:21] Speaker 3: think the source of main most stereotypes and prejudices is
[42:24] Speaker 3: that the outgroup.
[42:25] Speaker 2: I start derogating the outgroup.
[42:27] Speaker 3: I start cooking up stories and stereotypes to explain why
[42:31] Speaker 3: they aren't as good as me. And that's just a normal.
[42:34] Speaker 3: That's where they come from. These stereotypes and biases and
[42:38] Speaker 3: the like. But do they, as you're saying in your data,
[42:41] Speaker 3: do they actually affect behavior. They empirically have very little
[42:44] Speaker 3: effect on behavior, but behavior has a profound effect on them.
[42:50] Speaker 3: That is, if I do relate to you and we've
[42:53] Speaker 3: become friends, all those things that I know about your
[42:56] Speaker 3: group become irrelevant. They weaken that they don't have as
[43:01] Speaker 3: much grip on your psyche as they would ordinarily have.
[43:05] Speaker 3: So you know what I've heard that prejudices don't survive
[43:09] Speaker 3: proximity very well. You put us together and we started
[43:12] Speaker 3: to get to know I start to know you as
[43:14] Speaker 3: a human being. All those things that are out there
[43:17] Speaker 3: in society about how your group treats my group, and
[43:20] Speaker 3: this kind of becomes irrelevant in that situation. So I
[43:23] Speaker 3: think that's another hopeful dimension of this line of thinking
[43:27] Speaker 3: is that if we can reduce churn and bring people
[43:32] Speaker 3: together relax the churn goes down, that may actually be
[43:36] Speaker 3: one of the best ways to reduce prejudice itself.
[43:52] Speaker 2: I wonder how we can get people to meet each
[43:55] Speaker 2: other more.
[43:56] Speaker 1: I had high hopes that the Internet would accomplish that
[43:59] Speaker 1: just as an examp. But I went to Poland in
[44:01] Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties and I was really surprised to see
[44:06] Speaker 1: anti Semitic graffiti in Poland. For example, I would see
[44:10] Speaker 1: things where it was the Hangman's News and there was
[44:13] Speaker 1: a star of David there, things like that. The reason
[44:15] Speaker 1: I was surprised because there are no Jews in Poland.
[44:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, and what I.
[44:19] Speaker 1: Realized by talking to people and asking around is that
[44:21] Speaker 1: Jews become like a mythological creature and you could make
[44:25] Speaker 1: graffiti like this and nobody minded it.
[44:27] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[44:28] Speaker 1: So anyway, the question is how do you get people
[44:31] Speaker 1: to meet one another in a relaxed setting.
[44:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, just before I jump in on that question,
[44:36] Speaker 3: I really do think the original sin in a diverse
[44:39] Speaker 3: society like ours is segregation. You organize society in a
[44:43] Speaker 3: way that one group's over here and another group's over there,
[44:46] Speaker 3: and everybody has their Then pretty soon, inevitably our psyches
[44:50] Speaker 3: start to cook up flattering explanations of why we're good
[44:55] Speaker 3: and they're not so good. And you can do this
[44:57] Speaker 3: in experiments or experiments in social psychology where you bring
[45:00] Speaker 3: in people that you bring in twenty people, you flip
[45:03] Speaker 3: a coin, you say, if it's heads, they're in that group,
[45:07] Speaker 3: and if it's tails, they're in that group. And with
[45:11] Speaker 3: instantly you have them raid each other and they start
[45:15] Speaker 3: tearing down the other group, the group they're not in,
[45:17] Speaker 3: and uplifting the group they're in. So it's called a
[45:20] Speaker 3: minimal group effect, and it's extremely it's like a parlor trick.
[45:24] Speaker 2: It works all the time.
[45:26] Speaker 1: Let me in rep for one second, which is in
[45:27] Speaker 1: this experiment there with the hands stabbing and the brain scanner.
[45:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, we also do that.
[45:31] Speaker 1: We brought in new people and we said, hey, toss
[45:34] Speaker 1: the coin. If it's heads, you're a Justinian. If its tails,
[45:36] Speaker 1: you're an Augustinian. Totally random labels, right, they toss the coin,
[45:40] Speaker 1: they get a wristband that reminds them which group they're in.
[45:42] Speaker 1: They go in the scanner, they see Augustinian or Justinian
[45:46] Speaker 1: hands getting stabbed, and they have a larger empathic response.
[45:49] Speaker 1: That's the team they're on, even though it's totally arbitrary.
[45:51] Speaker 1: They're the ones who toss the coin and they know that.
[45:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly.
[45:55] Speaker 3: That's such a compelling to do that in an MRI,
[45:57] Speaker 3: as the machine is really amazing interesting stuff. But in anyway,
[46:01] Speaker 3: I think that's the original sin, and then churn is
[46:04] Speaker 3: an after effect because now I know that churn happens.
[46:08] Speaker 3: It's diversity that brings it about. If I'm just with
[46:12] Speaker 3: my own kind so to speak, let's say older people.
[46:16] Speaker 3: I'm a bit older, So if I'm with the other guys,
[46:20] Speaker 3: we're sitting at Pietz and we're just talking in the morning,
[46:22] Speaker 3: and I'm pretty secure that I'm not going to be
[46:24] Speaker 3: seen in terms of all those bad images of old people.
[46:27] Speaker 3: They have no tech competence, they have these tired views,
[46:30] Speaker 3: and I'm pretty safe because we're all old. But you
[46:34] Speaker 3: bring in some young people and all of a sudden
[46:37] Speaker 3: that security goes away, and I'm in turn, I better
[46:41] Speaker 3: watch what I say.
[46:42] Speaker 2: How should I say it?
[46:43] Speaker 3: Because they could see me in terms of those old
[46:47] Speaker 3: those stereotypes about old people. And that's one lesson of
[46:51] Speaker 3: the book is that diversity has this challenge to it,
[46:54] Speaker 3: and that challenge is maybe a little more important than
[46:56] Speaker 3: our prejudices at this point. That tension that just comes
[47:01] Speaker 3: from being under the threat of being seen in a
[47:04] Speaker 3: certain way as soon as the situation gets diverse, that's
[47:07] Speaker 3: what makes that uncomfortable.
[47:09] Speaker 1: So does that mean, just so I'm sort does the
[47:11] Speaker 1: original sin of segregation is that self chosen?
[47:15] Speaker 2: Sometimes it is.
[47:16] Speaker 3: It can be something I've experienced so much I just
[47:19] Speaker 3: start to prefer that. I just start to Given a
[47:22] Speaker 3: polarized society that we're in, Republicans are probably happier at
[47:28] Speaker 3: a dinner party with other Republicans and Democrats are happier
[47:32] Speaker 3: at a dinner party with other Democrats, even though that
[47:35] Speaker 3: immediate situation may not drive it, but they're inheriting that
[47:39] Speaker 3: from the differences that exist in the larger society between
[47:42] Speaker 3: Democrats and Republicans. I don't know if that's a clear
[47:45] Speaker 3: example or not, but that's in response to your question,
[47:47] Speaker 3: is how it comes about?
[47:49] Speaker 2: I think for the most part, we.
[47:51] Speaker 3: Used identity to organize and stratify this society, as do
[47:57] Speaker 3: most societies. But this society since the very beginning, as
[48:01] Speaker 3: the old world met the New world. Who's going to
[48:04] Speaker 3: be in the social contract? It's in the constitution. The
[48:08] Speaker 3: slaves are three fifths of a person. The Indians, we
[48:13] Speaker 3: can take their lands from them. So right there, we're
[48:16] Speaker 3: using We're stratifying society in terms of identity, making identity significant.
[48:21] Speaker 3: Maybe there's an alternative way to have done it that
[48:24] Speaker 3: you just didn't do that at all. You just tried
[48:27] Speaker 3: to live together and find ways of growing up together
[48:30] Speaker 3: and developing and evolving. There were always movements in throughout
[48:34] Speaker 3: American history that wanted to do that, that wanted to
[48:38] Speaker 3: make that kind of diversity something that we're more comfortable with.
[48:43] Speaker 3: So I think in part that's the way to characterize
[48:47] Speaker 3: where we are. Is this society. I'm old enough to
[48:50] Speaker 3: I grew up when we were really in a Jim
[48:53] Speaker 3: Crow era, when there was stark segregation in the United States.
[48:56] Speaker 3: In the Chicago area, for example. People think it's only
[48:59] Speaker 3: in the South. Was everyone and all kinds of You
[49:02] Speaker 3: couldn't go in this park, you couldn't go in that restaurant,
[49:05] Speaker 3: You couldn't go in that neighborhood. In Chicago, you certainly
[49:07] Speaker 3: couldn't date somebody. You certainly couldn't marry somebody. Life was
[49:11] Speaker 3: very segregated. That's been part of our history. So the
[49:15] Speaker 3: sixties is when we did away with the laws that
[49:19] Speaker 3: made that kind of segregation legal, and since then, through
[49:24] Speaker 3: a variety of policies and practices and efforts that I
[49:27] Speaker 3: think we should give ourselves.
[49:28] Speaker 2: Some real credit for.
[49:30] Speaker 3: We've tried to integrate this society and to expand opportunity
[49:34] Speaker 3: for everyone in society.
[49:36] Speaker 2: So we should take a lot of credit for that.
[49:38] Speaker 3: We may be the only society in the world that's
[49:41] Speaker 3: been as explicit about it and as effortful as American society.
[49:45] Speaker 3: We haven't done it yet, but we get some credit
[49:48] Speaker 3: for the struggle and I think this work is trying
[49:52] Speaker 3: to help us move to our next phase of how
[49:54] Speaker 3: to accomplish a genuine, fair, multi racial, multissi society.
[50:01] Speaker 1: So I'll tell you my take on it. I'd be
[50:03] Speaker 1: really curious to your reaction to this. So here's my
[50:06] Speaker 1: take as a neuroscientist and a technologist. First, we are
[50:09] Speaker 1: very prone for in groups and our groups, and we
[50:11] Speaker 1: see that at the smallest levels. I was just talking
[50:14] Speaker 1: to a gentleman who is a Christian who grew up
[50:18] Speaker 1: in a village in Israel, and we were just talking
[50:22] Speaker 1: about all the issues there, and he was saying that
[50:24] Speaker 1: in his village there are Christian and drus and Muslim
[50:28] Speaker 1: and Jewish communities. They all get along find but when
[50:32] Speaker 1: push comes to shove, they say, hey, i'm this community.
[50:34] Speaker 2: I'm back.
[50:35] Speaker 1: But within the community there are fights within between different
[50:38] Speaker 1: Christian families, and within that there are fights within the
[50:41] Speaker 1: like there fights all the way down with these things,
[50:44] Speaker 1: which it struck me as interesting. Okay, but here's the idea.
[50:47] Speaker 1: So as a technologist, what I recently came up with
[50:50] Speaker 1: was I patented this idea for a social media algorithm
[50:53] Speaker 1: which does something super simple, which is just the algorithm
[50:56] Speaker 1: knows all about you and all about me and everybody,
[50:58] Speaker 1: and so what it is It surfaces things between us
[51:02] Speaker 1: that we have in common. Let's say we don't know
[51:04] Speaker 1: each other at all, surfaces Hey you really? Oh you
[51:06] Speaker 1: both at Stanford? Oh yeah, both like the lawyers and
[51:09] Speaker 1: I like the exactly.
[51:11] Speaker 2: Oh you like all the retrievers. So do I agree?
[51:13] Speaker 2: So all these things get surfaced.
[51:15] Speaker 1: And it's only later that if we have let's say,
[51:17] Speaker 1: a political disagreement on gun control or abortion or whatever
[51:21] Speaker 1: it is, much later does that happen after we've hit
[51:24] Speaker 1: a certain connection thresho. And this is such a simple,
[51:27] Speaker 1: stupid idea, but it strikes me as potentially quite powerful
[51:30] Speaker 1: because of the way that we're always looking for in groups.
[51:33] Speaker 1: And I say, oh, yeah, Claude and I we totally
[51:36] Speaker 1: all these things we have in common.
[51:37] Speaker 2: Oh we disagree on this other thing.
[51:38] Speaker 1: Let me lean in and listen now because I'm interested
[51:41] Speaker 1: because he's a pal.
[51:42] Speaker 2: Yeah what do you think of that? Oh it's an
[51:44] Speaker 2: article of faith for me. Great.
[51:46] Speaker 3: I really it's been so true throughout my life, the
[51:50] Speaker 3: relationships across identity divides based on a human connection. Yeah,
[51:54] Speaker 3: you know what we have in common? We have so
[51:56] Speaker 3: much more in common, but there's always, and so many
[52:00] Speaker 3: societies a politician or a political movement of some sort
[52:04] Speaker 3: that really plays on those identity differences and tries to
[52:09] Speaker 3: create a political constituency by making one group really threatened
[52:14] Speaker 3: by another group. And it's a vulnerability in a democracy
[52:18] Speaker 3: that maybe Hitler's Germany was such a good example of it.
[52:21] Speaker 3: It was a democracy, but a leader comes along and says,
[52:24] Speaker 3: all your problems are due to that group, and what
[52:28] Speaker 3: he's creating in that statement is a constituency of people
[52:33] Speaker 3: like him that will become a political base and will
[52:37] Speaker 3: get him elected and the like, and the problems may
[52:40] Speaker 3: have nothing to do with that other group at all,
[52:42] Speaker 3: but it enables him through these dynamics we're talking about,
[52:45] Speaker 3: these group dynamics, to create a political constituency in his behalf.
[52:50] Speaker 3: And I think this is a vulnerability of democracies that
[52:53] Speaker 3: we have to be vigilant to, especially in a society
[52:56] Speaker 3: as diverse as ours that we can somebody can come
[52:59] Speaker 3: along who can trade in that kind of churn and
[53:04] Speaker 3: incitement of churn.
[53:06] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[53:07] Speaker 1: What's interesting is it happens from both sides, right, And
[53:10] Speaker 1: what happened in Germany in nineteen thirty four, every seat
[53:14] Speaker 1: elected in the Reichstag, the German parliament, was either far
[53:17] Speaker 1: left Communist or far right Nazi Party.
[53:20] Speaker 2: It was.
[53:20] Speaker 1: You know, it's just a very polarized study. Why in
[53:22] Speaker 1: part is because it was hyperinflation right after World War One.
[53:25] Speaker 2: The Germans had been punished ambiguity.
[53:28] Speaker 3: Yeah, expand that when you say inflation, I'm all of
[53:31] Speaker 3: a sudden in a very threatened and ambiguous situation.
[53:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of will I be able to provide
[53:35] Speaker 1: for my family? Yeah, Oh, I'm in trouble to some
[53:38] Speaker 1: it seems. And here's a guy who's telling me why
[53:41] Speaker 1: I'm in trouble. Yeah, gives me the answer. Yeah, that's right.
[53:44] Speaker 1: And so what's interesting is on the left there were
[53:46] Speaker 1: just as many people saying why they were in trouble
[53:50] Speaker 1: and hyperinflation and so on. They had a different answer.
[53:52] Speaker 1: And then the Nazi Party won more seats, and then,
[53:55] Speaker 1: of course, when von Hindenberg died, Hitler did this fast
[53:59] Speaker 1: move to take over the presidency. Becomes worrisome is when
[54:02] Speaker 1: things are so polarized. Now, the good news is we've
[54:05] Speaker 1: been polarized it many times in many eras of American history. Yes,
[54:09] Speaker 1: and so far, at least, we've always been able to
[54:11] Speaker 1: come out of it. One of my eras of interest,
[54:14] Speaker 1: I wonder if you'd.
[54:14] Speaker 2: Have a take on this.
[54:15] Speaker 1: I've been interested on not what starts one of these eras,
[54:20] Speaker 1: but what pulls this out, because I think it's the slow,
[54:23] Speaker 1: hard work by people who, let's say, don't become famous
[54:26] Speaker 1: for it, but somehow people slog along and pull us
[54:29] Speaker 1: out of these polarized eras.
[54:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to point to something that's always been
[54:36] Speaker 3: an answer to my answer to that question, and that
[54:39] Speaker 3: is the emergence of the civil rights movement. It co existed,
[54:43] Speaker 3: was a strong economy, things were growing, people could buy houses,
[54:49] Speaker 3: people could you could you could go to the UC
[54:51] Speaker 3: system for free. Yeah, you get the best education is
[54:55] Speaker 3: in the world for free. And so there was that context,
[55:00] Speaker 3: and then along comes of movement which in its early
[55:04] Speaker 3: days was incredibly inclusive and non threatening. It wasn't a
[55:08] Speaker 3: polarizing blacks versus whites, for example. It was we want
[55:12] Speaker 3: to have a beloved community and we see everybody's humanity.
[55:16] Speaker 3: It was John Lewis and Martin Luther King. That kind
[55:19] Speaker 3: of an etho became normative in society and I think
[55:23] Speaker 3: it led to the whole set of legislation in the
[55:28] Speaker 3: sixties that got rid of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Acts,
[55:32] Speaker 3: school desegregation in fifty four, the Fair Housing Acts, not
[55:36] Speaker 3: using quotas as much in immigration, and so on. All
[55:39] Speaker 3: this happened in that era, so where it did pull
[55:42] Speaker 3: us out of that kind of thing. So for some
[55:46] Speaker 3: reason we've drifted back, but not all the way back.
[55:50] Speaker 3: There's been a lot of accomplishment. But where we've got
[55:53] Speaker 3: a rash. Now maybe before it was a much more
[55:56] Speaker 3: serious illness, but we still have this rash.
[55:59] Speaker 2: Around is legislation.
[56:01] Speaker 1: We use legislation to make concrete our best ideas as
[56:05] Speaker 1: a society. So we pass anti discrimination housing laws. Let's
[56:09] Speaker 1: say the house that I bought many years ago, it
[56:13] Speaker 1: was an old house in the nineteen twenties, and it
[56:15] Speaker 1: still had in the charter this thing, you know, this
[56:18] Speaker 1: pub can't be sold to blacks to Jews. And then
[56:21] Speaker 1: there's an extra paragraph and extra page it goes along
[56:24] Speaker 1: with it that says this has now been overridden. But
[56:28] Speaker 1: it's fascinating to see how recent that stuff was in
[56:32] Speaker 1: our history. But the good news is we pass legislation
[56:35] Speaker 1: to say, look, we've now come up with a better idea.
[56:37] Speaker 1: We're going to lock that in so that even when
[56:40] Speaker 1: things go up and down, we can't go below this floor.
[56:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think I don't want to get too
[56:47] Speaker 3: much into contemporary politics. But that's why there's a lot
[56:51] Speaker 3: of alarm around the voting Right exact and Supreme Court
[56:53] Speaker 3: decision in recent weeks. That we need that floor, we
[56:56] Speaker 3: need that security because we are a diverse aside, and
[57:00] Speaker 3: we can be so easily tipped over into antagonism and polarization,
[57:05] Speaker 3: and so I think we need to be mature about
[57:09] Speaker 3: that reality, that psychological, social, psychological reality of having a
[57:14] Speaker 3: diverse society and understand the importance of those things rather
[57:18] Speaker 3: than just pretend like we're all the same. Yes, we
[57:23] Speaker 3: all are human in a very important way. I'm thinking
[57:26] Speaker 3: of John Roberts, the Chief Justice, who kind of wants
[57:29] Speaker 3: to have a view that it's all the race means nothing. No,
[57:33] Speaker 3: We've had a history here, and that history puts a
[57:36] Speaker 3: long shadow over a contemporary life, and we're still in
[57:41] Speaker 3: a period where opportunities and access to them are not
[57:45] Speaker 3: the same for everybody, for all identities, and we have
[57:49] Speaker 3: to be realistic about that.
[57:50] Speaker 2: It's not a big deal.
[57:52] Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you're a racist or something bad to
[57:55] Speaker 3: recognize that. It means we just have to be mature
[57:58] Speaker 3: about it. It's like recognizing that it's wise to have
[58:01] Speaker 3: a division between church and state. There are just certain
[58:04] Speaker 3: things that need to be thought of like that, that
[58:07] Speaker 3: they're there because we know if without that protection, one
[58:12] Speaker 3: thing could corrupt the other thing and it would just
[58:15] Speaker 3: be a mess. So given our society, we need to
[58:19] Speaker 3: vote in Rights Act.
[58:21] Speaker 1: So Claude, if people remember one idea from your book, Churn,
[58:25] Speaker 1: what do you hope that is?
[58:28] Speaker 3: The first thing is to understand that it is a
[58:30] Speaker 3: different kind of an analysis. It's not one rooted in
[58:32] Speaker 3: trying to understand things from a standpoint of bias and prejudice,
[58:36] Speaker 3: in acknowledging their importance, and that this is a different path,
[58:40] Speaker 3: and that it does have a Churn has a remedy,
[58:42] Speaker 3: an anecdote, a kryptonite, and that is trust building, and
[58:46] Speaker 3: that as individuals and as institutions. The reason I have
[58:50] Speaker 3: optimism is that I think it's easy to build trust.
[58:53] Speaker 3: Trust is, as I say in the book, it's a
[58:56] Speaker 3: game that's played on the ground. Is who shows up,
[59:00] Speaker 3: is who listens again, and then who collaboratively tries to
[59:05] Speaker 3: help and identifies with that. Anybody that does that to me,
[59:09] Speaker 3: I trust them. You can overcome these differences. They're not
[59:13] Speaker 3: that hard overcoming prejudices. As a psychologist and both as
[59:18] Speaker 3: a neuroscientist, both of us how hard that is. But
[59:21] Speaker 3: building trust is something that if we recognize that is
[59:25] Speaker 3: where our attention should go, then that's how we can
[59:28] Speaker 3: move forward. I think it's a relaxing and confidence instilling
[59:34] Speaker 3: insight about group relations and our experience as a multiracial,
[59:38] Speaker 3: multi ethnic, multi class society. And that's the main trust
[59:43] Speaker 3: I'd like to make of this book, that it offers
[59:46] Speaker 3: a new path forward integration two point zero.
[59:52] Speaker 2: There's that.
[59:52] Speaker 3: Then I also think at the level of individuals, the
[59:55] Speaker 3: second thing I would say, in the settings of our lives,
[59:57] Speaker 3: our schools, our classrooms, in those real settings that we
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: can all participate. If you're thinking about just a global society,
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: that's very where do I fit in here? And you
[1:00:07] Speaker 3: just ignore the problem, try to repress it. But if
[1:00:10] Speaker 3: you understand the trust building is something that can happen
[1:00:13] Speaker 3: in the concrete settings that we actually live and work in.
[1:00:18] Speaker 3: I think that's or I'd like it to be a
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: contribution of this book. And there are two things that
[1:00:23] Speaker 3: I think people can focus on in those settings. One
[1:00:27] Speaker 3: is reducing the ambiguity of situations. It's ambiguity that makes
[1:00:32] Speaker 3: me have to consider whether anything negative that happens to
[1:00:37] Speaker 3: me is due to my race. I have to consider
[1:00:40] Speaker 3: that as a rational person, and that makes it a
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: pressured situation for me and an uncomfortable situation for all
[1:00:48] Speaker 3: of us. So ambiguity and I give examples in the
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: book about elite graduate programs in chemistry that reduced ambiguity
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: and equated the performance of women minorities with that of men.
[1:01:02] Speaker 3: It had dramatic effects, and that finding holds up across
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: all the ucs in all the physical sciences.
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: I just want to make sure everyone understands this about
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: what it means to reduce ambiguity.
[1:01:12] Speaker 2: Give us a concrete example that.
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: I'll talk about if I can just stick in a
[1:01:15] Speaker 3: description of Berkeley's College of Chemistry. A couple of social
[1:01:19] Speaker 3: psychologists Rudy Mendoza Denton and Aaron Fisher and others at
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: Berkeley did a survey of the physical sciences and the
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: graduate programs in these elite program math physics, electrical engineering,
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: computer sciences, Women and minorities doing as well as the
[1:01:35] Speaker 3: men in these graduate programs as measured by progress towards
[1:01:40] Speaker 3: publication in graduate school. That's the coin of the realm.
[1:01:44] Speaker 3: And they found, as you might expect, no, they're not
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: doing as well except in one college, the College of Chemistry.
[1:01:52] Speaker 3: And when you so that, like a magnet, drew me
[1:01:54] Speaker 3: into it, and what you find there is that without
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: really thinking about diversity per se, they just to improve
[1:02:02] Speaker 3: their effectiveness with students, training, training great scientists. They have
[1:02:07] Speaker 3: a very extensive program that reduces ambiguity. So what they
[1:02:10] Speaker 3: do is a lot like what Georgia State does. They
[1:02:13] Speaker 3: bring them in three weeks earlier when they begin graduate school,
[1:02:16] Speaker 3: and they give them the social capital, the understandings they
[1:02:20] Speaker 3: need to benefit from that program. They tell them, look,
[1:02:22] Speaker 3: you're a graduate student now, not an undergraduate. It's not
[1:02:26] Speaker 3: you're a producer of knowledge, not just the consumer. It's
[1:02:29] Speaker 3: your progress is about how it's about research and how much.
[1:02:33] Speaker 3: And to help you with that, you're going to meet
[1:02:35] Speaker 3: five faculty and they're going to give you some ideas
[1:02:38] Speaker 3: you might do for your first year project. And you
[1:02:40] Speaker 3: have to do a first year project, and then they
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: structure it. You're going to meet every week with your advisor,
[1:02:44] Speaker 3: and by November two, you're going to have a proposal
[1:02:47] Speaker 3: in and by March third you're going to have the
[1:02:49] Speaker 3: research done, and by June you're going to have the
[1:02:52] Speaker 3: paper submitted. So with all that laid out now, it
[1:02:56] Speaker 3: reduces all kinds of ambiguities. What's important here? How do
[1:03:00] Speaker 3: I stand in my head of schedule on a behind schedule.
[1:03:04] Speaker 3: I know what the schedule is, I know what it's
[1:03:05] Speaker 3: all about. It sounds simple, but it's It takes a
[1:03:08] Speaker 3: lot of ambiguity out and it reduces these differences.
[1:03:11] Speaker 2: So that would be an example. Do the men and
[1:03:14] Speaker 2: the women get these classes or everybody?
[1:03:17] Speaker 3: Oh great, everybody gets them because they're going to be
[1:03:20] Speaker 3: white guys that don't know any and can benefit tremendously
[1:03:23] Speaker 3: from that kind of orientation. And now everybody's on an
[1:03:26] Speaker 3: equal playing field. What happens in the other departments most
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: of the faculty of men, So the men graduate students
[1:03:32] Speaker 3: come in, they feel kind of more comfortable. The women
[1:03:35] Speaker 3: and minorities don't. They've got that churn going. They're in
[1:03:38] Speaker 3: churn that in those situation, and that's distracting and weighty
[1:03:42] Speaker 3: because these are important situations to them, so they over effort,
[1:03:46] Speaker 3: they try too hard, they avoid things that churn. It
[1:03:50] Speaker 3: creates a real source of depression and oppression in their lives.
[1:03:54] Speaker 3: And graduate school just isn't as fun or exciting. You
[1:03:58] Speaker 3: don't feel as free and relaxed, so they don't do
[1:04:00] Speaker 3: as well and you get this difference in performance outcome.
[1:04:03] Speaker 3: But the Chemistry College addresses that by clearing up the ambiguity,
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: getting rid of that and supporting them at the same time,
[1:04:13] Speaker 3: not in some heroic way, but in a very straightforward,
[1:04:17] Speaker 3: matter of business way. And that's what makes me feel
[1:04:21] Speaker 3: optimistic and across all the ucs in these departments, that
[1:04:26] Speaker 3: feature of structure and support like that predicts which departments
[1:04:31] Speaker 3: have the smallest gaps between men and women and minorities
[1:04:35] Speaker 3: in performance.
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: Okay, so what gives you optimism that we can build
[1:04:40] Speaker 1: trust in a polarized society.
[1:04:43] Speaker 3: I think the first thing is that I don't think
[1:04:45] Speaker 3: we've recognized that trust is the issue, and I hope
[1:04:49] Speaker 3: that Chern as a book brings that to light. Then secondly,
[1:04:55] Speaker 3: I believe and I think the evidence that I try
[1:04:57] Speaker 3: to present it shows that Bill bilding trust is a
[1:05:00] Speaker 3: lot easier than any other approach to this, and that
[1:05:04] Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be a program or a policy
[1:05:08] Speaker 3: directed at one group and not other groups. It can
[1:05:11] Speaker 3: be an effort building trust in these real settings of
[1:05:15] Speaker 3: our lives can be an effort that everybody benefits from.
[1:05:20] Speaker 3: In this situation, we just haven't known that was the issue.
[1:05:23] Speaker 3: We just didn't have the words for it, the language
[1:05:26] Speaker 3: for it, the way to think about it. And I
[1:05:28] Speaker 3: think that when you have a response to a stress,
[1:05:32] Speaker 3: it reduces that stress. There's a lot of research which
[1:05:36] Speaker 3: show that's one of the best ways to reduce it.
[1:05:39] Speaker 3: Just tell me how to cope with this. As soon
[1:05:41] Speaker 3: as I think I have a way of coping with
[1:05:42] Speaker 3: it that I can be reasonably confident about it, my
[1:05:45] Speaker 3: stress level goes down. I've become more open, I'm less defensive.
[1:05:50] Speaker 3: I'm in a much clearer, happier space. I think we
[1:05:53] Speaker 3: just haven't appreciated that in the general population culture. I
[1:05:58] Speaker 3: hope this is a step towards introducing that hopefulness.
[1:06:06] Speaker 1: That was Claude Steel talking about the invisible forces we
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: feel every time we enter a room.
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: Am I safe here? Do I belong?
[1:06:14] Speaker 1: How? Am I being interpreted? Can I trust the people
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: around me? These questions are often running under the surface
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: of our conscious awareness, but they influence how much of
[1:06:24] Speaker 1: our neural resources are actually available to us. You only
[1:06:28] Speaker 1: have a certain amount of attention and working memory and
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: executive function. It's all finite, and every cognitive resource devoted
[1:06:37] Speaker 1: to monitoring the social environment becomes one less resource available
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: for solving equations or giving a presentation, or taking an exam,
[1:06:47] Speaker 1: or just enjoying a conversation. This happens to us all
[1:06:51] Speaker 1: the time. Think about your first day at your new job,
[1:06:55] Speaker 1: or when you move to a new city, or when
[1:06:57] Speaker 1: you meet your partner's family or give a public talk.
[1:07:01] Speaker 1: The brain is constantly asking whether the environment is predictable
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: and trustworthy, and once it receives enough evidence that it is,
[1:07:10] Speaker 1: that's when things get better. Vigilance relaxes, and mental bandwidth returns,
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: and instead of self.
[1:07:17] Speaker 2: Monitoring, you can get curiosity.
[1:07:20] Speaker 1: Psychology often focuses on changing minds from the inside out,
[1:07:24] Speaker 1: but Claud points towards another possibility, which is that sometimes
[1:07:28] Speaker 1: the environment can carry part of the burden, so expectations
[1:07:32] Speaker 1: can be made clearer, feedback can be made less ambiguous,
[1:07:36] Speaker 1: so that it communicates confidence and generally institutions can give
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: sign posts about what is expected and that reduces uncertainty
[1:07:44] Speaker 1: for everyone. That's a modest intervention, but what Claude's research
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: shows is that the consequences can actually be pretty large.
[1:07:52] Speaker 1: For example, as we heard at Georgia State University, where
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: they transformed to their graduation rates just through helping students
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: to understand how the institution worked and what was expected
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: of them and where help was available. That's all that
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: was needed to make a change. Now that's a pretty
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: encouraging lesson that you can get large changes in performance
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: just through small modifications in the environment that reduce uncertainty.
[1:08:18] Speaker 1: One last point I want to surface from today's conversation
[1:08:22] Speaker 1: is that simple human contact has real power. The person
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: who begins as some category gradually becomes an individual. Stereotypes
[1:08:32] Speaker 1: lose their grip because there's now an actual human being
[1:08:36] Speaker 1: standing in front of us. If you've never had a
[1:08:39] Speaker 1: chance to be pals with an Israeli and a Palestinian,
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: you should. If you don't get to spend time with
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: people of different age ranges, or ethnicities or political orientations,
[1:08:51] Speaker 1: you should. One of the most hopeful features of the
[1:08:54] Speaker 1: brain is that our nervous systems are plastic throughout life,
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: so every meaningful interaction you have with someone enhances your
[1:09:03] Speaker 1: internal models. So, in wrapping up, the main theme of
[1:09:08] Speaker 1: today's discussion is that every social interaction is really made
[1:09:12] Speaker 1: up of two conversations. One unfolds in words and the
[1:09:16] Speaker 1: other unfolds inside your brain. The first conversation is about
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: the topic at hand, The second is the potentially loud
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: internal conversation about belonging and trust, and that second conversation
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: often determines how well the first one goes. So one
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: of the greatest gifts we can give another person is
[1:09:38] Speaker 1: an environment where less churn is needed, where they can
[1:09:42] Speaker 1: devote all their remarkable cognitive machinery to learning and creating
[1:09:48] Speaker 1: in discovery. When we reduce the unnecessary social uncertainty, we
[1:09:54] Speaker 1: give the brain back its bandwidth, and that is how
[1:09:57] Speaker 1: we advance civilization, building environments where fewer minds have to
[1:10:02] Speaker 1: spend their brilliance on vigilance. Go to Eagleman dot com
[1:10:08] Speaker 1: slash podcast for more information and to find further reading.
[1:10:12] Speaker 1: Join the weekly discussions on my substack, and check out
[1:10:14] Speaker 1: and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of
[1:10:18] Speaker 1: each episode and to leave comments until next time. I'm
[1:10:21] Speaker 1: David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos assa

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