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PROFESSOR: OK, so up until now
in many ways we've thought
about people as individuals--
how they see, how they remember,
their personality,
things you can measure by
IQ tests, if they have
psychopathology or not.
We've primarily focused on
people as an individual agents
in the world.
And for this lecture and for the
next lecture, we're going
to flip over and think about
people as they interact with
other people.
And all the way back from 1962,
here's an example--
and you know so much
from your life--
of how powerfully we're
influenced by other people in
our behaviors.
So this is a story of
elevator rules.
You guys know elevator
rules, right?
You get in an elevator, what are
you supposed to be so you
don't make other people
uncomfortable or where they
don't make you?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Yeah, which
way you're facing.
Not too close in space.
If there's only two of you and
the person huddles right next
to you, you go, hmm.
OK.
So anyway here we go.
So I was a graduate student in
brain and cognitive science
and I got minimally exposed
to social psychology.
I was actually a teaching
assistant.
I must have heard something
about it.
But it wasn't until I was
teaching at Stanford which is
full of famous social
psychologists and I was
hearing them give their
introductory psychology
lectures that I got amazed by
what social psychologists have
discovered about human nature.
And maybe because I was exposed
to it in one shot, it
really changed for me personally
how I try to think
about people from that
day forward.
So let's see if it
does it for you.
And in many ways, we're going
to do today the core, core
famous, most famous things
in psychology--
that the Stanford Zimbardo
prison experiment, the Milgram
obedience experiment.
And a theme you'll see is how
funny we are as humans in our
desire to want to fit in.
So what is social psychology?
The scientific study of the
way in which our thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors are
influenced by the real or
imagined presence
of other people.
So it's how we relate
to other people.
And to a certain extent, if you
compare it to things like
linguistics or other aspects of
psychology, social things
have seems weakish.
But people have been thinking
in the last decade, more and
more, that maybe many things
that make humans humans have
been pulled by powerful social
relations that occur
in groups of humans.
And so for example, looking
across primate species--
just across primates--
here is the average size
of the social group.
Here's the average size
of the neocortex.
And it's a pretty good fit.
And so you could think back
in the course of examples.
For example, the infant who's
willing to crawl across a
dangerous visual cliff if the
mother has a positive facial
expression.
Risking injury, or worse,
because you have a social
queue that says it's OK.
And you're just an infant
interpreting that.
So more and more, the thought
that many of the abilities we
have, how we work together, how
we communicate together,
are driven by our fundamental
social character.
And so we'll talk today about
the power of the situation.
This is a big idea in social
psychology is that people's
behavior can be phenomenally
altered by the situation
they're in.
And we'll talk about
attribution--
how we decide whether a person
behaves a certain way because
of their character or the
situation they're in--
the fundamental attribution
error, conformity, compliance,
obedience, and bystanders.
There are so many experiments
here that amaze me and that
are still completely relevant
today, and I'll
convince you of that.
So I think we engage in all
the time as humans as
interpreting the actions
and words of others.
Why did somebody do something.
Right?
That fills our lives-- our
families, our teachers, our
friends, or coworkers--
why did somebody do something
or say something.
Why is that person looking at
me friendly across the room?
So the causal attribution--
what is driving that
person's thoughts?
What's in their mind
that's making them
to behave that way?
And there's at least two kinds
of the explanations.
One of them is character.
So personality psychology
is all about that.
The character of the person is
making them behave that way
because they're outgoing
or because
they're shy or whatever.
So Jeremiah helps the elderly
person across the street
because he's a really
nice guy.
Sven had a hard time solving the
puzzle because he's kind
of a dummy.
Tamae gave money to the boy.
Boy is she nice and generous.
That's the personality
predisposition interpretation.
So that's the who
she is or he is.
Or they're behaving that way
because they're in a
particular situation.
So Jeremiah helped the elderly
man across the street because
his friends are breaking in
to the apartment the guy's
leaving behind.
Or there's another person
there and he's trying to
impress that person what
a swell guy he is.
Sven had a hard time solving the
puzzle because it was an
impossible puzzle.
He didn't get nearly
enough sleep--
the situation.
She gave money to the boy
because he's the drug dealer.
He's a courier running--
whatever.
It's the situation, OK?
So you pick it, but all of a
sudden the interpretation
completely changes as
to what's going on.
It's about character
versus situation.
So where does the behavior
come from--
the dispositions of an
individual or the situation
they're in?
Personality psychologists
focus on this.
Social psychologists
focus on this.
And they will argue that this
dominates everything.
This dominates everything.
Not the only thing, but it
dominates everything.
So let's consider them
in one other way.
So let's say that you are late
for an appointment with me.
So what do I start to think as
I'm sitting there waiting for
you and you don't email
me, you don't call me.
You might think, well, this
person is a bit inconsiderate,
a bit disorganized,
a bit unmotivated.
It would not be a good idea,
for example, to show up for
job interview late for your
appointment, right?
Why?
Because we don't want them to
think we're disorganized,
inconsiderate, or unmotivated
until we're hired.
So that's the other person.
Like why aren't they here?
They're messing up, and there's
something not good
about their character.
But imagine when you're late.
Why are you late?
Because you're disorganized,
inconsiderate, and
unmotivated?
No, because something came up.
The situation, right?
The traffic was worse than
you could have imagined.
Last minute, there was an email
that you have to respond
to or your parent called
or whatever.
Some situation made you late.
And what I'm going to show you
in a moment is that a very
fundamental thing about people--
in fact, called the
fundamental attribution
error--
is that we're biased to
interpret the actions of
others as revealing their
character, whereas we're
biased to interpret our own
actions as being driven by the
situation we're in.
So Lee Ross was the one who came
up with this term, the
fundamental attribution error.
The other person is driven by
character and that's how we
interpret why they do things.
We give ourselves a break
by the situation.
And so what they did is, they
ran experiments where they
wanted to make it incredibly
clear to Stanford
undergraduate research
participants, incredibly clear
that the situation
was dominant.
And show that even then, even
when you know for certain it's
the situation, and you know as
much as you can possibly know,
you tend to ascribe character
to people.
OK?
So they had students
run in pairs.
And they were truly randomly
selected to be a quiz master
or a contestant.
Two students at a time.
The quiz master comes up with
questions and the contestant
has to answer.
So they can answer who were the
two inventors of calculus.
And you know the answer
might be--
and probably you could
argue some things
about those, right?
But look, you know this
as students--
it's sort of unfair that we get
to ask you the questions.
So I get to ask you something
like what's the structure just
in front of the hippocampus
that's important
for emotional memory?
And you might answer,
oh no, oh no.
[LAUGHS]
That was on the previous test.
It's not cumulative.
[LAUGHS]
and I go, it's the amygdala.
And I've worked in that field
for 30 years and I feel pretty
proud of knowing that
little fact.
Now, I need a student
hand to go up?
OK.
Now you asked me a question
that you think I might
struggle on.
And believe me, there's an
infinite number outside the
location of the amygdala.
Pick one from physics or
math or chemistry.
You're going to embarrass me.
Make it really hard so
I don't look so bad.
AUDIENCE: There was
a football match
this weekend in England--
PROFESSOR: There's
what, sorry?
AUDIENCE: A football match
this weekend in England.
PROFESSOR: A football match
this weekend in England.
AUDIENCE: Between two
of the top of teams
in the Premier League.
Who won?
PROFESSOR: Manchester?
No?
OK, I just made that up.
No, I don't know.
So here's the point.
If I ask questions,
I know the answer.
I picked the question, right?
And you may or may
not know it.
If you create the question,
there's a pretty good chance I
won't know it.
OK, so inherently when somebody
is the quiz master,
they're going to know the answer
and the other person
may or may not it.
A pretty good chance
they don't as
they make up questions.
You know that.
Logically you know that.
So the setup was--
and the students were only
correct 40% of the time-- not
bad-- who were answering the
questions spontaneously made
up by the randomly selected
quiz master.
So this is an experiment--
knowing this, does it tell you
anything about the knowledge
or intelligence--
let's call it, just
an easy label--
of the person asking the
questions or the person
answering the questions?
No.
Does that make sense?
They were randomly put into
positions where one person
gets to ask and one answers.
Yet even seeing all this right
in front of them, then
students were asked, compared to
a person in general, to the
average student, are the people
up there, the quizzer
and the receiver, are they
less knowledgeable, about
average, or more knowledgeable
than the average other
Stanford student?
And in a pure scientific sense
you should say I have no idea.
Because you created a situation
where one person had
a hopeless advantage compared
to the other.
You told me you were
doing that.
I saw you do that.
But human beings can help
us say-- including the
contestants say, I guess I'm
a bit dumb, but that other
person was really smart.
The one who knew about the
soccer match in England and
other questions.
Or the other person
observing--
that quiz master seems to know
a lot, that student.
And this other one-- the one
who was answering the
questions--
not quite an average
MIT student.
All right?
Because people can't help but
say if I see behavior, it's
because of the content
of your character--
smarter or dumber
in this case.
Even though I know logically,
your mind goes to that
analysis of behavior in others
by their character or
disposition.
Here's another one.
Participants read essays that
were in favor of Castro, who
is the leader of Cuba,
or against Castro.
In the US, we're mostly
against Castro.
The opinions expressed in the
essays were presented as
either chosen--
so the person could choose
to speak what
they want to speak--
or they were assigned
by the experimenter.
So you were asked, please give
a pro-Castro speech or please
give an anti-Castro speech.
That's your job here.
And then the people listening
said, OK, what do they really
think about Castro?
What do they really think?
OK, even in a situation where
you're told they're going to
be assigned that.
So what happens?
Here's how much they believe
that the essay writer was
pro-Castro or anti-Castro
in the case where they
chose what to do.
But when they were given the
assignment, and now you know
it's really truly random, it's
not quite as much as this, but
they still believed that if you
write a pro-Castro essay,
even though you're told the
person was assigned that
essay, as you read it you go,
this person seems to really
believe it.
I think they're really for
it because that's their
predisposition.
You're told fully this is a
situation that's assigned, but
humans can't help but think, I
see through this a little bit.
And that essay is just a little
too well written, a
little too convincing, for a
person just to be randomly
writing it.
So humans, even when you give
them all the information, that
it's 100% situational, they
can't help but interpret
things as being built out of
character or predisposition in
that person.
So people have also thought to
this idea of understanding
another person's behavior in
terms of their predispositions
versus the situation.
That the disposition on one
is made automatically,
reflexively.
That the situational information
sort of follows in
a controlled, slow,
thoughtful way the
takes energy to correct.
That humans on the whole first
interpret automatically,
reflexively, the behavior of
others as their character.
And then second, optionally, can
correct it thinking about
the situation.
So the idea is you see
something, you immediately
decide what the person's
character is.
And then maybe, maybe, we'll
slowly, effort-fully and
consciously, think about
what the situation
is that led to that.
So these are automatic, and
this is controlled,
thoughtful, and deliberative.
So it may not happen.
So the people to show this--
and it's a slightly
complicated experiment, but
let me show you how.
They wanted to prove that
thinking about the situation
demands a lot of extra mental
resources to overcome the
initial interpretation.
So they had participants watched
silent video clips.
They said it was silent
because they wanted to
preserve the privacy of the
woman who was being videotaped
having a discussion
with a stranger.
You just see the woman.
And she looked extremely
anxious in some
clips and not others.
The task is we want you to
rate how anxious is this
person basically.
Rate your impression in terms
of their character.
Are they an anxious
type of person?
Some of the research people
who were the subjects were
told the target was discussing
what the topics were.
And then they also did one other
thing which was some of
the people we're asked to
just watch and rate.
And other people were told,
not only do you watch and
rate, but we're going to test
your memory for the content of
what she said.
Because of that, they're
trying to
memorize what they hear.
And the idea is that your
filling up their attention
with what they're memorizing,
they can't make the
correction.
They're out of mental resources
to make the
situational correction.
So you're watching these
films on anxious
topics or relaxing topics.
So the relaxing topics might
be these things-- tell me
about a foreign film you like
or a favorite hobby.
Or speak about your worst public
humiliation, a sexual
fantasy you have, a personal
failure you had.
And of course, these things in
red, you could expect a person
talking about that to
see more anxious.
Those are personal, anxiety
provoking topics, OK?
So here's what happens.
So again, the topics
were either anxiety
provoking or not.
And you were either just
watching the film or
memorizing what you were
hearing as well.
And the hypothesis is that
this would happen.
So if you were doing one
task and you were told
what the topic is--
it has a relaxing topic
or an anxious topic--
you could separate out what the
task is versus the person.
But if you were trying to
memorize simultaneously what
the content of the film was,
that difference disappears.
The rating is identical.
The people are not taking into
account the topic that's being
talked about.
Because they're memorizing,
their mind is occupied with
the content of the scene.
And they're not able to sort
of correct the intuitive,
automatic, reflexive, habitual
interpretation of a person's
actions based on their
character.
So in the news today, as if it
were organized for our course,
there's a fantastic debate about
what pictures to release
or not release from what?
Yeah, the killing of
Osama bin Laden.
A huge debate going on about
whether it should
be released or not.
That's gotten the public
attention.
One of the biggest reasons why
among several, but a big
reason why there's such a huge
debate is another set of
pictures some years ago from
Abu Ghraib prison.
I'm going to show you those
pictures and the consequences
that were felt to follow
from the release.
So this is one of the soldiers
who was there, Private Lynndie
England, who was said to have
participated in maltreating
and torturing detainees at
the Abu Ghraib prison.
So you know, when the United
States went into Iraq, they
very much had the thought that
they were liberating the
country from tyranny, which in
some sense everybody agrees I
think just about.
They were in some sense.
But one of the goals was to
convince the population of
Iraq that the United States was
not there to occupy and
take over but to liberate and
free the people of Iraq.
That was a big message the
United States wanted to send
to the world and to
the Iraqis, right?
Regardless of whatever else you
know or believe or have
political opinion, that was a
message the United States
wanted to send to everybody.
That was huge for them to do.
That they were there to help
free Iraqi citizens not to
occupy and take over Iraq.
So imagine when these pictures
came out, a very large prison
that was run by Americans
in Iraq--
and these pictures were put on
the internet-- of various,
what looked like and probably
were, torturous situations.
Here's an Iraqi person with this
hood on their head with
wires connected to the body.
Here is that soldier holding a
leash, and here's a prisoner
on the leash.
Here's a smiling picture with
her and another soldier.
There's a pyramid of naked
prisoners piled up, one on top
of the other in a humiliating
position.
Here's another picture of her,
thumbs up, pointing at hooded,
naked prisoners' genitals.
OK, and then she was tried in
court for these things.
It was devastating for
the United States.
These pictures were devastating
for the United
States because they were exactly
the opposite of the
picture the US wanted to
present, which is one of
liberation and friendliness
and democracy and freedom.
And here's tyranny, brutality,
and prison torture.
And it figures hugely in the
mind of people in Washington
now as they're debating
about these pictures.
And for the moment,
they decided not
to release any picture.
The power of these pictures as
they floated around to inflame
and incite arguments.
And so here two ways you could
do it from the viewpoint of
social psychology.
The disposition attribution.
You imagine you're a juror
where she's being tried.
So the accused knew what
she was doing.
She was laughing and joking.
She is enjoying participating,
all for her own sick humor.
So here's the crime.
You get angry and you're not
very sympathetic because it's
from controllable factors.
She should've controlled
herself.
She's held responsible.
She should get a severe
punishment.
Or you could ask--
and we'll come back to this at
the end of the lecture--
were there uncontrollable
factors well beyond what a
person could be reasonably
asked to control.
Then you're not so angry at
them if you think the
situation was very
problematic.
For example, she had a boyfriend
who was not only
superior to her militarily, but
also was the ring leader.
She was a follower.
She was an individual smitten.
She did whatever he
wanted her to do.
Somewhat more sympathy, person
not held responsible, and the
punishment is more about
rehabilitation than
punishment.
So those would be
two approaches.
She was found guilty of one
count of conspiracy and four
counts of maltreating detainees,
one count of
committing an indecent act.
She was acquitted on
a conspiracy count.
So I'm going to come back to
this in a little bit after we
talk about the Stanford prison
experiment and ask you your
thoughts about this individual
from the information you have.
So we'll come back to that in
a little bit, thinking about
what is a person responsible
for versus the situation.
So let's start to talk about
social influence, which is
again a change in a person's
behavior or beliefs in
response to the intentional
or unintentional
influences of others.
And we'll talk about
three kinds.
Conformity, which is changing
your behavior or beliefs in
response to explicit or implicit
pressure from others.
That's the person turning
in the elevator.
Compliance, changing one's
behavior to avoid conflict.
And obedience, which is
following the demands of more
powerful people or
organizations.
So conformity.
I mean, conformity sounds like
a bad word, but we conform to
implicit and explicit
social rules.
It's pretty useful for social
groups operating.
If everybody here was talking
and walking in and out and
stuff like that, we couldn't
have a class.
I mean, if we didn't conform in
some ways, we couldn't do
very much that took more
than one person to do.
And it's seen across people and
lifespans and cultures.
It's how, in certain ways, we
work together as people.
Now the original experiment
on this came from a very
perceptual effect.
Participants supported for study
on visual perception--
Muzafer Sherif.
They were seated in a dark room
and saw point of light
appear, then move, and
then disappear.
And they were asked to judge
how far the light moved.
This was based on a perceptual
illusion.
Because if you stare at a light
in a totally dark room,
you'll start to interpret it
moving, even though it does
not physically move.
It has to be a blacked
out room.
You have to sit there
for a while.
And then you start to get
signals about movement that
are incorrect.
And this perceptual illusion
that a dot is moving was
called the autokinetic effect.
And that's OK.
You've see an amazing allusions,
and that would be
another amazing illusion of a
single dot of light in a dark
room, and you start
to think it moves.
But what the astounding
thing was this--
here's three individuals who are
tested and their rating of
how much it moved.
It didn't move, so there
are some differences.
Now the three of them are tested
together on day two,
day three, and day four.
And you can see that these three
different people start
to converge on the identical,
imagined illusory movement, as
if the responses of the others
were influencing one and
another on such a
simple thing.
And then this experiment was
made even more ridiculous by
one of the most spectacular
experiments just in the
simplicity and power
and replicability.
So this is from Asch.
Imagine that you walk into a
room and your task is this--
now get ready because I'm
going to ask for a
volunteer right now.
OK, thanks.
Get ready, this is going
to be pretty tough, OK?
And everybody else will be
nice to you because you
volunteered.
You see this line here?
Which of these three lines
has the same length?
AUDIENCE: Number one.
PROFESSOR: Number one.
That looks good to you?
Does that look like a
really tough thing?
No?
OK, thanks.
OK, I was being a little
facetious.
Thank you.
But you have to understand,
this is the gist of the
experiment.
Not such a tough thing,
pretty obvious.
Here's what they did.
Now you are brought into a
room and there were six
confederates.
So that's the word in social
psychology that's used for
people who are in on
the experiment.
OK?
They're not really subjects.
So you walk into a room.
You don't know what's
going on.
There are six other students
sitting there.
And they do exactly
what we did now.
They show you a line like this
and three other lines and say
you pick it.
The six other people go first.
So you're sitting there--
imagine this.
Imagine the first one says,
one, you go, OK.
Then somebody goes,
eh, uh, two.
And you go, hm.
The next person says,
oh yeah, two.
And by the time they get to you,
four of the six have said
number two.
What do you do?
Now to an astounding extend
what you do is this--
you also say two.
OK, and it's not--
like you're saying, I'm
just fitting in.
When they show you the pictures,
people are turning
their head.
Is there an angle?
Is it the lighting?
Why do I think it's
number one when
everybody else is pretty--
for such a simple thing,
pretty much the same.
So the confederates are not
always wrong, but they're
pretty often wrong, and
in a consistent way.
It's all set up.
But you as an individual--
and here's one of these.
You see this person like, OK,
if I look hard enough, I'm
going to figure it out.
How did they figure out that
line number one equals line
number two?
If you do it by yourself,
less than 1% errors.
Obviously, the only error you
make is if you're not paying
attention, right?
With group pressure, not every
single time, but all of a
sudden, 37 times more often,
you say it's the wrong the
line length.
And almost always, the
impression is you really
believe it.
The people are really
struggling.
They're really hemming
and hawing.
Not everybody's the same, but
only 25% give the correct
answer throughout
the experiment.
75% of people at least once will
give the obviously wrong
answer because they feel
that conformity.
They need to respond to the
other answers given by the
other students around them.
Such a simple thing as line
length, we cannot help but
want to fit in and figure
out a way to do that.
What effects this conformity?
Well, the more confederates,
the more powerful it is.
That makes sense, right?
So here's the group
size effect.
So if only one person is making
it, you just figure
they're not too swift and
you can get the line.
Two people, you're already
moving up.
By the time you get to
four people, you're
all the way up there.
4 to 15 is about the same.
So four other people giving you
obviously wrong answers,
you decide there must be
something interestingly going
on and you could figure
it like they did.
OK
Presence of an ally.
We'll come back to this
a couple times.
All it takes is one person to
break the conformity and
you're willing to
break that, too.
In these experiments,
that's set up.
The ally is one of the
confederates who's now told to
give the right length.
So one brave person can really
change what you do, but it's
hard to be that brave person.
These allies are set up
by the experimenter.
So what happens?
Here you go.
Here's the mistakes being made
when all the other people are
saying the wrong length.
And if one person is giving
the right answers, only
occasionally.
Still you do it sometimes, but a
dramatic difference from one
person giving the
right answer.
One dissenter opens up your
chance to go with the answer
you know intellectually
is correct.
Embarrassment.
It's amazing the stuff
we all do.
It's amazing the stuff we all do
to avoid being embarrassed.
Embarrassment is such
a powerful thing for
almost all of us.
There are some exceptions,
but for almost all of us.
So part of what's going on in
conformity is to not to be
embarrassed to be different.
And so here's the way
they show you that.
They have you arrive late.
You're not really
arriving late.
They tell you, oh, you should
have been here.
We had a miscommunication.
All the other people are here.
They knew.
Well, because you arrived late,
why don't you just write
down your answers.
You don't have to say
them out loud.
Because we can't have you mess
up the experiment now.
Then it's still not perfect, but
people reduced by a third
the number of their
incorrect answers.
Because they don't have
to tell other
people what they saw.
OK, it's not perfect, but all
of a sudden, at least that.
And a few other things.
It peaks in ninth grade.
Women on average a bit
more than men.
Cultures that are more
interdependent showed a bit
more than cultures like the US
that emphasize independence.
But these are all variations on
a relatively small thing.
Fundamentally, humans
want to conform.
And they don't form
superficially.
They convince themselves there's
something going on and
then the right thing to
do is to conform.
Why do we conform?
There's all kinds
of hypotheses.
We want to be right.
Everybody knew that line length,
I want to be right.
I want to be popular.
I don't want to be the weird
person not doing this stuff.
So anyway, let's come to
compliance which is even more
oppositional.
You know this from your life if
you have ever spent money
on something you didn't mean
to because there's an
effective salesperson.
It's called a foot-in-the-door
technique,
and here's an example.
Here's what they did in
1962 in California.
Freedman and Fraser
drove to homes--
random homes-- show a large
unattractive sign that says
drive carefully.
Now we can all agree that it's
pretty non-controversial to
drive carefully.
And they knock on the door and
they ask the person will you
place this on your lawn.
Now think if somebody comes up
to you, knocks on the door,
and says, would you place this
large unattractive sign to
drive carefully?
And less than 20% say yes.
OK that's not a shocking
number.
They're picking something that's
like apple pie, right?
I mean, drive carefully, who
could be against that?
But who wants a weird sign
on your lawn, right?
And they made it unattractive
on purpose.
So 20%.
Here's the other group.
They go up to your door, they
knock on the door, and they
say, I have a petition here--
you've had that experience on
the street or somewhere--
I have a petition here.
Will you sign up to support
legislation to
reduce traffic accidents.
OK, do you think there's
some gimmick here?
I mean, who's for traffic
accidents?
The person says yes.
OK, I'm going to
sign that one.
So a lot of people
sign that one.
Then you go back to the same
house a few weeks later and
you ask the sign, it moves
up to over 50%
say yes for the sign.
That's literally the
foot-in-the-door.
Once you sign this petition,
then you're incredibly more
likely to say yes
for the sign.
And what we understand that to
be through other experiments,
we want to be consistent
in our behavior.
Well gee, if we're willing to
sign a petition for fewer
accidents, why wouldn't we put
a sign on our lawn to further
promote people not
getting run over.
All right, but once you make
the small agreement, then
you're willing to do something
way larger that by itself you
would never do.
And I can't tell you from my own
experience how much that
when people end up doing
something they really wish
they hadn't done, it often
starts-- and you may know this
in yourself-- with a small
thing, good or bad.
It seems small, then you do a
little bit more, and then a
little more, and then all of a
sudden, you're surrounded by a
SWAT team in your dorm room.
And you say, how did
this happen, right?
It's amazing how often things,
good and bad, start with small
steps, another small step, and
all of a sudden you're on a
slippery slope to doing
something you could never have
imagined if it would have been
posed as strongly as you ended
up doing it.
Does that make sense?
OK, so this is compliance.
Little question, little
question, all of a sudden,
you're doing something you
would never do by itself.
Obedience.
Now obedience, we think,
well, we're not
going to be that obedient.
We, to a certain extent, obey
our parents, the police, our
bosses, and firefighters.
Again, a certain amount of
obedience logically we think
is necessary for social order
and civilization so that we're
all organized in some
non-chaotic way.
And it varies across groups
and times and so on.
But we know there are horrible
examples where obedience is
associated with genocide.
The defense of many Nazis in
Germany was that they were
simply following
orders, right?
And in genocides all over the
world, tragically, tragically,
people will say why
do they do that?
Why would they end up-- and if
you had posed it that way to
people, why would you end up
murdering many people,
innocent people, defenseless
people?
So often, part of it is being
obedient to some group.
So now comes one of the all time
amazing experiments that
we can't pull off-- although I'm
going to tell you it was
pulled off in a certain
way recently--
from Stanley Milgram.
So it works like this.
This is the actual flyer that
Milgram at Yale sent out,
"Persons Needed for a Study
of Memory." And
they'll pay you $4.
At that time that
was something.
And you would come into
Professor Stanley Milgram, the
Department of psychology
at Yale University.
And here was the gimmick.
It was a newspaper
add like that.
And you would come in.
And there would be two
people in the room.
One was a confederate and one
was you, who naively, honestly
just shows up to do
an experiment.
They tell you they're here to
help science improve learning
and memory through punishment.
Can we improve learning and
memory through punishment?
And we're going to say that
one of you will randomly
become the teacher and one
will become the learner.
And they make it look
like a lottery.
They hand out a piece
of paper.
But it's all a set up.
You will become the teacher.
The other person will
become the learner.
You will become the teacher.
And you get sets of word
pairs to memorize.
As a teacher, you give a word
and the student is supposedly
to give you the right answer.
You have the answer
in front of you.
And you tell them whether they
were right or wrong.
If they give you the correct
answer, you're supposed to say
"good" or "that's right" to
encourage good learning.
If they give you the incorrect
response, you're supposed to
press a button that
delivers a shock.
Here is the device they used.
And with every one of these
buttons, the voltage goes up.
And you, as the teacher, sample
a 45 volt shock which I
can tell you is moderately
uncomfortable.
It's not terrible, but you
know it's not fun.
OK, so you know that.
In case you had some illusion
about that, you know 45 volts
is already pretty
uncomfortable.
So you say that's how
it feels, OK?
OK.
Now the other person
goes into the room.
And you're sitting there
as the teacher.
So here's the set up.
Here you are getting your $4.
Here's the scientist
in a white jacket
telling you what to do--
the researcher.
Here's the so-called learner,
but that's really a
confederate.
They're not really getting
shocked in the other room.
But they're going to
play act a lot.
And you're sitting there in
front of this device that goes
from 15 to 450 volts in small
steps of 15 volts.
30 switches across here.
150 has a label that
says strong shock.
255, intense.
375, danger, severe shock.
At 435 and 450, there's
no word left for the
intensity of shock.
They just put XXX.
All right?
Initially, the learner
does well.
Again, it's a set up.
The learner knows what they're
supposed to do.
But then, errors
start to make.
The learner starts--
and with every error, you're
supposed to go one worse.
The learner complains that the
shocks are starting to hurt as
they move up to about 100.
Then they scream in the other
room when you give the shock.
And the participants--
I can tell you, they're just
like you would think, just
like you would do.
You go like, I really don't
like this, This
doesn't seem right.
And the person running the
experiment says, your job is
to do the next thing.
OK?
And the people are suffering.
And like, this can't be right?
And how is this happening
at Yale?
And so on.
So think what you would do.
The learner complains
about his or her
condition the other room.
More errors.
Now the teacher is often begging
the other person,
please listen and
pay attention.
I don't want to shock
you any more.
Come on, get it together.
I don't want to do
it any more.
Then the person starts to scream
from the other room.
"You have no right to keep
me here!" Another shock.
"I refuse to answer anymore.
You can't hold me here!" The
person's shouting this from
the other room.
"My heart is bothering me!" At
300 volts, the person says
they refuse to answer.
You turn your head to the
experimenter and you say, the
person's not even answering at
300 volts, what do I do?
And the scientist in the white
jacket says, if there's no
response, that's a
wrong response.
So you give another shock.
And at 350 volts, the person's
not even responding anymore.
As far as you know, they're
sort of dead.
I mean, you don't know what
they're doing, but you think
something horrible
has happened.
This is fully play acted.
And the people who went through
this were miserable.
So much so that it's been almost
impossible to do this
ever since.
People think it's too dangerous
for the naive
research participant who thinks
they're nearly shocking
somebody to death.
So how many people go
all the way up?
And this person's screaming,
begging, saying their heart is
starting to give out, and
finally going silent.
How many people go all the way
up to 450, all the way up?
Long after the person has
stopped responding and you get
these incredibly bad times?
So they asked experts and they
said, it'll be about 1 to 3%,
and that's a good
way to identify
psychopaths in the world.
And you could certainly sit
there and you could say what
I'm going to say, like I
would never do that.
And I'm going to convince you
in a minute, guaranteed in
this room most of you would do
that all the way, guaranteed,
by any scientific evidence.
And all of us will say I
would never do that.
The power of the situation.
So how many people went all
the way? two thirds
went all the way.
Two thirds.
Look at around.
Look to your left and
to your right.
If there's three of you,
two of you will
go all the way until--
I know, no, not me,
not me, not me.
So here's what experts said.
Once you get to some intensity
level, practically nobody's
going to do it.
Here's the two thirds of people
who went all the way.
And so two thirds went
all the way, but
everybody went to 100 volts.
Almost nobody stopped
early on.
But one third stopped around
a third through.
Two thirds went all the way.
So people have said, oh,
that's the 1950s.
People were much more conformist
and obedient.
That was before Vietnam, before
rock 'n' roll, before
Watergate, and all this
stuff that has
made us distrust authority.
And before the internet, we
know what's going on.
So now, you guys go
like it's not us.
That's some sad 1950s people
who are just following
instructions.
We're independent people
of the 21st century.
So they almost redid this
experiment in some reduced way
a couple years ago and it
doesn't make a difference.
So 2009, here are some
things they did to
get approval of this.
First of all, they carefully--
even more carefully than
before-- screened the subjects
to make sure they were in good
mental health so they weren't
breaking down people.
They were told three times they
could stop and still get
$50 for participating.
They were told multiple times,
you can stop, you can stop,
you can stop.
After the experiment they were
instantly told what the whole
thing was about, which wasn't
that well organized before.
They had a clinical psychologist
sitting there to
make sure that the person
seems not to distressed.
And they said, look since
we know that pretty much
everybody who went to 150
went all the way,
we'll stop at 150 volts.
We won't torture a person
all the way through.
But 150 is pretty big.
You're doing it for quite
a bit of time.
So what happens in 2009?
For Milgram, 79%
went 150 volts.
In 2009, 70% of undergraduates
go to that same length.
It looks pretty much the same.
And by the way, in case you
thought women were more
merciful, or not, they are
identical to men in these
studies in 2009.
It's stunning.
And so everybody who worries
about situations in the world
where people do horrible things
to other people is
incredibly impressed
by this experiment.
Where so a little pressure, as
a volunteer experiment, where
you can stop any time and walk
out, it's not your boss, it"s
not a general, it's not your
culture, it's not your parents
and schools, just an
experimenter--
almost everybody goes
all the way.
And that's true in
2009 as well.
We're incredibly prone, if we
have the right situation, to
be obedient beyond what our
humanitarian spirits suggest
they would be.
So nobody really knows why
we're so obedient.
Although I'll show you some
things that people have
discovered.
Does the status of the authority
figure matter?
Does it matter that the person
seems like a scientist who
knows what he or she is doing?
Is it belief that the source
of authority, because they
know what they're doing,
it must be OK?
How much does it matter that you
can't quite figure out how
to get out of this situation?
And how much of it is a slippery
slope like we've
talked about?
Well if I can do five
volts, I can do 10.
If I can do 10, I can 20.
If I can do 20, I can do 30.
And somehow, five by five,
you end up at 400.
So these are all ideas.
So people have looked at this.
What if the person gives
no instructions?
Almost nobody does it.
If the person just says, here's
the experiment, please
do it, and then doesn't talk
with you when you say you want
to stop, people stop.
All they have to say
though is "please
continue" and that's enough.
Men and women aren't
different.
If you do the experiment
not in a psychology--
here's the baseline, the 70%
that go all the way.
In an office building,
it's less.
Why do you think that?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: People's
interpretation of the
situation is not quite as
officially scientific.
Still, you get a lot.
If the person in charge doesn't
seem like they know
what they're doing, particularly
in a white coat,
doesn't seem like an advanced
scientist, pushes way back the
authority the person.
If the experimenter is more
formal but away from you so
you don't see them-- they're
talking to you over an
intercom or something--
that pushes you back to
do it less likely.
If the victim is in the
same room as you are,
that reduces it.
Although still 40%
go all the way.
If you have to touch the person
while the person's
being shocked, that
reduces it.
And if you have a
confederate--
another person working
with you on this--
who rebels, that also
has a huge effect.
This idea again if there's one
dissenter, that frees you
sometimes to follow your
own ideas and thoughts.
But these one dissenters
are set up who
becomes that one dissenter.
OK, the famous Stanford
prison experiment.
Same idea, roughly speaking.
And unbelievably relevant
to Abu Ghraib.
It's almost as if from the
viewpoint of psychologists
they had rerun the Stanford
experiment except in Iraq with
real prisoners and American
soldiers.
But in the Stanford prison
experiment, there was a social
situation where they basically
told people that they would be
either the prisoners or
the guards, Stanford
undergraduates.
And they would put them in the
basement of their psychology
building and they would
use various closets
as the pretend cells.
You were assigned
to be randomly
a guard or a prisoner.
To make it a little bit more
realistic, they surprised you
when they picked you up.
You had signed up.
But they would run to your house
and a guy would grab you
and say, you're coming now
and you're the prisoner.
There's a little play acting
in this as well.
And what they found was
that the guards--
the Stanford students who were
randomly assigned to be
guards-- became so sadistic, and
the Stanford students who
were the prisoners were so
stressed-- that the study was
stopped in six days.
They were going to do 24 days.
Because people were sobbing,
people were doing horrible
things to one another.
Here's pictures of the
Stanford-- this reminds you of
Abu Ghraib, right?
All lined up like that.
Typical Stanford students
who were dressed
up and given a baton.
And they were just horrible,
horrible, horrible, horrible.
Playing the role of the prison
guards, they became abusive
and mean to an astounding
degree.
And so again, this idea now--
weirdly enough, the only
authority here is Phil
Zimbardo, the social
psychologist, who said your
job is to be the guard
and your job
is to be the prisoner.
So anybody could have stopped
sort of at anything.
But once they got playing these
roles, it took them only
a few hours to really occupy the
life of the sadistic guard
and the life of the victimized
prisoner.
So think of this thing in Abu
Ghraib where you had a huge
number of prisoners, a very
small number of American
soldiers, very few of the
American soldiers had any
training about how to think
about being a guard.
It was almost as if you had
rerun the Stanford prison
experiment.
Add to it fear on both sides of
harm that's intended by the
other groups.
Add to it the cultural
divisions between the
Americans and the Iraqis, so
they really felt like the
other group was another group.
I mean, you know here at
Stanford in the basement that
these were your other
students.
Half the room could be the
guards here, Half the room
could be the prisoners here.
Nobody has been allowed to
rerun this because the
behavior was so horrible, so
fast, that there's nobody--
that you're simply just not
allowed to do an experiment
like that again.
And here again is a picture of
the guards, the students
randomly chosen to
be the guards.
And here's one of the
students randomly
chosen to be the prisoner.
It looks just like Abu Ghraib.
It's as if the Army should
have heard about that
experiment before that.
And here's more pictures
of the sort of abuse.
And you could find lots of
videos online about that.
OK so I'm going to jump
forward to this.
So again we could think, again,
the more you know about
this, how free was this person
to do the right thing.
And how situationally dominated
were they by
authority and by the situation
that around them.
If you think about the Milgram
experiment, who's your
commander in charge of you.
If you think about the Zimbardo
experiment, you have
the job of being the guard.
And is she really a bad person,
or did you put her a
hopeless situation
to do a good job?
So the last thing I want to
talk-- let's talk about that
for one second.
Any thoughts?
How would you find her?
Yes?
AUDIENCE: What kind of
torture [INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: What kind of abuse
was in the prison?
Well, from what one reads, and
who knows how accurate exactly
that is, one person did die.
Not much of it was the torture
of the sort of water boarding
that you hear about.
It was more scaring the heck out
of them and embarrassing
them horribly.
Taking a bunch of people, having
them all be naked, and
piling them up, putting them on
a leash, I'm sure it wasn't
physically nice.
It wasn't brutal in
the most sense.
It was more taunting
and humiliating.
But there was some pain
involved as well.
It wasn't murderous.
You could say that limit.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Has anyone been
able to do a follow up?
I mean, I know given the
circumstances [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: It's almost
impossible.
The same thing with
the Milgram.
We did a little bit in 2009 with
these limitations, right.
But the amazing thing is
it looks just like--
as far as they took it-- just
like the 1950s Milgram.
The Stanford experiment, people
now think ethically you
can't do that.
Because not only is the
behavior of the guards
abysmal, but the people who were
the prisoners were really
depressed afterwards, were
really anxious afterwards.
It wasn't like stepping in
and out of an experiment.
As were, by the way, the Milgram
subjects who went all
the way up.
They reported being haunted
by this experience for
many years to come.
So these kinds of things people
would not do now,
because it's just considered
too risky for the
participants.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: So the Stanford
people, the students that were
participating in it, did they
go on to live normal lives
[INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: Oh, what's the
long-term damage?
That's a very good question.
I don't know they're being
followed up or-- that's a very
good question.
I know for months, the people,
especially with the prisoners,
said they felt very,
very, very bad.
But I don't know if
decades later they
followed them up or not.
And that would be an interesting
question.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Do they consider
[INAUDIBLE]
for instance, if someone were
knowledgeable in psychology
[INAUDIBLE]
they had been trained
for in psychology?
PROFESSOR: Yes.
It's not so much psychology,
I'd say.
I'm going to give you my
impression, because I don't
have a good answer.
It's if you get the right kind
of training so you're prepared
for situation, you have
much better chance.
So remember earlier we talked
about-- now it seems very
academic compared to
these experiments--
we talked about cognitive
busyness.
That if your mind is not free to
evaluate the situation, you
interpret it in terms
of disposition.
So what does that mean?
In a scary, complicated
situation, we go by our guts.
And our guts are, the other
person is different.
I'm in charge of them
as the guard, right?
If we're trained so that we
have a second habit we can
fall back on, then we have a
better chance of doing the
right thing when the
situation arises.
This is a general point.
But yes, just sending in people
kind of unprepared--
it's not that they have to know
psychology, it's that
they have to be told again and
again and again, when you're
the guard, keep in mind that
it's so easy to be abusive.
It's so easy to be humiliating,
that you have to
guard against that
in yourself.
Does that seem OK?
Yes.
So it's training we think is--
it's not the intellectual
knowledge.
It's practicing so that when
the moment arises, you're
ready, is I think what people
believe is right thing.
OK.
So last thing I want to talk
about, a couple of things, is
bystanders and helping.
And these are just amazing
experiments.
And in many ways, they're all
about embarrassment, and how
embarrassment makes us
incredibly less helpful and
kind to others than
we can imagine.
So the most famous case that
began a lot of this research
was they murder in New York
City of Kitty Genovese.
And I'm going to read
to you just a
minute about her murder.
It got a fantastic amount
of newspaper coverage.
And this was the walk home
she had to her apartment.
So at approximately 3:20 in the
morning of March 13, 1964,
28-year old Catherine Genovese
was returning to her home a
nice middle-class area
of Queens from her
job as a bar manager.
She parked her red Fiat at a
nearby parking lot, turned off
the lights and started the
walk to her second floor
apartment some 35 yards away.
She got as far as a street light
when a man grabbed her.
She screamed.
The lights went on in a 10
floor apartment building
nearby, so a lot of people.
She yelled, "Oh, my God.
He stabbed me.
Please help me." Windows
opened in
the apartment building.
A man's voice shouted, "Let that
girl alone." The attacker
looked up, shrugged, and walked
off down the street.
Ms. Genovese struggled
to her feet.
Lights went back off
in the apartment.
The attacker comes immediately
back and stabs her again.
She again cries out,
"I'm dying.
I'm dying." Again, the lights
come on, and the windows open
in many of the nearby
apartments.
The assailant again left
and got into his
car and drove away.
She staggers to her feet as
a city bus drives by.
It's 3:30 in the morning now.
The attacker returns again.
He finds her in the doorway at
foot of the stairs and he
stabs her a third time, this
time with a fatal consequence.
It's 3:50, OK?
Half an hour when the police
received the first call.
They responded quickly, and
within two minutes they were
at the scene.
She was already dead.
The only person--
well, the one person to call
was a neighbor who revealed
that he had phoned only after
much thought and an earlier
phone call to a friend.
So he doesn't call the police.
He calls a friend and says, hmm,
I wonder what I should do
here, right?
And he said, I didn't want
to get involved.
Later, it was learned that there
were 37 other witnesses
to the stalking and stabbing
over the half hour period.
Why did no one offer any help
or call the police?
The story and question
were front page
news across the country.
Urban and moral decay, apathy,
indifference where some of the
many offered explanations.
This was one of these cases that
people said, this shows
you how bad off we are,
especially in cities, where
people just don't care
about other people.
OK.
They won't make a phone call
to the police, except one
person hemming and hawing his
way for half an hour.
So the lack of the bystanders
helping this woman, is it
because people are selfish?
Nowadays, you can bet you'd
have a video of that on
YouTube, right?
The question was what about
the rest of it?
[INAUDIBLE]
my life, fear of getting hurt,
what would you have done?
Now, let me tell you--
you'll see the punch line in a
moment-- is the more people
around who could help, the
more certain you are that
nobody's going to help.
The last thing you want to get
help is a bunch of people.
OK?
The best chance you have
is one person,
counter-intuitively
and against the
math of multiple people.
So here we go.
So the most famous studies--
and show you about three of
them, because they're
just amazing--
about how we won't
help people.
Because if we're not sure what
the right thing to do is, and
there's other people there, it's
too embarrassing to do
the most obvious humanitarian
gesture.
They did a series of
experiments, most of them
around Princeton,
looking at ideas
about pluralistic ignorance.
They say, each witness is
uncertain whether there's a
real emergency, they
look around, if
the others not reacting--
this probably part of the
story-- decide it must not be
real emergency.
Social evaluation of others,
what are they doing?
Diffusion of responsibility,
each person felt that somebody
else is going to get help.
So these are parts of the
story, but here's the
experiments.
You arrive for an experiment to
discuss personal problems.
You signed up.
You're a Princeton
undergraduate.
You show up.
There's one to four
people put in
different rooms over intercoms.
So it's one person sometimes
alone or two at
two different intercoms.
One person, the confederate,
over the intercom,
dramatically enacts a person
having a seizure.
All right.
So imagine you're a student.
And one of these people, who
you believe is randomly
another student, starts
to say, I think I
need somebody here--
dramatically.
I can do well enough--
because I've got one of the
seizures coming on.
I could really use some help,
if somebody could help me,
somebody could help.
Choking sounds.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
Choking sound.
The intercom goes quiet.
What do you do?
Well, if there's two of you,
about 80% of the time, you're
going to do something.
If there are six if you, only
30% of the time will anybody
do anything.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: I think sometimes
it's also people
can be really selfish.
I heard recently in a Johns
Hopkins examination that was
just a few months ago, somebody
started having a
seizure in the middle of the
exam, and not a single person
stopped their test to help
them, not even the TA.
PROFESSOR: So you're saying
people can be really selfish,
because at Johns Hopkins--
AUDIENCE: It was their exam.
They didn't want to stop.
PROFESSOR: They had an exam.
And somebody started
having a seizure.
And neither the students nor
the teaching assistant did
anything to help the person.
AUDIENCE: For a long time.
PROFESSOR: For a long time.
OK.
So you're going to
call it selfish.
And I'm going to agree, in
some sense, that's true.
But I'm going to tell you,
it's amazingly--
I didn't hear about
the story-- it's
exactly this thing.
Everything-- and I'll
show you, I
think, three more examples--
every experiment shows that if
it's just you and one person,
you are incredibly more likely
to help that person than if
it's you among five people
or 10 people.
The more people, the more
certain you are to do nothing.
And I'm going to tell you
in a moment-- this
is an amazing example--
why the exam matters, too.
OK?
Because these experiments will
show you that this is deeply
human, unfortunately.
OK.
Deeply human.
And I think it's not that
we're more selfish.
It's that that were terrible
at knowing--
this is a question about this--
we're terrible about
knowing what to do under
unusual circumstances.
And we're overcome by
wanting to fit in.
You look at that person, they're
not doing anything.
They look at you, you're
not doing anything.
You look at that person.
And you guys are-- you're having
a face-off of not doing
anything while the
person's sort of
sinking into their seizure.
And you could think it's all
about selfishness not helping.
But we think it's something
weirdly about humans that in
groups, they don't know how
to act if it's unusual.
They just don't know
how to do it.
By themselves, incredibly
more likely to help.
So here's an example.
I'll show you a couple more.
Was there a hand?
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Is this
showing the--
PROFESSOR: This is
a percentage of
participants who helped.
So are you asking the math?
Are you still better off--
AUDIENCE: Is this the percentage
of the time the
person received help or--
PROFESSOR: Yes.
This is a percentage of help.
You're right that you're still
better off with six, but I'll
show you that very often, it
doesn't play out that way.
But you're right.
There's a trade-off between the
sheer number of people and
the likelihood per person.
You're absolutely right.
That varies a little bit.
Here's another one called
lady in distress.
A subject walks alone or with a
passive confederate, so the
confederate is set
up to do nothing.
Or with a friend, a real friend,
you come as a pair.
And used you go into a room
that's separated by a curtain.
The experimenter goes
to the other room.
In this case, they made it
a woman at the time.
Turns on a tape recording
of a huge fall,
much bigger than that.
Boom.
She's around a curtain.
And she start moaning, a
pre-recorded, painful moan.
You are sitting on the other
side of the curtain.
Who gets up to go see what
happened to the experimenter
who sounds like they had
a huge fall and are
moaning with pain.
This is very much like
the example you
said almost, right?
What do the people do?
So here's what happens.
If you're by yourself, a 70%
chance you'll go there.
You could wonder what's
happening to the other 30%,
but OK, that's still--
OK.
If the other person sits there
who's set up to not do
anything, practically nobody
ever go and helps.
Because you're sitting
there, and the other
person's not doing it.
And you're going, well,
I don't know.
It's kind of weird situation.
Am I invading a person's
privacy?
Maybe that wasn't what
I thought I was.
Because the other person doesn't
seem to be doing
anything, because
they're set up.
If there's two people who
are naive, you're
somewhere in between.
If you come with a friend,
somewhere in between.
But here's the weird thing.
The more people, the more you
kind of try to figure out,
what's the right thing to do?
And you're not doing
anything, so I'm
not going to do anything.
The other person's saying you--
does that make sense?
Every one of these, the more
people there are, the more
people don't know what to
do, and they do nothing.
Because they don't want to
do something weird and
embarrassing like make trouble
or not do what
you're supposed to do.
Here's another one.
Where there's smoke,
there's fire.
Subjects filling out survey.
Smoke enters through a vent.
You're doing this survey alone,
in a group of three or
with two confederate's who
notice but ignore the smoke,
or a friend you bring
with you.
So who leaves the room within
six minutes to go get help
when smoke is billowing
into your room?
As you sit there again-- this
is like the Milgram
experiment-- you go, well,
of course I would do it.
But amazingly, people are
sitting there trying to figure
out, should I finish this first,
is this really a fire,
what's going on here?
Alone, 75% of the people get up
within six minutes and go
tell somebody, there's smoke
billowing into here.
With two passive confederate--
so people set up to do
nothing-- only 10% of the time
does the individual get up and
go tell anybody.
You look around the other two
people aren't doing anything,
you figure well, that must
be the right thing to do.
Two naive subjects--
now that we're doing
the math this way--
12% by individuals, so
a third of the groups
approximately do something.
That's still pretty low.
But if you go interestingly in
with a friend, that number
goes up-- a person you really
know and trust.
Because the interpretation is,
if it's somebody, you know,
you're not going to
be embarrassed.
You can say to that person,
well, this is a little wacky,
but shouldn't we go tell
somebody there's smoke here or
somebody collapsed next door?
And then the friend goes, yes,
it's probably a good idea.
I don't know, but maybe we
should do that, right?
But if you don't know the
person, you're not to have
that conversation.
So a friend is very powerful
to release you from this.
But if you don't know
the other people--
yes?
AUDIENCE: Does it make
a difference if
it's a family member?
Like if you [INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: I don't know that
they've done this.
So these are usually done with
undergraduates, so you just
bring your roommate
or your pal.
I don't if it matters
at other levels.
So that's a very
good question.
And maybe people
looked at that.
I just don't know.
This is the last experiment.
And this is kind of the
topper of all of this.
So this gets back to being
in an exam situation.
I'm glad you brought
up the --.
Because this is almost
an ironic experiment
in a deepest sense.
It's again Darley
at Princeton.
A Good Samaritan.
So what's the story of the Good
Samaritan from the Bible
for those--
yes?
AUDIENCE: Pretty much
this guy who's dying
of thirst on a highway.
PROFESSOR: Somebody really
injured on the side of the
road, right?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
It was somebody who needs
help in life.
And a bunch of people go by
one person at a time.
First person goes by,
doesn't do anything.
Second person doesn't
do anything.
Third person called the
Good Samaritan --
PROFESSOR: He's from Samaria.
AUDIENCE: All right.
PROFESSOR: OK.
No.
I'm just telling
you that's it.
AUDIENCE: Sorry--.
PROFESSOR: No, it's good.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
The third guy looks down
at the injured man, and
he helps him out.
PROFESSOR: Yes.
Now, I'm going to tell you
one more thing, which is
Samaritans we're not the most
affluent members of
society at the time.
This matters for the story in
a way you're about to hear.
So a Good Samaritan.
So they took students--
now, think about this.
Because they want to show you
how absurdly weird it is when
it is we're willing to step
forward and help a person.
And I don't think it's
about goodness.
It's about the weirdness
of our minds and not
embarrassing ourselves.
And how preoccupied we are
with our other business.
So social psychologists are
going to tell you the reason
the Good Samaritan stopped
was not because he
was such a good guy.
It's because he didn't
have so much to do.
And here's the experiment.
They're going to tell you why.
These are seminary students
studying to become ministers.
So this is the group.
They picked this group because
they want to show you-- social
psychologists get irritated by
personality psychologists.
They say, can you pick a nicer
group than people studying to
be ministers?
That's the disposition.
They're filling out
surveys about
religious values in a room.
They're told that they're going
to have to present a
talk about either seminary
jobs or--
so this is careerism--
or a sermon on the
Good Samaritan.
So you're sitting there going,
help people, help
people, help people.
All right. that's
their speech.
They're prepared.
Then they're released to go
give this talk in front of
other faculty members and their
students, so they want
to do a good job.
Either they're sent to the
building across the campus
ahead of time, plenty of time.
On time, they have--
or they're late.
They go, oh, my gosh,
you didn't go over?
We told you you should be--
you're going to be--
if you don't run,
you're going to be late.
You don't want to be late to
give your practice sermon or
speech to the faculty committee
waiting for you, right.
And then here's one more
thing to keep in mind.
Some of you probably have
visited Princeton, New
Jersey-- just to give
you a sense of this.
This is even back in the
1960s, but even now--
so who's been to Princeton
University?
You have?
OK.
Scary urban environment full
of threatening noises, the
campus itself?
Pastoral place full of eating
clubs and references F. Scott
Fitzgerald.
I'm just adding in that
Princeton is a pretty
nonthreatening place,
the campus itself.
I'm just adding this in,
because you've got
to keep this in.
OK.
Here's the confederate.
It's a man slumped in a doorway
moaning in obvious
pain, hunched over on the ground
going, uh, uh, uh.
Now, on the path to giving the
speech, who stops to help?
Anything they could measure
about the personalities in
individuals made no difference
whether you stopped to help.
Whether you were saying stop to
help, stop to help, stop to
help, because you were going to
give a talk about the Good
Samaritan or going to talk about
career paths doesn't
make any difference at all.
So amazingly, the people's
zooming by this injured person
are saying, stop and help the
person, stop and-- the guy's
moaning in the doorway
next to them--
as they're walking, sorry.
What counts as to who stops?
They're by themselves.
So it's not a group thing now.
They're by themselves, right?
It's if they're ahead of time.
If they have time, because they
know they can stop and
help somebody and still make
their talk on time, 63% stop,
45% if it's going to be close
call, 10% if they're rushing,
because they're going
to be late.
The description you set up, a
big group of people taking an
exam, they're like this.
They're pressured, their
pressured, they're pressured.
And there's a lot of us.
Somebody's going to take care
this if they need to.
And I've got things to do,
like take an exam.
Or run over and explain how
incredibly important it is
morally to help those who are
injured and around you, right?
So it can have a more sort of
literary experiment showing
you how weird it is when we
stop and help people.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: This happened
on campus.
I was walking back to
one of the dorms.
And I walked by and I saw feet
sticking out of a bush, like
someone had collapsed
into a bush.
I didn't quite believe it at
first, so I stopped the next
person and asked, are
there feet there?
Is that actually what
I'm seeing?
So eventually, we called the
police, but the response from
most of the people going
by, one was, I'm
sorry, I can't stop.
I'm late for MITSO.
I have to go pset.
So a lot of people just went
by and didn't stop.
PROFESSOR: OK.
So you're giving a story in real
life, on the campus here.
AUDIENCE: Yes, exactly.
PROFESSOR: Where two feet were
sticking out from a bush.
AUDIENCE: Yes [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: All right.
PROFESSOR: No, no, no, no.
This is not a set up.
You're not a confederate.
So first, you wanted to
ask somebody else.
And but this really
interesting.
I mean--
AUDIENCE: To make sure
[INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Yes, yes.
Because that's the first
thing, right?
Like, yes, what do you think?
Good idea to have a body here?
Bad idea to have a body here?
And another person walks by and
say what-- we'd like your
opinion before we do anything.
And the person says,
I can't stop.
I have things to do, right?
I have homework.
Yes.
It's astounding.
So I'll just stop with saying,
it makes you think-- you used
the word selfish.
And that-- no, no.
I don't mean to pick on you.
But it's just weird how
humans are like this.
You see this all the time.
For me personally, all of
these things have really
changed how I interpret
situations, and how much I
think a person's a
crummy person.
Because up until the fundamental
attribution error,
although I always gave myself
every break for doing
everything wrong, I always
interpreted other people's
failings as deep character
flaws, right?
And it has made me personally
stop and think.
If somebody's not doing
something I wish they did or
that I think would be better,
maybe from their perspective,
they're in a situation that's
compelling them to perform
less well than I think they
should or something like that.
So these are unbelievably
fascinating things and very
convincing.
And it's very sad when they set
up prisons not remembering
these lessons that
are so clear cut.
And I think the huge thing to
know about this, as far as we
possibly understand, this is
true of everybody, all of us.
None of us think we
would do this.
All of us are prone
to do this.
Through many, many, many
experiments, without any
evidence to the contrary, from
a scientific viewpoint, it's
about as convincing a story
as you can possibly have.
Thanks very much.
