Morality: Born Good?

This has to be the best ‘value for time’ video clip I have watched over the past few years. Only about 13 min long, it is packed full of useful insights – all based on research conducted in ‘The Baby Lab’ by psychologists Paul Bloom and Karen Wynn. [To find out more about these things, you may want to read Bloom’s excellent book ‘Just Babies].

Reading is one thing but seeing is believing, so get yourselves a nice cup of coffee and sit back to marvel at the ingenious ways Developmental Psychologists have thought up in order to discover what goes on inside babies’ brains.

The first big discovery is that when it comes to the chapter on morality, the human ‘tabula’ is far from ‘rasa’. Here is what the studies suggest:

• [2:14 – 3:52]: Babies prefer ‘good’ puppets over ‘mean’ ones (ok – no surprises here) but…
• [4:30 – 5:30]: …babies want to see bad/selfish puppets punished (!) and in this case they prefer the mean puppets who punishes them!

As Paul Bloom says [6:22] there seems to be a ‘Universal moral core that all humans share’. So – it looks like babies are little angels, right? (Albeit somewhat strict and unforgiving perhaps…) But there is another side to them as well. Read on.

• [6:48 – 7:28]: Babies prefer puppets who have the same preferences as they do (ok – again, this is what one might have predicted) but…
• [7:28 – 9:13]: …it’s not just that; incredibly, babies want to see puppets with different preferences punished!!! (Wow!! Babies are born bigots!!)

There is more to come. You would expect toddlers to always prefer two to one (e.g. two toys over one toy, two sweets over one sweet), right? Wrong!

• [10:31 – 11:23]: It seems toddlers (at the age of 3) are quite happy to accept less for themselves, provided they get more than another child!! So one-upmanship is not something taught to us by society; we seem to have a predisposition for it. But then something interesting happens…
• [11:23 – 11:49]: …Society takes a hand; by the age of 8 kids start to prefer a fair deal and by the age of 10 if they have to choose between an option like ‘2 for me and 2 for another kid’ or ‘2 for me and 3 for the other one’ they choose the latter! In the words of the hostess ‘chalk one up to society’.

Yet lest we get carried away, Bloom [12:10 – 12:39] hastens to point out that innate predispositions do not just disappear as a result of socialization; it is not the case that society wipes the ‘rasa’ clean and then writes something else there. Instead, ‘when we are under stress’ or ‘life is difficult’ it is extremely easy to revert to our ‘default predispositions’. [So now we know why in times of crisis the rubbish that Golden Dawn peddles will always be an easier sell than, say, the internationalism advocated by Communists].

So there we have it. The tendencies we are born with are both good (pro-social) and bad (with predispositions towards one-upmanship and an ‘us vs them’ mentality). If we want a better world, we have to nurture the former and combat the latter (as Bloom says ‘If you want to eradicate racism, you want to know to what extent babies are little biggots’ [9:36]). There is no point denying the negative aspects of our nature just because it would be better if they did not exist.

‘A thousand anachronisms dance down the strands of our DNA from a hidebound tribal past… If we resent being bound by these ropes, the best hope is to seize them out like snakes, by the throat, look them in the eye and own up to their venom.’  (Barbara Kingsolver)

Israelis, Palestinians and the Quest for Peace

Tags

Attribution, Conflict, Power, Retaliation

Watch this fantastic short clip by the great (Israeli) Daniel Kahneman to see what insights Psychology can offer into the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Looking at the issue from the point of view of Israel, Professor Kahneman says that peace is difficult – very difficult. Here is why:

Power imbalance [1:07]: A power imbalance makes the powerful look down on the powerless (indeed, according to N. Epley (Epley 2014, Ch. 3), it often leads us to dehumanize our powerless adversaries), they are less empathetic, prone to contempt and they have a sense of entitlement. Israel is by far the more powerful party.
Habituation [2:53]: We very easily ‘habituate’ to a certain state of affairs – thinking that it is going to last forever. Israel enjoys a number of privileges it would have to give up in order to attain peace. It is very hard to do that.
Loss aversion [4:45]: Losses (esp certain and immediate losses) loom larger than benefits (esp uncertain, future benefits). If Israel struck a deal now, it would have to give up a number of things (not least territory it has occupied, not to mention the settlements) and hope that this might translate into peace and good-neighbourliness in the future.
The right to self-defence [6:20]: Whenever there is a conflict, we perceive ourselves as the injured party, simply responding to aggression, insults etc. It is never the other way round. Not once has any of the two sides admitted that they were the initiators.
Disproportional retaliation: Another great Jew (E. Aronson) quotes research showing that it is all but impossible to restrain our tendency for excessive retaliation (Tavris & Aronson 2007 – p. 192). Time and again, our brain magnifies the other party’s offences and our own deeds seem insignificant by comparison.
Attribution [7:38]: We act in the way we act because of the circumstances; the other side however acts the way they do because of their nature – because they cannot help it (e.g. ‘Because they are anti-semites’ etc. – Palestinians also perceive Israelis as racists). This is such a common phenomenon, there is a special term for it: the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Mistrust [8:05]: Psychologically, we don’t mind so much if we miss an opportunity (e.g. to achieve peace). We do mind an awful lot however if we choose to trust the other party, we take a step towards reconciliation (e.g. by dismantling a settlement or releasing prisoners) and then we feel that this is turned against us (instead of appreciated).
So – what is to be done? Professor Kahneman says there is little hope in trusting that there will be a gradual change of attitudes among the Israeli people (or the Palestinians come to that). What is needed here is leadership – someone who will help steer the nation in the direction of peace. Will the Israelis manage this? The best answer perhaps is a Hebrew word from the Old Testament: ‘timshel’ ( = thou mayest).

 

References

Epley, N. “Mindwise” Allen Lane 2014

Tavris, C. & Aronson, E. “Mistakes were Made (But not by Me)” Pinter and Martin 2008

The Optimism Bias: Confidence and Overconfidence

Look at this graph. I have to say, when I first saw it, it completely blew my mind. OK, I had read about these things before, but the elegance and conciseness of the diagram is amazing!

There are 4 key elements worth noting: a) the way we see the future is NOT realistic – on average, we assume things will pan out better than they will  b) people who see reality as it is, are classified as clinically depressed!  c) on average, men’s perception of the future is substantially more optimistic than that of women;  d) (some) leaders are even more extreme cases – they are borderline ‘delusional’!

a) This is one of the 3 key ‘positive illusions’ *. On average, we tend to think that things are likely to improve in the future. It seems that there is an evolutionary explanation behind this. If you are (slightly over-) confident, you try harder and you take chances because you believe you are going to be successful – it seems that ‘optimists’ out-reproduced ‘realists’ in the past.

b) It may be that the Eeyores of this world are actually the realists! But, you may say, now that we know this, aren’t we going to become depressed as well? Fortunately, the answer is ‘No’. It seems that the ‘rose-tinted’ spectacles with which we gaze at the future are riveted in place and cannot be removed; think of the Muller – Lyer optical illusion: does the fact that you know the lines are of equal length help you see them differently?

c) Study after study has shown that men tend to take greater risks than women – clearly, overconfidence has a lot to do with it. That is why men are over-represented in extreme sports and in high-risk jobs (e.g. stockbrokers). This also explains why women (on average) tend to prefer the security that state jobs offer. (It does NOT explain why they still get less money than men for the same work…) Again, Evolutionary Psychology seems to provide a good account of why this should be so. According to R. Baumeister, historically, men have been under greater selection pressures than women. To put it another way, compared to women, fewer men were proportionally a lot more reproductively successful. So, to succeed, a man had to take greater risks and to have an (often unjustified) faith in himself (Baumeister 2010 – p. )

d) As Leslie points out (2011 – p. 222) leaders seem to possess this trait to an even higher degree. This makes sense of course; presumably a leader has the self-confidence to put himself through the grueling process which is the political ‘cursus’ (‘climbing the greasy pole’) in the first place and, to become a leader, they have to have some successes under their belt, which may also go to their head. This could potentially be dangerous; it seems that confidence is like wine; in moderation it can be good, but in excess it can lead to disaster – and in the case of leaders, they may drag whole nations along (see the extreme end of the graph…)

* The other two are that we think we have more control over reality than we actually do, and that (of course) we are ‘better than average’ in just about everything! 🙂 (Sarot 2012).

The False Consensus Effect

Do you think a woman’s place is in the home? Do you think gay marriage is an offence against both nature and God? Do you think all immigrants should be deported pronto? Whatever it is we happen to believe – however silly – we are of course convinced we are right. Not only that however; it turns out we also think most other share our views!

Professor Nicholas Epley carries out the same fascinating study every year with his MBA students. He gives them a list of ‘Ethically Questionable Practices’ (see table below) and asks them to say whether they think they are morally ok or not. Most people think they are not. But there is a twist in the study; students are also asked to estimate what percentage of people share their views. Most people who think these practices are unacceptable believe (correctly) that most others share their views. But here is where it gets interesting: the others, the students who are actually in the minority, also believe that most people agree with them! Look at the last column in the table; while only 6% of students think it is ok to pirate software from work and install it on your home PC, these people actually think that most others (56%) share their view! Epley concludes that our natural tendency is to assume others interpret the world as we do [Epley, N. “Mindwise” – Allen Lane 2014, p. 101].

[You can see why this may be a problem here on FB for instance. Say you are the moderator of a particular FB page and you have come to the conclusion that a particular policy is the best for the group. Of course you could ask what other people think about it, but why go to all that trouble? Clearly most people can see that your decision is the best… 🙂  After all, if people object they are free to express their views later. But here is the thing: in most cases, they won’t. This is where another phenomenon (‘Pluralistic Ignorance’) kicks in. Most people may actually disagree with your decision, but they think along the lines of ‘Well, perhaps most others agree with the moderators… After all, nobody has said anything…’  And so it goes… The combination of these two factors can help explain an awful lot about how minorities often come to dominate the public debate – and why, very often, there simply isn’t any public debate at all…]