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[Music]
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let's start with a quick
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poll please raise your hand if you punch
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someone
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today
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no very good me neither actually I've
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never punched anyone but I'd like to
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tell you about a time I came really
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close a few years ago my husband took me
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to a Red Sox Yankees game at Yankee
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Stadium oh so you know where this is
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going already okay my husband is a Big
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Red Sox fan so he was wearing a socks
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cap I'm not really a fan of either team
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sorry Red Sox fans but I enjoy the
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psychology and spectacle of sporting
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events oh yes so before the game and
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during the first few Innings a couple of
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Yankees fans commented on my husband's
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hat made good nature jokes about the way
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that the game would go and he huckle
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them back it was all in good
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fun but as the innings were on and the
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scores remained close the interactions
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between the Yankees fans and my husband
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became noticeably more
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hostile I saw my husband's patients
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wearing thin so I simply took the hat
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from him I didn't have anywhere to stash
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it so I put it
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on naively I assumed that I wouldn't get
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into any trouble I mean a I'm not even a
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hardcore fan and B I certainly wasn't
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going to start anything with
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anyone I could not have been more
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wrong I won't repeat the nasty things
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that some of these Yankees fans said to
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me but I with it for maybe 10 minutes
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before I was screaming back and
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eventually my husband had to stand
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between me and a Yankees
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fan I mean how crazy is that I just told
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you I don't even care about
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baseball and yet I'm willing to bet that
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many of you in some situation have
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wanted to react in a similar
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manner so why did this situation have
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this effect on
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me because of a fundamental component of
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human
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nature the tendency to draw bright
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boundaries between us and
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Them the good news is these responses
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are
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flexible we're not hapless victims of
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our Evolution or our environments if
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we're aware of the factors that make us
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more prone to attacking and harming
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people from other groups we may be less
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subject to those
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factors before we get there though we
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need to understand better what makes
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people or me behave this
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way simply acting as a member of a group
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changes how people
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behave in other words people's thoughts
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feelings and behaviors towards other
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changes when the social context shifts
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from me and you to us and
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them so where does this tendency come
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from in the grand scheme if we look back
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in our evolutionary histories our
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ancestors reap numerous material and
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psychological benefits from being able
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to cooperate and identify with fellow
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group members these benefits included
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protection pooled resources and a
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satisfaction of the psychological need
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to
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belong those who were better at
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identifying and cooperating with fellow
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group members reaped more
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benefits but the flip side of this
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tendency to draw boundaries between us
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and them is that group life also has
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significant
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costs group living produces pressure to
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conform with in groups sometimes making
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us do and say things we don't otherwise
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want to do and
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say it's also the source of intractable
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conflict between groups but that was our
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ancestors where does ingroup strife come
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from
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today groups continue to change how
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people behave because they change
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people's expectations of what's
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appropriate it's almost like people have
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a different template a more aggressive
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template for group on group as compared
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to one-on-one interaction
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remember I walked into that baseball
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stadium completely indiff but the second
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I put that cap on I marked my supposed
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group membership I didn't have any
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personal beef with the Yankees fans but
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they created it in me because they
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treated me like a member of Red Sox
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Nation because they did that I took on
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that Red Sox
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identity I wasn't acting as an
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individual anymore I was acting as a
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representative of Red Sox fans
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now Decades of social psychological
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research reveal that I am not unique in
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this
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regard people remember group on group
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interactions as being more aggressive
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than one-on-one interactions for example
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if you ask people to keep a diary of all
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of their social interactions and then
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ask them to remark on how those
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interactions went say a business meeting
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people reliably report that their group
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on group interactions are significantly
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more abrasive than their one-on-one
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interactions people also rate ongoing
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group on group interactions as being
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more competitive and less Cooperative
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than their one-on-one interactions and
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this is true even when groups are not in
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competition finally people expect group
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Ong group interactions that have yet to
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take place to be more aggressive than
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one-on-one
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interactions now these findings probably
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dovetail with your own past experience I
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mean if you think about it ever since
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you were a little kid more often than
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not being split up into groups meant
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that one group was competing against the
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other it's not so surprising then that
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people have this template in their
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heads so does this template actually
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impact our
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Behavior absolutely people behave more
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aggressively in groups as compared to
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alone consider a situation in which you
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bring two individuals or two groups of
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three people together you tell them that
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they either as individuals or as groups
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are going to have to make a choice about
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how to interact with one
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another across dozens of studies
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psychologists find that people cheat
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more often in games when they play as
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teams as compared to
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alone now this extends even to
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situations in which people are asked to
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physically harm others in the lab people
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will assign other people to drink more
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painfully hot hot sauce when they make
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the decision as a group as opposed to
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alone what is it about groups that
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allows this to happen I mean why do
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groups change how we
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behave at least three factors contribute
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to increased aggression between groups
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though I should note this is not an
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exhaustive
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list first groups allow us to reframe
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immoral Behavior as being critical for
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achieving our own group's goals set
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another way sometimes we tell ourselves
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that being a good group member means
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being a jerk to the other
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group but second groups also allow for
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the diffus diffusion or displacement of
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responsibility for harmful
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behavior when we act as part of a group
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we feel less personally responsible for
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bad
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outcomes finally groups may cause us to
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lose touch with our moral compasses we
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may get swept up in the excitement of
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acting as part of a group which then
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makes it harder to pay attention to
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whether or not we're adhering to our
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personal moral
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standards now this last factor is is
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extremely difficult to study and to
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measure as researchers we can't simply
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ask people if they've lost touch with
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their personal moral codes because the
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second we do we draw their attention to
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it so what my colleagues and I really
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wanted to figure out was what's going on
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inside people's heads when they act as
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members of
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groups by employing a combination of
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psychological and Neuroscience
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approaches we set out to observe the
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seemingly
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unobservable if you design your
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experiments with functional neuroimaging
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can provide you with an online
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unobtrusive measure of ongoing
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psychological
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processes in our case we used MRI to
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measure the changes in blood flow in
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people's
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brains now this technique allows us to
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see which brain regions are more active
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when participants are doing our specific
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task as compared to some
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baseline and in our case we were
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interested in this particular region the
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medial prefrontal cortex and pregenual
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interior singulate I'll call it mpfc for
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short
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just for frame of reference this region
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is located a couple of centimeters
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behind the center of your
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forehead now the mpfc is associated with
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self-referential processing which is
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just a fancy way of saying thinking
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about
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oneself this region is also associated
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with many other tasks and processes but
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across several studies the npfc is more
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active when people think about their own
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as compared to anothers mental States
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traits and physical
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characteristics the mpfc is more active
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when people read words and facts that
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are related to themselves like your name
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or the name of the street that you grew
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up
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on you may be wondering at this point
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what on Earth does this region have to
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do with
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groups well if people's personal moral
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codes really become less accessible when
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they act as a member of a
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group one might expect to see less mpfc
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activity when they read about their own
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moral behaviors in a group
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context so with with our experiment we
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tested exactly this we wanted to see if
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people showed less mpfc activation when
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they read sentences about their own
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behavior in the context of a competitive
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team relative to when they read these
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sentences
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alone so we brought people into the lab
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one by one and we assigned them to one
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of two teams competing for cash we
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placed them inside the MRI scanner and
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we had them read a series of statements
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about moral and social behavior for
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example a moral Behavior might be
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something like I've stolen food from a
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shared refrigerator whereas a social
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statement might be something like I have
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a Facebook
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account now we told our participants
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that their task was actually a game and
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their job was to push a button as
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quickly as possible when they saw a
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social statement and withhold a response
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otherwise we didn't label the moral
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items moral we just called them
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distractors finally we told participants
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you're going to play this game two times
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once alone and once surrounded by nine
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of your
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teammates we told them that nine of
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their teammates were coming back into
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the lab in order to be able to play the
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game with them in real time from a room
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across the hallway now what people saw
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was actually this pre-recorded video but
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what's important is that they believed
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that their teammates were there playing
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alongside them in real
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time after they finished the two games
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we pulled them out of the scanner and we
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said as a last favor to us could you
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please just help us select photographs
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of your teammates and competitors we've
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received permission from these people to
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publish these online to distribute them
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to the media and to disseminate them to
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the public more
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broadly what participants didn't know
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was that we had already had a separate
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group of people rank order these photos
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from most to least
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attractive now imagine this guy is
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competing with your group which picture
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should I select for the entire world to
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see maybe this
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one as
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predicted people who showed less mpfc
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activity when reading about their own
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moral behavior in a group context also
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picked nastier photos of their
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competitors relative to their
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teammates
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ruthless so there are two caveats here
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the first is that we ran several other
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analyses to bolster our confidence that
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this pattern of data is indeed related
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to reduced thinking about the self in
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the group context and second it's very
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important to note that this is just one
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study with a small sample we have a lot
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more work to do to better understand how
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this phenomenon unfolds in the real
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world with much more consequential forms
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of
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aggression but tentatively one possible
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interpretation of these results is that
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people who lost themselves in the group
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were also more ruthless to their
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competitors now you may be thinking at
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this
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point does this really matter outside of
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the lab I mean is this really a problem
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for me I don't go around punching people
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yes left unchecked these group related
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Tendencies have massive social
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consequences ingroup conflict has been
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called one of the greatest problems
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facing the world today by some counts
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the last century has seen over 200
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million people killed in Acts of
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genocide war and other forms of
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degression though it has decreased in
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recent decades in group violence
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continues to afflict communities from
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here in Boston and all over the country
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to countless countries
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worldwide this tendency is even
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reflected in our ever increasingly
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combative political landscape our
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government is presently the most
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polarized it's been in
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decades now some of these statistics are
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devastating but there's another
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challenge that stands between us and
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reducing this
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problem it's how we think about who is
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responsible when we chalk conflict up to
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just a few bad apples we completely
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neglect the fact that when we act as
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part of a group whether it's our
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national identity our religion our
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political affiliation we may become more
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likely to aggress as
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well now what makes this problem so
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Insidious but also so interesting goes
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back to how hard it is to see that it's
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happening when it's happening to
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us take me for example it wasn't until I
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got home from that Red Sox Yankees game
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that I began to even understand why I
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had become so
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aggressive in that moment even I didn't
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realize what was happening and I studied
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this for a
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living now my Red Sox Yankees Adventure
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is mostly funny story
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but think instead about ongoing clashes
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between protesters and police in places
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like Ferguson that have been going on
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for over a year how wearing riot gear
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and treating a group of peaceful
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protesters like an angry mob can create
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that angry
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mob so if it's so hard to check
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ourselves in the
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minute are we doomed to be horrible to
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one
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another no we're not doomed and our best
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strategies for reducing conflict between
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group May lie with the individuals who
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make up those groups first think back to
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the fmri study I just told told you
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about it's extremely important to note
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that not everybody showed that effect in
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other words people who didn't show
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reduced mpfc activity in the group
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context also did not aggress against
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their
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competitors now other researchers have
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found that when you tell people that
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their behavior within groups is going to
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be made public and specifically linked
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to
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them they aggress
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less so the result of our and others
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research suggest that one way to get
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people people to aggress Less in inner
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group conflict is to make them think
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about themselves as individuals rather
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than just as group members and this is
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an idea that my lab is continuing to
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work on
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now second there are a lot of extremely
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potent impulses that we experience as
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individuals that lead to good behavior
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and
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cooperation when we are face Toof face
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oneon-one we experience strong drives to
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be fair to share resources equity
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and to refrain from harming one
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another this is true even for strangers
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for example in the lab people will pay
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more money to protect other people that
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they've never met from receiving an
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electric shock rather than prevent
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electric shocks to
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themselves even rats will forego yummy
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treats like
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chocolate in order to help free a
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cagemate who stuck in a see-through
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cylinder like this
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one now this is even unique to inoc
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strangers or lab settings analysis of
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combat activity from the Civil War and
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World War I indicates that soldiers
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would shoot over the heads of enemy
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Fighters rather than shoot to
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kill the bottom line is that oneon-one
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the idea of hurting someone else is
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highly aversive to most of
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us finally I absolutely have to stress
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that groups do not always lead to bad
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behavior for example group oriented
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people can be swayed to donate more
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money to charity than individually
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oriented people in fact people acting in
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groups together can often accomplish a
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great deal more good than individuals
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acting alone as long as they share a
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constructive
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goal
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so where does that leave
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us I would argue that we should be
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cautiously
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optimistic much of what I've told you
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about today suggests that what we need
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to try and do is harness all of of those
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pro-social impulses we feel as
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individuals that when conflict begins to
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spiral out of control that we see the
00:18:05
person across from us as a person and
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not just a representative of their
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group we've all been
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there when you're facing someone from
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another group and you are seized by the
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impulse to harm them in some way be it
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punching them at a baseball
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game or sabotaging them at work or even
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ignoring them at a
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party what if instead you stopped and
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thought to
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yourself would you do this if it was
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just you and this person
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alone if your groups didn't
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[Applause]
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[Music]
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exist
