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Disinformation - Beware the emotional hijack · Save Democracy

0:04
Hello, and welcome to Save Democracy.
0:07
I'm Katherine Davies.
0:08
Just a quick reminder to please consider subscribing to our
0:11
YouTube channel if you would like to continue enjoying our podcast.
0:15
Thanks very much for your support.
0:17
Now, I have a question for you.
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Have you heard of emotional hijacking?
0:24
It's also called malign cognitive influence, and basically, it's
0:28
really good to know about as malign actors are working hard at it right
0:34
now to try to influence you online in ways that can be hard to detect.
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And my guest today is a leading expert on this question.
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Alan Jagolinzer is professor of financial accounting at Cambridge University's Judge
0:50
Business School, and among other roles, he is the founder, chair, and coordinator
0:56
of the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.
0:59
It happens every year and is a leading consequential global gathering of
1:04
academics, tech whistleblowers, and policymakers on this subject of
1:09
disinformation But today we will focus on one aspect, and that is what we're
1:15
going to call emotional hijacking.
1:18
Welcome, Alan.
1:19
Thanks.
1:20
Thanks for having me.
1:21
Thanks so much for joining us.
1:24
Maybe we could start with unpacking that term, emotional hijacking.
1:27
How does it work and what is it?
1:29
That'd be great.
1:30
So there's a cognitive process that we all go through as human beings
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where we see observations, and then we narrate stories in our heads that try
1:39
to make sense of these observations.
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And when we assign stories to them, we tend to generate emotional
1:45
responses to those stories.
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So when I do this in class, an example could be that I have texted my romantic
1:53
partner and they have not yet responded.
1:56
So in that moment of uncertainty, that's just the observation.
1:59
They just haven't responded.
2:01
So in that uncertainty, we tend to write stories to try to explain that,
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and based on prior experience, it could be that they are cheating on me.
2:11
That could be the story, generating emotional resonance around that
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of hurt or something like that.
2:18
With the hijacking, it's where people recognize that we go through this sequence
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of observation, story writing, and then assigning emotions to the stories, and
2:30
they intervene and create the stories for us, recognizing that we're looking
2:35
for stories, and then they're trying to drive specific kinds of stories
2:39
and specific emotional reactions.
2:42
So where we see this typically in social media are, for example, a
2:45
terrorist event or a threatening event, for example, where somebody has been
2:49
harmed with a knife in England or in the US with guns, and we don't really
2:55
know what happened because there's not been enough time to collect evidence.
3:00
But there are people in the ecosystems on social media who are agenda-driven
3:06
often, or they just have belief systems.
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For some reason, they have incentives, and they feel compelled to push stories
3:14
out before we really understand what's happening, and then to push emotional
3:18
narratives around those stories, and that's what I call hijacking,
3:22
where they're preventing agency.
3:25
They're preventing myself or you to be able to assemble enough evidence to create
3:30
your own stories, to inform the stories you already have in your mind, and to
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also think in terms of what emotions are appropriate to be assigned to the stories.
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And that's what I call hijacking, and we see a lot of this, and there's
3:43
a lot of money in this and a lot of political influence in this.
3:48
Could you maybe unpack an example of political influence?
3:51
Without weighing into the particular scenario.
3:55
We see this, for example, in Palestinian and Israeli conflict, where people
4:00
who might have a specific belief system or agenda, when something
4:04
happens in that environment, they will introduce their version of
4:08
story, and then they will try to get people to emotionally respond to that.
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I think we may even see this in the context of Macklemore's
4:16
statements, for example.
4:18
Recently with the concert tour of Ed Sheeran, the observation was he came
4:22
out with a statement, that supported his belief system, and then a lot of
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people who have emotional responses, some of whom might actually have political
4:32
agendas, will then intervene and introduce their version of stories and
4:36
their versions of emotions around the event of Macklemore making a statement
4:41
Okay, so you've got a sort of subset of people who are just responding
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in a kind of emotionally reactive way, and then there's some people
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who actually have an agenda and, and you would describe malign actors as
4:57
having a malign agenda at this point in the process that you've described.
5:01
Is that right?
5:02
Yes.
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And when we see them, typically play, it's typically when they're
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trying to undermine power.
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So we see this, for example, playing out in attacks on universities and attacks
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on what I consider to be institutions that could hold people to account.
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So we see accountability infrastructure in courts, in independent
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journalism, in academic scientific process, and things like that.
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So we'll see some agenda-driven influence in those communities too.
5:35
What do we have to be careful about that makes us more susceptible to
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emotional hijacking, do you think?
5:42
I think what's important is we emotionally, we tend to misinform
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ourselves more than anybody when we think in terms of, "I see an observation
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and I don't have certainty around it."
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And we tend to reach back into our own prior experiences to inform it.
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So in the example that I like to use, again, when somebody doesn't respond to
6:05
a text, a romantic partner, for example, if somebody has a prior history of having
6:09
cheating episodes, then that might be the first sort of space in which they go.
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That's the story that might most strongly resonate to them, and then
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we assign emotional resonance there.
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Why I bring that up is because our prior experiences and our already
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regular influence networks, the people we hang out with, the people
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we trust, they inform the stories and the emotional assignments through the
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cognitive process with regularity, and we tend to lean into those systems
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the most and with the most strength.
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We also then lean into that, and we then project some of that out.
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And what we're finding is that we become vulnerable by producing footprints,
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particularly online with our data.
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And my colleague, David Stillwell
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- So we're basically revealing by what we share online all of our vulnerabilities.
7:03
Yes.
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Well, we reveal a lot about our beliefs, and we reveal, which
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inherently is places of vulnerability.
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And I mentioned David Stillwell, who runs our Psychometrics Center at the University
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of Cambridge, and if we go back about 15 years ago, there's a very compelling
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TED Talk he did related to his research.
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And at that time, his research has said that with as few as 230 hits
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of the Like button on Facebook, he could predict your personality profile
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as much as your marriage partner.
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And this is before we introduce Amazon purchase history, we introduce the history
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of all the tickets you've purchased to concerts and events, your travel history.
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So we have so many data points available in what we produce, and so
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I can study that as a manipulator, and I can sit down and say, "You are
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predisposed to really respond favorably to a meme that is racist," or, "You
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are predisposed to really respond humorously to some sarcastic meme
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about political position X, Y, or Z."
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And even if you would disagree with it, you might share it widely because you
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find it funny or something like that.
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There are people we know who are very likely to react in certain ways because
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they've revealed those patterns before.
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We call that microtargeting.
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Microtargeting.
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So this is bringing me back a few years when we first looked at the
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back end of social media advertising and how they used to try to…
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If you were trying to advertise something, you would say, "Well, I think they're
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probably going to live in this city, and they're going to be this age group, and
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they probably like this magazine." And so this is like that world but on steroids.
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There's so many more data points, and we readily and freely give this information.
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It's very sophisticated, and it's very targeted, and it's capable of
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really precisely narrowing things.
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There's a book by Sarah Wynn-Williams called Careless People, and in one
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of the later chapters, I think it's around in the 40s, she discusses, if
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I'm paraphrasing it correctly, she discusses where Instagram would interpret
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that when young girls, when they would delete their selfies from Instagram,
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they would interpret that as consistent with them having low self-esteem.
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And then they would immediately target them with cosmetic ads and
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other ads that would try to boost sales of product that might hit
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somebody vulnerable, in that moment.
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to low self-esteem.
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So they basically hire, I mean, I don't know, but I'm just guessing, they
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basically hire people who are great at psychologically profiling people to the
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nth degree, and then they are part of the algorithmic programming process?
9:58
Is this the process behind-
10:01
I don't have enough insight- … into the specific algorithmic content
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of Meta, and I don't necessarily want to pretend that I do.
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But I can speak to some of the whistleblowers a little bit, and I would
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defer to them who have discussed them.
10:16
And, you know, the algorithms may have shifted over time.
10:19
But I will say that when we look back at things like Cambridge Analytica as an
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example, they had teams of people who were sophisticated in this who could identify,
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you know, audience… I don't want to necessarily use the word vulnerable, but
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audiences who were susceptible to the messaging that they chose to send to them.
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And so these were audiences who, in some ways, welcomed the messaging, whatever it
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was, whether it was a meme or something.
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And by the way, it was cheap enough to experiment.
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So I could try messaging with you based on your data.
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If it didn't land or if it didn't go viral, then I could try a
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different type of messaging.
10:57
But again, the key to me is recognizing that most people probably aren't aware
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of the instantaneous cognitive process.
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Again, I see something, and particularly when it's visceral.
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So I'll give you an example of the more visceral things.
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We see them on the news.
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A hospital blows up.
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That can be a very visceral moment, and then stories come in about why.
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Was it a terrorist event?
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Was it a bomb?
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Was it an act of war?
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Who's responsible?
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What are the implications?
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And there are very strong visceral emotions around this, particularly
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in specific context, where we have a history of very strong
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visceral emotional reactions.
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We have many sustained wars.
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Ukraine, what's going on with Palestine and Israel.
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The Palestinian conflict is very visceral, as we see even with the Ed Sheeran events.
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And so knowing that people are already ramped around their stories, people
12:00
already have stories, and they already have viscerally powerful emotions
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almost latent, then it's not difficult to stoke that and to get into that.
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And we see that in some rage-baiting campaigns.
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Okay.
12:15
Can I take us a little hypothetical, being a democracy podcast and, one of
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the great concerns of autocrats and authoritarian regimes is regime security,
12:26
and people who aspire to, to secure power and to, quietly change the rules.
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And if you were a wannabe autocrat and you're aware of the power of what
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you're talking about, I guess it's a question of looking at how do you
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influence enough voters to get elected?
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And then looking for the voters who are the most vulnerable to this kind
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of messaging, and then just mapping it out and understanding, "Okay, so
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what kind of key events… How can we prime these people so when the day
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comes, they're going to vote for us?" I mean, is this the sort of picture
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you see in different countries?
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Is this kind of what's going on?
13:06
Yeah.
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So there's a pattern that happens, and we've kind of
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unpacked this to some degree.
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And I would say that it's not stealthy.
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It's obvious now.
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It's blatant in some cases.
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There… And one of the things that I've witnessed, by the way, I've been working
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on fraud for decades, and in years earlier in my career, fraud was always hidden.
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Now it's celebrated.
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So one of the things that we're going to discuss is the shifting of norms
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and what's acceptable and what's not, and the absolution of shame and
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the re-shifting of what shame means.
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But to your question - grievance, grievance.
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There is latent grievance, and these folks will tap into it using what I
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call parasocial engagement, meaning that they're going to use a way of
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reaching out to somebody in a relatable way, a perception of relatability,
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a perception of care, a perception of elevating your concerns higher.
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Hearing you.
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"I hear you. I care about you." They're going to do it straight into the camera.
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They're going to do it maybe face-to-face in rallies and things
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like that, and they're going to say, "It's not your fault.
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All of that shame, all of that guilt isn't you.
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We're going to displace it.
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We're going to absolve you of that, and then we're going to reorient
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the norms to somebody else."
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It's the othering piece.
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It's their fault.
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It's a typical, what I call an opportunist populist move, and
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Steve Bannon discusses this in some detail in some of his podcasts.
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That then empowers people.
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It makes them feel like they're powerful.
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It also creates an in-group and a sense of purpose, and Jonathan Metzl does brilliant
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work on social identity and the power of social identity and how that can be
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manifested in all kinds of different ways.
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And what I see is it empowers people, and then we enrichen them with a
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sense of pride, and then we might even enrich them with things like
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crypto, and a sense of opportunity that isn't there or they don't sense
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is there in the traditional pathways.
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So right now, for example, it's incredibly easy to suggest that this
15:21
notion of an American dream or an upward mobility ladder if you work hard
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or if you go to uni or something like that, it just doesn't feel palpable.
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The ability to buy a home has escaped people, the ability to make rank
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through traditional old school ways.
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And so people are looking for a way to do that and offering them like a crypto ramp.
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So a lot of this is tapping into that grievance and then
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saying it's their fault.
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It's this old administration's fault, it's the immigrant's fault, it's
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somebody else's fault, and that if you follow my pathway, we'll lead there.
15:56
What is happening-- I mean, to be fair, some of that grievance is probably proper
16:03
grievance and needs to be addressed.
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And when I talk to politicians, I suggest that they actively engage grievance.
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Part of the disinformation problem is there's real grievance, and there's
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certainly perception of grievance even if it's not necessarily real.
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So engaging the grievance is critical.
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It's a social problem.
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But part of this is to create a community, and what I fear and
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what I see is that in doing so, a lot of the narratives are actually
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radicalizing into almost a violence.
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Intimidation is okay.
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We're going to not only other people, but we're going to celebrate
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bullying, harassment, even violent means, arresting, deporting.
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And when we go in that direction, then we no longer need to
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move into the voting space.
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Especially when there's impunity or perceived impunity.
16:57
Yeah.
16:57
So when we do this, when we reorient the norms and then when we take over
17:02
enforcement mechanisms around crimes, then we can easily justify almost any behavior
17:09
that was previously unjustifiable.
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And that's sort of the trend that I'm seeing in some of these opportunist
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populist movements, these campaigns to basically communicate, it's their
17:20
fault, it's okay, and the rage is warranted, the hate is warranted.
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This is what it means to be on the good side of things.
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So we're reorienting the norms.
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The narratives are around, "If you come to my side and my worldview, then you're
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doing things properly. And if you're that part of the worldview, then it's
17:42
improper." And it's literally rewriting norms, shame, and things like that.
17:47
And when you do that, votes become less important because you've taken
17:51
over not only the apparatus around the voting, including the enforcement
17:54
ecosystem, but you've more importantly intimidated many of the people who
18:00
could otherwise hold you accountable.
18:03
And last year, I had the opportunity to speak to members of the US Congress
18:08
and Members of Parliament, and I noted that one of the things that I think
18:12
is driving the problem is grievance, but then meeting the grievance is this
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opportunistic engagement with that grievance that is then radicalizing
18:23
people into more aggressive stances, which is then creating a cowardice problem.
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And the cowardice problem is in people who could enforce laws, who could enforce
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social norms, but who are too afraid to do so, and they've been silenced,
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and I think we're seeing that play out in the United States right now.
18:46
Yeah, and to a lesser extent perhaps
18:50
in many other countries, but it's really alarming in the US.
18:56
So I want to walk us back a little bit to that moment where you're online and
19:02
you're finding yourself connecting, and I've found myself in this situation,
19:07
connecting with somebody on a regular basis, maybe a podcast you're listening
19:12
to, and, you really like the person.
19:15
And sometimes you sort of find yourself having a sense of a relationship without
19:22
even realizing it with the person that you regularly listen to and laugh at
19:26
and like their jokes or whatever, right?
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And I'm just sort of leaning in a bit more into this parasocial bonds
19:33
in terms of our everyday experience and how we need to really be alert to
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what's going on in that moment and how that makes us easier to manipulate.
19:45
Parasocial relationships have existed forever, and many of them can be
19:50
healthy and therapeutic in some ways.
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Like musicians, musical artists we feel we're bonded to through their
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lyrics or they make us feel something.
19:58
Fandom, there's been a lot of research in parasocial around
20:02
Taylor Swift fandom, Justin Bieber.
20:04
So in some ways that's not necessarily unhealthy.
20:06
It's very normal.
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I just talked to a meteorologist on television, and she said she goes
20:12
into supermarkets and people are like, "Hey, I know you," but they don't.
20:18
So there's this feeling of comfort that evolves.
20:21
And in many cases, like with a meteorologist on television, it
20:24
could be very healthy because we rely on them, we build trust
20:28
because we see them with regularity.
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Where I think it becomes problematic is when we don't realize how
20:34
much trust we provide them implicitly because of comfort.
20:39
Because I see them regularly.. You, for example, come in with a very
20:44
calm persona, and right now calm is very appealing, or there's humor.
20:50
We see a lot of humor, so humor draws us in.
20:53
And I think it's perfectly okay, but then to be aware of, "Okay,
20:57
I am allowing myself to let my guard down because of this comfort,
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because of this familiarity."
21:03
It is in some ways analogous to having a family member, and even when we
21:08
deconstruct some of the more popular influencers, who, by the way, I don't
21:12
accuse of doing anything wrong, but when we just look at how they engage,
21:16
they're often in a hoodie, or they're comfortable sitting in their sofa, and
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it feels like they're talking to me as I'm a friend in their living room.
21:27
And these are people populating TikToks with regularity, and so I see them over
21:32
and over again, and it's almost like I see them more than my family or my friends.
21:36
And so drawing that in, being aware that I'm allowing myself to feel
21:41
comfortable with this person is important.
21:43
And then what I always do for, for assessment is, why
21:47
are they communicating to me?
21:50
How did they find me?
21:52
How did I find them?
21:53
What's this connection?
21:54
And doing a little bit of analysis about that relationship I think
21:59
is important in deconstructing.
22:00
I can talk more about how I deconstruct these if you want.
22:05
Yes, I like that sense of having almost a meta awareness of what you're
22:10
doing when you're engaging with the person and just remembering there is
22:14
no relationship in a meaningful sense.
22:17
But yes, happy for you to unpack that a bit more.
22:20
I think where it becomes more problematic is when they're pretty
22:24
clearly-- We move into the incentive.
22:26
So the very first thing I do in these relationships is
22:28
what are their incentives?
22:29
And in a relationship for a meteorologist on television, I don't find them
22:35
to be probably manipulating me.
22:37
Maybe their incentives are to get me to continue to watch their television
22:41
for their advertising revenue.
22:43
I find that to be pretty benign.
22:45
But when we move into, for example, the crypto or the meme asset space, where
22:50
I've got an influencer saying, "Hey, if you come with me into my community," and
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that's how they build their following.
22:57
They create community.
22:58
"If you trust me, I'll give you this great investment advice." And I think
23:03
going down those pathways could be really dangerous, and we see a whole
23:06
lot of carnage, with trusting people.
23:09
We also see this, actually one of the worst regimes for potentially,
23:14
dangerous relationships in parasocial are in the wellness community.
23:20
So many people go online to figure out things about, you
23:22
know, health and wellness.
23:23
What should I be eating?
23:24
How should I do fitness?
23:26
And a lot of these people are, even if they're well-intended, they're
23:30
pulling people into something that could actually be harmful.
23:33
And in many cases, they're not well-intended, and they're
23:36
actually intentionally trying to manipulate in order to sell
23:38
product or things of that nature.
23:41
So for me, I always sit down and say, "What are the incentives of
23:47
the messenger? How are they being compensated?" And by the way,
23:50
compensation isn't always financial.
23:53
It could be power in the authoritarian scenario.
23:57
It could also be physical, so they, in some cases, they're trying to
24:00
groom me for physical power control.
24:03
And finally, it could also just be social psychological.
24:06
They want you into their belief system, or they just crave your attention.
24:10
Some people are just desperate for attention, so there could be
24:13
a narcissism incentive there too.
24:16
It's interesting that people that perhaps are most vulnerable are not going to hear
24:21
this podcast, and they're not going to, they're not going to know what's going on.
24:25
And maybe there's somebody in your circle or community, because I think
24:31
they must target people that are least likely to be able to have this sort of
24:36
the ability to step back and analyze it in the way you're describing.
24:41
This is what I'm fearing as I listen to you.
24:43
And so where do you-- how do you intervene?
24:45
And it's never going to be easy, and how do you spread awareness?
24:51
I want to make a point that's really important.
24:53
It's extremely important to not say to somebody, "You're vulnerable."
25:02
This is all about preservation of agency, and I think one has to assess
25:06
for themselves if they're vulnerable.
25:09
Because for me to say, "Oh, you're vulnerable, you're being manipulated,"
25:13
you might feel very differently based on your own lived experience.
25:17
So I can't necessarily make that assessment for you, and
25:20
I want to be careful not to project my beliefs onto you.
25:23
But what I can do is help you find questions you can ask yourself
25:27
about your own vulnerability.
25:29
And the key, as you noted, is to get people to be at the meta awareness level
25:34
where they do their own self-assessment and say, "Am I vulnerable? How
25:37
could I be vulnerable?" And they do their own assessment, because it's
25:40
really important to preserve agency.
25:43
One of the most important takeaways is that malign cognitive
25:46
influencers intend to remove agency.
25:50
They want to tell you what you should believe and what emotions you should feel
25:55
instead of allowing you to sit through, do the meta-analysis, and say, "Wait
26:01
a minute, I want to choose this story.
26:04
I want to do my own research independently." This is really
26:08
important that we are preserving agency for independent assessment,
26:13
but in order to do that, one has to be aware of the relationships, aware
26:16
of the incentives, and challenge the incentives of the messengers and
26:19
say, "Okay, why have you reached me?"
26:21
And I will say, too, that the two most important questions when I get
26:26
into the influence space, most people think it's, is this true or not?
26:31
That's where they typically start.
26:33
Is what Katherine told me true or not?
26:34
I think that's a second order importance.
26:38
I think the most important question is why is Katherine reaching out to me?
26:43
What are her incentives, and what breadcrumbs did I
26:47
leave that led her to me?
26:49
And that speaks to the potential vulnerability piece.
26:54
Did I provide evidence or data to you that brought you your message to me?
27:00
Did I leave something which got algorithmic play such that I saw you?
27:06
And that then can help me think about then what the messaging could be, the
27:10
incentives behind the messaging, and then I get into the assessment of the
27:13
veracity of truth around the message.
27:16
This is really important to know and understand.
27:20
Thank you.
27:21
Before we get too close to the end, I just want to ask you something I
27:25
heard you talk about, and that was reality TV can be a launchpad for
27:31
entrepreneurial populist politicians.
27:34
This gets into the power of the parasocial relationship.
27:37
Right now, most of the influence… So influence is
27:40
in parasocial space right now.
27:44
A lot of people think they have influence.
27:46
So money, okay, there's many different avenues for influence.
27:48
Money is clearly influence.
27:50
But a lot of the money now is tied to the social influence, and the social
27:55
influence is happening typically online in engagements where people feel connected.
28:01
I think maybe because of the pandemic, maybe because we're now online, people
28:05
want to feel connected to community.
28:07
We've always, as humans, wanted to feel connected to community.
28:10
It used to be they would be social in person, now we've moved
28:13
online, and many of our community is dispersed around the world.
28:17
And so people who reach us who feel like we're being heard and stuff like
28:22
that are the ones we resonate with.
28:25
In the past, and even now with the support of Netflix and stuff like that,
28:28
there's this sort of interlink between celebrity, familiarity, "Hey, I kind of
28:34
know you," if people have been seen a lot.
28:38
This meteorologist is seen a lot.
28:40
I mean, fundamentally, it's sort of a mini reality show, if you will,
28:44
every news cycle as an example.
28:47
And so what we see in the United States as examples, Spencer Pratt
28:51
is one who was in the mayoral candidacy for Los Angeles recently.
28:56
And I sense, based on some of the data that I've observed, that he
29:01
got a big boost to his campaign.
29:03
He did not end up winning the campaign, but he got a lot of momentum, I think,
29:09
because he was previously on an MTV reality show for many years and had
29:13
sort of a character arc there that seems to carry forward into his campaign.
29:18
We also see the Secretary of US Transportation came out of The Real
29:22
World, as did his wife, and the US president came out of The Apprentice.
29:28
And many people in studies suggest that the familiarity, the way in which
29:33
he promoted or projected a sense of leadership in that capacity, helped
29:40
people form familiarity with his, quote, "leadership style." And people formed
29:47
expectations of, "Oh, this is how he would lead, and if he can lead on The
29:51
Apprentice like this, then he can lead in the United States White House like
29:55
this," or something to that effect.
29:57
There was like a sense of already, "I already know him. I already have-"
29:59
Yeah, I know him…. I know this man.
30:02
I know his character.
30:03
I know how he shows up.
30:04
I know what to expect.
30:06
And that's really influential when it comes to voting, isn't it?
30:09
Yes, I think so.. And so what I think, we're seeing some politicians,
30:14
particularly in the younger generation in the United States,
30:17
I'm watching them closely, who are actually doing a lot of this work.
30:19
They're not necessarily doing reality shows per se, but creating a lot of online
30:23
presence and a lot of influence and a lot of parasocial engagement because
30:27
that's where they're meeting people, and I think that's much more powerful
30:30
than getting in front of a BBC camera.
30:32
Yes, I hear you.
30:34
The word that keeps coming back to me is intention.
30:37
What is the intention of the person I'm engaging with?
30:40
And also what keeps coming back to me is the importance of turning off
30:45
one's podcast and turning off one's screen and going outside to one's real
30:51
community and connecting with real people and having real relationships.
30:58
Before we close today, is there anything you would like to share
31:01
that you haven't already shared?
31:03
What I would like to share is that, we're doing a lot of research into this stuff.
31:06
We're trying to understand how people do influence.
31:09
And, unlike what people claim, we're not here to close down narratives.
31:14
We're here to understand the narratives and to think about preserving agency.
31:18
So a lot of the work we're doing with the Cambridge Disinformation
31:20
Summit projects is looking at the structures, looking at the tactics,
31:24
because these things will persist.
31:27
We've seen these things throughout history.
31:29
They will persist.
31:32
While we see a lot of AI and a lot of platform-oriented work and cognitive
31:37
campaigns, cognitive manipulative campaigns, we don't need those.
31:41
I can do these face to face, and in fact, many scams and frauds happen in person.
31:47
So I think the key is just to be aware of this simplest structure, the cognitive
31:54
pathway of observation, story, emotional assignment, and if I am aware that that's
32:02
the process I'm going through, then I can think about, "Okay, what did I observe?
32:07
What story am I assigning?
32:09
Who is influencing that story?
32:11
What are their incentives?
32:14
What emotions am I feeling, and are they proper?
32:17
Are they informed enough?" Or can I get better information by doing more
32:22
research in order to inform them properly instead of listening to
32:26
carnival barker X who's out there on social media platform Z, who's sitting
32:32
there telling me what I should feel and getting me all angry and uptight?
32:36
I think if we were able to do some intervention on that cognitive chain,
32:39
that's the preservation of agency, and that allows us to think more carefully.
32:44
And that's the system that I've adapted, and I've found it to be pretty profound.
32:49
Wonderful.
32:50
Thank you so much, Alan.
32:51
That's been so, so helpful.
32:54
Thank you, and thank you for giving me the audience.