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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck Charles w Chuck Bryant, the best all around Boy,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and there's Jerry Rowland. And this is stuff you should
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: know about.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Really, wish I hadn't have told you that. I think
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I've told you that before, though, so you forgot the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: first time, so maybe you'll forget again.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I can't you know how people keep lists of like
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: episodes we say we should do, or movies we've mentioned,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: or something like that. They should keep a list of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: the different things that we've talked about and then completely
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: forgot we talked about, because I'm sure it would be extensive.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, big list.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: So speaking of big list, Chuck, we're talking today about priming,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: which is the present tense of prime us, and what
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: it refers to is a a psychological term where you
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: are prompted to respond in a certain way, behave in
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: a certain way, choose a certain selection based on some
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: prompt that was given to you without your knowledge. It
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: could either be so flashed so fast or something on
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: a computer screen that your conscious awareness didn't pick up
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: on it, or it could just be presented to you
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: in a way that you're not you're not aware that
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: it's actually related to the thing that you're being say,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: tested on.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And this is a big, big thing in
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: cognitive psychology, and you know, we're going to kind of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: get into the ins and outs of it. Some of it,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of for some of it, there's
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of studies that sort of indicate that there's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a lot to it. There's another part of this that
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we'll get to where there's a lot of studies that
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: aren't so great or that have been fudged or data's
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: been massaged or completely fabricated, where it seems like sometimes
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: they've been found out as far as researchers go. But
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it all comes down to memory. And if you're if
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: you're talking to a cognitive psychologist, they'll say that you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: have a couple of ways that you remember things. One
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: is your explicit memory or your active or conscious memory.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Like if you're trying to think of something and you
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: actively engage your memory to think of a thing, that's
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: what that is.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: If somebody asked, like what was Chuck's senior superlative in
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: high school? I would think back to a fact that
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I learned, and I would say best all round boy, is.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It going to be one of those? And then implicit
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: memory is the other one. And that's just what you
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: remember on an unconscious level. So if someone asked me
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: what was your senior superlo, wouldn't even have to think
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: about it, best all around boy, boom, it just pops
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: right out as if it were my name.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Right, So those are and this is really kind of
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: like breaking it down to a really rough basic level.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: It's much more complex than that. Well, we bring that
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: up because yours. It's tapping into the different ways that
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: you access memories that priming is based on. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 2: you said it falls under the rubric of cognitive psychology,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: and that is true. Cognitive psychology has shown very clearly
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: that this actually works. That if you give somebody, say
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a word, and you show them a list of associated words,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: it's going to just happen that they they're able to
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: pick out the associated word faster than other words. There, Well,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: we'll give you some examples. Rather than just me mushing
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: it all together. Let's let's tease it out a little
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: bit like a eighties per.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, Yeah, Let let's do that, because I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: think if we give some of these examples it'll make
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a little more sense. For instance, this first exercise that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Dave helped us out with this they found this one.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It's called the lexical decision, and that is the idea
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: that if you put a word up on a screen
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  Speaker 1: for a couple of seconds as a priming word, then
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: as the subject, will indicate the next word on the
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  Speaker 1: screen if it's real word or if it's a nonsense word,
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  Speaker 1: but that will be influenced that's your lexical decision you're making,
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  Speaker 1: but that will be influenced by that priming word that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you saw. So in this case, Dave, do you use
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  Speaker 1: the example Doctor You're sitting there in the lab. Bill
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  Speaker 1: Murray's on the other side, got the shaker already. Doctor
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  Speaker 1: pops up on the screen for a couple of seconds.
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  Speaker 1: That's your priming word, and then all of a sudden
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  Speaker 1: other words pop up after that, and our job as
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: a subject is to say whether that's a real word
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  Speaker 1: or a nonsense word. And obviously you would think if
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the word nurse pops up, you're going to be recognizing
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  Speaker 1: that a lot faster. So it's all about sort of
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  Speaker 1: the speed at which you recognize this as a real
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  Speaker 1: or nonsense word. Nurse would be a much faster decision
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  Speaker 1: than if it was basketball, right.
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  Speaker 2: And it's basically words that share a similar category are
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  Speaker 2: more easily accessed once you've been primed, almost like the
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  Speaker 2: way that we sort things is by putting them into
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  Speaker 2: large categories like doctor, nurse, hospital, stethoscope, right, and then
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  Speaker 2: once you open that category by thinking of doctor, you're
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  Speaker 2: going to be able to access the other stuff in
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  Speaker 2: that category much more easily than say something in a
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  Speaker 2: totally different category like cheese in the same category as delicious,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. Right, That seems for sure, that
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  Speaker 2: seems like what it's tapping into, and it actually seems
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to reveal that that's kind of how we store memories.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: There's another another demonstration that was pretty famous that shows
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: for sure. Again, I just want to get this across.
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  Speaker 2: Cognitive priming really works. If you give people a list
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: of words and one of those words has a letter missing,
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  Speaker 2: say a vowel, that could make multiple different words they're
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: going to choose or they're going to fill it in
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  Speaker 2: differently based on the other words in the list. So,
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  Speaker 2: for example, if you have a list of words bread, milk, hot,
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  Speaker 2: and then the last word is so o, blank p,
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  Speaker 2: poop sure or soup Oh, I think would be a
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: good one, right, yeah, And depending on whether you know
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: how to spell, you might spell it with an oh
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: or you doesn't matter, You're still getting the point across, right.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Or in another example of the same, you know, missing letter,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: if it was shower, water, wash, so blank p, you
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  Speaker 1: might say poop there too. Actually, soap would probably be
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  Speaker 1: the word. So you know, it's just a very intuitive
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  Speaker 1: kind of thing happening because your brain is working in
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  Speaker 1: a very unconscious way because or I guess non conscious,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: because it is primed by the words that precede the
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  Speaker 1: one with a missing letter.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And then there's also another another There's a number
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  Speaker 2: of different ways of priming people cognitively, but one that
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  Speaker 2: just makes total sense, and I think we've all run
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  Speaker 2: into is repetition priming, to where if you are shown,
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  Speaker 2: like say, a pair of words, maybe sometimes one of
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: which is a nonsense word, and you have to pick
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  Speaker 2: out the nonsense words. If you see, like in a
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  Speaker 2: list over and over again, doctor and nurse, doctor and nurse,
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  Speaker 2: it comes up three times out of a seven word
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  Speaker 2: pair list. You're going to move through those much more
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  Speaker 2: quickly because it's right there in the forefront of your mind,
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  Speaker 2: so it hasn't faded yet, so you're just going to
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: pick it out faster and faster the more it's repeated.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: That's a form of priming too.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are all really super basic, you know,
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  Speaker 1: examples of cognitive priming, But it does show a lot
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  Speaker 1: about how our memory works. That were not just computers
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: where we can just access a file by clicking on
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  Speaker 1: it very easily. We develop shortcuts in our brain. We
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: take shortcuts when we see words relating them to other words,
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  Speaker 1: and so it just makes sense, you know, you could
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  Speaker 1: access something much much faster because you have been primed.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, our implicit memory can be tapped into
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  Speaker 1: a lot quicker than our explicit memory.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Right. And at the end of each of these experiments,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: it kind of quickly became tradition where the researcher would
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: stand up and point at this and be like, you've
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: been primed, maybe adding a boo yah once in a while.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Deon Sanders just moon walks through the background.
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  Speaker 2: Really, so we know that this is true also, not
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: just because study after study has shown that this is
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: actually correct. But when you put somebody in the Wonder Machine,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the fMRI gotta do it. Yeah, they found that, like
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: if you ask somebody the name of let's say, Anya
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Taylor Joy, say who was the star of the Witch,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: but also the Gorge, which isn't that good?
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  Speaker 1: I thought that was fairly entertaining for a not great movie.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: By the way, The Gorge, Yeah, it was highly watchable
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: on like a rainy, not feeling so great day kind
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  Speaker 1: of movie.
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  Speaker 2: Way, agreed, Yeah, agreed. It just wow, it takes a
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: sudden turn. It's just really surprising. But yes, I agree.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to put it. You
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  Speaker 2: would stop and think like, oh, Anya Taylor Joy. And
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: by the way, the Queen's Gambit is one of the
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  Speaker 2: best things I've ever seen in my entire life.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the chess one. Yeah, that was great.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, but if you also said, you know, name a
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  Speaker 2: animal that you think of when we'd say the word dog.
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  Speaker 2: What they found in the fMRI is that different parts
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  Speaker 2: of your brain light up. So we do know that
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  Speaker 2: priming does have a certain effect and it is different
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  Speaker 2: than our normal kind of conscious recall, I.
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  Speaker 1: Wonder if when they go into the fMRI Wonder Machine room.
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  Speaker 1: Now the person running it just goes I'm telling you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. Some part of light up and then
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: another part of light up, and you'll all be super happy.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Right, you've been primed.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: You've been primed in Deander's very slowly moonwalks.
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  Speaker 2: So, okay, that's cognitive priming. Now, imagine if you were
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: a psychologist and you said cognitive priming is kind of boring.
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  Speaker 2: What if we could use that same stuff to get
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: people to eat more cheeseburgers, Yeah, or to vote for
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  Speaker 2: a particular candidate in a political election, Like, what if
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: priming works for that?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? And that's you know, it's all fun in games
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: to just sort of look at these little experiments on
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a campus somewhere. But if it has a real world use,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to marketing and advertising and stuff
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: like that, you can bet corporations are going to sink
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: some money into doing that.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, So this is the handoff right here between cognitive
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: psychology to social psychology. And social psychology has studied priming
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: in great detail. It was a huge hit. You'll remember
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: back to nudge Economics, we talked about it in our
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: PR Live episode, like it was a big deal in
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: like the Late ought to about the twenty twelve. I
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: think something like those is just a big deal, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: it makes a lot of sense, Like it's the basis
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: of things like ideas like McDonald's uses red and yellow
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: in its logo because those colors are associated with excitement
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: or energy, your happiness, or they call it a happy
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: meal because over time your kid will associate McDonald's with
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: being happy or I'm loving it. It's just a jingle
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: or whatever, and it makes sense. It's very catchy, but
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  Speaker 2: there's some part of your mind that it has been
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: primed to later on associate McDonald's with love, a positive feeling.
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  Speaker 2: All of this is these examples of social psychology research
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: supporting this idea that you can prime human beings to
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: behave in a certain way just by using these same
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: techniques that cognitive psychologists prove work. Dog cat soup, soap,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, as long as you beat them over the head
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  Speaker 1: with it over and over and over again, because repetition
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  Speaker 1: is one of the real keys here. Your brain just
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: being repeatedly exposed to that stimuli is going to you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: strengthen that association over time, and brands know that, and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that's why it drives you crazy during you know, especially
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: like sports playoffs or something, when you see those same
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: ads over and over and over again. Yeah, it's a
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: it's big business. They're putting a lot of money into
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: into you know, sort of manipulating your brain essentially.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: For some reason, some ad exec chose morning reruns of Murder.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: She wrote, all right, start TV over the air channel
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: network for the Burger King terrible singing.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: There had to be some research into their viewership or something, right, it.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Had to be. But the thing is, every single other
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: ad is for like human life insurance or health insurance
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: or dental insurance because you're you're just retired and now
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: you have Medicaid. Like every other ad that's almost stood out,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, our senior friends in the world are
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: very concerned about their health and their healthcare, and they
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: still love those cheeseburgers. That's two things we know.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I guess that's it. But it really grated on my
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: nerves because I watched that almost every day.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: All right, why don't we take a break here. That's
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a good table setting, I think, and we'll get back
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to how this is used in media and politics. Should
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: be no surprise right after this. All right, so we're back,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: as promised. We're going to talk a little bit about
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the media and politics, hopefully in a way that's just
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: sort of quick and easy and doesn't ruffle too many feathers,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: because what we've seen is media of all stripes do this,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and politicians of all stripes do this. So it's not
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: singling anybody out. But when the media gets involved in
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing to shape public opinion, they do
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: so sort of a three pronged fork, which is agenda setting, framing,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and priming. Agenda setting being like, hey, what's what are
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: we going to focus on editorially maybe in today's paper
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: or every day until the election? How are you going
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to frame this thing to suit what we feel is
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: probably our slant? And then priming it's basically, you know,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: similar to the first two, but this is the subconscious
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: things where we're going to repeat things. We're going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: use certain words, certain images as to just sort of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: reinforce how we framed it.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just for a quick example, let's say the
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: news decides to focus on crime, and that the framing
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: they uses that crime is on the rise, and you
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: hear about this over and over again, night after night
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: on the news, or you read about it over and
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: over again on your favorite news site. Eventually you're going
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: to be primed to think that crime is on the rise,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and you might even be a little scared of it.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Or relating to politics, a politician might latch onto that
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  Speaker 2: and be like, crime's really hot right now. We're going
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: to make crime like the main point. We're going to
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: use it to set the agenda of our campaign, and
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: we're going to tap into that fear that this person,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: this lack of safety that the people out there watching
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: the news feel because they're being told over and over
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: again crime is on the rise. Whether it is or not,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: as irrelevant.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no data, feel that it is exactly.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: They feel that crime is on the rise. So we
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a politician, are going to tap into that and use
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: it to helpfully get an election, because now we can
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: prime them to get that emotional response out of them
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: over and over again until we finally move them to
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the voting stations to vote for me the politician.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: That's right, I'd vote for you.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: By the way, I would never ever run for public life.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Oh of course you wouldn't, but I would never. I
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: would vote for you for like, you know, Neighborhood Watch
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Would you vote for me for best all Round? Boy?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean you got that one in the bag, buddy.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: You don't need my.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Vote, thank you.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Dog Whistling is something that you know, you've heard more
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: and more as a sort of a term used and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: you know, social media politics, on the news, stuff like that,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And that is when you use a word or phrase
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: that you sort of are in not sort of, you
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: are very much intentionally associating with a negative racial stereotype.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: But it's not explicit, so it operates on the unconscious level.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And this is where they tap into implicit bias, something
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: that everybody has, and you know, using these coded words.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Basically there are things that I will never take one
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of these. It scares me to death. So I would
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: never sit down for an implicit bias test because I
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: don't want to know what my implicit biases are. It's
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying because we all have them. I guess that's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: probably cowardly and I should know what my implicit biases
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: are so I can try and correct those. But it's
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: basically when they sit you down and then you say,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: all right, respond very quickly as quick as you can
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: to a series of images or words, and anything within
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: two hundred and six hundred milliseconds is your implicit memory.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Anything after that you're thinking about, and they that's explicit memory.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Right. Two things about that. One If every if implicit
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: bias is a universal thing and everybody has it, you're free, Okay,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: I have to feel as bad about it. I mean,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: it's definitely something you should work to correct, if you say,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: but you don't have to feel like it's just you.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: That's one thing. And then the second thing, too, Chuck,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: is if it is true that we all are implicitly biased,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: say like along racial lines. I feel like you could
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: explain it by saying, by it's an example of our
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: evolutionary history not being caught up yet to our current
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: social history. Like when we foreign modern societies, we jumped
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: light years ahead as far as evolution goes, and the
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: way that we think and see the world just completely
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: just hit warp speed. But evolutionarily there's still a big
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: lag catching up to it. So we're fearful of people
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: who don't look like us, or have a slightly different culture,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: live in a different nation, just evolutionarily speaking, even though
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: we know we shouldn't feel that way, that that's not
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: actually how things are. That conflict between those two things
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: is what the real issue is.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, that really lets us all off the hook.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I guess, right, So we don't have to do anything
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: about it. It'll work itself out in ten thousand years.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, though, is when people sit down
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: for these tests, they found that even people who explicitly
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: disagree with any kind of racial stereotype and like, I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: would never do that, I don't have those at all.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: They even while I was about to say, fail those tests,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: they even chart on those tests as showing implicit bias.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Right, so we've made it pretty squarely into social psychology
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: territory I now. And there were some there were some
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: early experiments trying to figure out how you can persuade
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: people using priming.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Right, he's like the seventies, right, yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Late seventies, early eighties, and so one of the first
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: ones came out of nineteen seventy nine, and it was
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: a social psychology experiment where you gave people scrambled, like
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: a scrambled word list and said make a sentence out
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: of this, right, And so you would get something neutral
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: like her found new eye and I knew her is
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a sentence you could make out of that, or you
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: would give something like leg break arm his You could say,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: break his arm. And so one group was given more
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: hostile word scrambles to make sentences out of the other
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: was more neutral, And then that was part one. After
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: that they were asked to consider a hypothetical scenario in
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: which somebody's kind of ambiguously responding or interacting with somebody.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I think I saw that Donald is refusing to pay
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: rent until his landlord paints his apartment, and the people
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: who were given the hostile word scrambles rated Donald is
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: much more hostile than the people who are given the
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: neutral word scrambles. So what they're showing is that you
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: can nudge people toward forming an impression about someone they
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: know basically nothing about, based on priming them, yeah, to
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: feel one way or another about them. And then that
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: was like, if we can do that, man, what else
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: can we do? That really opened the floodgates.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know we're about to tick through a
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: series of little things like that that might be mind
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: blowing for you where you're like, oh my god, I
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: can't believe that works, but just you know, sort of
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: put that in your pocket for now. There was one
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: study where it was again it was unscrambling sentences. Half
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the people were given sentences that had words that were
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you know, like healthier, healthy, and active lifestyle words. The
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: other half got neutral words, and afterward they said, all right,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you guys are great. You can go ahead and leave there.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: You can you know, go up the stairs there and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: get out of here to the parking deck up there,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: or you can take the elevator. And people who unscrambled
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the healthy words were more likely to take the stairs afterward,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: so you know, they're like, hey, that's pretty much proof
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: right there. They had been primed with these healthy words
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to make a healthier decision afterward.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Right And well, like you said, we'll talk about some
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: of the more shocking or surprising studies, but before that,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: we need to mention a guy named John Barg who
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: became basically the rock star of this field starting in
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: the nineties. He essentially wrote a paper that said, like
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: all of this is possible, Like, here's how you do that.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Here's how you take the findings of cognitive priming and
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: turn it into social or behavioral priming. And he was
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: very famous for a couple of studies, many studies, but
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: there's two that really stuck out to me that Let
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: me give you an example. One is that he tested
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: whether something is as random as temperature could affect your
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: impression of another person.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was interesting because it was like
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: they'd use words and finally like, hey, I wonder if
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: words worked, if images only alone could work? And then
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: he was like, hold my beer, right, what about just
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: temperature alone? So in this one, he asked participants to
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: hold a something warm, like a cup of coffee or
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: warm cup of soup or something, or a frosty cold beverage,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and then they bring them in a room where they
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with a stranger and they found that
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: or he found he claimed to find that people who
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: were with that warm bread beverage had a warmer impression
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: of that stranger afterward, and people who had that cold
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: beverage frostier had eight you know, they felt frostier toward
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: that person.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Right, So that means that you can nudge people to
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: feel a certain way based on metaphor. Priming using metaphor
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and not even words or images, but temperature.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Another one that he figured out was and this is
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: the one he's really famous for. I think this is
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the one that came from his nineteen ninety six paper.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: But he tested to see how certain kinds of words
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: affect certain kinds of behavior. And he took some nineteen
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one year old students and had them do
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: that famous word scramble. Priming researchers love word scrambles. Yeah,
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: and some had just a normal neutral set of words
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: to pick out from. Another had sets of words that
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: were associated with being old, so straight ahead that you'd
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: be like, these are all old people words, but they
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: were like bingo or florida or wrinkles, that kind of stuff. Right.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: That was part one, And then the students who were
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: participating thought that they were done at that point, but
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: he said, Okay, now we've got to do part two.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: But we're gonna have to go to the end of
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: the hall and turn right and where there's another lab
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: we need to go to for the second part of
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: this test. But the real thing he was doing was
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: clocking how long it took the students to make it
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: from one end of the hall to the other. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: he found the people who had who had worked with
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: word scrambles that had age or old elder related words
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: walked slower than the people who had the neutral words.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: And this was the one this experiment, Chuck, is what
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: broke open. This is what led to nudge economics. This
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: is what led to governments saying like, man, we could
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: use this to like move people in a way that
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: we want them. Two that's healthier and happier. This is
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: the study that did that.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's my I mean, I hope I'm not
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: giving anything away for act three when we sort of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: rained down our judgment upon this stuff. But like even
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: when I was first going through this, I was like,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I even know, there are so many variables to account
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: for in these experiments that there's no way they're accounting
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: for him like the taking the stairs or taking the elevator,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: like who was tired that day, who had a bum
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: ankle or who you know, There's just so many different
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: variables to account for on why someone would take the
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: stairs or an elevator, or why somebody would walk slower
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: down the hall. Maybe they were super bored by this
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: experiment and so they walked a little more sluggish or
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: something like that, and those types of variables there's they
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: weren't accounting for. Ever, it seems like.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I think we can just go ahead and reveal. Now
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: what do you think?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure, so.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I wish you had been illuminary in the field of
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: social psychology and priming research back in the late nineties
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: or eight two thousands, because you could have derailed this
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: whole thing before it ever got started. Because if that
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: seemed ridiculous to you, that idea that you could suggest
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: old related or age related words to twenty year olds
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: and they're going to walk slower because they were just
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: thinking about being elderly. Yeah, if that seems ridiculous to you,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: you are one hundred percent right. Okay, it's a ridiculous study,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: and it's ridiculous that the entire field of social psychology, economics,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: the politics paid attention to this and went all in
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: on it. But what we have, what we're actually talking
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: about today, is one of the biggest black eyes in
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the history of psychology that didn't involve torturing human beings.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, let's tick through a few of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: these that you found kind of quickly, because I think
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: it just illustrates, though, how a company or or a
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: political party would really latch onto this when they see
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: stuff like this right without kind of like critically thinking
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: on how they got there. One study exposure to fishy
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: smells would induce suspicion on trust based economic exchanges in
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a trust game. In other words, like they smelled something fishy,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: so they're going to carry that over as in something
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: smells fishy.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine reading that in a scholarly, scholarly journal
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: and being like, man, that's that's really crazy.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I would say this paper smells like tuna.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: There's another one. Remember power poses. I specifically remember John
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Hodgman realizing that I was nervous backstage at the Bellhouse
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: once and telling me to do a power pose. Oh really,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: to get over my stage fright. And I was like,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: this isn't working. The reason it doesn't work is because
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: that was a finding from priming.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Oh man, did you did you text him and say
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you're full of crap?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: No, I'm gonna let him hear this episode. Okay, there's
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: another one. If you make a frownie face and you're
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: shown upsetting pictures, you will self report that should be
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: a red flag in and of us that you were
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: upset by pictures of starving children, people arguing accident victims
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: that had been maimed more than people who weren't making
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: a frownie face at the time they saw the pictures.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here's one that's interesting to me. Money primed people
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: are more selfish. So if you're I guess they did
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: this experiment with people who made a lot of money
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and people who didn't.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: I think it was they were winning money in like games.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, But the long and short of it is,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: if you were one of the money people, quote unquote,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: then you would not if someone spilled their pencils like
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: one of the researchers, like, oh look at me, I
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: spilled all these pencils, they wouldn't pick up as many
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: pencils as someone who didn't have the money. So people
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: without money are kinder. I can see where that's going
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: in a way, But there are also just so many
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: variables in that, you.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Know, right, And also if your study is supporting just
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: a general moral judgment against.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: A certain group, yeah.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: It may have been biased in and of itself. Right,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: it's a good point. There's another one. I love this.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: At least last two are great.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: If you think about stabbing a coworker in the back metaphorically,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: you are more inclined when given a choice to buy soap, detergent,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: or disinfectant than you are to buy batteries, juice, or
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: candy bars.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Out damned spot.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Yes exactly. Why don't you give him the last one? Chuck?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, if you were in this experiment, you were induced
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: to lie to an imaginary person, either in an email
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: or a phone call. And then and a test that
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: followed that of the desirability of different products. People who
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: lied on the people who lied on the telephone they
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: actually said to lie out loud, preferred mouthwash over soap,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and people who typed it out and light in the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: email preferred soap to mouthwash.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the first group preferred mouthwash to soap and less
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: the soap was lifeboy. Right, So okay, yes, we should
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: probably rein it back a little bit. Yeah, because our
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: bias is showing. But for good reason. I mean, we
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: should say priming is not just this point of ridicule. This,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: it just comple the bottom fell out of this really hot,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: super sexy field of research that everyone had bought into,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: like a mud slide going down a mountain, Like it
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: just erupted. It was. It went so south so fast
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: that today, about about almost fifteen years on, since the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: everybody was like, this is all made up. It's essentially
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: a discredited field. Like there's almost no one working in
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: this anymore, because most people are like, this isn't true.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's not to say that they're like people
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: didn't get a lot of like legitimate recognition for this stuff.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Like there were people won Nobel prizes who worked on
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: this stuff and wrote selling books, who worked on this
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: stuff and made millions of dollars, like speaking to corporations
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: about how they can better, you know, take advantage of
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: their consumers. So it was it was swallowed, hook line
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and sinker.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So let's give you an example. Daniel Kahneman. He was
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: a Nobel already a Nobel Prize winning economist. He wrote
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Thinking Fast and Slow, and it was essentially an introduction
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: to nudge economics and priming for the average person. And
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: it was a huge bestseller. I mean, everybody was reading
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: that book back in the day. I think it was
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: two thousand and two.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: In this book he says, this is a quote. Disbelief
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: is not an option. The results are not made up,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: You have no choice but to say that this is true.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: So just get on board. This was like a Nobel
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: prize wing economist who was a psychologist himself, who wrote
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: that to the rest of the world, saying like, don't
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: even question priming. This is true. Let's figure out how
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: to use it to persuade people to do what we want.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was another guy. We talked about the nudge earlier.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, another Nobel winning economist named
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Richard thaller Co wrote a bestseller called Nudge Colon Improving
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Decisions about health, wealth, and Happiness. And in that book
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: he talked about social priming experiences, benign paternalism, or that
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: nudge that you know you kind of mentioned earlier, towards
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: making a better decision. And then there's this other economists
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: name they're all economists, Daniel what's his name, Eirily?
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I think so, yeah, And he.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Tested a lot of these supposed nudges. In one experiment,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: he had kids students grade their own tests, but before
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: had half of them write out as many of the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Ten Commandments as they could remember. And what he found
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: was that those students were less likely to cheat on
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: their self graded testing because they had just been primed
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: to sort of think of like, hey, what's the right
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: thing to do?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Totally makes sense? Why even question it. He worked with
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a car insurance company for another study. Car insurance companies
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: will sometimes have you say how many miles you've driven
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: in a year, and you can just lie and your
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: insurance rates will be affected on whether you lie or not.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: So to find out if you could make people be
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: more honest about that, Erarily introduced an honesty pledge that
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the person would sign at the top of their insurance
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: agreement or contract saying I won't fudge these numbers. And
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: those people fudge their numbers less than people who didn't
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: have that pledge to sign. So to prompt people to
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: be honest, whether it's the Ten Commandments or pledging honesty
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: or whatever, they're going to be more honest. And that's
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: a perfect example of the nudge economic that just swept
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: the world at the turn of the two thousands to
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the twenty tens.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if they asked any of the participants
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: coming in, are you.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Honest generally or not self report?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe we should take a break here. Yeah, it's a
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: good time for a break, and we'll come back and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: sort of talk about the big problem with all this,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, scientifically speaking, the replication of these
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: studies right after this.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So we've talked about this before. The replication
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: crisis in science. I think it's in the physical sciences.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: It's all over where people have had these landmark papers,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: groundbreaking papers that have changed the world, changed how people act,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: changed where research dollars go. When somebody finally gets around
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: to trying to replicate that exact same experiment, they come
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: up with different results, often negative results. They can't replicate
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: the results that that study found. And like I said,
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: that's throughout science this is a big problem. But in
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: psychology and more specifically social psychology, the replication crisis is
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: shaking the foundations of the thee and a reason why.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Let's do a little thought experiment here. Imagine that you're
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: a social psychologist, researcher, Okay, you're at the university and
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: you've come up with an experiment that you believe the
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: results of which will be used a corporations, political campaigns
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: all over the place to persuade everyday people to change
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: their behavior which will shape the world for years to come.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: But you don't really feel like leaving your office that day,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: so you just bring in a bunch of students, maybe
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: fifteen of them, experiment on them, and then extrapolate those
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: findings to a human universality, and then it gets packaged
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: and exported to corporations and political campaigns. That, in a nutshell,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: is social psychology.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's what happened. We have some specific
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: examples of like real mouthfeasance that happened in these studies.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: In some cases even not just like oh, you know,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: they didn't account for all the very like in some
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: cases they massage data. That Daniel Areley guy that we
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: were talking about, yeah, and his colleague Francesca Gino, they
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: were accused of massaging the data just to fit their hypothesis.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Turns out that car insurance company came back and said
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: that data doesn't even match what we sent you and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: what you published in that honesty pledge situation. Yeah, there
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: was another guy, a Dutch guy named Diedrich Stoppel. He
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: was a big, sort of big name in this field.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: He fabricated studies out of whole cloth.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So it's bad for psychology, bad for
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: social psychology. But priming research, it was just this is
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: like it must have just felt like a bloodbath day
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: after day if you were in the field, just bad
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: news after bad news. It got so bad that ten
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: years after he wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: wrote an open letter but it was actually directed to
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: John Barr saying like something, this is really bad, that
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: priming research is the poster child for doubts about the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: integrity of psychological research. And he warned of becoming train
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: wreck and was basically saying like, hey man, you guys,
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I'm just a believer. I'm just a fan. You guys
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: screwed this up. You better fix it. And there's actually
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I found a really great website called Replicable Replicability Index.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: It's a blog by Ulric Shimack at the University of Toronto,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: and they have a something called the Reconstruction of a
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: train Wreck where they go through and pick out like
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: how Kahman sold this to the public and misrepresented it
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: all sorts of different ways himself. So he's passed on RIP.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: I don't like to speak ill of the dead. And
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: everything leading up to that, from what I understand, was
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: a great career, but he just hitched his wagonto the
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: wrong thing and then tried to distance himself from as
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: much as he could.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the community that worked in that
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: field certainly woke up, and they weren't just like this
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: is no big deal. They were like, all right, this
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: is a real problem. So they tried have tried since
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: then to try and clean things up a bit and
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: address what they call qrps, or questionable research practices, of
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: which there are many. We're going to talk about some
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: of them right now, but one obviously you sort of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: mentioned this was they're just really small studies. You can't
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: make these big, huge conclusions about human behavior when you
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: studied twelve, you know, college freshmen, you know, on a
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Saturday morning. As part of the open science movement, and
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. I didn't know about this, but
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: researchers are now encouraged to register their studies ahead of time,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: including what their hypothesis is before they collect the data,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and that'll keep them from what's called HARKing hypothesizing after
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: results are known. So basically like, hey, here's what I
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: think is going to happen. Now, let's do the study.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: But it's officially registered, so I can't sort of pick
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: and choose what I what I look at.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Right, there's another big problem called pea hacking, which is
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: taking data and then making it work statistically so that
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: these random flukes suddenly became statistically significant. Yeah, that's a
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: big problem. And that I read that it's not so
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: much that researchers were sitting there purposely massaging their data
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again to tease out some
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: results that they could publish, but it was more like
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: they were just falling force flukes being more significant than
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: they were. That's what I read that that was really
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: the big problem. That it wasn't like an entire field
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: of bad actors.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I sort of get it in a way.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And we've talked about this in our Scientific Method show
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and other episodes too, where you know, you put all
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: this time and you want to you want to you
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: want your thing to pan out that you think is true.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: So I get the inclination, but you can't you can't
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: budge numbers, you can't look at stuff that just backs
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: up your conclusion. You can't throw stuff in the file
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: drawer that doesn't you got and this is one of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the things they talked about, the file drawer, like you
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: got to make all this stuff public. And part of
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the problem is the media, because they want to write
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: about something splashy and super interesting, right, and so like
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that play here that go
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: into why somebody would do this beyond just being like,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: you know, you're a bad person.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so there's something called publisher perish, like you
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: basically are advancing your careers if you get published in
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: an academic journal. The problem is academic journals they're like
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the media. They wanted it to be splashing and sexy,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: so they don't really publish negative results anyway. So even
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: if you wanted to, you'd have a hard time getting
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: it published in a legitimate journal these days. So that's
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: a big problem. Ultimately, Chuck the biggest problem, and this
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: is what really tripped up social psychology. It's the drum
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: that you've been beating this whole time. Humans are not
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: predictable computers who will respond in a predictable way if
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: you give them a specific stimulus. That's just not how
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: humans work now.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And even the same person will react on a different
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: day to the same exact experiment depending on the host
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: of factors.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Sure, so the same person will respond differently, you better
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: believe different people will respond differently to the same stimulus.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And then it also depends on who's presenting the stimulus.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Is it being presented by a grad student who's posing
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: as one of the participants, or is it like a
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: professor wearing a white lab coat for some reason. That's
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: definitely going to shape the information or the stimulus that's
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: being received. And when you put all this together, it's
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: essentially impossible to replicate a priming study, and if you
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: get the same results, that's essentially a statistical fluke from
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: what I understand.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we've talked about the Stanford prison experiment
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: a few times, and looking back, like especially when you
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: see the movie I talk about who's presenting the experiment,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: it's like those guards showed up. It's like, you, guys,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: you look ridiculous. You know, you look like an eighteen
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: year old who painted on a mustache and put on
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: some you know, mirror aviator sunglasses trying to be a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: prison guard.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and developed a southern accent. That one always stuck
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: out to me.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: So one reason why, I mean, when you're looking back,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: so we should say that there are still people I
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: think I did say working in this field earnestly, but
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: they're essentially going through and picking out what could be
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: salvaged from it.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: What they're finding is that priming does work, but it,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: like we said, it's going to work differently for different people.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: There's very few universalities, if any. But one thing that
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: they have figured out that is legit with social or
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: behavioral priming is that you can be primed most easily
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: and most reliably if it's pointing you in a direction
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: you already want to go. So let's say you want
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: to lose weight.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: If you're given a menu that has words like light
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: or diet on it or something like that, you're more
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: likely to choose those items than somebody who isn't interested
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: in dieting. Yeah, that's essentially what it got reduced back to,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: which is just barely beyond cognitive priming. But it's legitimate,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: and that's where they're starting out from. Again, that's the
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: current state of social priming. But just one more thing
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about, Chuck, is why everyone bought
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: into this?
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Well, why do you think everyone bought into it?
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you why. Thank you for asking. Because it
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: reduces humans to an understandable, predictable state.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is very easy to market and sell to.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and understand, not feel threatened by, but also to
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: feel superior to. I ran across one explanation called MPC
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: theory non player character theory, like referencing background characters and
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: video games. We don't think for themselves. They're just kind
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: of automated, and something like social priming unders scores that
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: idea that other people are like that. I'm not like that.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I can think for myself. Nobody's gonna doupe me into
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: eating a cheeseburger voting for them. Yeah, But other people
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: that happens too, And that's what priming research supported. That
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: other people are non player characters, which elevates your sense
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: of superiority and your sense of intelligence while also deflating
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: that of other people in your mind.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I have to say, though, we said the word cheeseburger
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: so many times I can't remember the last cheeseburger I had.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: All I want right now?
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: It's a cheeseburger, is that right?
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, well we'll get you one. What kind do you want?
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, Dave said something about nasty McDonald's cheezburgers
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and that I was like, what are you talking about?
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Mc donalds. It's a classic, it's the best of the best.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, they may not like it. Maybe
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: he's a hearty's guy.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe he's one of those guys who eats his cheeseburgers
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: on a briosh moon.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Oh an egg roll? Uh?
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: You got anything else?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else. These are always fun. I like
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: these they are.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: We don't very frequently tee off on something, but it
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: does feel good when we do once in a while.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Chuck just said yeah, and as everybody who's ever listened
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: to the podcast knows, he just unlocked listener mail.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, to listen to your wonderful podcast about three
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: hours a day of my way to and from work.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I want to say thank you for all of that
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: over the years. I had a very funny incident the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: other day listening to the Sea Monkeys episode. I was
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: coming home after a long day and that episode came on.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I was really tired, and when I originally fell asleep
• 47:35
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• 47:40
  Speaker 1: When I originally fell asleep, I was listening to the
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: history of sea monkeys. To my surprise, though, I woke
• 47:44
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• 47:49
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• 47:53
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• 47:58
  Speaker 1: you guys. I was relieved to find out that not
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: much time had passed and I didn't miss my stop,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: but also a little distressed to find out the dark
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: history of such an innocent children's produt. Yeah, I live
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  Speaker 1: a little taste of home. It's comforting on those days
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: when I want to tune into two smart guys talking
• 48:15
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• 48:18
  Speaker 1: you do and all the fun moments you've given me
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: on the bus. And that is from Katie Sesenler.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Katie knows how to speak our language, doesn't she Katie
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: really knows, she knows how to flatter. Thanks a lot, Katie,
• 48:31
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