Psychologist debunks 8 myths of mass scale | Todd Rose

in a perfect world our public selves the way I  behave the way I speak the things I do are the   same as our private selves at its best public  opinion holds a mirror to us and it reflects   exactly Who We Are what Collective Illusions  do to that relationship is turn it into a   fun house of mirrors which is fatal to free  Society Collective Illusions are situations   where most people in a group go along with  a view they don't agree with because they   incorrectly believe that most people agree  with it it's not just that we're misreading   a few people it is that the majority thinks  the majority believes something that they don't we are all part of creating and sustaining the  illusion we've known about Collective Illusions   for over 100 years but here's the thing our  cultural and technological conditions have   changed to make creating and sustaining Collective  Illusions so easy that they've just proliferated   at a scale we've never seen before in history  we have found them almost everywhere we look   from the kind of lives we want to live to the  country we want to live in do we want to treat   each other and even what we expect out of our  institutions and our job is to dismantle them   so that when we see ourselves in public opinion  we are seeing ourselves for who we really are   if you create the enabling conditions that allow  Everyday People to reveal who they really are to   each other social change can happen at a scale  and Pace that would otherwise seem unimaginable   and here's how we do that [Music]   I think tank populist studies Collective  Illusions and uses what we call Private   opinion methods which are just methods that help  reveal people's private views free of social   pressure and other distorting influences on public  opinion and every question we ever ask we always   ask what the individual thinks and what they  believe most people would say to that question   and that combination of methods helps surface  Collective Illusions all across Society   we have found them almost everywhere we look  from the kind of lives we want to live to the   country we want to live in do we want to treat  each other and even what we expect out of our   institutions from education to the workplace  the most damaging consequence is that an   illusion in one generation tends to become the  private opinion of the Next Generation [Music]   one of the most important Collective Illusions  we've ever discovered has to do with the way that   people Define a successful life it turns out that  the vast majority of the American public believes   that most people in the country care about wealth  status power when in fact the opposite is true   the vast majority of the American public are  focused on a more personal fulfillment orientation   but our kids are paying an incredible price  because they do not understand that this is an   illusion [Music] they try to chase Fame because  they believe that's what other people will   recognize as success so if we do nothing about  collected Illusions now our silence will virtually   guarantee that our children and our grandchildren  will have this view as their private opinion we've known about Collective Illusions for  over 100 years and up until the last say   20 years you could have probably counted on  two hands and two feet the number of serious   societal and Collective illusions that had  existed since then that number has exploded   they affect society as a whole but we are all  part of creating and sustaining the illusions even when we fundamentally end up disagreeing  a truthful disagreement is always better   than a collective illusion being aware that  Collective Illusions exist is the starting point the only way to discover those is the  same way that you actually dismantle them   you got to have conversations  you got to talk to each other   if you understand that fact and you create  the enabling conditions that allow Everyday   People to reveal who they really are to each  other these Illusions can crumble in a hurry   and social change can happen at a scale and  Pace that would otherwise seem unimaginable [Music] given the profound lack of trust in society today   we often look for the cause of that in  each other I don't believe that's true Frederick Taylor is probably the most  important person that most people have   never heard of over a hundred years ago he  wrote a book called Scientific Management   which they were about his ideas about how  you create a productive economy and he felt   like the biggest problem in society was that  we weren't very efficient and so Scientific   Management literally said wait the first  thing you got to stop doing is trusting people   he went about implementing A System's first  approach to a top-down Society governed by   managers in fact he invented the term manager and  he made us all cogs where the system Matters Most   because of the way our institutions treat us  by removing Choice from us and fundamentally   treating us as untrustworthy we have come  to see each other through that lens [Music]   but here's the thing when you actually study  honesty and trustworthiness what you find over   and over again is that the vast majority of people  are in fact trustworthy one of my favorite studies   it's a pretty famous German study here's what they  did they just randomly called people and said that   there was a contest going on and all they needed  to do was flip a coin themselves and if it landed   on Tails they got a gift certificate if it landed  on heads they got nothing now what's important is   nobody knows how the coin lands except for the  person on the phone so you would have expected   everybody says tells takes the gift certificate  and the accurate results are like well it's 100   tells who would have thought right it's not what  happened it was almost 50 50 heads or tails and   in fact it was slightly more in favor of heads  which tells me most people if not all people   were telling the truth about how the coin landed  when no one else could possibly have known [Music]   so it matters to us not just that we are  trustworthy but that we are viewed that way and   yet we live in a society where our institutions  continue to remind us that this is not true   that we are in some way untrustworthy we can only interact with each other in one of  two ways we can trust people to make choices   for themselves or we can control those choices  for them it is a fundamental tenet of democracy   that institutions serve people but ever  since Frederick Taylor we have flipped that   relationship as a free people in a free Society  it is unacceptable that our public institutions   treat the people as distrustful because now we  know that whatever efficiency you get from that   top-down control model the consequences in  terms of human dignity and social trust are   so damaging that that trade-off is not worth  it what we need is to trust communities to   make decisions for themselves trust families to  make decisions for themselves trust people too   if you want a trusting Society work to dislodge  this top-down view of our institutions and give   more power to people insists that our  institutions treat the public with trust foreign [Music] Collective illusions that we've ever discovered  has to do with the way that people Define a   successful life we looked at the private  opinions of the American public across 76   different attributes that could go into a  successful life out of those 76 the vast   majority of the American public believes that most  people would rank Fame as number one there's just   one problem in private it's actually dead last it  is 76 out of 76 possible attributes we don't care   about Fame but we believe that most everybody  else cares about Fame more than anything else   our public institutions are actually being built  around a false view of what people want out of   life in our media in our businesses those people  are also under the same exact Illusions we have   commercials we have movies and television shows  all telling us that a successful life is about   being famous now the dominant thing that kids  talk about is wanting to be famous one kid I   remember saying I want a million followers he  couldn't tell you for what he just wanted a   million followers we know that most people even  in the younger generation do not privately value   Fame but they are even more convinced than the  older Generations that most people do they are   internalizing the illusion as their own values  and that will become the dominant view in society   in the future if we don't do something about it  being aware that Collective Illusions exist is   the starting point and it comes down to us being  honest about ourselves to each other populists   ask what does a fulfilling life mean to you  what we found was really astonishing out of   those 76 trade-off priorities in the thousands  and thousands of people that we have studied no   two people were identical nobody can tell you  what a successful life is you have to discover   that for yourself it's about knowing who you are  if you want to understand whether the people you   care about are pursuing A Life That's not their  own ask them why they care about what they're   doing why do you want to be famous by having  your ideas challenged that gives you a better   sense for who your true self is if we recognize  our true shared values it fundamentally changes   how we see one another we now recognize  that investing in each other and enabling   you to pursue the life you want to live is  actually better for you and for me foreign [Music]   the greatest strength of social media is its  democratizing tendency we don't have to just   look to Elites and a few news outlets to tell  us about us we can actually communicate with   each other but when we engage online we  tend to think that we're interacting with   a reasonable sample of the actual population  but it's not true close to 80 percent of all   content on social media is generated by about 10  of the users that 10 tends to be extreme on most   social issues they are the vocal Fringe when  you have a vocal minority that is perceived as   the majority critical mass of us will actually  either self-silence or we will actually go along   to get along and it becomes a self-fulfilling  prophecy this is how Collective Illusions form   it's not terribly surprising that some  of the first people to start to use   these tools to manipulate were leaders who  need consensus to conserve power Venezuela an example of this is Nicholas Maduro the leader  of Venezuela for a long time it looked like on   social media that he had a pretty good beat  on the consensus of the people that he led   so almost everything that he would say stories  that were written about him that were positive   would be retweeted and shared and it looked  like this represented some kind of consensus   but it turned out a significant percentage of  his so-called followers were actually what we   call social Bots these are fake accounts that  only exist to retweet anything positive about   him or that he said and importantly to attack  the opposition when Twitter banned them the   real consensus was with the opposite position  and that started to emerge and be retweeted   as more and more people recognized that it  was okay to say what they actually thought social media is a free-for-all in terms of  who can shout the loudest and who can silence   other people in the name of masquerading  as a majority and Manufacturing Collective   Illusions your willingness to conform and your  unwillingness to challenge what you think the   group believes will actually contribute to  leading the group astray the solution to   our online life is to get offline once in  a while the most important thing you can   do is continue to have conversations with  your family with your neighbors with your   community don't carry that Distortion over  into the way you treat people in real life [Music] so this idea of conformity it isn't just a choice  every one of us as human beings is hardwired   to prefer to be with our group human beings  are not lone wolves who are a packed species   on Trials when we deviated from the group it  triggered what scientists call an error signal   this cascading signal across your brain that is  literally meant to short-circuit everything else   to tell you something is fundamentally wrong  and you should pay attention if you deviate   from your group you are actually punished this  Conformity bias sometimes it's been used for   benevolent ends right one of my favorite examples  of that comes from the story of the Bogota mimes   Bogota historically has had a lot of disobeying  like traffic rules everybody jaywalks nobody stops   at lights several years ago they got a new mayor  who realized there was a problem and realized that   you couldn't just continue to punish them with  corrupt cops issuing tickets and getting bribes   he hired a bunch of out of work mimes like clowns  you know the and he put them at intersections all   over the city they have no power to like imprison  you no power to write a ticket all they did was   every time they saw someone jaywalk they would  just point it out they would publicly shame   them as mimes and it turned out that this public  shaming had a massive effect it had a significant   reduction of traffic accidents and even deaths I  think it's a funny story what I don't like about   it is I'm not a huge fan of public shaming  for any reason but it does speak to the fact   that this is such a hard-wired powerful force for  human beings but sometimes the group isn't correct   there's nothing magical about group consensus  that guarantees that it is a fact it can just   literally be consensus because no one's ever  challenged it it may be a collective illusion   the group may not actually believe this  but because you think the group does your   willingness to conform and your unwillingness to  challenge what you think the group believes will   actually contribute to leading the group astray in  fact history is littered with examples of groups   airing in massive ways and there's an enormous  cost socially in the 60s a majority of whites   in the South no longer approved of segregation  they wanted desegregation and integration however   they were fully convinced that most white  Southerners still favored segregation in   other words they were under this Collective  illusion right and because nobody was willing   to challenge the belonging to their group  we allowed segregation to continue for many   years because we were behaving in ways that  were no longer consistent with our values   we are now in an environment where free expression  the ability to disagree openly is under such   Threat by a vocal Fringe that recognizes that  the only way that they can get their way is to   convince you that the majority believes something  they don't and allow Conformity bias to do the   rest of the work the cost to you of giving up  your private values in the name of Conformity   is that you may actually come to believe the  very thing that you don't agree with right now   we have to create the space that protects  differences of opinion that allows respectful   disagreement in ways that are productive  how many Illusions get punctured almost   overnight when we realize despite our  differences we have common ground as well [Music] ever since the 1930s the bargain has been  give up autonomy give up any kind of control   give up the expectation that work would be  fulfilling and just do what we tell you to   do that system fundamentally distrusts people  and we're living with those systems today   but what's changed is people are no longer  willing to be cogs they're just not our   priorities for work as an American public have  changed work doesn't have to be a devil's bargain   our most recent work is the American Workforce  index we didn't just ask people what they wanted   we asked them to make difficult choices trade-offs  across 60 different possible priorities for work   and not surprisingly when we asked  people what most people would say   they ranked a prestigious job as being the  fifth most important priority for everybody else   to have your job be viewed as prestigious  that sounds like something people want   right it's what we Chase but in private  it actually ranks number 55 out of 60.   people want to work at places that give them free  food and swag and it's a prestigious organization   where I have a prestigious title where I can make  a best friend at work the things that we are told   over and over again go into making a good work  culture in reality those are some of the least   prioritized things for the majority of workers  in America today to the extent that leadership   of companies are under these Illusions they will  continue to incentivize and design environments   that are no longer a very good fit to the true  trade-off priorities of the workforce what people   want is work to be a positive part of the rest of  their life they want to be trusted to be able to   make decisions about how they do their work and  they are expecting more meaning and purpose in   their work the thing that will hold us back from  a good life rather than just working to work are   these illusions that keep pulling us back to  Conformity to something for which the group no   longer actually values we all don't have to  quit our job and go somewhere else to find   fulfillment that it is closer than we think and  a lot of it is just subtle changes particularly   around giving more control to employees trusting  them more listening to the things they care about   from an individual standpoint it means having a  conversation with your supervisor talk about what   matters to you your silence will only diminish the  willingness of the employer to actually make the   changes that most people actually want to see it's  okay to have the conversation work absolutely can   be a part of a fulfilling life most companies  need to see that it is not risky that you can   trust employees that you can work hard to create  a good fit for more people and that the result   is not chaos and it does not come at the cost  of productivity and Profit just the opposite so what do we prioritize moving  forward as an American people   the American aspirations index was populist's  effort to understand the private trade-off   priorities that the public has for the future of  the country we simply asked participants whether   they thought we were more divided or United as a  country not surprisingly 82 percent of respondents   said we were more divided and half of those people  said we were extremely divided as the country   And yet when we put those same exact people  into this private opinion instrument it tells   a different story if we take politics out of it  and just look at demographics regardless of your   gender race geography income education level  we share eight of the 10 top priors we have   in common and they are nothing short of core  American values people care about individual   rights a quality education good health care and a  criminal justice system that operates without bias   they want to be treated equally regardless of  their background and they want to be able to go   as far in life as their ability and aspirations  will take them but it almost feels like it can't   be true because we're all operating under  this Collective illusion of widespread   disagreement and Division in society the biggest  illusion of all is the illusion of division   we have very sharp divisions on just a small  handful of issues but because they are so intense   it is misinterpreted as widespread disagreement  across the board but disagreement on process is   the heart of democracy let's pick the places  where we actually have common ground but the   illusion is convincing us it's not true you think  about something like the first step act one of the   biggest criminal justice reforms in my lifetime  was accomplished in part because you brought   together people who you didn't even think would  talk to each other and made Common Ground around   a common cause right more of that is needed and  it absolutely serves the need of American people   Unity for the sake of unity is False Consensus  we don't want to paper over real differences   what we want is a culture where we treat each  other with respect so we can adjudicate those   differences in productive ways the  strategy really is bridge building   it really is using unlikely alliances  to accomplish amazing things together   and so a call for Unity will fall on deaf ears  a call to treat one another with respect and   dignity that every human being deserves will  actually puncture the illusion of division   and allow us to accomplish more together as a  people than we could possibly imagine right now what we're witnessing right now across the  country is a pretty dramatic shift in the   way people think about their relationship between  people and our institutions and nowhere is that   more prevalent than in education out of the  66 possibilities that an institution of higher   education could deliver what we wanted  to understand is what do you prioritize   what you're given is a task that says school a  school B six of those 66 attributes are randomly   grabbed for school a another six are grabbed for  school B which one of these do you choose do it   again with six others and that allows us to build  a profile for you of your trade-off priorities for   higher education what people think people want out  of higher education is the prestigious school with   a great sports team and an active social life what  people actually want out of higher ed is to get   a good job that is Meaningful to them and to do  that with as little debt as possible foreign there   are incredible institutions of higher education  who are giving us a vision of what the future of   higher education will be they are doing things  that are modularized individualized customized   using credentials instead of diplomas to create  better signals for employers people are really   interested not just in having an undifferentiated  diploma but also a hybrid on-the-job training   apprenticeships it's not simply book smarts that  gets you the job that you want success is not just   going to college it is actually are we equipping  you to live the life that you want to live   parents know their kids better than bureaucrats  know their kids communities know their values   better than the federal government knows a  community's values where there's a lot of   common ground is in this commitment to a far more  individualized educational experience education   is and always will be the great equalizer the  best vehicle for enabling people to actually   live the kind of lives they want to live that  might be college for some people it might be   trades for others but social entrepreneurs need  to do is build the solutions and dismantle the   Illusions if we get it right and we acknowledge  the collective illusion recognize our common   desires for the purpose of Education moving  forward there's an opportunity to drive pretty   substantial change and we can actually have  the education system that we want and deserve [Music] as human beings our brains are Absolute  Energy Hogs your brain's always looking   for ways to reduce energy expenditure well  one of the best ways to do that is through   the use of cultural norms there are things we  agree to as a society that help us Grease the   wheels of social interaction and they  make life predictable for us [Music]   cultural norms usually reflect the prior  Generations group consensus not our own [Music]   born into them by and large we just assume that  this group consensus reflects something that is   true and good that people really want but it's not  correct a lot of norms are just entirely arbitrary   and we need to be skeptical about Norms because  Norms can exist for a very long time not because   they were ever true but just because people  don't question them there is the brain that track   cultural norms are the same areas of the brain  that process social information in general and   a violation of a cultural norm will trigger the  exact same error signal that your brain triggers   when it is perceived that you are going against  your group artists throughout history have played   a role in purposely challenging Norms we see them  as a little weird and a little disconnected from   society because they're supposed to be and that  creates a permission structure that allows them   to pull the mirror up to us and say is this really  you is this what you believe sometimes you come   back and say absolutely it is and you're offended  that they even asked but a lot of times it's the   first crack in the norm that eventually breaks  and as people start to talk about the artist   and about the art rather than the norm itself it  reveals the opportunity for people to reveal to   each other what they actually value and the norm  can disintegrate and a new Norm can emerge [Music]   Vietnam faced an incredible challenge with child  malnutrition that had basically been impossible to   solve through traditional top-down means they  finally addressed the problem and solved it   through a completely different approach called  positive deviants start by actually going into   communities and saying let's find the examples  of people in these communities that are positive   deviants meaning whatever problem you're facing  like malnutrition there's some family whose kids   are not malnourished even though they're under the  same constraints as everybody else they discovered   that these mothers were supplementing the  meager amounts of food the kids had with shrimp   well those were freely available and widely  available sources of nutrition but what they found   out was at some point a norm had emerged in that  community that said shrimp were harmful to kids   the mothers that were doing that were doing  it in private they didn't want anybody else   to know they were because they knew  they were violating a cultural norm   it wasn't enough to tell people to feed their  kids shrimp they had to find these mothers and   Elevate their voices and allow them to  communicate to other parents and break   that cultural norm but once they did they made  dramatic gains in Child Nutrition for decades the fact that we're so hung up on top-down  expert driven solution to everything is the   only reason why positive deviance seems strange  to us but in reality it's the only way you can   ever drive social change under Collective  illusions that are rooted in cultural norms   if you understand that fact and you create the  enabling conditions that allow Everyday People   to reveal who they really are to each other  these Illusions can crumble in a hurry and   social change can happen at a scale and Pace that  would otherwise seem unimaginable this series is   brought to you by stand together a community of  change makers tackling our biggest challenges   and to learn more about how you can partner  with stand together visit stand together.org [Music]   foreign [Music]

Channel: Big Think

Views: 1,428,531

Keywords: Education, Educational Videos, Videos, Faster smarter, big think, bigthink

Id: BD_Euf_CBbs

Length: 31min 45sec (1905 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022