The science of behavioral change
[Music]
so
i’m from oregon originally and i grew up
kind of in the middle of nowhere
the nearest town was like five miles
away and i’m using the term town
pretty loosely total population was like
150 people
i just didn’t really fit in very well i
love science
and logic and i wore my pants pulled up
way too high
and because the gods hate teenagers
appearing serious and rational is pretty
much a lost cause when you’re that age
eighth grade is just embarrassing for
everyone and i remember this one
experience
so clearly i was headed out of school at
the end of the day and a spider
had constructed a web right about base
level
for a teenager very considerate spider
and so when i walked out to go be with
my friends i got a face full of
spiderweb
and if you’ve ever seen someone walk
into a spider web from far away
it’s sort of an amazing thing right
they’re walking they’re walking totally
reasonable totally sane nothing weird
and then
out of the blue from nowhere they just
start freaking out
it looks like they’re like doing kung fu
against ghosts you know it’s crazy
all of a sudden out of nowhere they just
look insane
and of course my friends saw it and of
course they teased me about being
completely
out of my mind because it is the job of
your friends to remind you
that you’re not whoever you want to be
if you want to be a scientist when you
grow up they’ll tease you
about being irrational and of course i
did grow up to be a scientist
and what’s better i grew up to be a
scientist that studies irrationality
and so how people make decisions related
to their emotions and other things so
this talk is really just my way of
saying screw you
teenage classmates i made it right i am
here
but more importantly i want to talk
about walking into spider webs
in some sense everyone watching this
is like teenage me we want to be thought
of as rational and reasonable because in
many ways that’s how we culturally
define intelligence there’s
nothing wrong with that i am totally on
board with wanting people
to act based on evidence i’m a scientist
and so to take an orderly approach to
problem solving
seems very important to me but where i
start to get uncomfortable
isn’t with how we use reasonable but
with the reverse and how we label people
unreasonable or irrational because
there’s no doubt
unreasonable and irrational our
descriptions that we use to punish
people
and to keep them from sources of power
and participating in power fully
the women watching this know what i’m
talking about we love to call women
irrational as a way of belittling them
of implying
that their actions come from a place of
emotion rather than logic or evidence
the research here is you know sort of
endless you can look at the performance
reviews of women in the workplace
and find all of these adjectives that
are used to consistently describe women
as irrational or emotional or
you know sort of other kinds of
stereotype judgments about their basis
of their thing and they never sort of
see that in men’s performance reviews
you don’t see the same use of adjectives
you can even see it actually
um in in when we’re describing imaginary
women right in fiction
they actually have the same sort of use
of emotional adjective this is a
systematic pervasive problem in how we
identify women
and it isn’t just about gender think
about young black men
right young black men are more likely to
drop out of high school less likely to
go to college
surely they want to be successful and
surely they know education is a factor
in their future success how can they not
be putting
those two things together how can they
be so irrational
and of course it isn’t just gender and
race it’s not just women and black men
you can see this across the board
when poor world whites support you know
a
certain type of political candidate the
media often describes them as voting
against their rational self-interest
which is usually code for the fact that
their economic potential will go down
as a result of the policies of that
candidate i mean surely they realize
that cutting taxes on the rich will put
a larger burden on the working poor
how can they be so irrational
but what is irrational really i mean
hopefully you can all acknowledge that
when i walked into that spider web i was
acting perfectly rationally right
something was restricting my mouth
and i reacted to clear it you know and
if i say it in a particular voice it
really does sound particularly rational
perfectly sort of understandable even if
the action itself looks very strange i
mean try to think of my action as
narrated by like dan rather
something restricted his mouth and he
acted quickly to remove it
you know that sounds really good the
reason walking into spiderwebs appears
irrational is because the observer
doesn’t see the spider web that is they
don’t see the pressures that created the
behavior they only see
the behavior itself and because the
behavior itself
seems on the surface inexplicable your
mind doesn’t say oh yes
maybe he walked into a spider web maybe
that’s why he’s acting so crazy it just
seems
like i just all of a sudden started
acting bizarre and so when we judge
people
only on the behavior and not on the
pressures that create the behavior
because they’re invisible to us
then that’s where this we start calling
people irrational that’s where this
problem comes in
i mean let’s go back to women in the
workplace for a second it is a fact
an indisputable 100 true
economists agree fact that women are
underpaid relative to their male
counterparts
and part of the reason for that is women
act in a way that appears irrational
with regard to pay equity they don’t ask
for raises as often they don’t take
credit for their accomplishments
as often they don’t speak up in meetings
as often
and so they don’t get promoted as often
but those behaviors
aren’t random they’re not imaginary they
don’t ask for raises because we
socialize them not to
and we punish them when they do they
don’t take credit for their
accomplishments for the same reasons we
socialize them not to and then punish
them if they do
women don’t speak up in meetings because
men don’t shut up long enough for them
to do so
and if they do speak up or they
interrupt us so that they have a space
to talk we call them bossy
and we go back to labeling them with
emotional adjectives but
men don’t typically see all those
pressures that are creating those
behaviors
they don’t see systematic bias they
don’t see the socialization they don’t
see the punishments
so they look at the behaviors and they
say well this is a meritocracy these
women are silent in meetings and they
don’t seem to have any accomplishments
that they’re telling me about so there’s
no reason for me to promote them
this pattern plays out over and over and
over and over again in situations of
systematic bias
our young black men absolutely know that
education is fundamental to success
they also know that they are massively
more likely to be incarcerated or killed
by the police and deprived of their
opportunity to use
that education which makes spending time
elsewhere while they’re young
perfectly understandable and poor whites
who support
candidates are voting based on more than
just their economic self-interest
right the need to belong is a very core
fundamental human identity need
and candidates offer it to them they say
you know wear the hat
say the slogan and you too can be part
of the movement
we call all of these people unreasonable
because we don’t actually
understand the pressures that are
affecting them the pressures that are
creating
those behaviors and rather than trying
to understand those pressures trying to
to see where things come from it’s
easier to simply say that they don’t
exist
right just call women unambitious or
young black men lazy
poor rural whites stupid it’s easier to
say
there’s something wrong with the people
than to acknowledge
how their environment affects them and
when those judgments come from someone
with power
we have a recipe for an incredibly toxic
cycle an incredibly toxic system it
isn’t just that people are being labeled
those labels then become the
justification
for oppressing them when we deny the
existence of the spider webs we are free
to say that those people act
too unpredictably too irrationally to
participate
in power so what
i want to propose that in a world of
spider webs we need a
very specific approach to change
compassionate
scientific activism compassionate
scientific activism
why compassionate well compassion is the
first step in changing
behavior because compassion says i
believe
that the pressures that may be affecting
you
are things i can’t see and so i will
treat you with kindness and assume that
your behavior is based on something real
real to you
and when you look at modern therapy like
dialectical behavioral therapy dbt
right they make this a routine part of
how people understand each other right
validation it’s a skill they teach right
now notice by the way i’m not asking you
to agree with all behavior
that isn’t what validation is i
certainly don’t agree with dropping out
of high school
or voting for bad oppressive leaders
assuming that someone’s behavior is
based on something real to them doesn’t
mean you agree with the thing that
they’re doing
but if you don’t accept their behavior
as valid within the domain of their
experience
valid according to real pressures that
affect them
the only alternative is to believe that
their behavior is random
and random behavior by definition can’t
be changed
but that’s what we’re really talking
about getting rid of the use of rational
to label behavior matters
because ultimately we want to change
those behaviors for the better
we don’t want women to sit silently in
meetings we don’t want young black men
to drop out of high school
we don’t want poor rural whites
to vote for leaders that will oppress
them
but we can’t hope to change behavior we
don’t see those behaviors as
fundamentally driven by real pressures
that can be changed
and so we need to be compassionate and
accept that spider webs
exist but compassion isn’t enough
because it isn’t enough to say i believe
your experiences
are real compassion is necessary but
it’s not sufficient
this is where science comes in because
if compassion says
i believe that spider webs exist science
says
and i believe so much i believe so much
that those spiderwebs exist that i will
go find them that’s what research is
research makes the invisible forces
visible
now it’s important to take a second to
emphasize here i’m talking about science
not scientists
science as a process is specifically
about
finding and understanding the things
that shape other things right it’s about
finding and understanding those spider
webs scientists like me as practitioners
of science are highly
flawed and subject to bias and have
played a huge part in creating the world
in which we exist today i’m a scientist
and you can ask anyone i am highly
highly flawed
and full of biases but we need the
process that is science to
map the spider webs and show that they
exist because we already do this for the
people we decided irrational
i didn’t pick women and young black men
and poor rural whites randomly as
examples
we use the notion of irrationality to
perpetuate a sexist
racist classist power structure that
continues to bend over backwards to put
white men like me at the top
and because we put white men at the top
we study the pressures that shape their
behavior
more than anyone else’s guaranteeing
that we understand
those pressures and can support our
notion of their rationality in this sort
of endless loop because we see their
spider webs
when they act imperfectly we are more
likely to
attribute their imperfections to their
environment rather than to them and so
we’re
best at changing the behaviors of white
men and creating a better world for them
because we understand the pressures
that affect them and if we want to
change behavior for everyone
then we need to include everyone in our
understanding of how
pressures change behavior we have to be
diverse and inclusive
in our research as scientists all right
so we started with compassion we’ve
added science
but even compassionate science isn’t
enough i am
a phd dropout and i left academia
primarily because i found out
that it is gnostic in nature that is the
way you measure success in academia is
by generating
unique knowledge and that’s not a bad
thing remember i want us to see the
spiders to find out that they actually
exist
but if someone is struggling in a spider
web i don’t want to be the person
describing the thickness of the threads
if someone is struggling
i want to be the person who tries to set
them free
and that’s why we need action that last
word that activism
because compassion says i can’t see the
spider web but i believe that it is
there
right and science says and i believe so
hard so
hard that i will find that spider web
but his only action only activism that
says
and when i find it when i find that
spider web
i will tear it down i left academia and
became an applied scientist because it
allows me to take that last step to find
the systematic spider webs and start to
pull them apart we live in a world
of deep structural inequity some people
are just realizing this but some have
experienced it their whole lives
i like spider webs to talk about this
because they aren’t accidental they’re
well structured
they’re deliberate and they’re designed
to ensnare
and if we want to change the world that
we live in the deeply unequal place that
we have built together
we need to learn and practice these
three skills
compassion and science and activism are
not just philosophies
they’re behaviors ways of being and it’s
incumbent on all of us to want to
create change and to learn these tools
to do so
because this transformation from
focusing on behaviors to focusing on
pressures
is magical it’s one of the most
immediately impactful things that any of
us can do because instead of trying to
box people
in by dealing with their irrationalities
we reconfigure the systems to set them
free
we weaken some pressures and strengthen
others to help create an environment
where people can behave according to
their best intentions
to the things they actually are there
that are important to them like their
beliefs and their values
now look that doesn’t mean everyone will
act the same or even act well
because we have tremendous variety in
our beliefs and values
but we want people to be able to act
authentically that’s what real
rationality is the chance to do what we
believe in
to make actions and intentions line up
and when we do that with compassionate
scientific activism we get to a better
world
we believe people when they say their
spider webs exist we spend time
and money and energy finding and
understanding
those spider webs and then we tear them
down
because when you clear away the cobwebs
you find out who’s really doing kung fu
against ghosts
and who’s struggling to be free
struggling to pull the strings from
their mouth
struggling to breathe so let’s do it
again
compassionate i believe the spider webs
exist
scientific i find and study them
activism i tear them down compassionate
scientific activism thank you so much