WEBVTT

00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:03.360
David, this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast.

00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:06.560
Actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologist.

00:00:06.800 --> 00:00:07.920
Do you have anything else to say?

00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:09.040
No, nailed it.

00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:09.680
We got it.

00:00:09.920 --> 00:00:10.560
Boom.

00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:33.090
David, uh the law and evolution and psychology, the intersection of those three is

00:00:33.090 --> 00:00:34.290
what we talked about today.

00:00:34.690 --> 00:00:35.170
That's right.

00:00:35.250 --> 00:00:40.690
It's a beautiful example of how um anything involving human beings uh can be illuminated by

00:00:40.690 --> 00:00:42.050
evolutionary psychology.

00:00:42.210 --> 00:00:46.370
Uh and law is a thing that is affected by human beings and human minds, and you would

00:00:46.370 --> 00:00:49.890
expect law to be uh uh illuminated by evolutionary psychology.

00:00:49.970 --> 00:00:55.170
And our guest today, Keila Williams, who is a professor at Hamilton College and has both a

00:00:55.170 --> 00:01:00.940
PhD and JD, double threat, uh tells us all about law and evolutionary

00:01:00.940 --> 00:01:01.340
psychology.

00:01:01.660 --> 00:01:05.100
Yeah, I love that we learned about sort of how jurors make decisions.

00:01:05.260 --> 00:01:07.740
We talked about the death penalty, attitudes about that.

00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:12.860
And then we even talked about Keela's work on ecology, representations, and st and how it

00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:16.220
drives a lot of stereotypes about even things like racial groups.

00:01:16.300 --> 00:01:19.660
Um, really important topics, really counterintuitive.

00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:24.060
And I think Keela is just a great example of really cutting edge empirical work in the

00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:26.380
evolutionary social sciences.

00:01:26.750 --> 00:01:31.710
Yeah, and and stay tuned for my tips on how to be a good criminal and uh Dave's hilarious

00:01:31.710 --> 00:01:34.750
rant about how everyone in the legal system is hungry, tired, and grumpy.

00:01:35.390 --> 00:01:37.870
And I'm I will put myself in that category too.

00:01:37.950 --> 00:01:42.670
Without further ado, uh grab a sandwich and listen to enjoy the episode.

00:01:48.510 --> 00:01:50.990
Uh David, do you do you want to introduce Keila?

00:01:51.880 --> 00:01:52.200
Sure.

00:01:52.360 --> 00:01:58.360
Uh today we have uh Keila Williams, who is uh a rare guest who has both a PhD and a

00:01:58.360 --> 00:01:58.920
JD.

00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:04.680
That is, you she uh understands both the human mind and the human legal system.

00:02:05.080 --> 00:02:07.000
Uh so I I'm kind of curious.

00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:12.760
I mean, given that we we started there, how did you end up developing this combination of

00:02:12.760 --> 00:02:13.720
expertises?

00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:17.960
Uh and uh what how do you think one informs the other?

00:02:19.210 --> 00:02:24.570
When I was an undergraduate, I worked in a research lab that was looking at jury decision

00:02:24.730 --> 00:02:25.370
making.

00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:31.610
And I, as part of that, was reading literature from attorneys who were

00:02:31.610 --> 00:02:36.730
talking about the strategies that they use sometimes to select members of the jury.

00:02:36.890 --> 00:02:42.890
And I was reading research from psychologists who were writing on a similar topic, and yet

00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:45.850
they were coming to opposite conclusions.

00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:48.920
And I thought that was really fascinating.

00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:54.920
And I wanted to develop expertise in both areas so that I could figure out what

00:02:54.920 --> 00:02:55.960
the truth was.

00:02:57.160 --> 00:03:03.000
And so is the is the uh the goal for you to understand the mind of the juror,

00:03:03.160 --> 00:03:07.320
or is it more to understand the minds of the prosecutors or the judges?

00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:10.600
What whose minds are you most interested in getting inside?

00:03:11.270 --> 00:03:14.310
I'm just generally interested in legal decision makers.

00:03:14.470 --> 00:03:20.070
So that involves jurors, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, all of the above, and lay

00:03:20.070 --> 00:03:23.830
people too, who are asked to think about legal questions.

00:03:24.390 --> 00:03:24.630
Yeah.

00:03:24.950 --> 00:03:30.390
Do you do you feel, I mean, we can maybe like poke on and unpack some of those details

00:03:30.470 --> 00:03:31.670
because there's a lot to unpack.

00:03:31.750 --> 00:03:33.110
It's like what you're studying.

00:03:33.190 --> 00:03:38.620
But just as a starting point, once now that you've sort of wrapped your head around both

00:03:38.620 --> 00:03:44.460
views, should we feel pessimistic or optimistic about the legal

00:03:44.460 --> 00:03:44.700
system?

00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:49.020
Or do you feel more pessimistic or optimistic, or is it sort of ambivalent?

00:03:49.180 --> 00:03:54.700
Um, like is it is it worse than we think or better, or what what's your

00:03:54.700 --> 00:04:00.510
conclusion just based on being a scientist um and seeing that the way that

00:04:00.510 --> 00:04:04.830
psychologists are talking and the way that legal people are talking, they're arriving at

00:04:04.830 --> 00:04:05.630
opposite conclusions.

00:04:05.710 --> 00:04:07.070
That sounds scary to me.

00:04:07.230 --> 00:04:12.590
Like if somebody did something to me that required the legal process, that that level of

00:04:12.590 --> 00:04:15.950
inaccuracy to put it away is scary.

00:04:16.110 --> 00:04:17.870
Like you would want consistency.

00:04:18.190 --> 00:04:23.920
Um, but sometimes like psychologists are weird and like maybe the legal system has figured

00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:27.120
out a good system by just trial and error, even without science.

00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:28.320
Like, what's your take on that?

00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:29.920
Like, do you feel better or worse?

00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:31.520
Or what what yeah, what's up?

00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:38.160
I often feel frustrated because the legal system is very, very slow to

00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:42.720
incorporate science in general and psychological science in particular.

00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:47.010
And uh sometimes they they do eventually.

00:04:47.170 --> 00:04:52.770
I think eyewitness and eyewitness memory research is a good example of this, where

00:04:52.770 --> 00:04:58.290
Elizabeth Loftus did, you know, decades of work trying to show how unreliable

00:04:58.290 --> 00:05:00.050
eyewitness memory can be.

00:05:00.370 --> 00:05:06.290
And the courts have accepted that and incorporated it into some

00:05:06.290 --> 00:05:08.370
of their processes now.

00:05:08.770 --> 00:05:10.130
So that's a success story.

00:05:10.210 --> 00:05:15.680
But I think that there are other areas where junk science continues to

00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:16.960
permeate the quartz.

00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:19.440
And that is a frustrating thing.

00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:25.040
Is it more that there's an ignorance of of the psychological science, or is it that they're

00:05:25.040 --> 00:05:30.160
selecting the the bad psychological science as opposed to the good psychological science?

00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:31.840
Or is it a little bit of both?

00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:38.270
It's probably a little bit of both, but it's it's ultimately a resistance to change, I

00:05:38.270 --> 00:05:38.590
think.

00:05:39.070 --> 00:05:44.830
Um, that there's a reliance in the law on we've always done it this

00:05:44.830 --> 00:05:45.150
way.

00:05:45.550 --> 00:05:49.390
And so that can be difficult to fight against sometimes.

00:05:49.790 --> 00:05:49.950
Right.

00:05:50.110 --> 00:05:54.190
So it's a conservative institution, not in the political sense, but in the sort of like

00:05:54.190 --> 00:05:58.750
precise literal sense of like conservative, meaning like you kind of resistance to change,

00:05:58.830 --> 00:06:01.630
which can be a good thing if you if those

00:06:05.940 --> 00:06:10.660
But it that that's sort of it sounds like it's a conservative institution in that respect.

00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:11.540
Yes.

00:06:11.860 --> 00:06:12.420
Yeah.

00:06:13.220 --> 00:06:18.100
You know that makes sense if there are certain stakeholders who who might not win out from

00:06:18.100 --> 00:06:22.750
the new changes or or just by virtue of the fact that it's an institution that depends on

00:06:22.750 --> 00:06:24.350
people coordinating with one another.

00:06:24.590 --> 00:06:29.390
Um, if you introduce new ideas and new procedures into it, it's going to make it harder for

00:06:29.390 --> 00:06:33.550
people to coordinate, and there are already a set of coordination points or shelling

00:06:33.550 --> 00:06:39.550
points, as we might say, uh that have you know have rooted the whole institution.

00:06:39.630 --> 00:06:44.350
That that you know everyone triangulates around these concepts of guilt, innocent mensrea,

00:06:44.750 --> 00:06:45.390
etc., etc.

00:06:45.790 --> 00:06:50.400
And to introduce new ideas is gonna you know tamper with something that's already working

00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:52.080
well in terms of coordination.

00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:57.440
So we've already talked about psychology and the law.

00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:00.000
We haven't yet introduced the evolution piece.

00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:03.600
So how does the evolution piece fit in here?

00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:10.640
So the goal of evolutionary psychology in particular is to understand human behavior.

00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:13.360
And the goal of law is to regulate it.

00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:18.810
And the better you understand behavior, the better you're going to be able to regulate it.

00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:23.370
So I see them as really, you know, excellent bedfellows.

00:07:25.370 --> 00:07:25.930
Interesting.

00:07:26.330 --> 00:07:27.130
Regulate.

00:07:27.450 --> 00:07:32.970
So it's not merely that the legal system wants to just boss us

00:07:32.970 --> 00:07:35.130
around arbitrarily, right?

00:07:35.210 --> 00:07:39.130
It doesn't want to just tell us what to do, you know, as an end in itself.

00:07:39.610 --> 00:07:45.540
We might think or hope that it is regulating behavior in the service of some higher ideal

00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:49.940
like justice, morality, or some something like that.

00:07:50.180 --> 00:07:55.940
Um so uh I would then ask the question of uh,

00:07:56.100 --> 00:08:00.740
you know, to what end is this behavior regulation uh in pursuit of?

00:08:00.820 --> 00:08:04.420
You know, uh we'd like to think or hope that it's in the service of justice.

00:08:04.660 --> 00:08:08.500
Do you buy that idealistic story, or do you think something else is going on?

00:08:09.700 --> 00:08:11.220
What is justice?

00:08:12.950 --> 00:08:16.710
You have one minute to define five words or less.

00:08:17.030 --> 00:08:17.750
Yeah, exactly.

00:08:22.790 --> 00:08:28.150
A someone who was just starting law school and was there on the first day,

00:08:28.310 --> 00:08:34.070
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and the law professor asked them to raise their hands if they

00:08:34.070 --> 00:08:35.430
were there to study justice.

00:08:35.670 --> 00:08:40.620
A bunch of them like, here I am and then the professor said well you're in the wrong place

00:08:40.780 --> 00:08:46.780
the philosophy department is over there so I I think it's a very

00:08:46.780 --> 00:08:51.740
cynical way of thinking about it but I don't know that that the law actually

00:08:52.700 --> 00:08:57.660
is designed in a way that promotes justice in particular

00:08:59.740 --> 00:09:01.900
what is it designed to do yeah yeah

00:09:07.030 --> 00:09:08.390
Five words or less.

00:09:12.310 --> 00:09:14.630
In a haiku format, preferably.

00:09:15.350 --> 00:09:15.910
That's okay.

00:09:16.550 --> 00:09:17.190
Great.

00:09:17.670 --> 00:09:23.350
Um I think it's designed

00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:32.560
To really hard questions attempt to solve

00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:33.840
problems.

00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:40.240
But it doesn't do so in a highly efficient way.

00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:45.920
And it doesn't do so in a way that produces equal outcomes for

00:09:45.920 --> 00:09:46.880
individuals.

00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:54.080
So depending on your definition of justice, if that is

00:09:54.630 --> 00:10:00.550
what you want to see, then I don't think that the legal system is well designed to produce

00:10:00.550 --> 00:10:01.510
those outputs.

00:10:01.910 --> 00:10:02.070
Right.

00:10:02.230 --> 00:10:05.750
So it's sort of like we're all bumbling around and like there's a view of institutions

00:10:05.830 --> 00:10:10.390
which is sort of like we're all bumbling around and everyone is just like doing everyone's

00:10:10.390 --> 00:10:15.590
busy and hungry and tired and sleepy and just doing the minimal thing to just kind of keep

00:10:15.590 --> 00:10:20.840
themselves going and like, you know, keep their kids alive and, you know, their family

00:10:20.840 --> 00:10:22.120
alive and stuff.

00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:28.280
And most institutions are sort of run by people just sort of

00:10:28.280 --> 00:10:31.080
doing the minimal thing reasonably enough.

00:10:31.320 --> 00:10:37.080
And so what you're saying is that the justice system, if that's the word for it, or the or

00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:42.840
the legal system, is just is an institution because people had problems, it

00:10:42.850 --> 00:10:45.490
became other people's problem at some level.

00:10:45.650 --> 00:10:49.810
And so we had to come up with a mechanism to solve a set of problems.

00:10:50.210 --> 00:10:56.050
And it's sort of a good enough clue system that sort

00:10:56.050 --> 00:11:01.810
of has a way of sort of at least on the surface resolving problems.

00:11:02.050 --> 00:11:06.130
But it's nowhere near ideally designed or efficient.

00:11:06.370 --> 00:11:12.220
It's just this consequence of lots of hungry, sleepy, grumpy people, sort of all

00:11:12.380 --> 00:11:14.060
doing doing something.

00:11:14.220 --> 00:11:17.340
Is that sort of a fair uh characterization of it?

00:11:17.820 --> 00:11:23.260
Yeah, I really liked the the terms that David was using earlier about it being a

00:11:23.260 --> 00:11:24.460
coordination problem.

00:11:24.620 --> 00:11:30.460
I think the legal system is is really trying to to coordinate um behavior.

00:11:31.470 --> 00:11:36.910
And so, like in a criminal case or like a civil case, and kind of both, it seems like

00:11:36.910 --> 00:11:40.510
there's it's it's a lot about cost and cost redress.

00:11:40.750 --> 00:11:42.910
Is that a fair characterization?

00:11:42.990 --> 00:11:47.230
Or how would you think about like what is the the deep structure of what's the problem it's

00:11:47.230 --> 00:11:48.190
solving?

00:11:48.750 --> 00:11:50.430
Or maybe there's not a single thing.

00:11:50.590 --> 00:11:51.150
I don't know.

00:11:51.230 --> 00:11:51.870
Yeah.

00:11:57.460 --> 00:11:57.700
I know.

00:11:57.940 --> 00:11:59.460
No, I just don't we know so little.

00:11:59.620 --> 00:12:02.500
We're just we're just recapitulating like law one oh one.

00:12:02.580 --> 00:12:04.740
We're like we're just the legal at least for me.

00:12:07.700 --> 00:12:09.860
What is the meaning of the law?

00:12:11.860 --> 00:12:15.780
Uh yeah, I mean like well it seemed like the way you're talking about it, Dave, the the

00:12:15.780 --> 00:12:20.670
problem being solved is a is a conflict between people that these people are in some sort

00:12:20.670 --> 00:12:26.670
of conflict uh and uh they they would prefer not to just endlessly

00:12:26.670 --> 00:12:30.910
kill each other and their and each other's family members like Hatfields and McCoy's right

00:12:31.150 --> 00:12:34.910
and so you know because that would be a problem for everyone else if that was happening all

00:12:34.910 --> 00:12:39.470
the time and so these people's problems just become someone else's problems and then they

00:12:39.470 --> 00:12:42.670
have to figure out how to keep them from not killing each other.

00:12:43.310 --> 00:12:49.040
And and you know I love your your adjectives, J Dave, of you know, sleepy, grumpy, hungry,

00:12:49.120 --> 00:12:49.520
tired.

00:12:49.760 --> 00:12:54.480
And and these sleepy, hungry, grumpy, tired people are just like, all right, just doing the

00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:56.720
bare minimum to keep these people from killing each other.

00:12:56.880 --> 00:12:57.200
Yeah.

00:12:57.360 --> 00:13:00.720
Um and uh that's that's what the legal system is.

00:13:00.800 --> 00:13:03.040
Is that is that a fair characterization, Keila?

00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:06.960
Yeah, I would say so.

00:13:07.230 --> 00:13:07.790
Oh wow.

00:13:07.870 --> 00:13:08.030
Okay.

00:13:08.430 --> 00:13:11.390
Because that's like uh that's also a set of selection pressures, right?

00:13:11.550 --> 00:13:15.870
I mean, like, is that like have I mean key look, Keila, like I know like we had Deb

00:13:15.870 --> 00:13:19.870
Lieberman and we talked about the intersection of like law and evolutionary psychology.

00:13:19.950 --> 00:13:24.830
Like you've done probably you're one of the people, if not the person who's sort of done

00:13:24.830 --> 00:13:26.910
the most in integrating those two.

00:13:27.310 --> 00:13:33.140
Um, has that point sort of um, you know, that it sounds like that point

00:13:33.220 --> 00:13:34.660
um you're making, right?

00:13:34.740 --> 00:13:40.020
Is that is that a fair characterization that sort of um the law in some sense does

00:13:40.020 --> 00:13:44.180
recapitulate what are and also selection pressures, like what David just described is also

00:13:44.180 --> 00:13:49.780
something that like the our mental software design also had to

00:13:49.780 --> 00:13:50.580
deal with.

00:13:51.060 --> 00:13:56.500
Yeah, I mean, one of the the basic principles that I come from uh in my

00:13:56.610 --> 00:14:02.210
research is that these model these modern legal institutions are stemming from

00:14:02.210 --> 00:14:04.530
evolved psychological mechanisms.

00:14:05.170 --> 00:14:11.170
So how we're responding to these law related questions is being

00:14:11.170 --> 00:14:15.410
governed by the ways that natural and sexual selection have shaped our minds over

00:14:15.410 --> 00:14:16.610
evolutionary time.

00:14:17.250 --> 00:14:22.530
Yeah and one of the themes that like we've had on this um podcast has been to sort of say

00:14:22.530 --> 00:14:27.660
that taking an evolutionary approach moves you out of naive realism, which is just sort of

00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:33.020
the idea that it's trivial to sort of process any part of the world.

00:14:33.260 --> 00:14:39.180
You know, we know from evolutionary and cognitive science that there's a lot of

00:14:39.180 --> 00:14:44.300
mental software that's necessary to get anything, even like vision off the ground.

00:14:44.540 --> 00:14:50.030
And the idea that sort of there's a lot of content rich, infant rich,

00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:56.750
inference rich machinery, a lot of which is social, a lot of which is strategic,

00:14:56.830 --> 00:15:00.190
which is also a theme of like David's worldview and themes.

00:15:00.590 --> 00:15:06.510
Um that's a very different way of thinking about people, and that they're full of sort

00:15:06.510 --> 00:15:08.270
of motivated reasoning.

00:15:08.510 --> 00:15:13.790
Um, and I would imagine that that really butts up against an idea that's sort of

00:15:14.140 --> 00:15:20.060
jurors or judges or just legal scholars are

00:15:20.060 --> 00:15:25.500
just maybe, I mean, you can tell us like, is that the worldview of them that that I mean, I

00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:29.580
mean I may, I guess there's an idea that people are sort of self-interested sometimes.

00:15:29.900 --> 00:15:34.140
But I mean, I even know like when I've seen like I've been on juries, like people will say,

00:15:34.220 --> 00:15:38.060
like, oh yeah, just disregard what you just heard.

00:15:38.380 --> 00:15:43.340
And the idea that's sort of like the little me in my head can sort of go in and like

00:15:43.950 --> 00:15:49.950
remove that information on all the consequences that information had in

00:15:49.950 --> 00:15:52.990
my mind is sort of very it is very naive.

00:15:53.230 --> 00:15:56.030
Um so is that is that fair?

00:15:56.190 --> 00:16:02.110
Like that that there's sort of like this this very like almost cynical view of people

00:16:02.110 --> 00:16:07.310
from an evolutionary perspective butting up against a very sort of naive view of legal

00:16:07.310 --> 00:16:07.710
scholars?

00:16:07.790 --> 00:16:12.510
Or again, is that like a cartoon where I'm being self serving to my side?

00:16:13.420 --> 00:16:19.420
No, I think that's a I think that's a realistic description of um the

00:16:19.420 --> 00:16:24.620
differences between how as evolutionary scientists we would think about the ways that

00:16:24.620 --> 00:16:30.140
people think and behave uh and how legal scholars tend to approach it from

00:16:30.620 --> 00:16:36.060
uh this I would agree a more naive

00:16:36.300 --> 00:16:37.980
perspective of how the mind works.

00:16:38.330 --> 00:16:38.570
Yeah.

00:16:38.650 --> 00:16:42.250
And I think some of your work, I mean, like are do you have are can you are there certain

00:16:42.250 --> 00:16:44.010
examples like people might not know?

00:16:44.090 --> 00:16:49.130
Uh like people who haven't read your work, like are there examples um either in your work

00:16:49.130 --> 00:16:52.890
or other work that you're aware of that's sort of a good example of that where sort of

00:16:52.890 --> 00:16:56.650
people have taken a naive view and then, oh, from an evolutionary perspective, we would

00:16:56.650 --> 00:16:57.290
expect this.

00:16:57.370 --> 00:17:03.140
And that sort of clarifies um either legal issues or at least sort

00:17:03.140 --> 00:17:08.020
of um we might have like a a systematic way of saying like look people are gonna be biased

00:17:08.020 --> 00:17:09.940
systematically this way or that way.

00:17:10.980 --> 00:17:15.540
Uh it's hard to pick one because I'll we have a lot of time.

00:17:15.780 --> 00:17:16.660
So yeah, yeah.

00:17:17.140 --> 00:17:19.620
A lot of my research is looking at exactly that.

00:17:19.780 --> 00:17:25.710
Um so this is probably a recency effect, but the one that immediately came to the mind is

00:17:25.710 --> 00:17:31.470
a paper I published last month that was looking at the influence of criminal

00:17:31.470 --> 00:17:33.950
motive on people's decision making.

00:17:34.190 --> 00:17:39.470
And so from a very strictly legal sense,

00:17:39.870 --> 00:17:45.790
motive, the reason why somebody did what they did, um not supposed

00:17:45.790 --> 00:17:48.670
to matter when it comes to adjudicating guilt.

00:17:48.980 --> 00:17:54.900
that uh whether or not you stole twenty dollars because you needed to buy

00:17:54.900 --> 00:18:00.900
life-saving medicine or you stole twenty dollars to buy illicit drugs, it doesn't

00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:01.220
matter.

00:18:01.380 --> 00:18:03.700
You're guilty of theft all the same.

00:18:04.020 --> 00:18:09.780
And so the law really makes it clear that motive is not supposed to matter.

00:18:10.290 --> 00:18:10.530
Interesting.

00:18:10.930 --> 00:18:13.090
Would it would it would it affect sentencing?

00:18:13.570 --> 00:18:18.450
Or it would it is it I mean maybe it does you know in the real world, but is it supposed to

00:18:18.450 --> 00:18:20.290
be a consideration when it comes to sentencing?

00:18:20.610 --> 00:18:26.530
Yes at the sentencing phase judges are explicitly allowed to to use motive information

00:18:26.610 --> 00:18:31.890
um as both a mitigating or or an and an aggravating factor for determining sentences.

00:18:32.050 --> 00:18:34.290
So it's it's a little bit different there.

00:18:34.530 --> 00:18:38.450
It's more on the side of when you're deciding guilt.

00:18:38.660 --> 00:18:43.620
It's not necessary for a prosecutor to prove motive, for example.

00:18:44.100 --> 00:18:44.580
I see.

00:18:44.820 --> 00:18:47.620
So just just to make sure I'm keeping up with this.

00:18:47.780 --> 00:18:49.220
So intent matters.

00:18:49.300 --> 00:18:55.140
So like if you accidentally so like if I went to a store and I accidentally put like

00:18:55.300 --> 00:18:56.980
I had my son, for example.

00:18:57.060 --> 00:19:00.580
I'm I I I don't think I've ever done this, but I could easily imagine like, you know, I

00:19:00.580 --> 00:19:06.500
have my son, I'm keeping an eye on him, there's a $20 item and just by pure accident I walk

00:19:06.500 --> 00:19:11.990
out of the store versus I steal the twenty dollars because it's life-saving

00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:17.190
medication versus I steal the twenty the twenty dollar item because it's illicit drugs.

00:19:17.590 --> 00:19:23.030
The last two categories are intent and the motives different.

00:19:23.270 --> 00:19:28.150
And so the intent is what matters for guilt.

00:19:28.620 --> 00:19:29.820
Is that is that right?

00:19:30.380 --> 00:19:30.620
Yes.

00:19:30.780 --> 00:19:35.180
So the intentionality of it, that's the mensrea, the guilty mind component.

00:19:35.340 --> 00:19:40.540
And so you do have to prove that the person intended to commit the act.

00:19:41.020 --> 00:19:46.780
So if I did it by accident, then it would be probably hopefully they would just sort

00:19:46.780 --> 00:19:49.420
of uh say, don't do that again.

00:19:49.900 --> 00:19:50.300
Right?

00:19:50.860 --> 00:19:54.490
Well, I mean, may maybe they could could still convict you of something.

00:19:54.570 --> 00:19:58.810
I mean, 'cause I know that you could I mean, manslaughter is like unintended murder and you

00:19:58.810 --> 00:20:03.290
can still, you know, be convicted of manslaughter and have to go to prison for that, even

00:20:03.290 --> 00:20:04.490
though it wasn't your intention.

00:20:04.570 --> 00:20:08.170
You know, if you just you know, you were reckless driving or something like that and you

00:20:08.170 --> 00:20:09.930
accidentally hit someone or or whatever.

00:20:10.090 --> 00:20:14.570
Um, you weren't intending to kill that person but you you ended up killing them, um, you

00:20:14.570 --> 00:20:17.060
know, that could land you in a lot of legal trouble.

00:20:17.140 --> 00:20:20.580
You know, similarly with like medical malpractice, you end up, you know, the doctor ends up

00:20:20.900 --> 00:20:24.260
killing the patient by some accident or something like that.

00:20:24.420 --> 00:20:30.180
Um so even an accidental uh crime, can you can still be guilty of that,

00:20:30.340 --> 00:20:30.660
right?

00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:31.700
Yeah.

00:20:31.860 --> 00:20:35.700
So there are different uh levels of intentionality.

00:20:35.860 --> 00:20:41.850
There's knowingly, purposefully, recklessly, negligently, um, and so uh

00:20:42.090 --> 00:20:45.050
different levels of the extent of intent that you have.

00:20:45.290 --> 00:20:48.170
So is there a difference between recklessly and negligently?

00:20:48.570 --> 00:20:50.890
Yes, there is a difference between them.

00:20:52.090 --> 00:20:55.610
Could you enlighten us on what the difference is there? 'Cause they seem indistinguishable

00:20:55.610 --> 00:20:56.010
to me.

00:20:56.730 --> 00:20:57.130
Yes.

00:20:57.370 --> 00:21:03.320
So uh reckless, if you're asking me to recall my my intro criminal

00:21:03.640 --> 00:21:03.800
class.

00:21:04.120 --> 00:21:05.960
Anybody who's like studying for the bar.

00:21:06.040 --> 00:21:06.680
Uh exactly.

00:21:06.840 --> 00:21:07.080
Yeah.

00:21:08.120 --> 00:21:11.560
This will be helpful for me when I'm planning my life of crime so that I can, you know,

00:21:11.800 --> 00:21:16.600
carefully contort behavior to so that it fits the, you know, the the behavior with the

00:21:16.600 --> 00:21:17.320
lower sentence.

00:21:17.400 --> 00:21:21.000
So tell me yes tell us what the difference is and then what the lower sentence is.

00:21:23.250 --> 00:21:28.050
So again, I'm holding this back from the absolute recesses of my mind.

00:21:28.130 --> 00:21:30.930
This should probably be fact checked before it gets.

00:21:31.330 --> 00:21:32.530
We'll run it by ChatGPT.

00:21:32.690 --> 00:21:33.090
Don't worry.

00:21:33.330 --> 00:21:33.890
Exactly.

00:21:34.450 --> 00:21:37.730
But there's a difference between if you

00:21:41.730 --> 00:21:47.700
should have known that what you were doing was wrong versus

00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:52.980
you knew and ignored what you were doing was wrong.

00:21:53.300 --> 00:21:53.700
Right.

00:21:53.860 --> 00:21:58.580
Um I could have.

00:21:59.460 --> 00:22:05.300
So like if David is building a bridge and he's like using shoddy bolts and it's

00:22:05.300 --> 00:22:10.500
gonna fail and he knows he's doing that versus he's just incompetent because it's his first

00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:11.860
day on the job.

00:22:12.180 --> 00:22:17.070
One is reckless because he's like he's just like, Yeah, this bridge is gonna fail.

00:22:17.150 --> 00:22:17.790
I don't care.

00:22:17.950 --> 00:22:18.670
It looks fine.

00:22:18.830 --> 00:22:20.750
And then the other one is he's just incompetent.

00:22:20.910 --> 00:22:25.150
Sorry, David, but um and uh so that would be negligent.

00:22:25.230 --> 00:22:27.470
Is that is that I think so.

00:22:27.790 --> 00:22:28.430
I think so.

00:22:29.150 --> 00:22:29.470
Okay.

00:22:29.630 --> 00:22:30.670
I'm I'm starting.

00:22:30.750 --> 00:22:34.750
I mean, this is a really s psychologically subtle distinction.

00:22:35.310 --> 00:22:37.070
Um it's very psychological too.

00:22:37.150 --> 00:22:39.470
Like it's yeah, extremely yeah, yeah.

00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:45.900
But we're but we were we're digressing from the uh our looping back here to the example of

00:22:45.900 --> 00:22:48.140
evolutionary uh principle.

00:22:48.460 --> 00:22:54.380
So this is about the um the motive of uh the

00:22:54.540 --> 00:22:57.180
the effect of motive on the criminal.

00:22:57.340 --> 00:23:03.340
Um and so we've established right that um that intent matters for guilt,

00:23:03.870 --> 00:23:09.710
but that uh and motive shouldn't according to the law, whereas motive

00:23:09.870 --> 00:23:12.910
should matter for the strength of sentencing.

00:23:13.150 --> 00:23:17.950
And David has some information about how to start his life of crime or at least shoddy

00:23:18.110 --> 00:23:19.630
bridge building.

00:23:19.790 --> 00:23:23.310
Um maybe that's a reason for strategic ignorance.

00:23:23.470 --> 00:23:27.440
For you know, may maybe I you know Exactly.

00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:31.840
I don't want to read, you know, the actual uh instructions on how to build a good bridge

00:23:32.080 --> 00:23:36.320
because you know then then I'll I'll be more likely to be convicted of of recklessness as

00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:37.520
opposed to mere negligence.

00:23:37.840 --> 00:23:38.320
Exactly.

00:23:38.480 --> 00:23:38.800
Yes.

00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:39.600
Okay.

00:23:40.800 --> 00:23:44.080
Um so we're we're I think we are bumbling our way.

00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:46.800
Dave and I are bumbling our way into a life of crime here.

00:23:46.880 --> 00:23:49.280
So can you keep us up to speed now?

00:23:49.520 --> 00:23:54.560
So I think we've got the intent or the motive shouldn't matter for guilt.

00:23:55.430 --> 00:23:57.590
So yeah, I think that's where we're at so far.

00:23:57.910 --> 00:23:58.070
Yeah.

00:23:58.310 --> 00:23:58.550
Okay.

00:23:58.710 --> 00:24:02.790
So why why does why doesn't the motive matter for guilt?

00:24:04.230 --> 00:24:06.950
That's just what the law has determined.

00:24:07.190 --> 00:24:12.710
That uh why you the reason behind why you're doing the illegal

00:24:12.710 --> 00:24:17.270
thing doesn't matter in terms of deciding whether or not you have done it with the

00:24:17.270 --> 00:24:18.630
requisite intent.

00:24:18.790 --> 00:24:23.590
Um and so it's just supposed it's supposedly irrelevant.

00:24:23.820 --> 00:24:28.620
That doesn't mean that it's impermissible to talk about motive, and

00:24:28.940 --> 00:24:34.940
prosecutors definitely do, which was one of the reasons why my

00:24:34.940 --> 00:24:39.660
collaborators and I were interested in this paper is because why is it that this thing that

00:24:39.660 --> 00:24:44.620
the law considers so irrelevant is nonetheless really heavily

00:24:44.620 --> 00:24:50.390
emphasized in a trial to help to craft

00:24:50.390 --> 00:24:55.910
a narrative of what the individual did and to make an adjudication of

00:24:55.910 --> 00:24:57.430
guilt more likely.

00:25:00.550 --> 00:25:05.670
We had looked at what previous literature had said, other psychologists had said about

00:25:05.900 --> 00:25:10.060
motive and found that their conclusions were really unsatisfying.

00:25:10.540 --> 00:25:15.980
It was essentially like we care about motive because we want to punish bad people and we

00:25:15.980 --> 00:25:21.420
want to punish bad people because we have this inherent um desire

00:25:21.740 --> 00:25:24.540
to to punish people who we think are bad.

00:25:24.940 --> 00:25:25.100
Yeah.

00:25:25.260 --> 00:25:25.420
Yeah.

00:25:25.500 --> 00:25:29.350
That's clo classic circular psychology reasoning right there.

00:25:29.590 --> 00:25:34.470
So you you take the y and x and you transpose their order and then you got it.

00:25:34.550 --> 00:25:37.510
I'm figuring out how to be a um uh old school.

00:25:37.990 --> 00:25:40.470
This is this is non-evolutionary psychology 101.

00:25:40.630 --> 00:25:44.070
This is how teaching you this is how to do the theory crisis one oh one.

00:25:44.230 --> 00:25:44.630
Okay, great.

00:25:44.710 --> 00:25:44.950
Got it.

00:25:45.030 --> 00:25:45.350
So good.

00:25:45.430 --> 00:25:50.310
I got X and Y, and now I'm gonna change the order to Y and X in the first zero.

00:25:50.470 --> 00:25:50.870
Okay, got it.

00:25:50.950 --> 00:25:51.830
Okay, I'm up to speed.

00:25:51.910 --> 00:25:52.070
Great.

00:25:52.230 --> 00:25:55.190
We're learning how to be criminals and uh bad psychologists.

00:25:55.350 --> 00:25:55.590
Got it.

00:25:55.670 --> 00:25:55.830
Okay.

00:25:57.800 --> 00:26:03.720
so so yeah so we found that explanation pretty unsatisfying um and so we wanted

00:26:03.720 --> 00:26:08.920
to take an adaptationist approach to thinking about why would motive be so

00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:09.880
impactful.

00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:15.960
And what we suggested one reason is uh might be because

00:26:16.600 --> 00:26:20.760
motive matters for assessing association value.

00:26:20.920 --> 00:26:25.720
So whether or not this is a person we want to keep in the future as a cooperation partner.

00:26:26.910 --> 00:26:31.630
Um, so motive is feeding into this calculation of association value.

00:26:31.710 --> 00:26:36.750
And we propose that the reason why it's doing that or the mechanism through which it's

00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:42.670
doing that in part is by um affecting our calculation of the welfare trade off

00:26:42.830 --> 00:26:43.550
ratios.

00:26:44.910 --> 00:26:46.350
That we talked that other people have.

00:26:46.750 --> 00:26:48.990
David, did we talk about welfare trade off ratios?

00:26:49.230 --> 00:26:50.190
We might have talked about briefly.

00:26:50.750 --> 00:26:53.790
We talked about it, we I think we talked about it briefly in the context of anger, but uh,

00:26:53.870 --> 00:26:56.240
we haven't really delved into it that that fully.

00:26:56.560 --> 00:26:56.640
Yeah.

00:26:56.880 --> 00:26:58.320
So maybe that?

00:26:58.400 --> 00:26:58.480
Yeah.

00:26:58.640 --> 00:26:58.800
Yeah.

00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:01.120
So what yeah, what is a welfare trade-off ratio?

00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:07.920
So essentially, and feel free to jump in and adjust my explanation at any

00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:13.840
point, but um you can take somebody's welfare into account a little bit,

00:27:14.320 --> 00:27:16.640
not at all, a whole lot.

00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:22.630
And you can also figure out switch points between when people start

00:27:22.630 --> 00:27:27.190
taking their own welfare more into account than when they take other people's welfare into

00:27:27.190 --> 00:27:27.750
account.

00:27:27.990 --> 00:27:32.230
And this information is really useful because the extent to which someone takes your

00:27:32.230 --> 00:27:37.910
welfare into account is predictive of really important information, like, for example, if

00:27:37.910 --> 00:27:40.230
they're going to exploit you or not.

00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:43.440
Is there anything else that you want to add to?

00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:49.440
I mean, we might we sort of intuitively talk about welfare trade-off ratios as like how

00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:51.840
much someone cares about you.

00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:56.720
Um, you know, w whether they they really value or care about you.

00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:00.400
If you if they or if they don't give a shit about you, then they would have a low welfare

00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:01.040
trade off ratio.

00:28:01.120 --> 00:28:06.950
It's basically an attempt to turn this intuition about you know caringness into like hard

00:28:06.950 --> 00:28:12.790
math where like they're willing to impose a cost of ten dollars on you to gain a measly one

00:28:12.950 --> 00:28:16.390
dollar for themselves, that's a really low welfare trade-off ratio.

00:28:16.550 --> 00:28:20.390
But if they're willing to impose a cost of ten dollars on you to save themselves ten

00:28:20.630 --> 00:28:23.910
dollars, then maybe it's m more understandable, more forgivable.

00:28:23.990 --> 00:28:27.590
And if they're imposing a cost of ten dollars on you to save twenty dollars for themselves,

00:28:27.740 --> 00:28:31.740
then it's like, okay, you know, maybe I would have done that if I was in their shoes and I

00:28:31.740 --> 00:28:32.460
can understand that.

00:28:32.540 --> 00:28:37.180
And so it's an attempt to uh take this intuitive notion of how much a person cares about us

00:28:37.180 --> 00:28:41.500
or values us and translating it to something hard and numerical that we can study

00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:47.260
empirically and then we could think about um in in adaptationist terms, um, where you know

00:28:47.740 --> 00:28:52.310
surrounding yourself with people who have high welfare trade-off ratios toward toward

00:28:52.310 --> 00:28:54.790
yourself would have been a strong selection pressure.

00:28:55.030 --> 00:29:00.870
And the ability to negotiate and recalibrate other people's welfare trade-off ratios would

00:29:00.870 --> 00:29:02.950
have also been a strong selection pressure.

00:29:03.030 --> 00:29:07.590
And that led to the evolution of emotions like anger, uh for for you know trying to

00:29:07.590 --> 00:29:11.910
recalibrate other people's welfare trade-off ratios, guilt for recalibrating your own

00:29:11.910 --> 00:29:15.670
welfare trade-off ratio if it was too low, um, etc.

00:29:15.910 --> 00:29:16.150
etc.

00:29:16.800 --> 00:29:17.760
Um okay.

00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:23.760
So we have so we care about motive because um it it reflects

00:29:23.840 --> 00:29:28.240
or it is indicative of the perpetrator's welfare trade off ratio.

00:29:28.400 --> 00:29:33.600
And we care about that because um that tells us something very important about the

00:29:33.600 --> 00:29:37.840
underlying character of the of the perpetrator and whether we want to associate with them.

00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:38.720
Exactly.

00:29:38.880 --> 00:29:43.920
And there's there's a really great example that Aaron Sell has used um talking about did

00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:50.130
somebody ruin your sweater because they needed to wipe their

00:29:50.130 --> 00:29:50.530
mouth?

00:29:50.770 --> 00:29:55.970
Or did they ruin the sweater because they needed to staunch their child's bleeding wound?

00:29:56.210 --> 00:30:00.930
And so the crime of the ruined sweater is exactly the same.

00:30:01.170 --> 00:30:06.770
But the motive behind why they did it tells you something about how much they care about

00:30:06.770 --> 00:30:12.130
you and your welfare, and thus what their behavior is likely to be in the future.

00:30:12.820 --> 00:30:18.580
And so from a legal perspective, what does the law say about welfare

00:30:18.740 --> 00:30:19.700
trade-off ratios?

00:30:19.780 --> 00:30:25.700
Or what does the law say about a juror caring about how much the defendant

00:30:25.940 --> 00:30:27.460
is going to value them?

00:30:28.740 --> 00:30:30.980
That you should not care about that thing.

00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:36.830
And in fact, they they set up some rules so that they don't

00:30:36.830 --> 00:30:41.950
have people who are invested in particular outcomes serving as jurors.

00:30:42.430 --> 00:30:42.990
Um, right.

00:30:43.070 --> 00:30:47.550
Like if if your brother is on trial, you're not allowed to be a juror in that case.

00:30:47.950 --> 00:30:49.070
Maybe unless you hate your brother.

00:30:49.310 --> 00:30:51.150
Well, you can't hate your brother or really like your brother.

00:30:51.230 --> 00:30:52.510
You have to be completely indifferent.

00:30:53.310 --> 00:30:53.710
Exactly.

00:30:54.110 --> 00:30:56.750
So so I should so I I kind of want to clarify.

00:30:56.830 --> 00:31:00.660
So we're not talking about the presence or absence of a motive.

00:31:00.820 --> 00:31:04.420
We're talking about the presence of one motive versus the presence of a different motive.

00:31:04.580 --> 00:31:09.700
Because I might expect that the presence or absence of a motive might be a crucial piece of

00:31:09.700 --> 00:31:11.380
evidence in a criminal proceeding.

00:31:11.540 --> 00:31:15.940
You know, if if if I'm trying to argue that um the defendant is guilty and he has a

00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:20.340
plausible motive for doing the crime that's going to be count as evidence that he is guilty

00:31:20.340 --> 00:31:20.820
of the crime.

00:31:20.980 --> 00:31:24.980
If he has no motive, no reason to have committed the crime that will count as evidence

00:31:24.980 --> 00:31:26.100
against the idea that he's guilty.

00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:27.450
So you're not talking about that, right?

00:31:27.610 --> 00:31:31.850
Because that presumably would matter in assessing a defendant's guilt.

00:31:32.890 --> 00:31:38.810
So I am not talking about that, but I also would say that that does

00:31:38.810 --> 00:31:41.290
not need to be a component.

00:31:41.690 --> 00:31:46.330
Like prosecutors could say nothing about motive and still

00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:49.520
Provide the evidence that the person is guilty.

00:31:49.760 --> 00:31:51.760
You don't need to prove someone is guilty.

00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:54.640
It's not necessary, but it's certainly impactful.

00:31:54.720 --> 00:31:56.560
And that's why prosecutors use it.

00:31:56.800 --> 00:32:01.600
I will say though, uh, since what you just said reminded me of this, that the absence of a

00:32:01.600 --> 00:32:05.200
motive also has implications for WTRs.

00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:10.880
Like if you just killed the fourth person that walked by you on the street,

00:32:11.090 --> 00:32:17.090
that implies something about your how much you care about other people's welfare

00:32:17.090 --> 00:32:21.010
relative to your own and what kind of threats you're likely to pose in the future.

00:32:21.170 --> 00:32:26.050
So sometimes the absence of motive conveys important information too.

00:32:26.370 --> 00:32:26.530
I see.

00:32:26.770 --> 00:32:29.250
In that case, it would point in two opposite directions.

00:32:29.410 --> 00:32:33.250
So if I have less of a motive or less of a plausible motive, it would make it less likely

00:32:33.250 --> 00:32:34.530
that I did the thing at all.

00:32:34.770 --> 00:32:39.330
But if I did do the thing, it would it would uh make me a much worse person and give me a

00:32:39.330 --> 00:32:40.450
much worse sentence.

00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:46.000
So th that so the lack of a motive leads to both less likelihood of guilt, but if guilty, a

00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:47.760
s more severe sentence.

00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:49.440
Potentially, yes.

00:32:49.760 --> 00:32:54.400
So, David, more severe because you did the random thing versus if you knew the person?

00:32:54.880 --> 00:33:00.000
More more severe because if I killed the person capriciously or arbitrarily, that would

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:01.680
have very low benefit to myself.

00:33:01.760 --> 00:33:01.840
Yeah.

00:33:02.080 --> 00:33:07.760
And thus convey a much lower welfare trade-off ratio than if I killed someone, say, out of

00:33:07.760 --> 00:33:09.570
self-defense or or something like that.

00:33:10.130 --> 00:33:10.530
No, exactly.

00:33:10.610 --> 00:33:14.210
But I think this is, I mean, and yeah, and Keila, you can unpack this for us much better

00:33:14.210 --> 00:33:15.330
than me bumbling.

00:33:15.410 --> 00:33:19.730
But like uh I what I like about an evolutionary approach is that it it unpacks that and

00:33:19.730 --> 00:33:21.330
gives it a causal why.

00:33:21.490 --> 00:33:21.810
Right.

00:33:21.890 --> 00:33:26.370
So like I think we all have the intuition that if it was if if somebody, as in Keila's

00:33:26.370 --> 00:33:29.970
example, was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna count up to fourth person and I'm just gonna kill the

00:33:29.970 --> 00:33:35.410
person, versus like, oh man, you know, like somebody killed somebody because like some

00:33:35.410 --> 00:33:39.900
interaction they had, they they still killed the person, but the intuition is like the the

00:33:40.220 --> 00:33:43.020
counting to four person is way worse, right?

00:33:43.660 --> 00:33:49.340
Um, and and I think an evolutionary approach gives you well, one of the

00:33:49.340 --> 00:33:55.020
benefits is that it gives you an explanation for why that is, like David said, right?

00:33:55.420 --> 00:34:00.140
Um, and it also, I mean, Keila, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but like it also relates back

00:34:00.140 --> 00:34:06.110
to what you're talking about, which is if I'm a juror, um, I'm evaluating

00:34:06.110 --> 00:34:11.710
from an evolved perspective, like I'm designed to care about myself and like

00:34:11.950 --> 00:34:12.750
my interests.

00:34:12.910 --> 00:34:18.350
And so if I'm sitting in the jury box and I hear a story about somebody who killed

00:34:18.350 --> 00:34:23.310
somebody because that person wronged them, I'm thinking, well, did I wrong that person?

00:34:23.550 --> 00:34:23.870
No.

00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:30.320
So, you know, and how likely is it I would wrong them versus could I walk past them,

00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:30.880
right?

00:34:31.120 --> 00:34:32.560
And that's very likely.

00:34:32.720 --> 00:34:38.640
And so it's much more likely that the person who counts to four and kills somebody is

00:34:38.640 --> 00:34:44.240
gonna hurt me or my family than the person who had a very like specific

00:34:44.240 --> 00:34:46.560
interaction that me and my family didn't have.

00:34:46.720 --> 00:34:52.170
So from an evolutionary perspective, it makes total sense that I would really, really

00:34:52.330 --> 00:34:56.650
dislike the counting to four person much more than the interaction person.

00:34:56.730 --> 00:35:01.610
And that that's another, I mean, that would be another example of the evolutionary logic

00:35:01.610 --> 00:35:07.210
being very powerful in offering an explanation for why those very different

00:35:07.210 --> 00:35:08.810
scenarios feel so different.

00:35:09.210 --> 00:35:15.050
Yeah, in our paper, we use uh exactly the example of we are going to

00:35:15.050 --> 00:35:20.060
be less upset by the person who kills their boss because their boss didn't give them a

00:35:20.060 --> 00:35:24.300
raise rather than the person who kills the fourth random person who walks by them on the

00:35:24.300 --> 00:35:24.700
street.

00:35:25.020 --> 00:35:25.420
Yeah.

00:35:25.660 --> 00:35:26.300
Exactly.

00:35:26.460 --> 00:35:27.100
Yeah.

00:35:27.420 --> 00:35:28.300
Scary.

00:35:29.980 --> 00:35:32.060
So you did number four strikes again.

00:35:32.620 --> 00:35:32.780
Yeah.

00:35:33.020 --> 00:35:33.740
Don't be four.

00:35:33.820 --> 00:35:38.460
Um, how did you or yeah, you should just like like make sure you have a is this going to be

00:35:38.460 --> 00:35:39.900
in your screenplay, number four.

00:35:40.220 --> 00:35:40.540
Exactly.

00:35:40.620 --> 00:35:43.850
And then you just make sure you have like four people in front of you all the time.

00:35:44.090 --> 00:35:46.410
And then you just like have a backup.

00:35:46.650 --> 00:35:48.890
So you could you could game this as a strategy.

00:35:49.050 --> 00:35:51.290
Um, this is a very good screenplay, David.

00:35:51.530 --> 00:35:54.490
Um, can you walk us through like how do you actually do that study?

00:35:54.650 --> 00:35:59.130
Like, do you get um participants to think they're imagined they're jurors, or like what

00:35:59.210 --> 00:36:04.170
what are the what are the like what on the ground, like what kind of studies do you do um

00:36:04.490 --> 00:36:06.170
to actually assess this?

00:36:07.610 --> 00:36:12.720
So the paper that we published was purely theoretical.

00:36:13.120 --> 00:36:14.480
It was not an empirical.

00:36:15.120 --> 00:36:15.440
That's great.

00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:16.240
You're talking to T.

00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:17.520
Yes.

00:36:17.680 --> 00:36:19.280
It was just us pontificating.

00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:20.160
Yeah, that's great.

00:36:21.040 --> 00:36:23.440
So but we did say not just, yeah.

00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:29.520
We did say that you'd need empirical research to to flesh out the ideas that we were

00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:30.240
proposing.

00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:35.950
Um but I think that there are a couple implications that that lend

00:36:35.950 --> 00:36:38.590
themselves really nicely to empirical tests.

00:36:39.070 --> 00:36:45.070
So one of them is this idea that we can find perpetrators with different motives being

00:36:45.070 --> 00:36:50.430
similarly responsible for an offense, but reach very different conclusions about their

00:36:50.750 --> 00:36:51.950
WTRs.

00:36:52.190 --> 00:36:55.950
And that should then predict how much we want to punish them.

00:36:56.440 --> 00:37:02.360
Um, that the ratio of cost to benefits to the parties matters to people who

00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:05.080
are observing um these actions.

00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:11.240
So if there's an action that produces a great benefit to a perpetrator, like the more

00:37:11.240 --> 00:37:16.680
acceptable the motive is perceived to be, um, then that's going to

00:37:17.690 --> 00:37:23.210
better than if you have a motive that is not providing great

00:37:23.210 --> 00:37:25.370
benefit to the actor.

00:37:26.250 --> 00:37:29.450
So that I think could be easily tested.

00:37:30.330 --> 00:37:36.090
Also, if the future behavior of this offender is anticipated to in some way be

00:37:36.090 --> 00:37:41.500
benefit-enhancing, then that even a bad motive will result in less

00:37:41.500 --> 00:37:46.860
punishment compared to an offender who's going to be seen as imposing future costs.

00:37:47.020 --> 00:37:52.940
And then related to that, if their future association value is high, then their motive

00:37:52.940 --> 00:37:56.940
is going to be less influential in general on your desire to punish them.

00:37:57.100 --> 00:38:01.020
And so I think all of those are quite testable questions.

00:38:01.370 --> 00:38:03.050
Yeah, those last two seem really important.

00:38:03.130 --> 00:38:04.490
Can you give examples of those?

00:38:04.570 --> 00:38:08.490
Because those are like really subtle, kind of complicated ideas.

00:38:10.090 --> 00:38:16.090
Um, so if you have some

00:38:17.050 --> 00:38:23.050
situation in which you think that the person is going to benefit you in the future, um, so

00:38:23.210 --> 00:38:26.380
for example Like a famous person.

00:38:26.460 --> 00:38:32.300
Like let's imagine I'm a juror and the person like is or like a doctor, you know, a

00:38:32.300 --> 00:38:37.660
top a top surgeon, I see who specializes in difficult to treat cancer cases, right?

00:38:37.820 --> 00:38:38.300
Or something.

00:38:38.540 --> 00:38:38.780
Okay.

00:38:39.180 --> 00:38:43.100
Um versus uh a homeless person off the street.

00:38:43.420 --> 00:38:43.660
Right.

00:38:43.980 --> 00:38:49.950
That their motive, even if the doctor has a

00:38:49.950 --> 00:38:55.070
worse motive than the homeless person, you might still see people less willing to punish

00:38:55.070 --> 00:38:56.430
the doctor harshly.

00:38:56.910 --> 00:38:56.990
Right.

00:38:57.230 --> 00:39:00.350
And this might and this is something where like character might come in.

00:39:00.510 --> 00:39:03.870
So if there are a lot of people who testify that the doctor's a wonderful father, you know,

00:39:03.950 --> 00:39:08.510
a wonderful doctor who's helped a lot of people, he has really great character, that might

00:39:08.510 --> 00:39:13.240
affect the juror's opinion, affect sentencing, even if even if you know his motive was

00:39:13.240 --> 00:39:18.040
really bad in in this case, we might still view his association value as as high if in

00:39:18.040 --> 00:39:19.560
general he's a really good guy.

00:39:19.800 --> 00:39:24.840
Um it's like the interpersonal legal version of like the bank's too big to fail, right?

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:27.800
It's sort of like too valuable to convict.

00:39:30.170 --> 00:39:36.170
So do you so uh you mentioned that um motive is um irrelevant for assessing

00:39:36.490 --> 00:39:41.370
guilt, um, but it is relevant for assessing the severity of the sentencing.

00:39:41.770 --> 00:39:46.890
Given your knowledge of how the human mind works with regard to evaluating motives, do you

00:39:46.890 --> 00:39:48.890
think that is the right way to set up the legal system?

00:39:48.970 --> 00:39:54.410
Is it good to to separate out whether when the motive matters uh uh in terms of which part

00:39:54.410 --> 00:39:58.680
of the procedure, or do you or do you view this as the a wrong-headed way of approaching uh

00:39:58.680 --> 00:40:04.360
the justice system I think that it's a little bit

00:40:04.360 --> 00:40:09.480
naive to think that motive is irrelevant for

00:40:09.480 --> 00:40:10.920
adjudicating guilt.

00:40:11.160 --> 00:40:16.920
Um I think it is good that

00:40:17.240 --> 00:40:23.000
judges are legally permitted to use motive because they would do it anyway.

00:40:24.870 --> 00:40:27.590
So I could so my intuition is that it's a good thing.

00:40:27.670 --> 00:40:30.150
And let me see if I can run this argument by you.

00:40:30.310 --> 00:40:35.750
Um because there when you're thinking about whether the person did it versus how much how

00:40:35.750 --> 00:40:39.030
badly they should be punished if they did do it, these are two very different questions.

00:40:40.150 --> 00:40:44.150
The first question is just about trying to figure out what's true, just trying to figure

00:40:44.150 --> 00:40:47.580
out the facts of of whether they actually did the thing.

00:40:47.820 --> 00:40:52.140
And um and then the second question is, okay, given that they did the thing, how bad of a

00:40:52.140 --> 00:40:54.940
person are they and how how bad of a punishment do they deserve?

00:40:55.100 --> 00:40:59.260
Um, and it seems like you wouldn't want facts from the second part to contaminate parts

00:40:59.260 --> 00:41:00.060
from the first part.

00:41:00.220 --> 00:41:03.260
Like in the first part, you just really want to have a clear-headed view of whether they

00:41:03.260 --> 00:41:05.420
actually did the thing and what the what the evidence is.

00:41:05.660 --> 00:41:10.700
And if you're uh biased in answering that question by your hatred of the person, that's

00:41:10.700 --> 00:41:14.690
going to give you a less reliable answer to the question of whether they actually did do

00:41:14.690 --> 00:41:15.810
the thing, right?

00:41:16.130 --> 00:41:20.290
And so it seems like it might actually be smart to separate those two questions and say,

00:41:20.450 --> 00:41:24.530
first we just want to figure out what the facts are, you know, what actually happened, you

00:41:24.530 --> 00:41:28.610
know, what the person did, you know, whether they whether they did it intentionally or

00:41:28.610 --> 00:41:29.890
accident by accident.

00:41:30.050 --> 00:41:31.490
Let's figure out what happened.

00:41:31.730 --> 00:41:35.490
And then once we figured out what happened, then we can start to get into the you know the

00:41:35.490 --> 00:41:37.730
person's character and how badly they deserve to be punished.

00:41:37.890 --> 00:41:40.210
Does that argument make sense to you or do you disagree?

00:41:40.700 --> 00:41:45.420
It makes sense, but I I think it's unrealistic to believe that it's not going to matter in

00:41:45.420 --> 00:41:46.220
that first half.

00:41:46.380 --> 00:41:51.580
It reminds me a little bit of uh this is sort of tangential, but uh another

00:41:52.220 --> 00:41:56.380
thing in the justice system that has always boggled my mind.

00:41:56.540 --> 00:42:02.540
Um, that jurors are not allowed to be told what will happen to individuals who

00:42:02.540 --> 00:42:05.420
are found not guilty by reason of insanity.

00:42:06.620 --> 00:42:12.450
And they tend to assume that the person will just walk free when actually what

00:42:12.450 --> 00:42:15.650
happens is they often are institutionalized.

00:42:17.890 --> 00:42:18.290
Not guilty.

00:42:18.450 --> 00:42:24.050
So you mean you mean so wouldn't it be guilty, but so interesting.

00:42:24.210 --> 00:42:27.890
So they're they're found guilty of the crime, but but they're but they're judged to have

00:42:27.890 --> 00:42:30.210
committed it because of a mental illness?

00:42:30.770 --> 00:42:30.930
Yes.

00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:31.240
Yes.

00:42:31.480 --> 00:42:33.480
So they're technically not guilty.

00:42:33.960 --> 00:42:34.680
Tech oh interesting.

00:42:35.160 --> 00:42:38.200
David, I think maybe maybe let me poke on David's assumption here.

00:42:38.360 --> 00:42:40.200
And Keila, you can tell me if I'm wrong.

00:42:40.520 --> 00:42:46.200
David, I think you are giving the legal system maybe too much credit, or it's more of a

00:42:46.520 --> 00:42:48.040
it's more of a like a flow chart.

00:42:48.120 --> 00:42:53.320
So guilt is not a uh guilt is an operational definition.

00:42:53.400 --> 00:42:56.360
It just has like sort of if you're guilty, this happens.

00:42:56.600 --> 00:42:56.920
Right.

00:42:57.160 --> 00:43:03.110
So like it's not as if, like, I mean, for example, um, if you're guilty, there

00:43:03.110 --> 00:43:07.190
might be a minimum sentence that's already imposed by definition.

00:43:07.990 --> 00:43:13.510
So this might be a place where, you know, it's not like I have the f discretion as a judge

00:43:13.510 --> 00:43:18.550
to just do whatever based on an objective view of they did it or not.

00:43:18.790 --> 00:43:20.870
I might my hands might be tied.

00:43:21.190 --> 00:43:25.800
So I might actually say not guilty, because I want to avoid the minimal sentence.

00:43:25.880 --> 00:43:26.760
Is that true, Keila?

00:43:27.080 --> 00:43:29.000
Or am I completely making that up?

00:43:29.960 --> 00:43:31.880
I guess I'm not I'm not following.

00:43:32.760 --> 00:43:37.560
So I think David is correctly, if we were going to start from scratch and do the pins off

00:43:37.720 --> 00:43:43.480
Williams, Petrazuki legal school of thought, um, is basically saying, like, look, there's

00:43:43.480 --> 00:43:44.360
just facts on the ground.

00:43:44.440 --> 00:43:46.510
Like, did somebody do it or not.

00:43:46.670 --> 00:43:50.990
And we should just not imbue that we should not contaminate that with value judgments.

00:43:51.150 --> 00:43:53.390
So we should just establish whether or not it happened.

00:43:53.470 --> 00:43:56.990
And then after that, figure out what makes sense and is rational to do.

00:43:57.070 --> 00:43:58.510
And I completely agree with that.

00:43:58.750 --> 00:44:04.670
But what I'm saying is the definition of guilty or not guilty

00:44:04.910 --> 00:44:10.270
comes with it automatically, certain built-in consequences

00:44:10.920 --> 00:44:16.600
Such that it's not really possible to do what David's saying in some

00:44:16.600 --> 00:44:20.040
cases of just sort of like let the facts be the facts.

00:44:20.360 --> 00:44:25.480
And then we have full flexibility in choosing how we value what

00:44:25.480 --> 00:44:26.600
happened.

00:44:26.840 --> 00:44:27.160
Right.

00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:32.360
So in other words, just to make it concrete, like, let's say somebody, it's a horrible

00:44:32.360 --> 00:44:32.600
example.

00:44:32.760 --> 00:44:38.520
Let's say like somebody's family is like killed by somebody, and the person who's

00:44:38.520 --> 00:44:41.710
left like seeks revenge on that person, right?

00:44:42.190 --> 00:44:46.510
And let's say that happens in a state where there's just like a minimum sentence for

00:44:46.510 --> 00:44:49.470
somebody who commits murder.

00:44:50.030 --> 00:44:55.790
The jury or the prosecutor, the judge might just decide look, this was such a heinous

00:44:56.110 --> 00:45:01.710
crime that the that the person was revenging, that we don't want them to be punished at

00:45:01.710 --> 00:45:01.870
all.

00:45:02.030 --> 00:45:06.960
So we're just going to declare them not guilty, even though technically, you know, it would

00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:10.720
be better if we could just say, well, they are guilty, but there's such exonerating

00:45:10.720 --> 00:45:13.760
circumstances, we're just not going to punish them at all.

00:45:13.840 --> 00:45:16.880
But maybe that's just not an option in that state, for example.

00:45:17.120 --> 00:45:18.240
That's that's what I'm saying.

00:45:18.800 --> 00:45:19.200
I see.

00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:20.720
There's a a term for that.

00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:24.400
It's called jury nullification when it's juries who are doing it.

00:45:24.560 --> 00:45:24.800
Okay.

00:45:25.040 --> 00:45:30.870
That um that if they say, yes, we've come to the conclusion that the person did it, but

00:45:30.870 --> 00:45:33.590
for reasons X, Y, and Z, we don't want to say guilty.

00:45:33.670 --> 00:45:34.870
We're going to say not guilty.

00:45:35.190 --> 00:45:35.510
I see.

00:45:35.910 --> 00:45:41.510
So that would be an example of the value that the tied, the hands being tied, sort of

00:45:41.670 --> 00:45:46.790
consequences of the assessment actually goes back and changes the assessment, which I think

00:45:46.790 --> 00:45:47.750
is a smart.

00:45:48.150 --> 00:45:51.910
I mean, given the institutional constraints, that's not an unreasonable thing.

00:45:52.070 --> 00:45:53.910
I mean, imagine it's abuse too, right?

00:45:54.150 --> 00:45:59.920
But like in your example, like we don't want the surgeon to go to jail,

00:46:00.080 --> 00:46:03.280
so we're gonna change the conviction or something.

00:46:03.680 --> 00:46:04.320
Right.

00:46:05.120 --> 00:46:05.680
That's interesting.

00:46:05.840 --> 00:46:09.840
Yeah, it seems to me intuitively like that's a bad dis badly designed system.

00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:12.240
Like that you'd want to separate those two questions.

00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:16.800
Like we'd first want to establish that the guy did avenge his family's death and did kill

00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:17.120
the person.

00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:20.880
And then once we know that, if we if we decide that, you know, it was such a heinous act

00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:24.230
that he was avenging, he doesn't deserve to be punished, then that's fine.

00:46:24.630 --> 00:46:29.510
So we'd say in that case, he's guilty, but his punishment is zero because he, you know, he

00:46:29.670 --> 00:46:30.950
he was justified.

00:46:31.110 --> 00:46:36.630
Um that to me makes much more sense than like blending the two questions together in the

00:46:36.630 --> 00:46:38.950
way that the legal system currently works.

00:46:39.270 --> 00:46:43.830
Uh do you agree with that, Keeler or do you think it's uh it's good to blend them?

00:46:44.470 --> 00:46:47.750
Well, I think the legal system is it's trying to keep them separate.

00:46:48.150 --> 00:46:48.390
Got it.

00:46:48.790 --> 00:46:54.160
Um that it's human psychology that's blending them in these ways.

00:46:54.400 --> 00:46:54.640
Yeah.

00:46:55.200 --> 00:46:56.720
So it's like a dynamic, right?

00:46:56.800 --> 00:47:02.320
So sort of like, so like if I'm a politician, I'm like, uh anybody who kills somebody,

00:47:02.560 --> 00:47:06.880
we should have a minimum sentence because we don't want to let murderers go free.

00:47:07.040 --> 00:47:08.480
And everyone's like, that's great.

00:47:08.640 --> 00:47:12.720
And so I impose that structure without thinking through the consequences.

00:47:12.880 --> 00:47:17.630
And then the person who's avenging, you know, their whole family's death has this issue.

00:47:17.790 --> 00:47:19.230
So that would be an example, right?

00:47:19.310 --> 00:47:25.310
Of like we create an institution that sort of fights against the realities that the

00:47:25.310 --> 00:47:28.110
politician wasn't thinking about, for example.

00:47:30.270 --> 00:47:31.150
That's interesting.

00:47:34.590 --> 00:47:40.280
Um so given that we don't

00:47:40.280 --> 00:47:45.320
take the motive into account um when we're evaluating guilt.

00:47:45.720 --> 00:47:51.640
Um there's this interesting question of, you know, when a jury is hearing

00:47:51.640 --> 00:47:57.000
this case, um, we know from our psychologist's perspective that the jury is going to be

00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:02.710
evaluating the prospective benefits that the perpetrator might um heap onto the juror and

00:48:02.790 --> 00:48:06.390
and the prospective costs that the perpetrator might inflict onto the juror.

00:48:06.470 --> 00:48:11.510
And that is going to weigh their decision making to a quite substantial degree.

00:48:12.150 --> 00:48:16.150
And so do you do you also think this this type of reasoning has implications for juror

00:48:16.150 --> 00:48:20.390
selection and and impartiality of you know which jurors are likely to have an impartial

00:48:20.390 --> 00:48:22.870
perspective on on the crime?

00:48:24.390 --> 00:48:26.390
What do you think about that question?

00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:29.400
Yeah, that's a I think that's a fantastic question.

00:48:29.560 --> 00:48:35.560
That it it certainly seems to be the case that and I think

00:48:35.560 --> 00:48:41.160
the law does recognize this and and does its best to try to remove

00:48:41.400 --> 00:48:46.280
the partiality, the partial jurors from being able to sit on cases.

00:48:46.520 --> 00:48:52.040
But it would be interesting to think about I think more

00:48:53.000 --> 00:48:58.990
deeply what are the kinds of cues that uh offenders

00:48:58.990 --> 00:49:04.590
are going to give off that jurors might might lead jurors to be less

00:49:04.590 --> 00:49:05.470
impartial?

00:49:05.870 --> 00:49:06.110
Right.

00:49:06.350 --> 00:49:10.670
Like like if you're, I mean, just thinking it concretely, like if you're a family member of

00:49:10.670 --> 00:49:16.590
a homeless person, you know, like that's a really that's that's that's a really terrible

00:49:16.590 --> 00:49:21.740
thing if like the fact that somebody on the juror thinks that, you know, my uncle is gross

00:49:21.740 --> 00:49:26.140
and wouldn't want to be around them, which has zero bearing on whether or not they did

00:49:26.140 --> 00:49:30.380
something, has zero bearing on like what is objectively right to do legally.

00:49:30.700 --> 00:49:35.580
But the simple fact that, like, you know, my poor uncle is gross to this person who's

00:49:35.580 --> 00:49:39.180
sitting in the jury box is gonna have an effect on their psychology.

00:49:39.340 --> 00:49:41.260
That seems important to know.

00:49:41.420 --> 00:49:44.300
And like it's and like this is happening now, right?

00:49:44.380 --> 00:49:49.610
Like this, the idea, at least the the idea in theory, and presumably it plays out.

00:49:49.770 --> 00:49:55.610
And I think there's probably lots of cases where this idea of association value

00:49:55.690 --> 00:49:59.530
um affecting these decisions, that seems really important.

00:49:59.690 --> 00:50:00.890
Is this known at all?

00:50:01.130 --> 00:50:04.090
Like in the legal community?

00:50:05.050 --> 00:50:10.800
Oh, I I think that they're They tend to

00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.200
rely really heavily on intuition.

00:50:13.760 --> 00:50:19.280
Uh, attorneys, uh especially in the context of jury selection, that

00:50:20.560 --> 00:50:26.400
individual attorneys will have really arbitrary

00:50:26.560 --> 00:50:29.170
things that they think matter.

00:50:29.330 --> 00:50:35.330
Like to give a concrete example, um, I knew of one attorney who always

00:50:35.330 --> 00:50:41.090
looked at the socks that prospective jurors were wearing because he felt like he

00:50:41.090 --> 00:50:45.730
could determine personality characteristics from what their socks were like.

00:50:45.890 --> 00:50:46.130
Right.

00:50:46.450 --> 00:50:52.290
And there was another attorney who would always ask if you were at the airport.

00:50:52.450 --> 00:50:57.090
So he would ask prospective jurors if you were at the airport and you had to buy a magazine

00:50:57.090 --> 00:50:59.940
at the bookstand, what magazine would you pick?

00:51:00.100 --> 00:51:05.460
And then would use that to try to infer something useful about

00:51:05.940 --> 00:51:07.540
which jures they should select.

00:51:07.700 --> 00:51:13.380
And so it's it's not a very scientifically informed

00:51:13.700 --> 00:51:18.020
process, I would say, um for the most part.

00:51:18.890 --> 00:51:23.930
If you were design if you if we were designing the Keila Williams uh uh approved legal

00:51:23.930 --> 00:51:29.450
system, would you have uh every prospective juror fill out a prospective welfare

00:51:29.610 --> 00:51:34.650
trade-off ratio questionnaire with regard to the perpetrator toward themselves and then

00:51:34.810 --> 00:51:40.090
look at the uh the average uh welfare trade-off prospective welfare trade-off ratio and

00:51:40.090 --> 00:51:45.690
exclude jurors with uh whose whose uh scores were, you know, say more than a standard

00:51:45.690 --> 00:51:48.640
deviation away from from the mean or something like that?

00:51:49.920 --> 00:51:52.320
That would certainly be an interesting approach.

00:51:53.680 --> 00:51:58.320
I mean, because that that is a very legal, a very law, a very lawyer-y response.

00:51:58.480 --> 00:51:59.440
Very legal healing response.

00:52:03.040 --> 00:52:03.280
Exactly.

00:52:03.520 --> 00:52:06.800
But but that seems to be what lawyers are intuitively trying to do.

00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:11.570
Like, you know, if if say a black person was murdered, uh, and uh, you know, they're gonna

00:52:11.570 --> 00:52:15.730
look at the the race of each pr prospective jury member to see if they're gonna be an

00:52:15.730 --> 00:52:18.770
impartial um, you know, uh juror for for the crime.

00:52:18.930 --> 00:52:22.770
If it was racially motivated, that's gonna, you know, d depending on people's racial views,

00:52:22.850 --> 00:52:24.530
that's gonna potentially influence their decision.

00:52:24.610 --> 00:52:28.610
So presumably that happens a lot in in legal proceedings if they're if it was related to

00:52:28.610 --> 00:52:33.200
religion or sexual orientation or all the basically any detail of the crime is going to be

00:52:33.200 --> 00:52:37.520
relevant for excluding jurors who might have a stake in the outcome or who might be, you

00:52:37.520 --> 00:52:39.360
know, biased in in one way or the other.

00:52:39.440 --> 00:52:42.960
And and lawyers have an intuitive sense of, you know, what's going to affect a person's

00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:43.920
level of impartiality.

00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:48.000
So presumably they're already doing something like this intuitively, but this would just

00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:51.200
be, you know, putting it, you know, in more concrete terms.

00:52:52.160 --> 00:52:57.610
I'm curious, have either of you been called for jury duty or served as a juror?

00:52:57.930 --> 00:53:03.930
I have been, um, but I um I've gotten out of it, or maybe I was kicked out either

00:53:03.930 --> 00:53:04.250
way.

00:53:04.410 --> 00:53:10.090
Um, so uh there there's been only one or two times where I wanted to because I had the

00:53:10.090 --> 00:53:14.090
time, and even then I wasn't allowed to typically, you know, it's just like I'm a I'm an

00:53:14.090 --> 00:53:17.450
experimental psychologist and sort of that excludes me.

00:53:17.610 --> 00:53:22.970
Um, but uh there's been times both whether or not I want to, uh I've

00:53:23.130 --> 00:53:27.060
never been um allowed to be on a jury.

00:53:27.780 --> 00:53:30.580
Yeah, I've been uh no I've never served on a jury.

00:53:30.660 --> 00:53:34.180
I came close once, but I didn't want to, and I found a way to get out of it.

00:53:34.740 --> 00:53:40.020
Um so like I uh so the uh like I there was the trial was gonna be like when a friend was

00:53:40.020 --> 00:53:43.460
coming to visit me and I would have had to like miss him coming to visit.

00:53:43.540 --> 00:53:46.420
Uh and um and so I like I wanted to get out of it.

00:53:46.580 --> 00:53:52.290
Um and so what I did was I you know I I didn't lie, I gave honest

00:53:52.290 --> 00:53:53.250
information about my background.

00:53:53.570 --> 00:53:54.370
We can edit this out.

00:53:54.450 --> 00:53:58.290
Uh so you know, I you know mentioned I was a PhD psychologist and you know I I you know

00:53:58.370 --> 00:54:01.570
said I I was skeptical of eyewitness testimony because I've read all the literature from

00:54:01.570 --> 00:54:05.010
Elizabeth Loftus that eyewitness testimony is unreliable and then the case involved

00:54:05.090 --> 00:54:09.170
eyewitness testimony and I you know I said that maybe a little bit more forcefully than I

00:54:09.170 --> 00:54:13.330
otherwise would have just you know to hopefully scare the the lawyer away and it it it

00:54:13.330 --> 00:54:17.720
worked and the the other the prosecutor uh did not want me as a juror for that reason.

00:54:17.800 --> 00:54:20.840
Um and so that was a successful strategy for getting out of it.

00:54:21.000 --> 00:54:24.520
Um so yeah, that that's a pointer for anyone else who's listening who wants to try to get

00:54:24.520 --> 00:54:25.560
out of jury duty.

00:54:25.800 --> 00:54:30.440
Um so we got recommendations for, you know, committing crimes, for getting out of jury

00:54:30.520 --> 00:54:34.520
duty, for writing bad screenplays about uh the number four killer.

00:54:34.760 --> 00:54:39.000
We got a lot of why why else would you why else would you uh either learn about the law or

00:54:39.000 --> 00:54:40.200
listen to a podcast?

00:54:40.810 --> 00:54:41.210
I know.

00:54:41.370 --> 00:54:44.170
This is just a treasure trove of insights for our listeners.

00:54:44.490 --> 00:54:46.490
Um anyway, affordances, right?

00:54:46.650 --> 00:54:47.530
Affordances, right?

00:54:47.610 --> 00:54:52.490
That's one of the because Keila, you came out of the ASU um school of evolutionary.

00:54:52.730 --> 00:54:55.770
Can you talk like just as a we do tangents all the time.

00:54:56.010 --> 00:54:58.170
Um you're from the ASU school, is that right?

00:54:58.490 --> 00:54:59.450
Arizona State?

00:54:59.690 --> 00:55:00.010
Yes.

00:55:00.250 --> 00:55:00.490
Yeah.

00:55:00.570 --> 00:55:06.560
And your advisors were Steve Newberg in the psych department and Michael Sachs in the

00:55:06.560 --> 00:55:06.960
law school.

00:55:07.200 --> 00:55:08.000
Oh fantastic.

00:55:08.080 --> 00:55:08.240
Cool.

00:55:08.480 --> 00:55:13.840
And what what is the um their thing is sort of affordances, is that right?

00:55:14.480 --> 00:55:14.720
Yeah.

00:55:14.800 --> 00:55:20.560
So affordance management theory, the idea that the goal of the social mind is to identify

00:55:20.560 --> 00:55:26.240
threats and opportunities in our environment and to respond to them in opportunity

00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:28.080
enhancing and threat mitigating ways.

00:55:30.030 --> 00:55:30.910
What a crazy idea.

00:55:31.070 --> 00:55:31.710
I cannot believe.

00:55:32.430 --> 00:55:38.430
How could it just make no sense at all to me that we would have evolved to avoid threats

00:55:38.750 --> 00:55:40.750
and uh pursue benefits?

00:55:40.910 --> 00:55:42.590
I mean, what a crazy way of thinking.

00:55:42.990 --> 00:55:47.630
It must sound stulted to people who are unaware of the history of the behavioral sciences

00:55:47.630 --> 00:55:48.990
or the legal sciences, right?

00:55:49.070 --> 00:55:52.190
To sort of s say that because it's sort of like, well duh.

00:55:52.590 --> 00:55:57.710
But then exactly Keel as you're saying, like it sounds like what you are doing is exactly

00:55:58.100 --> 00:56:02.980
in a lovely example of applying that really important idea to a really important area where

00:56:02.980 --> 00:56:08.500
it hasn't been done before, which is just to say, look, jurors are assessing affordances

00:56:09.140 --> 00:56:14.500
in a way that's completely independent from what the letter of the law is.

00:56:15.140 --> 00:56:20.900
And one of my primary research areas has been about understanding people's attitudes

00:56:20.900 --> 00:56:22.260
towards the death penalty.

00:56:22.420 --> 00:56:27.780
And that is a really interesting area to think about applying

00:56:27.950 --> 00:56:29.150
affordances too.

00:56:29.790 --> 00:56:31.390
So tell us more about that.

00:56:32.350 --> 00:56:38.190
So I uh worked on a project with Ashley Votruba and

00:56:38.670 --> 00:56:44.670
uh our advisors, and it was looking at how resource scarcity

00:56:44.670 --> 00:56:49.230
influences people's attitudes towards the death penalty and their willingness to impose

00:56:49.230 --> 00:56:52.190
death on uh offenders.

00:56:52.910 --> 00:56:58.680
And uh It was really an interesting project because so much of the death

00:56:58.680 --> 00:57:03.880
penalty attitudes, literature, and psychology has focused on really proximate explanations.

00:57:04.440 --> 00:57:10.200
So, for example, political ideology that conservatives are more likely to endorse the death

00:57:10.200 --> 00:57:12.040
penalty than liberals are.

00:57:17.770 --> 00:57:22.730
I'm not bagging on that work by any means.

00:57:22.970 --> 00:57:28.250
But there weren't really any approaches looking at more ulti explanations.

00:57:28.730 --> 00:57:34.410
And so we started from the premise of when

00:57:34.730 --> 00:57:40.570
you are faced with a serious offender in your group, you have to make an important decision

00:57:40.570 --> 00:57:45.080
about whether or not you're going to try to rehabilitate them or if you are going to

00:57:45.080 --> 00:57:50.520
eliminate them, whether that's like banishment from the group or actually killing them,

00:57:50.840 --> 00:57:51.480
whichever.

00:57:51.800 --> 00:57:56.040
You either need to decide if you're going to get rid of them or you're going to try to

00:57:56.600 --> 00:57:58.760
incorporate them back into the group.

00:57:59.720 --> 00:58:05.720
And what we suggested was that the amount of available resources in the environment is

00:58:05.720 --> 00:58:07.720
going to affect that calculus.

00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:13.770
That if you have plentiful resources, then you're going to be more willing to take a

00:58:13.770 --> 00:58:15.850
chance on rehabilitating the person.

00:58:15.930 --> 00:58:21.450
And if your resources are scarce, you're going to be less willing to risk

00:58:21.450 --> 00:58:22.730
repeated offending.

00:58:22.810 --> 00:58:26.250
And so you're going to be more likely to get rid of the person.

00:58:26.650 --> 00:58:31.930
And we found some evidence to support that, both archivally

00:58:32.330 --> 00:58:37.800
across the globe, in the United States, and then uh experimentally as well in the lab.

00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:40.280
So that was a really, a really fun project.

00:58:40.680 --> 00:58:45.880
Well, how do you assess or manipulate resources or what what is meant by resources?

00:58:46.360 --> 00:58:51.640
So what we did for our lab studies was we gave people a

00:58:51.640 --> 00:58:56.840
slideshow about the economy, and it either suggested that the economy was doing great and

00:58:56.840 --> 00:59:02.440
was in an upswing and there are all these available jobs and everything is fantastic, or it

00:59:02.440 --> 00:59:08.230
said that the economy is in the shitter and is just getting worse and there are no jobs

00:59:08.470 --> 00:59:09.350
and so forth.

00:59:09.510 --> 00:59:15.350
And at the time that we ran that study, uh it was shortly after

00:59:15.350 --> 00:59:16.550
the Great Recession.

00:59:16.710 --> 00:59:22.550
So it was actually pretty believable that the economy could be either good

00:59:22.550 --> 00:59:24.310
or bad at that time.

00:59:24.710 --> 00:59:30.220
Um and then after they read the economy

00:59:30.540 --> 00:59:36.540
information, then they answered questions about um their attitudes toward

00:59:36.620 --> 00:59:37.340
the death penalty.

00:59:37.420 --> 00:59:40.140
So did they think that the death penalty is necessary?

00:59:40.940 --> 00:59:43.900
Do they think that it should occur faster?

00:59:44.220 --> 00:59:45.420
Those sorts of things.

00:59:46.220 --> 00:59:48.460
So just can I let me flesh this out?

00:59:48.540 --> 00:59:52.590
And you can tell me if it's right or wrong, but at different scales.

00:59:52.990 --> 00:59:58.750
So um of sort of um a time sampling, there's sort of software in

00:59:58.750 --> 01:00:02.270
my mind for detecting resource availability.

01:00:02.430 --> 01:00:06.750
So like, you know, uh do are things, you know, it's intuitive, right?

01:00:06.830 --> 01:00:08.510
Like are things nice, kept well kept up.

01:00:08.670 --> 01:00:10.910
There's enough stuff for me, for my family, whatever.

01:00:11.150 --> 01:00:13.710
And then uh, or like it's just desperate.

01:00:13.870 --> 01:00:15.470
There's a lot, I see lots of desperation.

01:00:15.550 --> 01:00:21.200
There's just not enough stuff and then if you encounter somebody like a

01:00:21.200 --> 01:00:26.320
criminal, there's just this issue of like, and it's gonna take resources to rehabilitate

01:00:26.640 --> 01:00:26.960
them.

01:00:27.360 --> 01:00:31.760
This idea that sort of like, well, it's gonna it's gonna be cheaper and quicker to just

01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:32.240
kill 'em.

01:00:32.480 --> 01:00:37.200
I mean, this is like very blunt, but the psychology is sort of like it's gonna be cheaper

01:00:37.200 --> 01:00:41.200
and quicker to just kill them as opposed to like invest all this time and energy and money

01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:42.720
in is that fair?

01:00:43.070 --> 01:00:44.030
Yes, exactly.

01:00:44.350 --> 01:00:44.510
Yeah.

01:00:44.670 --> 01:00:46.990
Now, is that accurate in any way?

01:00:47.230 --> 01:00:53.150
Like, even assuming that people can accurately assess resources, like, is that

01:00:53.150 --> 01:00:53.870
even true?

01:00:54.030 --> 01:00:58.750
That like um uh like imprisoning people is very expensive.

01:00:58.910 --> 01:01:02.430
I think killing people is even more expensive, let alone the morality of it.

01:01:02.590 --> 01:01:07.710
Like uh like this seems like a very like mismatchy kind of thing, um, let alone like

01:01:07.790 --> 01:01:13.740
letting people decide who should die because of like ambient feelings about scarcity.

01:01:14.380 --> 01:01:20.220
So it is true that killing someone in America with the death penalty is more

01:01:20.220 --> 01:01:22.540
expensive than keeping them alive for life.

01:01:22.940 --> 01:01:27.020
And that is because of all of the mandatory appeals processes that we have.

01:01:27.260 --> 01:01:31.820
If it were the case that the person would be found guilty and sentenced to death and then

01:01:31.820 --> 01:01:34.590
taken out back and shot, it would not be more expensive.

01:01:34.670 --> 01:01:35.710
It would be way cheaper.

01:01:36.030 --> 01:01:41.790
Um it's more legally expensive, but not the actual act is is not more expensive.

01:01:41.950 --> 01:01:42.270
Got it.

01:01:42.510 --> 01:01:42.590
Right.

01:01:42.910 --> 01:01:47.550
I can say as somebody who lived in Germany, uh do not recommend the first or the the

01:01:47.550 --> 01:01:48.430
cheaper option.

01:01:48.590 --> 01:01:52.750
There or like there's a long history of that being a really bad uh scenario.

01:01:52.990 --> 01:01:56.190
So be careful what yeah, the uh pr money's not everything.

01:01:56.270 --> 01:01:56.910
Yes, exactly.

01:01:57.310 --> 01:01:57.550
Interesting.

01:01:57.630 --> 01:02:01.960
Would would would you expect, you know, making people aware of this fact, say the

01:02:01.960 --> 01:02:07.800
expensiveness, um, would that be another variable that could push

01:02:07.800 --> 01:02:08.840
people one way or the other?

01:02:09.000 --> 01:02:13.160
Say, you know, if I'm if I think resources are really scarce, I might as well get rid of

01:02:13.160 --> 01:02:16.120
this person 'cause they're another mouth to feed and, you know, there's not enough stuff to

01:02:16.120 --> 01:02:16.760
go around.

01:02:16.920 --> 01:02:20.520
Uh but if then if you if you tell me that actually executing him is going to be even more

01:02:20.520 --> 01:02:24.520
expensive uh than putting him in prison, then, you know, maybe that'll push me in the other

01:02:24.520 --> 01:02:24.680
way.

01:02:24.840 --> 01:02:25.880
Would you make that prediction?

01:02:26.570 --> 01:02:27.690
We actually tested that.

01:02:27.850 --> 01:02:33.690
We measured we measured how people how expensive people thought um one was relative to the

01:02:33.690 --> 01:02:34.010
other.

01:02:34.170 --> 01:02:39.370
And that did not actually push around their their death penalty decisions.

01:02:40.330 --> 01:02:45.370
So even even if you tell people it's cheaper to keep them alive when they detect scarcity,

01:02:45.450 --> 01:02:46.810
they still say kill 'em.

01:02:47.290 --> 01:02:47.850
Yes.

01:02:49.050 --> 01:02:51.940
So to what what what is your why is that?

01:02:52.100 --> 01:02:53.220
What do you think?

01:02:54.340 --> 01:02:59.780
Is it just sort of like the system is just sort of doesn't believe that

01:03:00.100 --> 01:03:06.020
explicit information or I think it's because

01:03:10.330 --> 01:03:16.010
The mind doesn't actually care that much about

01:03:16.170 --> 01:03:20.490
the reality of the cost of doing it.

01:03:21.050 --> 01:03:26.730
That when resources are scarce, even if you tell me that it's

01:03:26.730 --> 01:03:30.970
less expensive, the mind is still going to want to do that.

01:03:31.120 --> 01:03:32.160
It's just so counterintuitive.

01:03:33.040 --> 01:03:33.200
Yeah.

01:03:33.600 --> 01:03:36.880
I think it's just a it's a counterintuitive idea at the end of the day.

01:03:37.040 --> 01:03:40.880
Like you might tell me, yeah, I might explicitly say, yeah, okay, I I believe that it's

01:03:40.880 --> 01:03:45.280
more expensive, I, you know, but intuitively it doesn't seem like that's right.

01:03:45.440 --> 01:03:48.640
And and that might be what's what's shaping people's attitudes.

01:03:48.720 --> 01:03:52.480
Aaron Powell I wonder is could it be and Keel, I'm sure you've thought of this and maybe I

01:03:52.720 --> 01:03:58.070
I'm just sort of slow to catch up, but like could it also be sort of a folk or like a smart

01:03:58.070 --> 01:04:00.470
folk version of sort of uh deterrence.

01:04:00.630 --> 01:04:05.750
So sort of if we're in a very difficult, scarce world,

01:04:06.470 --> 01:04:12.310
then if somebody is like doing something bad, it's a higher

01:04:12.310 --> 01:04:13.270
cost, right?

01:04:13.430 --> 01:04:18.140
So sort of like I really want to like slap down bad behavior.

01:04:18.300 --> 01:04:21.020
Like it's this is this is no joke, kids.

01:04:21.180 --> 01:04:23.420
Like you can't do bad stuff, right?

01:04:23.580 --> 01:04:25.020
Like that's the mode you're in.

01:04:25.340 --> 01:04:30.540
And so it's this it's this flipping into like punitive mode

01:04:31.100 --> 01:04:36.380
when costs are high for for just doing the wrong thing, right?

01:04:36.540 --> 01:04:39.260
Um and that would be a different thing.

01:04:39.500 --> 01:04:45.210
And that would even be, if that was the the the causal structure for why that would be,

01:04:45.370 --> 01:04:50.250
it would, it would even be rational, quote unquote, to even ignore the cost of that one

01:04:50.570 --> 01:04:56.570
murder in the sense of if if people believe the death penalty is more uh deterrent, even if

01:04:56.570 --> 01:05:01.610
the people aren't consciously thinking this, then it's sort of it's still rational because

01:05:01.610 --> 01:05:05.930
you're you're you're deterring more other people from doing the wrong thing in a highly

01:05:05.930 --> 01:05:06.970
scarce environment.

01:05:07.130 --> 01:05:10.280
That might be wrong, but that would be, I don't know, have I'm sure you've thought of that.

01:05:10.360 --> 01:05:11.880
Like what do you think about that?

01:05:12.360 --> 01:05:16.600
Well, one thing that's interesting is that we've found that resource scarcity doesn't make

01:05:16.600 --> 01:05:22.360
people more punitive in general, that it doesn't just heighten their their desire to punish

01:05:22.360 --> 01:05:28.250
and punish harshly, that it's specific to the use of capital punishment.

01:05:28.570 --> 01:05:28.810
Wow.

01:05:28.970 --> 01:05:29.610
That's cool.

01:05:29.690 --> 01:05:30.090
That's amaz.

01:05:30.330 --> 01:05:31.370
That's such beautiful data.

01:05:31.450 --> 01:05:31.690
Yeah.

01:05:31.770 --> 01:05:32.570
And yeah.

01:05:32.810 --> 01:05:37.370
We're I am we're real time going through the uh you're correcting us.

01:05:37.450 --> 01:05:38.170
This is wonderful.

01:05:38.250 --> 01:05:38.490
Yeah.

01:05:38.810 --> 01:05:38.970
Yeah.

01:05:39.050 --> 01:05:43.130
No, it was an interesting hypothesis, but yeah, that that that data uh speaks against that

01:05:43.130 --> 01:05:43.690
hypothesis.

01:05:44.010 --> 01:05:44.250
Yeah.

01:05:44.890 --> 01:05:45.450
Interesting.

01:05:45.610 --> 01:05:49.210
There's also this thing, I mean, like there's this trope and I think believe it's true.

01:05:49.290 --> 01:05:52.650
Like, you know, like for the example, like, you know, I w I watched a YouTube video of like

01:05:52.810 --> 01:05:58.300
a northern European prison, which you know depicted the prisoner getting up in the morning

01:05:58.300 --> 01:06:02.780
and like, you know, leaving his apartment and going to work, you know, and coming home in

01:06:02.780 --> 01:06:03.100
the day.

01:06:03.260 --> 01:06:07.180
You know, and that's a very different kind of, and this is like for a pretty serious crime,

01:06:07.420 --> 01:06:07.900
you know.

01:06:08.060 --> 01:06:13.820
Um, and and so that that's an example of sort of like there's a

01:06:13.820 --> 01:06:19.810
social, um a very big social safety net people feel taken care of in

01:06:19.810 --> 01:06:22.530
like northern European social democracies.

01:06:22.690 --> 01:06:27.970
And that seems to correlate with sort of non-punitive sort of

01:06:27.970 --> 01:06:33.090
retraining or you know minimizing recidivism sort of policies

01:06:33.650 --> 01:06:39.570
versus the trope of sort of, you know, in the somewhere like certain places in the US where

01:06:39.570 --> 01:06:43.650
it's sort of like, you know, oh, you shoplifted three times, we're gonna have to kill you.

01:06:43.730 --> 01:06:49.620
I'm sorry, you know, like um is that uh is that a character, caricature,

01:06:49.700 --> 01:06:52.100
or is that sort of borne out in the data?

01:06:52.180 --> 01:06:57.940
Like am I um am I reading into that with anecdotes or is that sort of what you're

01:06:57.940 --> 01:06:58.580
saying?

01:07:01.060 --> 01:07:06.900
That like somewhere, so for example, like you could actually would the would the would it

01:07:06.980 --> 01:07:11.940
would it be that, you know, if you had somewhere, for example, you took somewhere with

01:07:11.940 --> 01:07:17.470
really bad social safety notes, Healthcare is expensive, it's not

01:07:17.470 --> 01:07:20.670
available, people's kids are hungry, food is expensive.

01:07:20.830 --> 01:07:26.430
And you just shifted to a northern European model where food is cheap, healthcare is free

01:07:26.510 --> 01:07:30.750
and universal, childcare is free and universal, people feel taken care of, that would

01:07:30.750 --> 01:07:34.590
immediately change sort of how people feel about prisoners.

01:07:34.750 --> 01:07:36.750
Is that sort of what this is saying?

01:07:37.550 --> 01:07:38.510
That's interesting.

01:07:38.990 --> 01:07:43.790
I can speak from the data that we have that when we were looking at the global

01:07:44.700 --> 01:07:50.540
data that we were using the Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index

01:07:50.540 --> 01:07:52.940
as our proxy for resource availability.

01:07:53.100 --> 01:07:58.700
And that does incorporate a number of the things that you're talking about, like education,

01:07:59.100 --> 01:08:02.780
in addition to just resources themselves.

01:08:03.740 --> 01:08:09.590
And we found that places that have lower human development were more

01:08:09.590 --> 01:08:14.150
likely to have the death penalty as a form of punishment.

01:08:15.670 --> 01:08:21.270
So I I want to dig so my hypothesis here is that it's not so much about

01:08:21.510 --> 01:08:23.830
resources at an absolute level.

01:08:24.070 --> 01:08:28.360
Because if you think about it in the modern world, our absolute access to resources is

01:08:28.360 --> 01:08:31.880
probably uh significantly higher than it would have been in ancestral environments.

01:08:32.040 --> 01:08:37.320
Um what it's what it's indexing is not so much you know whether there's a lot of stuff or

01:08:37.320 --> 01:08:42.040
not a lot of stuff, but the zero sumness of the stuff available.

01:08:42.600 --> 01:08:48.470
So if we live in a world that's more positive sum where um you know maybe there aren't

01:08:48.470 --> 01:08:54.470
that many resources in an absolute sense, but uh, you know, eliminating you is not going to

01:08:54.470 --> 01:08:56.550
increase the amount of resources available to me.

01:08:56.630 --> 01:08:58.790
Because it's just about positive sum cooperation.

01:08:58.870 --> 01:09:02.550
Um, and you know, maybe having more people will increase the amount of cooperation and

01:09:02.550 --> 01:09:04.150
increase the pie for for everyone.

01:09:04.230 --> 01:09:07.030
And so it doesn't it doesn't really make sense to try to eliminate someone.

01:09:07.110 --> 01:09:11.030
But if we are in a state where there are limited resources and where there is zero sum

01:09:11.110 --> 01:09:12.180
competition over them.

01:09:12.500 --> 01:09:16.020
Then in that case, eliminating you is going to be a pretty appealing prospect because it's

01:09:16.020 --> 01:09:20.900
going to directly increase the amount of resources available to me.

01:09:21.860 --> 01:09:26.580
So of course, I would expect, you know, zero-sumness and absolute resource levels to

01:09:26.580 --> 01:09:29.940
probably be correlated, but they're still distinguishable and they're not the same thing.

01:09:30.020 --> 01:09:34.310
And so I would expect, you know, this human development index, poorer countries are tend to

01:09:34.310 --> 01:09:39.030
be countries with uh crappier institutions, with more uh zero-sum competition and

01:09:39.030 --> 01:09:43.670
corruption, uh, you know, in in politicians, where the society is much more about fighting

01:09:43.670 --> 01:09:48.790
over uh the slices of the pie uh than it is about growing the pie, uh and which which you

01:09:48.790 --> 01:09:50.630
tend to find in in in wealthier countries.

01:09:50.710 --> 01:09:54.550
And so in those in those more zero-sum contexts where there's more there's competition over

01:09:55.030 --> 01:09:59.750
power um and resources are it's less about cooperation and and growing the pie and more

01:09:59.750 --> 01:10:04.080
about just forming coalitions and grabbing what little of the pie is is left.

01:10:04.240 --> 01:10:07.680
That in those uh contexts, there's more of a zero-sum mentality.

01:10:07.760 --> 01:10:13.280
And maybe that is what's driving this result rather than well, absolute levels of wealth.

01:10:14.400 --> 01:10:16.640
No, I I think that's really insightful.

01:10:16.800 --> 01:10:22.560
Um it it reminds me a little of the the fact that we saw differences

01:10:22.670 --> 01:10:27.070
across states based on state per capita income and whether or not they were likely to have

01:10:27.070 --> 01:10:30.510
the death penalty, even controlling for the political ideology of the state.

01:10:30.670 --> 01:10:36.110
So I I totally agree with you that I think it's it's about a relative comparison, not about

01:10:36.110 --> 01:10:38.910
the absolute um number of resources.

01:10:39.150 --> 01:10:42.350
Can I add another layer of complexity to this?

01:10:42.670 --> 01:10:42.830
No.

01:10:45.870 --> 01:10:51.740
So Ashley and I also thought that the value of the

01:10:51.740 --> 01:10:55.180
offender would matter in this calculation.

01:10:55.420 --> 01:11:01.340
So when resources are scarce, so even if resources are scarce, you're not going to

01:11:01.340 --> 01:11:05.500
get rid of the most valuable group member, no matter what they do.

01:11:06.380 --> 01:11:12.150
So we set up some experiments where we tested this, where we manipulated the

01:11:12.150 --> 01:11:18.150
value of the group member by making the offender either a very good

01:11:18.150 --> 01:11:23.910
hunter or an artist or a schlub who was

01:11:23.910 --> 01:11:26.150
lazy and didn't contribute anything to the group.

01:11:26.230 --> 01:11:30.950
And then looked to see how resource availability would affect people's willingness to

01:11:30.950 --> 01:11:36.710
punish, and found that when resources are scarce, people actually became much less willing

01:11:36.800 --> 01:11:40.960
to ban it was banishment in this case, to banish the hunter from the group.

01:11:42.560 --> 01:11:43.360
Interesting.

01:11:43.920 --> 01:11:48.240
I mean, I wonder it seems like the logic you're laying out here with regard to capital

01:11:48.240 --> 01:11:51.920
punishment would also apply equally to immigration.

01:11:52.160 --> 01:11:56.240
So that's another case where you are, you know, as opposed to eliminating a member of the

01:11:56.240 --> 01:11:58.160
group, you are welcoming in a new member of the group.

01:11:58.320 --> 01:12:02.230
And so in that case, the same logic should apply, where if there's a limited amount of

01:12:02.230 --> 01:12:05.750
stuff and we're letting another person into the group, that is going to reduce the amount

01:12:05.750 --> 01:12:09.750
of stuff available for me if we if we live in a zero sum world.

01:12:10.230 --> 01:12:15.590
And so have you thought about maybe extending this logic to um to immigration

01:12:15.590 --> 01:12:16.470
attitudes?

01:12:17.030 --> 01:12:19.270
I haven't, but I I love that idea.

01:12:19.510 --> 01:12:21.430
I think that makes total sense.

01:12:22.680 --> 01:12:24.600
And there is research out there.

01:12:24.920 --> 01:12:28.680
I think Carrie Pick is one person who's been working on this, looking at the different

01:12:28.680 --> 01:12:33.400
kinds of threats that different immigrant groups are seen to pose.

01:12:33.720 --> 01:12:39.480
And the um finds that Mexican Americans are seen to pose a more

01:12:39.640 --> 01:12:40.840
economic threat.

01:12:41.160 --> 01:12:47.070
And so I wonder if maybe it also would be affected by what whether or not the

01:12:47.070 --> 01:12:52.510
immigrants are seen as posing an economic threat versus a safety threat versus some other

01:12:52.510 --> 01:12:54.350
type of threat or benefit.

01:12:55.150 --> 01:12:55.550
That's great.

01:12:56.110 --> 01:12:59.230
Yeah, no, I'm aware of there's there's some interesting data, I think a political scientist

01:12:59.310 --> 01:13:04.270
by the name of Haynes Mueller or Hans Mueller, uh basically showing that when you specify

01:13:04.270 --> 01:13:07.390
the characteristics of the immigrants, you know, whether what country they're from, you

01:13:07.390 --> 01:13:10.910
know, whether they're religious or not, whether they're high highly educated or highly

01:13:10.910 --> 01:13:16.760
skilled or not, um, you tend to actually eliminate most partisan differences in in

01:13:16.760 --> 01:13:17.640
immigration attitudes.

01:13:17.880 --> 01:13:21.240
So if it's like a if it's specified that this is a highly skilled, highly educated person

01:13:21.240 --> 01:13:23.880
who's coming in to immigrate, you don't really see partisan differences.

01:13:23.960 --> 01:13:27.640
You know, Democrats, Republicans are happy to let that person in, which I think speaks to

01:13:27.640 --> 01:13:32.280
this hypothesis that it's really about options of of zero sumness and association value.

01:13:32.440 --> 01:13:35.640
You only really get partisan differences when it comes to uh Latin American immigrants and

01:13:35.640 --> 01:13:36.600
Muslim immigrants.

01:13:36.680 --> 01:13:39.150
And why that is the case is an interesting question.

01:13:39.230 --> 01:13:43.310
Uh with uh with the case of m Muslim intr uh immigrants, I would expect, you know,

01:13:43.390 --> 01:13:44.750
religiosity to play a role there.

01:13:44.830 --> 01:13:49.630
And, you know, uh I would expect, you know, people who are more um devout to be more

01:13:49.630 --> 01:13:51.790
threatened by a religious rival, perhaps.

01:13:51.870 --> 01:13:54.910
Uh with with Latin Americans, I'm not sure it it may have something to do with with

01:13:54.910 --> 01:13:58.750
economic threat and the and the perception that maybe they're gonna be competing with uh

01:13:58.830 --> 01:14:02.030
with you know working class white people for low skilled labor.

01:14:02.190 --> 01:14:03.790
That could that could be uh a part of it.

01:14:03.870 --> 01:14:05.380
But it's an interesting, interesting topic.

01:14:05.700 --> 01:14:11.380
I mean also those two regions were are also sort of like we have a a very checkered history

01:14:11.380 --> 01:14:16.580
of s of like, you know, the the global north sort of dominating Muslim countries or global

01:14:16.580 --> 01:14:17.220
south countries.

01:14:17.300 --> 01:14:21.460
And so I mean I think like a very rational reaction is like these are people coming from

01:14:21.460 --> 01:14:24.820
more desperate circumstances, all sequel, right?

01:14:24.980 --> 01:14:27.460
Which is fairly accurate all sequel.

01:14:27.540 --> 01:14:28.020
Yeah.

01:14:28.500 --> 01:14:33.690
Sorry, Keila, you were gonna say something No, I was just saying that's really interesting.

01:14:34.010 --> 01:14:34.170
Yeah.

01:14:34.250 --> 01:14:39.210
I mean, this also speaks to like this also predicts, for example, that like association

01:14:39.210 --> 01:14:44.970
value uh and high resources should go together in like uh rhetoric about

01:14:44.970 --> 01:14:48.010
like outgroups, which I think is borne out too.

01:14:48.090 --> 01:14:51.850
Like this is the this idea, like David, you were talking about like the re the kind of

01:14:51.850 --> 01:14:57.840
resources based on what Keela's saying, that like, you know, um, if I want to sort

01:14:57.840 --> 01:15:03.760
of like say that we should really um be upset if I'm like a speaker, you know,

01:15:03.840 --> 01:15:08.480
like a demagogue or something, I should be like, look, there's these low association value

01:15:08.480 --> 01:15:14.080
people who have who have who are taking resources or have resources

01:15:14.400 --> 01:15:15.520
that belong to you.

01:15:15.680 --> 01:15:19.360
Like that's the sort of like the deep structure of like a demagogue in a way.

01:15:19.440 --> 01:15:25.170
And I think that's pretty borne out, um, you know historically right like you know um again

01:15:25.250 --> 01:15:29.010
I'm thinking you know just because of Germany but like you know the the idea that sort of

01:15:29.010 --> 01:15:34.610
like you know the Slavs have our uh have our uh or have our like you know

01:15:34.850 --> 01:15:39.970
space you know for the Third Reich you know so sort of like these people who are subhuman

01:15:40.130 --> 01:15:44.850
are occupying this wonderful land and area that belongs rightly to us.

01:15:45.010 --> 01:15:47.650
Um and you just fill in the blank of other examples.

01:15:47.810 --> 01:15:53.720
So it's a I I think this idea is sort of a lovely example of sort of like the deep

01:15:53.720 --> 01:15:56.760
structure of like this political rhetoric.

01:15:58.680 --> 01:15:59.080
Yeah.

01:15:59.320 --> 01:16:05.320
Um speaking of resources and um their availability or lack thereof, um I know you've

01:16:05.320 --> 01:16:10.680
done some interesting research on stereotypes and how they relate to perceptions of

01:16:10.680 --> 01:16:12.920
resource scarcity and resource availability.

01:16:13.000 --> 01:16:16.440
So I'm curious if you could uh elaborate on on some of that work because I think it's

01:16:16.440 --> 01:16:17.160
really interesting.

01:16:17.670 --> 01:16:18.070
Thank you.

01:16:18.310 --> 01:16:18.630
Yes.

01:16:18.870 --> 01:16:20.870
So I have done some work.

01:16:21.030 --> 01:16:23.990
This was with Oliver Sung and Steve Newberg.

01:16:24.790 --> 01:16:30.710
And we were interested in this idea of ecology stereotypes, about whether

01:16:30.710 --> 01:16:36.710
or not people hold beliefs based on inferences

01:16:36.710 --> 01:16:42.230
of the kinds of environments that others come from, and specifically how that might be

01:16:42.230 --> 01:16:45.270
related to race stereotypes in the US.

01:16:46.070 --> 01:16:51.900
So I I wonder if I should start from the beginning in terms of the theory behind this

01:16:51.980 --> 01:16:53.020
or just talk about it.

01:16:53.740 --> 01:16:53.900
Yeah.

01:16:53.980 --> 01:16:56.220
I mean, it's incredibly, I'm so glad David brought it up.

01:16:56.300 --> 01:16:57.260
It's such incredible work.

01:16:57.340 --> 01:17:00.060
So yeah, and I'm sure many people don't know about it who are listening.

01:17:00.220 --> 01:17:02.540
So yeah, please just start from wherever you think.

01:17:02.780 --> 01:17:03.180
Yeah.

01:17:03.820 --> 01:17:09.500
So the the starting point is that the kinds of environments that people grow up in

01:17:09.500 --> 01:17:11.820
does actually affect their behavior.

01:17:11.980 --> 01:17:17.410
That when people grow up in environments that are resource poor and unpredictable, that

01:17:17.410 --> 01:17:21.890
they this tends to engage more present-focused strategies.

01:17:22.050 --> 01:17:27.650
So more impulsivity, more opportunism, more sexual promiscuity,

01:17:27.810 --> 01:17:31.570
less investment in education, and less investment in children.

01:17:31.970 --> 01:17:37.570
Whereas people who grow up in more resource-rich and predictable

01:17:37.570 --> 01:17:40.930
environments do sort of see opposites.

01:17:41.170 --> 01:17:47.160
So being less impulsive, more planning for the future, more future oriented, more

01:17:47.160 --> 01:17:49.640
sexually restricted, et cetera, et cetera.

01:17:50.120 --> 01:17:52.680
So that work is already out there.

01:17:53.080 --> 01:17:57.880
Lots of people have have uh quite a bit of robust research on that.

01:17:58.120 --> 01:18:02.520
And so we are coming again from the affordance management perspective of the mind

01:18:03.030 --> 01:18:08.070
interested in seeking out these threats and opportunities, that people should be attuned to

01:18:08.070 --> 01:18:09.350
this ecology information.

01:18:09.510 --> 01:18:13.670
If it provides really useful information about how others are likely to think and behave,

01:18:13.830 --> 01:18:18.310
then it would make sense for us to have stereotypes that are based on ecology.

01:18:18.550 --> 01:18:23.510
And so the first study that we did in our first ecology stereotypes paper was just

01:18:23.510 --> 01:18:29.350
exploring generally if people do possess these ecology stereotypes, as we called

01:18:29.350 --> 01:18:29.590
them.

01:18:29.910 --> 01:18:35.280
So we gave participants vignettes that described a person who was either from an

01:18:35.280 --> 01:18:40.080
environment that was really resource poor and unpredictable, or resource rich and

01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:40.800
predictable.

01:18:40.960 --> 01:18:46.960
And we asked them how likely is this person to be impulsive, be invested in their

01:18:46.960 --> 01:18:50.080
education, be sexually promiscuous, et cetera.

01:18:50.400 --> 01:18:55.440
And we found that people do have these ecology stereotypes, that they stereotyped people

01:18:55.440 --> 01:19:01.200
from more harsh ecologies as being more present focused and people from

01:19:01.790 --> 01:19:06.430
these more hopeful ecologies as being more future focused.

01:19:07.070 --> 01:19:11.950
So that was our first just establishing the base, basic effect.

01:19:12.430 --> 01:19:18.350
Then we did some additional studies that were trying to sort of rule out alternative

01:19:18.350 --> 01:19:19.310
explanations.

01:19:19.630 --> 01:19:25.550
We showed that people have these ecology stereotypes for environments that are seen

01:19:25.550 --> 01:19:30.910
both as being primarily white inhabited and primarily black inhabited.

01:19:31.960 --> 01:19:37.160
We showed that these stereotypes are not derivatives of wealth

01:19:37.160 --> 01:19:42.200
stereotypes, that within high and low wealth, we still see these ecology

01:19:42.200 --> 01:19:43.880
stereotypes occurring.

01:19:44.040 --> 01:19:49.960
And then we also showed that it's not just a positivity bias towards people in hopeful

01:19:49.960 --> 01:19:55.960
ecologies, that the stereotypes are really specific to

01:19:56.280 --> 01:20:02.270
these present versus future focused in psychological suites

01:20:02.350 --> 01:20:03.470
of behavior.

01:20:03.870 --> 01:20:09.630
And so then our final study in that project was looking at if maybe that these

01:20:09.630 --> 01:20:14.350
ecology stereotypes could help to explain race stereotypes in the US.

01:20:14.510 --> 01:20:19.150
And the reason why we thought that that might be the case is because in America, race and

01:20:19.150 --> 01:20:23.790
ecology are confounded in the sense that black Americans are more likely to live in

01:20:23.790 --> 01:20:28.720
resource-poor and unpredictable environments, and white Americans are more likely to live

01:20:28.720 --> 01:20:30.960
in resource rich and predictable environments.

01:20:31.120 --> 01:20:37.120
And so if there is this confound, then it would make sense for the mind to be using

01:20:37.120 --> 01:20:40.000
race as a proxy for ecology.

01:20:40.640 --> 01:20:46.400
So we essentially separated race and ecology information in that last

01:20:46.400 --> 01:20:46.960
study.

01:20:47.200 --> 01:20:53.200
And we first replicated our finding that when you give people just ecology information, you

01:20:53.200 --> 01:20:58.990
see that those from harsh ecologies are stereotyped as more present focused than those from

01:20:58.990 --> 01:21:00.350
Hopeful Ecologies.

01:21:00.510 --> 01:21:02.430
Then we looked at just race information.

01:21:02.510 --> 01:21:07.230
So if we asked people to imagine a black individual or a white individual, people were

01:21:07.230 --> 01:21:12.030
stereotyping the black individual to be more present-focused than the white individual.

01:21:12.270 --> 01:21:16.830
But when you provide people with both race and ecology information, that's when the really

01:21:16.830 --> 01:21:18.830
interesting results happened.

01:21:19.070 --> 01:21:23.230
That people's stereotypes tracked ecology and not race.

01:21:23.480 --> 01:21:27.480
So it essentially wiped out the effect of the race stereotypes.

01:21:27.640 --> 01:21:33.640
So black Americans from hopeful ecologies were stereotyped as being just as future focused

01:21:33.640 --> 01:21:35.960
as white Americans from hopeful ecologies.

01:21:36.120 --> 01:21:41.400
And similarly, black Americans from harsh environments were stereotyped as just as

01:21:41.400 --> 01:21:45.240
present-oriented as white Americans from harsh ecologies.

01:21:45.480 --> 01:21:48.520
So that was the those are really exciting findings for us.

01:21:49.720 --> 01:21:51.470
Yeah, that's that's really amazing.

01:21:51.630 --> 01:21:57.470
I mean, in the sense of, you know, I mean, tell me if I'm if I'm wrong, but I mean

01:21:57.790 --> 01:22:03.630
uh the literature and also I think just sort of common knowledge was sort of that this

01:22:03.630 --> 01:22:04.830
is all about race.

01:22:05.070 --> 01:22:06.350
Is that fair?

01:22:06.830 --> 01:22:07.470
Yes.

01:22:08.750 --> 01:22:10.590
Yeah, and so this would yeah.

01:22:11.060 --> 01:22:15.700
I mean it it's I mean it's again, you know, uh viewing the mind, uh viewing humans as

01:22:15.700 --> 01:22:17.300
idiots, basically.

01:22:17.460 --> 01:22:22.340
Um, you know, we're just you know blindly we just don't like people who look different than

01:22:22.340 --> 01:22:23.620
us, and and that explains this.

01:22:23.700 --> 01:22:27.220
And we have these crude stereotypes that aren't really tracking anything in reality, and

01:22:27.220 --> 01:22:29.940
it's just we're just dumb bigots.

01:22:30.100 --> 01:22:35.070
Um, and you know, while a lot of the the downstream outcomes of these stereotypes uh might

01:22:35.070 --> 01:22:36.190
be might be deplorable.

01:22:36.430 --> 01:22:42.270
The underlying uh logic to the mind that is uh creating these stereotypes is there there's

01:22:42.270 --> 01:22:43.390
something rational about it.

01:22:43.550 --> 01:22:48.190
That it's it's connecting to something uh deep about the connection between uh human

01:22:48.190 --> 01:22:49.870
ecology and and human behavior.

01:22:50.030 --> 01:22:52.190
And people are picking up on this regularity.

01:22:52.270 --> 01:22:55.630
Um and uh it's n it's not just a blind, crude thing.

01:22:55.710 --> 01:22:59.550
It's it's it's it's stemming from something real, uh which I think is is is really

01:22:59.550 --> 01:23:00.030
interesting.

01:23:00.190 --> 01:23:02.670
Uh and it and you know it echoes some of Dave's work.

01:23:02.800 --> 01:23:05.760
You know, it basically, you know, the the paper can race be erased?

01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:08.560
And if you find that, you know, race is confounded with all sorts of things.

01:23:08.640 --> 01:23:10.320
It's confounded with ecology, as you mentioned.

01:23:10.400 --> 01:23:12.400
It's also confounded with uh coalition.

01:23:12.480 --> 01:23:17.360
Um, and when you deconfound those things, you can uh erase uh uh race effects.

01:23:17.440 --> 01:23:23.200
You know, we uh with with Dave's work, you know, if if you um deconfound um skin color

01:23:23.200 --> 01:23:27.200
with, you know, whose side of a of a group conflict you're on, that can uh decrease or some

01:23:27.280 --> 01:23:29.840
in some cases eliminate racial categorization in your case.

01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:35.910
If you deconfound race with ecology, that can um uh el eliminate uh differences in in uh

01:23:35.910 --> 01:23:37.030
uh racial stereotypes.

01:23:37.110 --> 01:23:41.590
So I I think it's a really interesting um line of work that that delves you know deeper

01:23:41.590 --> 01:23:46.950
into the nuts and bolts of this important you know part of uh you know modern culture uh

01:23:46.950 --> 01:23:49.990
and and and really uh I don't know giving a lot of insight into it.

01:23:50.630 --> 01:23:55.110
And the the underlying evolutionary logic here um that I'll just toss out maybe for

01:23:55.110 --> 01:23:59.430
listeners who aren't familiar with it is that um humans across evolutionary history would

01:23:59.430 --> 01:24:04.040
not have encountered people of different races, um, very often, if at all.

01:24:04.200 --> 01:24:10.040
And so we wouldn't have expected evolved mechanisms that would encode race as

01:24:10.040 --> 01:24:11.160
a social category.

01:24:11.640 --> 01:24:11.800
Right.

01:24:11.960 --> 01:24:16.200
And it's I I think to me, it's a lovely example of, and I think all everything we've talked

01:24:16.200 --> 01:24:22.120
about, like juror decision making, legal decision making, racial categorization, it's

01:24:22.120 --> 01:24:27.640
the idea that beneath the surface, there's sort of a hidden

01:24:27.640 --> 01:24:33.310
logic that if you understand it, you can better understand what's happening

01:24:33.470 --> 01:24:34.990
and possibly change it, right?

01:24:35.070 --> 01:24:38.590
So like you're talking about legal decisions that are happening right now as we speak.

01:24:38.670 --> 01:24:42.990
Like people are literally deciding if somebody's guilty or not as we speak.

01:24:43.230 --> 01:24:48.190
And it's for reasons that maybe aren't good, like because somebody just seems gross to

01:24:48.190 --> 01:24:48.350
them.

01:24:48.430 --> 01:24:52.340
And that's completely irrelevant and bad that they're doing that.

01:24:52.500 --> 01:24:58.020
Um and so I think what I like about all this work is that it shows that there's sort of a a

01:24:58.020 --> 01:25:03.700
hidden logic that if you unpack it, you can sort of get at the the

01:25:03.700 --> 01:25:06.980
machinery in a way that we can then better evaluate.

01:25:07.060 --> 01:25:09.380
Like does this make sense, yes or no?

01:25:09.540 --> 01:25:11.860
Which is a different issue, but still um yeah.

01:25:12.020 --> 01:25:15.060
So I I like that that that's sort of a through line of all that work.

01:25:15.490 --> 01:25:15.730
Yeah.

01:25:16.130 --> 01:25:18.530
People have used the phrase deep rationality.

01:25:19.250 --> 01:25:20.690
And I think it's a good one.

01:25:21.010 --> 01:25:21.330
Yeah.

01:25:21.570 --> 01:25:23.010
Have you thought it all?

01:25:23.170 --> 01:25:25.410
Um, because I know we're both here.

01:25:25.490 --> 01:25:29.090
Um, and people ask me all the time, like, what do you think about the relationship between

01:25:29.090 --> 01:25:32.850
the coalitional work and the ecology work?

01:25:33.170 --> 01:25:37.410
And, you know, maybe we can also just pin that for another time, or you and I can talk

01:25:37.410 --> 01:25:40.290
about like I I I am not sure what I think about it.

01:25:40.370 --> 01:25:46.180
And I'm curious if you've thought about that that relationship in the sense that we

01:25:46.180 --> 01:25:50.980
both have done this work showing that race is being used as a proxy for some other deep

01:25:50.980 --> 01:25:52.580
rationality thing.

01:25:53.300 --> 01:25:58.020
But what what have you thought about sort of what what's up with the relationship between

01:25:58.020 --> 01:25:59.620
ecology and coalition?

01:26:00.340 --> 01:26:06.110
I have not put a lot of thought towards it, other than um I've

01:26:06.110 --> 01:26:09.630
also seen that there is likely a connection there.

01:26:09.870 --> 01:26:14.430
And that it's interesting that that race is being used as a proxy for both of those things.

01:26:14.670 --> 01:26:14.910
Yeah.

01:26:15.070 --> 01:26:16.510
Um, but I haven't no.

01:26:16.670 --> 01:26:18.350
I would like to talk more at something about it.

01:26:18.590 --> 01:26:20.670
Maybe we can have that another time or something.

01:26:20.750 --> 01:26:21.070
Yeah.

01:26:21.150 --> 01:26:24.030
I it's a good example of sort of like yeah, me too.

01:26:24.110 --> 01:26:26.510
I've thought about that, but I I've meta thought about it.

01:26:26.590 --> 01:26:29.310
I've thought about it abstractly, but not actually gone through it.

01:26:29.390 --> 01:26:31.390
So yeah.

01:26:32.600 --> 01:26:34.920
So I mean I mean the go ahead.

01:26:35.400 --> 01:26:39.880
No, you know, no, I've just I I I I've been trying to understand, you know, political

01:26:39.880 --> 01:26:45.800
alliance structures and and why um you know uh the the so on the so called white

01:26:45.800 --> 01:26:50.520
working class has uh recently gravitated a lot toward the Republican Party, um which is

01:26:50.760 --> 01:26:53.640
sort of a recent phenomenon in in American history.

01:26:53.800 --> 01:26:57.650
Um and uh I'm I'm trying to wrap my head around that and and why we see a lot of this

01:26:57.650 --> 01:27:03.250
anti-immigrant sentiment um and uh racially coded policy preferences coming from the white

01:27:03.250 --> 01:27:04.050
working class.

01:27:04.130 --> 01:27:07.730
Um, you know, depending on how you want to measure it, you you tend to see these effects.

01:27:07.890 --> 01:27:13.810
Uh and um uh just thinking out loud, I mean, th these are people that you know,

01:27:14.050 --> 01:27:17.250
if you think of the white working class and and African Americans, they're coming from kind

01:27:17.250 --> 01:27:18.450
of similar ecologies.

01:27:18.610 --> 01:27:24.400
Uh and I'm wondering if if if there's something about being in a similar ecology um

01:27:24.480 --> 01:27:27.520
you know evokes a kind of um competitiveness.

01:27:27.600 --> 01:27:33.520
Like you know, we we we talked with um Ann uh Pizor about um how it's

01:27:33.520 --> 01:27:39.520
not so much um uh uh the how far apart uh two groups are

01:27:39.520 --> 01:27:40.960
that that will elicit antagonism.

01:27:41.040 --> 01:27:44.160
It's often the groups that are more similar to each other in terms of their status or

01:27:44.160 --> 01:27:46.320
formidability that where you see the most conflict.

01:27:46.510 --> 01:27:49.870
Uh and I'm wondering if something like that could explain this uh this political

01:27:49.870 --> 01:27:53.950
realignment where you see um, you know, uh uh the white working class developing these sort

01:27:53.950 --> 01:27:57.870
of ethnic resentments that that steer them toward um the Republican Party and toward these,

01:27:57.950 --> 01:28:00.590
you know, uh more uh populist policies.

01:28:00.750 --> 01:28:04.990
Um so I'm cu I'm I'm just thinking out loud here and then spit blank but I'm curious if you

01:28:04.990 --> 01:28:05.870
have any thoughts on that.

01:28:06.540 --> 01:28:07.660
That's really interesting.

01:28:07.820 --> 01:28:13.020
Um, it also reminded me uh as another example uh backs up what you're saying.

01:28:13.260 --> 01:28:18.220
You see that with intersexual aggression too, that um women tend to be most competitive

01:28:18.220 --> 01:28:20.780
with women who are similarly attractive, right?

01:28:20.940 --> 01:28:25.500
They're not being competitive with the the superhottis or the ugos.

01:28:25.820 --> 01:28:26.940
It's yeah.

01:28:27.500 --> 01:28:28.940
Technical terms, huh?

01:28:29.820 --> 01:28:30.300
Right.

01:28:30.460 --> 01:28:35.930
Um it reminds me of the the Saturday Night Live sketch that was Black

01:28:35.930 --> 01:28:36.730
Jeopardy.

01:28:36.890 --> 01:28:42.730
Um, I don't know if you saw that, but they they had Tom Hanks on it, um, who was

01:28:43.050 --> 01:28:48.810
uh MAGA supporter um along with two um other

01:28:49.130 --> 01:28:50.250
black contestants.

01:28:50.330 --> 01:28:56.330
And and the whole shtick was that the contestants were all agreeing on things, and how

01:28:56.330 --> 01:28:59.900
surprising was it that that there was such agreement?

01:29:00.140 --> 01:29:06.140
Um and I think it it's because of this shared ecology uh that that it

01:29:06.140 --> 01:29:09.980
really does drive similar cognition and behavior.

01:29:11.180 --> 01:29:11.820
Yeah.

01:29:12.460 --> 01:29:13.420
Interesting.

01:29:14.460 --> 01:29:15.100
Cool.

01:29:15.740 --> 01:29:18.380
Well, I was also just oh go ahead.

01:29:18.700 --> 01:29:19.100
All right.

01:29:19.670 --> 01:29:24.550
I was also just going to say that we very recently published a paper that shows that

01:29:24.550 --> 01:29:27.750
ecology stereotypes are quite universal.

01:29:28.230 --> 01:29:32.870
So you see them existing in many, many countries around the world.

01:29:33.190 --> 01:29:37.110
And it's not always confounded with race.

01:29:38.390 --> 01:29:43.030
So for example, in Japan, it's very homogenous, racially homogeneous.

01:29:43.110 --> 01:29:48.760
And so you wouldn't expect ecology by race effects, but we do see effects of cat

01:29:49.080 --> 01:29:54.840
other categories that have been confounded with ecology, specifically family structure.

01:29:55.080 --> 01:30:00.440
So there you see that single parent households get

01:30:00.440 --> 01:30:05.160
stereotyped like harsh ecologies, people from harsh ecologies.

01:30:06.120 --> 01:30:10.920
Is the idea that um predicting people's

01:30:11.490 --> 01:30:13.490
impulsivity is really important.

01:30:13.570 --> 01:30:16.530
And so you're picking up cues that would predict that.

01:30:16.930 --> 01:30:20.770
And so that's why we're having this.

01:30:20.930 --> 01:30:25.490
So in that context, maybe people you said which country was it?

01:30:25.570 --> 01:30:25.810
I'm sorry.

01:30:26.450 --> 01:30:26.610
Japan.

01:30:26.850 --> 01:30:27.090
Japan.

01:30:27.170 --> 01:30:27.570
It was Japan.

01:30:27.650 --> 01:30:27.810
Okay.

01:30:27.890 --> 01:30:28.610
I thought it was.

01:30:28.770 --> 01:30:34.610
Um, so in Japan, if I if I live in Japan, I might just really experience that boy,

01:30:34.770 --> 01:30:38.770
the family composition of people just really pops out to me.

01:30:39.200 --> 01:30:44.240
Um, the idea would be though that the reason why that is happening is there's this

01:30:44.240 --> 01:30:50.240
underlying, probably non-conscious process that I'm trying to infer

01:30:50.240 --> 01:30:52.800
what somebody's going to be like, quote unquote.

01:30:52.960 --> 01:30:54.480
And I may not even be aware of it.

01:30:54.560 --> 01:30:56.720
Is that sort of a fair thing?

01:30:57.040 --> 01:30:57.600
Absolutely.

01:30:57.920 --> 01:30:58.640
Interesting, yeah.

01:30:58.800 --> 01:31:03.950
So that yeah, because I think most people, I mean, even when I heard this work, I mean, I

01:31:03.950 --> 01:31:07.710
was skeptical of the coalition work, I was skeptical of the ecology work, and in part it's

01:31:07.710 --> 01:31:10.350
because it doesn't jive with my intuition, right?

01:31:10.590 --> 01:31:13.150
As you said, like a lot of law is based on intuition.

01:31:13.230 --> 01:31:18.990
And we know as psychology, like one of our things is that intuition is valuable because it

01:31:19.070 --> 01:31:23.710
it is sort of a readout of our software, but it's not the description of the software.

01:31:23.870 --> 01:31:28.900
And so like I experience, you know, race, I experience like these pop-out effects of

01:31:28.900 --> 01:31:33.220
certain things, but why I do, or even why I'm attending to it, might not be hidden.

01:31:33.300 --> 01:31:37.380
And I think this is a lovely example of like, I don't think anybody listening would think,

01:31:37.460 --> 01:31:41.940
like, oh yeah, no, ecology is something I'm tracking, or like I'm trying to figure out how

01:31:41.940 --> 01:31:42.820
impulsive somebody is.

01:31:42.980 --> 01:31:45.860
I mean, maybe, like, you know, occasionally I'd be like, oh, that person seems really

01:31:45.860 --> 01:31:50.580
impulsive, but like it's not a category that is sort of intuitive.

01:31:51.190 --> 01:31:57.030
Um, but in the same way, you know, like your visual system calculates

01:31:57.110 --> 01:31:59.830
like how far apart the images are on each eye.

01:31:59.910 --> 01:32:01.910
And that's part of how you experience depth.

01:32:01.990 --> 01:32:06.390
Like we experience depth, but we don't experience like how that's actually working.

01:32:06.550 --> 01:32:11.910
I think it's a similar thing where there's all these sort of like social illusions, but the

01:32:11.910 --> 01:32:14.100
underlying logic is different.

01:32:14.180 --> 01:32:19.620
And I just love, like, I think the ecology work is so important as an example of that.

01:32:19.860 --> 01:32:21.140
Um, yeah.

01:32:21.620 --> 01:32:26.180
So yeah, so I don't know if I have a a question, but yeah, I just want to say, I mean, do

01:32:26.180 --> 01:32:30.820
you think about uh how have people responded to the work?

01:32:30.980 --> 01:32:33.940
Um, like, have you gotten much feedback one way or the other?

01:32:34.100 --> 01:32:39.950
I know it runs counter to a lot of existing theory that had been sort of very

01:32:39.950 --> 01:32:45.070
much in this sort of like it's about race or it's about ideology

01:32:45.950 --> 01:32:48.270
that doesn't look at this underlying deep logic.

01:32:48.350 --> 01:32:50.030
Like, what's the response been?

01:32:50.990 --> 01:32:54.270
So generally the response has been really positive.

01:32:54.350 --> 01:33:00.030
Um, but I'll focus on the the two less positive responses that I've

01:33:00.030 --> 01:33:00.510
gotten.

01:33:00.750 --> 01:33:06.220
Um one has been, are you saying that black people are impulsive?

01:33:06.780 --> 01:33:11.180
Are you claiming that there's a kernel of truth to the stereotype?

01:33:12.140 --> 01:33:18.140
And I am surprised by that criticism because actually the work

01:33:18.140 --> 01:33:20.060
is saying quite the opposite.

01:33:20.220 --> 01:33:25.020
It's saying that there's nothing about blackness that makes people impulsive, that you can

01:33:25.020 --> 01:33:29.740
put a white person in the same ecology and expect it to elicit the same behavior.

01:33:30.460 --> 01:33:34.330
So actually it's very anti-essentialist.

01:33:35.850 --> 01:33:41.210
And then the other critique that we've gotten is well, are you just talking about social

01:33:41.210 --> 01:33:41.690
class?

01:33:41.850 --> 01:33:45.290
Is this really just social class stereotypes or wealth stereotypes?

01:33:45.450 --> 01:33:50.810
And we tried to get at that with that study that that manipulated wealth orthogonally to

01:33:50.810 --> 01:33:51.770
ecology.

01:33:52.810 --> 01:33:58.580
But I I find the the social class question to be a really amusing

01:33:58.580 --> 01:34:04.340
one because um social class theorists

01:34:04.340 --> 01:34:09.620
don't come from the same perspective at all and they

01:34:10.980 --> 01:34:16.020
they would I think be quite

01:34:16.020 --> 01:34:21.710
unwilling to say that their theory applies, for

01:34:21.710 --> 01:34:23.550
example, across species?

01:34:24.590 --> 01:34:30.110
Whereas we are claiming that you do see across species these

01:34:30.270 --> 01:34:31.550
ecology effects.

01:34:32.030 --> 01:34:37.310
And so would you call, this is one question that we've had for social class theorists is,

01:34:37.470 --> 01:34:41.470
you know, would you say that an elephant is a higher class animal than a rat?

01:34:42.660 --> 01:34:47.220
Um and I don't think that they would be willing to make those claims.

01:34:47.540 --> 01:34:47.860
Right.

01:34:48.100 --> 01:34:49.860
So yeah.

01:34:50.100 --> 01:34:50.420
Interesting.

01:34:50.660 --> 01:34:51.780
That's a good question.

01:34:53.380 --> 01:34:54.260
Intuitively, yes.

01:34:54.340 --> 01:34:56.900
I could I could see an elephant wearing a top hat and that.

01:34:57.700 --> 01:34:58.020
Exactly.

01:34:58.260 --> 01:34:59.940
That's great chain of being, exactly.

01:35:00.100 --> 01:35:00.900
That's the study there.

01:35:01.780 --> 01:35:05.140
There's also a version of the social class thing that is the theory, right?

01:35:05.220 --> 01:35:09.910
Like I mean, I actually wonder how much people like when they say social class, are they

01:35:09.910 --> 01:35:11.510
actually talking about ecology, right?

01:35:11.670 --> 01:35:17.190
Like I actually um like that's also the other way to talk about it is that actually in the

01:35:17.190 --> 01:35:21.510
same way that race is sort of a proxy for this underlying thing.

01:35:21.590 --> 01:35:25.190
I think when people are actually talking about social class, often they're talking, you're

01:35:25.190 --> 01:35:30.550
right, not about like absolute amounts, but it's about, you know, these other things, which

01:35:30.630 --> 01:35:33.510
there in some sense is the right thing to be looking at, right?

01:35:33.920 --> 01:35:34.000
Yeah.

01:35:34.080 --> 01:35:37.840
It's almost like you're what you're doing is you're providing a theory of what social class

01:35:37.840 --> 01:35:38.000
is.

01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:38.480
Right.

01:35:38.640 --> 01:35:38.880
Right.

01:35:39.040 --> 01:35:42.560
As opposed to offering, you know, a saying, you know, it's a different theory than than

01:35:42.560 --> 01:35:42.640
this.

01:35:42.720 --> 01:35:46.160
It's like, yeah, social class obviously matters, and we have class-based stereotypes and

01:35:46.160 --> 01:35:50.720
blast class-based hierarchies, but you're providing insight into what that actually means

01:35:51.040 --> 01:35:52.240
in a really interesting way.

01:35:52.400 --> 01:35:54.240
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And in a non-essentialized way.

01:35:54.320 --> 01:35:59.570
It's sort of saying here's the here's the like causal structure in the world, and here's

01:35:59.570 --> 01:36:05.570
the uh Q structure, and it has nothing to do, it's it's a complete arbitrary

01:36:05.890 --> 01:36:06.530
thing.

01:36:06.770 --> 01:36:12.370
Like you could you could set up a scenario where like any attribute becomes correlated with

01:36:12.370 --> 01:36:16.530
this, or any feature of the world becomes predictive of it, and you would predict this is

01:36:16.530 --> 01:36:18.210
what people would latch on to.

01:36:18.370 --> 01:36:24.260
So it's not only causal, but it's exactly as you said, like not it's getting rid of all

01:36:24.260 --> 01:36:28.580
the essentialism that has nothing to do with skin color, has nothing to do with the way

01:36:28.580 --> 01:36:33.220
people talk, it has nothing to do with any like X, Y, or Z attributes, um, you know,

01:36:33.380 --> 01:36:35.700
whether it's a species, an elephant or rat.

01:36:35.860 --> 01:36:39.620
It's just, it's just these, anything that correlates with this deep structure.

01:36:39.780 --> 01:36:40.100
Yeah.

01:36:40.500 --> 01:36:46.170
I I'm wondering, I mean, uh now now my mind is racing with thoughts about um, you know uh

01:36:46.330 --> 01:36:49.930
conspicuous consumption and signaling of class membership.

01:36:50.490 --> 01:36:51.850
It was the elephant in the top hat.

01:36:51.930 --> 01:36:52.330
It was the elephant.

01:36:52.650 --> 01:36:53.930
Yes, that that's what that's what yeah.

01:36:54.890 --> 01:36:55.130
Yeah.

01:36:55.210 --> 01:36:59.610
I mean presumably we have all sorts of social signals, ways of uh communicating, you know,

01:36:59.690 --> 01:37:02.890
our class membership, you know, signaling that we're a member of the upper class, we're not

01:37:02.890 --> 01:37:07.130
a member of the the lower class, you know, um and we you know from the way we dress, the

01:37:07.130 --> 01:37:11.130
way we talk, you know, the the the books we read, the furniture we have, you know, our our

01:37:11.210 --> 01:37:16.760
our our opinions uh uh presumably in in in in in significant uh part

01:37:17.000 --> 01:37:18.840
function to signal our our class membership.

01:37:18.920 --> 01:37:22.600
And I wonder if you could connect this work to that, where, you know, the things that are

01:37:22.600 --> 01:37:27.160
effective class signals are things that are are signaling, you know, uh aspects of these

01:37:27.160 --> 01:37:30.920
ecology stereotypes like impulsiveness or present-orientedness or or whatever.

01:37:31.080 --> 01:37:36.120
Like if I can sit through a long, boring uh book, you know, from the 17th century, that's

01:37:36.120 --> 01:37:39.670
going to convey, you know, that I have a low present-orientedness orientedness and

01:37:39.670 --> 01:37:42.470
therefore that's a cue of you know upper class culture.

01:37:42.630 --> 01:37:47.270
Um and and and that might be a common thread to a lot of, you know, so so unso uh so a so

01:37:47.350 --> 01:37:49.350
called um highbrow culture.

01:37:49.430 --> 01:37:53.670
That the common thread there is that it takes a lot of, you know, self control and and um

01:37:53.990 --> 01:37:59.590
future orientedness to uh master the the the refinery of of you know the the highbrow

01:37:59.590 --> 01:37:59.910
culture.

01:37:59.990 --> 01:38:03.990
That the you know I I could see lots of interesting directions uh coming out of this

01:38:03.990 --> 01:38:04.550
analysis.

01:38:05.120 --> 01:38:05.840
Oh, 100%.

01:38:06.400 --> 01:38:11.440
We have long been interested in trying to figure out what are the cues that people are

01:38:11.440 --> 01:38:13.360
using to infer ecology.

01:38:13.840 --> 01:38:15.760
I think that's a very interesting question.

01:38:16.480 --> 01:38:21.120
There's also the problem of like um kids are really impulsive.

01:38:21.360 --> 01:38:25.840
So there would have to be like a correction on this system too for sort of like accounting

01:38:25.840 --> 01:38:29.710
for the fact that they're kids, but then like within that sort of tracking, you know,

01:38:29.870 --> 01:38:33.710
because I think there's also a lot of rhetoric of like there's the outgroups kids too,

01:38:33.790 --> 01:38:33.950
right?

01:38:34.110 --> 01:38:39.230
Like I w so I wonder like the intersection of like perception of kids um and kids being

01:38:39.230 --> 01:38:42.750
impulsive is like another interesting wrinkle in all this.

01:38:43.150 --> 01:38:43.630
Mm-hmm.

01:38:44.430 --> 01:38:44.670
Yeah.

01:38:44.830 --> 01:38:49.870
Steve Newberg would say that there aren't just independent sex stereotypes, age

01:38:49.870 --> 01:38:53.950
stereotypes, ecology stereotypes, that they're actually sex age ecology stereotypes.

01:38:54.350 --> 01:38:54.990
Right.

01:38:56.240 --> 01:38:57.360
Super interesting.

01:38:57.520 --> 01:38:58.000
Yeah.

01:38:58.320 --> 01:39:00.000
So much more to talk about.

01:39:01.520 --> 01:39:04.880
We are quickly running to the end of our session here.

01:39:05.040 --> 01:39:09.920
We usually have a question, which is is there something we should have asked you?

01:39:14.240 --> 01:39:15.680
I don't think so.

01:39:16.000 --> 01:39:20.640
I think we covered all of the topics I was hoping to touch on.

01:39:23.150 --> 01:39:25.550
I can't think of anything off the top of my head now.

01:39:26.030 --> 01:39:28.030
What was your motive in asking that question, Dave?

01:39:28.110 --> 01:39:29.710
I wonder if that should affect our.

01:39:39.790 --> 01:39:41.950
And the furniture behind David and my books.

01:39:50.140 --> 01:39:55.740
Keila, is there anything um that if people are interested in sort of the

01:39:55.740 --> 01:40:01.740
intersection of evolution and the law, um, like can you point them either to you or like

01:40:01.820 --> 01:40:05.820
what would if you if if there's like a student or just like some person out in the world

01:40:05.820 --> 01:40:10.700
who's sort of interested in evolutionary approaches to the law, what would you sort of

01:40:10.700 --> 01:40:16.530
point them towards as sort of inroads into that or um obviously your

01:40:16.530 --> 01:40:17.570
your own work.

01:40:18.050 --> 01:40:22.450
You know, is there a certain work of yours that they should start reading, or what would

01:40:22.450 --> 01:40:23.970
you point them towards?

01:40:24.930 --> 01:40:26.050
Oh, great question.

01:40:26.290 --> 01:40:32.290
Um I would say that I had the distinct

01:40:32.290 --> 01:40:38.050
pleasure and honor of co-organizing a special issue in evolution and human

01:40:38.050 --> 01:40:41.010
behavior on uh evolution and law.

01:40:41.410 --> 01:40:47.380
And so that is a bait collection from some fantastic people, all thinking

01:40:47.380 --> 01:40:52.180
about legal questions or justice related questions from an evolutionary perspective.

01:40:52.340 --> 01:40:55.220
So I think that would be a great place to start.

01:40:55.460 --> 01:41:00.260
Um, I really like the paper that I contributed to that special issue.

01:41:00.420 --> 01:41:04.740
It was an ecology stereotypes paper, but it was looking specifically at stereotypes of

01:41:04.740 --> 01:41:05.700
criminality.

01:41:05.940 --> 01:41:09.700
So who we think commits different kinds of crime.

01:41:09.860 --> 01:41:15.550
Um, and it turns out that race based criminality stereotypes are actually

01:41:15.550 --> 01:41:17.950
ecology based criminality stereotypes.

01:41:18.670 --> 01:41:23.310
So that I think is cool work that I would like people to be aware of.

01:41:24.110 --> 01:41:28.030
I would also say shout out to Carlton Patrick.

01:41:28.270 --> 01:41:32.670
I don't know if you've had him on to interview already.

01:41:32.910 --> 01:41:33.710
No, not yet.

01:41:34.030 --> 01:41:39.220
Well, he is an evolutionary psychology and law person.

01:41:39.460 --> 01:41:42.100
He's also funnier and better looking than I am.

01:41:42.340 --> 01:41:47.620
So he would be a great, great guest to have um to chat with.

01:41:47.860 --> 01:41:49.860
And his work is really, really cool.

01:41:50.100 --> 01:41:53.220
So I would point people in his direction as well.

01:41:53.700 --> 01:41:54.420
Fantastic.

01:41:54.580 --> 01:41:55.300
That's great.

01:41:55.860 --> 01:41:56.420
Thank you.

01:41:56.500 --> 01:41:57.300
That's that's great.

01:41:57.380 --> 01:42:02.420
We'll have to have Carlton on and uh Carlton should Venmo you or something after that.

01:42:02.500 --> 01:42:03.140
Yeah.

01:42:05.170 --> 01:42:07.170
Uh yeah, this is wonderful.

01:42:07.250 --> 01:42:11.810
David, do you have anything, any last any last minute questions to help you with your life

01:42:11.810 --> 01:42:12.770
of crime?

01:42:13.250 --> 01:42:19.170
Um well I think uh I uh I hereby declare

01:42:19.170 --> 01:42:22.850
this episode guilty of being uh interesting and fun.

01:42:25.820 --> 01:42:26.620
Sustained.

01:42:27.020 --> 01:42:27.340
Oh.

01:42:27.660 --> 01:42:28.140
All right.

01:42:28.460 --> 01:42:28.940
Nice.

01:42:29.100 --> 01:42:30.380
Uh fantastic.

01:42:30.620 --> 01:42:36.300
So um on that note, um, let let the what does the foreman do?

01:42:36.460 --> 01:42:39.420
Do they it's like the members of the jury are adjourned?

01:42:39.580 --> 01:42:40.540
What is that?

01:42:41.340 --> 01:42:41.580
Yeah.

01:42:42.460 --> 01:42:43.020
Court adjourned.

01:42:43.260 --> 01:42:44.300
Yeah, the court adjourns.

01:42:44.620 --> 01:42:45.740
Thank you so much for your time.

01:42:45.900 --> 01:42:46.380
Yeah.

01:42:46.460 --> 01:42:48.940
I really appreciate getting the chance to speak with you both.

01:42:49.250 --> 01:42:50.530
Yeah, no, it's fantastic.

01:42:50.690 --> 01:42:53.090
I I love um I love this work.

01:42:53.170 --> 01:42:55.410
And Keila, you're just one of the people.

01:42:55.570 --> 01:43:00.770
When I think of like who's the usual suspects doing fantastic cutting edge experimental

01:43:00.850 --> 01:43:06.850
psychological work um in uh in just evolutionary psychology,

01:43:06.930 --> 01:43:09.010
like you are one of the people I always think of.

01:43:09.250 --> 01:43:15.170
And so um thank you for coming on and being uh and representing um the work that's being

01:43:15.170 --> 01:43:15.410
done.

01:43:15.490 --> 01:43:17.090
I think it's it's really important.

01:43:17.520 --> 01:43:23.360
Um, and it's it's super important given that there are literally like life and death

01:43:23.360 --> 01:43:24.880
consequences to all this stuff.

01:43:25.040 --> 01:43:30.320
So thank you for sharing it um and giving people to a chance to listen to to what you're

01:43:30.320 --> 01:43:30.640
doing.

01:43:30.960 --> 01:43:32.160
Thanks so much.

01:43:36.640 --> 01:43:42.430
Um, David, um you are um not only allowed to, but

01:43:42.430 --> 01:43:45.230
we would encourage you to uh support the podcast.

01:43:45.470 --> 01:43:50.750
It's not against the law um to not support the podcast, but it would still be nice if you

01:43:50.750 --> 01:43:51.390
did do that.

01:43:51.790 --> 01:43:57.230
Yeah, it's not uh super erogatory, as the philosophers would say, but it is uh uh, you

01:43:57.230 --> 01:43:58.430
know, uh admirable.

01:43:58.830 --> 01:43:59.550
What does that mean?

01:43:59.870 --> 01:44:04.980
I think uh last I read it was like something about how it's not like uh oblig obligatory,

01:44:05.060 --> 01:44:07.940
but like it's still praiseworthy, like like donating to charity.

01:44:08.020 --> 01:44:12.500
You're not like required to donate to charity, it's super erogatory if you do it, you know.

01:44:12.900 --> 01:44:13.220
Okay.

01:44:13.460 --> 01:44:16.820
It sounds not it sounds like something else, but that's great.

01:44:16.900 --> 01:44:19.220
Um, it's a good word of the day for you.

01:44:19.620 --> 01:44:25.620
Um subdogsastic is another one, which to my mind is just means um it's not conscious

01:44:25.700 --> 01:44:27.300
and there's like complicated stuff going on.

01:44:27.620 --> 01:44:30.100
Sub persona believes, yeah, subdogsastic.

01:44:30.180 --> 01:44:31.300
So yeah, this philosopher is man.

01:44:31.540 --> 01:44:37.470
Anyway, um, please, if you're willing to tolerate the fancy words and

01:44:37.470 --> 01:44:42.110
you're enjoying the guests in the conversation and the topics that we're covering, we would

01:44:42.110 --> 01:44:43.390
encourage you to support the podcast.

01:44:43.470 --> 01:44:45.150
And David, how can people do that?

01:44:45.790 --> 01:44:49.310
They can uh say a kind word about us on social media.

01:44:49.390 --> 01:44:52.910
They can leave us a kind review, they can visit our Patreon page.

01:44:53.070 --> 01:44:58.350
Uh any little thing you do helps, and it gives us the time and money to read more fancy

01:44:58.350 --> 01:45:02.420
books to learn fancy words like uh subdoxastic and supererogatory.

01:45:02.660 --> 01:45:03.060
Awesome.

01:45:03.140 --> 01:45:07.540
Uh without further ado, uh that here here's the end of the

01:45:08.660 --> 01:45:09.220
goodbye.

01:45:09.860 --> 01:45:11.220
Here's the goodbye.