Evolutionary Social Psychology with Steve Neuberg
2026-05-12 12:00:00.000 +00:00

This is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast. Actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists. Boom. Let's just say Steve. Yeah, we'll say Steve. Okay, uh now that we're this is like the Christina introduction where we haven't gotten past the name yet. But just like the Christina episode, this is a lovely episode. And it was a bit different in the sense of we actually are talking a lot about science and just sort of history and the ebbs and flows of one person's journey in science and how they view it and thinking about evolution and social psychology and reputations and old the old guard and the new guard and all those things. Yeah, very much about the sociology of science and how Steve has fit into this.

I mean, he's done a great job of, you know, we mentioned this in the podcast about how he he has had some success in translating ideas and getting a lot of positive reception among people who have not been steeped in evolutionary ideas, and he's a very good translator and missionary for the evolutionary social sciences. And we got into, you know, how he pulled that off, where, you know, what barriers still remain, um, what problems still remain in in the social sciences and in psychology in particular, and and how whether scientific progress is is going in the right direction or not. Uh yeah, this was kind of a deep meta. It was kind of a I I loved it. Yeah. I think especially if you're a student um uh or a student at heart, Uh I

don't know. It's just it's just sort of like a journey of how do you figure out what the heck we're doing? This was sort of an episode about that. And I think if you're interested in evpsych and social psychology, Steve Newberg is a really important person in the history of bringing those areas together. But if you're even just more interested in figuring out, well, how do I go to a conference where people don't assume what I'm doing makes sense? Um, this is also a helpful thing to hear. Um and I think we all struggle with that. Yeah, for sure. No, this was this was this is a great time. Steve's a great hang. So I think you'll you'll have a good time listening to this one. Yeah. Enjoy. Steve, thanks for being here.

Um we have had we've had some social psychologists on. And some of them are people who grew up in evolutionary social psychology. We've only had a few people who found evolution after they were already in social psychology. To my mind, you are one of the key people who brought the two fields together. And I don't think I even know this. Can you tell us a little bit about either how you found integrating evolution with social psychology, either personally or sort of what was your thought process? Because I think a lot of students may take it for granted that the two go together, but that wasn't always true. Yeah, you know, it uh it it came to me late and it actually came to me it it came to me in in pieces, I think.

Uh I actually, I mean, I had a tortured route to becoming a psych major, right? I wasn't gonna be a psych major. I started as a biomajor. I was gonna be uh I was gonna be Hawkeye Pierce. I was gonna be a smart ass cardiac surgeon. Uh and uh and so I was gonna I was gonna go to med school and when I was an was an undergrad uh uh I I hated the all the the early level bio courses and chemistry course. I mean, they were all memorizing. It was it was all sort of leadout for folks who wanted to go to med school. And it was really uninspiring and it was boring. I was I liked the labs. Uh I liked the labs, but I hated what you needed to do, and I just didn't want to do it enough, right? To uh to be just memorizing all the time and and grinding.

Uh and so I wasn't I wasn't doing particularly well. Uh I wasn't liking it. I was exploring a lot. I was taking political philosophy classes and I was doing all sorts of things. I did take uh an animal behavior class in bio that I found really interesting. And uh one day one of my fraternity brothers said, Well, you like animal behavior? I'm taking this intro-cycle class. Uh I hear it's a great class. You know, why don't you why don't you take that? You know, people are animals, right? Yeah, okay, people are animals. And uh and so I took this class and it was uh it was held by uh it was held in the in the Cornell Performing Arts uh Auditorium, Bailey Hall, Bailey Auditorium, 1500 students. And I think I think it was probably the one of the first classes in any discipline that

went big and went multimedia. And so you hit week twelve or whenever they get to social psychology in this. And what the instructor had was in addition to like the Milgram films and the Ash films, which were great, he had uh Cornell and Stanford were sharing the candid camera archives. And uh and so he was showing clips of these just funky little s you know social situations where essentially, you know, the guy that this is this is the old candle camera back like in the in the 60s or whatever. Uh they'd be doing like these little experiments, these little sort of demo experiments, right? And it all sudden occurred to me. I'm sitting in the class and I'm I'm hearing about ash and uh the studies there.

And so, wait, you can do experiments on people, right? You can do you can do science on people's behavior way better than other animal behavior, you know, from my perspective. And I was hooked, you know, I was, you know, the the roof opened up and the sun started rays started coming in and doves started singing and angels were flying around. And I became a a sort of a social psychologist right at that moment. And at at Cornell at the time, if you weren't like in engineering or something, they didn't actually let you uh declare a major till the end of your sophomore year if you were in arts and sciences. And so I, you know, walked over to the psych building. This is before internet and online stuff.

Walked over, you know, walked into the, you know, the secretary's office and said, I want to be, I want to, you know, be a psych major and I want to do social psychology research. And you know, she said, you know, we've got this brand new uh faculty member coming in in the fall from Stanford. Uh his name is Tom Gilovich. And you know, the back this is students uh we didn't have like professional advising, faculty advised students on things. He said he'll be your advisor. I said, Great, you know, he's social whatever. And I showed up and and right off the bat, you know, I was essentially Gilovich's very first student. Uh he didn't have grad students yet, he hadn't been able to, you know, recruit folks or

whatever, and just sort of jumped right into stuff and uh and just got to play and started thinking and just started thinking about science and stuff but I had the bio background a little bit and it was always sort of it was hovering but I really wasn't really thinking and he really is he doesn't like I don't know if he'd say this now he he doesn't he doesn't really like evo psych he doesn't get it he doesn't understand the approaches uh to it Uh social psychologists ought to love evolutionary psychology, right? Because it's fundamentally about how environments and ecology sort of shape, you know, you know, what what our what our psychology is, right? I mean, it's it's just it's sort of social psychology writ large and deep, right?

And and uh they oughta like it. But didn't really like it. But he was a great mentor and he let me explore and so uh through that I ended up, you know, I had another sort of early champion, John Barge, you might know of of John, because I was interested, I was I did an honors thesis, which I was only allowed to do because my grades weren't good enough. My grades weren't good enough to to do an honors thesis, right? And and Tom being a young guy and being naive, whatever, you know, pleaded for me or whatever. And I said, Okay, fine, fine, you're a young guy. We'll we'll we'll give you something here. And uh they let me do an honors thesis. And I met John through just doing a study that was sort of extending some of the work that

he had and I just really got into it. And then uh you know, I did a I did a sexual, I mean my one of my other first studies, my first real not real, my first sort of semi-uh research study that wasn't with Tom was actually in Sandy Bem's sex rules class, where for an extra credit for a fourth credit, you could you could you could do a study. And I just did this observational study of who was holding doors open for whom at the campus bookstore. So here we are, you know, in at highly liberal Cornell University in 1981 or something. And you know, did the sex roles, the the the the norms of men holding girls doors open for women. Women, of course, would be wholly opposed to this, right? I mean, this is a highly liberal place.

You know, we had you know anti-apartheid, you know, shanty towns in the middle of campus, right? This was a highly activist liberal uh place. And it turns out, yeah, yeah, that it turns out that men still open the door the doors for women, and women quite happily let them do that. And not only that, men open the door for men. Uh, and women don't open the door for other women. They open, they walk right on through. They anyway. And so I wrote up this paper on this. And the only response I got from Sandy Ben was on the cover of the paper, which said, uh, A, uh, this is a great paper. Can I put this on reserve in the library as an example for other students? And you know, so I got these like mentoring experience.

I I was getting into the science, thinking about it a little bit, not deeply, but I got into it. Susan Fisk, uh so I ended up going I almost went to I almost went to UCSP to to work with David Hamilton. In the end it was between the two of them. And the reason, and of course David's never been a fan of uh Evo Psych. I I gave a talk before you ended up uh there. Actually you may have been a grad student there at the time. I gave a talk on on sort of some evo approach to some prejudice work I was doing at the time. And afterwards he said, Yeah, but why do you need evolution for this? I mean, you know, isn't this whatever? It's like, well, because you actually want to understand it, David. I took a graduate class with David uh Hamilton.

He was lovely. He's always been he is lovely. I I think he's lovely. But yeah, we there was always a little bit of um uh not entirely meeting uh I would put it as yeah. You know the reason I didn't go to UCSP because David was a high I mean he was a really famous social cognition stereotyping person and that was really up the alley of uh of what I was w getting interested in. And uh as I was g as the as the days were getting closer to having to make a decision, it's probably you April 7th or something. I get this manila envelope in the mail. Again, there's like no internet. I mean, people aren't sending stuff to each other, right? I mean, everything's by mail. You're getting letters. And I get this middle envelope.

And I open up the middle envelope. It's from David. I open up the middle envelope and I unfold this big poster of Santa Barbara on the beach, right? The little marsh there, whatever, right? And I look at this thing and say, I'm such a bad student. If I go to Santa Barbara, it's gonna be a backfire. Right. So I went to Pittsburgh and I to work with uh someone who worked with Susan uh Fisk, which turned out to be great. But I think what led me to, and so this was a really long ramble to get towards your answer. With Susan, we were sort of on the cutting edge in social cognition of trying to bring motivation into cognition. I mean the motivation had been in there a little bit, but the but the base model, the

presumption was at that time was that we operate like a computer and emotion and motivation are adds on. In fact, Susan's early model actually was just adding tags, right, to c to cognitive representation, adding affect tags, plus minus, right, to concepts that we would have. I mean, this was sort of the model. And we were starting to push this idea that no, that the that the kind of processing you're going to engage in was going to differ depending on sort of what what goals were sort of important to you at the time. And you know, the work that we did uh that ended up I think being pretty important was, you know, when do people stereotype and when do they go beyond their stereotypes and individuate and what are the circumstances?

What you know, I was focusing on what are the motivations. She was focusing on what are the informational circumstances that would lead you to give up your stereotypes. And I was really interested in what are the motivational circumstances and really thinking about, you what we would now think about in terms of interdependence. We were calling it outcome dependency at the time. But you know, what's the relationship with this person that would lead me to need to understand this person better so I could predict their uh behaviors, right? Because the aim uh from my perspective back then, it wasn't all social cognition, was that we think in order, we think about people because we want to understand what they're gonna

do because we have to interact with them. And I didn't quite have that wasn't solid in my mind now then like it like it is now, but the but the foundations were were really there. And I left a I left Carnegie Mellon, I did a year postdoc in Waterloo and I came here and I had Kenrick here. So you think that Kenrick is the reason why I got into. And it actually isn't. We did a little bit of work after this, but the very first thing, uh, I presume you guys know the name Robin Fox, anthropologist from okay. Robin Fox wrote, I don't know if you've ever seen this paper. It's more of an essay in Psych Inquiry on stereotyping prejudice. And it and what was the title? The title of the paper is something like an unfinished mind.

And so it's a target article. Uh it's a it's a it's a beautifully written article. It's a fun article uh to read. I still assign it to students. and uh uh in which he argued that prejudice and stereotyping is sort of lower my hand. Uh uh for those on on uh uh the acoustic format, Steve just raised his hand in Zoom. So if you have a question, Steve. I'm I'm Jewish, I talk with my hands and possible and uh he wrote this incredible paper where he argued for the fact that prejudice is sort of the default natural state and for good reason, right? That stereotyping and and and having and having affects towards people that can help drive drive behavior towards them, that that was sort of the base. And so, you know, it's uh the it's a targeted article with a bunch of invited commentaries.

I don't I was just a kid then. I don't know why I was invited, but I was invited to to comment on it. And uh I loved the paper uh for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean it's a beautiful paper. Uh but it was uh the argument was that stereotyping was uh was was an evolved uh was was an adaptation for for dealing with certain kinds of challenges. And as I was thinking about it, I was realized, yeah, but the kind of individuation that I talk about and the circumstances under which it happens and for whom we're likely to individuate, that also has to be. And so what's also has to be an adaptation and part of the part of a well-designed system. And then what so now what are what are the factors that sort of switch you from one to the

other? How do you need to think about this? And so my that my response was yes and right and uh and it was really the first time that I really started thinking about my work in a way that uh uh uh Might have had those kind of deeper foundations to it. And so that was one thing. And then Doug and I, and a couple of students, did some work on sort of contrast effects on attractiveness and dominance and men and women, and you know, who would kind of whatever. And that was sort of fun stuff, but it really I really wasn't into it. And then their second thing hit. And this uh is with uh uh another one of your colleagues emeritus now, uh Dave, uh Brenda Major. Yeah. I had been invited. Yes, and and Brenda's more open, and Brenda became more open to thinking about sort of

Brenda actually so Rob Kurzman wrote this paper on on stigma. And he wrote it actually initially for Brenda's class. Brenda really didn't like the paper. Yeah, she told me because I took the same class and I was I was the second leadest student after Rob in that same class in a later class. Yeah. So she told me about that. Yeah. Yeah, she she likes the paper more now, but I ended up uh we ended up talking a lot about it, and she sort of came around on it. But I initially I was at a conference held by Dartmouth University uh up sort of at on on the estate, they had these small conferences that would turn into books where they'd invite like 15 people and around a topic. And so the topic was sort of the you know the social psychology of stigma.

And so it's it was held on the on like the the estate that had been donated by the founder of CBS to Dartmouth. So it was literally on Golden Pond. You guys may not be old enough to know the movie on Golden Pond with Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda, but literally it was on this on this place. So it was a beautiful place. You're out in the middle of the woods. Uh and and the the way the little work conference thing was, is that you didn't talk about your own work. In fact, you only you had seven minutes after dinner, during drink time, to talk about your work. And we would do that like every night for four or five nights. And uh but what you do is that you sit around a big table and there'd be a question for the

morning session, a question for the afternoon, and you got and we you'd argue about the question, you talk it through, and at the end people decide what do they want to write about to go into into this this edited volume on the social psychology stigma. And you know, it was interesting, it was fun, there were a lot of very cool people there. Schaller was was there, he'd probably be the other person who uh uh ended up being sort of ebo. And uh you know, I and you were rooming with people, right? So is that this right? Because it was and so I was rooming with Jack DeVideo, which was sort of cool. A very different kind of social psychologist, right? Very different view than than than mine. But I'm out on a boat during one of these breaks with Brenda Major and Jenny Crocker, who

longtime friends, very, very close. And as they're talking about stigma, I realized that they viewed it as entirely everything was arbitrary, right? I mean, you know, the stigma of whether you wore Jordash or Wrangler or Levi's jeans was functionally the same as being sort of stigmatized because you uh you free ride uh on your community members or because you're walking around all diseasy or you're because you're from a different tribe or because right, whatever. Uh and for them it was all it was just all sort of deviance off of some kind of norm, and that norm could be entirely arbitrary. And I'm on the boat and I realize this makes no sense at all. Of course, this isn't the case. There has to be some kind of uh uh universality, some deeper function.

And then I started thinking about well, what would be the things that we would stigmatize? And that really sort of got me into the whole perspective that I have, you know, thinking about okay, well, what is the nature of human groups? What do human groups need to be like in order to uh to be uh you know uh valuable that and you know add fitness value for its members, right? And then could we derive from that what those features needed to be? What are the things that then would be stigmatized? So stigma as a form of social control, right? To enable groups to be successful so that, you know, for so that individuals would be getting the fitness benefits out of it. And it was really that that was the big trigger.

I mean, and and and and then Shaler and I were started talking about these kinds of things. And and he, you know, uh uh, I don't know if you've had him on yet. Uh he's just brilliant and a really creative thinker and really fun to play with. I mean really fun to play with over ideas. And we really started uh building some stuff together and then going in other directions and then pulling those directions back together. And uh that's really I think that's really it. So in some ways, you know, you know, Robin Fox, right? Uh you know, Brenda Major, right? Out of uh by being by saying by talking about things in ways that made no sense, right? I teased Brenda about this, right? Brenda, you know, your your ignorance turned me into what I am.

Uh but then having really good mentors along the way that just led me to be open minded and to be thinking integrated. Susan Fisk is a very integrative thinker and and she views herself as sort of supportive of of evo stuff but she doesn't really get it uh in in in a lot of ways I say with great affection Susan if you hear this uh really really important and a and a an incredible mentor and you know Gilovich who's just you know go explore you know do your own thing you know you you you figure out an honors thesis right I'll I'll support you and if you want a project I'll help you at the end if you can't find something but you know just the just the notion of of being open to thinking about different ideas.

And but that Robin Fox essay was really important. And then having dug around, right, to be talking about these things and to be building on them and and and having the the friendship with Shaler and uh we overlap one year here, right? I was a first year faculty member when he was finishing up uh uh here with uh with Chaldini uh and Kenrick and so all those. So that's a really long-winded answer to a very it's a very vivid picture. That's great. Yeah. No, it's one of it's it's great because I think you are um the first guest we've had who sort of came into evolutionary psychology indirectly, and that you had a successful career as a psychologist without um taking an evolutionary perspective, and then all of a sudden

you were you just had various influences and you were persuaded about the value of these ideas, uh and then started running with it. Um I I think one of the key things here, and Kim Hill said something to me, uh that you know, another great colleague across campus, being at ASU was really great uh uh for this as well. I mean, there's so many people around around campus to talk to, but uh you know, I had an I had an idea and I tested that idea, and the data started coming back and and the data are the data, right? Uh and uh one of the things Kim told me once was that he thought that psychology was gonna become more substantially evolutionary before anthropology be accepted more by more traditional folks uh because

psychologists care about data was was was was his uh line on this that the cultural anthropologists it's not really it's not fundamentally uh about about the data to them. And so to have for folks like him to have sway there, he was way more pessimistic about that than he was about, you know, folks like me and folks like you guys having sway within uh within uh psychology. Yeah, it's interesting. That may well be correct. Um and I and I feel like if psychology has been more receptive to evolutionary ideas, particularly social psychology, I think it is largely due to you. I I feel like you're one of the best people for um persuading other non-evolutionary psychologists about the value of these ideas, uh interfacing with social

psychologists and persuading them that these ideas are relevant and valuable to them. Um you're one of the best people at at getting your students jobs in social psychology departments and you know teaching them how to frame their ideas in a way that will be receptive to people who uh are who didn't you know naturally come to these ideas or or or you know or weren't already steeped in them. Um I I feel like you're you're one of the best people who uh who does what I might half jokingly call missionary work of of of bringing people on board um uh to these ideas. And I'm and I kinda I'm curious about you know if you have any insight into um why you've been so successful at that? Um has it been because you know you yourself were persuaded about the value of these ideas

and so you know what worked on you and and and you sort of use those same tools on other people, or what is it that allows you to um bring these ideas to other people in a way that doesn't turn them off, and a way that has you know had such an impact in making evolutionary ideas um more accepted and uh and more mainstream in psychology? Yeah, well, first of all, th thank you for that. Uh I'm I'm flattered uh by that. Uh I I think it's I think it's a few things. I th I think part of it is uh and and and this this may partially be based on my own inconfidence and insecurity, that I often don't lead with sort of the strict derivations from the the deep I I don't I don't so if if if we listen to a talk from a

UCSB person, it'll often start with, okay, so now if we start with first principles and we start with this thing right here, which by the way is going to be foreign to all of you folks over right, or whatever. Right. And then we say and we sort of apply this and we sort of work our way through. Uh one of the benefits I have is that uh I I was never trained as an evolutionary biologist. I never got to take an Evo course from Lita and John or or any of those folks. So I have never taken an Evo course, right? I mean um it's it's it's it's self-taught and with costs, which I which I'll admit because I think I think there are times that uh I get loose and I appreciate folks when they say, you know, you're being a little bit loose uh loose here.

Okay, help me. Uh figures out so I think I think part of it is that because if you because if you've if you start at a place where that feels really foreign to folks I think it's uh even even well intentioned it's it's it's it's it requires work and if the foreignness is associated with a lot of the stuff that evil psych has unfortunately been associated with right you know just just a lot of wrong inferences about what what our assumptions actually are, uh, then I then I think it's really easy for people just sort of to t turn off. I remember what so so Chris Crandall is a very traditional social psychologist. He's a very good friend. I've known him for I actually met him when he was interviewing for a faculty position at

Carnegie Mellon when I was a grad student like a last year grad student there. So we've known each other for what coming up on 40 years now or something. Uh And he once came when I when I first presented some of the work that I've been doing with with Kathy Cottrell on there these, you know, prejudice isn't just valence. It's not just negative, negative affect towards groups, right? There are these different, you know, emotional flavors to them. And those are anger, you know, anger focused prejudices, disgust focused prejudices, and fear and and and uh and they're there for a reason, right? They're they they are they are you know those are those are uh effective adaptive responses to particular threats that these groups are perceived as po and when I started

doing that research and I I was as with a talk I was at a conference on on prejudice, I think up in Madison, and uh I I gave I gave the talk on it, which was really foreign and and it and it was threatening uh to social because it meant that you have to measure prejudice different. It's not there's no prejudice, it's prejudices, right? And they're these qualitatively different things. Uh and those qual and those qualitative distinctions make a really big difference. You know, if you actually want to intervene, right, then intervening, presuming that these are all the same thing, you're you're you're really going to not be very effective. And in fact, we haven't been very effective. Uh and you know, so I gave this talk and it was threatening to a lot of folks, but you

know, Chris came up to me afterwards and says, you know, you you this has to be right. Right. And and I think it was the combination of the data and then and the logic that goes to it and and a and a simpler logic, one that that doesn't need to did it come from first principle I think this is an interesting I should finish sentences right uh so I think this is maybe an interesting difference between sort of the model that we have here for example and the and the UCSB model and I and I see this with uh so Michael Barlow is a colleague of mine now uh and uh and and one of the reasons why I brought him in a long time ago as a as a postdoc, right, was because I wanted to to to put these two perspectives

together and sort of see how uh see how they worked and how they were similar, how they different, and and and how they could build each each other, is that we'll sometimes start with a a phenomenon and then sort of work our way back a little bit and then and and and and cycle a little bit. Okay, here's the phenomena to be explained. What what are the possible explanations and then cycle back? Uh and and I think you know a UCSB model is some is is often starting with the first principles and then saying, okay, well what would now would we expect in working the way out. And I think uh I think it's the the model we have is just a naturally more uh comfortable one for social psychologists, I think.

Uh it's it's it's one that they've been doing their whole career, right? I mean it's it's the one that you know I sort of start with and you know I wasn't trained as an evolutionary uh uh psychologist or or biologist. And and so I think I think that's part of it too, that uh that that people can maybe more quickly get the grasp on the phenomenon and the nuance in the phenomenon. And then if the nuance is a bit of a threat to their current beliefs, okay now maybe and if they're serious scientists, then they need to think about it. Right. Uh I I have I have serious scientists who who focus who do stereotyping and prejudice who still come up to me uh and uh including a former uh recently a former

David Hamilton uh social cognition student who said you know you have to be right it's the it's the it's the like the evo packaging that has so many people uh sort of sort of uncomfortable uh with it and then thinking through what would the implications be. So Carlos Navarette, I don't know if you guys ever knew him. Yeah, I knew Carlos because he was a grad student when I was a grad student at UCLA. Okay. He was at UCLA when I was at UCSB, yeah. Right, right. And uh after we published this PAS paper on sort of uh ecology and stereotypes being confounded with race stereotypes, right? People from you know more harsh, more unpredictable environments that pull for certain kind of behaviors, certain kind of characteristics, certain kind of strategies.

And it turns out that those are highly correlated with some stereotypes about African Americans in the United States, right? And so that that may be a lot of the stereotypes that that we see uh in the United States aren't really fundamentally stereotypes about race, right? But they're but they're maybe fundamentally stereotypes about uh you know uh about the ecology that pe people are are presumed to come from and of course that's very valuable information to have if in fact ecology shapes behavior, which it does. And uh he came after that paper got published, he came up to me at a conference and said, Wow, that was really brave. I said, Why what what was what was brave about that? Uh, you know, you know, psychologists, social psychologists in particular should should

love the idea, right? That it's not fundamentally about race and that it's about uh it's about environments and things like that, right? He said, no, no, no, no. One of the implications of this is that maybe there's a kernel of truth to the stereotypes, right? And and the thing, right, because that the that the uh not that the behaviors being engaged in, they're being engaged in because of the environment, but but that pe people are sort of picking up on those behaviors and they're using them to make inferences and they're extending them out there to the group that there might be a kernel of truth to stereotypes. And I was talking with this former student at David Hamilton's about this a few months ago.

And he said, yeah, but that's not a kernel of truth. What a kernel of truth means, it's not about predicting the it's about that there's an essence that is genetically based. No, no, no, no, no. And I think there's an inference that people make about evo stuff that what we're saying, because there may be these systems that exist that drive these things, that uh uh that they're inherent and that they're deterministic and whatever, and and they're and the ideology just doesn't let them go there, right? I'm not going there. None of us go there, right? They think they think we're going there with it. And so if they're if they adopt a perspective that they're going there or they'll be seen as going there.

And I gave a talk once at at a conference down in Sydney. Uh again, one of these small conferences, they pull people together. Uh uh Kenrick had been to this conference a couple of years earlier, uh, and Wendy Wood had been there as well. And you know, they just just hated uh hated that stuff, hated all the all those ideas uh that Doug was talking about, uh, where he was talking about uh sex differences and and mating and things like that. And I gave a talk on sort of more social cognition-y things and in fact didn't talk about sex differences at all. But I was talking about different motivational systems and how it was shaping different aspects of of cognition about people. Uh and afterwards he came up to me said, now that's a kind of evolutionary psychology I can

like. that I can right and that I that I can and why because it had nothing to do with sex differences and she had these commitments to what it meant what what it meant to be male and female and and what differences look like and where they must come from. And if they came from here then oh my God, if they came from there then that would be okay. And it would right and and and so it was it was sort of driven by commitments. I think we still have that problem. I think some of that problem is coming back. I think over the last five years ago. I think uh, you know, maybe since the murder of Geor George Floyd and a lot more uh sort of social justice activism uh within academia and now backlash and backlash for the backlash

and all that. Uh I think there is more concern about how one comes across uh uh a little bit. Uh but in the end, you know, the the data are the data, yes, they need to be interpreted. And yes, when there are alternative interpretations, we ought to work really, really hard to sort of tease them apart. Right. But what's really clear is that in the areas that I focus on, you know, how people think is so much more nuanced and and and so much more based on trying to solve fundamental challenges of of social living than what our science has uh uh has presumed it to be. You know, if we measure things really simply, you don't you don't uh you don't you don't discover the complexity. And we've had very simple measures because our theories initially call for very simple

measures. Uh and so we don't see the complexity and so people can keep moving on, but we're not making progress without uh diving in deeper, I don't think. Yeah. I kind of want to see if I can take a stab at summarizing your answer. What I hear you saying is that you know there are two approaches to um framing evolutionary ideas and their utility um to studying humans. Um and there's the the Santa Barbara I'm probably caricaturing, but um the Santa Barbara approach is very much we're gonna start with the Big Bang. And if you read the John Tubi talk. The John Tubi method. And if you read any Tubi papers, they tend to start with the Big Bang. They start with you know the thermodynamics and uh replicators and then you know work their

way from first principles to the phenomenon that you're interested in. Yeah I did I didn't learn until listening to the the leader thing that he started off as like a physics major. So you can it makes sense in retrospect. Yeah there's not totally there's not in it a mental state anywhere in that story either which I love but but but yes exactly like it's it's uh physics and design. Yeah totally. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you take a a very different approach. Uh rather than starting with the Big Bang or the law of thermodynamics, um, which could alienate people who uh don't really think about that or don't find it relevant. Um, you start with the thing that people actually care about, which is say prejudice.

So we all it's just so immediately you get on the same page with the people you're talking to. We're both interested in prejudice, we're both interested in in what causes it and how we can change it, right? And when you start from there and then bring in the evolutionary ideas, well, here is how we can gain insight into prejudice and where it comes from and how to change it. Uh then people are going to be much more receptive because you're starting on a on a place of common ground, we share the same goals, and then here's how my approach can help you achieve these goals that we share. Yeah, I I think that's right. But I also think that both are absolutely necessary. And the notion of, you know, Cialdini talks about full cycle psychology in a different kind

of way. But if we think about sort of, you know, just you know, observing uh phenomena and you know understanding the this isn't gonna come out right. Uh uh requiring ourselves to have sort of the the deep logic, Both of those things are true. And I th I think, you know, where I benefit from interacting with uh uh with folks that come out of the Lita and John uh tradition is that they sort of really force me to to think harder and deeper about those things. I think some of the value we add is that we're we're maybe seeing earlier a lot of the complexity that needs to be explained, right? And and those those have to meet, right? Those those those have to meet to have a really, really s strong science of what we're

trying to do here, I think. So I I th I think they're entirely complementary. I don't I don't see them as being competing at all, but but maybe there's a little bit of a uh uh uh an aesthetic difference in sort of where one started or maybe like i said it may it may just be a practice difference right i mean it's i grew up in one place i didn't grow up in the other place and so it's a sort of where where where my mind goes first. Yeah and I like I did I did the a first graduate class. We've there had never been a graduate class in evolutionary psychology at UCSB, believe it or not. And I did I tra transform what was the undergrad class that Lita had been teaching, that I had been teaching since I was a graduate student, and that I taught when I left and taught

elsewhere. I form reformatted that into a grad class and it was doing largely doing a task analysis. Uh and there is and this is also in the um David Lewis et al. bus lab paper, where you can go phenomenon first or adapt a problem first. And you can just sort of and and when you do phenomenon first, it's really, you know, is it, does it quack like a duck? Does it sound like a duck? Does it swim like a duck? You know, you're really just interrogating, well, what is the phenomenon you're talking about? But as you said, Steve, then you're translating that into the job of an evolutionary psychologist is to take an important phenomenon and then have this gambit or these guesses of what are the likely adaptations that are underlying this, you know?

And I like both of you, you like David with humor or with like status games or Steve looking at and looking at prejudice or discrimination or stigma. The skill in the art is to look at a complicated real-world phenomena and pare it down to at least one or two really plausible sets of adaptive problems, which is not easy, but I think that's I think you're describing, Steve, exactly like what it is to be day to day an evolutionary psychologist is you're just looking at the world. Um, and this is even something John Tuby used to say like your job is to just sort of the news, history, day to day life, you're always translating that into what are the adaptations or likely sets of adaptations causing that.

Yeah, no, I I think that's right. I think that's right. Uh it's fun. You know, I I like the fact that they're um that there's sort of these different flavors of approach to it. I mean I I find that uh I I find that enriching. And and I have to say, so uh this is this is the first sabbatical I think I've I've had I'm on tobacco right now. I can't tell that I'm on sabbac right now. I shouldn't be here in my office. That I haven't actually gone to UCSB for a week or so to hang out and to talk to Lita and and the social psychologists and and uh uh everyone else uh there about the idea that would that's like bouncing around in my head, right? And uh I I've done that of I've done that a few times and it's been incredible.

I I probably need to find a way of showing when when is your semester over? So I can show you how to do it. You're not teaching. I have no idea. Yeah. You have to ask any kind of uh uh but yeah, I mean couple weeks. Couple weeks, okay. Yeah, I probably probably I probably missed the opportunity this this year for that. Uh but yeah, uh I've I've always benefited greatly from uh from going to Santa Barbara and uh and talking with folks and throwing the ideas out there and then you know having them uh gently of over a six hour period of time, three or four hours in the in the C E P meetings and then over dinner with Lita and John afterwards, uh you know, having them interrogated uh in really sort of fun ways.

So you mentioned earlier um that you you work with Tom Gilovich and um he just didn't get it in in your words. And and there are still some people who who don't get it. Uh and I'm curious what you think is going on there. What is ex what explains the the holdouts? I mean you mentioned some of it, whether there's some political concerns about there being, you know, genetic determinism or uh or or stuff like that. Um that's probably part of it. Uh do you think that's all the i that's what's not all of it. Okay. Yeah, I I I think that another aspect of it is sort of the David Hamilton comment. Yeah, but why do we need it? Right. And I think this has to do uh I th I used this term in a little bit of a different sense a

few minutes ago, of a sort of a scientific aesthetic. That is what what what are you really trying to accomplish with your sci I mean what sort of feels right or looks right for you at at at what level do you really want to explain? I mean, what counts as explanation for you? What counts as understanding for you? And I th I think that's actually probably the bigger thing. It's like, yeah, yeah, fine, but why do we need it? Let's just, you know, you know, you you got you got a long pathway of a model here. Why don't we just start right here? Right? You know, why why do we need to understand that stuff uh uh as well right and and i think that's and and that and the assumption there uh especially for those

psychologists who are interested in at least having their work be relevant to intervention well geez you know the closer you can intervene to the thing that you want to change maybe the better off you are anyway so do you really need to understand this bigger frame that's that's deeper and and and sort of causally further back uh and I've always wanted to sort of dive in and to and to play with that idea a little bit more because, you know, my intuition on it is that no, it makes a huge difference because it it it it gives you it tells you what territory you need to be in, right? And I think we're missing huge territories, right? Because we're not asking. Uh that because because we're not understanding the adaptive problem.

So we're not looking in the right places, right? And so we're we're, you know, uh yeah, we're blind that we're blind, right? We're sort of theory blind to where a lot of the gr the the the the stronger possibilities might might be, right? And sort of thinking that through and developing that uh a little more. I'll I'll never do it, but I I think that would be a useful thing, you know, in terms of uh, you know, help helping folks uh who who aren't as driven as much by the ideology but just still don't understand, yeah, but why do we need it? And I th and I think there's also this this this different level of curiosity, right? I mean so so Tubi was starting as a physicist. Everything starts it right I mean curious about a lot of things.

Everything needs to connect. Everything needs to connect, right? And uh and I think for a lot of folks everything doesn't need to connect. That's really interesting. Yeah, it's almost like um there are different appetites for explanation. And we just have a really deep hunger to get as deep as possible in the explanatory uh uh depth of of what we're what we're looking at. Um and some people uh are not as hungry for explanatory depth. They're they're they're happy if they can just explain something at at a shallow level, and um that might be you know an individual difference variable. Yeah, I mean at a what I would say for a lot of them it would be at a mechanistic level, but not understanding, you know, why

why those mechanisms and therefore maybe not understanding nuances that they don't see because they don't measure the right stuff. Right. Or they're not seeing alternative mechanisms as well because again they're not thinking about it in terms of the problem that the that this that this ultimate behavior is trying to uh or problems that that they're is trying to solve, right? And so uh I I think I think it's uh it's a blindness outside the particular uh mechanism sort of of current focus. Uh and they wanna they say, okay, there's something here, let's come in and let's and and let's really sort of understand that. Um again, not realizing that there's all this other stuff out there uh that they're not

seeing. thought that came to me about like how these people might be persuaded. You know, it seems to me like what they're trying to do is they're trying to fix a machine. Let's say, let's say it's a car. But um they're ignoring what the machine is and what its function is and what the different parts of it are designed to do. And you're gonna have a much harder time fixing a car if you don't know that what you're fixing is a car and the part you're f if you don't know what part what the function of the part you're looking at is, right? You're gonna have a really hard time. Um it so it seems like if you want to fix the car, you have to understand number one, that it is a car, and number two, that it has a set of functionally specialized parts that are

designed to do different things. And you're gonna have, you know, uh imagine a mechanic who doesn't know what he's fixing and doesn't know the function of the things he's looking at, right? So that might be one argument you could give. Right, or d or doesn't understand what the what the relate so you're going in and you you even even if you understand sort of part of the part of the machine and you're going in to like fix a piston or something like that, uh, or you're trying to make it better or whatever you're trying to do, but you don't realize what the relationship between that piston is and these other things. And if it turns out if it yeah, you can get it cranking faster. If you get it cranking faster, you know the suspension's not going to hold.

I'm making stuff up I don't know. Sure. Right. Right. Yeah. And uh and and and a and a real system wouldn't work like that, right? Sort of a real sort of uh adaptive system wouldn't have pistons that work in the kind of way that its suspension couldn't uh couldn't hold together. Right. I I also think there's it's really one cannot overestimate the sociology of the moral landscape of academia. And I really think that also if you grow up in a world where you're focused on a mechanism and people who are appealing to evolution are using that to essentialize or justify social or gender discrepancies, then it's not only a lack of curiosity, it's also a marker of there's another group of people who have an agenda that's not to figure out the mechanism, but to just

essentialize the existing status quo. And that did that that did happen. And that's not what some evolutionary psychologists or most evolutionary psychologists are doing, but it does make sense why people would have that um perspective. And it's very much uh probably implicit thing of part of theory is sort of a marking, it's like a coalitional or coordination marker of like, who's my moral circle? We're all good, but there's other people who are up to no good. And theory is part of marking that. And so not wanting to adopt another theory has this like loyalty and moral tinge to it. I I think I think that's true. And I and I was if you would have if we would have had this conversation, you know, seven

or eight years ago, what I would have said is that younger people, and I still think this is the case, that that younger scholars are way more open to what we're doing than older scholars, than folks of my generation and and uh and and beyond. Uh because they didn't grow up in the in the in the uh in the social activism and social constructivism sort of days of the sixties and the seventies and and and and all of that and have that be sort of part core of of their identities and of their affiliations or coalitions and and the like. And then the world got easier and simpler and okay now you know we we we can we can look at the world and we don't need these particular lenses. And I think you know younger psychologists were becoming more open to the evolutionary

approach. I do wonder now, like over the last five years or so, whether that's taken uh as taken a hit again. You know, younger younger scientists are different now than uh uh than they were. Uh they're more sensitive to a lot of things, I think they feel more vulnerable. Uh uh they are uh even more cynical of of what they view as power structures which are defined by things that are very much sort of extra sci extra scientific, right? Uh and uh yeah and and and part of so i i think it'll be interesting over these next five or ten years to see you know whether you know the sort of the growth in the acceptance of evolutionary psychology takes a little bit of a a dip a little bit of a of a hit uh i think i think eventually you know the

uh uh the science is gonna win out but i'm an optimist uh Uh but yeah, we'll see. And and and and part of part of my my local pessimism about this might have been I was chair for six years. I was chair during, you know, sort of the COVID George Floyd times where uh young people especially, sort of grad students especially, right, uh just became very, very activated and uh very, very sensitive to things that could be seen as uh uh oppressive in one way or another. And so uh I wonder whether we're gonna we're gonna be fall back into being stereotyped in and in in those ways again. Yeah. Or or we're part of the uh anti oppression um articulation. So uh I I I I feel like the last five or six years, I feel like uh um

I don't know if it's COVID or I don't know if it's the political climate, like not to get political about things. I do feel like as an academic, I'm sort of living through a dying institution. You know, like journals. Uh I mean, I don't know what how David feels about this, but you know, I'm old enough that I feel like I was at the tail end of the golden era of um you could publish an article that didn't have fancy, glossy figures in it. people would read the articles. Maybe I was a kid, and maybe this was all maybe this is just a thing of when you're a kid, the world is ideal, and when you grow up, you realize it's not. Um, but you know, like I'm I'm old enough that I didn't have like as much internet science,

and it wasn't as much like glossy photos. Um, and now it just feels like, especially sped up with like AI and and these things where it's just sort of funding, publishing, um, teaching all of these things just feel like there's it's sort of a dying institution and so even myself like the last five or six years I feel like there is more um more extra scientific garbage um or you're sort of aware of um uh all the ways in which science is being harmed um from all these outside forces and I I feel um I feel more oppressed in the last five or six years. Yeah, that's interesting. Uh holding myself constant. I'm uh I'm uh it's a within participant, uh within subjects effect. Yeah. Right. Uh yeah, I I I I you know share that that vibe, I think.

I th there is a sense that something is decaying. Um maybe it's it's just an illusion. And I'm and I don't know. But curious if you if you share that feeling, Steve. Yeah, I don't know if it's a co I don't know if it's just you get older as a scientist and you realize the ways you you were ideal idealizing the process and then you see the warts and sausage being made, and that's always true. Or if it's really that um, you know, there's there's just a very different experience um That older faculty in my department, for example, didn't have to deal with a lot of these things that now current faculty, especially young faculty, are dealing with that are really new problems. I mean, maybe they had other new problems back in the day, but I think there's a

this may be sort of orthogonal to what you guys are talking about. I think uh Science among serious scientists is getting there's like a pressure to be safer in it, right? Uh and I think part of this came out of uh a lot of very legitimate criticisms, you know, having to do with reproducibility and uh and uh how we were doing, uh how we were analyzing data and and and all of that, you know. Uh and I so I think there's some really legitimate criticism. I think we're doing a lot of that better now, right? Uh but I think people are scientists are uh becoming more afraid of making mistakes and getting caught in mistakes. Uh we've become uh you know science by Arthur Anderson versus by Magellan, right?

That we're so we're concerned with these type one errors, right? We don't want to we don't want to have any false positives. But in and and so we get safe and the science gets narrower and we get more specialized and you know we don't swing for the fences as much, right? Uh but I think there's a huge cost to that, right? Uh you know, you have to head out into the into the open seas. I mean, otherwise the the science gets uh it's what it gets small, right? And uh if you think about times when you don't need small science, I think now times you don't need small science, right? And I and I and I think uh there there have been a lot of concerns in terms of you know what people are willing to do and what people are willing to sort of put out there and what

risks they're willing to take. And partially because the criticism can be so fierce and it can be so quick and it can be so ad hominem. I'm actually not gonna mention her name because this was a really horrible experience for her. But who who had some papers who got seriously criticized. Uh and and some might have been legitimate criticisms, but not based on the morality of the scientists, right? Uh and uh and you know, Susan's dad was Donald Fisk. I don't know if that name rings a bell to you guys, but Fisk and Campbell, he was a very, very sort of important methodologist way back when uh in the University of Chicago. Uh uh and you know, there was a person who like threw out there on social media, you know,

uh Donald Fisk would be spinning in his grave looking at this stuff, right? And it just just cruel, right? And and so I I I think there's this environment out there that the world can see what you do, they can misinterpret what they do, they can label it how they want to. Recovering is way harder, right? Tearing something down right and recovering from accusations is really, really hard. And so I think we're getting a little bit safer. And uh and and I think for people who feel compelled to be safer, right? I think I think uh that has to feel lousy. I think it has to uh feel stifling, or maybe you just get used to it a while and then science changes. And if that's the case, that's you know, that's sort of heartbreaking.

Uh you know, I have a I have a thing. I have I have I have a couple couple things that that you'll that you can see around my office if you wander in. You know, one is uh quote by Einstein, not all that relevant here, but really it's a it's a it's a little bit of a it's a it's a it's a critique of sort of over parsimony right uh that sometimes we way oversimplify things you still have to account for the data right and what and what nature uh says but I have this thing here that's a story about Enrico Fermi who's used who's taking a tour of uh of someone other physicist lab and he's asked afterwards essentially hey so what do you think and uh I Research appears to be technically impeccable, but theoretically unexciting.

But maybe so, but these are like bricks, bricks in the wall of uh in the edifice of science, right? You know, the uh the person comes back to them and says, well, no, we know most of them are just bricks laying around in a in a brickyard. And and the message for that is like, no bricks. We shouldn't be, we shouldn't be, you know, just uh just making bricks, right? They they have to be about something. And uh you know, there's another metaphor I sort of like, especially with students as they're at the stage where it's now time for them to sort of think about an identity, think about what your thing is going to be, you know, start doing this. Uh and it's the metaphor of a shot across a bow. And that, you know, the very first piece of work you do and sort of in with a new question,

a new area, it should be designed to be a shot across the bow. And that is in the sense that if you're right and if the data turn out that people have to say, whoa, huh, this uh this this would change things. If this is right, this sort of if and if I decide I'm gonna take this seriously, right, as a scientist, this has to change things, right? And I think we need to be doing more of that as opposed to I mean I think a lot of people add bricks to their own edifices. I guess that's okay. Adding bricks to someone else's edifice, okay, that that that's fine, but that that to me is uh that's minor league science that what we really need more people doing is and and I don't care if you're wrong, right?

I mean here's the other thing about science that that's incredible, right? I mean, if it's about something important, right? Uh it's people are gonna try to replicate it, they're gonna try to build on it and we'll discover that it's wrong, right? That to me is such a lesser cost than not to go out there and to take the risks and and and and and try to generate something that that would make a difference, right? And how we understand things. Yeah. Derek Gigerenzer has a very similar thing. It's like an older theory and psychology paper where he's at a lunch with students and there's faculty and the young students are asking faculty for advice and the faculty are saying, well, you really want a safe topic that you know you're going to get about three or

four papers worth of data from. Um and then you know you can have your sort of speculative idea you can pursue later when you're a faculty member. And then Gerton is uh Gert style honesty is like that's fine if you want to be mediocre but really you should so it's a similar similar sentiment. Um I hear that but yeah no David yeah go ahead. No no it was so but but but the thing is If if if it's an interesting question, the data are going to be valuable no matter what. You'll still get those three or four papers, you know, worth of you know uh data if you're if you're asking important questions, right? Yeah and uh and you're designing the studies well, right? Yeah. I mean I think that's an important thing.

Yeah, we we we have to be asking questions that are interesting enough that no matter you know what the answer is, it's going to be interesting. Right? Where we uh it's bad when we get into a place where the questions we're asking, they only matter if the if the data come out one way. And if they don't come out that way, then whatever, we'll put it in the file drawer. Like that's a bad place to be for science. We want to be asking questions that really give you interesting data however they come out. Yeah. I I I also like, I mean, I everybody has their own sort of personal situation that they're and I think one's expression of sort of what's going on in science is a readout of that. And I'm aware that like what I'm about to say is largely my experience.

But I also think uh, you know, I also grew up with the theory crisis. Like I actually was submitting, I had a paper out at JPSP under Chick Judd at the same time this the Daryl Bem, the infamous Daryl Bem paper came out. Um and uh I think one of the other problems is there's still we're still this is all a symptom still of the theory crisis because there from a young from a young pers from a younger person's perspective there was a view of the the older guard, which is probably unfair, was uh the currency was like, is it surprising? And if you wanted to do sort of slower science where you just publish like a dirt derivation of what we should be looking for in the mind, or a theory that isn't surprising but is true and hasn't been documented, that's sort of more incremental, but I

would argue more profound because it's it's it's but it wasn't in the currency of surprising. Um that that was that was a generational conflict. And I think some of the I know who you're talking about, you know, the the the Susan Fix student, and it was horrible. I know, I know um her pretty well. Um uh I think some of those were the growing pains, and where I think we're still in the growing pains of as a science, psychology is still not figured out, sort of it hasn't figured out the division of labor of who's doing what and what are all the things that need to be done. And I think some a lot of people feel like victims be in that miscoordination. And then people feel justified to harm other people because they're like, I wasn't valued.

I'm a statistician and I see how everybody's doing everything wrong. And I wasn't valued. So I'm gonna hurt somebody else, or I'm an evolutionary psychologist, and people don't value adaptationism. So I'm gonna hurt somebody else. Or I wanna be shoot for the fences in a phenomenon, but nobody cares about that anymore. So I'm gonna, I think everybody is correct. I think it's just we there that we we're not coordinated enough yet as a science. Yeah, that's I'm I'm trying to think about what coordinated science looks like. I mean so in physics they have you know, they make a distinction between sort of theoreticians and uh and empiricists, right? Uh and uh and and rarely do they do they do they meet, rarely do they do

both things. Uh yeah, I d I d I do think the surprising thing was a was a big and and a and it was a it was a criterion in a lot of journals and and I think it was a big problem. Uh but I think it was a it was it was the version of surprising that was the big problem. That is that it had to surprise your your well evolved intuitions, right? Which also meant that that a lot of those things were gonna be wrong. Exactly. I mean right. Uh but there's a lot of things. It was like I think there's a c it's a Kurt Gray and uh Dan Gilbert paper. Uh how to do that. Dan Wagner, maybe. Dan Wagner, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we forget that your grandmother knows a lot of things. She's pretty smart.

Well, you know what? But she knows she knows everything. She knows she knows that absent makes the heart grow fonder and she knows that out of s she knows out of sight, out of mind. She actually knows both of those things. Does she know when when those are gonna be she can see but she doesn't know how she sees. That's also that there is a kind of surprising that I think is really important. And that is uh surprising relative to the dominant theoretical frames of the time. Yeah right. And the challenging of the frames. And so sometimes the response that I get to some of my research is uh this hindsight thing. Oh yeah of of of course there are these different kind of prejudices or whatever. And I and I and uh and so okay so what?

Right? And I'd say okay well look at every one of your theories. Give me show me one theory that actually can generate this set of predictions. It's like, oh, right. That's the kind of that's that's sort of the shot across the bow. That's the kind of surprising thing that we that we do need, right? The things that challenge the standard frames that we have, uh and that's and that's where the advances that come from. The problem is that the kind of surprising that we were going after was was the you know grandma Bubba, you know, uh, you know, surprising. Yeah. Yeah. I think my my mean my opinion is that the journals are not adequately organized or articulate what I want um and where to send this kind of paper.

Like I think the journal landscape is um is really bad right now. And I think there's I there's so many people I talk to who send papers out to different journals and they're just desk rejected because this is not the kind of paper we want, but there's no articulation of where. And if it's not the the the operationalization of sort of this is where you do this kind of paper is not articulated. And I think editors with no guile or malicious intent are nervous and they want their journal to look sciencey. And if something looks out of place or different than what is usual, then they'll just sort of say, Well, I don't want to be under the tutelage of this journal taking weird looking, less sciencey looking things.

Right. So that I I think that I think that's right and again it it leads to safe science and I think you know the funding agencies, you know, NIH would I mean you pretty much have finished all the studies that you'd be proposing in an NIH proposal, you know, and and provide you know enough of that sort of pilot data on it uh you know before NIH would say, okay, we'll we'll we'll spend money on this now. Right? I mean it you know it it it you know just uh just very, very uh uh safe and i guess that's you know i think we can think about scarcity in different kinds of ways we can think about in terms of money you know i guess for the journal it's you know is it is it scarcity of sort of reputation or or just the concern of making a mistake and getting

caught and when when I I was associate editor of JESP a long time ago uh, with with Russ Fazio as the editor, and and we instituted a thing at the it may have been one of the very first versions of this, which were short papers. So there'd be a long and and and I can see in some ways why this would be viewed as outrageous now, right? Uh, this is before the replication crisis and everything, where the notion was: no, we don't want to spend 30 pages on this, right? Uh you know, you got four studies and whatever, and yep, stuff, but it's a really cool idea. So let's pull out the the the study that's the best exemplar of the idea, and we'll give you seven pages or whatever, whatever the the number was, and uh

and let's get that out there so the world can see it. Right. Now, what that sort of meant was okay, you were and this is before the the age of computer, you know, online supplements. So people wouldn't see all the other stuff that was out there, right? Uh and so yeah, I can see why that would get critiqued now. But the but the notion was again that it's an idea that's worth having out there. And if it's an important idea and it turns out to be wrong, we're gonna discover it. And that's okay. That's the way I mean we we should be thrilled by that. That's the way science works. I'd rather have an idea that turns out to be wrong. I'd rather generate an idea, have it out there for a while, and then have someone say, you

know, it's really this, it's not that, and say, okay. I think I I think you know, under that circumstance, I will still have made a contribution because I would have had an idea out there that would have been significant enough that could have, and now, boom, we got we got people talking, we learned something. Uh yes, this is now off the table, and we're going, we're going here. That's that's science moving forward. I think that's a hard thing, and maybe that's easier because I'm old, right? And my my my career is set, you know, I'm a folk professor, I'm tenured, I make a good salary, I I'm not forced to retire at any age. I can sort of do this however uh however I want. And so that's that's easy for me to to I think to say that.

I think for a young untenured person that's a way harder uh thing to say, uh especially these days and especially again how quickly one can get devastated by uh by the commentariat out there in the you know out there in the in the world. So yeah. That's this is very meta. This is good though. I know. Yeah. Maybe we should talk about what Steve Newberg, the evolutionary psychology you do. Uh no, but this is wonderful. I yeah, it but the last it reminds me there's a Jerry Fodor um when Jerry Fodor passed away, there was a um a memorial service and somebody talked about how uh they remembered um going up to Jerry Fodor and saying, you know, this one idea I think you have is actually pretty reasonable.

And he looked shocked and he's like, but it's still pretty unreasonable, right? Like he wanted to he wanted to be the the the contrarian or to provoke people to get them to think. And I think that's you know, yeah, I think that's really important. And I I think a science that doesn't encourage that. I think it's a litmus test of we're probably incentivizing the wrong thing. Um, if we can't be like, hey, this is this, let's what what if this is true? Let's figure this out. Like, yeah. Or or we just need to be, is ecumenical the right term, in terms of the different kind of sciences and the different kind of scholarship that we're open to, right? Yeah. Uh I mean, I've got colleagues in in the department and and the work to me is totally

uninspiring, but it's important in certain kind of ways because it helps people with mental illnesses, right? Deal with their challenges, right? It's not interesting to me, but it's it's really useful and there and there needs to be space for that. Yeah. You know, I also want them to be to to look at stuff that uh that I and some of my colleagues are doing where, you know, there this it's way further you know to to get to application, but it's about how the mind works and that's really an important thing, right? And let's understand that. And so, you know, and I I think if uh we're a little bit less sort of uh you know sort of intradisciplinarily tribal or whatever, uh that that's uh something that would be good

for us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean this goes to Dave's point, which I think is very well articulated that it's about, you know, coordination failures among you know, we're we're just not rowing in the same direction. It's more like every man for himself. Uh there's no cohesive paradigm. There's no shared goal or shared uh philosophy about what we're doing and why we're doing it and what we're looking for and how our science should be. Um, I mean, maybe the solution to that is to have more you know broad conferences where people from diverse parts of the social sciences come together and get on the same page, but you know, that has its own challenges, and and that's also hard in in in different

ways. Um yeah, I don't know. I mean there's a great quote. I can't remember who said it that um the best interdisciplinary work is done within one's own mind. I think you said it was Jerry Fodor back in the middle. Yeah, I think it was Jerry Fodor, yeah. I could I could be wrong, but yeah. Sounds like something Jerry Fodor would say. You attribute it to Jerry Fodor early in an earlier. The best interdisciplinary work happens within one's own mind. Yeah, see, I yeah, I don't I don't I don't buy it. I th I think, you know, what you actually need are people who come at things from very different perspectives but have an ethos of of listening and learning from one another. And and and it's it's hard.

It takes a I've I've done several interdisciplinary uh kinds of uh uh sort of bigger projects. And uh it's hard because it takes a while to get the language. And and you and I know I remember one instance doing this project on religion and conflict where it took a full year before I realized that two of us were using the same term in very different ways. Yeah. Right. You know, because you know the disciplines used them in different ways. And uh and that we didn't even realize that we had sort of been talking. We finally realized this is why we're talking past each other. Right. And it took a year, right? Uh and so so so doing doing that kind of work is hard, but no one can be an expert in in tons of things, right?

And so you you you want you want folks who have the depth of expertise and then you want to be willing to listen and to let the ideas uh collide and converge and uh you know meld and uh and everything I think. Yeah. And it's hard to get the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I remember, I mean, Steve, I think you're doing exactly what David is describing here, which is you're helping coordinate, right? But it's it's hard because number one, and I think students really feel this, is that if you go, for example, to a social psychology pre-conference and you don't use the same terminology or you're you're coming from a different perspective, we all absorb these norms of this is the way I usually do this.

And I think to their credit and detriment, social psychology is a very norm heavy discipline. I think there's there's lots of anecdotal data. You know, for a while you couldn't get a paper published without a path diagram, a path diagram. I mean, it was very, you know, they were like, I remember working with social psychologists, and they're like, no, you have to say this thing in this way. You have to have this kind of figure, you have to have this kind of statistic. I was like, but you don't even know what the study is about. It just doesn't matter. This is the norm. And you know, and so I think like going up in front of a group of people, violating the norm, knowing you're doing that by having a different approach, it's a vulnerability.

It would be hard for a young student, especially if it's hard for young people and for women or anybody, like you know, for example, like if if you're not the kind of phenotype or the that is given the benefit of the doubt for for multiple reasons, then there's this additional problem of in order for me to even cr facilitate coordination, the people, the audience has to give me the benefit of the doubt. In a 15 minute talk, are they going to? So I think like it's very courageous for everybody to do it, but I think it's really good when people do it like you, Steve, because it opens the door for other people who may not even be able to do that. Well, I'd never thought about that, but thank you.

Uh I I I do think that, you know, one of the this is this is not only, you know, part of the problem in in in doing the science, but maybe in our broader societies is that we've moved away from giving people the benefit of the doubt. Right. And uh and that has just humongous uh costs. Uh it it has costs, you know, for when that when that benefit isn't given, but it has huge costs in people knowing that that they're not going to be given it, and therefore they're spending all this time and all this effort to uh uh to overexplain is not quite the right word, but uh but to avoid the potential cost of of being misinterpreted. Uh and that's that's uh just a heavy weight, right? Uh to to know that I can't go and and have a five minute conversation with someone uh you

know that that is that is that is just totally play right because I could be misinterpreted, I could do this, uh to have to, you know, think about exactly how I'm gonna say every single thing, that I don't leave this out, that I what be I mean that's that's a heavy weight. And that's a weight that takes away from uh doing uh a lot of creative good things. You know, I'd I'd rather, you know, if if you think uh and I see this actually in some communication, I've been talking to some colleagues about this, you know, you I see sometimes tensions arise where, you know, someone will write an email, right? Not even about so they'll write an email and someone will have an interpretation of that. And instead of asking a question, let me understand, are you saying this or are you saying

this? They presume that they're saying that. And uh and now all of a sudden you have a conflict where there's never any need to have a conflict. And now people are going they're they're cycling on this. It's now the person who's been accused of something that they didn't do, now they're offended and everyone's offended. Uh yeah, I think those two things. We don't give people the benefit of the doubt and we're too easily offended. You put those two things together and it's hard to do it's hard to do really good science. Uh to it's hard it's hard to communicate uh really good uh uh science and uh and to take risks. Yeah. Yeah, or even if we're not more offended, there's uh the selection for attention, right?

Like there's just new coordination devices like social media, or you know, I I if you're I'm just doing my science, nobody's paying attention to me. But boy, I just said something controversial, or that could be interpreted, or I just knock somebody down, all of a sudden I've got you know thousands of people looking at me. That felt good. I'm gonna do more of that, right? So even if people um individually are no different, there's now like a select uh institutional selection for for these things, yeah. Yeah, and I and I actually think that and the knocking down, I think we saw a lot of that uh for young people who are sort of trying to be on their way up. I mean, it's uh it's uh it's it's it's exciting, it's a drug, right?

And it you know it can really be reinforcing. And and so I'll tell you something that I have a little bit of shame about. So uh not because I think I did the science wrong, but because of how I felt you know with the communication of it. So I was in a controversy uh I don't know if I should be even saying this. I was in a controversy with an article Kru Kruglanski uh in the mid nineteen eighties about this uh uh about this individual difference uh construct uh personal need for structure uh and need for cognitive uh closure that he was doing some work on and uh I don't need to go into the content of it but we ended up uh I I ended up learning around two months before we were both me and a student of his were gonna be on a panel together talking about sort of need

for structure kind of ideas and and how they shape cognition and all sorts of other things. Okay. So uh what I dis what I discovered in the couple months before, because I got an email from a student at another place that says, you know, you this scale over here that that that you felt uh you know advanced done by other people, not by me, uh, but that I published on it. And this scale over here by Kruglanski and his colleagues, you know they're correlated like point eight. It's like no that and I I was a reviewer on that crew. I said, no, they couldn't be correlated.8, right? They uh you know they're correlated point two. It says, no no no look I here are my data. So we ran a thing here and yes it's point eight and attenuating for over whatever.

Uh it's essentially they're essentially the same scales, but one's way longer and has a lot of bad items in it, and one is shorter. but all those items were overlap. And logically, of course, they were correlated. And we like I had like four colleagues around the country in your own sample. So go ahead. You know what is it? And then we dove deeper and we were looking at the structure of these, and and and we had a sort of a legitimate sort of critique. And the problem was from the science perspective, was that they were the way they were doing it, they were taking two independent constructs, but it was making it look like it was just one construct. And that was going to lead to a lot. I'm a splitter as opposed to a lumper, uh theoretically, and uh it was going to lead to

a lot of wrong inferences about about really what was going on with with all these social cognitive processes it was being used for. And so at this conference, and this was uh it was I think the one time that S E S P and the European Association had a joint conflict, I think it was in DC. Uh, and we were on this panel together. So around a month before, I said, you know what, I'm gonna change the topic of my talk. I think this is really important. I'm gonna talk about this stuff because it's about the construct. But here's what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna uh everyone has a heads up. Here's what I'm gonna say beforehand. No one's gonna get, and you know if you want to put me at the end, right, so that you don't

feel the need to sort of respond to what I'm gonna say in your own talks, absolutely fine. They put me at the end. They actually try to have me not be allowed to talk about that. And to their credit, the conference organizers said this is science. Conferences are about the cutting edge stuff at the front end. You know, yes, he can he can change his mind about what he's gonna uh talk about. Uh there was uh the sort of his allies on the panel sort of filibustered by the time it got to Schaller was also on the panel uh talking about other stuff. By the time it got to me, there were like seven minutes left for my you know 17-minute talk. And uh and and there was no time for nuance. And this is back in the days of overhead projectors.

And so Shaler's like slapping the the things down on the thing, and I'm just going boom, boom, boom. No no nuance, no politically political sensitivity. And at the end of the talk, you know, RE is in the audience because a student had presented, and he said, I've got some I've got some things to say. So he says the one thing I start to answer. He says, No, no, no, no, no. You've had your chance to talk now, it's my turn. And and it's at the end of a session. people aren't leaving the room. We're going overtime, right? The rooms people are coming in, and instead of trying to kick us off, this is like the coolest thing they've ever seen at a conference because we're going back and forth. And uh and I got a buzz off of it.

Yeah. Right. And uh and I feel some shame for the buzz I got off of it. A young guy, I was a young guy at the time. I in fact, uh before I went and I did that, I I was I had I was I had just gotten tenure. In fact I asked, you know, Bob and Doug, Taldini and and Kenrick, uh whether I should do this or not. And they said, you know, this is what tenure's for, right? This is this is what tenure's for. If you believe the data, if you believe then then you should do this. Uh so I I under but but I it it it got it went beyond the science uh at that point for me. And that was wrong. And that was wrong. He and I didn't chat for a long, we didn't talk, and we had been we hadn't known each other well, and he in fact been a supporter of me when I was very young uh for like 10-15 years.

Uh to to put a bring a happy end to the story. Uh we're in a lobby at another conference. I'm sitting at I'm sort of standing chatting with someone and I see him walking down. He's gonna he's gonna pass right in front of me. And I don't know what it was. I grabbed him as he walked by. I said, you know, we should talk. He said, Yeah, we should talk. Happy hour later, down in the down in the poster session, whatever the thing was. We're there two minutes into the conversation. I sort of explained, you know, why I did what I did, and then we we publ we went back and forth in the literature too. I mean, it turned into a series of papers, uh, which was good. I think it was good for the field. Uh two minutes later he says, You know, I'm the new editor of this series on these on these

uh on these monographs about stereotyping prejudice. You want to do one? It's like you know. So it's it's sort of, I mean, at that the space gave us the ability to take the the person the personal aspects out of it, right? But the personal aspects get in there. And I think as a young person, you know, there there there's there's a buzz to going after senior people and uh the f folks who are who have the power and stuff and it's uh it's natural uh and it's not good. Yeah. I mean I think to your credit, I don't think it wasn't like you were pursuing it. You felt experienced it and you know, it you didn't then go, Oh, this is great, I'm gonna keep doing it, you know. So I yeah, but I but we did write the papers.

We did go back and forth in the journals and um which I thought w was was useful. Yeah. Um But but I I did I did get a buzz and I got a buzz off of young other young people coming up and saying that's the coolest thing we've ever seen at the conference, right? Yeah. Yeah, why wouldn't you? It makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it reminds me of um uh one of my favorite Robert Trivers quotes, which is that uh the greater the social content of a discipline, the slower its progress. Um and that there are you know real challenges and difficulties to being, you know, a bunch of people studying people because we have all you know all the all the flaws of people. You know yeah. We're humans with you know Trivers having more than a healthy dose of those flaws for

absolutely of people ness. As a side note, there's an entire no journalist I can't believe just as quick aside, Trivers passed away recently. I looked through all of these think pieces about Trivers. They're all by men, by the way. Um, which you should also think, why might that be? Uh there's an enormous story about Trivers that is not yet. Um there like all the all the all the reporters uh who did Trivers research did not do their homework. Yeah, not not a good not a good man. Very good scientist, very good thinker, uh brilliant contributions to the field, but yeah, not not a good person. This is something somebody said, I won't say who said it because I don't wanna I'm not sure if it's accurate.

But what I heard was a lot of Trivers' papers were written in Irv Devore's um kitchen with Irv Devore. Um so that's also something to look into. I don't I don't know the full story there. Yeah. I've been I've been told uh, who have I heard this from? Uh that may maybe from Lita, that Irv Devour is probably the most significant uh mentor and grower of evolutionary psychologists. Uh evolutionists terms. Yeah. We we in in this my cohort of uh at least UCSB of psych people, we refer to like an Irv Devor as this sort of a puppet master person who's not sort of well known outside the area, but is the originator or the the salon keeper, maybe is the right way of sort of sort of like the the George Harrison of uh evolutionary

psychology, the underrated compositional backbone. Very good, very good. Um Steve, um we've had Keila Williams on. And she talked a lot about the the work. Um, is there stuff that you're currently chewing on or thinking about that you find really exciting? Or is there something that if people are listening that don't know your work and you've done you've done so much and you know, like the the there's affordances or stereotypes are specific to these different groups? Um out of all of that, you know, set, is there something either that already exists or that is going to exist in the future that you feel like you know, if somebody had four minutes to spend with Steve Newberg, what science do you think they want should

know? So wow. Uh you have three and a half minutes now, sorry. Yeah, no, I got three and a half minutes. So there's a line of stuff that comes out of the sort of the affordance management approach to stereotypes framework that I'm really excited about that that Oliver Sung is doing working on and that Becca Neal is working on in a in a at sort of a broader sort of pulling together other sort of sub sort of sub-phenomena as well. And that's the idea of directed stereotypes. And we we could think about this, and I don't know if you've seen this work by Oliver or not. There's a paper in JPSB this past year on it, with I think Becca in Kila. But the idea here is that we tend to think about, you know, when we think about

you know making inferences about people that we make inferences about their traits or their capacities or something like that. And so and some of these traits are, you know, you know, someone is friendly, right? Or someone's competitive or whatever, caring, uh aggressive. As if we we presume that people have these uh these non-directed behavioral inclinations towards folks. But of course they don't, right? What I really care about, if I wanna if I wanna manage the potential affordances that you have for me or the or the people I'm invested in, is I want to know what you're gonna do to me, right? Or or to these other folks, right? I don't really care what you're gonna what whether this right, because I if I have to

predict your behavior towards me, I need to predict your behavior towards me. And so it turns out that what people actually have in their minds, uh, which we don't discover because we never ask the questions, right? This is part of our measurement problem and because we don't have theory that sort of suggests this, is that uh we actually have these really uh nuanced notions of of uh you know people having inclinations towards other kinds of specific other kinds of people, right? So uh you know some of the stuff that came out of Oliver's uh uh work with his collaborators, you know, who's more competitive, you know, men or women. Well of course men are are more competitive. You know, who's more competitive towards young women?

Young men or young women? It's like, well young women are more oh, right? Young women are more okay. Right. As soon as you add the towards whom, all of a sudden there's all these things that swap. They look very different. And of course, those are the that's the level of of representation that people need to have in their heads if they're in fact going to predict other people's behaviors. And so, you know, I I think, you know, Becca gave a a talk at uh uh was it SPSP? Uh yeah, I think it was at I think it was at SPSP uh uh where she sort of expanded on this toward whom notion of that there that they're classes of characteristics that really are fundamentally relational and they're about towards whom and we need to have

those represent those that's the level of representation you need to have for those things. Right? Intelligence isn't uh isn't uh relational, right? You had to have just to know whether someone is has the ability to process information effectively and efficiently, whatever, that's that's good. But aggressive? No. Yeah, that that that that that that doesn't do the job. And so I think that's a really interesting sort of next implication that sort of falls right out of the logic of the affordance management. You know, so if we're doing first principles, then we start with the first principle of of of of of the basics of evolutionary uh of of affordance management then and you work that through you're gonna get to the idea that some of these things have to be directed and so

i'm i'm i'm really excited to see what that's gonna pop out coming out of out of their work there's some work i'm doing with uh a student of mine tiffany chin uh where we're applying this this this broader uh uh affordance management perspective to prejudices uh against immigrants uh and you know to let me say towards immigrants because some are actually quite fair and and sort of again that you know if you if you look at gallup polling, if you look at politicians, you look at all the discussion, it's like there's immigrants, right? Well no, they're actually immigrants and they're here for they're different kinds of they're here for very different reasons. And depending on what your own vulnerabilities and goals are, those characteristics that

you think that they're they bring different characteristics with them. The characteristics might have might pose opportunities for you, they may pose threats uh uh to you. Uh one of the interesting implications that we've never uh and so elabor using that as a case to sort of uh look again greater new people uh different kinds of groups, but one of the interesting things here is that uh most of our feelings towards people, most of our prejudices are are probably ambivalences. And I know ambivalence is a single dimension, and so ambivalence has to be positive and negative. But the fact is, we have these different kinds of negative negative ambivalences. We'll need a different word for it, right?

There, folks that you're that they they both make you angry and they and they make you afraid. And uh, well, fear leads you to want to go away. And if, you know, uh and and angry makes you want to go forward and uh and to recalibrate their their their behaviors, right, and the like. Well, people they they they emerge. If if you if you believe that that that our impressions that are stereotypes about groups can be profiles of different kinds of threats, then you have to acknowledge that you've got profiles of emotional responses and there are all these ambivalences that again are getting masked by the typical ways in which we and you can have different kinds of sort of positive putting air quotes around positive and negative, because I think it's a really problematic

word when we're thinking about affect. Uh to be thinking about some as positive and some as negative, it just it it it totally masks what what these affects are for. Uh uh. But there are all sorts of different flavors of these ambivalences. And I think uh there'll be a lot of traction as as we sort of as we sort of unpack that and demonstrate that and and show where the different ones come from. Again, if you're interested, if you're interested in fixing the car engine, you better understand what this actually what's actually going on inside this. You want to do interventions to reduce prejudices that you're that you're not uh uh that that you're opposed to, right? Well you better understand actually what these what these prejudices actually look like and

what these feel. And so I I I think that that's I think there's some really interesting stuff in that. You know, so of the things that are coming out of sort of that perspective that I've taken, I think those are two of the things that uh that I'm sort of most interested in right now. We're also applying uh Barlev and I are applying this framework to be thinking about anti-Semitism because I think it's actually another one of these groups where there's a lot of ambivalence, there's a lot of uh competing uh uh uh sort of different kind of affordance stereotypes of opportunities threats and qualitatively different kind of threats. And I think that would benefit. So it's it's another it's both a case study and something that's uh that's of interest uh

uh to me for other reasons. But I I think I think there might be some very nice leverage uh there as well. Uh uh David's doing very some interesting stuff on uh on on anti-semitism and coalitions. Uh and I'm I'm very interested to see what what what ends up coming out of all that. Yeah, and I've worked with uh Barlov and um and and Jamie and Sneezer. It's sort of a bit on the hiatus, but we have some really interesting data on anti-Semitism looking at the alliance structure and and who people think the allies of Jews are politically and who people think the enemies of Jews are politically. and we're looking at w if they're the ally of one of my enemies, is that gonna predict uh anti Semitism?

Or if they're the enemy of one of my uh enemies, is that gonna predict more positive attitudes toward Jews? And it turns out that um just these indirect relationships of of of who you s view the allies of Jews and and the enemies of Jews and how you feel about those allies and enemies, just those indirect pathways are explaining something like forty percent of the variation in anti Semitism, and then it's all interact and like indirect in in terms of like where are Jews situated in the political alliance structure, And that is uh just who you where you think they're situated in the alliance structure. So I'm excited about that. And it's you know obviously inspired by a lot of Steve's work in terms of understanding

prejudice in a more nuanced and and functional way. That um, you know, it's not just uh you know uh um a single continuum of positive and negative, it's much more complicated. Um and uh yeah, I I I I love this work because it it um It unearths the complexity that we didn't know was there. And it's it's interesting and functionally organized complexity that ought to be of of interest to evolutionary researchers and anyone who's interested in in prejudice itself. Yeah, you know, uh Oliver Sung has this uh uh great little line that he likes to use that we've been uh we've been stereotyping, right? That that that we that we pres we're presuming that this is all sort of really simple, right? And people are so much people are so much more complex and for and for and for really

good reasons and way more interesting than than we've been giving them credit for. And you know, I understand you know you start your model simple and you start with uh but you know we're we're too mature of a of a of a behavioral science to be still living in those in those old models. Yeah. Do you think there's a little bit of wishful thinking that's probably like well intended which is that if prejudice or stereotyping is simple or unitary, then maybe there's like an intervention we can do. But if it turns out that it's multifaceted and more to the point, which I think a lot of your work is pointing towards, it's also largely rational to the extent that it's in response to structural issues.

It's pointing towards the way you reduce prejudice or discrimination are largely structural things. They're not really things where you can just like have this pill or like, you know, you know, hit your head ten times against a board and now you're not prejudiced. I mean, I'm being f facetious, but I mean it's kind of in that category. Do you think that some of that is that there is a resistance because it when you get more truthful, uh it points to harder to fix or more structural things? I mean, I I think that I I suspect that that's not uh consciously what people would it would admit to themselves. I suspect that uh that that may be part of it. It also may be part of that it says something uh that well well maybe our field isn't

the field to fix this. Right. So right so you know if the solutions are you know uh you know change changing the environments in which people are growing up and if they if they are uh uh other kinds of things you need to do to you know create opportunities and reduce threats and the like and that that moves the solutions then require politics and they require community organization and they require an investment of money and well that's not what's that's not what psychologists do, right? Yeah that that's uh and and so you know you know, and in some ways the the irony there is that, you know, psychologists, I think, you know, even way more than sociologists are the ones that sort of sort of uncovered and turned, you know, the explorations of

prejudice and a group conflict into uh you know into into a science, right? Uh and in the end may not be, you know, the you know the largest contributor to uh uh to to the solutions. Um yeah. Or at least uh I mean the charitable t version is that you can't solve the world like you said by yourself. And so you it's it's like, oh we realize we need all this other stuff, like like you all the things you articulately listed. Um yeah, and until you you're just like a lowly PI in a lab, you know, and you're like, Well, how am I gonna do that? you know. So um right. Again, I think it comes back to a coronation problem. But I think to the credit, to your credit, I mean, I think like sticking to the guns of we

we are being accurate about what the psychology is, and therefore if it is a structural problem, like maybe, maybe it will provoke um or you know, I like I think that's good to stick with, right? Even if even if we can't fix it. But by the way, I don't I don't I don't think it I don't think it's just a structural problem, right? I mean I think I think with with even within if we look within whatever sort of uh you know uh you know cells of interacting structural things, you still you still find a lot of variation uh with how people responding. So so I think I think that I think there's plenty of work uh to be done if if one has an aim of uh of addressing some of those uh uh some of those challenges.

Uh I I think another part of it is uh is actually even uh simpler in the way in the sense of you know people most scientists get used to using certain tools you know and and they're they they may be methodological they may be conceptual and that's sort of what and they and they they have an identity around those tools this is what I do this is what I know I'm good at this is what I've been rewarded for and you know I think challenges like mine which sort of say you need, you know, the tools are wrong. You you keep using a tool that's too simple to understand your phenomenon that you're interested in. But now you gotta change, you gotta shift, right? You got you have to use different measures and they're more complicated.

Uh, you know, you have to analyze your data uh uh differently. Uh, you know, the the stories sometimes aren't so simple, right? When you're when you're sort of trying to articulate something, it's not it's not as easy uh, you know, when you're getting from the eighth floor of the elevator down to the lobby to to explain what it is that you uh what it what it is that you're uh doing and what it what exactly it is that you're finding and so I mean that's pushing people out of their comfort zones, which is why, you know, who is it that said that, you know, you know science advances by the by the by the death of old scientists. It's a mox punc. It's uh science progresses one funeral at a time. Okay, that's right.

Right and and so uh you know we we we're we're all uh you know somewhat constrained by what we know and what we're used to doing and what we think is good and what what our identities are. And so uh you know uh which which is why you know I think we always need to be looking I I'm way more interested in in uh in convincing and getting the it the attention and the interest uh of young people than I am of people of of my uh my generation right uh you know the people of my generation you know uh you know can give me uh what's uh it's uh benefits or status in a kind of way that young folks can. But in the long run, it's the it's it's it's it's the young folks that are actually gonna uh you know you know determine whether whether the ideas are right and where they can go

and uh uh and the like. It's it's actually, you know, in my mind what the what sort of the biggest joy of mentoring is. I I I like mentoring. Uh it's an important part of my identity and the the idea of of young people going off and I mean and taking things in these incredibly cool different kind of directions that I never would have thought about. But but knowing that you were sort of a part of that, I think is uh is is is maybe the most rewarding. I I suspect that my impact on the field, whatever it ends up being, will be way greater as mediated by my students than anything that I end up uh that ends up having my name on it. I hope anyway, that's maybe maybe that's maybe that's just a hope.

But it's almost like differential reproductive success you can have. No, I mean i if any I mean you have a good track record thus far. I think you know you've Jamie Oliver and Keela and there's just so many I can't Beck and forgetting so or not forgetting, but I I can't I'm not gonna list everybody. Yes. Um but yeah, it's like Tom Gilovich or Brenda Major too, right? Even you had your own st story um and the people that influenced you. Um yeah so so yeah if you feel like you're um being uh being your science is being ignored the people you should be worrying about are are what the young people think about you. That's right. That's right. Uh and and and just uh you know you know I I think their

open-minded attention is probably the I th yeah so I'll throw this out there. I don't know if this is right or not. I've never really thought about this before. That the that the open-minded attention of young scientists is probably the most important resource uh uh that there is out there for the advancement of of science. Um I don't know. Does that does that sound Yeah I mean there is they're probably the closest thing we can get to a you know an impartial jury to evaluate these ideas. And they can just evaluate all these different ideas with with fresh eyes in a way that's less biased by, you know, years of building coalitions with different people. And then they have the capacity and the time to actually if if the if the ideas grab uh

to actually make like you know important things happen with them yeah they have time to read the whole paper uh yeah um uh Lita I was thinking in terms of years not in terms of like no but they also have the time to read the whole paper. Uh Lita always said um you should be writing to young graduate students and I think it was exactly for this reason you described Steve is that when when they're and I think even I asked, like I was like, you know, who were you writing to? And it was like to young graduate students, and it was for all these reasons we're talking about. So I think that that's always been really helpful for me, too, is like you're and I think sometimes we over some graduate students really get uh to put it in a

hokey way, a bee in their bonnet about like some theory, and they really go after it and they want to convince like the senior person. And I think sometimes that's a mistake, you know, like that's not the right way to write the paper. The right way to paper is as David just said, like it's you know, you're writing to the jury of young students, and and that should be the tone and the approach. And you don't have to convince this person who's who's living, as Steve put it, was you know, their salary depends on hanging on to this idea. They're probably not gonna let go unless they're very rare and special um people. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to insult them if you don't have to. No, that's true.

What what was it? Is it uh Dan Dennett, who's got this uh sort of philosophy of how to write a great review, right? Uh you know, and and and and what it's it starts with you know understanding the uh you know the position so well that they would just be overjoyed as you sort of explain it back uh to them. And that's sort of the the the the first thing. You know, not offended you're you're looking it up right now. Uh it says first and more important you should attempt to express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says things like, I wish I had thought of putting it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and so and so that's uh you know so so beginning with uh beginning with respect and uh

generosity right of care I mean it's like it's a cue of that you care right about doing this and I think that's uh a really useful uh thing so we don't want to we don't want to offend the old folks. Yeah but some some but sometimes, you know no one should get offended. Right. I mean, I I think this is again the thing. You know, some someone uh someone at attacks my perspective. Uh yes, I'm gonna get irritable about it, but what I should do is I should appreciate it as an opportun you first of all they paid attention so they gave me the gift of attention and then the the second thing is that they uh they've given me an opportunity uh you know uh to learn and and or and or defend right and to make my case better right if people

don't understand you know what I'm writing that's on me right this is actually one of the really important lessons I think for grad students right you know if if they if they misinterpret that's that's on you that's your job right uh yeah, that's good good advice. Um Steve, is there anything um about you that people might not know, like hobbies or um hobbies. Hobbies, you know. I've I've had several people tell me recently that I need a hobby. Uh so uh like you know, way back when I used to be uh uh musician but stock while I was still too young to get really serious about it. But I I had talent way back when that that maybe that's uh a little bit interesting. I think uh well I'll I'll tell you really briefly something I'm doing right now that's very

different than than this. And that is when I was chair of the Department of Psychology, uh We we started something that's now evolved. Uh we call it Psych for Life. And it's an attempt to sort of bring the the uh it's it started when when I was chair of the department, you know, you know, you know that 75% of psych majors don't do anything psych related. I mean they do everything is psych related, but they go into business or they go into health or they go into law, or they do they don't go into you know become therapists or to or to be or to be researchers or things like that. And so when I was chair, I thought, well, you know, how what how do how do we serve them well? Because the system isn't designed for for that really.

And so uh we we started this thing, we were calling it psych for life. The psych department will be free for life. That if we played with the premise that we were going to be with you and add value to your life and for life, what would we do differently? So we started doing a bunch of things having to do with careers and mentorships and and whatever. Uh we then asked the question, well, what do we do for our alums after they're out. And the thing, and so here's the second meaning of Psych for Life, and that is we have an evidence-based psychology, uh science, right, that says that has useful uh useful lessons, useful insights about relationships and about, you know, raising your kids and about well-being and about career and about community.

Can we figure out a way of really easily getting that into people's hands in ways that are actionable, that are engaging, that that that could be effective. And so, you know, we thought about this just in the terms of okay, can we can we send stuff out to our alums? Over time, it became clear that maybe there's sort of a broader value of this out there in the world and people encouraging us, raised a good amount of philanthropy uh to sort of start to build this. We've now shifted it. Uh, we're going to be rolling this out of ASU. Uh, the first instantiation will be sort of as an app, uh, covering a bunch of topics, but really helping people have skills, sort of life skills within these different kinds of domains that they might now be able to integrate into their everyday

lives and uh and you know help solve you know little challenges before they become real problems. And so we're actually spinning this out as a startup. And I am now the CEO president of this of this uh new startup that I'm gonna be doing while I'm an academic. We'll see how well that goes. I should have a separate conversation with David uh about uh about being a about being a business guy. Uh but that's that's something that's sort of exciting to me. Uh the challenge right I'm I'm trying to you know marry everything together and do both of these things. And uh but that's uh that's it's a it's you know as scientists we're problem solvers and uh of of one sort. And you know, getting these tools out to people in ways uh and to a lot of people in

ways that can be useful to them uh is uh is just another kind of problem to be solved, both how do you design the systems, but how do you how do you you know find what the right markets are and how do you engage in those markets and how do you how do you sell and all those things. So that's sort of been exciting uh uh to me as well and that's probably something that people don't know that it's a it's sort of a very different side more of an applied uh uh kind of side uh but uh trying to trying to uh you know have an impact in in that kind of way as well that's fantastic it does it exist yet or is this coming out it's so we we sort of have beta versions of it where we're in the midst of we we got some

we've been getting some feedback we're in the midst of sort of this next sort of like beta plus version uh but we'll we we think we'll be ready to go out and to have like real people using it, you know, come uh sort of end of summer or so. We're sort of building some some new, I think, reasonably fundamental features into it that that significantly raise the value of it, that bring it beyond sort of just psychoeducation stuff, uh in in ways that uh people can integrate into their into their lives and uh make it really more usable. So and of course, you know, doing you know, doing the user research and all that. I mean, it's just it's been a bunch of different challenges and they're all interesting.

So Yeah, that's fantastic. And I mean, that's wonderful for social things, like if we have the data, it's again this coordination problem and people want to know what do I do for my um uh what do I do with my kid here or myself or my spouse, uh, if there's data and getting that to them without ads or snake oil or some of them sell you selling something to them. That's right. That's fantastic. And it's gonna make the science better to the degree that there's a market outside of entertaining undergrads. No big lecture hall. Yeah. We hope so. We hope so. Yeah, David, I'll probably reach out to you actually to you know what's what's the license also to be run in a business. Yeah, please do. I wish I knew the answer to that question.

At least how you solve some of the challenges. Business humor. So well, Steve, this was wonderful. Uh we really appreciate it. Um and uh Yeah, it's it's it went by quick and uh yeah, it's always fun. There's so much going on, uh so much throughput in your lab and your offspring, your academic offspring. It's uh thanks for being on. Um it was lovely. Well, well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure and um I'm flattered, and it's been a lot of fun. David, um Why do I always try to start the in the outros? I never stop. Well, we just we just had a conversation with Steve Newberg. We just had a Steve had a lovely conversation with Steve Newberg. Time flew. Um there was We're still figuring out what we're still figuring out what this outro even

is. I think that's it said that. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, that fits in with like Bayesian models of cognition. John John Tuby famously had a post-it note on his computer that was a little more direct, and it said, Everything you think you know is wrong. Okay. I like that. Yeah. Um I mean I have a blog post coming up that's basically arguing that most of what you think you believe you don't actually believe. Awesome. I'm really excited about that one. I believe that. Does it be a good one? Yeah, I'm glad you that's a really, really good question. You might not deep down. Who knows? That's kind of I feel like that's very freeing though, because then if somebody's like I don't believe you, you can be like, well, okay.

Yeah. No, I mean the thesis is that you you may believe you believe those things, but you don't actually believe those things. And there's a difference there. Just because you believe you believe it doesn't mean you actually believe it. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like like we've talked about, like if you actually the way people believe act when there's a real conspiracy versus they say there's a conspiracy is very different. I think we talked about Hugo Mercier. Yeah, we talked about Hugo Mercier. We also talked about it with Dan Williams, and I talked about pseudo-beliefs. So I have a big post coming up on on pseudo beliefs. And uh I think it's a really interesting topic. Anyway, we I don't know how this fits in with anything.

Well, uh if you believe, David, that um that was uh yeah, I didn't even I didn't even uh finish that. Um well if you believe you like this podcast, what can people do? Uh well, they can say nice things about us on social media, support us on Patreon, leave us a kind review. Those are the big three, right? Can't think of any other ones. Yeah, that's that's it. Yeah, and some journalists out there get on the Robert Trivers thing. My goodness. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I'm just beginning to hear some of the horror stories. Yikes. I met I'm I didn't meet him in personally, but I did I was for H best Rutgers. I stayed in the student dorms and he was staying in the same hallway. And he was, I just remember he was in the hallway.

I think like the showers was a college dorms. So he just I just remember he was like peering out the wind, looking out the window with like a towel around his neck, just sort of peering. And I was like going into my room. I was like, Oh, there's Robert Trivers. And that was the only interaction I had with him. But yeah, I've had I've I've never heard so many stories from people having interactions with a human being that were so colorful, is the one way to put it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well anyway, on that note we can separate the ideas from the man, hopefully. Exactly. No, totally. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. Yes. Um but uh it was wonderful uh to uh to have Steve on. Thank you for listening. And David, I'll see you next week.

Yep. See ya. Bye.