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Uh David, what is this podcast?

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It is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast, and what is the tagline?

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Actual Evolutionary Psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists, and let's get right

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into it.

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All right.

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David, today we have a fantastic guest, Anne Opizel.

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Yes, Anne is a wonderful scholar, brilliant thinker, doing absolutely uh a cutting edge

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research into the nature of group psychology and intergroup relations, overturning our

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understanding of what intergroup uh animosity is and and and also flipping it

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on its head and showing uh ways in which people can and do uh interact uh and cooperate

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across group boundaries.

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Um yeah, and I think the theme of this episode is connections, because in two ways, one is

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uh Anna's talking about all of the ways in which the evolved psychology makes connections

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across and between groups to sort of shore up against risk and uncertainty.

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But then also this conversation itself, I feel like was a super great example of Anne just

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knows so much uh in the literature and was making connections and we were all sort of

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really riffing in in a wonderful way and really uh crossing a lot of different topics and

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making connections.

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I certainly learned a lot um in this um in this episode and I think people will uh enjoy

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it very much.

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Yeah, this was this was a really fun one and I think you'll enjoy listening.

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So without further ado, here is Ann Pizor.

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Today we have Ann Pizor.

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Did I say that right?

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Pizer?

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Pizer.

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You did.

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Yeah.

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Pizer, Pizer.

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Okay.

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Yes.

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I have a difficult P last name too.

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Um, so yes, we got three P's on the call right there.

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Hey.

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Um, so uh Ann, you are at um you run the Sociality Lab, um, and that's at

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Penn State in the Department of Anthropology.

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Is that right?

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That's right.

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That's right.

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I co run it with Chris Smith, who's at Washington State.

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Ah, fantastic.

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And Chris Smith was we've we've talked about Chris on the podcast.

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We we need to have him on.

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Was he a student of yours?

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He was my postdoc for a few years.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Yeah, Chris is great.

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We should friend of the podcast, as they say.

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Indeed.

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Um, and and you study um, I know you've you've been doing, I think, different

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things, but one of the things most recently, at least for me, um, is group

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relationships that are sort of cross traditional group boundaries, which I

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really like and I really want to get into because for me, coming from

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a social psychology background, people have this idea that groups, to the extent they

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exist, really are boundaries of interaction.

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And, you know, I think there's this idea from like archaeology, you know, you find like

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physical, like pottery from distant lands, and you have this idea, well, maybe people

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tolerate like trade.

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You know, if this shiny thing is really attractive, yeah, I'll, you know, we'll we'll let

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the traders do that.

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But otherwise, it's very much this sort of nature-red tooth and claw view of group

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boundaries.

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Um, and so uh, I mean, we can start anywhere, but I'm just wondering, sort of,

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you seem to be maybe interjecting a bit of sophistication into that view

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that groups are not these sort of concrete walls between people.

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And there actually can be somewhat strong ties between people.

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And you're also looking at sort of why people do that and what benefits there are.

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Is that a fair characterization?

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That is a fair characterization.

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Yeah.

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So I'm going to go into story time a little bit here, if I may, when it comes to groups.

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Yeah.

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So so as you know, and as the listeners know at this point, there's a tradition of thinking

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about groups in evolutionary anthropology and in evolutionary psychology, where we're often

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thinking about groups as kind of boundaries, as containers for cooperation.

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And humans are really social, and they certainly are extremely important.

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And I think also of your work, Dave, on that as well, in terms of what one can do with

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groups.

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And so when I first started doing research, when I was thinking about cooperation, working

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with Mike Irvin at Santa Barbara, I was thinking a lot about group dynamics in Bolivia.

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So you have this kind of through line in training where we're all thinking about groups and

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how groups structure cooperation, regardless of our intellectual tradition and evolutionary

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behavioral sciences.

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And then at the same time in Bolivia, it was really interesting.

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It was this era with a new constitution where there were 36 different pueblos indigenes,

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different indigenous groups.

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And so even the political discourse in Bolivia was really heightening the salience of

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groups and group boundaries.

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And so when I started doing research in Bolivia, I was just really thinking in terms of

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groups.

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And what ended up happening, of course, is as I did more and more of that research, I

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realized that groups weren't really stopping anybody from cooperating.

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They were often salient in certain contexts.

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You could certainly activate group boundaries, as we know so well from psychology, and that

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would change cooperation.

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But a lot of the time, folks are just trying to get stuff done.

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And things like ethnic group boundaries were really flexible at the end of the day.

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So yeah, I'd say it's fair to say that my thinking about groups has has shifted over time.

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And then also the story that I've been telling about groups and the research I've been

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doing on groups has shifted along with it.

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It might be worth getting into what defines a group, what a group actually is at the end of

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the day, because if it's not a container for cooperation and if it's not preventing me from

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cooperating or interacting with or having relationships with people in the other group,

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then what is it actually doing?

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What is it?

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Is there a boundary there at all?

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Is there a group at all?

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Like what are we talking about here?

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No, exactly.

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And this, I have to actually cue this up right because I've actually been teased by

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students for putting my hands on the desk at this point and saying, what is a group?

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And turning the question back.

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It's one of my favorite questions.

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So there are two kind of through lines on what a group is that I think are somewhat

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implicit in the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

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So one is this idea of groups that's coming through, say, the primatology literature or the

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behavioral ecology literature, where it's the idea of who isn't proximate to to who else

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for the most amount of time.

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And so that makes things easy for primatologists in terms of talking about one male units

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or talking about nested groups or thinking about um kind of multi-level structures and

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primates.

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So this is one kind of group.

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Group as a spatiotemporal cluster.

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That's it.

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Exactly.

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And that's where we get some of the terminology, like fission fusion dynamics, for example,

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instead of groups, because there's kind of this soft boundary about how much time

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individuals have to spend together before we start calling them a group that's in reliable

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association with one another.

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So that's that's one definition of group.

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And then on the other side, when we're coming from social science, we're often talking

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about identity groups, or we're assuming identity groups where there aren't any, which is

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also a really interesting one.

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And so identity groups are something that humans do really well.

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It also ends up that you can see identity groups popping up in the animal world as well.

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If we're looking at certain species of ants, for example, identity groups become salient.

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So what what is an identity group then?

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yes.

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So this is where my anthrop comes out.

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It depends on who you ask, right?

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Okay.

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Um, so so let me give you what I would consider to be a working definition of an identity

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group.

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And I'm gonna pull a little bit on Dave's research here.

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So other folks recognize us as being in a group, and then it's part of my own identity in

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terms of who I see as, say, a reliable cooperator.

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That might be one way that we have a working definition of an identity group.

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Another one might be to say that I recognize other individuals as kind of being folks who

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share something with me that makes it easier to coordinate, whether that's for cooperation

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or otherwise.

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Those are often what we see as identity groups.

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We often talk about identity, of course, is just the sense of self.

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I think it starts to get a little squishy in there, but there's something to that that

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humans are doing.

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And I think what often happens is we end up conflating the two things.

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So we're thinking about group identity and bounded groups and groups in the mind, as it

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were, um, and that are recognized by by others around us, and then also who we're spending

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time with.

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And those two I those two group definitions can overlap, but they don't have to.

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Mm-hmm.

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So is this different from having a label for a group?

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So that's sort of what I think of in terms of identity.

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So like I am white, I'm a Californian, I'm an American.

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Um these are label or uh you know a Democrat, whatever.

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I I can put these labels on me in terms of my, you know, partisanship, religion, you know,

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ethnicity, socioeconomic status.

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Um, but that's different from what you're talking about.

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Um, and that if uh what you're talking about is is uh uh similarity to a group of people,

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willingness to cooperate with a group of people, uh uh common knowledge that we're all

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similar and good cooperative partners, that kind of thing.

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But that doesn't necessarily need to correspond with a particular label.

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And you you could have the reverse where you have a label, but the the people who share

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that label don't actually see each other as as cooperative partners and don't see uh each

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other as as similar.

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So how does the label fit in?

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Is that a a third way of thinking about groups?

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Yeah, so this is where I'm going to pull a little bit on Christina Moya, who actually has a

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really nice paper on this and has been on the show as well.

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And so what Christina did is I thought broke this down really nicely, is it's basically

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kind of what is a group?

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She has a table on it in a paper, and a table, it does a lot of work for this, actually.

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And what she kind of pulls apart is whether things like gender, ethnicity, um, the

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kind of job you hold, how frequently those are things that people actually tap into in

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terms of forming cooperative groups and kind of using the labels to scaffold cooperation.

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And it ends up that humans could pretty frequently will do that with ethnicity, which of

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course is a slightly different meaning than race when we're talking to anthropologists,

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right?

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We're talking about a shared history that we recognize.

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And those identity markers again kind of come into play there.

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And so it seems that there are certain kinds of labels, if you will, to pull on your

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language here, that are more reliably used to scaffold cooperation.

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But as we know from research coming out of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology, for

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example, at Santa Barbara, is that you can actually move around which labels structure

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cooperation and which labels are recognized by others as being something that is unifying

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for people.

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And so I think sometimes we have kind of three different ways of thinking about groups that

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are somewhat conflated.

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So one is the assumption that things like gender, you which you mentioned, scaffold

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cooperation or scaffold groupishness and it really depends on the situation.

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Are there affordances to cooperating along gendered lines, for example, that can actually

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elicit groupishness but doesn't have to.

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Then you have this through line as well of just identity groups that people self-ascribe,

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which sometimes we miss when we're doing scientific um social scientific research is we'll

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forget to ask people what they ascribe as, which I think is really important.

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And then additionally, we have this idea of groups coming in also from ecological research,

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which is just individuals and association.

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And so sometimes I think those three are kind of getting mixed up in the work we're doing.

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And I think it behooves us to pull them apart.

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That's great.

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And I think there's even an additional complication and maybe this is leading into the

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research, which is that groups are a social coordination or

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convention.

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And so we've talked a little bit about, and I know, Ann, in your work, the idea that sort

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of, you know, and again, this comes back to sort of a more complex view of human

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nature and our evolved psychology, but it's not sort of that we're just sponges for soaking

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up the existing groups.

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And clearly kids are.

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And there's interesting developmental work on that.

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Like, for example, that kids learn labels really easily, especially applied to groups of

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people, which is actually just as an aside important for how you talk about people with

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your kids.

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So maybe we can talk about that a little bit.

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But um but uh but in addition to that, at a certain point, you just sort

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of look around, and you know, adolescents and even young kids do this too, where they're

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just looking around and they're like, okay, adults, I don't like what you're doing here.

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I'm going to do something different and make kind of go my own way.

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And that then cashes out also in the group context where groups are also, you know,

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you create a group identity like evolutionary psychology, right?

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Like that didn't exist 30 or 40 years ago or something.

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And, you know, people just started using that word and said, I'm an evolutionary

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psychologist.

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And now, like, that's a group, right?

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Um, and that's just one example of there's just a time course too, where people are

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negotiating.

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And for some people, it's a benefit to be a group member, be seen as a group member, and

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they want to promulgate that identity.

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And then there's the opposite where sort of, you know, and a good example would be like

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colonialists sort of just coming in and like, you know, massacring the natives, and they're

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just viewing everybody as like, oh, the rebels, right?

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When it's in fact like a very small group of people, but then they just broaden that

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category to everybody because they don't know the ethnography of the area.

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And so both in terms of like co mission or omission or aggression or defense,

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there's all these negotiations of group identities as sort of

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entrepreneurial coordination things.

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And so I think it's even more complicated than just those three things.

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It's sort of like by design, uh there's motivation to sort of for some people

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to want new groups to exist, or for some people for existing groups to not exist.

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And it's interesting too, it comes back to this idea as well about

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what's sometimes called structure versus agency and the social sciences, if I can bring

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that up, in the sense that any individual will actually, for example, as you said,

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maybe try to negotiate for certain groups to exist.

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But then you also have the structure, which is basically all what everyone else is trying

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to do in terms of their group coordination and what they would like to see happen to your

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point.

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And so I think this actually pops out again and again in the social sciences, but sometimes

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we're actually not thinking, as you said, about the whole space when it comes to

258
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coordination problems, when it comes to motivations that different folks have, and thinking

259
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about both the psychology and then the interpersonal dynamics of it all at once.

260
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Yeah, no, it's a really, it's no surprise that, you know, it's this thing of like groups

261
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are hard enough to measure, the individual psychology is hard enough to measure.

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And then when you get this dynamic of it's like that's, you know, very agent-based model-y

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kind of thing where it's sort of, or or game theory, um, you know, which I know David's

264
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been thinking a lot about too, which is just sort of you have all these coordination games,

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there's conflicts of interest, and so it's just it's it's no wonder that studying these

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things has been difficult and that we've often sort of oversimplified them.

267
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So how how are you?

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So let's let's try to make the rubber meet the road in terms of actually going out into the

269
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world and seeing how it works and measuring things and and observing things.

270
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So how are you uh wading into this morass of of definitional confusion about what a group

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is?

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And how are you getting in there and how are you operationalizing what it means to be a a

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member of a group?

274
00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:00,570
Yeah, it's a great question.

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00:16:00,730 --> 00:16:05,210
So one thing that's really fun, I was actually listening back to Shane Lou Levy's uh

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interview with y'all.

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Um, and one thing that she mentioned that really resonated with me that I actually want to

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just bring back for listeners too, is this idea of storytelling and then also about

279
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revising and being wrong and talking a bit about our process in the literature.

280
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So so when I started out thinking about groups, let's let's go back.

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So y'all might know, um, some of you listening and definitely both of you, David and David,

282
00:16:29,300 --> 00:16:31,620
um, that I started out working in Bolivia.

283
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So I was working in Bolivia in the Bolivian Amazon with Mike Irvin, Chris Von Ruden, and

284
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others that you know.

285
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Um and I was working there from 2010 to 2018.

286
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And as I mentioned, I had a lot of assumptions about what groups were up to.

287
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One of the things I was really interested in, right, is that groups as kind of containers

288
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for cooperation, because they often are, as you mentioned earlier, David.

289
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So to come back to that.

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And that who is in and who is out might be shifting as people are participating more in

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market economies.

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00:16:59,390 --> 00:17:05,230
That maybe the notion of who's in is expanding, which then makes cooperation easier when it

293
00:17:05,230 --> 00:17:09,470
comes to, say, getting a job, sending your kid out of college, lots of different things

294
00:17:09,470 --> 00:17:13,150
that folks are trying to achieve in Bolivia in the 21st century.

295
00:17:13,550 --> 00:17:18,940
And so what ended up happening, of course, is I had to take a big step back because I first

296
00:17:18,940 --> 00:17:24,620
found out by doing the field work, by by talking to folks that groups really mattered, but

297
00:17:24,620 --> 00:17:25,740
in very specific ways.

298
00:17:25,900 --> 00:17:28,220
So they certainly mattered for discrimination, right?

299
00:17:28,380 --> 00:17:33,020
So when working with Chimane people, for example, and then working with other groups in

300
00:17:33,020 --> 00:17:37,650
Bolivia, I would often hear that Chimane were considered to be groups, you know, members of

301
00:17:37,650 --> 00:17:42,690
a group that were discriminated against, that sometimes were considered to be out in the

302
00:17:42,690 --> 00:17:44,690
woods and kind of not knowing anything, right?

303
00:17:44,770 --> 00:17:48,210
So you get some really kind of strong through lines of discrimination there.

304
00:17:48,450 --> 00:17:53,650
And then additionally, you would hear from folks who identified as Chimane that as well

305
00:17:53,730 --> 00:17:55,890
they were experiencing that from the other side.

306
00:17:56,050 --> 00:17:59,810
And so really starting to unpack who was in and who was out was important to me.

307
00:17:59,970 --> 00:18:05,040
So one of the first things I started to do to understand this a bit more was to use a very

308
00:18:05,040 --> 00:18:09,520
similar kind of scale to something Dan Hushka was using at the time, which is this idea of

309
00:18:09,520 --> 00:18:10,320
closeness.

310
00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:15,520
So actually having people tell me by using physical space how close or far they felt to one

311
00:18:15,520 --> 00:18:16,640
group versus another.

312
00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:19,280
So you can see this kind of feltness popping out here, right?

313
00:18:19,360 --> 00:18:23,520
Those identity groups, people actually kind of opting in and telling me a bit about who's

314
00:18:23,520 --> 00:18:25,120
in and who's out for them.

315
00:18:25,910 --> 00:18:31,350
And so then I was starting to write papers about when folks made these intergroup

316
00:18:31,350 --> 00:18:31,670
connections.

317
00:18:31,750 --> 00:18:36,390
And what I was starting to realize is that groups were not always salient to folks.

318
00:18:36,630 --> 00:18:41,590
And so what I did ended up doing later in the day is with Cody Ross, I ended up writing a

319
00:18:41,590 --> 00:18:44,470
paper where I said, you know, I think there's two different things going on here.

320
00:18:44,710 --> 00:18:49,940
One thing is groupishness and groups as containers for cooperation and also groups as

321
00:18:49,940 --> 00:18:50,820
structure, if you will.

322
00:18:50,980 --> 00:18:55,220
So in Bolivia, when they're central to the discourse, they kind of become reified, right?

323
00:18:55,300 --> 00:18:58,100
They become things that are salient to interactions.

324
00:18:58,500 --> 00:19:02,260
And then at the same time, though, people are trying to manage things that are very

325
00:19:02,260 --> 00:19:03,700
distance bound in Bolivia.

326
00:19:03,860 --> 00:19:07,940
So if you need a connection in the city so that your kiddo can get a job, you need to know

327
00:19:07,940 --> 00:19:10,980
someone in the city, and it doesn't really matter which ethnic group they're in.

328
00:19:11,300 --> 00:19:17,070
And if you need to sell your lumber to someone, you need to have someone who's able to

329
00:19:17,070 --> 00:19:17,710
engage in trade.

330
00:19:17,870 --> 00:19:20,030
This is something you alluded to at the top, Dave.

331
00:19:20,270 --> 00:19:24,430
And so what I started to realize is that we actually need to split these things apart,

332
00:19:24,510 --> 00:19:24,670
right?

333
00:19:24,750 --> 00:19:28,030
So when we're thinking about cooperation, people are trying to solve multiple problems.

334
00:19:28,190 --> 00:19:30,350
Some of them are group bound, some of them aren't.

335
00:19:30,510 --> 00:19:34,350
And even when they are group bound, it ends up that people are very creative and there's

336
00:19:34,350 --> 00:19:37,220
often ways to find ways around boundedness.

337
00:19:37,460 --> 00:19:42,340
One thing I often think about for pastoralist groups in Africa, especially, is that you

338
00:19:42,340 --> 00:19:46,260
have things like stock friendships that can often go across ethnic boundaries.

339
00:19:46,340 --> 00:19:50,260
And if you have one of those friendships, you're often given a free pass to visit, even if

340
00:19:50,260 --> 00:19:55,700
your two groups are kind of at war or just even just tense with one another.

341
00:19:55,940 --> 00:20:00,230
So I start to kind of insert myself into this conversation by saying, let's take this step

342
00:20:00,230 --> 00:20:00,390
back.

343
00:20:00,470 --> 00:20:03,910
Let's start thinking about the kinds of problems people are trying to solve with

344
00:20:03,910 --> 00:20:08,790
cooperation and when groups would actually be something that's relevant to that situation

345
00:20:08,870 --> 00:20:13,350
versus something that can either be a not thought about in a particular study.

346
00:20:13,510 --> 00:20:17,510
Maybe we're talking about distance and that the groupishness is not really putting a

347
00:20:17,590 --> 00:20:19,190
container on that, as it were.

348
00:20:19,350 --> 00:20:21,830
Or two, that people are finding ways around.

349
00:20:21,910 --> 00:20:26,760
And those ways around are either individual or they're something that can also get baked in

350
00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:31,640
over time to cultural practices in terms of say stock friendships being a way to make a

351
00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:32,440
connection.

352
00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:37,320
And so this eventually leads me to kind of start going back to the literature and say we

353
00:20:37,320 --> 00:20:40,280
need to even rethink concepts like parochial altruism.

354
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:44,920
So this idea of in-group favoritism and out-group animosity and actually start to kind of

355
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:48,760
pull apart the conditions under which we would actually expect to see that happen.

356
00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:53,610
So nature, again, not always red in tooth and claw, but what about nature would actually

357
00:20:53,610 --> 00:20:56,010
say lead to red and tooth and claw versus not?

358
00:20:56,250 --> 00:21:00,250
So that's my long-winded kind of background story there, David, about how I ended up

359
00:21:00,250 --> 00:21:04,970
starting to insert myself into this conversation and actually go a bit from my own

360
00:21:04,970 --> 00:21:08,570
assumptions about groupishness and the way it should be playing out in the research world

361
00:21:08,570 --> 00:21:12,010
and in the lived world in Bolivia to where I am now.

362
00:21:12,380 --> 00:21:15,420
And how do you actually, like on the ground, study that?

363
00:21:15,580 --> 00:21:16,940
Because that seems like it would be difficult.

364
00:21:17,020 --> 00:21:18,940
Like, so what does that actually look like?

365
00:21:19,580 --> 00:21:20,140
Yeah.

366
00:21:20,380 --> 00:21:23,180
So this has been something I've been iterating on over time.

367
00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:24,700
So a couple things.

368
00:21:24,940 --> 00:21:29,100
First, right, is to start asking folks who's in and who's out.

369
00:21:29,180 --> 00:21:30,380
So I started to do that.

370
00:21:30,460 --> 00:21:32,940
And it's always from the individual's perspective, right?

371
00:21:33,020 --> 00:21:35,100
So they're the ones telling me who's in and who's out.

372
00:21:35,260 --> 00:21:39,180
Although one can make inferences on a larger scale from those data.

373
00:21:39,790 --> 00:21:44,190
Then additionally, one thing I started to do is doing what a lot of what we call lab in the

374
00:21:44,190 --> 00:21:44,510
field.

375
00:21:44,590 --> 00:21:50,110
So I was doing economic experiments in the field, having folks allocate money to strangers

376
00:21:50,110 --> 00:21:52,990
who are in-group or out-group members and identified as such.

377
00:21:53,230 --> 00:21:56,670
It ends up that those games are pretty powerful, but design really matters.

378
00:21:56,830 --> 00:22:01,230
And so this ends up being something I thought through with Cody Ross, Ben Persicki, Matt

379
00:22:01,230 --> 00:22:05,390
Gervais, and others about how we can actually use things like economic experiments to

380
00:22:05,390 --> 00:22:10,640
really give us purchase on particular questions about groupishness, cooperation, et cetera.

381
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:15,040
And then another thing, of course, is actually to just ask people the questions.

382
00:22:15,200 --> 00:22:19,920
So I found out over time, of course, is if you ask who's in and who's out, and you get a

383
00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:25,760
sense of how people are kind of negotiating this in real time, just actually having

384
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:28,400
conversations about it makes a big difference.

385
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:33,110
But again, at the end of the day, you come back to a lot of this is is a bit squishy.

386
00:22:33,190 --> 00:22:36,470
So you actually have to triangulate across different sources.

387
00:22:36,710 --> 00:22:39,590
At least this is the way I've been doing it to figure out what a group is, how it's

388
00:22:39,590 --> 00:22:42,390
structuring cooperation, when people are using it and when they're not.

389
00:22:42,630 --> 00:22:42,790
Yeah.

390
00:22:42,870 --> 00:22:46,150
And is it like showing photos of people or names?

391
00:22:46,230 --> 00:22:46,950
Or how do you do that?

392
00:22:47,030 --> 00:22:51,110
Because I mean, as David mentioned, you know, labels may not, there might not be labels.

393
00:22:51,190 --> 00:22:56,820
Like you, the three of us might have lots of group identities that were all common

394
00:22:56,820 --> 00:23:00,660
knowledge for us, but we we don't even think about them in that way because we don't have a

395
00:23:00,660 --> 00:23:01,300
label for them.

396
00:23:01,460 --> 00:23:05,700
So how do you is it photos or pup in individual identities or or how do you do it?

397
00:23:05,780 --> 00:23:06,100
Yeah.

398
00:23:06,340 --> 00:23:06,500
Yeah.

399
00:23:06,660 --> 00:23:06,900
Yeah.

400
00:23:06,980 --> 00:23:08,740
So I started out with photos.

401
00:23:08,980 --> 00:23:13,540
So originally, right, I was thinking that I could just describe an in-group and an outgroup

402
00:23:13,540 --> 00:23:13,860
member.

403
00:23:14,020 --> 00:23:17,620
I really liked the idea of using photos because it made things more real.

404
00:23:17,790 --> 00:23:21,790
And this has been a kind of movement in the lab and the field space for folks who are doing

405
00:23:21,790 --> 00:23:24,030
this kind of work is to increasingly use photos.

406
00:23:24,190 --> 00:23:25,870
Cody Ross has done a lot of work on this.

407
00:23:26,110 --> 00:23:28,110
He's at the Mox Planck Institute.

408
00:23:28,350 --> 00:23:33,950
And basically, what we start to do is use these photos to basically simulate a

409
00:23:33,950 --> 00:23:39,120
first-time interaction or to get additional information, even about known alters, known

410
00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:43,360
other people as well, in terms of, okay, so tell, tell me a bit about how you'd like to

411
00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:47,200
allocate money or take money from other individuals, tell me the story of how you made that

412
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:49,680
decision and to add some richness there.

413
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:54,000
The thing that's complicated, as y'all might guess, including folks listening who know a

414
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:58,400
bit about evolutionary psychology, as I know you do, is that you have to think about what's

415
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:02,490
in a face and you have to think about what's in the background and you have to think about

416
00:24:02,490 --> 00:24:03,450
what's on the body.

417
00:24:03,530 --> 00:24:05,770
There's a lot of things that go into a photo.

418
00:24:05,930 --> 00:24:11,690
And so it's something that we've been kind of trying to find that happy medium on as

419
00:24:11,690 --> 00:24:17,290
we've been using photos in field contexts, across continents, across evolutionary

420
00:24:17,290 --> 00:24:20,090
psychology, evolutionary anthropology and beyond.

421
00:24:20,250 --> 00:24:21,290
What is what is in a photo?

422
00:24:21,530 --> 00:24:22,490
What is it telling us?

423
00:24:22,730 --> 00:24:27,520
What are people seeing there that they're that we're not able to capture as outsiders, to

424
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:28,640
your point, David.

425
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:30,800
And so it's been interesting.

426
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:35,760
I started out kind of trying to elicit categories that people were paying attention to and

427
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:39,200
then actually introduced the strangers in the photos with those categories.

428
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:45,040
So name, age, and whether they were saying a religious in-group or outgroup or ethnic in

429
00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:45,920
group or out group.

430
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,040
But again, that is still only capturing a fraction of the variation.

431
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,160
And when I asked people back afterwards, how did you make the decision?

432
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:56,170
They would actually tell me things about like wealth that they were inferring from how the

433
00:24:56,170 --> 00:24:58,810
person's face looked or what was in the background of the photo.

434
00:24:58,970 --> 00:24:59,370
Oh wow.

435
00:24:59,530 --> 00:25:01,130
So there's a lot going on there.

436
00:25:01,290 --> 00:25:06,490
It's a fun method, but yeah, it's always that trade-off we're making between that kind of

437
00:25:06,490 --> 00:25:11,450
contextual richness and the control that we can get in a in a lab space on campus.

438
00:25:11,690 --> 00:25:11,850
Yeah.

439
00:25:12,010 --> 00:25:12,810
So what what percent?

440
00:25:13,050 --> 00:25:16,890
So when you show someone a photo, what percent of the time do they actually know the person

441
00:25:16,890 --> 00:25:19,610
in the photo and what and what percent of the time is it just a stranger?

442
00:25:19,930 --> 00:25:20,250
Yeah.

443
00:25:20,410 --> 00:25:23,240
So in Bolivia, I tried really hard to make it be stranger.

444
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:27,000
So I actually collected a bunch of photos for my dissertation work before I showed them

445
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:28,120
back to everyone.

446
00:25:28,360 --> 00:25:31,640
And I would ask everyone if they knew anyone in the photos.

447
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:33,480
And if they did, I would swap it out.

448
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:33,880
Okay.

449
00:25:34,120 --> 00:25:38,200
It does end up that some folks would say that they didn't know anybody and then they

450
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:38,600
actually did.

451
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:40,280
And then that would drive their decisions.

452
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:45,240
So I was able to, in some circumstances, at least kind of elicit that afterwards and kind

453
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:50,450
of a confessionary follow-up and then deal with those data accordingly, put a little flag

454
00:25:50,450 --> 00:25:51,890
on them in the analysis.

455
00:25:52,130 --> 00:25:54,050
But yes, that was the that was the plan.

456
00:25:54,130 --> 00:25:57,410
But it takes a lot of work to do that, it ends up, especially if you're working in an

457
00:25:57,410 --> 00:26:01,810
environment, say, where you're saying these are in group members, these are other folks who

458
00:26:01,810 --> 00:26:06,610
I identify as chimane or Mosaten or Intercultural different groups in Bolivia.

459
00:26:06,770 --> 00:26:11,250
But then at the same time, you know, at the time there were 16,000 people identifying as

460
00:26:11,250 --> 00:26:15,010
Chimane, every once in a while you would try to present someone with a stranger and they

461
00:26:15,010 --> 00:26:16,520
would they would not be a stranger.

462
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:18,920
So lots of little layers here.

463
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:19,800
Got it.

464
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:20,120
Okay.

465
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,960
So you have uh you so you're bringing people in to to run the experiment.

466
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:28,120
You show them a you know picture of someone who's in a different group and then presumably

467
00:26:28,120 --> 00:26:31,960
you you have some kind of economic game where they could divide a sum of money with this

468
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:33,160
person from the other group.

469
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:35,960
So you're doing this uh many, many times.

470
00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:38,120
Um what are what are the results?

471
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:39,240
What are you discovering?

472
00:26:40,590 --> 00:26:45,710
So, what I thought was really interesting is at first, right, remember, I'm thinking about

473
00:26:45,710 --> 00:26:46,750
market participation.

474
00:26:46,910 --> 00:26:51,310
And one thing that folks may not be familiar with is that there's a through line of work in

475
00:26:51,310 --> 00:26:55,710
the evolutionary behavioral sciences about how cooperation changes with market

476
00:26:55,710 --> 00:26:56,510
participation.

477
00:26:56,750 --> 00:27:02,190
So the idea is that as people participate in markets, social worlds expand and there are

478
00:27:02,190 --> 00:27:03,710
more and more strangers in them.

479
00:27:03,950 --> 00:27:09,160
Now it ends up that this is not a nuanced necessarily interpretation of the world.

480
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:14,280
So when we go back and look at data from, say, uh Kim Hill and colleagues, uh, my colleague

481
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:18,680
here, Doug Bird, and Rebecca League Bird here at Penn State, my colleagues here, know that

482
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:22,360
social worlds are actually quite large, even for folks who are living in what we would

483
00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:24,280
call, say, a small-scale society.

484
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:30,110
And so there are sometimes strangers, and that's not unusual, right?

485
00:27:30,190 --> 00:27:34,590
But the idea is that you just get strangers at this just huge level once you start

486
00:27:34,590 --> 00:27:35,870
participating in market economies.

487
00:27:35,950 --> 00:27:38,110
There's just so many strangers around.

488
00:27:38,350 --> 00:27:41,310
So how is it changing people's behavior with respect to strangers?

489
00:27:41,390 --> 00:27:45,870
And is that behavior with strangers scaffolded in any way by group membership?

490
00:27:46,110 --> 00:27:51,380
And so what you see is that looking at three different groups of let me not use the word

491
00:27:51,380 --> 00:27:55,460
group, three different pueblos indigenas, so three different ethnic groups in Bolivia.

492
00:27:55,620 --> 00:28:00,340
So Mosetenes, Interculturales, and the Chimane as well.

493
00:28:00,580 --> 00:28:05,620
In Bolivia, what you see is that Chimane were giving a lot less money in these games, this

494
00:28:05,620 --> 00:28:10,420
kind of open and cooperative move to outgroup members relative to folks who identified as

495
00:28:10,420 --> 00:28:12,180
Moseten or Intercultural.

496
00:28:12,650 --> 00:28:16,090
And of course, one might say that's actually the market economy, right?

497
00:28:16,170 --> 00:28:20,970
So Mosatenis and Interculturales are participating a lot more in the market economy.

498
00:28:21,130 --> 00:28:22,570
Maybe that's what we're seeing there.

499
00:28:22,810 --> 00:28:26,730
But when you actually kind of talk back to people afterwards, after the game, and you ask

500
00:28:26,730 --> 00:28:28,090
them how are they making the decision?

501
00:28:28,170 --> 00:28:30,410
Who would how are they deciding who gets money and who doesn't?

502
00:28:30,730 --> 00:28:36,300
Shamani participants would really regularly say, I am never treated well by members of

503
00:28:36,300 --> 00:28:36,940
those groups.

504
00:28:37,420 --> 00:28:38,220
They're never good to me.

505
00:28:38,300 --> 00:28:39,580
Why would I be good to them?

506
00:28:39,820 --> 00:28:43,820
And you really get this sense of kind of the not only the affordances, but also the

507
00:28:43,820 --> 00:28:44,380
discrimination.

508
00:28:44,460 --> 00:28:47,260
And I think those two things overlap pretty substantially, right?

509
00:28:47,420 --> 00:28:50,300
In terms of, am I going to invest in one of these relationships?

510
00:28:50,460 --> 00:28:54,860
And also, these aren't really, in some ways, first-time interactions if you're activating

511
00:28:54,860 --> 00:28:55,660
group membership.

512
00:28:55,820 --> 00:29:01,590
People are often thinking about this group as an entity and as having a value to them as a

513
00:29:01,590 --> 00:29:03,430
potential, say cooperative partner, right?

514
00:29:03,510 --> 00:29:05,110
This is often getting ascribed.

515
00:29:05,270 --> 00:29:09,430
And so Shimani participants would often say, it's just not worth it to me.

516
00:29:09,590 --> 00:29:12,950
And so what's really popping out, there could be a market integration story, but I think

517
00:29:12,950 --> 00:29:17,670
it's also a story about the haves versus have-nots and how that's actually mapping onto how

518
00:29:17,670 --> 00:29:22,710
people are being treated in Bolivia and to some of the bits of discrimination that were

519
00:29:22,710 --> 00:29:24,790
often popping out when I was talking to people.

520
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:29,240
sorry, go a go ahead, Ann.

521
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:29,560
Yeah.

522
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:31,480
No, no, I'm I I would like to hear what you're saying.

523
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:34,360
Oh yeah, I was just gonna say that's really interesting because I mean I think you know

524
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:38,280
there had been work in social psychology on sort of warmth and competence.

525
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:41,640
So um Cuddy and Fisk and those folks.

526
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:47,720
Um and the idea is that uh when you represent groups or collections of

527
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,310
people, um, there's sort of a a deep software structure.

528
00:29:51,470 --> 00:29:53,550
I don't think they would have called it evolved design at the time.

529
00:29:53,710 --> 00:29:58,990
I think nowadays they might, but you know, for sort of like is this person or group of

530
00:29:58,990 --> 00:30:02,350
people competent um to like actually carry things out?

531
00:30:02,430 --> 00:30:06,670
Um and then the other one is sort of warmth, and that's sort of a kind of fuzzy word for

532
00:30:06,670 --> 00:30:08,190
sort of like how are they treating me?

533
00:30:08,270 --> 00:30:13,720
And I like what I'm hearing you say is that really there's the valve

534
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:19,720
design for when when a group or collection of people are represented, just

535
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,360
intrinsic to that is sort of how are they treating me.

536
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,160
And that makes complete sense from an evolutionary perspective.

537
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:29,880
And I don't think we've emphasized that enough that there's a valve design, not only for

538
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:30,680
individuals, right?

539
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:32,680
Like it it's intuitive for an individual.

540
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:38,690
Like, you know, if you if you imagine the the evolved software for an agent file for

541
00:30:38,690 --> 00:30:43,650
a person, one of the most important things aside from sort of what do they look like for

542
00:30:43,650 --> 00:30:45,650
each person would be like how do they treat me?

543
00:30:45,730 --> 00:30:49,410
Is this somebody who I love who takes care of me or I need to take care of?

544
00:30:49,570 --> 00:30:50,530
Is it my child?

545
00:30:50,770 --> 00:30:52,210
Is it my um partner?

546
00:30:52,690 --> 00:30:54,130
Is it a family member?

547
00:30:54,290 --> 00:30:55,090
Is it an enemy?

548
00:30:55,170 --> 00:30:57,570
Or is it somebody who dislikes me or treats me poorly?

549
00:30:57,650 --> 00:30:59,010
That's obviously really important.

550
00:30:59,090 --> 00:31:03,860
And then it just extends up to um this category level thing.

551
00:31:03,940 --> 00:31:08,100
So if I've been treated poorly by this one member of this group, I will infer that the next

552
00:31:08,100 --> 00:31:10,420
time I encounter a member of that group, they don't.

553
00:31:10,580 --> 00:31:13,460
And that's I think that's really important in what you said.

554
00:31:13,700 --> 00:31:19,540
And I think our literature, even till this day, hasn't really emphasized that evolved

555
00:31:19,540 --> 00:31:24,100
design enough that there's this evolved design that sort of intrinsically there's sort of a

556
00:31:24,100 --> 00:31:26,260
slot for like how do they treat me?

557
00:31:27,710 --> 00:31:28,590
No, agreed.

558
00:31:28,670 --> 00:31:33,150
And I think it pops out nicely from some of the literature, but could be emphasized more.

559
00:31:33,310 --> 00:31:37,150
Um, one of my favorite papers on this is actually a paper that that John Tuby led.

560
00:31:37,230 --> 00:31:38,990
Uh, it's a book chapter, I believe.

561
00:31:39,150 --> 00:31:42,110
And it's kind of focused on these end-person coordination problems.

562
00:31:42,190 --> 00:31:43,470
I know you know this paper well, Dave, too.

563
00:31:43,630 --> 00:31:44,510
Is it the groups in mind?

564
00:31:44,830 --> 00:31:45,230
Groups and mind.

565
00:31:45,550 --> 00:31:47,230
Yes, it's the groups in mind paper.

566
00:31:47,470 --> 00:31:51,710
And and what I what I like about it as well is just kind of thinking about how one can

567
00:31:51,710 --> 00:31:53,780
represent kind of the group as an entity.

568
00:31:53,860 --> 00:31:57,460
Sometimes it's called entitativity coming out of social psychology.

569
00:31:57,780 --> 00:32:03,700
And it seems to just kind of be this rule of thumb that makes things more straightforward.

570
00:32:03,860 --> 00:32:09,140
But also in thinking about this in terms of risk management, I mean, if you are in an

571
00:32:09,140 --> 00:32:14,180
environment where groups actually could be sources of harm and you don't know who folks

572
00:32:14,180 --> 00:32:18,420
are, and we do know that social worlds have been very large for humans in the past, not

573
00:32:18,420 --> 00:32:23,050
only in the present, is that again, as exactly as you said, having that feature of the mind

574
00:32:23,050 --> 00:32:26,970
that's paying attention to groupishness and using that as a first pass, it shouldn't

575
00:32:26,970 --> 00:32:27,770
surprise us.

576
00:32:27,930 --> 00:32:32,010
What kinds of groups get mapped onto it kind of harkens back to the earlier part of our

577
00:32:32,010 --> 00:32:32,490
conversation.

578
00:32:32,570 --> 00:32:36,330
And there are certain ones that seem to scaffold that more readily than others, but it's

579
00:32:36,330 --> 00:32:37,530
not a hundred percent of the time.

580
00:32:37,610 --> 00:32:39,770
Again, it as you said, it depends on the environment.

581
00:32:39,930 --> 00:32:42,330
Kids are often renegotiating this, et cetera.

582
00:32:43,460 --> 00:32:49,300
And what I just heard you mentioned get into is sort of this idea of part of groups is

583
00:32:49,460 --> 00:32:52,100
uncertainty and then also risk.

584
00:32:52,340 --> 00:32:54,980
Um, and I know you've been thinking a lot about that.

585
00:32:55,140 --> 00:33:00,180
Can you talk a little bit about that, either in the context of what you were just talking

586
00:33:00,180 --> 00:33:03,940
about a second ago or what you've been studying with your students?

587
00:33:04,450 --> 00:33:05,730
Yeah, absolutely.

588
00:33:05,890 --> 00:33:10,290
So a lot of the work we're talking about actually emerged from my dissertation, which is

589
00:33:10,530 --> 00:33:13,010
probably longer ago now than I care to admit.

590
00:33:13,170 --> 00:33:18,210
But basically, I spent a lot of time focusing on groups, market integration.

591
00:33:18,370 --> 00:33:21,890
And as I mentioned earlier, that led me to think a lot about distance.

592
00:33:23,010 --> 00:33:28,980
So humans, omnivorous, really high energy throughput, especially little kiddos, right?

593
00:33:29,060 --> 00:33:33,780
You know, I think about we we all have little kids, and three year olds are often spending

594
00:33:33,780 --> 00:33:36,820
50% of their calories every day just on their brain, right?

595
00:33:36,900 --> 00:33:38,900
So yes, yes.

596
00:33:39,140 --> 00:33:41,140
So yeah, that that's amazing.

597
00:33:41,220 --> 00:33:41,620
Yeah.

598
00:33:41,940 --> 00:33:42,740
It's amazing.

599
00:33:42,820 --> 00:33:44,980
It maybe explains some behavioral things we encounter.

600
00:33:45,140 --> 00:33:46,340
I have an old five year old.

601
00:33:47,140 --> 00:33:49,860
Yeah, it explains the love of popsicles.

602
00:33:49,940 --> 00:33:50,580
Yeah.

603
00:33:51,190 --> 00:33:56,790
The love of popsicles, the in the very deep grumpiness, and also potentially the aversion

604
00:33:56,790 --> 00:33:58,470
to certain certain foods as well, right?

605
00:33:58,550 --> 00:34:00,390
Which of course is a whole nother tangent.

606
00:34:00,870 --> 00:34:05,030
Um, but so you have this really high energy throughput that humans have.

607
00:34:05,190 --> 00:34:07,670
And we're omnivorous and we're moving around quite a bit.

608
00:34:07,830 --> 00:34:12,070
There's a big through line of mobility, of course, over the course of human history.

609
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:16,840
And so a lot of the problems we had to solve were inherently spatial problems.

610
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:21,720
They were problems of accessing really key resources that could never be obtained locally.

611
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:26,440
So things like salt, for example, in the Amazon basin, they, it occurs in certain areas.

612
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,000
You need it, you have to figure out how to get it.

613
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:34,760
And then also, we have these past and present, these experiences of these really correlated

614
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:35,080
risks.

615
00:34:35,240 --> 00:34:38,110
If you have a flood, it hits everyone on the floodplain.

616
00:34:38,270 --> 00:34:41,470
If you have a big drought, it can be even wider scale than that.

617
00:34:41,710 --> 00:34:47,470
And so the risks that humans have faced have been kind of inherently tied up in space, in

618
00:34:47,470 --> 00:34:48,670
space and in time.

619
00:34:49,230 --> 00:34:53,710
And one thing I think we miss, and this came up a bit earlier for us when we were chatting,

620
00:34:53,790 --> 00:34:58,720
was this idea of who's in and who's out, and thinking about warmth and thinking about

621
00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:01,520
family, and that kind of helps us guide in our behavior.

622
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,600
Oftentimes we we focus on those more immediate things in the evolutionary behavioral

623
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:06,000
sciences.

624
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:07,120
We're thinking about family.

625
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:08,960
Maybe we're thinking about neighbors.

626
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:13,440
But are we thinking about the escape valve when things get really rough locally?

627
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:18,080
Or are we thinking about that salt trade or that trade for medicine when you really need

628
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:21,920
something that you can't get locally and you maybe only need it once or twice a year, but

629
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:23,920
then you have to figure out how to get it.

630
00:35:24,230 --> 00:35:26,550
And so being able to study that has been key.

631
00:35:26,710 --> 00:35:31,270
It's been the focus of my research program largely now for about five or six years, really

632
00:35:31,430 --> 00:35:32,790
moving in that direction.

633
00:35:33,030 --> 00:35:35,670
And so inherently, it's a risk management problem.

634
00:35:35,830 --> 00:35:41,590
It's a risk management problem that comes from the kind of lifestyle we lead and is solved

635
00:35:41,590 --> 00:35:42,390
through cooperation.

636
00:35:42,470 --> 00:35:45,350
So it's kind of a continuation of my previous work.

637
00:35:45,430 --> 00:35:47,670
And that work on groups is what got me here, right?

638
00:35:47,750 --> 00:35:50,950
It's thinking about the these different problems that are being solved.

639
00:35:51,270 --> 00:35:56,060
And so today, what's interesting, right, is that when you talk to folks about what are

640
00:35:56,060 --> 00:36:01,020
these big risks that they're solving that are in fact, you know, correlated in space or

641
00:36:01,020 --> 00:36:05,820
that have to do with accessing resources that are often not locally available, things that

642
00:36:05,820 --> 00:36:09,260
really come up are things like climate change, for example, right?

643
00:36:09,340 --> 00:36:14,540
So people are experiencing these increasingly long, intense, sometimes highly correlated

644
00:36:14,540 --> 00:36:16,780
things like large-scale droughts.

645
00:36:17,010 --> 00:36:20,530
And then additionally, also things like natural resource management.

646
00:36:20,690 --> 00:36:25,570
So, what strategies are people using to manage resources that are often very large that

647
00:36:25,570 --> 00:36:27,810
require cooperation across distances?

648
00:36:27,970 --> 00:36:31,810
It ends up that this kind of perspective applies really well to both of those contexts.

649
00:36:33,570 --> 00:36:36,930
That's uh stuff that we're we are all dealing with.

650
00:36:37,010 --> 00:36:40,130
Uh, and that's it feels like a big theme.

651
00:36:40,370 --> 00:36:43,250
And just to hear to make sure I'm understanding.

652
00:36:43,410 --> 00:36:48,860
So in the old literature, there were things about like risk buffering with cooperation,

653
00:36:48,940 --> 00:36:50,380
even just something like sharing food.

654
00:36:50,460 --> 00:36:55,100
So, like if you're in a context where you don't have modern technology and you can't store

655
00:36:55,100 --> 00:36:58,940
food in a refrigerator, then you store the food in your neighbor, right?

656
00:36:59,180 --> 00:37:02,780
Because if you provide them with food one day, then they'll give you food the next day.

657
00:37:02,860 --> 00:37:08,220
And it sounds like this sort of idea is extending in your thinking and in your work to

658
00:37:08,220 --> 00:37:14,210
groups, in the sense of groups are also sort of a way, or maybe groups is the wrong word,

659
00:37:14,290 --> 00:37:20,050
but sort of large scale or larger scale and spatially larger relationships are

660
00:37:20,050 --> 00:37:25,410
sort of key for risk buffering or risk management.

661
00:37:26,370 --> 00:37:26,930
That's right.

662
00:37:27,090 --> 00:37:31,730
And I think it's actually there in the literature before, but it wasn't a focus and it it

663
00:37:31,730 --> 00:37:35,730
kind of pops up more as fun anecdotes and less as a through line.

664
00:37:36,050 --> 00:37:40,640
So thinking, for example, about Harrow exchange among San people.

665
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,440
This is something that pops out in the ethnographic literature.

666
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,640
It's spelled H-X-A-R-O for folks who are curious.

667
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:51,760
And it often is something we learn, say in anthropology 101, is we we talk about exchange

668
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:53,920
relationships that are built over time.

669
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:55,920
They're often inherited across generations.

670
00:37:56,080 --> 00:38:01,130
And then when times get rough for San people, they're traditionally very mobile people,

671
00:38:01,450 --> 00:38:04,890
sawn people would kind of scatter to the winds, as it were, and go to different places

672
00:38:04,890 --> 00:38:06,730
where they could get access to water.

673
00:38:06,970 --> 00:38:08,810
And so that shows up there.

674
00:38:08,970 --> 00:38:12,490
We even see thinking about Argonauts of the Western Pacific, right?

675
00:38:12,570 --> 00:38:17,850
Thinking about Malinowski, we see this examples from the cooler ring, where you maintain

676
00:38:17,850 --> 00:38:22,250
relationships from trading over long periods of time that can be important escape valves.

677
00:38:22,490 --> 00:38:23,290
So those are there.

678
00:38:23,450 --> 00:38:28,880
I think where we often miss them is that really getting down to the brass tacks of what it

679
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:34,400
means to be human and how humans cooperate and how the human social niche is something that

680
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:40,000
enables us to be human and to understand evolved human psychology is something we really

681
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:44,560
kind of needed to drill into and really structured a lot of the work that we've been doing

682
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,930
from 1980s, 1990s, the 2000s.

683
00:38:48,090 --> 00:38:51,210
But then to actually kind of come back to some of those things we knew from before and to

684
00:38:51,210 --> 00:38:52,090
broaden it out.

685
00:38:52,330 --> 00:38:55,530
It's something that that we've known in that ethnographic literature.

686
00:38:55,610 --> 00:38:58,170
It's something archaeologists have known for quite a bit of time.

687
00:38:58,330 --> 00:39:03,610
And so thinking about how that is structuring human life over the course of human

688
00:39:03,610 --> 00:39:07,770
evolution, but then also, of course, the mind has been something that's been interesting

689
00:39:07,770 --> 00:39:10,570
for me to kind of retackle and pull together these different threads.

690
00:39:10,820 --> 00:39:11,220
Yeah.

691
00:39:11,540 --> 00:39:15,700
Do you I I wonder, I mean, I wonder if you've thought of I mean I'm just thinking of this

692
00:39:15,700 --> 00:39:19,620
now and I'm sure you've thought of this, where sort of I wonder if some of the de emphasis

693
00:39:19,620 --> 00:39:25,220
on this is also sort of just rhetoric or in David's terminology propaganda in the sense of

694
00:39:25,460 --> 00:39:29,540
one could view certain kinds of relationships as disloyal.

695
00:39:30,100 --> 00:39:35,220
And so I wonder too if you're talking about, you know, people coming from a particular

696
00:39:35,220 --> 00:39:39,850
cultural background doing the science, it's sort of this thing of there's a narrative of

697
00:39:39,850 --> 00:39:44,650
what groups exists and loyalty to the group is really important, especially if you're

698
00:39:44,650 --> 00:39:49,370
talking to the people sort of whose interest it is to sort of reify the groups.

699
00:39:49,530 --> 00:39:55,450
And so I wonder if the reality of actually there's lots of relationships that

700
00:39:55,610 --> 00:40:01,450
cross cut groups is sort of um uh it's very uh rebellious in

701
00:40:01,450 --> 00:40:06,660
a way to sort of hierarchical relationships or impose group boundaries.

702
00:40:06,740 --> 00:40:12,740
And I wonder, I I don't know if if that's something you've come across or or if

703
00:40:12,740 --> 00:40:15,940
that's true, but I'm just sort of thinking real time about that.

704
00:40:16,740 --> 00:40:19,700
No, it it's definitely something that's come across.

705
00:40:19,860 --> 00:40:21,380
It's it's interesting.

706
00:40:21,540 --> 00:40:25,540
I think sometimes folks talk about the science of science and thinking about who's doing

707
00:40:25,540 --> 00:40:26,420
the science.

708
00:40:26,660 --> 00:40:32,390
And just to give an example, one can see if one's say looking at the literature on war and

709
00:40:32,390 --> 00:40:37,590
peace, which is something that is alive and well in thinking about that in the evolutionary

710
00:40:37,590 --> 00:40:43,430
behavioral sciences, is that you can see kind of upticks and declines in whether

711
00:40:43,430 --> 00:40:49,020
people have been studying warfare or intergroup aggression Western

712
00:40:49,020 --> 00:40:51,900
science over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.

713
00:40:51,980 --> 00:40:56,140
And you can see upticks and downticks that probably track people's own experiences.

714
00:40:56,300 --> 00:41:00,220
So big uptick after World War II in terms of folks who were actually involved in World War

715
00:41:00,220 --> 00:41:03,900
II, in terms of studying intergroup dynamics and tensions.

716
00:41:04,140 --> 00:41:06,540
Funding drives it up and drives it down as well.

717
00:41:06,620 --> 00:41:10,940
So you can see funding interest in it over time in terms of where the money's coming from.

718
00:41:11,260 --> 00:41:16,750
And then I think also what we do, of course, is we create cultures of research, right?

719
00:41:16,910 --> 00:41:22,910
So again, earlier I mentioned this a bit, but I kind of came up in this time where we were

720
00:41:22,910 --> 00:41:27,070
thinking a lot of intergroup dynamics in the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

721
00:41:27,230 --> 00:41:31,870
And so it was almost my assumption that that is how the world was going to function.

722
00:41:32,140 --> 00:41:36,780
And when it didn't function that way, when there were nuances, when it when it depended,

723
00:41:38,060 --> 00:41:40,220
that was news and that required some rethinking.

724
00:41:40,380 --> 00:41:41,820
So I think you're right.

725
00:41:41,900 --> 00:41:44,220
I think there may be different incentives involved.

726
00:41:44,460 --> 00:41:46,300
I think they come from multiple different directions.

727
00:41:46,460 --> 00:41:49,900
I also think they come from the experiences of the researchers themselves.

728
00:41:50,140 --> 00:41:53,820
And so Cody Ross and I have a paper on parochial altruism.

729
00:41:53,900 --> 00:41:59,130
Again, that's in-group favoritism and out-group animosity being paired.

730
00:41:59,210 --> 00:42:01,770
So you actually, when you get the two of those things together.

731
00:42:02,010 --> 00:42:06,490
And what's interesting is that we actually caution in that paper that we should be

732
00:42:06,490 --> 00:42:11,130
sensitive to our own kind of preconceptions about what we're gonna see out there in the

733
00:42:11,130 --> 00:42:14,170
world, which is easier said than done for scientists, right?

734
00:42:14,330 --> 00:42:15,690
Requires a lot of unpacking.

735
00:42:15,850 --> 00:42:17,370
I've had to do that work myself.

736
00:42:17,450 --> 00:42:18,810
I'm still not perfect.

737
00:42:19,050 --> 00:42:24,920
Um, but I think it helps, I think it helps ultimately to to have that perspective, to take

738
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:29,080
that step back, because it ends up this is one of the thing I think things I think I can

739
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:30,440
say with with pretty good confidence.

740
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:34,120
Humans are extremely flexible when it comes to our sociality.

741
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:39,640
And I think sometimes we don't give humans the credit that we're due for how we make things

742
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:39,960
work.

743
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:40,760
Right.

744
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:41,400
Yeah.

745
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:46,510
I think that's uh and giving people humans credit, I think is one of the areas that get an

746
00:42:46,510 --> 00:42:51,390
evolutionary approach sort of always, and I'll speak for myself, even.

747
00:42:51,630 --> 00:42:56,990
I I thought as an evolutionary social psychologist, for example, well, I'm giving people

748
00:42:56,990 --> 00:43:00,670
much more credit than many people who don't take an evolutionary approach, but even I

749
00:43:00,670 --> 00:43:01,950
wasn't giving people enough credit.

750
00:43:02,030 --> 00:43:06,510
And like the data I would get, you know, every time it's sort of like people are really

751
00:43:06,510 --> 00:43:07,470
smart, as you said.

752
00:43:07,550 --> 00:43:10,030
The d their evolved psychology is very smart.

753
00:43:10,190 --> 00:43:15,580
And I think like our prior should always be that there's even if it's a bad reason, there's

754
00:43:15,580 --> 00:43:18,140
a smart reason why people are doing something.

755
00:43:19,980 --> 00:43:23,900
So I won't get into this this paper on parochial altruism.

756
00:43:24,060 --> 00:43:27,180
It's a really interesting uh paper and set of ideas.

757
00:43:27,420 --> 00:43:32,860
Um I I wonder if you would accept um a substitute term for parochial altruism, just

758
00:43:33,100 --> 00:43:34,220
tribalism.

759
00:43:34,460 --> 00:43:40,150
Uh and that, you know, uh you know liking the in-group and and and disliking the outgroup,

760
00:43:40,230 --> 00:43:43,030
we we sort of colloquially think of that as as tribalism.

761
00:43:43,110 --> 00:43:46,070
Uh would would you accept that uh substitution?

762
00:43:46,630 --> 00:43:47,190
Hmm.

763
00:43:47,830 --> 00:43:50,950
So I I would have two little areas of pushback.

764
00:43:51,110 --> 00:43:54,790
I would think just in terms of discourse right now, even thinking about the way folks are

765
00:43:54,790 --> 00:43:59,380
talking about these dynamics um in the United States and beyond at this moment.

766
00:43:59,540 --> 00:44:03,220
Tribalism is very commonly used and I think very easily recognized.

767
00:44:03,540 --> 00:44:08,580
The only just for the listeners, just a couple cautions about why I have some hesitations

768
00:44:08,580 --> 00:44:09,860
about the word tribalism.

769
00:44:10,020 --> 00:44:14,340
One is that it kind of assumes that tribe and tribalism equate.

770
00:44:14,500 --> 00:44:18,980
And so, of course, tribes then often are thought about in group and outgroup, and there's

771
00:44:18,980 --> 00:44:22,420
almost kind of an implicit through line of aggression and intergroup aggression there for

772
00:44:22,420 --> 00:44:24,020
tribes, for native groups.

773
00:44:24,180 --> 00:44:26,740
And so that's my one little bit of pushback on that term.

774
00:44:26,950 --> 00:44:32,950
The other one is actually that parochial altruism has a specific meaning that comes out

775
00:44:32,950 --> 00:44:38,150
of early 2000s research, thinking especially about work by, for example, Sam Bowles and

776
00:44:38,150 --> 00:44:43,270
colleagues about 20 years ago, and this idea that these two things would coevolve, that you

777
00:44:43,270 --> 00:44:47,350
would get in group favoritism co evolving with outgroup animosity.

778
00:44:47,510 --> 00:44:51,510
And it's a little bit stronger even than just not liking the outgroup.

779
00:44:51,590 --> 00:44:55,990
It's actually kind of it's an us versus them, a really strong thing.

780
00:44:56,420 --> 00:44:59,380
Now, yes, other than those two things, yes.

781
00:44:59,540 --> 00:45:02,740
I mean, tribalism, we're talking roughly about the same thing.

782
00:45:02,820 --> 00:45:05,620
So when folks hear that in the news, we're we're in the same genre.

783
00:45:05,700 --> 00:45:05,860
Yeah.

784
00:45:06,180 --> 00:45:06,340
Okay.

785
00:45:06,420 --> 00:45:09,460
Well I'll I'll I'll st I'll stick with parochial altruism then because it's a little more

786
00:45:09,460 --> 00:45:10,900
um accurate to to what you're talking about.

787
00:45:11,060 --> 00:45:15,620
I'll be and then listeners can, you know, understand that it's roughly tribalism, but but

788
00:45:15,620 --> 00:45:16,180
not quite.

789
00:45:16,740 --> 00:45:22,610
So uh in thinking about parochial altruism, um uh you you go through what

790
00:45:22,610 --> 00:45:26,770
I think is the million dollar question, which is what pushes it up and what pushes it down.

791
00:45:26,930 --> 00:45:31,810
I mean, this is this is what we all want to know uh as citizens of the world.

792
00:45:31,970 --> 00:45:35,330
We see uh tribalism for lack of a better term all around us.

793
00:45:35,490 --> 00:45:38,690
We want to know what causes it and what decreases it.

794
00:45:38,850 --> 00:45:42,690
Um and I think your your paper has some really interesting insights into that million

795
00:45:42,770 --> 00:45:43,490
dollar question.

796
00:45:43,650 --> 00:45:49,410
So so what are some of the um the the mechanisms that can uh push push that up or down?

797
00:45:49,820 --> 00:45:50,300
Yeah.

798
00:45:50,540 --> 00:45:53,020
So there's three key ideas that we go over in this paper.

799
00:45:53,100 --> 00:45:54,620
And I want to rehash these a bit.

800
00:45:54,700 --> 00:45:58,780
And they're actually coming from different sides of the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

801
00:45:58,940 --> 00:46:01,340
So one of course is resource competition.

802
00:46:01,500 --> 00:46:05,820
And in fact this pops up as a really strong through line when we're doing comparative work

803
00:46:05,820 --> 00:46:11,260
on on humans and say non-human primates, thinking about the primate order more broadly, is

804
00:46:11,260 --> 00:46:16,130
that it ends up when there's incentives for resource defense, when resources are very

805
00:46:16,130 --> 00:46:17,730
clumped in one particular place.

806
00:46:17,970 --> 00:46:22,610
What you can often see is that you get this these groups cohering around those resources

807
00:46:22,610 --> 00:46:26,210
and often defending them against other individuals, especially if you have to go a long

808
00:46:26,210 --> 00:46:29,090
distance before you can find additional resources.

809
00:46:29,330 --> 00:46:31,890
So that's something that's popping up in non-human primates.

810
00:46:32,050 --> 00:46:34,130
It's something we see in humans too.

811
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:39,680
And for listeners, for example, if you think about uh discourse that involves resources and

812
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:43,280
who has what and who's taking what, you can see how that's kind of kind of clearly

813
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:45,840
activated as well in our own psychology today.

814
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:50,400
The second one is thinking about institutions.

815
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:51,760
What's an institution?

816
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:56,480
Well, it's a collection of norms for how to do things, as the simplest way to put it.

817
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:58,560
And institutions are cultural.

818
00:46:58,730 --> 00:47:02,490
And so what's interesting about institutions when it comes to something like parochial

819
00:47:02,490 --> 00:47:06,970
altruism, in-group favoritism, and out-group competition or out-group aggression is that

820
00:47:06,970 --> 00:47:09,290
that can actually be structured by culture.

821
00:47:09,610 --> 00:47:14,810
And so you can have expectations set about who's in and who's out, who's a reliable

822
00:47:14,810 --> 00:47:16,010
cooperator and who's not.

823
00:47:16,170 --> 00:47:21,210
That doesn't just come from individual experience, but also from, say, transmission from

824
00:47:21,210 --> 00:47:21,930
other individuals.

825
00:47:22,090 --> 00:47:26,900
Well, they said that this group isn't a reliable cooperator, or where a boundary is

826
00:47:26,900 --> 00:47:29,140
actually set for you that you actually can't talk to those folks.

827
00:47:29,300 --> 00:47:32,900
I think you alluded to this earlier, Dave, when you said, you know, if you go over there,

828
00:47:33,140 --> 00:47:34,500
are you being disloyal?

829
00:47:34,740 --> 00:47:36,660
That itself is an institution, right?

830
00:47:36,740 --> 00:47:41,060
This is an expectation about behavior that's kind of coming down and affecting us.

831
00:47:42,020 --> 00:47:47,060
And then this third component is coming a lot from social psychology and it's thinking a

832
00:47:47,060 --> 00:47:48,180
bit about valence.

833
00:47:48,470 --> 00:47:51,670
So we're talking earlier a bit about warmth, for example.

834
00:47:51,910 --> 00:47:56,710
One can, from past interactions, have positive and negative valences towards members of

835
00:47:56,710 --> 00:47:57,110
other groups.

836
00:47:57,190 --> 00:47:59,750
I feel more warm to them or I feel more cold to them.

837
00:47:59,830 --> 00:48:04,550
That's kind of an easy way that often translates across cultures, this idea of warmth.

838
00:48:04,790 --> 00:48:10,790
And so what ends up happening is you basically have this updating of uh internal

839
00:48:10,790 --> 00:48:16,560
bookkeeping about whether groups are kind of worth the time, whether they're

840
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,120
going to cause you harm, et cetera.

841
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,360
Those three components are the ones we really hone in on in terms of how we can think about

842
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:25,600
parochial altruism and what moves the needle.

843
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:26,160
Yeah.

844
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:27,280
That's fantastic.

845
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:31,920
It's a lovely like core um d distillation.

846
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:32,720
Yeah.

847
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:38,170
Um yeah, I mean I I I I like that way of thinking a lot.

848
00:48:38,330 --> 00:48:44,010
Um it it sort of ties into the way that that Dave is

849
00:48:44,010 --> 00:48:44,970
thinking about groups.

850
00:48:45,130 --> 00:48:51,050
I mean, just the mere fact that um we can ascribe an attribute like warmth or

851
00:48:51,050 --> 00:48:56,810
competence to an entire group of people as opposed to an individual presupposes that um if

852
00:48:56,810 --> 00:49:00,970
one person is is warm toward me, then everyone else in that subset is also going to be warm

853
00:49:00,970 --> 00:49:01,210
to me.

854
00:49:01,370 --> 00:49:06,860
That inference is itself part of the underlying group psychology, that I can validly

855
00:49:06,860 --> 00:49:11,740
generalize this trait from this individual to this other individual by virtue of the fact

856
00:49:11,740 --> 00:49:13,820
that they share the group label.

857
00:49:14,060 --> 00:49:16,220
And you could imagine that inference not being made.

858
00:49:16,380 --> 00:49:20,380
You know, if someone from another group is mean to me, I don't necessarily have to infer

859
00:49:20,380 --> 00:49:23,180
that everyone else from that group is also going to be mean to me.

860
00:49:23,420 --> 00:49:29,310
And so what is is driving the mind to make that kind of inference, that if one member does

861
00:49:29,310 --> 00:49:34,750
it, then the others have to do it as well, as opposed to not generalizing that inference.

862
00:49:35,950 --> 00:49:38,830
When I'd be curious to hear Dave's follow-up on this as well.

863
00:49:39,150 --> 00:49:44,590
One thing that I often think about here is the cost of the downside, the cost of being

864
00:49:44,590 --> 00:49:44,990
wrong.

865
00:49:45,550 --> 00:49:48,670
And partially one would say that would depend on the ecology.

866
00:49:48,750 --> 00:49:53,310
So I'm gonna use the word ecology pretty broadly here, but it depends on the social

867
00:49:53,310 --> 00:49:53,790
environment.

868
00:49:53,870 --> 00:49:54,910
So who's around you?

869
00:49:54,990 --> 00:50:00,880
And it also depends on if you're wrong about someone else, does that mean that you're not

870
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:01,440
going to have a meal?

871
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:03,520
Does that mean that you're not going to have a place to sleep?

872
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:05,760
What are the costs of being wrong?

873
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:11,200
And what's interesting, of course, is that different ecologies can increase or decrease the

874
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:12,720
cost of being wrong.

875
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:16,800
Now, I'm curious, I'd be curious to hear Dave's thoughts about whether the mind kind of

876
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:21,200
defaults to there being a high cost of being wrong or whether that's actually kind of

877
00:50:21,210 --> 00:50:25,850
updating in real time with ecological uh context, because I bet you have some thoughts

878
00:50:25,850 --> 00:50:26,490
about that.

879
00:50:27,370 --> 00:50:32,730
But in general, I think that if there are cues, that the costs of being wrong are high.

880
00:50:32,810 --> 00:50:36,330
And those cues can come from a lot of things, they can be socially transmitted.

881
00:50:36,490 --> 00:50:39,770
When I say so socially transmitted, that can include the media, right?

882
00:50:39,930 --> 00:50:44,570
So if we're talking about things that are that we're seeing on TikTok, et cetera, social

883
00:50:44,570 --> 00:50:45,770
transmission is happening, right?

884
00:50:45,850 --> 00:50:46,970
So we're getting cues.

885
00:50:47,850 --> 00:50:53,760
So if the costs seem like they are high of being wrong, then if you have

886
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:57,200
one interaction and it goes poorly, you would imagine that the updating would go very

887
00:50:57,200 --> 00:50:57,440
quickly.

888
00:50:58,000 --> 00:50:59,360
Okay, not worth it.

889
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:05,360
That members of that group, whatever salient identity that person is in, are now folks who

890
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:06,160
are high cost.

891
00:51:06,240 --> 00:51:08,880
And again, salient identity here could be lots of different things.

892
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:10,640
I'm sitting in the middle of Pennsylvania.

893
00:51:10,720 --> 00:51:14,160
It could be whether you're wearing an Eagles or a Steelers jersey, for example.

894
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:17,040
There's lots of things that could be salient in that.

895
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:20,650
But if you've got those two things, that salient identity and that high cost, and then a

896
00:51:20,650 --> 00:51:25,130
bad interaction happens, you very quickly get that kind of down regulation of interest.

897
00:51:25,370 --> 00:51:26,650
Dave, what are your thoughts on that?

898
00:51:27,050 --> 00:51:29,370
Yeah, I mean, I agree everything with what you're saying.

899
00:51:29,450 --> 00:51:33,690
And I think I would even just add to it by putting it back in the language that you

900
00:51:33,690 --> 00:51:39,540
provided us, these three factors of sort of one resource competition, to boundaries.

901
00:51:39,620 --> 00:51:41,780
I like the idea of sort of boundary propaganda.

902
00:51:41,940 --> 00:51:43,300
You've talked about institutions.

903
00:51:43,380 --> 00:51:48,340
So one is resources, two is boundary propaganda, and three is valence.

904
00:51:48,500 --> 00:51:49,700
So how do you experience?

905
00:51:49,780 --> 00:51:55,620
And so just to make it concrete, I would, and this is the idea of costs, is like, let's say

906
00:51:55,780 --> 00:51:56,820
start with valence.

907
00:51:56,980 --> 00:52:02,100
Like if I have, if we all have a negative interaction from an individual person, right,

908
00:52:02,580 --> 00:52:06,990
then there's sort of a market for, well, what's the story?

909
00:52:07,230 --> 00:52:09,630
Is that one person just like an asshole?

910
00:52:09,790 --> 00:52:12,590
Or is there like a group of people who are out to get me?

911
00:52:12,990 --> 00:52:17,390
And that is a function of sort of the marketplace of boundary propaganda.

912
00:52:17,550 --> 00:52:22,830
And then what's the function of boundary propaganda includes competition over resources.

913
00:52:23,230 --> 00:52:28,990
So if there is competition over resources, or there's just sort of this market

914
00:52:29,150 --> 00:52:31,470
of what are the social groups?

915
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:33,600
am I a winner or a loser?

916
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:39,200
Which ideas stick in this in this kind of coordination of group

917
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:42,800
identities around power and resources?

918
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:48,800
Then if if there's low um competition for

919
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:53,760
resources among boundary propaganda, then we'll just be like that person's an asshole,

920
00:52:53,970 --> 00:52:54,610
roughly.

921
00:52:55,170 --> 00:52:59,970
But if there is competition for resources and there's the boundary propaganda that's sort

922
00:52:59,970 --> 00:53:04,530
of enough people are sort of buying into and we buy into, they're like, oh, that's an X.

923
00:53:05,010 --> 00:53:07,810
And boy, those X's, those are really bad people.

924
00:53:07,970 --> 00:53:10,210
And this is an example of X's being bad people.

925
00:53:10,290 --> 00:53:15,330
And the next X I see, I'm justified to assume they're gonna that they're gonna be bad too.

926
00:53:15,490 --> 00:53:17,250
And I'm justified in taking their stuff.

927
00:53:17,490 --> 00:53:23,200
So I view it as like the the three factors you listed is just a beautiful um

928
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:25,360
distillation of the of this dynamic.

929
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:30,720
That's so it's it's it's the cost answer, but that's I'm just kind of making it concrete uh

930
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:32,400
based on what you just said.

931
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:34,320
Interesting.

932
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:40,320
Uh in terms I mean I uh it seems like the the resource competition um aspect of it is

933
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:43,970
sort of like the the source of a lot of the hostility.

934
00:53:44,050 --> 00:53:48,370
So that will so if there's resource competition, there's going to be um boundary

935
00:53:48,370 --> 00:53:54,130
propaganda, as Dave put it, to uh uh make the the competing group

936
00:53:54,130 --> 00:53:59,250
seem negatively valenced so that we can more effectively outcompete uh that group, right?

937
00:53:59,330 --> 00:54:03,940
And so the resource competition is fueling the animosity um in in that case, and it's also

938
00:54:03,940 --> 00:54:08,660
fueling the the boundary uh uh uh propaganda as well and the institutions that form around

939
00:54:08,740 --> 00:54:11,060
you know who's in and who's out of the group.

940
00:54:11,220 --> 00:54:14,820
And to to a certain extent it's it's framing the the valence aspect of it as well.

941
00:54:14,980 --> 00:54:18,340
That if we view these people as competitors, we're gonna be more likely to focus on

942
00:54:18,340 --> 00:54:22,020
information that frames them in a negatively valenced light.

943
00:54:22,430 --> 00:54:28,030
So given that uh resource competition is often at the base of a lot of this stuff,

944
00:54:29,150 --> 00:54:31,870
would you take a broader view of what resource competition is?

945
00:54:32,270 --> 00:54:33,470
Is it just physical resources?

946
00:54:33,630 --> 00:54:38,350
Or would you consider things like social status or political power to also be resources

947
00:54:38,350 --> 00:54:40,990
that lie at the heart of these issues?

948
00:54:41,710 --> 00:54:42,590
They absolutely are.

949
00:54:42,670 --> 00:54:43,550
It's a great question.

950
00:54:44,030 --> 00:54:49,870
So so thinking about status, thinking about what matters, what translates into

951
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:52,080
increased something for folks.

952
00:54:52,240 --> 00:54:54,000
We can talk about proxies of fitness.

953
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:56,640
I assume y'all have talked about fitness before on the show, Ms.

954
00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:57,200
Mitch.

955
00:54:58,480 --> 00:54:58,960
Just a little bit.

956
00:54:59,200 --> 00:54:59,920
I don't I don't know.

957
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:04,320
David was sending I actually don't think I don't actually don't like the idea of fitness in

958
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:09,600
the sense of like when when I when you teach early or like new people, because it kind of

959
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:13,360
essentializes I don't I don't want to go into this, but like, but anyway, but the point is

960
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:17,670
yes, like we've talked about like what gets selected for, I think, and you know, things

961
00:55:17,670 --> 00:55:20,310
that would be beneficial from a gene's eye view.

962
00:55:20,390 --> 00:55:21,190
I think we've talked about that.

963
00:55:21,510 --> 00:55:23,030
Yeah, but we've never we you're right.

964
00:55:23,110 --> 00:55:24,790
We haven't directly tackled the issue.

965
00:55:24,950 --> 00:55:29,590
We probably should actually, but um, but but yeah, fitness, inclusive fitness, um, you

966
00:55:29,590 --> 00:55:32,070
know, uh survival, reproduction, reproduction of kin.

967
00:55:32,150 --> 00:55:33,510
That's what that's sort of thing we're talking about.

968
00:55:33,670 --> 00:55:36,710
We're talking about fit fitness proxies, we're talking about things that were reliably

969
00:55:36,710 --> 00:55:40,230
correlated with fitness in ancestral environments and things that presumably the mind

970
00:55:40,230 --> 00:55:44,320
evolved to uh pursue and and to find uh appealing and and motivating.

971
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:48,800
So with that in mind, uh can continue and who's running this podcast?

972
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:52,720
It's like, what are we 18 episodes in and we haven't even talked about fitness?

973
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:54,400
Like, what's evolution?

974
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:55,120
I don't know.

975
00:55:55,600 --> 00:55:56,400
Sorry, Ann.

976
00:55:56,480 --> 00:55:56,960
Yeah.

977
00:55:57,520 --> 00:55:58,080
You're good.

978
00:55:58,240 --> 00:56:00,400
Well so we can talk about about proxies.

979
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:01,520
You've talked about proxies.

980
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:03,600
So that that's that's a great way to think about it.

981
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:07,250
So what are what are the proxies that basically bring well-being?

982
00:56:07,410 --> 00:56:11,410
We'll use again kind of a gloss here about you know things that matter for folks.

983
00:56:11,490 --> 00:56:16,210
Um, and that could be, for example, that you have well-being in the sense that I mentioned

984
00:56:16,210 --> 00:56:19,410
before, you have a place to sleep, you have food, you have you have a job.

985
00:56:19,490 --> 00:56:21,490
Um, these are things that matter for folks.

986
00:56:21,650 --> 00:56:25,330
Uh, even things like having health and well-being also matters, right?

987
00:56:25,410 --> 00:56:29,740
These are all different things that kind of factor into us doing well, which again, in an

988
00:56:29,740 --> 00:56:31,580
ancestral environment would would matter quite a bit.

989
00:56:31,660 --> 00:56:34,220
And I'm gonna argue it matters still quite a bit today.

990
00:56:34,460 --> 00:56:38,460
And so what what happens, I almost got a little derailed there.

991
00:56:38,540 --> 00:56:40,060
So let's see if I can come back to your question.

992
00:56:40,300 --> 00:56:41,100
No, you're good.

993
00:56:41,260 --> 00:56:42,140
It was fun.

994
00:56:42,300 --> 00:56:48,300
Um is again thinking about what what is a resource, we think about what is it that

995
00:56:48,300 --> 00:56:49,020
matters?

996
00:56:49,340 --> 00:56:54,890
And some of that stuff is, I would, I dare say, uh, attractors, right, for our evolved

997
00:56:54,890 --> 00:57:00,410
psychology in the sense that if it is something that is about um often often land,

998
00:57:00,730 --> 00:57:04,890
or if it's about something like food, that is extremely salient to people.

999
00:57:04,970 --> 00:57:06,490
And it's actually really easy to get that.

1000
00:57:06,570 --> 00:57:11,450
I again think about Christina Moya was thinking about on what can one build groupishness.

1001
00:57:11,530 --> 00:57:14,250
And there's certain things that are easier and that are more commonly used.

1002
00:57:14,410 --> 00:57:16,250
I think about the same thing when it comes to resources.

1003
00:57:16,330 --> 00:57:19,050
There are certain things that are just more salient to people.

1004
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:24,240
And I think, I think power and I think status is also one of those things that really pops

1005
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:25,040
out for folks.

1006
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:28,880
Now, does other stuff matter like ability to say get a job, which I alluded to?

1007
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:34,000
I I think it does as well, but I think it's actually even tied up, almost scaffolded on

1008
00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:37,680
some of those other things that the mind is paying a lot of attention to, like social

1009
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:38,480
relationships.

1010
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:42,080
We know at the end of the day that a lot of times social relationships are what get you

1011
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:44,270
jobs, even in 2025.

1012
00:57:44,510 --> 00:57:48,350
And so again, that's a bit of a meandering answer, but I agree with you.

1013
00:57:48,510 --> 00:57:50,270
I think that resources are more than one thing.

1014
00:57:50,350 --> 00:57:55,150
And I think there are certain resources that are just more salient to people in pretty

1015
00:57:55,150 --> 00:57:56,030
predictable ways.

1016
00:57:56,270 --> 00:57:56,510
Yeah.

1017
00:57:56,830 --> 00:57:57,950
Can I just clarify?

1018
00:57:58,350 --> 00:58:03,630
So to make sure I understand what you're saying, the idea would be that there's sort of

1019
00:58:03,630 --> 00:58:07,630
some privileged categories because they've just been so evolutionarily important.

1020
00:58:07,790 --> 00:58:12,320
So just like to make it really concrete, like if there's a kid growing up and there's sort

1021
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:16,080
of like arbitrary groups like the yellows and the blues.

1022
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:22,080
And the blues just have more stuff or have more territory, like that, like

1023
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:27,920
having stuff, or having just like territory or land, like just at a very like quote

1024
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:33,280
unquote primitive level or very simple level, is sort of a privilege thing that feeds into

1025
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:39,370
um uh both sort of the spawning of group differences, but also it's sort of

1026
00:58:39,370 --> 00:58:43,930
implicitly opening an entry for there's a difference in power here.

1027
00:58:44,170 --> 00:58:49,930
Um, just because it's so always correlated, you know, in like or think like access

1028
00:58:50,010 --> 00:58:53,530
like who's eating, who's hungry, who's not, who has stuff or not.

1029
00:58:53,690 --> 00:58:58,560
I mean, like, as we all know, like toddlers get this, you know, like space, food, just

1030
00:58:58,560 --> 00:58:59,440
having stuff.

1031
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:03,600
Like these are very basic, easy to see things.

1032
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:05,280
Um, is that what you're saying?

1033
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:08,960
That these are they're sort of like privileged categories in a way, or cues.

1034
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:10,080
They are they are.

1035
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:13,840
And I confess in some ways I'm thinking through some of these as as we're talking.

1036
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:16,080
Um, but I I think that's the case.

1037
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:20,690
I think there are certain ones that are are just more salient, and I think that's why, even

1038
00:59:20,930 --> 00:59:26,050
say for for listeners of the podcast, thinking back to um previous guests, for example, why

1039
00:59:26,050 --> 00:59:31,170
things like like leadership and power kind of pop out, why we say uh see certain salient

1040
00:59:31,170 --> 00:59:35,170
things when it comes to social learning, for example, kiddos are coming into the world and

1041
00:59:35,170 --> 00:59:38,690
they are paying attention to who's who the haves are and who the have nots are.

1042
00:59:38,930 --> 00:59:43,170
And what what is had will vary of course across space and time.

1043
00:59:43,250 --> 00:59:47,090
But things like food and power, I think, are generally quite salient to humans for again,

1044
00:59:47,250 --> 00:59:49,010
the exact reasons you specify.

1045
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:56,000
I mean, uh, it makes me think that there should be um a theoretical paper on the psychology

1046
00:59:56,000 --> 01:00:00,720
of a resource or what a resource is and what are the salient attractors for the for the

1047
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:06,240
mind to categorize something as a resource um that is worth fighting over, um, and what

1048
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:08,800
things are not put into that category.

1049
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:10,960
Um it's a very interesting concept.

1050
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:15,360
I I would think that um one of the main factors that would cause something to be

1051
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:20,330
categorized as a resource is the degree to which it is zero sum or monopolizable, such that

1052
01:00:20,330 --> 01:00:22,490
the more of it you have, the less of it I have.

1053
01:00:22,650 --> 01:00:27,210
So land in that case is very salient in terms of a zero-sum resource.

1054
01:00:27,370 --> 01:00:30,650
The more space you have, uh, the less space I have.

1055
01:00:30,810 --> 01:00:33,130
Um, food is uh is kind of a a tricky one.

1056
01:00:33,210 --> 01:00:37,450
In some cases, um, the more food you have, the less I have if there's like a fixed amount

1057
01:00:37,450 --> 01:00:38,170
of food here.

1058
01:00:38,250 --> 01:00:43,740
Um, but in terms of uh food being the product of collaboration, uh uh and and coordination,

1059
01:00:43,900 --> 01:00:48,380
uh you know, you could work really hard to get food and we could work really hard to get

1060
01:00:48,380 --> 01:00:48,540
food.

1061
01:00:48,700 --> 01:00:52,700
And it's not necessarily the case that, you know, there's like a fixed amount of food, and

1062
01:00:52,700 --> 01:00:56,380
the more food that that group has, the less food uh my group has.

1063
01:00:57,500 --> 01:01:01,580
Um and so maybe food is is sort of a blurry one, where in some cases it could it could be

1064
01:01:01,580 --> 01:01:06,570
limited if there's like a specific, say, patch of land, for instance, that produces food,

1065
01:01:06,650 --> 01:01:10,970
like in an agricultural setting, or if there's a specific body of water where animals tend

1066
01:01:10,970 --> 01:01:15,290
to congregate, we want to defend that specific patch of land that gives rise to food.

1067
01:01:15,770 --> 01:01:21,050
But in other cases, it might not be viewed as a zero-sum resource.

1068
01:01:21,930 --> 01:01:26,730
On the other hand, political power, I think, is a very strongly uh zero-sum resource.

1069
01:01:26,810 --> 01:01:31,660
You know, the more power, uh, the more seats in Congress, say the Republican Party has, the

1070
01:01:31,660 --> 01:01:34,540
less the fewer seats the the Democratic Party has.

1071
01:01:34,620 --> 01:01:38,860
Um the more control they have over legislation, the less control uh we have.

1072
01:01:39,020 --> 01:01:42,220
Uh who you know, if if they're in the White House, we're not in the White House.

1073
01:01:42,300 --> 01:01:45,020
I mean it's it you know is is the space metaphor as well.

1074
01:01:45,100 --> 01:01:48,700
They're in the physical space of the White House and we are not in that space.

1075
01:01:48,860 --> 01:01:54,630
Um so I'm curious how you think the the zero-sumness of of

1076
01:01:54,630 --> 01:02:00,470
the resource feeds into this and in in what context do we view a resource as zero sum uh

1077
01:02:00,550 --> 01:02:01,510
uh or not?

1078
01:02:02,310 --> 01:02:03,350
I actually think this is great.

1079
01:02:03,510 --> 01:02:05,990
Partially I feel like we're actually writing the paper while we're talking.

1080
01:02:06,070 --> 01:02:08,950
So that's also fun because this pushback is useful.

1081
01:02:09,430 --> 01:02:14,560
So as you you brought out, for example, with food, food is not necessarily zero sum.

1082
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:18,960
If it is communally produced, I think about um, for example, collaborative hunting, for

1083
01:02:18,960 --> 01:02:23,360
example, or the way that food can get shared out, then of course it's not it's not zero

1084
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:23,600
sum.

1085
01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:25,440
Same thing with land, right?

1086
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:30,400
So if we think about um, for example, traditional landholders thinking about notions of

1087
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:34,720
country or landess capital, which is a term coming out of archaeology, there's often an

1088
01:02:34,720 --> 01:02:39,680
idea as well that that of course, if land is kind of being co-managed, that people are

1089
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:43,350
actually are not experiencing a zero-sum environment when it comes to land.

1090
01:02:43,510 --> 01:02:44,150
Everyone can use it.

1091
01:02:44,230 --> 01:02:47,830
I think about the experience of Mardu people, for example, in Australia.

1092
01:02:48,070 --> 01:02:50,390
And then thinking also about power.

1093
01:02:50,950 --> 01:02:52,310
That's an interesting one.

1094
01:02:52,390 --> 01:02:56,390
And I'm sure folks in the audience have thoughts too, but I think it also depends.

1095
01:02:56,550 --> 01:03:02,470
I think about contexts in which allies, for example, thinking about non-human primates,

1096
01:03:02,630 --> 01:03:06,900
oftentimes allies can actually depose, for example, an alpha.

1097
01:03:06,980 --> 01:03:10,100
So if I'm thinking about, say, chimpanzee society, for example.

1098
01:03:10,340 --> 01:03:14,580
And so, um, and again, that's not a one-to-one with humans, but again, just kind of

1099
01:03:14,580 --> 01:03:20,500
thinking here about when one would expect to get the notion of a resource and the notion of

1100
01:03:20,500 --> 01:03:22,180
a resource that is worth fighting over.

1101
01:03:22,340 --> 01:03:27,620
I think your zero stumness is hitting on something here, because even then, um, if one's

1102
01:03:27,620 --> 01:03:31,460
thinking about food, and of course we know toddlers think a ton about food, for example, we

1103
01:03:31,460 --> 01:03:32,820
know that all too well.

1104
01:03:33,140 --> 01:03:36,250
Um, at the same time, is food limited?

1105
01:03:36,410 --> 01:03:39,610
And so it I think your point is is well taken on the zero-sumness.

1106
01:03:40,170 --> 01:03:40,410
Yeah.

1107
01:03:40,650 --> 01:03:42,250
I also think about food a lot.

1108
01:03:42,970 --> 01:03:44,730
Can I push back a little bit, David?

1109
01:03:44,810 --> 01:03:50,410
Like let me let me challenge the idea that power is zero-sum in the sense of if somebody is

1110
01:03:50,570 --> 01:03:56,280
um uh in the uh in power, it's not zero sum if I

1111
01:03:56,280 --> 01:04:01,160
view them as an ally, or if even if I view them as like kind of an outgroup, if I do think

1112
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:05,960
like there's a broader social identity that that we sort of have in common.

1113
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:11,640
So it's sort of like nested sets of like, how much do they care about my

1114
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:12,280
interests?

1115
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:16,520
And I think there is rhetoric now of like, you know, if the Republicans are in power, the

1116
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:18,360
Democrats are in power, like you're gonna get nothing.

1117
01:04:18,440 --> 01:04:19,400
They're the enemy.

1118
01:04:19,590 --> 01:04:21,110
It's literally zero sum.

1119
01:04:21,430 --> 01:04:25,030
But I think historically, you know, it's this thing of, well, yes, like we disagree about

1120
01:04:25,030 --> 01:04:28,710
some issues, but then there's a larger set that we all agree on, and of course we're all

1121
01:04:28,710 --> 01:04:30,710
together if there's another issue.

1122
01:04:31,030 --> 01:04:34,550
So I don't know if that's a a devil's advocate position.

1123
01:04:34,630 --> 01:04:36,710
That might be a too strong articulation.

1124
01:04:36,950 --> 01:04:41,510
But do would would that view challenge this idea that political power is zero sum?

1125
01:04:41,670 --> 01:04:42,390
I don't know, actually.

1126
01:04:42,470 --> 01:04:44,950
I'm I'm just asking both of you.

1127
01:04:45,510 --> 01:04:46,950
I yeah, no, it's interesting.

1128
01:04:47,030 --> 01:04:52,200
I I so maybe there's a caveat there that um it's only zero sum in cases of conflicts of

1129
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:52,600
interest.

1130
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,600
So where there are different groups with different interests, then then it's zero sum,

1131
01:04:56,680 --> 01:04:59,320
where more more power goes to one group to advocate for those interests.

1132
01:04:59,720 --> 01:04:59,800
Yeah.

1133
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:04,920
But but if there are if there are no conflicts of interests, um then it's not necessarily

1134
01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:06,360
zero sum.

1135
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:08,120
Um if we all have the same interests.

1136
01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:08,600
Yeah.

1137
01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:10,120
Um I like that.

1138
01:05:10,290 --> 01:05:10,610
Yeah.

1139
01:05:11,170 --> 01:05:15,330
And and this also there is like a little bit of what you talked about in the Pascal Boyer

1140
01:05:15,570 --> 01:05:15,650
paper.

1141
01:05:15,890 --> 01:05:21,810
We should have Pascal on in his psychology of ownership, um, where it's sort of uh

1142
01:05:22,290 --> 01:05:28,290
I think in that paper he's he's he's alluding to the sociality of resources, uh, which

1143
01:05:28,290 --> 01:05:29,570
is a really cool idea, right?

1144
01:05:29,730 --> 01:05:33,360
Wait, this is the idea like David that you're saying you're saying is like we don't really

1145
01:05:33,360 --> 01:05:36,960
consider oxygen a res or like, you know, air a resource right now.

1146
01:05:37,600 --> 01:05:43,200
But boy, if David had it all and and you and I didn't have any, you know, we we immediately

1147
01:05:43,200 --> 01:05:43,920
would, right?

1148
01:05:44,080 --> 01:05:46,240
Uh and we'd be knocking on your door, David.

1149
01:05:46,400 --> 01:05:50,880
Um so if we're out in space, all of a sudden air is, right? 'Cause like some people have

1150
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,200
it, some people don't, and like tanks or something, right?

1151
01:05:53,280 --> 01:05:58,230
So it's it's it what counts as a resource is not an objective feature of the world.

1152
01:05:58,310 --> 01:05:59,910
David, I really like that you pointed that out.

1153
01:05:59,990 --> 01:06:03,350
And I do think like the Pascal paper starts to get into it.

1154
01:06:03,430 --> 01:06:09,430
But that's that's such a cool sort of unlifting of like the matrix programs, as John Tuby

1155
01:06:09,510 --> 01:06:09,990
would talk about.

1156
01:06:10,070 --> 01:06:14,470
Like it's that we just think resources just exist, but really it's kind of like groups.

1157
01:06:14,550 --> 01:06:15,750
It's the same principle, right?

1158
01:06:15,830 --> 01:06:21,670
Like both groups and resources, they're so obvious, but that obviousness is instinct

1159
01:06:21,670 --> 01:06:25,590
blindness to like there's actually a lot of calculation going on.

1160
01:06:25,910 --> 01:06:31,560
And the idea that like what counts as a resource is is social is such a weird, cool idea

1161
01:06:31,720 --> 01:06:34,760
that I agree is just starting to be thought of, David.

1162
01:06:34,840 --> 01:06:36,360
I think that's a really nice thought.

1163
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:41,640
And I mean, and I think that's a lot of what your work is also looking at.

1164
01:06:41,720 --> 01:06:46,120
If if, you know, you can tell me if you're wrong, but basically it's this idea that sort of

1165
01:06:46,350 --> 01:06:51,790
even what groups exist is sort of a function of these resources.

1166
01:06:52,030 --> 01:06:56,910
As you talked about, like one of the drivers is resource competition, as we talked about

1167
01:06:56,910 --> 01:06:57,390
earlier.

1168
01:06:57,630 --> 01:07:03,470
There's an old paper by Liz Cashton that is like, and we're gonna have Liz Cashton on it at

1169
01:07:03,470 --> 01:07:03,790
some point.

1170
01:07:03,870 --> 01:07:06,670
I'm going back and forth with her scheduling, that's incredible.

1171
01:07:06,750 --> 01:07:09,070
That talks about, and Annie, I saw you nodding your head.

1172
01:07:09,310 --> 01:07:15,220
I'm sure you know this paper even better than I do, which is that she found that the

1173
01:07:15,540 --> 01:07:21,540
density of ethnic groups across the globe is a function of basically

1174
01:07:21,540 --> 01:07:25,940
what she discovered was sort of like the density of resources.

1175
01:07:26,180 --> 01:07:31,940
So, for example, if you're in a really high-latitude area where you have to travel very far

1176
01:07:32,260 --> 01:07:36,420
to just get enough stuff to keep a small number of people alive, because you got to go get

1177
01:07:36,420 --> 01:07:42,190
a polar bear or you know you've got a fish, then the the spatial scale of a group

1178
01:07:42,190 --> 01:07:43,950
identity will be very large.

1179
01:07:44,190 --> 01:07:48,830
But if you look at like very much lower latitude areas where there's like rainforests and

1180
01:07:48,830 --> 01:07:52,990
density of food and you can just go to the river really close by or go to trees really

1181
01:07:52,990 --> 01:07:57,550
close by and get everything you need, then the number and density of sort of group

1182
01:07:57,550 --> 01:07:59,470
identities increases.

1183
01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:01,680
And for me, that was just mind blowing.

1184
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:06,400
And it's exactly like in in accordance with with Anne with your what you're saying here,

1185
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:11,600
which is that, you know, sort of what gr drives these containers of cooperation

1186
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:17,760
ultimately, as David put it, is sort of this engine of of group of of resource competition

1187
01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:21,680
or or corpor cooperation or competition for resources.

1188
01:08:21,760 --> 01:08:22,240
Yeah.

1189
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:24,480
Yeah.

1190
01:08:25,290 --> 01:08:27,770
I mean, I I love this uh this this train of thought.

1191
01:08:27,930 --> 01:08:32,410
I mean, uh one interesting aspect that I I throw in just because we're um we're spitballing

1192
01:08:32,410 --> 01:08:35,850
in an interesting area is um jobs as a resource.

1193
01:08:36,090 --> 01:08:39,610
Um what's interesting about jobs is that they're kind of they're they're somewhat

1194
01:08:39,610 --> 01:08:40,330
unprecedented.

1195
01:08:40,410 --> 01:08:43,450
I uh there were there and that there wasn't really a market economy in ancestral

1196
01:08:43,450 --> 01:08:46,490
environments, although certainly we had roles and division of labor, but we didn't really

1197
01:08:46,490 --> 01:08:50,490
have uh quite formalized jobs the way we do now.

1198
01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:56,000
and um it seems like a lot of people think of jobs as a resource.

1199
01:08:56,080 --> 01:08:59,200
You know, there's rhetoric, uh anti-immigration rhetoric that you know they're taking our

1200
01:08:59,200 --> 01:08:59,760
jobs.

1201
01:08:59,920 --> 01:09:04,000
Um and what's interesting is that economists will tell us that they're actually not a

1202
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:05,120
zero-sum resource.

1203
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:09,520
That when when immigrants come in, uh, you know, yes, uh they might take some jobs, but

1204
01:09:09,520 --> 01:09:13,530
they also produce more jobs because they're there are more consumers to uh consume

1205
01:09:13,530 --> 01:09:17,530
resources which creates more jobs and then they they work and they grow businesses and they

1206
01:09:17,530 --> 01:09:21,290
create more products to sell and and you know they add more mouths to feed which creates

1207
01:09:21,290 --> 01:09:24,970
more money and so when you so when you think about it in terms of uh you know the economic

1208
01:09:24,970 --> 01:09:29,130
system the uh there isn't really like a fixed amount of labor right there's known as like

1209
01:09:29,130 --> 01:09:34,090
the lump of labor fallacy where you know less few fewer jobs for for you means yeah or more

1210
01:09:34,090 --> 01:09:37,930
jobs for you means fewer jobs for me that's really not how it works in the economy and yet

1211
01:09:38,010 --> 01:09:43,020
there's something about it that we we sort of think of uh jobs as like a a fixed resource.

1212
01:09:43,180 --> 01:09:45,580
It's it's sort of an attractor for the mind.

1213
01:09:45,900 --> 01:09:49,180
Um and I'm wondering, you know, you you mentioned Ann that you were working with with

1214
01:09:49,180 --> 01:09:54,060
societies that were just starting to integrate into a a market economy if if you have if

1215
01:09:54,060 --> 01:09:59,020
you've caught wind on any of this psychology of of of whether job is is is is seen as a

1216
01:09:59,020 --> 01:10:00,140
resource or not.

1217
01:10:01,830 --> 01:10:03,590
That's a really interesting question.

1218
01:10:05,990 --> 01:10:07,750
Is it seen as a resource?

1219
01:10:07,990 --> 01:10:10,390
My so my brain's going in a couple different directions.

1220
01:10:10,550 --> 01:10:13,430
I'm going to start to answer the question to see where it gets us because I actually

1221
01:10:13,430 --> 01:10:15,030
haven't thought about this before.

1222
01:10:15,830 --> 01:10:21,350
So, first line: one thing that we know is that households are

1223
01:10:21,980 --> 01:10:25,900
basically at the end of the day, if we think about the household as a unit, risk

1224
01:10:25,900 --> 01:10:29,340
diversification is kind of a through line of household decision making.

1225
01:10:29,580 --> 01:10:34,060
And one thing that we see again and again, whether it's planting more diverse crops for

1226
01:10:34,060 --> 01:10:38,460
agriculturalists, whether it is pursuing different kinds of game if you're if you're

1227
01:10:38,460 --> 01:10:44,060
hunting, whether it's having different income streams from different sectors if you're

1228
01:10:44,010 --> 01:10:47,610
participating in markets, is that households are diversifying.

1229
01:10:47,770 --> 01:10:51,770
We see that kind of pop up again and again, whether we're, you know, economists, whether

1230
01:10:51,770 --> 01:10:54,250
we're uh anthropologists, et cetera.

1231
01:10:54,570 --> 01:11:00,490
And so when I think about resources in this context, about what a job is, I think about it

1232
01:11:00,490 --> 01:11:03,530
as kind of a reliable source of diversification.

1233
01:11:03,770 --> 01:11:09,080
So that's kind of answer number one there is that it's kind of part of a portfolio from the

1234
01:11:09,080 --> 01:11:11,880
household perspective, which I think is really salient for folks.

1235
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:17,240
And then additionally, when you add to that, that that particular

1236
01:11:17,560 --> 01:11:23,400
avenue of resource access can be outsized in terms of how much it's bringing into the

1237
01:11:23,400 --> 01:11:23,960
household.

1238
01:11:24,200 --> 01:11:30,120
I think that, again, thinking about this kind of zero-sumness, what is the magnitude of

1239
01:11:30,150 --> 01:11:33,270
that pathway when it comes to household diversification.

1240
01:11:33,510 --> 01:11:37,590
And I think here we're thinking a bit about concepts that show up in something like human

1241
01:11:37,590 --> 01:11:42,390
behavioral ecology when it comes to making decisions about how to invest one's time, what

1242
01:11:42,390 --> 01:11:47,030
are the average returns versus the variance, and that really will affect decision making.

1243
01:11:47,190 --> 01:11:50,470
It's something we also see when we're talking about household decision making.

1244
01:11:50,550 --> 01:11:55,670
If we're talking to a labor economist or talking to an agricultural economist, is thinking

1245
01:11:55,670 --> 01:11:58,790
about those trade-offs again when it comes to mean versus variance.

1246
01:11:59,400 --> 01:12:04,680
And so what I'm hearing here a little bit when I'm thinking about jobs is people are often

1247
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:07,080
talking about high paying jobs.

1248
01:12:07,240 --> 01:12:13,160
And high paying jobs are as salient in the US right now as they are in rural

1249
01:12:13,160 --> 01:12:15,800
Bolivia right now is how do I get a high paying job?

1250
01:12:15,960 --> 01:12:19,880
When people talk to me about long distance relationships, they're often talking about that

1251
01:12:19,880 --> 01:12:21,400
resource as the key thing.

1252
01:12:21,560 --> 01:12:26,120
How do I find a good job, a high paying job that pays well is something that's really

1253
01:12:26,120 --> 01:12:26,840
salient.

1254
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:32,230
And so I think what ends up happening then is that if there's not just competition over

1255
01:12:32,230 --> 01:12:37,510
jobs, but there's competition over that one job that is going to be the high mean, low

1256
01:12:37,590 --> 01:12:41,430
variance job that's going to be coming into the household and it's going to just really

1257
01:12:41,750 --> 01:12:46,870
expand our options when it comes to thinking about diversification portfolio, that's when I

1258
01:12:46,870 --> 01:12:48,950
would expect that competition to arise.

1259
01:12:49,680 --> 01:12:50,080
Interesting.

1260
01:12:50,160 --> 01:12:55,040
Yeah, no, I like that distinction a lot because you know jobs as an abstract category don't

1261
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:59,280
really make much sense to it doesn't make sense to think of them as as zero sum or as

1262
01:12:59,280 --> 01:13:02,240
limited, um, because you know they grow as the economy grows.

1263
01:13:02,400 --> 01:13:06,240
Uh but one job is a zero-sum resource.

1264
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:10,240
If you, you know, if we both want the same job, if you get it, then I don't get it.

1265
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:14,960
You know, uh, you know, if the president, that is one job, you know, if uh if the

1266
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:17,600
Republicans get that job, then the Democrats don't.

1267
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:18,320
Right.

1268
01:13:18,650 --> 01:13:21,290
Um, and so that's that's an interesting way of thinking about it.

1269
01:13:21,370 --> 01:13:26,170
Um, that it's it's not necessarily jobs as an abstract category, but a a particular job or

1270
01:13:26,250 --> 01:13:31,130
particular type of job um that that might be driving um this this kind of psychology.

1271
01:13:31,290 --> 01:13:32,010
Um cool.

1272
01:13:32,730 --> 01:13:37,370
I like that too, because I mean it reminds me, coming from like a social dynamics

1273
01:13:37,370 --> 01:13:43,370
perspective, where um there's a lot of situations where people do

1274
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:47,960
really sort of horrible things, like they have a job that involves, like, I mean, like at

1275
01:13:47,960 --> 01:13:50,760
the extreme version, you know, like working in a concentration camp.

1276
01:13:50,840 --> 01:13:54,680
Like, actually, what you're describing reminded me of when I visited one, where it was sort

1277
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:59,800
of like, why would somebody ever who's sort of in the victim category ever have one of

1278
01:13:59,800 --> 01:14:00,600
these jobs?

1279
01:14:00,760 --> 01:14:05,000
Or why would they ever do one of these jobs that sort of is like helping the machinations

1280
01:14:05,240 --> 01:14:05,800
of the camp?

1281
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:08,570
And it was because there was a finite job.

1282
01:14:08,650 --> 01:14:10,570
And it was basically, am I better off having it?

1283
01:14:10,730 --> 01:14:12,010
Do I get more food or not?

1284
01:14:12,170 --> 01:14:14,250
And if I don't take it, someone else will.

1285
01:14:14,490 --> 01:14:18,250
And so it's not like I have the power to change the fact that the jobs exist.

1286
01:14:18,330 --> 01:14:22,410
Like I don't want the job to exist, but like it's just basically like, do I have enough

1287
01:14:22,410 --> 01:14:26,490
food for me and maybe the person I love over on the other side of the camp and I can give

1288
01:14:26,490 --> 01:14:27,370
them a little more food?

1289
01:14:27,530 --> 01:14:32,140
And I think that's an extreme version, but I think this happens a lot where like a job,

1290
01:14:32,300 --> 01:14:36,780
just as David put it, just like there's this thing of like, here's the package, like, take

1291
01:14:36,780 --> 01:14:37,580
it or leave it.

1292
01:14:37,740 --> 01:14:39,900
And if you leave it, someone else will take it.

1293
01:14:40,140 --> 01:14:41,820
I think that's a really powerful decision.

1294
01:14:41,900 --> 01:14:44,380
And I think there's lots of people who have jobs.

1295
01:14:44,540 --> 01:14:49,340
There's aspects of them they don't like, but institutionally it's sort of like it's a

1296
01:14:49,340 --> 01:14:50,300
package deal.

1297
01:14:50,460 --> 01:14:55,910
And it's just the question of like, is it better for me to take it or leave it.

1298
01:14:56,070 --> 01:15:01,990
And I think a lot of sort of negative externalities are a consequence of people making what

1299
01:15:02,070 --> 01:15:05,590
what are pretty rational decisions in that context of saying, well, take it.

1300
01:15:05,750 --> 01:15:06,150
Right.

1301
01:15:06,390 --> 01:15:07,190
Um, yeah.

1302
01:15:07,350 --> 01:15:11,990
I wonder, does that happen in the market integration thing where people who are going in

1303
01:15:12,150 --> 01:15:16,950
sort of don't like aspects, but the old package deal is sort of, well, I can't beat this as

1304
01:15:16,950 --> 01:15:17,830
a resource package.

1305
01:15:17,990 --> 01:15:19,990
Like, is that something you've encountered?

1306
01:15:20,310 --> 01:15:20,950
Hmm.

1307
01:15:21,740 --> 01:15:22,540
That's interesting.

1308
01:15:22,620 --> 01:15:22,940
Yeah.

1309
01:15:23,020 --> 01:15:27,020
So um I can talk about the larger literature, but let me start with some some stories here.

1310
01:15:27,180 --> 01:15:29,020
So um we can start in Bolivia.

1311
01:15:29,180 --> 01:15:34,060
I work in in Kenya mostly now, Kenya and and a little bit in Tanzania with Chris.

1312
01:15:34,460 --> 01:15:40,300
And what what often happens is that people will take relatively um

1313
01:15:40,300 --> 01:15:42,220
low-skill wage labor jobs.

1314
01:15:42,300 --> 01:15:43,500
They're a bit precarious.

1315
01:15:43,660 --> 01:15:49,250
I mean, again, if one had the entire range, as you say, of options of jobs, then one could

1316
01:15:49,250 --> 01:15:49,970
pick and choose.

1317
01:15:50,130 --> 01:15:55,490
But if there's a really limited choice set, um, and there's fewer, there's few outside

1318
01:15:55,490 --> 01:15:59,170
options, again, I'm thinking here about a lot of the language that pops out of things like

1319
01:15:59,170 --> 01:16:04,370
um behavioral ecology or even optimal decision-making in the context of evolutionary

1320
01:16:04,370 --> 01:16:06,690
psychology, the choice set's very small.

1321
01:16:06,880 --> 01:16:08,000
It's often constrained.

1322
01:16:08,080 --> 01:16:11,360
It's a constraint for folks like say Shimane laborers.

1323
01:16:11,440 --> 01:16:15,680
It's constrained for folks who are migrants, often moving between country and country.

1324
01:16:15,760 --> 01:16:20,000
There's often a really constrained labor market from which to choose.

1325
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:26,080
And then within that set, one may just take the best of a bad deal, as it

1326
01:16:26,080 --> 01:16:26,320
were.

1327
01:16:26,890 --> 01:16:31,610
And it it might be again that it's better that one has it home or it diversifies options

1328
01:16:31,610 --> 01:16:34,970
for the family because families are actually often part of the decision making in terms of

1329
01:16:34,970 --> 01:16:35,930
job taking.

1330
01:16:36,170 --> 01:16:40,490
And so I think that's to your point, partially what we're seeing here.

1331
01:16:40,650 --> 01:16:44,890
And that's what we definitely see, I was seeing in Bolivia as well, is that having that

1332
01:16:44,890 --> 01:16:46,970
wage labor job, it it wasn't perfect.

1333
01:16:47,050 --> 01:16:50,410
The hours were long, you were away from your family for long periods of time.

1334
01:16:50,890 --> 01:16:52,970
Sometimes folks would take advantage of you.

1335
01:16:54,440 --> 01:16:55,320
it was an income.

1336
01:16:55,640 --> 01:16:56,280
Right.

1337
01:16:57,000 --> 01:17:01,080
Yeah, and that's a really powerful, I think, way to think about this as jobs, there's

1338
01:17:01,080 --> 01:17:04,120
resources, and then that there's just what's the market and what's the choices.

1339
01:17:04,280 --> 01:17:06,360
I think that's a really and I don't know.

1340
01:17:06,440 --> 01:17:11,160
I mean, I'm not an expert in this either, but I I don't know if this has been looked into

1341
01:17:11,160 --> 01:17:11,800
enough.

1342
01:17:12,600 --> 01:17:13,000
Yeah.

1343
01:17:13,240 --> 01:17:14,520
You know, I think there might be a bit.

1344
01:17:14,600 --> 01:17:17,870
I know Pascal Boye has a a paper on folk economic beliefs.

1345
01:17:17,950 --> 01:17:20,910
There might be something there about jobs as a resource, I forget.

1346
01:17:21,230 --> 01:17:25,630
Um but certainly there are a lot of you know folk intuitions we we bring to bear in in into

1347
01:17:25,630 --> 01:17:29,950
a market economy um that that economists might um scoff at.

1348
01:17:30,270 --> 01:17:35,950
Um so uh uh related to this uh discussion of of of jobs uh is is

1349
01:17:35,950 --> 01:17:36,590
inequality.

1350
01:17:36,670 --> 01:17:41,230
Um so I'm curious what your thoughts are on uh how uh what what the role of inequality is

1351
01:17:41,230 --> 01:17:43,470
in in parochial altruism.

1352
01:17:45,120 --> 01:17:50,640
Yeah, and I assume here thinking kind of a bit about in between group inequality and how

1353
01:17:50,640 --> 01:17:52,880
that can reify over time.

1354
01:17:53,040 --> 01:17:58,960
So what's interesting, and this is popping a bit out of social psychology, is this

1355
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:02,720
idea of the relative difference between two different groups.

1356
01:18:02,880 --> 01:18:07,040
So let's just say for the for the sake of argument that one has two different groups that

1357
01:18:07,090 --> 01:18:10,930
are salient, that people recognize, maybe they're ethnic groups, for example, could be

1358
01:18:10,930 --> 01:18:13,170
something else, could be just social classes.

1359
01:18:13,410 --> 01:18:17,730
And one group has a lot and the other group has very little.

1360
01:18:18,450 --> 01:18:23,090
It ends up that, at least the data show, and I'm gonna channel this here, that if that

1361
01:18:23,090 --> 01:18:27,970
difference is very large, you actually can sometimes get what's called magnanimity going

1362
01:18:27,970 --> 01:18:30,290
from the group that has to the group that doesn't have.

1363
01:18:30,530 --> 01:18:35,410
So thinking about donations to the poor, for example, or thinking about charitable giving

1364
01:18:35,420 --> 01:18:36,380
more broadly.

1365
01:18:36,620 --> 01:18:42,060
But what ends up happening is that if the distance between those two groups shrinks in

1366
01:18:42,060 --> 01:18:45,100
terms of the power dynamic, let's say power is a resource here.

1367
01:18:45,260 --> 01:18:49,820
If it's uh thinking about money, if that's what it is, again, these are all things that

1368
01:18:49,820 --> 01:18:54,700
could matter to folks, and that distance starts to shrink, then the behavior of the group

1369
01:18:54,700 --> 01:18:56,700
that has more is going to change.

1370
01:18:56,860 --> 01:19:00,460
And it partially depends again on whether there's some zero-sumness involved, right?

1371
01:19:00,620 --> 01:19:06,590
So I have power, and then this other group is looking like they may also be vying for

1372
01:19:06,590 --> 01:19:12,030
power here, and that that distance starts to shrink, or it's money and that distance starts

1373
01:19:12,030 --> 01:19:12,510
to shrink.

1374
01:19:12,670 --> 01:19:16,030
That's when that charitable giving is at risk of going away.

1375
01:19:16,270 --> 01:19:19,710
That's when you tend to see more between group tensions.

1376
01:19:19,870 --> 01:19:23,470
What I think is really interesting here, and again, this is coming as an anthropologist

1377
01:19:23,470 --> 01:19:28,510
who's often thinking about humans in this larger context of primates, is that when you

1378
01:19:28,510 --> 01:19:33,840
start to decrease the power distance between non-human primate apes as well, thinking about

1379
01:19:33,920 --> 01:19:38,240
say chimpanzee groups, for example, is that that is also when you start to get a lot of

1380
01:19:38,240 --> 01:19:39,120
intergroup tension.

1381
01:19:39,200 --> 01:19:40,800
So it can be numbers.

1382
01:19:40,960 --> 01:19:44,240
Um, you kind of have very similar numbers between two groups.

1383
01:19:44,400 --> 01:19:49,360
That usually signifies that they're similar threats, they have similar potential to hold on

1384
01:19:49,360 --> 01:19:51,440
to resources between two different groups.

1385
01:19:51,600 --> 01:19:53,680
That's also when you see tensions rise.

1386
01:19:53,840 --> 01:19:58,050
You might not see an attack, but you might see those tensions go up.

1387
01:19:58,290 --> 01:20:00,850
And so I think it's an interesting through line.

1388
01:20:01,010 --> 01:20:04,850
And I believe that's the thrust of your question is what happens with inequality.

1389
01:20:04,930 --> 01:20:08,130
And I think it actually just depends on how extreme the inequality is.

1390
01:20:08,370 --> 01:20:11,810
And you actually see different behaviors from this group to this group.

1391
01:20:11,970 --> 01:20:15,330
Now, just to quickly clarify here at the end, I'm thinking a lot about the group who's

1392
01:20:15,330 --> 01:20:16,050
being threatened.

1393
01:20:16,210 --> 01:20:19,810
If you think about the group who is actually the have not position, if there's a big

1394
01:20:19,810 --> 01:20:24,540
distance between those two groups, that that doesn't mean that folks in the group who don't

1395
01:20:24,540 --> 01:20:27,500
have anything aren't going to clamor for more as well.

1396
01:20:27,900 --> 01:20:30,620
So the experience of being in those two groups is going to be quite different.

1397
01:20:31,420 --> 01:20:34,780
That's that's uh a really fascinating way of putting it.

1398
01:20:34,940 --> 01:20:39,740
Um it it it it's somewhat counterintuitive in that, you know, uh from a naive perspective,

1399
01:20:39,820 --> 01:20:42,780
you might expect, you know, the greater the inequality, the greater the animosity.

1400
01:20:43,340 --> 01:20:46,700
You know, if if this group is really powerful and really dominating the other group, then

1401
01:20:46,700 --> 01:20:51,830
that's gonna that's gonna be the worst situation um for for um for the lower group.

1402
01:20:51,910 --> 01:20:54,790
Um but what you're saying is it's actually more complicated than that.

1403
01:20:54,870 --> 01:20:59,830
That um it's not so much with the with the inequality is greater you see more conflict, but

1404
01:20:59,830 --> 01:21:04,310
but it's when it's smaller, uh actually fascinatingly you you see more tensions.

1405
01:21:04,390 --> 01:21:08,310
Uh and so I'm curious, you know, how how would you explain that from an evolutionary

1406
01:21:08,310 --> 01:21:08,710
perspective?

1407
01:21:08,790 --> 01:21:13,670
You know, why why when the power differential decreases you see more tension?

1408
01:21:13,750 --> 01:21:15,430
What is the evolutionary logic there?

1409
01:21:15,820 --> 01:21:16,300
Yeah.

1410
01:21:16,540 --> 01:21:18,300
And I will note too a couple things.

1411
01:21:18,380 --> 01:21:23,260
So, so first, just to kind of give a wave here to political science, is that oftentimes

1412
01:21:23,340 --> 01:21:27,500
when it comes to things like ethnic tension or political tension, one of the worst things

1413
01:21:27,500 --> 01:21:31,820
you can have is two groups that are about 50 50 in terms of their size.

1414
01:21:32,060 --> 01:21:32,460
Yeah.

1415
01:21:32,700 --> 01:21:37,740
That is really hard in terms of getting things done when it comes to collective action, to

1416
01:21:37,740 --> 01:21:38,860
governance, etc.

1417
01:21:39,180 --> 01:21:42,620
Actually, if you have smaller groups with different amounts of power, it's actually less

1418
01:21:42,620 --> 01:21:42,940
bad.

1419
01:21:43,100 --> 01:21:44,540
So food for thought there.

1420
01:21:44,860 --> 01:21:49,450
But when you I think the key thing here, and that you alluded to, David, I want to I want

1421
01:21:49,450 --> 01:21:54,010
to pull it back up, is that it's not when you start to get these tensions, is actually when

1422
01:21:54,010 --> 01:21:55,370
distance is shrinking.

1423
01:21:55,690 --> 01:21:59,690
So if there's actually movement in statuses, that's when you start to see this pop out.

1424
01:21:59,850 --> 01:22:04,810
And again, I'm channeling other folks' work here right now, so this isn't my own, but that

1425
01:22:05,290 --> 01:22:09,200
is what I think is where we start to see threat kind of pop out.

1426
01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:14,480
So if we're going back to thinking earlier about groups, about boundary pop propaganda,

1427
01:22:14,560 --> 01:22:17,120
which I thought was a really interesting term, Dave, that I would like to borrow.

1428
01:22:17,520 --> 01:22:18,000
It's David's.

1429
01:22:21,840 --> 01:22:22,400
Oh, there we go.

1430
01:22:22,480 --> 01:22:23,840
I'm sorry, whoever brought it up earlier.

1431
01:22:24,080 --> 01:22:27,840
No, no, I brought it up, but I'm I'm giving credit to David because that's baked into a lot

1432
01:22:27,840 --> 01:22:32,430
of David's um pol political idea his idea of like political discourse is all propaganda.

1433
01:22:33,070 --> 01:22:36,990
I love that David is bringing back the idea of propaganda, which you know, it just lays

1434
01:22:36,990 --> 01:22:37,230
bare.

1435
01:22:37,630 --> 01:22:41,870
You know, the idea of rhetoric is just very sort of like fuzzy and like propaganda, it's

1436
01:22:41,870 --> 01:22:42,670
much more direct.

1437
01:22:42,830 --> 01:22:43,710
So I just like this.

1438
01:22:43,790 --> 01:22:46,110
So that's so that's very much a David term, but I did say it.

1439
01:22:46,190 --> 01:22:46,590
You're right.

1440
01:22:46,670 --> 01:22:47,870
So I'm just yeah, yeah.

1441
01:22:48,190 --> 01:22:49,390
You added the word boundary to it.

1442
01:22:49,470 --> 01:22:50,750
And so I did, I did, I did it.

1443
01:22:50,830 --> 01:22:51,390
Yes, exactly.

1444
01:22:51,710 --> 01:22:53,070
Yes, boundary propaganda.

1445
01:22:53,230 --> 01:22:54,430
I do like boundary propaganda.

1446
01:22:54,670 --> 01:22:55,870
I should put that on a t shirt.

1447
01:22:56,030 --> 01:22:56,350
Yeah.

1448
01:22:56,590 --> 01:22:56,910
Yeah.

1449
01:22:57,070 --> 01:22:57,700
We need to do that.

1450
01:22:57,860 --> 01:23:02,180
Well, and I think that again, thinking about those three things mutually reinforcing, which

1451
01:23:02,180 --> 01:23:07,460
is I I think a key thing emerging from our conversation earlier and from this larger

1452
01:23:07,700 --> 01:23:12,020
understanding that we have in evolutionary behavioral sciences and in the social sciences

1453
01:23:12,020 --> 01:23:16,260
and ecological sciences more broadly, because we're really kind of playing with all those

1454
01:23:16,260 --> 01:23:21,220
ideas here today, is this idea that when you start to see that threat, is that that's when

1455
01:23:21,220 --> 01:23:26,190
you should start to see things pop out like sudden resource salience, like uh boundary

1456
01:23:26,190 --> 01:23:30,750
propaganda, like the valence shifting about warmth, for example, that these things are kind

1457
01:23:30,750 --> 01:23:35,070
of moved together in a way that that y'all laid out really nicely earlier.

1458
01:23:35,230 --> 01:23:40,590
And so it's that closing of the gap that seems to be something that's really salient for

1459
01:23:40,590 --> 01:23:40,910
folks.

1460
01:23:41,230 --> 01:23:44,190
Do you think that that's because of like coordination?

1461
01:23:44,350 --> 01:23:48,990
So, in the sense of like if the large group in the small group, the small group is sort of

1462
01:23:48,990 --> 01:23:54,440
like, look, we're not, we're not gonna, we might, if we're

1463
01:23:54,440 --> 01:23:59,320
integrated into this group, let's say, you know, we might become like a subgroup or

1464
01:23:59,320 --> 01:24:04,760
sub-identity, but there's no way we can like just take over the coordination or cultural

1465
01:24:04,760 --> 01:24:05,320
norms.

1466
01:24:05,480 --> 01:24:10,440
And I think there's even an analog in the animal conflict literature where like you don't

1467
01:24:10,440 --> 01:24:11,590
get fighting.

1468
01:24:11,750 --> 01:24:13,590
Like fighting is very costly, right?

1469
01:24:13,670 --> 01:24:16,710
So there's this whole literature of the asymmetric or of attrition, which is sort of

1470
01:24:16,710 --> 01:24:21,430
jargony for just this idea that if you have a huge lion and a very small lion, they just

1471
01:24:21,430 --> 01:24:23,430
look at each other and they don't fight, right?

1472
01:24:23,590 --> 01:24:25,910
Because the small lion's like, well, I know it's gonna happen.

1473
01:24:25,990 --> 01:24:27,910
The big lion's like, I know what's gonna happen.

1474
01:24:28,070 --> 01:24:30,070
And so the small lion just backs off.

1475
01:24:30,310 --> 01:24:31,590
There's a complication, right?

1476
01:24:31,670 --> 01:24:35,750
Which is of course, if the small lion is starving and the big lion is sated, then there

1477
01:24:35,750 --> 01:24:39,120
might be right escalation, but all sequel there, they're the same.

1478
01:24:39,280 --> 01:24:43,680
But then if the lions are equally matched, they'll escalate and they might like stalk back

1479
01:24:43,680 --> 01:24:44,240
and forth.

1480
01:24:44,400 --> 01:24:50,080
And what they're trying to do is evaluate if there was a conflict, who would win.

1481
01:24:50,320 --> 01:24:55,920
And if they can both arrive at that, that knowledge, then they will not even touch each

1482
01:24:55,920 --> 01:24:56,160
other.

1483
01:24:56,320 --> 01:25:02,170
And it's only when there's still ambiguity that there's an escalation to actually sometimes

1484
01:25:02,170 --> 01:25:05,930
ritualize conflict, which you know, for rattlesnakes, they like wrestle.

1485
01:25:06,010 --> 01:25:09,290
They don't actually bite each other, like they're coordinated about this, right?

1486
01:25:09,530 --> 01:25:14,170
Um, and it's only when there's really a matched thing that the conflict escalates.

1487
01:25:14,250 --> 01:25:20,160
So it almost, I wonder if it's this thing of um that it's sort of

1488
01:25:20,160 --> 01:25:22,000
obvious who the winner and loser is.

1489
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:27,760
And it's only when it's so equally matched that it just drives that you never reach this

1490
01:25:27,760 --> 01:25:33,440
thing of like, well, it's obvious who would win in a conflict over coordination,

1491
01:25:33,920 --> 01:25:35,040
more or less, right?

1492
01:25:35,120 --> 01:25:37,120
Um, of sort of whose norms wins out.

1493
01:25:37,280 --> 01:25:39,440
And then that would be why it it escalates.

1494
01:25:39,600 --> 01:25:42,080
Um I don't know what you what you think about that.

1495
01:25:43,040 --> 01:25:46,470
I think that's interesting as I'm hearing kind of two different ideas there.

1496
01:25:46,550 --> 01:25:50,550
So one is the the norm and the coordination perspective, and the other one is just the

1497
01:25:50,550 --> 01:25:53,670
physical harm perspective as well in terms of taking that on.

1498
01:25:53,830 --> 01:25:53,990
Yeah.

1499
01:25:54,150 --> 01:25:59,590
And I think I think what's interesting here is that one might make two slightly different

1500
01:25:59,590 --> 01:26:00,630
predictions about that.

1501
01:26:00,790 --> 01:26:04,550
So the harms thing in terms of numbers, I think is very salient.

1502
01:26:04,710 --> 01:26:10,280
As you said, across the animal world for humans as well, There are workarounds to that in

1503
01:26:10,280 --> 01:26:15,080
terms of initiating conflict in humans and otherwise.

1504
01:26:15,320 --> 01:26:19,160
But yes, I think numbers matter a lot in terms of how things are structured when it comes

1505
01:26:19,160 --> 01:26:20,760
to those intergroup tensions.

1506
01:26:20,920 --> 01:26:25,800
Thinking again about chimpanzees, sizing up group size, often through vocalizations.

1507
01:26:26,040 --> 01:26:30,600
A lot of times when when you have um lots of intergroup tension in in primates,

1508
01:26:30,760 --> 01:26:33,880
vocalizations are really key for actually hearing group size.

1509
01:26:34,390 --> 01:26:40,390
And then also here thinking about norms and what would what would take hold and

1510
01:26:40,390 --> 01:26:46,230
whether coordination would actually be something that would be more challenging for me as a

1511
01:26:46,230 --> 01:26:52,230
member of a smaller minority group in the context of of coordination

1512
01:26:52,390 --> 01:26:54,470
if there was more involvement.

1513
01:26:54,630 --> 01:26:58,150
I'm thinking here I'm in a riff a smidge and then I want to see if I'm on base with where

1514
01:26:58,150 --> 01:26:59,430
you were headed with this Dave.

1515
01:26:59,670 --> 01:27:03,080
So I'm thinking about work done by John Bunce.

1516
01:27:03,240 --> 01:27:07,160
I was for a while, I mentioned the Mox Planck Institute earlier, Mox Planck Institute for

1517
01:27:07,160 --> 01:27:08,440
Evolutionary Anthropology.

1518
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:12,520
I did my postdoc there with Richard McElwreath and crew.

1519
01:27:12,760 --> 01:27:18,520
And in that space, John Bunce was working a lot on with Machiganga people in

1520
01:27:18,840 --> 01:27:24,590
Peru and with Mestizo people in Peru, who are a numeric majority

1521
01:27:24,670 --> 01:27:30,270
and who had a settlement very close to the Machaganga community, which Machigenga people,

1522
01:27:30,350 --> 01:27:34,190
for reference, are living in the Amazon, have been living there traditionally for quite a

1523
01:27:34,190 --> 01:27:34,670
long time.

1524
01:27:34,910 --> 01:27:38,030
And so then the question is, is what happens at the boundary, right?

1525
01:27:38,110 --> 01:27:42,510
When you have these two different norm systems, one group is much bigger numerically.

1526
01:27:43,200 --> 01:27:43,920
what is going on?

1527
01:27:44,000 --> 01:27:47,200
And when do you actually say get norm displacement across those boundaries?

1528
01:27:47,360 --> 01:27:51,440
Are those boundaries actually sources of really strong norm differentiation?

1529
01:27:51,600 --> 01:27:55,360
And again, for listeners who have heard your conversation with Christina Moya, a lot of

1530
01:27:55,360 --> 01:27:56,720
this will sound familiar.

1531
01:27:56,960 --> 01:28:02,960
And so what's interesting is that it partially depends on the incentive for the

1532
01:28:02,960 --> 01:28:05,040
minority group to hang on to those norms.

1533
01:28:05,280 --> 01:28:08,800
And there's lots of different contexts we can think about this today, thinking about

1534
01:28:09,040 --> 01:28:13,450
indigenous people, for example, and the continuity of traditional ecological knowledge.

1535
01:28:13,610 --> 01:28:18,490
We can think about incentives to hang on to traditions for folks.

1536
01:28:18,650 --> 01:28:22,970
Even I'm sitting in Pennsylvania right now, I think about plain communities, for example,

1537
01:28:23,050 --> 01:28:26,170
so Amish communities, for example, hanging on to norm systems.

1538
01:28:26,410 --> 01:28:30,650
And I think it partially depends on the perceived incentives for hanging on to that.

1539
01:28:30,730 --> 01:28:35,200
And it, including for the purposes of coordination within the smaller community and what

1540
01:28:35,200 --> 01:28:36,240
those affordances are.

1541
01:28:36,400 --> 01:28:39,520
Again, that's a meandering answer to your question just because I thought it was

1542
01:28:39,520 --> 01:28:40,000
interesting.

1543
01:28:40,480 --> 01:28:41,440
But that's where my brain went.

1544
01:28:41,680 --> 01:28:42,800
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

1545
01:28:42,960 --> 01:28:44,960
I think that also explains generational things, right?

1546
01:28:45,040 --> 01:28:49,280
Like if you're a more senior Amish person, just for example, I mean, you could use any

1547
01:28:49,280 --> 01:28:54,650
example, but it's just in a minority uh numerically or norm in a norm sense.

1548
01:28:54,810 --> 01:28:59,290
Um, you know, if you're a senior person and that's your status, you've kind of locked into

1549
01:28:59,450 --> 01:29:04,410
that's your status scheme to to Riff on David, then, you know, you're incentivized to sort

1550
01:29:04,410 --> 01:29:04,890
of stick with it.

1551
01:29:04,970 --> 01:29:09,210
But you're if you're a kid, you know, like then maybe you're looking around and you're

1552
01:29:09,210 --> 01:29:13,290
like, well, maybe there's other ways to make a living in this this world that doesn't

1553
01:29:13,290 --> 01:29:14,810
involve, you know, sitting in a buggy.

1554
01:29:14,970 --> 01:29:19,100
I mean, I I I love horses, so you know, but I'm just so nothing personal against that.

1555
01:29:19,180 --> 01:29:22,940
But just so but I think that might explain like kind of intergenerational conflict of sort

1556
01:29:22,940 --> 01:29:24,780
of like, you know, the market.

1557
01:29:25,020 --> 01:29:28,860
And maybe you mean Adam, you can tell me better than most people.

1558
01:29:29,020 --> 01:29:33,100
I mean, is it true that like a lot of times the market integration is driven by kids and

1559
01:29:33,100 --> 01:29:38,330
sort of, you know, like the the older folks are sort of, you know, I mean, they're not,

1560
01:29:38,570 --> 01:29:40,090
they're not necessarily locked in.

1561
01:29:40,170 --> 01:29:44,650
They're not necessarily Leadites per se, but I mean they they probably are all all sequel,

1562
01:29:44,810 --> 01:29:49,930
a little more locked into the status game or their way of making a living than the young

1563
01:29:49,930 --> 01:29:54,490
people who are sort of still flexible and figuring out what what they can and want to do.

1564
01:29:54,650 --> 01:29:55,450
Is that fair?

1565
01:29:55,610 --> 01:29:58,570
Like, do you find generational effects like that?

1566
01:29:59,530 --> 01:29:59,770
Yeah.

1567
01:29:59,850 --> 01:30:02,170
And this, so I'm going to switch literatures in my head here.

1568
01:30:02,250 --> 01:30:06,080
And again, I'm going to be channeling other literatures out there, thinking a little bit

1569
01:30:06,080 --> 01:30:08,480
about econ, thinking a little bit about anthropology.

1570
01:30:08,720 --> 01:30:14,640
But in general, when we start to see folks pick up a new trade, leave

1571
01:30:14,640 --> 01:30:18,720
their community, for example, engage in wage labor, they often tend to be younger.

1572
01:30:18,880 --> 01:30:21,840
Part of that is a life stage thing, for example, right?

1573
01:30:21,920 --> 01:30:23,440
So oftentimes folks are unmarried.

1574
01:30:23,520 --> 01:30:25,280
It's actually easier to pick up and move.

1575
01:30:25,490 --> 01:30:26,930
And so that's often when we see it.

1576
01:30:27,010 --> 01:30:31,090
And sometimes then that we'll actually come home to marry and either go back to the same

1577
01:30:31,090 --> 01:30:32,610
trade or et cetera.

1578
01:30:32,690 --> 01:30:34,530
So I think part of it's a life stage thing.

1579
01:30:34,690 --> 01:30:37,650
I also think it's interesting to think about the evolved psychology here.

1580
01:30:37,730 --> 01:30:42,530
So again, you'll have Liz Cash and once another opportunity to talk about um spatial

1581
01:30:42,530 --> 01:30:47,490
experiences among young folks and moving around and the opportunities to find mates among

1582
01:30:47,490 --> 01:30:48,610
jobs and everything else.

1583
01:30:48,770 --> 01:30:50,610
It's a little riff right there.

1584
01:30:51,170 --> 01:30:57,040
But I think that you're also right in the sense that A, there's

1585
01:30:57,200 --> 01:30:58,320
you haven't invested much.

1586
01:30:58,400 --> 01:31:02,560
There's not a lot of sunk cost in terms of investing into the status game in a particular

1587
01:31:02,560 --> 01:31:04,400
community if you're if you're leaving early.

1588
01:31:04,560 --> 01:31:06,080
That's a really interesting point.

1589
01:31:06,320 --> 01:31:08,800
I think another one of them, as you said, is kind of the reskilling.

1590
01:31:08,880 --> 01:31:14,080
You're not reskilling if you're 40 years old and shifting to a new sector versus you're

1591
01:31:14,080 --> 01:31:16,080
actually kind of coming up in that sector.

1592
01:31:16,240 --> 01:31:18,930
And I do think kids have their eyes open, right?

1593
01:31:19,010 --> 01:31:20,610
They're able to see what's out there.

1594
01:31:20,770 --> 01:31:24,690
They're often, when we when we talk about cultural change, they're often the prime movers,

1595
01:31:24,770 --> 01:31:24,930
right?

1596
01:31:25,010 --> 01:31:27,810
So they're often the ones who are picking up the fresh languages, they're picking up the

1597
01:31:27,810 --> 01:31:31,890
new norms, they're the ones who are changing languages or changing cultural practices.

1598
01:31:32,370 --> 01:31:36,610
And sometimes older folks in communities have some thoughts about that because that often

1599
01:31:36,610 --> 01:31:40,930
has something to do with with cultural loss that happens further down the line.

1600
01:31:41,090 --> 01:31:46,440
Um, including in Bolivia, where say traditional languages are being spoken less and less as

1601
01:31:46,440 --> 01:31:50,920
the affordances of speaking Spanish and even English are greater and greater.

1602
01:31:51,320 --> 01:31:53,880
So I think there's a few different things going on there.

1603
01:31:54,040 --> 01:31:57,960
But I think you're right in terms of I'm if I'm hearing this correctly, almost like the

1604
01:31:57,960 --> 01:32:03,560
games we play when it comes to status, when it comes to investment in reputation, and also

1605
01:32:03,560 --> 01:32:07,080
investment in different social networks who are going to be, again, bringing that

1606
01:32:07,080 --> 01:32:10,530
cooperation back, opportunities for for mutual support.

1607
01:32:10,770 --> 01:32:11,650
Where is that going to be?

1608
01:32:11,730 --> 01:32:13,250
Where are you going to put your roots down?

1609
01:32:13,410 --> 01:32:16,850
What's what's in the best interest for self and family?

1610
01:32:17,010 --> 01:32:20,770
And there's a lot of decisions I think that are going on there that could be could be

1611
01:32:20,770 --> 01:32:21,730
unpacked even further.

1612
01:32:21,890 --> 01:32:22,850
It's an interesting question.

1613
01:32:23,170 --> 01:32:24,450
Yeah, that's really interesting.

1614
01:32:24,610 --> 01:32:29,490
I think what you just said, I think summarizes so much of the dynamics, like even with in

1615
01:32:29,490 --> 01:32:30,780
modern culture, right?

1616
01:32:30,860 --> 01:32:34,140
Like of like there's competition for sort of getting kids.

1617
01:32:34,220 --> 01:32:39,500
Like I'm I'm thinking even, I remember um, you know, I I grew up kind of religious and I

1618
01:32:39,500 --> 01:32:43,740
always have a little bit of an ear to like how do these religions or like, you know,

1619
01:32:43,900 --> 01:32:48,780
religious proselyte work, proselytation, religious proselytation work works, excuse me.

1620
01:32:48,940 --> 01:32:53,190
Um and there's this thing of like get them while they're young um thing.

1621
01:32:53,350 --> 01:32:58,390
And I think it's a very, it's the expression, I think, of a very similar thing, right?

1622
01:32:58,550 --> 01:33:03,910
Where um and and in in other contexts too, where it's sort of like education is important.

1623
01:33:04,070 --> 01:33:09,510
We set kids on a trajectory to either be like pro social, antisocial from the

1624
01:33:09,510 --> 01:33:11,510
perspective of the society, right?

1625
01:33:11,750 --> 01:33:15,830
So like that's why we have after school programs or like teach them a trade or a skill so

1626
01:33:15,830 --> 01:33:17,030
they stay out of trouble.

1627
01:33:17,190 --> 01:33:18,710
You know, there's these all these things.

1628
01:33:18,790 --> 01:33:23,520
And it's it's you know, from a m a stepped back perspective, if you drop the morality out,

1629
01:33:23,600 --> 01:33:28,320
it's really just about it's it's just you're providing there's competition for sort of

1630
01:33:28,320 --> 01:33:30,400
what's my status scheme I'm gonna play.

1631
01:33:30,640 --> 01:33:35,360
And it's sort of this institutional acknowledgement that a lot of times kids, exactly as

1632
01:33:35,360 --> 01:33:39,680
you said, their their eyes are open and they're sort of they're the ones shopping because

1633
01:33:39,680 --> 01:33:41,680
the uh the switch costs are low.

1634
01:33:41,760 --> 01:33:42,960
And I love what you said.

1635
01:33:43,040 --> 01:33:45,120
Those are I think those are really great points.

1636
01:33:45,200 --> 01:33:45,680
Yeah.

1637
01:33:46,480 --> 01:33:47,150
Really interesting.

1638
01:33:47,310 --> 01:33:52,670
I mean, it i it brings to bear um that, you know, back to this conversation about

1639
01:33:52,670 --> 01:33:57,950
resources, it it may be that um the local packet of of norms and linguistic

1640
01:33:57,950 --> 01:34:03,950
practices, um that that this is itself a kind of uh uh resource that

1641
01:34:03,950 --> 01:34:04,750
people fight over.

1642
01:34:04,910 --> 01:34:08,430
And that, you know, if I'm in the older generation and I grew up speaking a certain

1643
01:34:08,430 --> 01:34:11,700
language and the younger generation is starting to speak a different language, well, that's

1644
01:34:11,700 --> 01:34:12,740
a huge threat to me.

1645
01:34:12,900 --> 01:34:16,900
If if if everyone else is going to speak this language that I don't know how to speak, um,

1646
01:34:16,980 --> 01:34:20,260
that's going to exclude me from social opportunities, from social networks.

1647
01:34:20,420 --> 01:34:23,860
It's going to lower my social status because I don't know how to speak the reigning

1648
01:34:23,860 --> 01:34:24,180
language.

1649
01:34:24,260 --> 01:34:29,300
So I might really have an incentive to rebel against this cultural change that puts me on

1650
01:34:29,300 --> 01:34:32,100
the losing end of this new status game.

1651
01:34:32,180 --> 01:34:36,820
And you could imagine similar dynamics arising from other changes in local norms and status

1652
01:34:36,820 --> 01:34:37,060
games.

1653
01:34:37,140 --> 01:34:42,010
You know, there are going to be uh um some people who win out from those changes and some

1654
01:34:42,010 --> 01:34:43,450
people who really lose from those changes.

1655
01:34:43,530 --> 01:34:47,370
So culture itself can be a battleground with winners and losers.

1656
01:34:47,450 --> 01:34:50,810
Uh and and there can be a zero-sumness to that uh as well.

1657
01:34:52,490 --> 01:34:54,090
Yes, I it agreed.

1658
01:34:54,170 --> 01:34:57,850
And I think what's really interesting about culture too is that it emerges from lots of

1659
01:34:57,850 --> 01:34:59,130
individual decision making.

1660
01:34:59,210 --> 01:35:03,050
You can be in a position of power and have an outsized influence on what happens with

1661
01:35:03,050 --> 01:35:07,240
cultural practices, but there's a lot of negotiation coming all the time.

1662
01:35:07,640 --> 01:35:09,800
We're not, of course, blank slate.

1663
01:35:09,960 --> 01:35:11,080
I know y'all have talked about that.

1664
01:35:11,240 --> 01:35:15,960
We're not just here to receive culture and not negotiate a bit and actually kind of be

1665
01:35:15,960 --> 01:35:19,960
pushing back and looking at that, looking out for for what's good for us.

1666
01:35:21,000 --> 01:35:25,400
And and I think that's interesting in terms of, you know, thinking about how that

1667
01:35:25,400 --> 01:35:27,240
negotiation's happening in in real time.

1668
01:35:27,400 --> 01:35:28,520
So yes, to your point.

1669
01:35:28,680 --> 01:35:29,240
Mm-hmm.

1670
01:35:29,810 --> 01:35:30,050
Yeah.

1671
01:35:30,130 --> 01:35:34,290
I mean, in in in a way, we're trying to change the status game in the social sciences to,

1672
01:35:34,370 --> 01:35:38,210
you know, to privilege evolutionary perspectives, which, you know, we win out from that

1673
01:35:38,210 --> 01:35:42,130
because we've invested a lot of time and energy into learning uh evolutionary ideas.

1674
01:35:42,210 --> 01:35:45,570
And the people who lose out from that are the people who have not invested time and energy

1675
01:35:45,570 --> 01:35:49,170
in learning evolutionary ideas, and their status is going to fall if we end up winning,

1676
01:35:49,330 --> 01:35:51,960
which, you know, who's to say whether we will or not?

1677
01:35:52,120 --> 01:35:57,000
But yeah, uh every cultural change has winners and losers.

1678
01:35:57,080 --> 01:36:02,200
Um, and I think that that sheds light on why you know we have things like culture wars,

1679
01:36:02,440 --> 01:36:04,600
wars over culture itself.

1680
01:36:05,320 --> 01:36:06,600
Um Yeah.

1681
01:36:07,000 --> 01:36:07,720
That's great.

1682
01:36:07,880 --> 01:36:11,880
Um and if you're listening, you are learning, so you're not the losers.

1683
01:36:12,600 --> 01:36:13,080
Yeah, exactly.

1684
01:36:13,160 --> 01:36:14,600
You'll be on the winning side of the cultural work.

1685
01:36:15,080 --> 01:36:15,960
Because you're a learning side.

1686
01:36:16,490 --> 01:36:21,770
Um and uh we can we can sort of I uh this has been an incredible conversation and it's

1687
01:36:21,770 --> 01:36:22,170
wonderful.

1688
01:36:22,250 --> 01:36:26,650
Um I'm gonna just ask this question now because we need to get to it and we can see how far

1689
01:36:26,890 --> 01:36:29,370
we we are we are reaching the end here.

1690
01:36:29,530 --> 01:36:31,850
But is there anything we should have asked you?

1691
01:36:32,250 --> 01:36:37,130
Um and one of the questions, uh maybe or one of the options, and you can just, you know,

1692
01:36:37,290 --> 01:36:38,250
say whatever you want.

1693
01:36:38,410 --> 01:36:42,170
We we've gotten away from asking people how they got into stuff because you know, people

1694
01:36:42,170 --> 01:36:46,900
also said like I don't some people said they didn't care but I am I am curious sort of like

1695
01:36:46,980 --> 01:36:52,740
you know um if uh so yeah one is what should we we should have asked you and number two

1696
01:36:53,060 --> 01:36:58,660
um if you do have sort of uh if you want to share sort of like what your background was or

1697
01:36:58,660 --> 01:37:03,460
how you got into doing this especially for me and I think I have talked to people who are

1698
01:37:03,460 --> 01:37:07,460
very interested in like especially people who decide to go to the field you know because

1699
01:37:07,540 --> 01:37:12,580
you know as as as we've all heard from people who are in the field, you know, there's

1700
01:37:12,660 --> 01:37:16,230
there's there's lots of things in the field.

1701
01:37:16,310 --> 01:37:21,590
Um and that's quite a hardship, but it's also a really exciting and interesting place to

1702
01:37:21,590 --> 01:37:21,830
be.

1703
01:37:21,990 --> 01:37:27,430
Um and I think at least for those of us who just stay in the lab, um, sometimes it feels

1704
01:37:27,430 --> 01:37:30,310
like it requires an explanation, fair or not.

1705
01:37:30,390 --> 01:37:32,790
Um but like how did you get to that point?

1706
01:37:32,950 --> 01:37:35,670
Um or any other question you think we should have asked you.

1707
01:37:35,750 --> 01:37:35,990
Yeah.

1708
01:37:36,300 --> 01:37:37,660
Yeah, that's really interesting.

1709
01:37:37,900 --> 01:37:42,140
Well, I want to talk a little bit about kind of uh that background and how I've ended up

1710
01:37:42,140 --> 01:37:46,780
where I am now, which will also open up for for folks who are listening if they want to

1711
01:37:46,780 --> 01:37:51,740
follow up with me and talk about um the kind of applied work I'm I'm doing now combined

1712
01:37:51,740 --> 01:37:54,220
with with some of the basic science that I do.

1713
01:37:54,460 --> 01:38:00,220
Um so the short story is that I was in undergrad and I loved

1714
01:38:00,220 --> 01:38:05,990
psychology, anthropology, I loved ecology and I loved international relations.

1715
01:38:06,150 --> 01:38:10,470
And I was sitting in a social psych class one day, and there was a single paragraph in my

1716
01:38:10,470 --> 01:38:12,950
textbook about evolutionary psychology.

1717
01:38:13,110 --> 01:38:14,630
I was at UCLA.

1718
01:38:14,790 --> 01:38:20,070
And so I Googled evolutionary psychology, UCLA, and found Dan Fessler, who was my

1719
01:38:20,070 --> 01:38:21,270
undergraduate advisor.

1720
01:38:21,430 --> 01:38:25,430
And so that's actually how I ended up in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, is it

1721
01:38:25,430 --> 01:38:26,870
checked all of my boxes.

1722
01:38:27,140 --> 01:38:30,660
And so when you hear that story, what you'll also hear is you'll hear kind of the

1723
01:38:30,660 --> 01:38:33,700
international relations, that kind of global perspective.

1724
01:38:33,940 --> 01:38:38,180
And that is the the bug that's been sitting in there the whole time that got me to the

1725
01:38:38,180 --> 01:38:38,820
field.

1726
01:38:39,300 --> 01:38:44,500
So if you are listening and you are like, I could I could never do field work, that was me.

1727
01:38:44,660 --> 01:38:46,500
Um I was scared of everything.

1728
01:38:46,660 --> 01:38:52,340
I have a five-year-old she's turning five tomorrow and she is afraid

1729
01:38:52,470 --> 01:38:56,470
of some very predictable things that we we know about from studying evolutionary

1730
01:38:56,470 --> 01:39:00,230
psychology, things like the dark things like monsters.

1731
01:39:00,390 --> 01:39:04,470
Shout out to Clark Barrett here as well, and things big dangerous animals are very salient.

1732
01:39:04,710 --> 01:39:07,190
And so I was afraid of all those things as an adult.

1733
01:39:07,270 --> 01:39:10,310
And here I was living in the Amazon with no electricity.

1734
01:39:10,470 --> 01:39:12,070
Um, there were lots of bugs.

1735
01:39:12,230 --> 01:39:14,390
We were, you know, getting sick all the time.

1736
01:39:14,550 --> 01:39:17,670
And this is the life that folks live in the Amazon every single day, right?

1737
01:39:17,750 --> 01:39:20,870
It was just me experiencing it for the first time as an outsider.

1738
01:39:21,270 --> 01:39:25,720
And what I really liked about it is first of all, I felt like I could do anything, which

1739
01:39:25,720 --> 01:39:26,200
was really nice.

1740
01:39:26,360 --> 01:39:31,240
It made any things that came after seem less challenging to do, which is nice.

1741
01:39:31,480 --> 01:39:36,760
The other thing also that I've really enjoyed about it is I love thinking hard about the

1742
01:39:36,760 --> 01:39:37,080
mind.

1743
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:40,760
I love thinking hard about human sociality, about why it is the way it is.

1744
01:39:40,920 --> 01:39:44,120
And I also really love the opportunity to apply that.

1745
01:39:44,750 --> 01:39:49,950
And one of the reasons I caught that particular bug is by living with folks and seeing what

1746
01:39:49,950 --> 01:39:51,310
was salient to them.

1747
01:39:51,790 --> 01:39:54,590
Climate change came up a ton when I was working in Bolivia.

1748
01:39:54,750 --> 01:39:56,750
People were experiencing huge floods.

1749
01:39:56,990 --> 01:40:00,830
A big flood came in in 2014 and really affected everyone.

1750
01:40:00,910 --> 01:40:02,510
And I was there in the aftermath.

1751
01:40:02,750 --> 01:40:08,430
And so that was an opportunity to also think for me how can I continue to do the work that

1752
01:40:08,430 --> 01:40:13,380
I love doing when it comes to thinking hard about human evolution and human sociality, and

1753
01:40:13,380 --> 01:40:18,020
at the same time, actually apply that to the context of climate change or apply that to the

1754
01:40:18,020 --> 01:40:20,100
context of natural resource management.

1755
01:40:20,260 --> 01:40:26,260
And so what's really fun now is I do my job in terms of doing that hard thinking and also

1756
01:40:26,260 --> 01:40:28,980
doing the applied work and pairing the two.

1757
01:40:29,140 --> 01:40:33,970
And I think what's interesting too, speaking of the incentives offered by granting agencies

1758
01:40:34,130 --> 01:40:38,370
that is ebbing and flowing in real time in the United States, but in a broader global

1759
01:40:38,370 --> 01:40:41,970
perspective, when it comes to the granting landscape, there's still a lot of interest in

1760
01:40:41,970 --> 01:40:46,690
how to go from that basic to the applied when it comes to things like climate change.

1761
01:40:47,490 --> 01:40:52,930
So I'm always happy to talk about that more, but that's kind of how I landed at where I am

1762
01:40:52,930 --> 01:40:53,250
now.

1763
01:40:53,410 --> 01:40:57,660
And how you'll hear me in one conversation talk about parochial altruism.

1764
01:40:57,740 --> 01:41:02,460
And then in the next c conversation, I might be talking about how people are migrating in

1765
01:41:02,460 --> 01:41:06,300
response to certain climate shocks and not others and what leads people to move.

1766
01:41:06,460 --> 01:41:08,380
Uh, those are all parts of my purview today.

1767
01:41:08,620 --> 01:41:09,020
That's great.

1768
01:41:09,180 --> 01:41:09,420
Yeah.

1769
01:41:09,500 --> 01:41:15,020
I think a lot of people, um, as they get um far enough along that it's not

1770
01:41:15,020 --> 01:41:20,140
desperate um in their career, they want to do something and make an have an impact too.

1771
01:41:20,220 --> 01:41:24,300
And I think that's that's wonderful that you're able to to do that.

1772
01:41:25,110 --> 01:41:28,870
And uh um yeah, I uh that's just that's fantastic.

1773
01:41:28,950 --> 01:41:29,590
Yeah.

1774
01:41:31,430 --> 01:41:36,630
Well I think we're um getting to that time in the episode where we ask our uh our typical

1775
01:41:36,630 --> 01:41:40,310
question which is uh is there anything we should have asked you

1776
01:41:42,710 --> 01:41:48,360
beyond that um the the really funny thing, and I'll say this because it came up recently,

1777
01:41:48,520 --> 01:41:52,200
is someone said to me, uh, are you leaving academia?

1778
01:41:52,440 --> 01:41:56,200
And I say this because I actually spend some time, these are for folks who who end up

1779
01:41:56,200 --> 01:41:57,320
looking me up after this.

1780
01:41:57,560 --> 01:42:01,080
I spent some time with a foot in industry and a foot in academia.

1781
01:42:01,240 --> 01:42:03,240
And David, I see you here.

1782
01:42:03,400 --> 01:42:07,790
And one of the reasons I really like it, and maybe, maybe you too, is that I get the best

1783
01:42:07,790 --> 01:42:08,430
of both worlds.

1784
01:42:08,590 --> 01:42:12,750
I actually think I heard you mention that when you were talking about your your story, is

1785
01:42:12,750 --> 01:42:17,550
that I get to spend time kind of helping folks figure out how they can help other people,

1786
01:42:17,710 --> 01:42:21,710
what what folks need, how to better serve a community or a customer.

1787
01:42:21,870 --> 01:42:23,070
It's a lot of fun.

1788
01:42:23,310 --> 01:42:28,100
And then I also, of course, do my full-time job faculty at Penn State.

1789
01:42:28,260 --> 01:42:29,540
And so I really love that.

1790
01:42:29,700 --> 01:42:31,860
I actually love academia for that reason.

1791
01:42:31,940 --> 01:42:35,620
So here's a little plug for academia for folks who are thinking about the compare and

1792
01:42:35,620 --> 01:42:41,380
contrast is that in my academic life, I'm actually rewarded for doing research and then

1793
01:42:41,380 --> 01:42:45,300
also contributing to things like professionalization and contributing to things like

1794
01:42:45,300 --> 01:42:48,100
placing our students in other sectors.

1795
01:42:48,340 --> 01:42:52,900
I think it's really fun and it's another opportunity to think about how our work translates

1796
01:42:52,970 --> 01:42:55,130
beyond just the academic realm.

1797
01:42:55,610 --> 01:42:57,210
So that would be the question to ask me.

1798
01:42:57,370 --> 01:42:59,370
Answer is no, I actually love my job.

1799
01:43:00,010 --> 01:43:04,730
And I love my job for that specific reason because it actually is mutually compatible with

1800
01:43:04,730 --> 01:43:05,850
doing that kind of work.

1801
01:43:07,130 --> 01:43:11,770
Well yeah, no, it's uh it's it's a great I mean it's it's wonderful to to be in in that to

1802
01:43:11,770 --> 01:43:16,570
have that privileged position of of of getting the best of both worlds and and uh and you

1803
01:43:16,570 --> 01:43:17,690
know being in both sectors.

1804
01:43:17,850 --> 01:43:21,640
I will say, you know, I do have a blog and I can write stuff that, you know, thousands of

1805
01:43:21,640 --> 01:43:27,640
people will will read, but um uh it's not it doesn't give me the same fulfillment as,

1806
01:43:27,720 --> 01:43:31,960
you know, you know, having a a a a theoretical insight and and writing an academic paper

1807
01:43:31,960 --> 01:43:35,880
about it, even though, you know, maybe ten, twenty people will read the academic paper um

1808
01:43:35,960 --> 01:43:37,640
compared to thousands on the blog.

1809
01:43:37,880 --> 01:43:42,680
Still, those ten twenty people will take that idea and they will, you know, maybe they'll

1810
01:43:42,920 --> 01:43:46,360
amend certain things to it, maybe they'll elaborate on it, maybe they'll criticize certain

1811
01:43:46,360 --> 01:43:48,200
parts of it and they'll build off of it.

1812
01:43:48,370 --> 01:43:51,650
Um and it will lead to intellectual progress.

1813
01:43:51,810 --> 01:43:53,730
Um and you don't get that with the blog post.

1814
01:43:53,810 --> 01:43:56,770
Um people will read it and then they'll just go on about their day and then maybe they'll

1815
01:43:56,770 --> 01:43:57,730
forget about it next week.

1816
01:43:57,890 --> 01:44:02,050
But if you write an academic paper, you are contributing to intellectual progress in a in a

1817
01:44:02,050 --> 01:44:02,770
meaningful way.

1818
01:44:02,930 --> 01:44:08,450
Um and so that for me is is the is the thing that keeps me uh uh going uh in in that

1819
01:44:08,450 --> 01:44:08,850
direction.

1820
01:44:08,930 --> 01:44:14,050
Uh just the the the thrill of of uh intellectual progress and and contributing to it.

1821
01:44:14,290 --> 01:44:19,260
Um so thank you for uh contributing to our intellectual progress and and the intellectual

1822
01:44:19,340 --> 01:44:20,940
progress of our of our listeners.

1823
01:44:21,180 --> 01:44:23,980
Um and uh yeah, this was a wonderful conversation.

1824
01:44:24,060 --> 01:44:25,340
We really appreciate having you.

1825
01:44:25,660 --> 01:44:26,940
Yeah, thank you for your time.

1826
01:44:27,340 --> 01:44:28,540
Yeah, this was super fun.

1827
01:44:28,700 --> 01:44:32,300
I feel like um you know we we covered a lot of ground.

1828
01:44:32,460 --> 01:44:37,180
Um I'm certainly gonna have to listen to this to catch everything, so uh

1829
01:44:38,630 --> 01:44:39,990
But it was it was wonderful.

1830
01:44:40,070 --> 01:44:40,790
Thank you, Ann.

1831
01:44:40,870 --> 01:44:44,790
And I know we've taught we've hit on a lot of people, some that we've had on before, some

1832
01:44:44,790 --> 01:44:45,590
we haven't.

1833
01:44:45,750 --> 01:44:51,430
Um, and uh, and you know, you you have created and part of a wonderful social

1834
01:44:51,430 --> 01:44:57,430
network of people moving the um the knowledge forward and intellectual progress forward.

1835
01:44:57,510 --> 01:44:58,710
And so thank you for that.

1836
01:44:58,870 --> 01:45:04,740
Um and we look forward to having you back and having some of your uh academic lineage um in

1837
01:45:04,740 --> 01:45:06,420
both directions on as well.

1838
01:45:06,580 --> 01:45:10,420
So thank you for being part of the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

1839
01:45:10,580 --> 01:45:16,500
And I think your your ability to sort of articulate and even like source a

1840
01:45:16,500 --> 01:45:16,980
lot of that.

1841
01:45:17,140 --> 01:45:22,020
I think for a lot of people, especially who might be outsiders, you you have really

1842
01:45:22,020 --> 01:45:27,140
articulated the connections between areas so so well in this in this session.

1843
01:45:27,300 --> 01:45:29,220
So thank you for doing that too.

1844
01:45:30,010 --> 01:45:30,650
Absolutely.

1845
01:45:30,730 --> 01:45:30,970
Yep.

1846
01:45:31,130 --> 01:45:33,130
Study human society and love it myself.

1847
01:45:33,290 --> 01:45:34,330
So happy to do it.

1848
01:45:34,490 --> 01:45:35,290
Thank you for having me.

1849
01:45:35,370 --> 01:45:36,490
It's been a great conversation.

1850
01:45:36,650 --> 01:45:40,410
And also shout out to Pascal Boyer for writing the paper that we were all thinking about

1851
01:45:40,410 --> 01:45:40,730
writing.

1852
01:45:40,810 --> 01:45:42,890
And I realize that he's gotten there before us.

1853
01:45:43,290 --> 01:45:44,650
Well, I think it I think it's a paragraph.

1854
01:45:44,810 --> 01:45:45,210
We have to see.

1855
01:45:45,290 --> 01:45:48,490
I feel like we should call Pascal up and dial a friend here.

1856
01:45:48,570 --> 01:45:52,730
And uh, but we'll have to have him on, or we can all four talk about it.

1857
01:45:52,880 --> 01:45:55,040
so um in a in a later episode.

1858
01:45:55,120 --> 01:46:00,080
But yeah, thank you again, uh Ann, and uh and thanks everybody for listening.

1859
01:46:03,200 --> 01:46:06,480
So David, uh this is the end of the podcast.

1860
01:46:06,640 --> 01:46:08,160
People made it through.

1861
01:46:08,400 --> 01:46:12,880
Um and uh I don't have my

1862
01:46:15,130 --> 01:46:19,610
This is the part where we say, uh, you know, uh leave us a kind review, visit us on

1863
01:46:19,610 --> 01:46:20,330
Patreon.

1864
01:46:20,490 --> 01:46:24,650
Uh honestly just talk to us, reach out to us on social media, or send us an email.

1865
01:46:24,810 --> 01:46:28,490
Like we we love to hear from you if you have any questions, topics you want to get covered,

1866
01:46:28,650 --> 01:46:29,850
ideas for episodes.

1867
01:46:30,090 --> 01:46:33,050
We uh we're we're very uh friendly and and pleasant to talk to.

1868
01:46:33,370 --> 01:46:35,850
You know, I don't think I have we've ever linked the email.

1869
01:46:35,930 --> 01:46:37,610
We should put that link in the show notes.

1870
01:46:37,690 --> 01:46:38,090
I'll do that.

1871
01:46:38,740 --> 01:46:40,260
yeah, that's we should probably do that.

1872
01:46:40,500 --> 01:46:41,300
That'll be an oversight.

1873
01:46:41,380 --> 01:46:43,700
So send us an email, but we won't tell you what the email address is.

1874
01:46:43,780 --> 01:46:44,420
We'll we'll put that in.

1875
01:46:46,020 --> 01:46:47,620
One of our mem many bumbling mistakes.

1876
01:46:48,020 --> 01:46:48,340
Exactly.

1877
01:46:48,500 --> 01:46:49,060
Okay, good.

1878
01:46:49,140 --> 01:46:50,420
Well thanks everybody for listening.

1879
01:46:50,500 --> 01:46:51,060
Have a good week.