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  • Question: Why do people do horrible things?

  • Slave owners, and Nazis, any of the perpetrators of history's atrocities. How do they so successfully

  • dehumanize other people for so long? At a smaller scale, how do bullies in the lunchroom

  • manage to treat other kids with such cruelty and then go home and pet their dog and call

  • their grandma and say "happy birthday?"

  • Most of what we've been studying so far has focused on the individual. We've covered sub-fields

  • of psychology like cognitive, personality, and clinical psychology, which tend to address

  • the phenomena contained within a single person's mind. But there's also social psychology,

  • which focuses on the power of the situation. It examines how we think about, influence,

  • and relate to one another in certain conditions. And it's better equipped to answer this question

  • about people doing horrible things.

  • Social psychology can not only give us some of the tools we need to understand why people

  • behave brutally, it can also help us understand why we sometimes act heroically.

  • Like why did Jean Valjean reveal his true identity to save some stranger from being

  • tried in his place? And why did Nazi Oskar Schindler risk his own hide to save over a

  • thousand Jewish people? What made Darth Vader throw the Emperor down that hole, even as

  • he was being electrocuted?

  • I can't say there are any easy answers about humanity's greatness or it's horribleness.

  • Certainly, there aren't any that we can find in the next ten minutes. But we can point

  • ourselves in the right direction, and it starts with social thinking.

  • When we're trying to understand why people act like villains or heroes, one of the things

  • we're really asking is, "Did they do what they did because of their personality? Or

  • their situation?" Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider began plumbing the depths of this question

  • in the 1920s when he was developing what's now known as the Attribution Theory.

  • This theory simply suggests that we can explain someone's behavior by crediting either their

  • stable, enduring traits - also known as their disposition - or the situation at hand. And

  • we tend to attribute people's behavior to either one or the other. Sounds pretty simple,

  • but it can be surprisingly hard to tell whether someone's behavior is dispositional or situational.

  • Say you see Bruno at a party and he's acting like a wallflower all night. You might assume

  • that he just has a shy personality. But maybe he doesn't; maybe he'd ordinarily be re-enacting

  • all the moves from Footloose at this party but on this night, he had a twisted ankle

  • or a headache or he'd just seen his ex with somebody new - those are all situational explanations.

  • Overestimating the forces of personality while underestimating the power of the situation

  • is called the Fundamental Attribution Error. And as you can imagine, making this kind of

  • error can really end up warping your opinion of another person and lead to false snap judgments.

  • This might not be such a big deal when it comes to Bruno and his awesome dance moves

  • but according to one study of college students, 7 in 10 women report that men have misread

  • their polite friendliness - which would be appropriate for the situation - as a sexual come-on.

  • We choose how we explain other people's behavior everyday and what we choose to believe can

  • have big consequences. For example, our political views will likely be strongly influenced by

  • whether we decide to attribute poverty or homelessness to personal dispositions, like

  • being lazy and looking for a hand-out, or social circumstances like lack of education and opportunity.

  • And these attitudes can, in turn, affect our actions. Activists and politicians know this

  • well and they can use it to their advantage to persuade people in different ways.

  • In the late 1970s and 80s, psychologist Richard Petty and John Cacioppo developed a dual process

  • theory of understanding how persuasion works. The first part of their model is known as

  • the Central Route Persuasion and it involves calling on basic thinking and reasoning to convince people.

  • This is what's at work when interested people focus on the evidence and arguments at hand,

  • and are persuaded by the actual content of the message. So when you're watching a political

  • debate, you might be persuaded by a candidate's particular policies, positions or voting history.

  • That is, the stuff they're actually sayin'.

  • But we all know that persuasion involves more than that. There is also Peripheral Route

  • Persuasion at work. This influences people by the way of incidental cues, like a speaker's

  • physical attractiveness or personal relatability.

  • There's not a lot of hard thinking going on here, it's more of a gut reaction. So you might decide

  • to vote for a particular candidate because you think they're cute or they're from your home town.

  • Peripheral Route Persuasion happens more readily when you're not paying a ton of attention,

  • which is why billboards and television ads can be scarily effective. So that's how politicians

  • and advertisers and maybe bosses and teachers and pushy friends try to change our behavior

  • by changing our attitudes.

  • But, it turns out that the reverse is true too. Our attitudes can be affected by our

  • behaviors. You might have heard about the phrase, "Fake it till you make it." Meaning,

  • if you smile when you're actually sad the act of smiling may carry you through an attitude

  • change until you actually feel better.

  • Sometimes we can manipulate ourselves this way, but it's also an incredibly effective

  • method people use to persuade each other. It generally works best in increments, through

  • what psychologists call the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. People tend to more readily comply

  • with a big request after they've first agreed to smaller more innocuous requests.

  • Like Darth Vader didn't just go from "Go get 'em Anakin," to Dark Lord overnight. He was

  • slowly enticed to the dark side, by a series of escalating actions and attitude changes.

  • Do this favor for me, now run this errand, now kill these Padawans. Now blow up a planet!

  • What started this small actions went on to become big ones, suddenly transforming Vader's

  • belief's about himself and others.

  • There's plenty of experimental evidence that moral action really does strengthens moral

  • convictions, just as amoral action strengthen amoral attitudes. And there is perhaps no

  • better example of this than the Stanford Prison Experiment.

  • Back in 1971 Stanford psych professor Philip Zimbardo and his team put an ad in the local

  • paper looking for volunteers to participate in a 14 day experiment. After screening around

  • 70 applicants, 24 male college students were deemed physically and mentally fit enough

  • to participate in the study. For their troubles they'd each be given $15 a day.

  • The participants didn't know the exact nature of the experiment, just that it involved a

  • fake prison situation. And with a coin flip, half were randomly deemed prisoners and the

  • other half guards. The guards were told that it was the prisoner's behavior that was being

  • studied. The prisoners weren't told much of anything, aside from that they had been arrested

  • and taken to prison. Other than that neither group had many specific instructions.

  • Zimbardo wanted to observe how each party adapted to their roles, and so, on a quiet

  • Sunday summer morning in Palo Alto, real cops swooped in and arrested the prisoners in their

  • homes under charges of robbery. They were frisked, handcuffed, and read their rights.

  • Back at the station, they were formally booked and then blindfolded in a holding cell wearing

  • only hospital gowns. The researchers had taken great care to make sure that the setting was

  • extremely realistic, which is one reason they used real cops in the arrest before handing

  • the prisoners over to the fake guards. And it took no time at all for this role-playing

  • to become really, really real.

  • The initial trauma of the humiliation of the arrest, the booking, strip-searching and waiting,

  • immediately kicked off a loss of identity in the prisoners. A few prisoners only made

  • it through the first night before they became too emotionally distressed and had to be released.

  • Things only went downhill from there. Though the guards could act any way they wanted as

  • long as they didn't physically hurt anyone, encounters quickly became cruel, hostile,

  • and dehumanizing. Guards hurled insults and commands, referred to the prisoners only by

  • number, and put some of them in solitary confinement. Prisoners started breaking down, others rebelled,

  • and still others became passively resigned as if they deserved to be treated so badly.

  • Things got bad enough that the experiment ended after only six days, causing relief

  • in the fake prisoners, while interestingly leaving some fake guards feeling angry.

  • Luckily, everyone involved bounced back to normal once out of the prison setting. All

  • of those negative moods and abusive behaviors were situational, and that fact reinforced

  • the important concept that the power of a given situation can easily override individual

  • differences in personality. Although it would never fly by today's ethical standards, Zimbardo's

  • famous study remains influential today because it sheds such a harsh light on the nature

  • of power and corruption.

  • And yet, people differ. Many people succumb and become compliant in terrible situations,

  • but not everyone does. Lots of people risked their lives to hide Jewish people in World

  • War II, help runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad, keep Tutsi refugees safe during

  • the Rwandan genocide, or generally refuse to comply or participate in actions they didn't

  • believe in. Some people can, and do resist turning to the dark side, even when it seems

  • like everyone around them is going mad. And yet, the fact is, these people tend to be in the minority.

  • So why? Why does it seem so easy to rationalize a negative action or attitude and so hard

  • to muster the positive ones? One partial explanation comes from American social psychologist Leon

  • Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. It's one of the most important concepts in psychology.

  • Festinger's theory begins with the notion that we experience discomfort - or dissonance

  • - when our thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors are inconsistent with each other.

  • Basically, we don't like to confuse ourselves.

  • For example, if Bruno was generally considered a peaceful person but finds himself suddenly

  • punching at his friend over a fender-bender, he's likely experiencing some level of cognitive dissonance.

  • So, by Festinger's thinking, Bruno might relieve this tension by actually modifying his beliefs

  • in order to match the action's he's already committed, like telling himself, "Turns out,

  • I'm not such a nice guy after all, maybe I'm actually a bully." On the other hand, he might

  • resolve his internal tension by changing how he thinks about the situation. He might still

  • think of himself as a peaceful person, but realize that an unusual situation led to an

  • unusual action, like, he'd had a bad day and it was his mom's new car, or his friend was

  • just really askin' for it. So, he can keep being the ordinarily peaceful guy he was before.

  • It's kind of an inverted fundamental attribution error if you think about it. Attributing a

  • person's actions mainly to the situation, instead of his personality. The point is that

  • this mismatch between what we do and who we think we are induces tension - cognitive dissonance

  • - and that we tend to want to resolve that tension. That's part of what turns an Anakin

  • into a Darth Vader, and then, if we're lucky, back into an Anakin.

  • Today you learned that social psychology studies how people relate to each other. We discussed

  • Fritz Heider's attribution theory, and fundamental attribution error. You also learned how attitudes

  • can affect actions, like through the duel-process theory of persuasion, and also how behavior

  • can change attitudes, like through the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. The Stanford prison experiment

  • illustrated how a situation can override individual differences in personality, while Leon Festinger's

  • theory of cognitive dissonance explained how we ease the tension between conflicting thoughts and actions.

  • Thank you for watching, especially to all of our Subbable subscribers, who make Crash Course

  • possible for them, but also for everyone else.

  • To find out how you can become a supporter, just go to subbable.com.

  • This episode was written by Kathleen Yale, edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant

  • is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins, the script supervisor

  • and sound designer is Michael Aranda, and the graphics team is Thought Cafe.

Question: Why do people do horrible things?

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