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  • >>Male Presenter: Glad to see you all here today. A few months ago I got into the car

  • and turn on NPR and the program that was on the air immediately captured my full attention.

  • The guest was commenting about how we've gotten to a point where America's different ideological

  • factions could no longer even understand each other at all, let alone work together constructively

  • for the common good. He pointed out that while it maybe convenient for us to look at our

  • opponents as evil or stupid, they're not evil or stupid, they believe in making a better

  • world, just like we do. The guest was Jonathan Haidt who's here to talk to us at Google today.

  • He mentioned to me that he's sick of talking about politics, so he's not going to be talking

  • about that subject. Instead he's going to talk about the group dynamics and psychology

  • that make effective organizations like Google function as well as they do. He's been a professor

  • of psychology at the University of Virginia for 16 years. In the summer, he moved to NYU

  • where he's starting a program to study complex social systems. He's the author of "The Happiness--

  • >>Jonathan Haidt: Hypothesis

  • >>Male Presenter: Hypothesis" and

  • >>Jonathan: Righteous Mind

  • >>Male Presenter: "The Righteous Mind" which opened up at number 6 on the New York Times

  • bestseller list. By the way, the book is for sale over in the corner here, Nadine from

  • Books, Inc. has the book for $10, which is heavily subsidized courtesy of Google. So

  • grab a copy and get it autographed at the end. Now, fresh from an interview with Michael

  • Krasny on Forum, please welcome Dr. Jonathan Haidt.

  • [Applause]

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Thanks so much, David. So, Hive Psychology, bees. That's kind of

  • creepy and gross. Why would I come here and give you guys a lecture about hives and bees?

  • Well, as David mentioned, my last book was "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern

  • Truth in Ancient Wisdom" and I reviewed great ideas from across cultures, across the eras

  • and evaluated them in terms of what we now know in modern psychology. And chapter 10

  • reviewed ideas about happiness, where it comes from. And how really, the deepest forms of

  • happiness come from between, from getting the right kinds of connection and embeddedness.

  • There wasn't that much research to review, just a lot of claims from people long dead,

  • but the way I summarized it was "Mystical experience is an off button for the self.

  • When the self is turned off, people become just a cell in a larger body, a bee in a larger

  • hive." And I reviewed religious experiences, all kinds of awe experiences and I've long

  • been an awe junkie myself. I would do almost anything to get experiences of awe. So, I

  • really was kind of proud of this sentence. I thought, "Oh great, this is one of the things

  • that I care most about". But there wasn't much more to say about it. Well, I went on

  • to then write this new book "The Righteous Mind" and in the interim, there has been a

  • little bit of research around this and thinking about morality and where it comes from helped

  • me think through this hivishness, this groupishness, that is one of the most important facts and

  • features of human nature.

  • So, this is the cover of my book in the United States, where the slash, I think, perfectly

  • captures what it feels like to be an American these days, something is torn, something is

  • ripped, something is wrong. In the UK, they have a different cover which I think works

  • just as well as in the United States. It looks like that.

  • [laughter]

  • Now the book is, in a sense, very simple, in that it's really just about 3 ideas. If

  • you get these 3 ideas, you get moral psychology. So the three ideas are first: intuitions come

  • first, strategic reasoning second, that's what my early research was on. And if you've

  • read Malcolm Gladwell and Blink, and know about all the research on implicit cognition,

  • you're familiar with some of that work.

  • The second part is on the principle that there is more to morality than harm and fairness.

  • This is about how liberals and conservatives build their moral worlds on different sets

  • of moral foundations. This is what every newspaper and radio station that interviews me wants

  • to talk about because of the election year and as David said, I'm sick and tired of talking

  • about it. And I'd much rather talk to you about hivishness and awe. So that comes out

  • of part 3 of the book, mortality binds and blinds. That's where it comes from. It comes

  • in part from this novel ability we humans have, to be bound together into teams that

  • are not kin. That can work together towards higher goals. And one particular chapter is

  • on hive psychology and I thought it'd be fun since I'm here talking to one of the most

  • novel and interesting companies in the world, to talk about hive psychology and let's see

  • in our discussion afterwards how well these ideas apply to what you experience here at

  • Google.

  • So, perhaps the most over-rated or over-hyped idea in the social sciences in the last 70

  • years has been the idea that people are basically selfish. That our fundamental nature is selfish.

  • Economists have told us that for decades. Political scientists have told us that people

  • vote for their self-interest. Evolutionists, such as Richard Dawkins told us about selfish

  • genes. Which, they can make us cooperate with our kin in cases of reciprocity. But by and

  • large as Dawkins said, "let us try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born

  • selfish." George Williams, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists, said it even more

  • bluntly. "Morality is an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a

  • biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability." So

  • the view is, human nature is selfish. We can transcend it, we can act in ways that go against

  • our fundamental nature, but our fundamental nature is selfish.

  • Now, this view has been widely embraced in business schools and the business community

  • and it's been embraced even more strongly by people who hate business. Here's an essay

  • that was published in The New York Times last week, "Capitalists and Other Psychopaths".

  • It reported, down at the bottom you can see it reported when it came out in paper it said

  • "2010 study found that 10% of a sample of corporate managers met a clinical threshold

  • for being labeled 'psychopaths'". I read that and I said "that's nonsense, it can't possibly

  • be true". And I was right, the guy just made up that number. The actual study that he was

  • quoting said 4% which is even still probably too high. But the point is that there's a

  • narrative out there about business which is that it is a bunch of psychopaths and that

  • explains why businesses act the way they act. It's because of that narrative, that long

  • standing narrative which I suppose goes back to the 19th century that Google, of course,

  • came up with its identity, its brand. Which is "Don't be evil", but then of course, people

  • being what they are, there are many cynics on the web who think that Google is evil.

  • [laughter] So, now my talk today is about how our nature

  • is other than this. Our nature is not entirely selfish. There's been a kind of a little boomlet

  • in the last 10 years or so on altruism. A lot of people reject this idea and want to

  • prove no people are deeply altruistic. And there are cases like Mother Theresa, although

  • from her biography, as I understand it, even Mother Theresa wasn't exactly like Mother

  • Theresa. But there are cases of people who devote themselves to helping others. That's

  • interesting but I think actually that's not really where the action is. If you wanna understand

  • what's so amazing about human beings, don't go looking for all the cases where we do extreme

  • acts of altruism for strangers. Rather, what's really remarkable about us is our extraordinary

  • cooperation. We're just really cooperative, you guys have all cooperated more than a hundred

  • times since breakfast. It's just when you walk in the hallway, when you drive on the

  • road, we are all cooperating all the time.

  • There's a particular kind of cooperation I'll focus on which I'll call "groupishness" and

  • I'm calling it this to be able to make a very precise comparison to selfishness. Because

  • when I say, as a psychologist, that we are selfish, that our nature is in part selfish,

  • what I mean is that the human mind contains a variety of mental mechanisms that make us

  • adept at promoting our own interests in competition with our peers. Of course, we're good at that.

  • Of course, we evolved these complex minds that make us selfish very often. I'm not arguing

  • that. What I'm arguing is that's not the whole story. We are also groupish, by which I mean

  • our minds contain a variety of mental mechanisms that make us adept at promoting our group's

  • interests in competition with other groups. I'm arguing that we focus too much, in the

  • social sciences, on the competition of individual versus individual and not enough on the competition

  • of group versus group. Which I believe has also shaped our mind. That's a side story

  • about multi-level selection, group selection versus individual selection. We don't need

  • to get into that today. But that's the background to part of what I'm saying here. [clears throat]

  • So, the reason I believe this, the reason I began studying groupishness as a moral psychologist

  • that is I'm a social psychologist, but I specialize in the study of morality. The reason I study

  • this is because I was studying the moral emotions, like moral elevation and I just found there

  • are so many ways that people have found to shut down their selves, shut down self-interest,

  • transcend the self. The metaphor that I'll use is that it's as though there's a staircase

  • in our minds and there's a kind of a door that sometimes opens, very rarely, but most

  • of us have had it open. There's a kind of door that opens, it's as though there is kind

  • of a secret staircase, and when this door opens, it invites us to go up, we climb the

  • stair case and we emerge into a different realm. A realm in which we are fundamentally

  • different. We transcend ourselves and it isn't just different, it's ecstatic, it feels wonderful.

  • Most of us are familiar with these experiences in nature. Raise your hand if you have ever

  • climbed a mountain or gone out in nature specifically to experience some sort of an altered state

  • of consciousness, a state of self-transcendence, please raise your hand. OK, so right, especially

  • here in Northern California, you kind of stumble out to get the milk and that seems to happen

  • to you. But anyway. Most of us are familiar with this kind of experience. Ralph Waldo

  • Emerson described it, I think, in the most eloquent way that it has even been described.

  • Just describing what it's like to go for a walk in the woods in New England. And I've

  • had some animators animate his words, these are from an essay from, I think, 1839 and

  • again, it's as though this staircase opens, the door opens, you go up the staircase and

  • here's what he said about it.

  • >>male narrator: In the woods these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign. Standing

  • on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,

  • all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball, I am nothing, I see all. The currents

  • of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal

  • beauty.

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: So, he had lines like "all mean egotism vanishes" again, this self-transcendent

  • nature of nature experiences. William James, one of the founders of American psychology,

  • wrote a book called "Varieties of Religious Experience" were he cataloged all these sorts

  • of experiences and he noted that they don't just make us happy; they don't just make us

  • feel good. They make us feel different. That our self is fundamentally changed. People

  • don't come back from these experiences saying "I can do anything. Now I'm going to make

  • as much money as I can as quickly as I can." Rather, they come back experiencing a moral

  • commitment and a desire to serve, to be part of something larger. Many of the world's religions

  • have developed techniques and technologies to foster these self-transcendent experiences.

  • Meditation is one developed especially in most of the eastern religions. Many of the

  • world's religions discovered psychedelic drugs. Substances that can, within 30 minutes, attain

  • the kind of self-transcendence that takes years of study through meditation to achieve.

  • This is from a sixteenth century scroll showing a mushroom eater about to consume a mushroom.

  • And as soon as he eats it, this god is going to yank him up the staircase into the other

  • world. We don't know much about the Aztec's religion and to what degree it was a moral

  • transformation. But in the '60s there was a great deal of interest in psychedelic drugs,

  • there was research on it.

  • A famous study by Walter Pahnke, in conjunction with Timothy Leary, gave psilocybin or niacin

  • pills. It was a placebo controlled study. They gave the pills to divinity students in

  • a basement in a chapel at Boston University. And all 10 of the students who took psilocybin

  • had religious experiences and those who took niacin, they first felt a flush, you feel

  • like something is happening, they were really psyched. They said "Yes, I'm one of those

  • who got the pill." But it was just niacin and that quickly faded and nothing else happened.

  • So the subjects who got psilocybin experienced profound transformations, as one of them put

  • it "feelings of connectedness with everybody and everything".

  • So again, these many many roots of self-transcendence which have a morally transformative effect,

  • this is what I'm interested in. Many of the world's religions use circling, rhythmic movements

  • to create an altered state in which one gets closer to God. And if you put this all together,

  • you put chemicals that alter the brain with movement that also triggers ancient circuits,

  • what you get is a rave. It was discovered in the 1980s that if you put ecstasy and certain

  • kinds of music together you can achieve certain altered states of consciousness and it's not

  • just a celebration of hedonism. Its peace, love, unity and respect. Again, unity, it's

  • a sense of oneness, togetherness, transcending the self. And here's the weirdest place of

  • all, which is war. War is hell of course, but many journalists, when they serve with

  • the men and women down in the trenches, they find that actually war unites people like

  • nothing else. And it gives warriors experiences that they cherish for the rest of their lives.

  • There's an extraordinary book by Glenn Gray who served in the American Army in World War

  • II, and D-Day and came back and wrote a book. He wrote a book in which he interviewed many

  • other veterans and he describes the experience of communal effort in battle. Once again,

  • I've had this animated, I hope we can keep the volume louder this time, here it goes.

  • >>male narrator: Many veterans will admit that the experience of communal effort in

  • battle has been the high point of their lives. I passes insensibly into a we, my becomes

  • our and individual fate lose its central importance. I believe that it is nothing less than the

  • assurance of immortality that makes self-sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy. "I may

  • fall, but I do not die. For that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the

  • comrades for whom I gave up my life"

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: "I" passes insensibly into "we", "my" becomes "our" and individual

  • fate lose its central importance. If bees could speak, I think this is the sort of thing

  • that they would say. So it's because of these experiences, they are so ubiquitous; you find

  • them all over the world, across the eons. It's as though we were designed to be able

  • to lose ourselves. At very least there's something in our minds that makes it easy to do so.

  • This is what led me to formulate what I called the hive psychology hypothesis. It's a hypothesis,

  • but my claim is that human nature, alright this parts a metaphor, not a hypothesis. Human

  • nature is 90% chimp, 10% bee. That's the metaphor. The idea is that most of our sociality is

  • strategic or selfish. When you read books on human nature or evolution where they invariably

  • compare to other animals and the author will trace out kin selection, reciprocal altruism.

  • So we're able to cooperate as other animals are but it's ultimately for our own benefit.

  • Just like chimpanzees, but we have the ability to forget our self-interest and lose ourselves

  • in something larger than ourselves, like bees. My claim here is that we are like bees, in

  • part because we went through a parallel process of evolution as bees did. Namely a long period

  • of group versus group competition. Which chimps didn't really go through, or our primate ancestors

  • didn't go through. But group selected species do.

  • So, we're very good in situations that call for every man for himself. This is a photo

  • of a tomato fight in Spain, everybody throws tomatoes at everybody. But, I would note,

  • they had to actually all get together and agree on the rules, get a permit you know

  • they're all having fun. So actually even this isn't every man for himself. But, we're good

  • at it, we can do that. But we are especially good at one for all, all for one. Alright,

  • how does that happen? Well, let's look at sociality, let's step back and look at what

  • forms sociality takes in the animal kingdom. Many many animals are social. Darwin wrote

  • about this and noted that it's often adaptive to hang out with others, not because they

  • work together as a team but because the odds are that you won't be the slowest out of the

  • thousand deer. And so when the lion comes, it will be your neighbor that gets eaten,

  • and not you. So, deer are like this, they live in herds and these herds are not cooperative

  • at all. It's just safety in numbers, there's no team work. So this does not provide a good

  • metaphor for anything in the corporate world. I don't think there are any corporations that

  • are herds.

  • Alright, but let's move up a little bit. A lot of animals live in packs. Now packs are

  • very different. Packs, you especially find them among carnivores because teamwork lets

  • them take down larger prey. Four wolves working together can take down a much larger animal.

  • But, a wolf pack is a rough place to be, there's constant competition for status and resources.

  • Well, now it's beginning to sound more familiar. So familiar in fact that many textbooks of

  • organizational behavior specifically feature wolves. And we train our MBA students to be

  • effective wolves. Most MBA companies can be analogized to wolf packs. Teamwork lets them

  • take down larger prey. They can do things they could not do as individuals but there's

  • constant competition for status and resources. So that works, that works throughout most

  • of the business world.

  • Raise your hand if the description I've just given you describes what it's like to work

  • at Google. OK, I thought not. Of course, if you did raise your hand I'm sure there are

  • cameras everywhere and who knows what would happen to you. [laughter] But, for you, I

  • think you would resonate more towards the third alternative which is hives. Only a few

  • kinds of species live in hives, it's only been discovered a few times in the evolution

  • of life on earth. A few dozen times actually. The Hymenoptera were the main discoverers

  • of this way of living. The bees, wasps and ants and they are able to live in gigantic

  • colonies with massive division of labor, and they are able to do it because they are all

  • sisters. They suppress breeding, so they're really all in the same boat, all in the same

  • hive. It's one for all, all for one. There was a species of cockroach that discovered

  • this form of living and their bodies morphed into those that we now call termites. And

  • there's one species of mammal that did, the naked mole rat. In all five of these cases,

  • it's the same trick. Suppress breeding, so that you have just one queen who lays all

  • the eggs or gives birth to all the babies and now everybody's interest, their biological

  • interest is one for all, all for one. Keep the queen alive, keep the babies alive. And

  • so they're able to cooperate, massively build gigantic nests, thousands of times larger

  • than any individual. It's really quite extraordinary what they can do, but it's not hard to explain

  • because it's straight kinship.

  • Now, once you get hive living, you can get this amazing division of labor and you can

  • the group functioning as a super organism. This is an image of giant Asian honey bees

  • that do this behavior. And what scientists have figured out is that they do this when

  • there is a wasp, a larger predatory insect, there's a wasp trying to get in. Trying to

  • attack them, to get in, trying to get the honey. So, they're able to flick their tails

  • and their bodies in unison, in a pattern that basically flicks the wasp off. It's an amazing

  • feat of coordination possible because they live in this way, one for all, all for one.

  • And these emergent behaviors have evolved, quite extraordinary. This yields massive efficiency;

  • you have massive division of labor and trust. Is this an analogy or even a homology for

  • anything in the corporate world? Are there any businesses that work this way? Well, there's

  • no business that has no competition, in which people are truly perfect hive members, where

  • there's no politics, no competition. But there are many businesses that come close.

  • I've visited a couple times at zappos.com and they pride themselves in being like this,

  • and my sense is that they really are. If you put Zappos into Google image search, this

  • was one of the first images that came up when I did this. And it is them forming this symbol

  • of one for all, all for one and when they do this love to spin around like those bees.

  • So, some companies, I think, are like this. Now, I want to tell you about this little

  • bit of research that has been done on hive psychology recently. It's been discovered

  • that synchronous movement, moving together, seems to change our minds, chance our physiology

  • in ways that make us extra good hive members. So, many religions use synchronous movement

  • well. Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath at the Stanford Business School, brought people into

  • the lab, had them basically sing a drinking song. They didn't actually give them alcohol

  • but they had them wave mugs around while singing 'O Canada'. They wanted a song that people

  • wouldn't have any particular emotional attachment to.

  • [Audience laughter]

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: They had them sing 'O Canada' while listening on headphones to

  • the song so that they could either be singing or moving in unison or not quite in unison.

  • And then they had them play various games and dilemmas to see how well they could cooperate.

  • And after moving together in synchrony, they were better able, they could go further in

  • these games that required extreme cooperation. Something that has very direct relevance to

  • any sort of collective effort, certainly in the business world. Moving together in time

  • increases cooperation and trust.

  • Another study found that when you take rowers, college level rowers and you have them row

  • either in synchrony or not in synchrony, they did it in a rowing tank so they could measure

  • exactly how much force was being applied. They actually were able to deliver the same

  • amount of force, but then when they gave them the pain tolerance test afterwards. Those

  • that had rowed in synchrony were able to withstand more pain. In other words, it changes the

  • endorphin system which would be adaptive if this is a reflex for battle. Groups that move

  • together in time can fight together better, they can trust each other better. So we're

  • changing some relatively low level aspects of brain chemistry that would prepare individuals

  • to be a part of a team in combat. Now in case you want any evidence that this

  • can be used in the corporate world, Japanese companies have long used synchronous movement

  • in the morning to bind the group together. The Japanese corporate structure is very much

  • based on a hive model, a family model, not so much competition within the group, but

  • fiercely competitive across companies. Synchrony has been used in the business world for exactly

  • this purpose. And actually, how many people have ever done any sort of like team building

  • exercise or corporate retreat where they had you move in synchrony, is this commonly done?

  • OK, ya it is often used, it's not studied very much so we need to do better research

  • to find out if it really works. But I suspect that it does.

  • So, here's one dramatic example of how, again, how it's just people [unintelligible] this

  • is the All Blacks, New Zealand, one of the premiere rugby teams. The All Blacks.

  • [Sportscaster narrative]

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Watch their poor opponents in the end.

  • [crowd cheers][rugby players chant the Haka] >> Jonathan Haidt: So it's fun, it feels good

  • and there are reasons to believe that it actually works to bind teams together more closely.

  • So I want to make the point now that while a corporation is always a super organism.

  • In fact, the legal definition of a corporation, going back to eighteenth century Dutch and

  • British law, is a group of people united into one body. The word corporation literally means

  • body. So Mitt Romney is not entirely wrong when he says corporations are people, although

  • of course, it they are people they are a certain kind of person that does not have much in

  • the way of moral sentiments in and of itself. But we won't go there.

  • Alright, so, a corporation is always a super organism, it is a kind of emergent entity.

  • But I want to make it clear, I'm not saying that they are hives, most are not. Very few

  • are hives. There's a dimension of hivishness and even within the same industry. So, here

  • are some companies just from my limited experience in the business world around or rather just

  • teaching courses to people in the business world. I hear from the students that some

  • companies are very much hivish; these are places where they really feel one for all,

  • all for one. I asked David on the way in, whether this is really true about Google,

  • what I've heard. Oh absolutely, right away from my first day here it was clear that I

  • could call up somebody if I needed help and no matter how busy he was, he would just help

  • me. Even though there was nothing in it for him, it wasn't his project. But everyone just

  • has this sense that you know, you help, you do what's needed. You do whatever another

  • fellow employee needs. So like those bees, you function as an organism, division of labor,

  • but you're all in it together.

  • So here are some companies that are known for not quite being that way. So competition

  • even, of course Amazon bought Zappos and people at Zappos were concerned that their corporate

  • cultures would be very different. But so far it seems as though Amazon has respected their

  • very, very different culture at Zappos.

  • So, I think that there are some obvious benefits of hivishness, just on its face now, I just

  • signed on at the Business School at NYU, so I haven't done the front line research on

  • this directly but there are reasons to think that hivishness is going to have these two

  • major, major benefits. The first is almost, by definition, higher social capital. Social

  • capital is an important concept from sociology, popularized in the 1990s. It refers to the

  • trust that is found in relationships. So if two companies have, if one company has more

  • financial capital than another, but everything else is equal, more money in the bank is going

  • to let them beat out the other company. Similarly, if two companies are identical and identical

  • in financial capital, but one has more social capital, that is, people can do as David said

  • you need help, you ask for it, you get it. There's no backstabbing or there's no turf

  • guarding, that's social capital. If everything else is equal, that company is going to beat

  • out the other company. They're more efficient.

  • So hivishness by definition is going to give you higher social capital, which should generally

  • translate into higher productivity and flexibility. Management can make changes and assume that

  • people will trust them, go along with it, not fight over well, should we change. You're

  • a team, you're like one body. When I say move to the left, my right hand doesn't say "wait

  • a second, what's in it for me?" Secondly, hivishness is going to give you employee morale.

  • It's just a lot more fun to work in a place where everybody likes and trusts each other

  • and works as a team. So you get lower turnover. Turnover is extremely expensive for companies.

  • And when people are fired, or when they leave for any reason, they're much less likely to

  • sue if it's a hivish organization, were there was much more trust. It makes it much easier

  • to recruit, and once people are here, it makes it harder to lure them away. So hivishness

  • has obvious benefits for companies.

  • Now it also surely has downsides and it depends how you do it, so I'm not standing here saying

  • "Oh, every company should become more hivish." I have no idea if that's true. But I do want

  • to introduce these terms. I think it's helpful for people in the business world to think

  • about. So possible risks or downsides are at a certain point you spend so much time

  • playing drinking games and charades and other things that they do in some of these hivish

  • companies. Billiards, what else do I see here Ping-Pong, scooters, pogo sticks. At a certain

  • point you spend so much time that it will lower productivity. Secondly, if you have

  • that really hivish feeling of love of the group, that could become sort of toxic for

  • outsiders. You could no longer care about other stake holders, other people outside

  • the company. Of course, if you have more group loyalty then there might be more pressure

  • to cover up misdeeds, it would be harder to be a whistle blower, perhaps. And lastly you

  • could have more group think if everybody is sort of on the same wave length and people

  • are emphasizing their similarity. On the other hand, at least what I heard at Zappos, and

  • what I've also heard from a student of mine, Jesse Kluver who is a Marine, is that when

  • you have a really hivish group, there is such trust and everybody values the mission that

  • actually, often what you have is it's easier to speak up because everyone trusts that you're

  • not grandstanding, you really have the interest of the group at heart. So, it's an open question

  • when hivishness will have a profile of benefits and when it will have costs.

  • Now, some advice on what one can do if you have an organization, this is not just true

  • in the corporate world, this is any organization any non-profit a soccer team, anything. Well,

  • some of the basic ideas from classic social psychology are that when people have a sense

  • of shared fate, and especially a sense of shared sacrifice. We're all pulling together;

  • we're all in the same boat. That really brings out the bee in us; it really brings out the

  • cooperator in us. It's very important in any organization to suppress free riders if there's

  • a sense, because in such an organization there's so much freedom. Anybody who wanted to could

  • stock up on all these snacks and go sell them on the street corner if you wanted to. And

  • anybody who did that would be violating the group's trust. Any organization that lets

  • free riders do such things then suddenly activates more negative psychology in everybody else,

  • people don't feel that they can trust each other. So free riders are really poisonous.

  • It's crucial that free riders be punished and punished quickly. But punishment doesn't

  • have to involve spanking or firing or anything else. Gossip is the normal human form of punishment.

  • Gossip is actually, generally speaking a good thing, especially in a hivish organization.

  • Gossip gets a bad name because in junior high school people tend to use it to destroy their

  • rivals. So that's ugly. But, what's been found, a study by Naft and Wilson, looked at gossip

  • on a crew team. And when you have a group working together like that, most of the gossip

  • was actually who's shirking, who's not working out hard enough. When people really care about

  • the mission of the group they tend to gossip in way that's will shame and punish those

  • who are drifting off and sort of pull them back in. So gossip is the front line of defense

  • for a healthy organization.

  • Third, heightened similarity, anything that makes you feel like you are all one will help

  • this feeling. So of course many companies emphasize diversity. It's important to emphasize

  • diversity for justice reasons and diversity especially of perspectives, has many benefits

  • for creativity. But I want to emphasize that to get trust and cohesion, you don't want

  • to tell everyone oh, we're all so different and that's great, you want to say we're all

  • the same. And when you do that race stops mattering because so many other things link

  • you together. So, just think about emphasizing similarity not diversity.

  • Fourth point, synchrony moving together to the extent possible, has been shown to have

  • these effects. Healthy competition is good. When you divide people into groups, they tend

  • to trust the people in their group more and interestingly, they don't dislike the people

  • in the other group. So, are there any intramural competitions here? Is there any time where

  • you do group versus group or division versus division here at Google? Do you ever do that?

  • I assume you don't then hate the people on the other team? It's playful, it's fun. You

  • get to work together more closely. So this is the classic social psych finding, in-group

  • love is not purchased at the cost of out-group hate. Unless the competition gets really nasty,

  • and then it gets viciously tribal and that's where we are in the US Congress. But within

  • a healthy company that's not what happens.

  • Lastly, to the extent that you can say your company is pursuing a noble mission, it's

  • much easier to inspire people. So at Zappos, for example, they don't talk about selling

  • shoes, they talk about their mission is delivering happiness. They're a service company. And

  • Google is organizing the world's information. Google is making our lives easier. Google

  • is doing all these wonderful things. So, to the extent that one is thinking about the

  • culture of one's team or organization, these are some pointers for how to make it more

  • hivish and cooperative. There are some specific things that leaders can do, behaving in particular

  • with integrity and charisma. A leader must be worth of respect, admiration and perhaps

  • even awe. Not necessarily but these things do help. Great leaders, such as Julius Caesar,

  • inspired their men because their followers could trust them. They looked up to them.

  • One of the most important things about being a leader or a boss is that people are willing

  • to cede you authority and to follow you as long as they trust that you really are out

  • for the good of the group. As soon as they get the sense that you're a self-aggrandizer,

  • that you're out for yourself or you've got your favorites and you're out for your faction

  • and not going to help the other members of team, then they'll turn against you very,

  • very quickly.

  • So an important part of leadership is impartiality, fairness, people really have to trust you,

  • that you're really impartial. And then they will accept decisions from you that work against

  • their self-interest. Self-sacrifice is crucial, that leaders sacrifice when times are tough.

  • I was at a, there was a positive psychology conference, a month after 9/11 and corporate

  • CEO got up and said to this room of 300 psychologists "We, the business community, we are on the

  • front line in the fight against terror." Which seems to me to be incredibly pompous when

  • we are sending troops over to Afghanistan to actually fight and face bullets, but anyway.

  • So, "we CEOs are on the front line of the fight against terror, and we need ideas from

  • you as to what we can do and how we can win this fight" So I stood up and I said "Well,

  • we've just gone through the 90s when CEO pay skyrocketed as profits were going up. Now

  • the economies turned and 9/11's pushed us down further, profits are dropping, pay is

  • dropping. So, I would think if CEOs would take a massive cut in pay on the way down,

  • that would inspire more cooperation and help you win the fight against terror."

  • [Audience laughs]

  • >> Dr. Jonathan Haidt: He says "That isn't helpful, any other suggestions?" [laughter]

  • So anyway, shared sacrifice.

  • And lastly eloquence, history books are full of times when a battle turned or the history

  • of the world turned on one person giving an inspiring and eloquent speech that rallied

  • others to work or fight their hardest.

  • So to conclude, we have this story about human beings being fundamentally selfish. And certainly

  • businesses and business people being fundamentally selfish and while I think there is a little

  • bit of truth to this, this story does work in some corners of the business world. And

  • right now we're all trying to figure out whether the finance business, the finance industry

  • is different from the rest of the corporate world where they actually make things that

  • are of use to people. Finance does seem to be plagued by many more problems than other

  • areas of the business world. But I'd like to replace this idea of human nature with

  • this idea: that we are both selfish and cooperative, we are selfish and groupish, and I think this

  • is not just a more inspiring of what we are but I think it's actually a true vision.

  • Thank you very much.

  • [Applause]

  • >>Male Presenter: We have time for questions, so if you're interested come up to the microphone

  • and ask away.

  • >>male #1: So you've made some pretty compelling arguments about the benefits of hivishness

  • and the human propensity for hivishness. And given those benefits, it seems reasonable

  • that people would have this psychological propensity. But we all know that evolution

  • is not a teleological mechanism that seeks long term global optimization-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Not at all.

  • >>male #1: -and in fact you cited the fact that a lot of the insects have to adopt these

  • very strange genetic patterns into their hives in order to make it evolutionarily stable

  • strategy for them to behave that way. You said at the beginning you didn't really want

  • to dive into the whole issue about individual versus group selectionism, but I just have

  • one sort of top-level question-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Sure. >>male #1: -which is, do you think it's necessary

  • to invoke group selectionism to explain the human propensity for hivish behavior?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Well yes, a great question. Is it necessary to invoke group selection?

  • I think it's not necessary. There are some very clever explanations as to why we're so

  • groupish, that rely on individual level selection. That is individuals who could show off that

  • they were good team players would be rewarded and trusted more and therefore they would

  • benefit. But part of the reason why I'm attracted to ideas about multi-level selection that

  • is: human nature was shaped in part by group versus group competition, is that there's

  • all this weird stuff we do that's very hard to explain as something that will redound

  • to my personal benefit. For example, after 9/11 there was sort of the 'rally around the

  • flag' effect. And it's kind of hard to explain that people who rally around the flag and

  • had this urge to support the leader that they beat out the other ones who had less of that

  • urge. A better example I think would be the urge to kill traitors and apostates. So what

  • you do with it. A traitor is worse than an enemy, in many religious books and in many

  • societies. A traitor, there's only thing you have to do with a traitor, you have to kill

  • them.

  • Now, do we suppose this urge to kill traitors came about because long ago individuals who

  • killed their traitorous neighbors had more children than individuals who hung back and

  • didn't kill their traitorous neighbors? There's just a lot of really tribal groupish stuff,

  • initiation rites, a lot of weird stuff we do that makes perfect sense if you think that

  • our genes came down to us in part by being lodged in successful groups. It's being currently

  • fought out, nobody has a knock down argument but I think the total picture of human nature

  • is more consilient with group selection than with individual selection.

  • >>male #2: You mentioned searching out and destroying traitors just now and that kind

  • of gets at what I was going to ask. What about when the hive sort of goes off track and I

  • was sitting there thinking a little about like Salem witch trials. You mentioned bullies

  • in school, what happens when you have a mob? A hive turns into a mob?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Right, right. So I take an ecological view of human evolution. That

  • is if you think about a total ecosystem and there's lots of niches then there all these

  • creatures in the niches. Most of those creatures are individual animals but some of them are

  • groups. So if we think about religion, so in my book I developed at great lengths ideas

  • from David Sloan Wilson and others. That religion is an adaptation for binding groups together

  • for intergroup conflict. That means that religion in its original tribal form is very much about

  • getting people to trust each other, develop virtues that will help maximize their productivity

  • and especially make them more fit, or at least wipe out or, at least, out compete neighboring

  • groups. Not a very pretty picture. And in many parts of the world, as the new atheists

  • love to document, religions look sort of that way. But in the American ecosystem, things

  • are very, very different. In America, we've had a free market in religion since the beginning.

  • And especially for Protestants who shift around quite a lot, between sects. So they all have

  • to be good at marketing and they all have to be appealing and if you go to a church,

  • and I'm a Jewish atheist but I assign my students to go to various, you know far right or far

  • left churches. I had to do it myself. You go in there and everyone is so welcoming,

  • so nice wherever you go. In the American ecosystem, nasty tribal religions don't propagate. But

  • nicer ones do. So in our ecology, religion actually turns out to be a great benefit overall.

  • So there's a book called "American Grace" by Putnam and Campbell where they just look

  • at whether religions have a net benefit to society. And they conclude that in America

  • at least, they really, really do.

  • So even though this stuff emerged in ways that could have all kinds of negative externalities,

  • depending on the ecosystem, it can actually be quite positive. There are lots of externalities.

  • >>female #1: Hi. So when Steven Pinker was here, he was talking about his theory about

  • the history of violence and it's declining in human society-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: -yes-

  • >>female #1: - and he brought up this idea of moral circles-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: -yes-

  • >>female #1:- like that us has sort of expanded outward in time. It used to be maybe just

  • our family, then just our tribe then our nation and then the groups get bigger and bigger.

  • And I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the philosopher-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: -Peter Singer-

  • >>female #1: - Peter Singer. So how do you think that dovetails with your idea about

  • groupishness and hivishness?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Yes. So, groupishness. We get more groupish when we're attacked.

  • And after 9/11 we got a lot more groupish, I think everybody thought there's going to

  • be anti-Muslim violence and there wasn't, to the credit of Americans' generally tolerant

  • nature. But, war and intergroup conflict shrinks the circle and makes us more competitive whereas

  • peace and prosperity lets that sort fade away. Also, intergroup contact trade and travel,

  • which keep going up, thin that out. So I think that Pinker is absolutely right, violence

  • is declining. There are many reasons for that and one of the reasons he cites is actually

  • trade and commerce.

  • Because trade and commerce makes you not care at all what those people eat or how they have

  • sex. Just, do they have the goods and will they honor their contract? And this is why,

  • to this day, Amsterdam is one of the most tolerant places on earth. Because it was the

  • origin of this kind of new modern global trade. So, I think Pinker is right and as the internet

  • has helped us see more interact with people more globally, it is thinning this stuff out.

  • The other piece of the story that Pinker mentions is strengthening institutions. This groupishness,

  • this hivishness, works well to structure groups when there is no police forces, no courts

  • but as you get stronger institutions, you can weaken this tribalism, this hivishness.

  • And the Scandinavian countries are the forefront in world history of having effective civil

  • institutions and ever decreasing groupishness. So it's possible to have a very humane society

  • without it. But, people need groups, people thrive in groups and so it remains to be seen

  • whether you can healthier or less healthy forms in America.

  • >>male #3: There's been some research that suggests that there's sort of an inbuilt limit

  • in the number of other primates that we can consider part of our group. Dunbar's Number?

  • Do you think there's a similar limit for how large we can find our hive to be?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Right, that's a good question. So the Dunbar Number is one hundred

  • fifty, there's not been any firm research on it but the basic idea is that there's a

  • certain number of people that we can know personally. But not just know personally,

  • because you can know a thousand people personally, but know how everybody is connected to everybody

  • else. And once you get above one hundred and fifty, that's very hard. So that's kind of

  • a natural break point for human groups.

  • But one of the cool things about human social cognition is that it's recursive. So there's

  • this Arab proverb: "Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, me and

  • my brother and cousin against the stranger." And, the US military uses this beautifully.

  • There's competition at every level. Everybody is competing with everybody. But within the

  • lowest level, you know they'll compete within a patrol; they'll then cooperate to compete

  • against the next patrol and all the way up until the Marines are competing against the

  • Navy.

  • And then of course in war, the whole US Military is competing against another military organization.

  • So, there is no limit to how high we can go as long as there's someone on the other side.

  • So there will never be a human hive until either we're attacked by Mars or we get serious

  • and declare war on those goddamn mosquitoes.

  • [Laughter]

  • >>Male #4: I'm interested in the same topic, the scale at which this groupishness can operate.

  • I just joined Google a few weeks ago and I'd be surprised if I knew somebody in this room.

  • And so you showed slides of people moving together, so I wonder if I signed up for like

  • an aerobics class here at Google, but I didn't happen to know anybody else in the class and

  • after I was done and I came back to my group, is that gonna foster groupishness? In me,

  • or do I have to actually know the people I'm moving with?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Thank you, that is exactly the experiment I would like to run, I will

  • credit you when I run it, that is something that we need to do. But my hypothesis would

  • be, that if you simply exercise with people that you don't know and don't see again, that

  • would be enough to foster or facilitate your integration into this company. So it should

  • work at that very minimal level.

  • Secondly, if you do at least recognize the people that you're moving with and then you

  • see them in some other context, or at a party, you would be able to strike up a conversation

  • more easily. And third, if you took one division of Google and sort of encouraged it, you can't

  • force people or you'll get reactance, but you encourage one division to do a lot of

  • this stuff and another one to not do it. My prediction would be that you would see a measurable

  • bump up, depends on the outcome measure, but for certain tasks that require trust and ability

  • to work together, you would see it.

  • So that's the hypothesis, we don't know yet whether it's true.

  • >>Male#5: Hi, thanks for coming. I sort of have two questions, about intention and consciously

  • doing, consciously acting. So both when you're looking at sort of selfish actions or groupish

  • actions. How much does it matter whether those are, you're trying to be selfish or trying

  • to be groupish versus it just being the subconscious? Like, does that even come into play?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Right.

  • >>Male#6: And sort of semi-relatedly for groups or hives, what is intention? Previous question

  • about when the hive starts to drift away, you know, that's sort of the hives will is

  • sort of drifting. You were talking about a leader sort of having a role in sort of defining

  • the direction of a group. How much is sort of emergent, no one's really trying to apply

  • a direction versus how much is really just an individual applying their own will.

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: OK, thank you. That's given us two good questions. So the first,

  • I deliberately said 90% chimp 10% bee, not 50/50. Because we are very, very concerned

  • with our self-interests and especially our reputation. So a lot of cooperation is for

  • show. A lot of cooperation is because people are watching. And if there's no monitoring

  • and you're relying only on people's team spirit and they can get away with anything they want,

  • research shows that most people tend to cheat more than they even realize that they are

  • doing. So some of it is for show and a well set up organization is one in which people

  • will do good and get credit for it. To the reputation you want, to harness reputational

  • concerns as much as you can.

  • As for the extent to which a leader is making it happen versus letting it happening organically,

  • I think a good metaphor is gardening or maybe more like forestry. You can manage an ecosystem,

  • but it's very hard to just create one from scratch. You have to let it grow to some extent.

  • And this to the extent that I'm very interested in liberal and conservative ideas. I am dispositionally

  • a liberal, I think there are problems, we can solve them. But I've been very persuaded

  • by conservative critiques that say that liberal efforts to just come in and impose a new system

  • tend to fail.

  • And I think the way to think about social engineering is more like ecosystem management.

  • If you come in and say well, we're going to have a whole new way of supporting children

  • or marriage or anything and you put something new in place, you get all kinds of invasive

  • species as it were. You get all kinds of things you didn't expect. But yet you can still influence

  • Yellowstone Park, you just can't raze it to the ground and plant it from scratch. So I

  • think a good leader is someone who is a little modest about what can be done but sort of

  • tries to get organic processes growing and then you can still direct them to some extent.

  • Where are we on time? Oh, it's been almost an hour; I guess we have time for one or two

  • more questions? We've got 5 more minutes.

  • >> Male#7: I guess more along those linesCan you have a hive without a leader?

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Can you have a hive without a leader? Yes, I think you can. Bees

  • certainly do, there's no leader in a beehive. The queen is just the ovary, she's not the

  • leader. In a street gang or any group of friends, yes, they can definitely be hivish, if they're

  • small. I think it'd be very hard to have a large hive without a leader. [cellphone rings]

  • And this is one difficulty I see with Occupy Wall Street, it's very, it's an intensely

  • idealistic group, very committed to horizontality. That's where their emphasis on horizontality,

  • very afraid, very opposed to having leaders. So it can happen but it makes it very, very

  • hard for them to get anything done. I was at a Occupy Wall Street meeting where they

  • were trying to draft their vision statement. And you know they had to do it by consensus,

  • and consensus means unanimous. And it just goes on month after month because it's very

  • hard to get a unanimous statement. So yes, you can have a hive without a leader but if

  • you want to get things done, good leadership helps. And especially if it's a large group,

  • yeah, I think you have to.

  • >>Female#2: So thank you for coming here. Talking about leadership, I'm just reading

  • a Steve Jobs' biography and there is repetitive mention of his reality distortion and how

  • finicky he was, so I'd like to hear your views about his leadership and the psychology you

  • talked about.

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: So I haven't read the book, I don't know much about Steve Jobs but

  • I do want to reiterate the pointthat a company can be extremely good and extremely

  • profitable without being a hive. And you know, apparently Jobs was not a very nice guy. Does

  • anybody know whether Apple was a hivish place like Google, where there's very little backstabbing,

  • or politics? Does anyone know? Yeah? What is it? No? OK.

  • [Audience laughter] >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: No. OK Alright, so.

  • Their trick was incredible devotion to good design. And that made them the most profitable,

  • one of the most profitable companies in history. You don't have to be a hive to be successful.

  • You don't have to be a hive to change the world. But it's a lot nicer to work in a place

  • where people are hivish.

  • >>Female#2: Yeah, but how does a leadership like that work? Where there is a lack of trust,

  • there is a lack of you know-

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: mmm hmm. Yeah.

  • >>Female#2: - there is a lot of favoritism. [computer beeps]

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: Yes, that's right. Well, so I don't know much. There's a gigantic field

  • of leadership studiesahh, oh my computer just shut offbut one of, it's a vast

  • field, I don't know much about it. But the termsoh, here it is, there we are, my

  • computer somehow knew what I wanted to show.

  • [Audience chuckles]

  • >>Dr. Jonathan Haidt: One of the pair of terms is transactional leadership versus transformational

  • leadership. Transactional leadership basically says: let's align interests, I want you to

  • do X and I will pay you more to do X. So you can have a very effective company if you align

  • incentives and pay people for it. You're sort of leaving money on the table, as it were,

  • in that people are actually willing to do a lot of stuff, not just for pay if they get

  • a sense of meaning and connection and happiness from it.

  • So it can work, and most companies, as I said most companies are wolf packs, not hives.

  • So think about what you're doing and what style is right for your organization. And

  • there are many ways to run a successful organization.

  • OK, I think that's 1 o'clock. Thank you all for your attention.

  • [Applause]

>>Male Presenter: Glad to see you all here today. A few months ago I got into the car

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