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The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
451. Why Everyone Else Is A Hypocrite: Exploring Our Modular Minds w/ Dr. Robert Kurzban
00:49:39
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer welcomes Dr. Robert Kurzban, author of Why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite, for an enlightening discussion on the modular nature of our brains and the evolutionary psychology behind our...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Hey there Melina. Here I'm excited to share. I'm teaching two virtual courses in Applied Behavioral Economics which are enrolling now. Advanced concepts of Behavioral Economics and Internal Communication and Change management. So if you're interested, don't delay, learn more and enroll at HBL. Like Human Behavior Lab.tamu like Texas A&M University edu. Again, that's HBL.tamu edu and click on Certificate program when you're ready. Let's start the show. Welcome to episode 451 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Robert Kurzbon, author of why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite. Ready? Let's get started.
- [01:01]
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:16]
Hello.
- [01:17]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Hello everyone.
- [01:18]
Melina Palmer
My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Robert Kurzbon. Robert received his PhD in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and received postdoctoral training at Caltech in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, UCLA Anthropology, and the University of Arizona's Economic Science Laboratory with Vernon Smith. In 2003, he joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he reached the rank of Professor. He has published on a wide array of topics including morality, cooperation, friendship, mate, choice, supernatural beliefs, modularity, self control, and political opinions. He's published two books, why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite and the Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind and currently publishes a newsletter at the Living Fossils on Substack. He now works at the Garces Foundation, a non profit serving newcomers to the United States living in Philadelphia who are in need of education and health services. Really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Rob and myself, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com451 now let's jump right in. Dr. Robert Kurzbon, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [02:51]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Thank you and thanks for having me on.
- [02:53]
Yes, I'm super excited to be speaking with you today about our modular brains and how they work and getting into some fun nudgy work as well, for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can.
- [03:07]
Melina Palmer
You please share a little bit about.
- [03:08]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Yourself and the work that you do?
- [03:10]
Sure. So I was sort of born into the world as an evolutionary psychologist. So I studied the field, which is basically the application of Darwin's ideas about evolution to understanding human behavior, mostly human social behavior. So I did my PhD out in California and then I did a couple of postdocs with economists and some anthropologists which gave me sort of a broad view of the social sciences. I spent some time as a professor at Penn and then I did a public administration degree and I've sort of migrated to the nonprofit space and then do a little bit of entrepreneurship in my spare time. So I'm sort of a scientist who turned into someone who's trying to do some good in the world.
- [03:49]
Oh, I love that. I, I didn't give you a heads up that I might ask this. Every so often I like to ask. And if you say I hated it and I don't want to talk about it, that's fine too. What did you study for your dissertation?
- [04:02]
I studied, I was interested in human social media so I studied human cooperative behavior. So I did a game I would call public goods game which basically gives people an opportunity to either be selfish or altruistic. A little group and I played around with the interaction among the people playing the game. So it's worth. It was very fun at the time. So a real simple manipulation. So I had people come into the room and then they would like make eye contact with each other according to the instructions. They would like whatever and compare that to appropriate control conditions. And we found even little things like that can increase rates of cooperation. So I was just interested in does your kind of interaction with people. Not language, just non verbal stuff, could that affect, you know, how pro social you feel? And the answer to that was yes.
- [04:48]
Melina Palmer
Oh yes.
- [04:49]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And I'm glad that so this one as you started to say it, I remember this was in your book and so know that we'll, we'll get. It's a little bit deeper into the book and how our brains work though than maybe at the beginning as we talk about our, our modular minds but as we think about incentives and the pressure like you said that we have from others in this kind of social norms and things. Can you get a little bit more into the details about. It's if I'm going to get. And this might have been a secondary study versus the specific one you did for your dissertation, but where I was talking about if I want to know. I don't want to know what my choice is going to impact on the other person. So I can be a little bit more selfish and not have to lie about being selfish and caring more about myself. I thought that was such an interesting study.
- [05:39]
Thank you. Yeah. So there's. There's sort of what some people call strategic ignorance. I actually like the example, which is a little bit outside the lab and in real life. I mean, I'm sitting here in Philadelphia and, you know, if the example that I like to use. And this is, this is, by the way, this is true. If you cross the street in Philadelphia and you don't look at oncoming traffic, so you are kind of remaining ignorant of whether or not someone else is coming down, that typically the cars will stop because the driver's thinking, well, he can't get out of the way. He's not looking at me. So I, you know, Whereas if you make eye contact, they might barrel through the. The drivers could be like, well, he could scurry out of the way. So that's a case. And the same thing happens when we have choices to make in the laboratory. Right. So if I look at only my payoffs, but I don't look at your payoffs, and I see one choice I can make is 2, and the other one is 1. Well, as long as I don't know that that one would give you 10, the 2 would give you 3. I'm like, I'll just take the 2 because, like, I don't know. So, you know, you can keep your own ignorance to actually make yourself better off. And I think both of those examples from the lab example and the real world example sort of point that out.
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Yeah. And in that way, with the eye contact piece being that if you force people and say they have to kind of look around at each other before they choose the payouts, they did things that were going to make others better off more often than when they didn't have to look at anybody beforehand.
- [07:04]
It seems to build this sort of sense of a little bit of an obligation. Right. You're not just sitting around and doing your own thing. You become sort of part of a group or a coalition or a tribe or whatever you want to say. And don't get me wrong, that can be dangerous too. Right. But. But in this case, you know, that's what tribalism does. It tends to make you more pro your tribe, and then sometimes that means a little bit anti the other guys.
- [07:25]
I find that so amazing too, when we think about it, really, to say something as simple as that. You know, millisecond of a glance. Right. And how much impact they can have. I can, you know, of course, you. You would feel similarly, I would assume, because you did your dissertation on it. But it's amazing.
- [07:45]
Yeah. And honestly, you know, we did the work because we didn't know what we're going to find. And we were actually a little surprised because it is a subtle. It's sort of like a subtle manipulation. There was another treatment in there where people didn't look at each other. They just tapped out rhythms together, which sort of evokes this. It's a little primal. There's something about rhythms and percussion that also had the effect. But I agree. And part of the reason we were looking at that was I know you have a background in economics, is that I was sort of interested in things that economists would say are not supposed to influence behavior. These sort of non. It's not a real incentive. There's no money on the table. And so I should be. Full disclosure, part of it was just to irritate economists because you show it's quite irrelevant factors are influencing economic decision making.
- [08:33]
Oh, yeah. So were there other things that you tested that didn't have the same level of impact?
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We had a touch manipulation where we. This is, you know, this was back in 1997 or eight. So, you know, whatever was less fraught than it probably would be now, where you just leaned over and you sort of tap the shoulder of the person next to you. That didn't do anything.
- [08:58]
Well. And so with the tap, did they have to respond to the tap or they just.
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Yeah, it was just sort of like the other ones. It was just, you know, just want to make a little touch. Because there is some literature that suggests so that this comes out of an incredibly old finding back in the days when they had telephone booths, because the manipulation was they had had a confederate go up to subjects or unknowing people and say, hey, can I have a dime for a phone call? Back when phone calls, cost of debt. And the treatment in that condition was effective, where the condition where they tap the person, hey, can I have a dime? Elicited compliance more often than where you just asked. So I thought there was some possibility that the touch thing would work. But, you know, the data is the data that didn't have that effect. But in some contexts, I mean, it's just a normal everyday life. I mean, people who make media know this. They know that they can signal the nature of a relationship by showing just even a little bit of contact. It could be a plot point. Right. Like if you see two people on a screen and they're sort of just barely touching, you're like, oh, they're close. That. That's psychologically meaningful to that. You know what I mean?
- [10:01]
Definitely. Well, that's through Texas A and M where I teach. And we've done some work with. Do quite a bit with restaurants and menus and did some work on talking about how to increase tips and things and knowing that in that case, when the waiter will touch an arm or something, again, this, you know, post Covid.
- [10:23]
Melina Palmer
Things are a little bit different.
- [10:25]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
We do that less. But you know that tips increase when somebody, you know, touches your arm or is looking at you more eye to eye if they crouch down or those sorts of impacts. Yeah.
- [10:37]
Oh, so interesting. I like the fact that you've got the eye gaze thing and the touch thing. You've got two of my manipulations in an applied environment. That's superf. I'd known about that back in the day. That that is really. And also, it's like it kind of conforms to my intuitions. Right. Like I think of a server or something. Gives me a little, you know, I feel like. I guess we're like, okay, right.
- [10:55]
They care about me. They're paying attention and they're, you know, we have that connection point. So. Yeah, and I guess we did. There's not the same sort of ritualistic tapping that you would have with your server. That may be a little bit weird, but on the. You think about, like, birthday celebration and everybody, like, claps along. I would be interested to see, actually, is do people tip more?
- [11:19]
Melina Palmer
You know, if it's your own table, yes.
- [11:20]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
But if you were participating in the clapping of that with all the servers, does that impact that behavior of supporting that. That waitstaff?
- [11:30]
Yeah, super interesting. I mean, I think also another place, the real world, you see, this is in sporting events where there's lots of sporting teams and yes, they have some songs and so on, but one of the things that have is a particular rhythm. You know, what we do here is, you know, E E L Eagle. It's. It's not just that you're spelling out. It's something about everyone is doing the same thing at the same time that's coordinated. And there' something very compelling about that psychologically. Yeah.
- [11:54]
Melina Palmer
Oh, perfect.
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Dr. Robert Kurzbon
I feel like I have to throw in for all the Seattleites out there. The Sea Hawks, right? Versus your.
- [12:01]
Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, we do. We have a call and repeat versus.
- [12:06]
I know that's interesting.
- [12:07]
Melina Palmer
All the letters. Right.
- [12:08]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
So, yeah, but there's something to that, right, that the rhythm that we all know and we all sort of perform it does. It sort of hits that deep psychology, like, oh, these are all my people. Sort of interesting.
- [12:19]
I love it. All right, well, thank you for taking that little walk with me into some of that.
- [12:24]
Melina Palmer
I think that's really interesting and so.
- [12:26]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Important for people to know. When you think about your own teams, right.
- [12:30]
Melina Palmer
And you think about those little moments.
- [12:32]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Of bonding and where I think in this case, even the case of, like, why video chat is helpful instead of just having phone calls. If you have remote teams.
- [12:44]
Melina Palmer
Right.
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Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Being able to have that even small moments of eye contact to be able.
- [12:48]
Melina Palmer
To help your team to bond.
- [12:49]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Have you done anything else as far as helping to, you know, leverage that type of work into larger business context for people?
- [12:57]
I haven't. But I do think that if you look at Icebreakers, you'll see a lot of these sort of people have an implicit knowledge of what works psychologically. And I think, you know, my sense is that any of these team building exercises in general, they often entail some kind of coordination of activity. We seem to respond to that. And from an evolutionary perspective, sort of my view is that, you know, there's something very compelling about coordination because it is probably true that, you know, groups that were able to coordinate better were often at an advantage relative to those who did. You see this in, you know, for example, hunting, but then also military conflict and so on. I mean, so I think that's. I think there's a lot of applied context where this notion of coordination could have a very important, kind of an important fact.
- [13:44]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, I love it.
- [13:46]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Well, let's talk about your book I. And why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite. I love that title.
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Thank you. I appreciate that.
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And so, however you want to start talking about the book in our brains, I open it up to you and then I shall ask follow up questions.
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Yeah, sure. So, you know, I wrote it because I'm very interested in how we're all. And you put in it sort of before the. Like, we're compartmentalized. Walt Whitman has this notion, you know, I contain multitudes. And what I sort of try to argue is that he was right, that there's different parts of your brain and they all have little duties. Right. So you've got a visual system that can see and you've got a, you know, a hunger system that tries to figure out if you should eat or not. And then you've got all these little Parts of your brain doing that thing. And one of the things that I find very interesting about that is a lot of what's going on in your brain. You. The kind of conscious you don't even know about. Right. And with that, that leads to all sorts of very peculiar situations where, you know, there's a lot of times where if someone says, why'd you do that? You can say, I don't know. You're not being dishonest, you're being very candid. Like, yeah, I don't really know if I did that. It's because there was some part of your brain that was. Had, you know, had the reins at that particular moment. And I think that this idea of modularity, this idea of compartmentalization, it really is helpful to get to think about how the brain works. And particularly it's helpful to think about different kinds of competing motives, because there's one module that has this kind of design and there's another module that has another design. And so that could be helpful. So that's. The basic thesis, is that there's a lot of stuff going on in your head and Freud kind of got there first, but now with modern cognitive science and evolutionary biology, we can sort of pay out a little bit more about how the mind works.
- [15:32]
Yeah. And I mean, as far as any audience that is going to be primed and ready to accept this idea, as everybody really here that listens to the show typically has some understanding of behavioral economics, whether they've heard me talk about it or even if it's their first time here, you know, and to say, you know, hey, the. And I. I just go with conscious and subconscious when I talk about the terms, because I find system one and system two to be difficult for people to process. So. But knowing that there's this, you know, your subconscious quote, unquote, doing so much all the time that is like, below what we're able to know and.
- [16:15]
Melina Palmer
And process.
- [16:16]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And so that's why, you know, my first book is what your Customer Wants.
- [16:19]
Melina Palmer
And Can't Tell youl.
- [16:19]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And I wrote what your employees need and can't tell you because we don't really know. So really, everyone who's here is like, yes, and tell me more about that. So I don't know how often you get to talk about the. The depths of what's in the book, but I would say even just the. The points that you made to help to see, like, yes, we definitely do that.
- [16:45]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [16:45]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And I know you talked a little bit about, you know, cognitive dissonance and different aspects of what's going on in the brain. But even like why do we have these different sections? And I think this idea of not being able to know who you are, right, where we tend to say it's like on some level this or like they really want that or like I, I really enjoyed the way that you talked about all of that. If you wouldn't mind knowing we can't talk about the whole book but everybody can go buy, buy one.
- [17:15]
But yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. So just on, just to take pick up one piece. So I mentioned in Arizona, so if you, if you're, if your listeners or view into behavioral economics, I should admit so I was very lucky to have studied with Vernon Smith as postdoc for a couple of years. I think of him as sort of the, you know, the granddaddy of it all. So just, you know, just to say. And he heavily influenced a lot of, of my subsequent work. So yeah, I sort of feel like the, one of the places where the modular view is really helpful is in this area of, you know, where you talked about cognitive dissonance, self deception because there's a lot of times which are, which is sort of similar to the cross the street case where you sort of don't want to have some particular piece of truth because once you sort of have the conscious knowledge of some fact, it can leak out. Right. So Bob Trivers, a very famous biologist, developed this idea before I did. And the, the intuition is basically, look, if I don't know something bad about myself then, and I, but I hear by I that that is the conscious me or whatever, then in the course of this very casual conversation or what have you, it can't sort of leak out because it's not in there to begin with. So I think a lot of what we talk about in terms of self deception is a case like this where, you know, if there's, if you ask me how good a driver am I, I'm going to say yeah, yeah, you know, like I'm in the top 20%. I mean I am particularly not a great driver. But anyways, and, but then when you put me in a car and you say how skilled are you? I'm like, oh, I'm like in the top 3%. And then you put me in a car and you look at how I drive. This guy is first of all not very good, but also he drives very conservatively as if he wouldn't be able to avoid some mishap were it to occur. But from my perspective there's this Sort of part of your brain that sort of I think of as a press secretary, which is managing all of your reputational effects, managing your relationships. And then there's these decision making parts. And so the press secretary says, oh, yeah, I drive like a demon. And then there's decision making parts, like, just keep it under 65. And so you have these inconsistencies, but it's fine. Right. Because you get the public one, just like, you know, a public relations kind of person or press secretary doing propaganda, if you will. But then the good decision making is happening, as you would say, subconsciously making sure that you make good decisions, even if those decisions are not consistent with what you have said.
- [19:46]
Yeah, definitely. I loved the, it's funny, I watched some of the West Wing way back, you know, when the West Wing was on. My mom really liked it. So I know that it was all, it was on a lot. And so it was like, oh, yeah, C.J. right. Like, remember the, the name and how where the president, like, say, Martin Sheen had ms, Was that, yeah, it was.
- [20:09]
Interpretive as a relapsing and remitting MS, I think it was.
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Ms. Yeah. And, but she could tell something was wrong, but very intentionally asked questions so that she wasn't having to go tell anybody or lie to protect him and the better, you know, aspects. And so I thought that was a really good comparison as we think about the plausible deniability of, like, I, I didn't know.
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Melina Palmer
Right.
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Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And, and so, but then someone eventually asks, like, what's the exact question ask, did you, you know, it's like, is there anything I need to know versus I should know?
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Exactly.
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Melina Palmer
And how that impacts.
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Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And I love that example, too, because such a great way that she's basically saying, look, if they ask me this question, I'm gonna have to tell the truth. So, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna make you tell me. Right. So I'm just gonna say, and that makes her, you know, gives her plausible deniability. I think we do that all the time. We sort of look away. I mean, how many of us look away from people who could use our help if we kind of sort of really came to terms with their, you know, their, their situation? I mean, we all do this, right? I don't want to have to make that choice. A lot of people, you know, they switch the other side of the street if they think there might be people who are going to ask them for money, for example. Right. And it's, it's not that they wouldn't if they had the opportunity, but they're just like, well, if I don't have the opportunity that I don't know that there's this need, I don't feel any, you know, I don't feel compelled to meet it, you know, I mean, totally.
- [21:38]
Well, that's like. I know you talked about the trolley problem in the book and we talked about it on the show before too, of that, you know, the action versus inaction of whether, you know, did I cause that thing to happen and I had to make the choice or just what it was out of my hands. And you know, how we feel on different, you know, levels about things, which is very interesting. And I know, I know I say on different levels and I'm like, oh, no, you're thinking I said the wrong metaphor.
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Yeah, module.
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It's like, it's not. It's not. Right. So I guess in that way it's the different. How. How would you say that? It's our different. And a different module believes what's. Give me. What's the phrasing that we would use?
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Yeah, I. I'd love to see. This is one of the reasons I. Another reason I wrote the book is because it's like the very way we talk about stuff like, you know, Molina believes X. What I want to argue is, well, the whole of her doesn't, like some part of her brain has that belief. And that's the way I think we should talk about it. This module has such and such a belief, and this module has such and such a belief. So one module really sincerely believes. I can drive really well. And this other little system is like, no, you can't. Right. And so I think you should talk about which system or which module has which little belief or preference or what have you. Same thing. Preference is another good example to go back to economics, which is, you know, you have some module there and it's got this preference that I go to the gym this morning and don't, you know, have a huge dinner. And then there's the other modules that really. Yeah, one doesn't want to do that at all. Right. And another. They want to do that, have the reverse preferences. So even in your own head, you have modules where I think you could think of them as having different preferences, which makes it difficult to model. Right. Like if you're an economist, that's a bummer because now I can't say, okay, here's an agent. And it has certain preferences. You're like, well, on average, I guess it does. But you really have to think, well, what's the preference look like in such and such a context? And that just makes, you know, that makes modeling very unpleasant.
- [23:40]
Melina Palmer
Yes.
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Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And as you were just saying that. I remember. So I've been reading your book over, you know, a couple weeks from when I got it and I've been looking at some related books as well. And so I'm going to ask a question that I believe is from your book. And then if I misspeak, we shall shame me publicly. I won't edit it out or anything and say what a terrible person I am. So I believe though, talking about where it was like in the cars and where. Or the device that has a heat seeking module versus heat avoidance and the different aspects of the layers and it wasn't just cars, but if you have these then competing aspects, this is. You're nodding to where I believe. Yes. Okay, can you talk about that? I love this example.
- [24:26]
I do too. So there's a. I drew it from a book by an author named Von Braidenberg and he, it's just called Vehicles and he invites you to think about a little vehicle and it's got like a sensor on it connected to the wheel. And so the sensor senses light and if it detects light, then it accelerates the wheels. And so that vehicle likes light. So you could think of that as this is the way I think you should think about preferences, which is just some sensory system and there's some calculation and then there's some motor that goes along with it and you can keep adding one. So you could add a little sensor for, you know, a temperature gradient so it likes light, but it hates heat. And so. And then the reason I find that so helpful is that it really helps you think about. Well, you need a way to arbitrate if you've got competing preferences in a particular environment. And that's exactly what the modular mind is doing. Right. So in my most ambitious moments, the way I think about this is that this is an explanation for why we have consciousness. It's because you experience all these motives and somehow you've got to sort out, well, which one is bigger. Now do I want to approach the light or stay away from the heat? I can't do both at the same time. And so one of the things I think consciousness is doing is it sort of has a, a way to arbitrate those things. Well, this, this compulsion feels stronger than this one. So I'm going to go with that. What have you. So you need a way to arbitrate among what's you about these modular systems. At the end of the day, the vehicle, the car, the person has to make a choice. And so you got this complicated big bowl of competing motives. And my hope is that eventually this framework becomes valuable for kind of. I mean consciousness is a hard one, but try to give some kind of account of what you need for. Not that, by the way, this is not my idea. Other people had philosophers come up with this stuff first. Probably Dennis as he came up with everything first. But anyway, so yeah, I think that those little vehicle examples are good. So you could think about, look, all the preferences is like a sensor connecting up to some motor behavior with some kind of calculation in the middle and bam, you've got preferences.
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Absolutely. Well, and then we can see where it gets into like a problem when we have competing priorities if it's not thought out properly in advance, right? So I believe in the example that one of the main ones where you were talking about this in the book. So we have the, I think it was just the three preferences that had to do with light, like you said, heat and you know, carbon dioxide or you know, so oxygen, right? Being able to have oxygen rich sort of areas or whatever. But so if we're drawn to the light, but then it gets too hot and we're going from the heat, we get into a fight, flight, freeze sort of a situation, right? As they're battling each other, we're stuck as we can't go forward because of the heat, but the light wants us to do that. And so we need to know, okay, if it gets over a certain threshold that like our skin's gonna melt, like let's get out of here because we don't want to be there, it's too hot, right? That's bad. And we like light, if this, right? And so we don't touch that thing, but we get close. And so we start to have these pieces of comparison and to know that when you have a system or the app or whatever, we would be thinking or talking about that module. If it's trying to do too many.
- [27:37]
Melina Palmer
Things and it's not specializing in something.
- [27:41]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Then it's just this generically vague. It doesn't do anything very well at all. But you get more and more complexity as you add it and very quickly, just one new module can add so many interconnected moments in that like network effect, right? And knowing that our brains have so many of these connection points when you start to think and look at it that way. And as you said, we do believe that light is good on this like, in the one module believes that, but another module really doesn't like it because a lot of light is too hot. Right. And so we can see that we both love and hate it based on that.
- [28:21]
Yeah, exactly. And as you say, I mean, one of the. One of the things that's both great and horrible about this approach is it gives you a sense of how complicated it all must be. I mean, now I had this conversation, my mentor, when I was in grad school, and I very foolishly said to him, you know, this approach that we're taking to psychology is so powerful. You know, I just feel like we're going to figure it out before my career is over. And he just laughed at me. Is like, you know, complicated. You're gonna die. And we still will have figured out 2% of the human mind. So you got plenty of things to worry about, Rob. Don't worry about that.
- [28:55]
Don't. Don't you worry.
- [28:56]
Yeah. Because as you say, like, yeah, minds are complicated and, you know, it's got to take a minute to figure it all out because you add one piece and then all the interaction terms go crazy.
- [29:09]
Yeah. One of the things I really liked about the book and what really spoke to me in this is I tell people all the time. And I know across behavioral economics, people say the same thing in behavioral science.
- [29:21]
Melina Palmer
And.
- [29:21]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And as we look to be understanding and influencing human behavior, context always matters. Right. And all those little factors, like you're saying, that shouldn't have an impact, they often do. And you need to, whether you thought about them or not, they are likely influencing the behavior. And so understanding the context, you can't just go read a study and say.
- [29:46]
Melina Palmer
Oh, I can pick this up and.
- [29:47]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Put it into my context, and it will absolutely work every time. That's not how it works because it's so complex. And the more that you can understand about the context, there may be a little thing over here that you didn't realize that they all shook hands when they walked in or they didn't meet each other at all. Right. And that would impact how they feel as a group. Right. Like, those little things are just so key when we understand, you know, is there one module that we're not quite considering that's important in our context? And if we factor that in, it's actually overriding a bunch of these other modules we were thinking about.
- [30:24]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [30:24]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
So we can have this awareness of how those concepts from behavioral economics can come into play and the weighting of them, which I think is just really important as we think about applying and using behavioral economics in life and business.
- [30:39]
Totally. So, you know, there's this expression of politics. All politics is local. The way I sort of tortured that is that I think kind of to your point about context, the way I think about it is that all psychology is local. So that, you know, the decision framework that we have, it depends on the local context. It's sort of weird in that way. And part of that's because, you know, these different contexts activate or deactivate different modular structures. And so the. The setting can kind of be turning our systems on and off, oftentimes without us even knowing about it. I mean, a lot of times you're walking into foreign country or something and you're not quite sure what it is. Like you just might feel safer, for example, and you can't even say specifically. I mean, what is it exactly? You just somehow there's something. And, you know, a lot of that we're not aware of, but there's something to that local context that is telling your system, oh, this is. You can dial down your vigilance a little bit because whatever. So, yeah, I think that's really helpful to know because what that means is that with relatively subtle changes, at least to some extent. Yeah. You should be able to push behavior around. And I think your server example with the touching is a good example.
- [31:46]
Absolutely. Well, I know in the book you talk a little bit about having worked at Disney World on, I believe, Cranium Command was that the name of the. Of the ride that you worked on.
- [31:57]
That was.
- [31:58]
And that little Buzzy, I believe, is the name of the little guy that's in there running the. The mind in the show there feels like that is such a precursor for Inside Out. And I'm curious what your thoughts are, if any, on the Inside out movies from Disney and Pixar. And it's kind of funny because, like, on the one side of having the different emotions be their own entities and identities and they're like leading their own lives versus one thing that's running. The show feels like it fits in with the modular piece. And that Riley character at Inside out doesn't really know kind of who's doing what and what she really thinks or believes or what's happening in there. But then the command center and running, that seems like it's at odds with the way that you think about it. So I'm just curious, what. What are your thoughts on that?
- [32:53]
That's such a great question. So I should say I just saw the second one, which was. I just. I Thought it was great. And as. Yeah, and as you're saying, I. I mean, I think that it gets more right than it gets wrong. As you're saying, having a central command center, probably, it doesn't quite work like that, but having a system whose job is, you know, anger. So you know what that guy does? He just sits around there and he's like, trying to figure out if someone just, you know, hurt Riley, whatever, and then take some action. Like, I do think that's basically how it works because, oh, I got hurt. Let's get anger in here around the show like that. That's his job right now. And the new one, of course, introduces even more emotions, right? Like embarrassment. And each one is personified. But that, I think, gets close to way that. I mean, it seems silly to say that. That's. Yeah, this movie, a couple of movies, does something right about, you know, gets us. But there is something to that, that, you know, each emotion has its own little rules and each, you know, the characters have their own ways of interacting. And I think that's right, you know, like if you're being chased by a bear, the. Whoever's in there, that's a charge of fear. It's like, okay, I'm gonna run the ship now, and I'm gonna turn the heart rate up and I'm gonna, you know, get. Get my senses, whatever, and then I'm gonna, you know, get. Get out of there.
- [34:08]
Get those legs moving.
- [34:09]
Yeah, get the legs moving and get that whatever. And the same thing. So, like, yeah, if embarrassment is there, look, you know, we just violated some social rule. Our best move is to kind of just be as invisible as possible. Shrink away. We don't want to. Whatever. I actually think that is. Yes. I also think the cranium command in some ways is the ancestor of Inside Out.
- [34:31]
I see. I see a lot of similarities there, for sure. Based on what I read about in your book. I was. I hadn't. It sounds like they don't have that right anymore, but I would bet. Here's our. Like, we heard it here first. I feel like the Inside out ride will probably be 2.0 of cranium command, Right? Yeah.
- [34:48]
Yeah, I'd love that position. Yeah, it was. It made me very sad when I went back to the parks and I discovered that. That they. That, you know, they closed the pavilion, the one that I worked in. The attraction, by the way, was. Was great. But yeah, I would be at all surprised if. If there were an incentive. And again, I think one of the things that's Nice about it is it helps to, at least to some extent help people think about how these emotions really might be more discreet than you probably, you know, you're not just an undifferentiated mass of, you know, adrenaline. It's not like that. It's. Now you've got these different systems and they, you know, when, when they're in charge, they do all the kinds of things that you want them to do. Changing your physiology, changing your behavior, changing which memories you go search for. I think that is a pretty deep. I think it's a pretty deep kind of way to portray what's going on up there.
- [35:38]
Absolutely. I think it, it does a really good job of explaining that, of course, for, for children, for, for teens, you know, to be able to understand emotions and that as we get older they get more complex. And I love that even the, you know, we see that the parents have their own version and it's like we do have all of these things and you can like learn to lower sum and there, there's always an option to turn something else up. We shouldn't lock any of them away. They all have value. You know, it's a good movie we won't ruin. You know, since we, like I said, let's.
- [36:08]
I don't want to spoil it too much, but let's just say there are reasons that you don't necessarily want to suppress all of your negative memories, that there's value in those experiences and if you toss them out, that is not necessarily going to be, you know, that's not going to lead to the best possible outcome. So I think there's some pretty deep, kind of some deep insight into the way psychology works in those films.
- [36:33]
Agreed. All right, so we clap, we celebrate Pixar and Disney on doing such a great job there. And no spoilers. We shall move on. But thank you for that. That was fun. So as we are getting ready, kind of close out our conversation here. I would love to hear about. You talked about in your space, spare time. I'm sure there's so much, you know, you do some entrepreneurship. Can you tell us a little bit about Bonzi?
- [37:00]
Oh, sure, be happy to. So this dates back to, I should say I'm in a relationship, but when I was on the market and this was years ago, I, I thought back to my time in learning evolutionary biology and economics. And in both economics and evolutionary biology, there's a very sharp distinction between signals that people or animals are going to believe, usually because they're costly and cheap talk. Right. So if I Say I'm going to be at lunch tomorrow at noon that you know, maybe I will, maybe I won't. But if I'm not there at noon and I say, look, I'm going to, I'm going to write a bond and I'm going to, if I'm not there at noon tomorrow, then I sacrifice this $100 bond. Well now you know that I have an incentive to be there. So Bonzi just puts that idea into an app. So the idea was, look, we make a date, I post a Bonzi and then I get to the specific address at the specific time and once I get there, there's a little friendly green button that says redeem your bond. And if I get there, then I redeem it, I don't pay anything. But if I don't, then, you know, there's a little window that then I sacrifice it. What that means is that now I have, I just send this honest signal. And so the problem for reliable people, and I'm very humble as you've noticed, but I am, I will be very arrogant, I am incredibly reliable. If we did have an appoint tomorrow at noon for lunch, you know, I would be there barring some kind like not just an accident, I'd have to be a major accident. But if you're on the dating apps, it's difficult to signal this to people. You say, oh no, not really reliable, like, well that's cheap talk. I've read economics books, I know that you know, whatever. And then I say no, but I'm going to post a $50 bond. And so that's what Bonzi does. Also the other, since we had the technology, what I did was also I allowed people to do reward Bonzi. So let's say I know and I'm sure this isn't true, you're a little bit unreliable. I say, look, I've created a little reward Bonzi for you and if you're at one two three Fake street at noon tomorrow, you click the button on your phone, you're going to get a payload. It's a little link like to a gift certificate. Now I've given you an incentive. So really it's a way to kind of, it's very behavioral economics. It's a way to give incentives to yourself in order to signal something to a partner or to someone else to change their behavior. So it nudges them around in a relatively subtle way. And yeah, as you say, it was sort of a spare time project but you know, these days with you know, chatgpt to help Me out on the coding front, obviously, I've got a group of very supportive people around me. So that's the basic idea. It's really, it's just the distinction between an honest signal and cheap talk put into app forum for appointments or dates or contractors or whoever wants to use it.
- [39:45]
Yeah, we, I love the, you know, there's the loss aversion coming into this and like you said, the incentive piece and I like that pro social signaling.
- [39:54]
Melina Palmer
Too, for the other person and how.
- [39:56]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
That comes into play. Whereas something like stick, you know, we talked about on the, the show before and that being, you know, you put up a large amount of money, let's say, to get, you know, you're going to get the proposal written or you're going to go to the gym a certain number of times, you're going to hit your weight limit. And then I think with stick, typically it's that if you don't, then, you know, the money you put up is going to be donated to a cause that you hate or, or whatever else it happens to be. I think you can give it to the other person maybe, but you don't necessarily want your friend to have incentives for you to fail. So maybe.
- [40:30]
Yeah, when people ask you about it, I sort of. They know about stick. I'm like, it's, it's like stick, but for two people. It's not just for yourself. It's like for, you know, for people who are involved in an interaction.
- [40:40]
All right, so if I put up the bond to say that I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna be there tomorrow for lunch at noon, then what happens to my $50 if I didn't set it up as a reward? Where does it go?
- [40:55]
It's pretty flexible right now. So the, we call it the payload. So whatever it is you're putting up is a link. So it could be, you know, it could be the link to redeem, you know, a gift certificate. It could be whatever you want. Down the road, we're gonna add that. What I. One of the things I learned as I was doing this is that when you actually have bonds, you run a, you run into a huge regulatory piece because you're actually going to hold people's money. You need to be a banker, basically. So. So right now we leave that open to the imagination of the user. So, you know, if you, if you sec. If you want to post a bond again to some cause that you don't like, NRA or whoever it is on the other side, I guess, of narrow or something like that, yeah, you're more than welcome to, to do that down the road. We'll probably add some guide rails in it to give people sort of a vocabulary and stuff so they don't even have to think about it.
- [41:51]
Love it, love it, love it. And yeah, good nudge to ourselves and to help other people to, you know, I don't want you to waste your time showing up and, but, and I like that nudge ability for others. And I mean, I definitely see the opportunity with the kids, Right. Of being able to teach them about some aspects of responsibility and doing what you say you're gonna do. And does it have like a Geo fencing or something worked into it so it can tell you're actually there? You don't just hit the button.
- [42:24]
Exactly. So that's one of the reasons that the app was possible, was, was because of the good. So I just do a, I do an API call to Google, which you can, it's incredibly cheap now that that particular cost is basically free, but. Exactly. And then there's a parameter that lets you, you know, 50ft, you know, we could change whatever, you could estimate a little bit. Yeah, that's one of the things that we like about it is because, yeah, you can't just say you're there. Right. The, the phone knows what time it is and the phone knows where you are. So all of the kind of verification has been offloaded, you know, and that, that's an important part of it because you don't, yeah, you want to sort of preclude the possibility of, of cheating. And as you say, I have a very close friend who's in the, the world of juvenile criminal justice. And as you can imagine, they're always looking for ideas, you know, to get people to the good place, not the bad place. Right. So the basketball court, not to the court, whatever it is. And so we're, you know, we've been looking into, you know, what would that look like to give small incentives to get people, you know, to the basketball practice that they said they were going to go to. But you know, for lots of people, even small incentives can, can nudge you around. Right. That's what, that's what the behavioral economics is telling us is that, you know, I remember one of the other reasons I went this way was because, you know, I, I was very lucky to hear a talk by someone who was involved in this question of how do you get kids, young kids, seven, eight year old kids or whatever in schools to do whatever. And he had this racist they called the good behavior game where you give them a sticker if they have their hands folded together, whatever, and they respond to this. Like again, small rewards can have interesting behavioral effects. So we'll see.
- [44:08]
Yeah, well, and even I mean that next level on that with the loss aversion piece coming in. Right. So there's one thing to say, if you're sitting with your hands folded like you're supposed to be doing, you will get a sticker. There's another thing that it's like everyone has a sticker at the start of the day and if you ever don't do what you said you were gonna.
- [44:27]
Melina Palmer
Do, you lose your sticker.
- [44:28]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Right?
- [44:29]
Yeah, totally.
- [44:30]
Way worse.
- [44:31]
Yeah, that's again, yeah, the original Bonzi. Like I'm posting a bond. One of the reasons I decided to run with it, because I thought about that, I was like, yeah, I really wouldn't want to lose that. Like that would be. Yeah, this is an area where, yeah, Danny got, you know, you know, basically got it right. There's something very deep about losing a little bit.
- [44:49]
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming today and chatting with me about our modular brains and about pro social behavior and talking about Disney, Pixar movies and Bonzi and all this great stuff for everyone who I know is so excited to learn more about you. I would hope maybe there's somebody that's.
- [45:11]
Melina Palmer
Listening that says, oh my goodness, Bonzi's.
- [45:14]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Perfect for this thing we're doing. They want to connect with you. You know what's their best next step to connect? Learn more about you.
- [45:21]
Well, I am currently running on sub stack. It's called the Living Fossils. You can get me there. And then if you go to the Bonzi page, there's a little button you can click or you can get me directly. I'm sure you could put this in your show notes. It's our kurzmanmail.com I am actually, as you can imagine, like I said, I'm very conscientious. So I'm pretty good at responding to cold emails. So I'm happy to receive them.
- [45:44]
Awesome. Well, we'll put links for, for Bonzi for your substack in the show notes. We don't put emails because spam is a real thing and I care about your inbox.
- [45:54]
Melina Palmer
But that means everyone who's listening will.
- [45:56]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Now know you have a little special thing. You can just hit your like back 30 seconds, write it down, you can hear it, but it won't be written for you to click because that's fair. Spam is real And I care about you, so. But people can still go and get that or if they can email me. I put my own email address out into the world because I guess I care less about my own inbox. But they can email me if they want to get that connection to you. So thank you again so much. It's really been delightful to chat with you today.
- [46:24]
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. It's great.
- [46:27]
Melina Palmer
Thank you again to Dr. Robert Kurzbon for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I love books that make me think differently about how I think and why everyone else is a hypocrite. Certainly didn't disappoint in that department. One of the main things that has stuck with me since reading that book and from the conversation is really about how complex systems can get as you layer in new functionality, even very simple things as you add 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It can get so complex, like in that case of cars, if it seeks heat, but you have to put parameters so it doesn't get too hot and it needs to flee. If there's a fire, let's say you want to seek oxygen, but not at the expense of warmth. The interdependencies and how you have to think about the way two things it likes can be opposite and how to think about this in advance so it doesn't just get overloaded and stuck is really fascinating. And of course we can see the tie ins with our own brains because, you know, we humans want to be warm, but not too warm. We obviously want oxygen, but there are things where we wouldn't want to be getting, you know, too much. Similarly, as we think more about our.
- [47:37]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
Brains, you know, we know we don't.
- [47:39]
Melina Palmer
Have a little person running the command center in our brains. We know that we do believe contradictory things at the same time.
- [47:47]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
And if you don't believe that, definitely read the book.
- [47:51]
Melina Palmer
There's a whole lot of explanation as.
- [47:54]
Dr. Robert Kurzbon
To how and why that works to.
- [47:55]
Melina Palmer
Build up to that point. But definitely we're believing different things all the time and even if they're opposite, they can both be true. So yeah, I know that. But it hits different when you read about it. And Rob did a great job of layering these thoughts. So like I said, they build up to that central thesis of the book and in knowing that we're all hypocrites and that's part of our foundation. So it's okay. More than okay, it's good and necessary in many ways. So that can help us to hopefully be more tolerant of ourselves and others in all sorts of situations. I also loved learning about Bonzi. These incentives to do what we say we will and be where we say we'll be or want and intend to be are really important and helpful. They can show someone you care about them and your relationship enough to put some money on the line, especially if you're habitually late, which is super interesting. It definitely ties back to that give feedback nudge I talked about earlier this week. Be sure to check out that episode if you haven't already. It was number 450 milestone alert. Lastly, I want to say a big thank you to Dr. Paul Zach for making the introduction to Rob. If you haven't already listened to his episode on Immersion, I highly recommend it. As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes, which include links to my top related past episodes and books, including, of course, why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite, Ways to get in touch with Rob and myself, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com451 and thank you again to Dr. Robert Kurzbon for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [50:01]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the brainybusiness.com.