Beliefism: how to stop hating the people we disagree with
01:10:48 Share

Welcome to the LSE Events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.

Wow, you guys are so polite and quiet like that. But let me start by welcoming everybody to LSE. Actually, before I forget, the people online as well. Really delighted to have a lot of people joining us online tonight. And for the people who are joining online, just to say we will let you participate actually in the event and ask questions later on.

Speaking of participation, there's a book stand out in front. Some of you may have seen as you walked in and after the lecture, Paul will go out and sign books if there are people who want to have a copy and get a book signed. So let me just briefly introduce the event. My name is Charles Stafford. I'm one of the vice presidents here.

I'm actually an anthropologist with a special interest in psychology. So I'm really interested in tonight's topic and hearing what Paul has to say.

I'm going to ask him a few tricky anthropological type questions in a minute. But first, let me say a couple of words about Paul, who, as you know, is a prof here at the LSE in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. His research has focused on

developing better ways of measuring and valuing the richness of human experience, right? What are the things that people do in their lives? What really matters? What should we really care about? And of course, he has a special expertise in the psychology and the economics of happiness, which of course have been a very timely topic in recent years and one that a lot of people are paying attention to. So Paul has a fantastic CV.

as you know, very impressive as an academic, as a scholar, but he's also one of those academics who really wanted to engage in the real world of policy and practice to reach a bigger audience. So he's done a lot of heavy lifting on the public engagement side. And he's, you know, done his podcast and he's written books for general audience that have been really well received, including Happiness by Design, which of course really had a very big impact.

Tonight, Paul is speaking about the problem of polarization, I think is the correct thing to say. So this is specifically how our strong commitments to particular beliefs make it really hard for us to engage with people who have different beliefs. That's the basic topic that

that we're looking at tonight. I just say that in universities in the UK and in the US at the moment, this is a topic of particular interest. I think everybody knows that in universities, there are a lot of tensions and issues around campus polarization, conflicts and so on. I happen to be

chairing co-chairing the lsc's campus relations group which is specifically looking at these problems on our campus and how we deal with them how we get people to talk to each other uh and disagree in a way that is not damaging to local relations that's the sort of thing that we're uh working on um

So super interested to hear from Paul. We're just going to have a relatively brief presentation from him. We'll have a very brief conversation. And then what we really want to do is have a lively discussion with the audience. So I hope as we do our little bit at the beginning, you'll be thinking of questions that you want to put to Paul in the discussion bit. Paul, over to you. Thank you, Sean. Fantastic.

Lovely to see everybody here. You get very nervous when you write a book that you put out into the public. You want to immediately change moments after it's published. But I should just say a few thank yous at the beginning. I want to thank my agent, Will Francis, for finding a publisher crazy enough to publish the book. To Holly Harley, who

bought the book for me from Little Brown and then subsequently left, although I don't think that's causal. And for Samir, who then took over being editor of a book that he didn't really want, but then came to love.

I'm putting words in your mouth. And to Lucy and Celeste for being fantastic advocates of the book and, you know, getting it out there now as widely as possible. All right, good. That's my formal thank yous out of the way. I'm going to now...

just say a few words and I talk not for very long because I want to get to the Q&A as Charles quite rightly said about beliefism and I just want to be clear about what it is it's I'm trying I'm making a case for it being in so many ways although not all the time and everywhere like any other ism but

But when you find a thin slice of information out about somebody, you use that to categorize their entire character. So once I find your race or your sex, I use that as a way to identify you as either being someone who's good or bad, one of us or one of them. And the same when I find out a belief that you hold, particularly about one issue that I feel very strongly about. Then I use that to categorize your entire character as being wholly good or wholly bad.

This is a book that is an attempt to reduce beliefism, not an attempt to change anyone's mind about anything, except how much they listen to people who have different minds.

So it's not about the, you know, I don't want anybody. And so insofar as it's about the polarization problem, I'm entirely relaxed about us being very polarized. In fact, I think sometimes that's very helpful. And one of the points that I make over and over and over again is well-functioning societies not only tolerate difference, they celebrate difference. If you think of any characteristic that you can define people by, we would never have evolved as a species that we are

If we were all the same, if you took risk attitude, if everybody was super cautious, we would never have left Africa. If everybody was super risk seeking, we'd all be dead. You need a balance of people in society, some who are more cautious, some who are more risk seeking. So we need different beliefs, even sometimes crazy ones. Even sometimes crazy ones. People like Galileo were crazy until they weren't.

So we need to be more accepting, not just accepting, but celebratory of difference. And that's the central thesis of the book. It's not about changing minds. It's about changing our willingness to listen to disagreement. Now, beliefism plays out not when you just decide whether someone has views that you agree or disagree with on a single issue. But as I say, you use them as a way to spill over things.

into all that you think about them as a person or as a group. So I'm going to start, let me ask you a question. This is an audience participation part, by the way, so just to manage expectations so we're clear about what we're doing. Imagine you need some work doing on your house. That's actually quite an imagination for students, owning a house. At some point, you might own a property. Just imagine a world, or maybe you rent one that you need some work doing for that you have to pay for.

Maybe it's a plumber and you have identified the plumber or you've identified two plumbers that you could choose from. They're both equally competent. The first plumber you've heard is a member of a party that you really, really dislike. Their politics, it's been suggested to you, are the complete antithesis of everything you hold to be dear. There is another plumber, same standard. They're a bit more expensive, but they hold similar values.

views to you are you going for the cheaper plumber or the more expensive plum and i want a show of hands and i want you to be honest are you going for the for the for the plumber they're both equally good they're both going to do the same job but just one's going to charge you a bit more there's a premium attached to a plumber who you've heard has the same political views as you compared to one who's different uh can i not can i rather resist off or do something like that i don't want to because i need to move my hands off

So would you go for the, would you, hands up. You've got, you are going to have to, have to use one plumber, right? So it's not like you can keep your hand down. So, because you've got a water leak or something, right? So, okay. So, so the plumber who is cheaper but has different political views. Hands up. Okay, good. Anyone, anyone paying a premium for the more expensive plumber? Wow. Wow. There you go, Charles. That's something for you to, that's very, very interesting. Very, very interesting. All right. So now for those people who,

I didn't expect to see so many hands. For those people who chose the former, so that is they were going for the cheaper plumber, what if you've now heard that this person has quite racist views and actually they only associate with people of their own ethnic group? If you had your hand up to that first plumber before...

Do you want to pull your hand up to this plumber again now, or are you going for the more expensive plumber? So hands up if you're still going to take the plumber who's costing you the least. Okay. And now if you're switching to the other plumber. Okay. So, all right. Well, we'll leave that there and move on. Not say anything more about that until we have a conversation about it later. The point of asking those questions is that we're using, whether rightly or wrongly,

Because, of course, I should also say there's no right or wrong answers. That's what you always say when you're doing survey research, even though that's plainly not true. There are clearly are right or wrong answers. We kind of pretend that there aren't any. Is to use a piece of information about somebody. By the way, I should just say I was very clear. I was trying to be very clear in my language anyway, even if I wasn't. I kept saying, you've heard that, that person. I didn't say, you know that this person.

Because our beliefism, and that was, of course, the whole point, is that our belief is often entirely predicated on what we think we know about someone's beliefs rather than what we actually know about their beliefs. It's a little bit like spouses who think they know each other's preferences. By the way, on that, there is some interesting data showing that the longer you've been together, the less you know about your partner because you make more assumptions about them.

than when you're newlyweds, where you actually do care whether their favorite color is blue. So we make assumptions. It's a bit like having a spouse for a long time. We make assumptions about people and we know that we're right. So we don't need to ask them whether they actually do think that or not. So you believe that this person believes X. And we use that information to then

impact upon decisions we make in wholly irrelevant arguably environments so we see this play out in quite a lot of action in the lab and in the field in various studies that have been done one study where people categorize shapes and they got paid if they got the shape right they're made up made up shapes and you could get advice from people who knew how to categorize shapes you're also told that the people giving you the information vote for a

party that's either the same or different to yours and people use that information as a means on which to trust their shape expertise wholly irrelevant to what you should be doing in the experiment arguably is trying to maximize the money that you take away not based on anyone's politic or in the field in economic decisions like the ones that you've just made where you're willing to pay a price for being believers there's some various field experiments

There's an opportunity for me now to thank the person that I want to thank most of all, which I left him till now to be separated from all the other people that I don't really care about as much, which is George Melios, who was the research assistant with me more than the research assistant postdoc and friend throughout the whole time of working on this, on this book. And I, and I, and it wouldn't be what it is without him. It might not have existed without the other people, but it wouldn't be what it is without him.

And one of the studies that we cite is from taxi drivers in, I think, Ghana, where there's a really nice field experiment where they exchange information, the ride and the cabbie, in order to identify their politics. And the cabbie will offer cheap affairs to people who are identified as being similar to them. So it plays out in real-world behavior. This is not some academic exercise. We are...

acting in ways that suggest we're believers. So what I want to say before I stop, I'll say a couple of things about why. Well, we are because we're human beings. I mean, we have long lived

sought to identify people as one of us and them. Some very interesting research on even when you just see somebody, within the first tenth of a second, unconsciously, you will process whether that's someone that is a friend or foe, or at least there's a sort of starting point to identify whether there'll be someone that you'll see as a friend or foe. We do it automatically, we do it unconsciously, we do it very quickly, and we've always done it. We've always identified people as

one of us or one of them. And that plays out in a host of ways, not least of which is in organizations and institutions that suffer from groupthink. And I just want to say a few words about what motivated, well, there are lots of things that motivated writing this book, and maybe we can pick up on some of those later, but

The pandemic was one issue that was a central motivation for this book. Because when we face that radical uncertainty in the early part of 2020, you would expect in the face of radical uncertainty there to be very many different perspectives on what we ought to do in response to COVID. And yet, amongst the academic world in particular,

with a few exceptions, many of whom were vilified for standing out. With few exceptions, there was an enormous amount of criticism. And I thought, it can't possibly be that everybody thinks the same about what we ought to do in response to something that's uncertain. And you would expect there to be different perspectives. But we saw how very quickly it became very clear to very many people that to speak out was to really risk reputational harm.

and to risk their academic careers in some cases. I'm doing that. And so working in an academic institution, which again, sort of thinking about reasons why I wanted to write the book, I went into academia because I actually do like having a good argument, respectfully, and actually being a bit humble sometimes, all of us, about what we know to be true.

and going into discussions with the humility that enables us to discuss issues openly. Very rarely will we change our minds about anything that matters to us. Danny Kahneman was a great friend and a huge influence on me. And he said that very many times. Very rarely will people, if ever, change their minds about anything that matters to them. That's kind of not the point. It makes you humble because you realize that actually you're not always right and other people can have a good point even if you don't change your mind. And so...

It struck me that institutions like LSE were suffering from an enormous amount of groupthink. And I came out very early on in the pandemic in a piece that was published in The Spectator in May 2020. It wasn't a natural home for me, by the way, to publish in The Spectator, a piece about the harms that would come from lockdowns.

And I had a very lively email correspondence with some of my faculty colleagues who thought that I shouldn't be saying that. And that was another motivation for me.

for writing the book. I also should say, as an aside, if I mention in the Spectator, I mentioned Steve Baker, who was a Tory MP and minister for Northern Ireland, who was in one of the very few groups of people at the time that were questioning lockdowns. And the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party wasn't, again, a natural home for me, but it was a natural home for me during the pandemic.

And what you realize, which I'm saying something that's really fucking obvious that we should all really get over, is that you can disagree with people about one thing. Doesn't mean you're going to disagree with them about something else. But even if you did disagree with them about everything, you could still like it. Steve and I disagree about very many things, but I still like it. But what people will do is they will do, as we all do, is make assumptions about somebody based upon their beliefs.

as if they are then fundamentally evil because they disagree about how they see the world. And you see that the image on the front of the book is the duck-rabbit illusion, which is a very nice metaphor for how we become polarized. I see the image one way. In fact, it's both images. It's both animals. But I see it one way. I surround myself with people who see it similarly. So in the end, I say, there is no way that is a rabbit. That is 100% a duck.

Because it's effortful to see the world through a different lens. But again, let me say it again, well-functioning societies celebrate difference. All right, let me conclude with the final bit. I know I'm under no time pressure, but I feel like I'm under time pressure too, because I've made a commitment to not talk too long. So, and I don't want to talk for too long, and I won't. So, a couple of minutes.

What are we going to do about all of this? Because it's easy to write a book where you set out what everyone else has done forever and say how we're surrounding ourselves with people like us and we don't like people that disagree with us and all those things. What are we going to do about it? Well, we've got to get over ourselves, first of all. I say that a lot about most things in life, actually. We need to get over ourselves. We need to get over ourselves as animals that are

because it's kind of in our DNA almost to surround ourselves with people like us to be hostile to those who disagree. We like people who nod their heads in agreement more than we like people who shake their heads. Very easy to say, oh, I like disagreement. Anyone who says that is probably someone who really doesn't. You know the number of people, and everyone says they're tolerant, by the way. I love this when I've been right, but everyone say, I'm really tolerant. And you now just pause and I might do it well, except, and then they just reel off a list of people that they hate. Um,

So all of us believe ourselves to be tolerant, but we're actually quite intolerant. So we're not going to be more tolerant by desire. We need to do it by design, kind of in many ways, like happiness by design. You're not going to be happier thinking yourself happier. You're going to be happier doing yourself happier. You're going to be happier by designing your environment that makes it easier for you to be happier without having to think about it. And so we need to do exactly the same thing when it comes to beliefism.

We need to design our organizations, our institutions in ways that make it easier for us to be less beliefist. And so...

I've actually used slides tonight, two of them. I've got a checklist in the book. I fucking love checklists. Everyone should love checklists. Checklists are so effective at drawing us away from situational blindness to focus on what's fundamentally important, not what our attention is focusing on at the time. And many of you will know about the success stories of checklists in the aviation industry, in surgical operating theatres, where

where simple things on the checklist, like have I got a co-pilot sitting next to me, have led to fewer planes crashing because pilots weren't paying attention to the co-pilot. They were looking at the instruments and it was all fine and they took off. I know, obvious but overlooked. That's actually a fundamental part of everything, obvious but overlooked. And so checklists draw our attention for the obvious but overlooked. And so I've got a checklist in the book

And it's called Embrace. In very good scientific rigor, I came up with a word and then I fitted the evidence to the word.

And it just so happened, it was remarkable. I didn't realize, this is extraordinary. George and I were blown away how all the evidence fitted these seven letters as if by magic. And there are seven letters in Embrace. And these are, and I'm not going to go through them now, but these are an attempt to help us organize our lives, our organizations, our institutions in ways that make it easier for us to listen to people that we disagree with

to make better decisions. We're facing radical uncertainties around the future of AI, about the next virus that we're going to get. We need to have different voices in the room coming up with their answers and their arguments. We know that cognitive diversity works in most industries and sectors.

So we need to have genuine cognitive diversity. I apologize, I haven't looked upstairs. I saw that people came in from the beginning. It was empty to begin with. Now the people are in there. So hello, upstairs. We need cognitive diversity. And the only way we're going to do that is by embedding it into our organizations. And our institutions like LSE need to adopt the EMBRACE framework.

in order to reduce beliephism. I just want to say one word to finish on one of the letters, on one of the elements of one of the letters, because saying the LSE made me think of this. Under bonding, there are things that bring us together

that make us similar, which are some of the fundamental determinants of happiness. And humour is one of those. And there's a randomised controlled trial looking at the use of humour in getting the Israelis and the Palestinians to listen to the other side's perspective. When humour is introduced into the intervention, people are more willing to engage. So I suggest that at places like the LSE, we laugh a bit more than we do, because isn't it interesting how we cleanse education of people

joy and play the further we go up it um so i will continue to make crap jokes charles in my classes um and i will stop at that point and be ready to talk to you first i think hi i'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome lse podcast that we think you'd enjoy

Thank you very much.

I kind of feel you directed this at me as the kind of embodiment of the LSE a bit more than I was expecting. I feel I'm supposed to answer for the LSE. So actually, as I said at the beginning, it's really interesting for me, partly because I've spent a big chunk, I mean more time than you can imagine in the last two years, talking with colleagues and staff and students at LSE about issues that really are related to exactly what Paul is talking about.

talking about tonight. You know, we've had the Gaza encampments, we've had the trans rights kind of tensions, which now are back, you know, because of the Supreme Court ruling, they're back on the front page. We're dealing with this and lots of other things I want to bore you with.

And actually, I think I personally would say on the whole at the LSE, our position in relation to these kinds of issues that are affecting all the universities is not a bad one in the sense that I think on the whole,

given the stunning diversity of LSE as an institution with people really from not just different countries, but different belief systems and so on. I think we actually do pretty well. So that's good. But of course, we have challenges like everybody else.

Some of them, I have to say, I'm an old guy, you know, you get old, you get sentimental. Some of them a little heartbreaking for me to realize that, you know, students have really bad experience at the LSE because of anti-Semitism, for example. I think, oh, come on, you know, really? Yes. So challenging times and beliefism is obviously a part of

part of that story. But the thing I focus on in particular and then ask you a question about, which really stands out to me at this point, is self-censorship. That is really where I see there to be a major issue in universities and at the LSE. And I've really come to feel self-censorship is an interesting thing. So in a simple way, you could say, okay, self-censorship is...

not saying what you believe out of fear, for example, because you just think, well, if I really say what I think about topic X, I'm going to come under attack so much that it'll be super difficult. Therefore, I'm just not going to say it. I think in practice, I mean, the cases that I've heard about are much more complex than that, including that I think a lot of

for example, self-censor because they want to listen a bit more to what the other people have to say. You know, they're avoiding

conflicts of particular kinds in order to have discussions maybe of deeper kinds, etc. So it's a kind of complicated thing. So what I really wanted to ask you was just about how self-censorship fits into the thing that you're talking about. You know, one thing is to have beliefs. It's a different thing to express them or to not express them in particular contexts. I haven't read the book yet, so you get to know it better.

tell me about self-censorship yet? No. I mean, honestly. Well, I mean, obviously someone who's interested in measuring stuff, measuring self-censorship is really hard because how could you observe it? So you're only going to observe people saying that they self-censor. If they do, you can't always trust what people tell us in surveys. I can give you the evidence. So, yeah,

The question of listening, I mean, if you think about, I mean, one of the things I didn't go into is what, you know, that we've always done this, what we're doing, belief is whatever, but the social media age has kind of made things magnified in many ways because there is a need on social media to perform and to express opinions and views in a very strongly held, passionate way that assert your moral authority.

and to recognize ambivalence or uncertainty or ambiguity kind of a bit weak, even though everything should be recognized and looked through with ambivalence, uncertainty and ambiguity. You know, if you say during the pandemic, every death is a tragedy, sounds like it has moral authority compared to we should proportionately weigh up the costs and benefits of actions. In fact, we should be doing that, but

it doesn't assert you in quite the same way. So I think there is a performative nature. There's a virtue signaling nature because often what we can post online is costless. I can say very, very strong things without any recourse to bearing any kind of consequence of those words or actions. And so I think that does permeate then into the real world

And I think that if you're someone who's self-censoring for humility because you want to listen to the arguments, then, of course, that's a very good thing. But if you're doing it because you just feel scared to say something that might be disagreed with, then, of course, that's much more challenging. I mean, one of the things that would be great if when we're making hiring decisions at LSE and other institutions is to really flush out people's beliefs.

you know, um, because, because, because it's very interesting that we're, that we don't do that. And of course there's all sorts of issues and reasons why we don't do that. I'm not saying it's a, you know, categorically a university good thing to do, but it, but it would be interesting to get people to reveal things about themselves in ways that may not then be made public, um, in order to increase that cognitive diversity. Um,

And the self-censorship piece then does then play out in the kinds of assumptions that people make about the jobs that they're going into. It's not even self-censorship, it's self-selection. If it's identified as a profession, whatever that might be, that has a particular leaning, then if I have different views to that, I'm less likely to choose to go into that career. Footnote, the new free speech system

law is coming into effect and obviously having a big impact on university. One feature of that will be that we will really need to actually make it a bit more explicit in our protocols for hiring.

that we're not going to discriminate against people because of their beliefs. You know, that's just going to be... It's just going to have to be actually part of the deal. Well, it's interesting that it's been in law anyway with views around faith, for example, but it hasn't, by extension, extended into other beliefs. Yeah, well, now it has. Yes, which it will now. Now it has, yeah. Anyway, mindful of time, just another...

for me and then in a minute we open it up. So this is the bit at which you're supposed to be thinking of your brilliant questions. And we have some online. Well, actually, five minutes ago there was a message on the iPad that said there are no suitable questions yet. And I was like, send us the unsuitable questions and we'll take those too. But anyway, now there are three. One other for me, which I mean, I apologize for this in advance. It's a very anthropological question.

question uh or comment i guess um which is to say that the focus on belief uh per se is a very western uh thing i would say um

You know, I give a concrete example of this. So I was an anthropologist of China and Taiwan back in the day. So I did research in Taiwanese and Chinese communities, mostly rural communities, very traditional, in quotes, you know, communities where kinship and religion was very salient and really determined so much of what people did.

And one of the things that I learned about Chinese popular religion, Taiwanese popular religion, and there's arguments about this in the literature, but it's not very belief-oriented.

Meaning that if you talk to people and you say, oh, you know, what are these beliefs about? You know, what do you, you know, people look at you sort of like, wow, you're being so Christian and asking about belief because that's not really exactly the thing that we're doing. It's not about belief per se. Yeah.

And so what is it about? It's much more, A, about community kind of cohesion. And, you know, it's a very Durkheimian social type of religion where the point of it is to really celebrate the social issues.

And it's about practice. You know, it's not so much that we care what you believe. We care if you do the ritual and you do it in the right way. And that's sufficient. And we don't have to get in. You need to read the book. Because I'm explicit that there are social ties in actual large part.

And they come from the norms of the environment that we're in. And we identify with people that identify with us. That's a very social psychological view as well as an anthropological one, I think. They're not always a kind of individual's beliefs about the world. They come from a connection and the sense of sharedness of the kind that I think you just outlined. Okay.

I'll read the book and... Let's all sell one in China. Okay, very good. In Chinese, obviously, not in English. We're going to jump into questions at this point.

and immediately someone in the front row has a brilliant question, but you have to wait a second. Here's the good news. I have read the book, so that's a good sign. Here's a question for you, and it's a complicated question. I don't want to be an old guy asking a really complicated question, but I'm interested in, you talked about identity being something that we are uncomfortable about having prejudice towards, but we have agency when it comes to our opinions, right? Okay, so that's the- Do you think so? Okay.

Well, I just want to give you this example. I used to work at a big tech company and there was this sort of confounding issue where we used to do a lot for LGBT rights and pride. And a Christian person came up to me and said, this is against my belief that we do this. And I was really confounded with how to answer that. And then

I discovered the paradox of tolerance. Cul-Papa, the idea that the only thing we should be intolerant towards is intolerance. That, you know, actually, if you allow intolerance to happen, then it's so societally destructive that actually you need to be intolerant towards it. And,

And so it begs the question for me. I feel we do have agency towards our opinion more than our identity. And I'm just interested in your perspective in can you genuinely look past that plumber thing in every instance? If someone's being intolerant, can you look past that intolerance?

Can I? Well, as you know, I can't. Well, one, yes. Well, I mean, I think it depends. That's obviously going to be the best answer that anyone could give to any question that's clearly complicated is that it does depend. It always does depend. That's always the answer to every question. And I wouldn't have moral certainty about any of it. I think it would depend on the context, of course. It would depend on whether the belief, if it's a belief in relation to something that is actively going to harm people,

you or others like you, then I think it's entirely legitimate in my moral compass world or in anyone's world, I think, to be beliefist against someone's beliefs in those nights, but not about other things that they might have to offer and contribute. If we're talking about productivity in the workplace, then

Unless they're highly correlated with their beliefs that are abhorrent, we should listen to everything they have to say. I would avoid splitting. That's what I want to avoid. I want to avoid the idea of categorizing Steve Baker as evil because he was the hard man of Brexit, which he hates everyone saying. And I've just said it again. I apologize, Steve. But it's, you know, when we wrote a Times Red Box piece about vaccine passports,

most of the comments underneath and the comments that I got from LSE colleagues were about his views on Brexit and nothing to do with what we were talking about in that issue. And that's where, so you can not like his views about a particular topic and you might think that that's

existential to you in some way and that's really you know significant and then you would dismiss you might not want to engage with them even but not about everything else and not forever because that's surely going to be harmful to effective decision making that's really what i want to try and enhance is our ability to make good decisions and i think our ability to make them is very much compromised if we if we just dismiss everything even if they're abhorrent about one thing

I'm going to take one of the unsuitable online. How do you teach people to question their belief system, particularly a religious belief system, when their religious leaders teach an absolute viewpoint of religion as a truth where questioning is not allowed or is actively discouraged? That's a super question. There's a good book out now by a UCL neuroscientist, Leo Smolkord, called The Ideological Brain, which...

Again, you know, people are on a continuum or distribution. You know, there will be ideological people amongst us who are wedded and committed to a particular way of the world being. And it shows up in their brain of being like that. Whereas other people will be more plastic, I guess, and will be arguably more innovative and creative in the workplace because of their plasticity.

And so there might be conditions under which we would want to identify different types of people. It's an interesting question about whether an ideology then serves an evolutionary function into the longer term or not.

And maybe again, we need to continue more distribution. I know that I think she argues in the book that we want to move away from being ideological, but maybe actually there's a place for it. Maybe there in that distribution, in the tales, there will be some people who feel very, very strongly about things and won't ever budge or won't ever listen. But hopefully there'll be few and far between, I think.

Thank you. I, as you've been talking, I've been wondering about kind of the role or the, yeah, the role that manifesting one's belief plays. To me, there seems to be kind of an importance in toleration, but then also in making sure that if you believe in something, that it is heard and that it makes a difference. And so in the Plummer example,

If there is one plumber that is racist or homophobic, there seems to me to be a kind of line that needs to be drawn between tolerating that, but then also in manifesting a belief that goes against that and saying this person

arguably should not be tolerated, right? And so when it comes to like manifesting for causes, protesting, making a belief heard, do you see a line between tolerance where it goes to an extreme and then having healthy debate out on the street? Like, where do you draw that line? Yeah, so it's a good question. First of all, I have to be very honest about my own prejudices. When I hear the word manifesting, it does rather make me feel a bit

It does make me feel a bit sick. So I should be very honest. I'm very honest about that and my priors. The idea that you can manifest things is completely remarkable. Actually, just go and do shit and get it done. And protesting is clearly one way in which we can do that and we can get things done.

One of the things about protesters, of course, is that there's anger, but there's a huge amount of optimism because why are they out on the streets? Because they want to change the world, right? So I think, again, it's a boring answer, but well-functioning societies will celebrate that difference. So we would have people that were manifesting, to use your language, they're trying to change minds, they're trying to influence the world and for all the better. I think we need that. But you wouldn't want a whole world where everybody did that. You wouldn't want a whole world because it'd be just complete chaos.

It's, you know, the idea that we need political engagement. We do. We need more of it, but not everybody to be politically engaged because you imagine how mad the world would be. We need people not to care. We need people who don't know. We need people who are uncertain, ambivalent, humble, and actually, as I say, don't care. I mean, my views on Brexit were largely that I didn't care.

which was really interesting because people it was almost like it not only not only should I also believe what they believe but it actually would almost be better in that case to believe the opposite than to not hold a strong view at all because to not hold a strong view about something that's existential is like morally suspect but I didn't actually care very much it was it was 18th of 20 issues before the referendum it kind of stayed there for me but so again we would want

people to manifest about others to actually not care very much i'm going to do an online and then we got a few i mean this relates to things that have been asked before but it's a succinct version of it is beliefism ever justified are there any beliefs so heinous that they justify discrimination against someone so that's a very clear statement at that so i would like to make so

I'm sure there will. I'm sure there would be. I mean, I, um, as everybody knows, struggle with Coldplay fans. I mean, I do think, I do think it would be, it's hard for me to take anything that they say about anything seriously. Um, but I am trying, I am trying to overcome. This is like a form of therapy for me. Um, I am trying to overcome my distaste of people who have distaste in music. Um, but,

But I'd like to think that if we're going to make better decisions, that even the most extreme and hostile and horrible views are ones that we would still listen to the person saying something else about another issue that we would want to listen to. And also because if we take this view that our beliefs are our social ties to some large degree and that we may not always have the degree of agency that we'd like to think we have.

then, you know, even some of those horrible views will be understandable in, you know, some sense. So I kind of, you know, you can always push it. There'll always be points. You could always find an example where I wouldn't agree with what I just said. But I do think as a generalizable rule, I'd like to think that I would listen to anything that anybody said about anything else other than the thing that I considered there to be an abhorrence on. Yeah.

However, sorry, I'm going to read. I'm wondering about your perspective on existential issues, mainly climate change, where there's a clear scientific consensus. Tolerance only takes you so far. Galileo was labeled as crazy, but now we've got coordinated efforts by fossil fuel firms to undermine public trust in the phenomenon itself.

Blah, blah, blah. Given the urgency of dealing with this situation, isn't a degree of beliefism warranted in order to avoid false balance of opinions? My climate-denying uncle at the dinner table fantasizing about an eternal fossil fuel age is most certainly not a modern-day Galileo. No. No. No, your uncle is very unlikely to be a modern-day Galileo. I do think, I mean, of course, climate change denial is one thing.

that the science has advanced sufficiently well for us not to engage in that belief. But what we do about climate change, well, that's a very, very different matter. And I do have to say that my faith in the objectivity of science, I'm not saying in relation to climate change, was shaken during COVID because I was very strongly made aware that people's own existential dread, their own fear,

was playing such a significant role in how they were interpreting evidence and so I so because well people like Ellen Townsend who's in the audience tonight you know came out she will she got much more hostility than I got about her views about

about the pandemic, her views about the harms that were being caused to children. I mean, it wasn't like she was saying anything other than that, but the science was so overwhelmingly the case that she should not be saying that, that I became, that I was like, my faith in the objectivity of science was shaken. And it just takes me back to Kahneman's point, and I want to make this point now, about adversarial collaboration. I think this is what we should be doing in institutions like LSE, is embedding

collaborations between people who explicitly disagree about stuff, not pretending that we can go into the research question free of our priors, but being open and honest about them, agreeing on the research methods, agreeing that we may change our minds if the conclusions aren't in keeping with what we think, but then being humble about the fact that we're probably not going to change our minds, but recognize that we're not always right. And I think that's a much better approach to science. And so maybe that's a better approach to how

how to deal with climate change, mitigation, adaptation issues, is to bring people together who are being so incredibly hostile towards one another and not listening to what the other side says at the expense of actually maybe coming up with a better solution about how we address man-made climate change.

Great. There are a few. Yes, please. Hi, Paul. I've got a very practical rather than theoretical question. And I'm too old to say I feel seen, but I feel seen. So my family is a very wonderful thing. And they're always, it's like

badly dressed Game of Thrones. We're always falling out. My father didn't talk to his twin. Is there as much sex? Because that's a good bar to sex. Well, this is my brothers and sisters we're talking about. My father and mother. So, you know, thankfully, no. But, you know, my father didn't talk to his twin for the last 25 years of his life. My mother dropped me for 10 years. Our WhatsApp

is, well, we have a trot and a Trumpite on our family WhatsApp. We have a feminist and a trans activist. And what tends to happen is people...

Block each other and then they vanish for 10 years. I just wondered if you could talk to me about how Embrace would work for something as incendiary as a gene pool. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, families, I'm not getting into families, but they, I mean, the bonding piece, at least there is some genetic shared.

Some gene shed. In theory. But the bonding is an important element, isn't it? It's the thing that if you put two objects side by side, what you automatically do is look for difference between them. You look for what makes them different. You don't look for what makes them similar. There's not anything salient or attention-grabbing in similarity.

And that's what we do with people. We look for difference rather than look for similarity. And so there will be so many more things that your family members will share with one another than makes them different. And I think maybe paying attention and reminding yourselves of that similarity may be one way forward.

But accepting the fact that there's difference, it's very interesting that people, we all say that we like difference and then we want everybody to be like us or to be like the world that we would like to see shaped. Yeah, anybody who's got children or at least more than one child will be very celebratory of the fact that they say their kids are different.

And so there are some environments where we are willing to kind of accept that difference. And maybe celebrating the fact that you've got such heterogeneity in your family is again a good thing, rather than trying to shoehorn everybody into the same view. I mean, I do think, if I can just quick footnote on that, I think it goes back to the point I made earlier about, I mean, it sounds like you have a situation in which people are not self-editing. I mean, they're

They're saying these things and therefore there's huge conflict. And I think this is one of the reasons that most of the time in most families, people do a lot of self-censorship. And to go back to my role at LSE, we had situations in which people after October 7th were tweeting messages.

things that cause tremendous offense. And part of my little job was to go and talk to those people and talk in the departments. What did I say? I said, we support you in saying these things that are causing such offense. This is what we said, right? Which for me was quite a big thing to say.

in those meetings, I also said, personally, I do not say everything to my parents that comes into my head. I believe in truth. I believe in free speech. I believe in academic freedom. But in my relationships with my loved ones, I do a lot of careful thinking about how to put things, when to say them, what's the

You know, I mean, I'm gay. My parents, fundamentalist Christians. I edited my speech for a long time. I could regret that, but I didn't say what I think to them. On the other hand, that's what I did. You know, I think it's part of being human, not only to have strongly held beliefs, but also to do quite a bit of careful thinking.

thinking about the impact that our beliefs and our speech have on others. I mean, I think it's, you know, incredibly important. I think that's a good comment in

relation to the self-censorship point. That's like, we're fundamentally doing that all of the time, aren't we? Anyway, it's a good thing that we do that because we don't want to be, most people don't, again, it comes to motivation as well. I think if you, if you, if you start from the position that most people aren't motivated out of causing harm, I mean, some people are some of the time, especially online, maybe sometimes, but not very rarely, very rarely are people motivated out of causing harm. And if you start from that position,

I think it's a really helpful way to then properly engage in that disagreement. Enough about me. Many questions. Yes, please. Hi. Hello. So I'm American. Yes, I got that straight away. You go for it. So oftentimes when I'm talking to people here, there's kind of a prejudgment. Fair enough. But...

As someone, if they don't know me or don't know my opinions yet, and maybe don't know yet that I disagree with the political leader in America right now, how am I supposed to approach conversations with that? Change your accent? Can't do much about that. Pretend you're Canadian? Smart. Well,

Well, it's so interesting that we can't, like...

Second guessing what other people think of us is a difficult challenge. Even understanding ourselves is hard enough. Understanding how other people are going to think about us is another issue. So it'd be interesting if you could try and find out quite quickly what they do think. Maybe than assuming that, I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong to assume, but you might be wrong to assume sometimes that people would think that. I know that's quite effortful, but it's maybe not as effortful as saying you're from Canada.

We have a question for you. A question for both of you, actually. Paul, your book, you say quite a lot how this is hardwired into human nature to a certain extent. It's tribal. Yeah.

So why do you think it's become so much worse in the last few years, and especially at universities, which in theory should be the last place to succumb to this, given that they're supposed to be devoted to intellectual inquiry? And Charles, you're right in saying that you're going to have to literally say in your adverts now that this LSE academic position is open to supply-siders or something like that. I mean, people who might... Are you going to literally have to spell out that you're a non...

um beliefist employer yeah more or less i mean i actually it's it's a really good question and um the the you know because the guidance around that act would remain you know remains to be seen what guidance there will be around what university is supposed to do so we're having these discussions now

with colleagues about how we implement various bits of it, such as, you know, your events policy cancellation problem. How do you deal with that? We don't have that problem with LSE complaints that students might make about what happens in a classroom. How do you deal with that? And on the hiring side, I think it's still a question how we do this. But, you know, there is a question which relates to Paul's point about, you know,

you know, ideological conformity, if you like, that can obviously happen anywhere and it can happen in universities that you, you know, want to hire people. Or maybe you think, oh, I'm on the promotions committee. I, you know, I feel like this is somehow more aligned with

my view of the world and something else. And I think, you know, given the mission of the university to really explore ideas, have proper debates and to use the current chart, you know, to have viewpoint diversity, you have to take that

Seriously. And whatever you might think about that, I think universities are going to be required to actually formally in their systems have some way of communicating to staff. You know, you're actually not allowed to discriminate against people on a beliefist basis. I mean, how that will work in practice will be the subject of many employment tribunals of the future. But yeah, the answer is yes.

just quickly on the why it's got so much worse now and why universities yeah why now well I do think well I do think I'll pass the universities point the well unless in

as far as they relate to younger people who now are on social media from such an early age compared to us oldies, where there's bound to be spillover effects of what happens online into how we engage with one another in the real world. It's impossible to think of that not being the case. And so when, of all the things we mentioned before, and there's more evidence out there,

outlined in the book of the performative nature of what you do online. The supply of information online, we cite a dating experiment that we've done, that we've had published, where you can now, of course, supply so much more information about yourself online.

then you will find out about someone in person. I might find your politics out after a few days. Now it's all there for me. And because it's supplied, it becomes important on the demand side. And then that creates then a selection effect. And it's interesting as you know that, no Fraser, is that we're seeing more of a divergence among young people in their politics in that young men are either staying broadly where they were or becoming more conservative.

as young women have become more progressive, to use that term loosely. And it's creating tensions in that market for dating because the people won't date across the aisle. So I think that's what we've seen that we didn't see before. The sort of mixed households will become less common, I think, than they were once upon a time. My niece is about to turn a year old. So I was just wondering how you suggest we teach her to grow up to be tolerant, if it's something that

can be taught or should be taught? Tolerance? Tolerance, yeah. Yeah, such a good question. So, I mean, education and particularly education programs for changing behavior have been largely ineffective. Designing environments to embed the lessons in the real world as people behave and act is much more effective. So, well, it looks like these elements... So, embrace. So...

So we can pick any, I mean, um, affect. Let's pick out, that's basically feelings, right? Psychological speak for feelings. When you're aroused or very angry, not a good time to have a discussion and a debate. Takes the amygdala about 15 minutes to properly calm down when you're properly aroused. Quite a long time. Could only take a few minutes if you're, if you're a little bit angry. So maybe have a filter on your social media that just doesn't send that message immediately.

and they'll ask you to confirm it a few minutes later. You can still confirm it a few minutes later, but you'll probably be less likely to if it's really hostile if you're in it, if you then calm down. So there are things that we can design. So telling people that they ought to calm down through education programs, you know, it's not going to work very much, but designing into the way we interact will make it easier. We have a very high arousal family.

Matteo, our family is very Italian in the whole stereotype of an Italian family. And we have learned that it's a good thing. But actually, humor is really effective. That's a deep hope. That's a massive, massive way. It just makes us laugh and it's brilliant. That argument's gone.

But just walking away for a couple of minutes is very helpful when you've got two teenage children, by the way. Teaching them to walk away, because I obviously won't, because I'm the adult in the room. No, sometimes I do. It's actually really, really helpful. So there are things that we can do. You can educate people, but you can also design particular environments in ways that make it easier. And that's in relation to affect. And there's illustrations across all of the other elements.

We have a couple of balcony questions, please. Thank you very much. I took a lot of notes, not least because of the humor. I'm a former law enforcement intelligence analyst. That must be very funny. Yeah. One of the training courses I used to teach was the John F. Kennedy case. So I had with great difficulty to develop a lot of patience and

when I was hearing the conspiracy theory nonsense that people were swallowing. Very, very difficult. I mean, there's a lot of people who just cannot engage across the aisle on that. But my question is, where – and this is a particularly difficult one for academia –

Do you have any comments on Matt Ridley, the science writer, who, frankly, I get the impression he is being semi-censored, including by perhaps academia, because of his views on the origins of COVID?

He has always been a believer that a lab leak is a possibility, and he's now gone further to say he now believes that is the probable cause.

So I really do find it's quite sinister, not least that many of his opponents have gone remarkably silent. And I say this having had a discussion a few days ago with a BBC chap who said he was there when the first WHO team were in China and he said the Chinese were pulling the wool over their ears.

Answer that, Paul. Yeah, well, I won't say any specific case. I do think it was very, I mean, in retrospect, of course, I say I also thought it was at the time. It's actually, by the way, I was very thankful for the spectator publishing that because I wanted to come out early on. I didn't want to say afterwards, like many people would say after the fact, told you so. It's easy to say told you so. I wanted to say I told you so at the time I'm telling it. But I do think in relation to the lab, it was very interesting. There's so many academics came out

very, very early on to say it was a conspiracy theory to say it could have come from a lab. And do you know what's, I don't know what, Oaken's razor or whatever, like if you look for an answer, it's probably the, it will be the simplest one. And I don't know, I have no idea where the virus came from, but there was a lab right next to where the bat market was. So like...

Let's not at least rule that out immediately would seem to be a very sensible thing to do. And then we have a question at the very top. Yes, hello. You said earlier that if someone holds an abhorrent belief, we should listen to everything else they have to say outside of that abhorrent belief. But do you not think perhaps because of how perception influences reality that

Like in the sense that that person, because they have a different core belief, is actually experiencing a different reality than I am. If I disagree with that belief. Do you not think that that belief that I disagree with would have other ways of manifesting itself throughout their life in other ways that would then sort of make me feel like bad by sort of listening to everything else they have to say? Like, for instance...

If someone held a core belief that like, I shouldn't help other people, I should only help myself, then wouldn't that manifest itself in how they live their life, where they go and their behavior towards me? And then wouldn't it therefore be detrimental towards me to sort of like, yes, tolerate that? Yes, it might be. And so this is why it's complicated.

And I don't think like, it's not straightforward. And also I should say that I'm not making any pronouncements about how people ought to organize their own lives and their friendships and what they should listen to and whatever. But I do think for well-functioning organizations and institutions, listening to some of those other beliefs would be helpful to enhance the array of possibilities that

help us address some of the radical uncertainties that we face um but personally you know i mean you can you can avoid whomever you wish i mean that's like that's that's uh entirely on us and it's interesting when you write a book like i've written two books about happiness but you only have to say in the first sentence everyone wants to be happy right move on no one's like hold on a minute i don't why would anyone want to be happier

It's very easy. You make a book about beliefism or tolerance and you've got to make a case for it. You've got to make a case for it. Because you said about feeling bad. Yeah, we feel bad. I feel bad when people disagree with me. I don't feel good. Like I have to remind myself that actually I might be learning something or I might be smarter or it might make me more humble or it might make us make better decisions. All those things are harder to remind yourself of when you're feeling something, when you're feeling someone's hostility or someone's disagreement.

You feel it. So it's a reminder, well, to calm down, I suppose, but also it's a reminder that we could into the longer term feel better and particularly make better decisions and just be more interesting people, frankly.

If we're surrounded by, by people that disagree with us, I'm quite personally proud that I think my, my friendship group probably contained in relation to Brexit, you know, 48% remain 52% leave. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it was broadly, broadly that. And I think you could take, you could take many of the current issues of the day. And I'd like to think that I've got quite a considerable extent of diversity in my,

In my friendship group. What we have seen happening is more of a clustering of people's beliefs. So once I know Charles's views about X and Y, I can better predict his views about Z now than I would have been able to two or three decades ago.

So, to some degree, if you are going to be beliefist, in some sense, almost ironically, now is the time to be it because you can make more assumptions about what people believe from when you know one thing about them, about what they think about other things that you might care about as well.

But then also, if they hold a belief that I don't agree with, but I'm being tolerant towards that, but I don't also want to start to adopt that way of life or adopt that belief myself, then how do I reconcile that of like listening to them, but then also de-influencing their beliefs from entering into my beliefs, if that makes sense? Come and talk to me afterwards, because in the interest of fairness, we need to move on to another.

Somebody else. Another question. At the back, please. We just have time really literally for one or two more and then we'll... These have to be really good now. They're the ones that are going to be remembered. And especially for all those long-suffering online people who are actually listening to all of this still. Yeah, well, hello. Well, I was reflecting on this whole topic and I feel like besides us feeling bad because we disagree with someone else, I feel it's also important for us to consider that

There is another consequence, which might be that the belief of another person can be harmful to us because beliefs are not just beliefs. They always translate into actions or inactions directly or indirectly. Right.

with something very like a daily activity or, for example, who do I talk to? Who do I not talk to? But also, how do I vote? How do I shape my policies? So beliefs are always going to be important and translated into actions that can be harmful to other people. And I feel like that's why we are very aware of the beliefs of other people, because they can also determine the power dynamic. They can determine...

the privilege, how this other person stands in relation to ourselves, how this other person views the world, how this person views us. So the belief of a person can also say a lot about themselves, but how I am going to experience that relationship with that other person. So I feel like it's not just a thought, you know. No, you're right. They can. They can. What I would also say is where I started with that question about the plumber, which is in relation to you've heard that. And so I do think that we just...

if you want to be beliefist or whatever else yeah but do it on do it on a solid basis do it do it with good evidence that you know that somebody believes something because so much of what we live our lives is like the married couples that have been together for a very long time lots of assumptions are made about other people's beliefs that are often wrong um so if you do if you want to yeah so if you want to be beliefist do it on the basis of good evidence last uh question please yeah

Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. So I do have some question regarding what I have been like, also have inner conflict in through like my families and also like in the society. So actually, I am from Thailand and we are like really like deeply religious belief, you know, and I have a conflict with like my mother and like my father that they still believe in like future life.

you know, like for the next life that you need to concern, you need to donate the money, you know, for like the institution that for the better life that I think like by contrast, I have one life and I believe in like academic, you know, scientific and then AI and technology. We have like sharp contrasts

of this belief together. But then like, I'm trying to figure it out. Like they're in the old generation and I'm, I'm the younger generation. And afterwards, like maybe probably my kids will be in the next generation. What can like suggestion or like the help that we can live happily or harmonize together, you know, into like this kind of the generation gap that we can live

Yeah, coordinate together. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that's, I don't know. I mean, I don't know is a good answer to many of these questions because we should say that we don't know. I mean, I do think the intergenerational thing is really interesting. I mean, there are clear intergenerational differences. I would also say, having said that, and I agree with that and it's true,

I would also say that we all, again, look at the two objects and notice differences. And I do think that there are many similarities across generations as well as differences. And I do think we need to be alert to those and to fundamentally remind ourselves, maybe this is the point to which to finish on, the way that we will move forward in that there is so much more that makes us similar than makes us different.

Um, and we're mostly motivated in very similar ways. Most people are motivated for the good. They care about their family. They love their children. They love their parents. Not always. Um, um, you know, and, and, and they want good relationships and that's, that's the fundamental part of the human condition is that connection piece. And I think if we, if we can break beliefism to some large degree, we're better connected.

And I think that's only good for us now, tomorrow and into future generations. Wow. On that thought, sounds like a great way to end. Thanks very much. You guys were great. Really interesting questions. Thanks very much.

Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to the LSE Events podcast on your favourite podcast app and help other listeners discover us by leaving a review. Visit lse.ac.uk forward slash events to find out what's on next. We hope you join us at another LSE Events soon.