Liane Young
Appearances
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So that's a version of the scenario in which someone causes harm to someone else by accident because of a false belief. In another version of the story, Grace puts powder into her co-worker's coffee. She thinks the powder is poison, but it turns out to be sugar. So that's a situation in which She has a harmful intention, but no harm is done.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So in these two cases, there is a conflict between the intention of the agent and the outcome of the agent's action. And so we can ask our volunteer participants, for their moral judgments of both the person, the agent performing the action, and also the action itself, whether this action is morally permissible or morally forbidden.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And using these kinds of scenarios and these kinds of moral judgment scales, we can get a sense for the extent to which different people rely on information about intentions to make their moral judgments. So you and I, for instance, could have very different views about how bad it is to accidentally poison a coworker.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And sort of depending on the circumstances, there could be a situation in which there's just no way she could have known maybe somebody swapped the sugar and the poison and she had the best of intentions. And so those are cases where there's a lot of flexibility for individual variation in moral judgments. And we can apply that same reasoning to the case of a failed attempt to cause harm too.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Some people might focus more on the neutral outcome, the fact that nothing bad happened at all, whereas other folks might focus a lot more on the fact that this person just tried to poison their coworker and that's very, very bad.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So we've run a number of studies now using brain imaging techniques to look at how people's brains are responding as they're making moral judgments of these kinds of cases. And so what we found in one study was that a brain region called the right temporal parietal junction, which is right above and behind your right ear, processes information about people's intentions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And what we found was that the more an individual's right temper pridal junction responds as they are making these moral judgments, the more they are using information about innocent intentions to let the person who caused harm by accident off the hook.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I often yell at my kids for things that they did by accident, like spilling a smoothie or leaving a cap off of a permanent marker and, you know, making black permanent stains all over the sofa.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so we see this correlation between brain activity in this region that tracks intention information and the moral judgments that people are making of accidental harms.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
In addition to using brain imaging, which helps us to track what brains are doing as people are making moral judgments, we've also used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short, to temporarily disrupt activity in this particular brain region, the right temporoparietal junction, to see what effect that has on the moral judgments that people make.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so when we temporarily disrupt activity in this brain region, we see that people's moral judgments rely less on information about intentions in these kinds of cases that we've been talking about. So to give you an example, if you are reading a story about somebody who tries to poison their friend but fails to do so because... They mistook the substance for poison, but it was in fact sugar.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
If I am disrupting activity in your right temporal parietal junction, you will be more likely to say that that is more okay than if I didn't disrupt activity in your right temporal parietal junction.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I think a lot of us share the intuition that is confirmed by recent empirical work in psychology that how we think about moral situations or moral beliefs are really central to what we consider to be our identity. We take our moral identity as central to our self-concept. And so to think that scientific interventions can alter our moral judgments is in some ways upsetting.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
That said, as neuroscientists, we've assumed all along that our moral judgments have some place in the brain. And so it stands to reason that when you disrupt activity in people's brains, that you will be disrupting the kinds of judgments that we'll be making too, including moral judgments. And there is so much work on the unconscious influences on behavior.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so whether someone is in a rush to get somewhere can change or impact the likelihood of their stopping to give money to a homeless person. And so I think that there are environmental influences. There are cultural differences in the degree to which people rely on intention information.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so in many ways, I'm not sure that I would be more upset by the fact that smelling fresh cookies is going to impact my behavior or, you know, somebody applying transcranial magnetic stimulation to my brain is going to impact my behavior or my decision making.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
There is this terrible tension between the fact that nobody meant any harm, nobody meant to kill anyone, and the fact that this nine-year-old boy died. And to take it a step further, you could think of a case in which he hadn't run a stop sign. Maybe he was just driving and the child came out of nowhere. I think we would still have the intuition that
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
If you caused that event to happen, if you caused that bad outcome, then there is a way in which you are causally responsible for something very bad that you didn't know that you would be doing and maybe could not have prevented. And so it's really tricky to figure out how to handle that kind of case, as you point out.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I think different people have different responses to what happened and what should be done and how to prevent that from happening again.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And often in these cases, we downplay intent information. It doesn't matter that you didn't know. The fact that you did it is bad enough. And so that happens for, again, as I mentioned, violations related to food and sex. And those are cases in which once you are sort of defiled, there's very little that you can do to get clean again.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And there's very little that you could say to sort of justify or mitigate the behavior, including that you didn't know or that it wasn't done on purpose.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yeah, exactly. So whether we interpret an event as just a natural disaster or a technical malfunction or as a coordinated planned attack can really affect the way that we respond to those events. And so when we hear about something like that, I think... First, we ask ourselves or read the news to find out what happened. And then we want to know why and who, if relevant.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so we ask those kinds of questions in that order. And as you say, our answers to those questions really help shape our understanding of an event as either misfortune or We are trying to figure out who did it and why and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Absolutely. I think our ability to read intentions tells us how to evaluate the events around us, how to understand them, how to predict what's going to happen in the future and how to interact with people in the present. And so all of that depends on our ability to figure out intentions and distinguish intentional events from accidental events. This happens in a lot of news events that we read.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
When we read about a building collapsing, we think, you know, what happened and how can we prevent that from happening in the future? And again, our answers to those questions depend on whether that happened on purpose, whether someone caused it or whether it was an earthquake. for instance. And so I think your question about why it is that we have this capacity is a really important one.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Thanks so much. It's good to be here, Shankar.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And I think we don't have an answer to that question yet as psychologists, in part because there's so many reasons why that capacity for theory of mind could be important. We need to think about other people's minds in order to figure out whom to learn from, who's the right expert in a particular domain.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We need to know about people's intentions to figure out who our friends are, who to avoid, whom to punish, whether to punish. And we need to read people's intentions in any ordinary interaction, like having a conversation and figuring out what to say and how to respond.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I am a fan, and it's a very funny clip because it captures this phenomenon that we study in psychology called indirect speech, which allows for a misinterpretation of intentions. Because She's inviting George up for, quote, coffee as opposed to asking him up more directly. It gives her plausible deniability.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So if he declines the invitation, she doesn't have to feel bad or offended or lose her pride. But on the other hand, it also leaves room for just misinterpretation and miscommunication, which is what happens a lot in real life.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Again, there is this question of what cues we are using to read people's intentions from their actions. And what is really tricky about this problem is that we can't see into people's heads. We can't observe their thoughts or their feelings. We can only observe what people do. And, you know, in this case, people's body movements reaching into a pocket and reaching into a glove compartment.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so that leaves room for misinterpretation and really awful consequences.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Absolutely. And there are many cases in which we don't realize that we are misreading people's intentions. In the Seinfeld clip, George realized shortly after the fact that he missed the boat on that opportunity because he didn't catch what the woman was doing. But there are many cases in which we don't catch our mistakes and we're not able to fix them after the fact.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
The pandemic is a really interesting case of intention reading and misunderstanding. So there have definitely been instances in which I've gone into a public indoor space wearing a mask. And I wonder what people think about what I'm doing. Do people think that I'm unvaccinated because I'm wearing a mask.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And then I have to sort of stop and think about, well, what do I think when I see somebody wearing a mask indoors? Do I think that they're unvaccinated or do I think that they're being extra careful? Do I think that they're immunocompromised or they have young children who are unvaccinated and so on?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so it becomes a really interesting exercise to think about how people are reading my intentions and then how to read other people's intentions and sort of backtrack from that exercise to the other.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
That's right. There are many cases where because intentions are not black and white, because we can't see them, there's no clear evidence for intentions. This is a case where politicians are able to frame or reframe their opponents' intentions however they see fit to be able to shape other people's thoughts and feelings about others. There's this sort of ambiguity in this space.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Politicians have the opportunity to be able to create different narratives, particularly about people's intentions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
A lot of times people do engage in this willful misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the minds of people on the other side. But then in a lot of cases, I think this happens sort of automatically and unconsciously. We give people that we know and like the benefit of the doubt. And often those are the folks who are on our team or in our party.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And we can interpret or understand those events very, very differently. So if you imagine that somebody in your party is being accused of some transgression, you might start to seek alternative explanations for why they did what they were accused of doing.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Whereas if you heard the same story of somebody committing a crime on the other side, then you might automatically take that story description at face value that they're guilty.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We ran a series of studies in which we tested American Democrats and Republicans and also Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East, and we gave them examples of acts of aggression in both of those cases and asked our participants to attribute motives.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And what we found, which is maybe not so surprising, but was very consistent across those different groups of people, was that people were more likely to attribute acts of aggression performed by their own group to in-group love. People are just trying to defend their own values and their own people, whereas people would attribute those same acts of aggression performed by an out-group
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
to outgroup hatred. They're doing this to retaliate. They're doing this to attack us. And so it's very interesting that we see this asymmetry in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions, depending on whether those acts are being performed by people on our side or people on the other side.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I think we do that all the time. And we do that in the ways that we interpret the intentions and actions of our friends as opposed to people we don't know or people that we know but don't like. We give our friends the benefit of the doubt. We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We don't want to see ourselves as... Bad people. We don't want to see our friends as bad people.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so, again, if you encounter a friend doing something morally ambiguous, you might make up an excuse for why they did that in order to... read their behaviors as fitting with your narrative of being friends.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so it's very interesting that we see this asymmetry in how people are attributing motives underlying the very same actions in very different ways depending on whether those acts are being presented as performed by people on our side or people on the other side.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Well, I think we wouldn't be able to appreciate the humor and the irony in that scene where Daniel is essentially, he knows what is going on with his wife and he is trying to get his wife to not date this other man. And of course, we know that the wife doesn't know Daniel's true identity as Daniel. She thinks that He is this housekeeper and we know that she doesn't know.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I think it's really useful for both relationships and also for ourselves to give others around us the benefit of the doubt. I think it makes for smoother social interactions and also for happier selves, right? What I've told my students is that if you have a bad interaction with someone, chances are they're not trying to offend you or insult you. Maybe they're having a bad day.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Maybe they didn't get enough sleep. And I tell them to... sort of think about our one-on-one interactions in the same context, that if we have a bad conversation, it's probably because, you know, I am feeling bad that I yelled at a kid that morning and it has nothing to do with, you know, their paper or their project.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so, again, we come back to this idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt and, you know, taking intentions into consideration. I also think about times when I'm on the road and I get upset when other drivers cut me off.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And there's really nothing that I can do about it aside from give them the benefit of the doubt because I know that when I'm the one who's speeding or cutting other people off, Usually it's because, you know, my three-year-old in the backseat says she needs to go to the potty or because we're rushing to an event and we're late.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so to be able to extend that to other people, both strangers and the people that we interact with on a regular basis, I think just makes for happier interactions all around.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
It's really hard. It's really hard to take that step back and think about what are the situational stresses and influences that could be leading to other people's actions, whereas it's sometimes easier to see those external pressures on our own selves and lives and interactions.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so if we're able to pause in the midst of a tricky interaction and think about what that other person is experiencing trying to do or not trying to do, again, that will lead to much smoother, much more positive interactions and ultimately relationships.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Thank you so much, Shankar.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so there's this very sort of layered understanding that we need to have as the audience to find the scene funny. Yeah. We can't find it funny without realizing that she doesn't know what he knows and who he is.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yeah, so we're able to. And I remember watching this movie as a child who, of course, hadn't had the benefit of studying how theory of mind works in the brains of children and adults. And I still found it very funny. I knew exactly what was happening, who was misunderstanding, who knew what other people didn't know, and so on, in order to be able to enjoy the scene and really the entire movie.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yes. So I should say that many psychologists and neuroscientists use a number of different terms. Theory of mind is one of those terms, and that describes the theory that we all have, ordinary people have, about other people's minds. And what I mean by that is how we understand that other people have thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions, mental states in general.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
It's not my fault. I didn't mean to do it. I shouldn't say this, but I tell them it doesn't matter that you didn't mean to do it. What matters is that you won't do it again.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so other terms that have been used for this general cognitive capacity include mental state reasoning, mentalizing, reasoning about intentions, and so on.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Exactly. Even as you and I are having this conversation, Shankar, I'm trying to figure out what it is that you want to know and how to explain the term theory of mine in a way that will be accessible and so on. And sometimes we take different cues from people as we're having that conversation, whether they're nodding their heads, whether they're pausing, whether they look confused and so on.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so We take in all of that information to figure out what people are thinking and how they're responding to the information that we're giving them.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I think it's really important that we're able to take the perspective of different characters when we're watching movies, watching TV shows. reading books. And often as the reader, as the viewer, we have a sort of different, in some cases, omniscient perspective. We can see the scene unfolding in a way that characters within the scene cannot.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And so on one level, we understand what's going on in a way that characters within the story do not. And we also are able to not just get into the minds of characters, but get into the hearts of characters as well. So we know how they're feeling and how they're reacting and responding in ways that maybe other characters in the story don't.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
This is a little bit controversial in the field, but I think what is generally recognized in the field is that at least children's capacity for explicit theory of mind, being able to reason and verbalize answers to theory of mind tasks, that ability emerges between the ages of three and five years. Psychologists are able to administer
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
batteries of theory of mind tasks to young children to figure out when exactly it is that individual children are able to think about other agents in the world as having minds that are maybe separate from the reality of a situation.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We need to think about other people's minds in order to figure out who our friends are, who to avoid, whom to punish, whether to punish. And we need to read people's intentions in any ordinary interaction, like having a conversation and figuring out what to say and how to respond.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
So one example of a false belief task would be the Sally-Anne task in which you have two puppets, Sally and Anne. Sally is playing with a ball and then she takes the ball and puts it away in a basket. She leaves the room and another puppet comes in and moves the ball to a different location. And then children are asked when Sally comes back into the room, where does she think her ball is?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Did Sally see Anne move the block?
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And three-year-old children will tend to say that she thinks the ball is where it really is, even though she's not supposed to know that Anne came in and moved her ball, whereas older children, by the time children are five, they know that Sally has a false belief about where that ball is.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yes, that's exactly right. So younger children, three-year-old children don't have a concept that people could have beliefs in their heads that depart from the reality of the world, the facts of the situation.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yeah, this is in a uniform capacity that we see the same in all people across all situations. It can be dependent on the individual. It can be dependent on the context, even in healthy, typical populations. We've also looked at specific patient populations as well, including patients with specific brain damage.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
We've looked at prison inmates with a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, and we've looked at high functioning adults with autism. And so we've seen sort of a range of behavioral patterns across different populations of people in terms of how they use and how they deploy theory of mind capacities for moral judgments in particular.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
I mean, we've all been in a situation where a joke falls flat because the person who's telling the joke... isn't able to appropriately assess the mood in this space or what other people know or don't know and so on. And so certainly there are many cases of that.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
And then there are sort of the opposite cases where we really admire individuals for having a keen sense of what other people are thinking and feeling and able to shape a conversation or discussion in that way.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yeah, you're right. And so it can be very complicated trying to figure out how theory of mind plays out in any given situation. You know, in my lab, when I'm particularly on Zoom, it can be a lot harder to read the room, if you will, figure out, you know, as a group, how people are doing and how to shape that space.
Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: Why Did You Do That? + Your Questions Answered: Fred Luskin on Grudges
Yes, absolutely. So we usually have our subjects read stories that we write about other people who are performing actions that have effects on other people in the scenario. So in one story, we have a person named Grace who put some powder into a co-worker's coffee. And in one scenario, she thinks the powder is sugar. but the powder turns out to be poison and she ends up poisoning her friend.