Anastasiia Grigorev: The Problem With Women And Children First - January 22, 2026

episode

The Last Show with David Cooper 10 min 3 speakers 8 chapters transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

David Cooper 0:03

Prepare to have your mind blown as we delve into the complexities of relationships, explore the cutting edge of science, and celebrate the bizarre and beautiful absurdity of the world around us. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.

What does 'women and children first' really mean in modern contexts?

Unknown 0:25

Women and children first. We've all heard the phrase. There is a new study that shows saying women and children is not just descriptive, but it can be used to crank up moral outrage. It can change who we feel compelled to punish, protect, and care about in a crisis. I'm here with someone who's worked on that research. Her name is Anastasia Grigoreva, and she is a developmental psychologist at Emory University. Anastasia, welcome to the show.

Anastasiia Grigorev 0:50

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Unknown 0:52

This phrase, women and children, I feel like it's so familiar. I can think the last time I heard it and really stuck out was in the movie The Titanic. I think it gets said so often a lot of us don't even notice it. So what made you stop and think, hey, something can be going on here when people use this phrase?

How does moral outrage influence our perceptions in crises?

Anastasiia Grigorev 1:08

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You know, it actually dates back to the 18th century maritime drill, women and children first. And as you mentioned, it was deeply popularized by the Titanic. And a couple of years ago, my collaborators and I noticed that, you know, there is a lot of reporting going on about various tragic events in the world, and they're pretty diverse. But the thing that cuts across a lot of them is that they indeed tend to highlight women and children. So on the one hand, it could be that it's just a force of journalistic habit because it's such a popular phrase. But from a psychologist's point of view, where we're interested, is there something morally, psychologically consequential that's going on when we actually hear that phrase?

Unknown 1:53

There's a lot to unpack with gender stuff here, and I want to do that. But before we get there, let's just talk about moral outrage. How is it different from just feeling sad or empathetic or angry?

Anastasiia Grigorev 2:03

That's right. Now, moral outrage became all the rage, so to speak, within the psychology recently, and in part because it's very relevant in the media spaces. It relates to news virality.

What is the psychological significance of labeling victims as women and children?

Anastasiia Grigorev 2:16

When people feel morally outraged, they are more likely to share various news stories. And so it can amplify the impact of the stories. So that's partly why we thought it would be a relevant phenomenon here. But what's interesting about moral outrage is that it's this extreme emotional reaction to immoral acts that's actually targeted at the perpetrators. So it makes people make pretty strong judgments about perpetrators, thinking of them as these really horrible people. It also calls for really extreme punishments for the perpetrators.

Unknown 2:49

So let's get to your experiment and what you asked people. When a crisis or a tragedy happened, when people knew that the death toll, the number of people that passed were the same, they seemed to get angrier when the victims were labeled as women and children. Is it the label alone that really carries that emotional power?

How does benevolent sexism relate to moral outrage?

Anastasiia Grigorev 3:07

Yeah, so that's what we're curious about, too, right? There could be different explanations for why women and children seem to have this special moral pull. You know, one thing that people will sometimes highlight is that, well, it's not really women and children. It's really about civilians. And women and children simply act as stand-in for civilians. Now, harming civilians is bad. We all know that. And people tend to get upset when there are civilian targets. So we actually tested whether it is something about women and children per se, or is it about them standing in for civilians by comparing the two groups directly. And we'll find that even then, women and children still amplify moral outrage, even relative to civilians.

Anastasiia Grigorev 3:49

So this does seem to suggest that there is something special about these two groups.

Unknown 3:53

Interesting. Well, let's get to kind of this, the sexism here.

What role does motherhood play in societal perceptions of women?

Unknown 3:57

My understanding is you liken this to something called benevolent sexism, which sounds nice on the surface, I think, but it's still sexism and it might have sort of threads into hostility or hate.