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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-15
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4guqlK6ieTc
a few months ago I read a story in the local newspaper our reporters had left letters on the street all around the city and they wanted to see how many letters were returned to the mailbox so they wanted to see how kind people in Helsinki really are towards each other and it was a really cool experimentalist were put into the mailbox of people were kind and
friendly towards each other but what sort of struck me was the headline of the story because in red something along the lines of a surprising amount of letters were returned to the mailbox and this got me thinking why are we surprised when people act kindly why is it surprising that people help each other and why do we expect the worst from each other on site like
this and my tongue a slightly difficult task ahead of me tonight because I'm going to try to convince you that people are actually inherently generous a inherently friendly yeah and inherently kind towards each other now we do have a very good reason %HESITATION to kind of expect the worst from each other %HESITATION on days like these and in general on a day to day basis we're
faced with evidence and stories about humana hatred human animosity human greed which may be leads us to conclude that humans are worlds to humans and accept this as a fundamental truth about human nature but I suggest that this evening even just for the next ten minutes or so we take a small vacation from this story about human nature and a visit to another story that is
quite different but I propose equally true %HESITATION and I don't even start with the bulls his moves aren't selfish whose aren't mean first of all they're super cute and their pot animals fools work together they need to collaborate in order to survive the hunt together they share food they routinely make decisions that benefits others I instead of only themselves %HESITATION and you know what humans are
pack animals to it has been suggested that the only reason we still exist as a species is because we are able to collaborate because we're able to share because we like helping each other and being kind and perhaps as a result our brain is host a wide array of mechanisms that are devoted for connecting to other people for understanding other people on the level of thoughts
and on the level of feeling for example we have brain mechanisms that make emotions super contagious they've done the studies where they put a person in the brain scanner and then they show them terrible pictures of someone like cutting their finger with scissors or stopping their toe painfully and what happens is Dr he in areas of the person viewing these pictures light up which means that
that in some situations in some contexts our brains don't understand that we are two different people and that your pain is exactly the same as my pain which Tunisia super beautiful thought we also have several mechanisms in the brain that have kind of brick dust for kindness but every dust to enjoy helping each other and being kind %HESITATION and this at these mechanisms that I intend
to speak about at a greater length this evening because I believe that understanding these mechanisms might create more opportunities for us to utilize them to create opportunities for kindness to emerge some gonna talk about three studies that I find super interesting the kind of shed light on what it is to be kind or the neural basis of kindness the first one explains that what kind of
moron place kindness has in our minds what kind of place it has in in basic human nature the second study tells a story about %HESITATION what happens in the brain and we act kindly and the third US study tells about why answers to the question why what what motivates people to act kindly by do we choose %HESITATION to kind of work for the good of others
perhaps at a cost to enter to ourselves so under the first piece of evidence this study conducted by a fantastically talented researchers who are interested in what happens to people when they're not able to control themselves so researchers wanted to know like what types of animal impulses arise and people aren't able to control themselves or inhibit these impulses how do we behave towards each other when
there is no self control so in order to answer this question they sort of %HESITATION shut down the parts of the brain that are responsible for self control and they have the participants play a game where they could distribute money to others now what they found was that the participants who are no longer able to hit it themselves became more generous towards others towards strangers a
knife you stop to think about this result for a moment I own it's actually pretty beautiful and the researchers stated that it might mean that that generosity the willingness to share is the default state of the human brain but this is how where or wired in a fundamental way and that if we want to act selfishly this is what self control is needed for stable off
our natural selfless impulses my second piece of evidence is here in this study researchers want to know what happens in our brains when we decide to act kindly so they had participants and they split them into two groups are they give both groups as love map both participants because both groups of participants a certain sum of money and they were meant to spend the sum of
money during the next four weeks they had a one group act selfishly you are promised to act selfishly and spend all the money on themselves and they had a selfless group who made a promise to spend the money only on other human beings and after they made this promise they took the participants and put them in the brain scanner where they could play a game where
they could either make selfish or selfless decisions and what they found was that immediately after deciding to act either selfishly or selflessly %HESITATION there are differences in how how people made these decisions and the taxes task that they were doing in the brain scanner so the people who had just made a promise to help others to give all the money to others to by others things
also made more selfless decisions in the task they did in the scanner they also reported increased feelings of happiness as a result of the decision and Furthermore when they need selfless decisions in the brain scanner the parts of the brain that are important for feelings of reward and pleasure became active so it means that by creating a kind mindsets you promote kind behavior instantly and and
your brain starts rewarding you for it so it's like this beautiful look that you can create spike by the assuming a kind mindset and acting kindly towards others my last and final piece of evidence invita selfless and nature of human beings is this one and here scientists were interested in the question of why do we ask kindly towards others when it often comes at a cost
to ourselves why do we choose to help others and generates thought that there are two main reasons why people help others number one is fairness so someone does something kind to me and then I pay back I'm I'm kind to you so I reciprocate and number two is empathy so when I see someone else in pain it causes personal distress nine did decide to do something
kind to kind of resolve the situation nine this study scientists were interested in whether this is true whether we have these two routes to kind actions and whether the mechanisms that %HESITATION create these motives are somehow separate into breaking so in order to investigate this scientists had to of course because our generate feelings of either fairness or empathy and the participants and they did this by
dividing the participants into two groups they had the fairness group and the empathy group and then they induced feelings of either fairness or empathy with the help of electric shock very easy perhaps also speak something about the kindness of the experimenters allow me to explain US if you were in the in the embassy group and they took you enter a room or the participant into a
room with two other people who were in on the plan and the participants sat there and one of the P. persons was shocked with terribly painful electric shocks the participants herself was shocked with moderately painful Lennox it shocks and the third person wasn't shocked at all so the idea was that seeing someone in pain and and knowing what that pain feels like would cause me to
experience feelings of empathy towards the person in pain very efficient nine the fairness group the situation was similar it so they were good to people alongside the participant in the room but now the participants was super unlucky because they were the ones getting the most painful electric shocks and another person was getting only moderately painful electric shocks no third person no summers ago and the trick
to induce fairness here was that of a person getting to moderately painful shocks could save the participant from getting shocked by giving us up some of their own money so at the thought was that when this person keep saving me from getting bill shocks all see them as a really fair a fair person okay are you with me so we have two groups had the empathy
group and the fairness group in the embassy group participants are feeling empathy towards someone in pain and the fairness group they're being treated fairly by another person okay then the participants were put into brain scanner and the task was to divide a sum of money between the three people to could either keep all the money to your south or give some to the other people who
just you just data spend some excruciating minutes within the group and perhaps not surprising lean in the empathy group and the participants decided to give more money to the person they empathize with the person they'd seen in pain and then the fairness group half the participants decided to give more money to the person who had to give them fairly and it seems that these two mechanisms
mechanisms were somehow separate and bring and there are several fruits kindness in our brain but what if you're just like god selfish person but if you were given the choice of like dividing a pot of money between the three people and collect all Chris I keep it all to myself well in this study the scientists identified highly selfish people and they want to see is there
any way that we can get these people to act kindly and it turns out that empathy still does the trick so if you're super selfish person %HESITATION being treated fairly doesn't really do anything you don't feel the need to pay back but empathy still works it's our brains have found a way to circumvent these these obstacles to kindness which to me speaks about how surprisingly resilient
and powerful kindness is finds a way to emerge in interaction and perhaps the more important take home message from this particular studies that these things I've been speaking about like fairness and kindness and empathy they're not individual traits so they're not individual characteristics but they emerge they exist in interaction so the really cool thing then is that kindness and fairness and and that he had the
chance to emerge in any interaction it's a matter of choice as participants of any interaction you and I can choose whether we wish to nurture these characteristics or not so perhaps in a summary faced with all of the evidence of human nature %HESITATION faced with all of the the news and all the scientific evidence I don't think we're left with one tourist or certainty about who
we are what we are like as a species but rather a choice a choice to act we can either choose to listen to only the stories that speak about a selfish nature of human beings but we can also listen to other types of evidence you can also choose to see evidence of how we are wired for kind and the very cool question is what happened on
