0:00:00.844,0:00:03.222
When we think about prejudice and bias,

0:00:03.222,0:00:05.366
we tend to think about stupid and evil people

0:00:05.366,0:00:07.820
doing stupid and evil things.

0:00:07.820,0:00:09.890
And this idea is nicely summarized

0:00:09.890,0:00:12.358
by the British critic William Hazlitt,

0:00:12.358,0:00:15.293
who wrote, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance."

0:00:15.293,0:00:17.405
I want to try to convince you here

0:00:17.405,0:00:19.040
that this is mistaken.

0:00:19.040,0:00:20.772
I want to try to convince you

0:00:20.772,0:00:22.495
that prejudice and bias

0:00:22.495,0:00:25.783
are natural, they're often rational,

0:00:25.783,0:00:27.614
and they're often even moral,

0:00:27.614,0:00:29.866
and I think that once we understand this,

0:00:29.866,0:00:32.375
we're in a better position to make sense of them

0:00:32.375,0:00:33.432
when they go wrong,

0:00:33.432,0:00:35.200
when they have horrible consequences,

0:00:35.200,0:00:37.525
and we're in a better position to know what to do

0:00:37.525,0:00:39.207
when this happens.

0:00:39.207,0:00:42.234
So, start with stereotypes. You look at me,

0:00:42.234,0:00:44.480
you know my name, you[br]know certain facts about me,

0:00:44.480,0:00:46.309
and you could make certain judgments.

0:00:46.309,0:00:49.162
You could make guesses about my ethnicity,

0:00:49.162,0:00:52.443
my political affiliation, my religious beliefs.

0:00:52.443,0:00:54.542
And the thing is, these[br]judgments tend to be accurate.

0:00:54.542,0:00:56.724
We're very good at this sort of thing.

0:00:56.724,0:00:58.207
And we're very good at this sort of thing

0:00:58.207,0:01:00.940
because our ability to stereotype people

0:01:00.940,0:01:04.195
is not some sort of arbitrary quirk of the mind,

0:01:04.195,0:01:06.511
but rather it's a specific instance

0:01:06.511,0:01:08.166
of a more general process,

0:01:08.166,0:01:09.785
which is that we have experience

0:01:09.785,0:01:11.326
with things and people in the world

0:01:11.326,0:01:12.575
that fall into categories,

0:01:12.575,0:01:15.031
and we can use our experience[br]to make generalizations

0:01:15.031,0:01:17.390
about novel instances of these categories.

0:01:17.390,0:01:19.757
So everybody here has a lot of experience

0:01:19.757,0:01:22.010
with chairs and apples and dogs,

0:01:22.010,0:01:23.646
and based on this, you could see

0:01:23.646,0:01:25.998
unfamiliar examples and you could guess,

0:01:25.998,0:01:27.314
you could sit on the chair,

0:01:27.314,0:01:29.879
you could eat the apple, the dog will bark.

0:01:29.879,0:01:31.643
Now we might be wrong.

0:01:31.643,0:01:33.443
The chair could collapse if you sit on it,

0:01:33.443,0:01:35.665
the apple might be poison, the dog might not bark,

0:01:35.665,0:01:38.535
and in fact, this is my dog Tessie, who doesn't bark.

0:01:38.535,0:01:41.294
But for the most part, we're good at this.

0:01:41.294,0:01:43.210
For the most part, we make good guesses

0:01:43.210,0:01:45.024
both in the social domain and the non-social domain,

0:01:45.024,0:01:46.973
and if we weren't able to do so,

0:01:46.973,0:01:50.189
if we weren't able to make guesses about[br]new instances that we encounter,

0:01:50.189,0:01:51.640
we wouldn't survive.

0:01:51.640,0:01:54.509
And in fact, Hazlitt later on in his wonderful essay

0:01:54.509,0:01:55.994
concedes this.

0:01:55.994,0:01:58.536
He writes, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom,

0:01:58.536,0:02:00.876
I should not be able to find[br]my way my across the room;

0:02:00.876,0:02:03.328
nor know how to conduct[br]myself in any circumstances,

0:02:03.328,0:02:07.531
nor what to feel in any relation of life."

0:02:07.531,0:02:09.040
Or take bias.

0:02:09.040,0:02:10.748
Now sometimes, we break the world up into

0:02:10.748,0:02:13.749
us versus them, into in-group versus out-group,

0:02:13.749,0:02:14.910
and sometimes when we do this,

0:02:14.910,0:02:16.467
we know we're doing something wrong,

0:02:16.467,0:02:18.140
and we're kind of ashamed of it.

0:02:18.140,0:02:19.623
But other times we're proud of it.

0:02:19.623,0:02:21.436
We openly acknowledge it.

0:02:21.436,0:02:22.718
And my favorite example of this

0:02:22.718,0:02:25.120
is a question that came from the audience

0:02:25.120,0:02:27.837
in a Republican debate prior to the last election.

0:02:27.837,0:02:30.129
(Video) Anderson Cooper: Gets to your question,

0:02:30.129,0:02:34.310
the question in the hall, on foreign aid? Yes, ma'am.

0:02:34.310,0:02:36.546
Woman: The American people are suffering

0:02:36.546,0:02:39.183
in our country right now.

0:02:39.183,0:02:42.531
Why do we continue to send foreign aid

0:02:42.531,0:02:43.847
to other countries

0:02:43.847,0:02:47.950
when we need all the help we can get for ourselves?

0:02:47.950,0:02:49.645
AC: Governor Perry, what about that?

0:02:49.645,0:02:51.012
(Applause)

0:02:51.012,0:02:53.350
Rick Perry: Absolutely, I think it's—

0:02:53.350,0:02:55.010
Paul Bloom: Each of the people onstage

0:02:55.010,0:02:56.981
agreed with the premise of her question,

0:02:56.981,0:02:59.100
which is as Americans, we should care more

0:02:59.100,0:03:01.226
about Americans than about other people.

0:03:01.226,0:03:04.091
And in fact, in general, people are often swayed

0:03:04.091,0:03:07.599
by feelings of solidarity, loyalty, pride, patriotism,

0:03:07.599,0:03:10.315
towards their country or towards their ethnic group.

0:03:10.315,0:03:13.400
Regardless of your politics, many[br]people feel proud to be American,

0:03:13.400,0:03:15.462
and they favor Americans over other countries.

0:03:15.462,0:03:18.312
Residents of other countries[br]feel the same about their nation,

0:03:18.312,0:03:20.798
and we feel the same about our ethnicities.

0:03:20.798,0:03:22.482
Now some of you may reject this.

0:03:22.482,0:03:24.203
Some of you may be so cosmopolitan

0:03:24.213,0:03:26.547
that you think that ethnicity and nationality

0:03:26.547,0:03:28.700
should hold no moral sway.

0:03:28.700,0:03:31.462
But even you sophisticates accept

0:03:31.462,0:03:33.296
that there should be some pull

0:03:33.296,0:03:35.997
towards the in-group in the[br]domain of friends and family,

0:03:35.997,0:03:37.418
of people you're close to,

0:03:37.418,0:03:38.979
and so even you make a distinction

0:03:38.979,0:03:40.954
between us versus them.

0:03:40.954,0:03:43.557
Now, this distinction is natural enough

0:03:43.557,0:03:46.481
and often moral enough, but it can go awry,

0:03:46.481,0:03:48.210
and this was part of the research

0:03:48.210,0:03:50.969
of the great social psychologist Henri Tajfel.

0:03:50.969,0:03:53.574
Tajfel was born in Poland in 1919.

0:03:53.574,0:03:55.713
He left to go to university in France,

0:03:55.713,0:03:58.268
because as a Jew, he couldn't[br]go to university in Poland,

0:03:58.268,0:04:00.778
and then he enlisted in the French military

0:04:00.778,0:04:02.061
in World War II.

0:04:02.061,0:04:03.830
He was captured and ended up

0:04:03.830,0:04:05.361
in a prisoner of war camp,

0:04:05.361,0:04:07.628
and it was a terrifying time for him,

0:04:07.628,0:04:09.316
because if it was discovered that he was a Jew,

0:04:09.316,0:04:11.408
he could have been moved to a concentration camp,

0:04:11.408,0:04:13.400
where he most likely would not have survived.

0:04:13.400,0:04:15.987
And in fact, when the war[br]ended and he was released,

0:04:15.987,0:04:18.492
most of his friends and family were dead.

0:04:18.492,0:04:20.329
He got involved in different pursuits.

0:04:20.329,0:04:21.860
He helped out the war orphans.

0:04:21.860,0:04:23.591
But he had a long-lasting interest

0:04:23.591,0:04:25.136
in the science of prejudice,

0:04:25.136,0:04:27.796
and so when a prestigious British scholarship

0:04:27.796,0:04:29.641
on stereotypes opened up, he applied for it,

0:04:29.641,0:04:30.998
and he won it,

0:04:30.998,0:04:33.188
and then he began this amazing career.

0:04:33.188,0:04:35.937
And what started his career is an insight

0:04:35.937,0:04:37.777
that the way most people were thinking

0:04:37.777,0:04:39.893
about the Holocaust was wrong.

0:04:39.893,0:04:42.299
Many people, most people at the time,

0:04:42.299,0:04:44.200
viewed the Holocaust as sort of representing

0:04:44.200,0:04:47.204
some tragic flaw on the part of the Germans,

0:04:47.204,0:04:51.038
some genetic taint, some authoritarian personality.

0:04:51.038,0:04:53.096
And Tajfel rejected this.

0:04:53.096,0:04:55.639
Tajfel said what we see in the Holocaust

0:04:55.639,0:04:57.950
is just an exaggeration

0:04:57.950,0:04:59.728
of normal psychological processes

0:04:59.728,0:05:01.489
that exist in every one of us.

0:05:01.489,0:05:04.174
And to explore this, he did a series of classic studies

0:05:04.174,0:05:05.918
with British adolescents.

0:05:05.918,0:05:07.467
And in one of his studies, what he did was he asked

0:05:07.467,0:05:10.019
the British adolescents all sorts of questions,

0:05:10.019,0:05:11.903
and then based on their answers, he said,

0:05:11.903,0:05:14.260
"I've looked at your answers,[br]and based on the answers,

0:05:14.260,0:05:16.357
I have determined that you are either" —

0:05:16.357,0:05:17.363
he told half of them —

0:05:17.363,0:05:20.320
"a Kandinsky lover, you love the work of Kandinsky,

0:05:20.320,0:05:23.298
or a Klee lover, you love the work of Klee."

0:05:23.298,0:05:25.114
It was entirely bogus.

0:05:25.114,0:05:27.404
Their answers had nothing[br]to do with Kandinsky or Klee.

0:05:27.404,0:05:30.132
They probably hadn't heard of the artists.

0:05:30.132,0:05:32.872
He just arbitrarily divided them up.

0:05:32.872,0:05:36.143
But what he found was, these categories mattered,

0:05:36.143,0:05:38.654
so when he later gave the subjects money,

0:05:38.654,0:05:40.330
they would prefer to give the money

0:05:40.330,0:05:42.130
to members of their own group

0:05:42.130,0:05:43.963
than members of the other group.

0:05:43.963,0:05:46.290
Worse, they were actually most interested

0:05:46.290,0:05:48.296
in establishing a difference

0:05:48.296,0:05:50.862
between their group and other groups,

0:05:50.862,0:05:52.770
so they would give up money for their own group

0:05:52.770,0:05:58.018
if by doing so they could give[br]the other group even less.

0:05:58.018,0:06:00.236
This bias seems to show up very early.

0:06:00.236,0:06:02.536
So my colleague and wife, Karen Wynn, at Yale

0:06:02.536,0:06:04.147
has done a series of studies with babies

0:06:04.147,0:06:06.979
where she exposes babies to puppets,

0:06:06.979,0:06:09.244
and the puppets have certain food preferences.

0:06:09.244,0:06:11.426
So one of the puppets might like green beans.

0:06:11.426,0:06:14.001
The other puppet might like graham crackers.

0:06:14.001,0:06:16.370
They test the babies own food preferences,

0:06:16.370,0:06:19.060
and babies typically prefer the graham crackers.

0:06:19.060,0:06:21.672
But the question is, does this matter to babies

0:06:21.672,0:06:24.788
in how they treat the puppets? And it matters a lot.

0:06:24.788,0:06:26.307
They tend to prefer the puppet

0:06:26.307,0:06:29.786
who has the same food tastes that they have,

0:06:29.786,0:06:32.342
and worse, they actually prefer puppets

0:06:32.342,0:06:35.327
who punish the puppet with the different food taste.

0:06:35.327,0:06:37.604
(Laughter)

0:06:37.604,0:06:41.236
We see this sort of in-group,[br]out-group psychology all the time.

0:06:41.236,0:06:42.900
We see it in political clashes

0:06:42.900,0:06:45.314
within groups with different ideologies.

0:06:45.314,0:06:48.940
We see it in its extreme in cases of war,

0:06:48.940,0:06:52.157
where the out-group isn't merely given less,

0:06:52.157,0:06:53.745
but dehumanized,

0:06:53.745,0:06:55.985
as in the Nazi perspective of Jews

0:06:55.985,0:06:58.070
as vermin or lice,

0:06:58.070,0:07:02.306
or the American perspective of Japanese as rats.

0:07:02.306,0:07:04.520
Stereotypes can also go awry.

0:07:04.520,0:07:06.781
So often they're rational and useful,

0:07:06.781,0:07:08.355
but sometimes they're irrational,

0:07:08.355,0:07:09.581
they give the wrong answers,

0:07:09.581,0:07:10.798
and other times

0:07:10.798,0:07:12.973
they lead to plainly immoral consequences.

0:07:12.973,0:07:15.781
And the case that's been most studied

0:07:15.781,0:07:17.448
is the case of race.

0:07:17.448,0:07:18.855
There was a fascinating study

0:07:18.855,0:07:20.929
prior to the 2008 election

0:07:20.929,0:07:23.955
where social psychologists looked at the extent

0:07:23.955,0:07:27.397
to which the candidates were[br]associated with America,

0:07:27.397,0:07:31.002
as in an unconscious association[br]with the American flag.

0:07:31.002,0:07:32.358
And in one of their studies they compared

0:07:32.358,0:07:34.372
Obama and McCain, and they found McCain

0:07:34.372,0:07:37.766
is thought of as more American than Obama,

0:07:37.766,0:07:40.339
and to some extent, people aren't [br]that surprised by hearing that.

0:07:40.339,0:07:42.257
McCain is a celebrated war hero,

0:07:42.257,0:07:43.916
and many people would explicitly say

0:07:43.916,0:07:46.616
he has more of an American story than Obama.

0:07:46.616,0:07:48.553
But they also compared Obama

0:07:48.553,0:07:51.069
to British Prime Minister Tony Blair,

0:07:51.069,0:07:53.330
and they found that Blair was also thought of

0:07:53.330,0:07:55.837
as more American than Obama,

0:07:55.837,0:07:57.910
even though subjects explicitly understood

0:07:57.910,0:08:00.900
that he's not American at all.

0:08:00.900,0:08:02.324
But they were responding, of course,

0:08:02.324,0:08:05.375
to the color of his skin.

0:08:05.375,0:08:07.426
These stereotypes and biases

0:08:07.426,0:08:08.876
have real-world consequences,

0:08:08.876,0:08:11.748
both subtle and very important.

0:08:11.748,0:08:14.410
In one recent study, researchers

0:08:14.410,0:08:17.679
put ads on eBay for the sale of baseball cards.

0:08:17.679,0:08:20.413
Some of them were held by white hands,

0:08:20.413,0:08:21.631
others by black hands.

0:08:21.631,0:08:23.210
They were the same baseball cards.

0:08:23.210,0:08:24.454
The ones held by black hands

0:08:24.454,0:08:26.521
got substantially smaller bids

0:08:26.521,0:08:29.005
than the ones held by white hands.

0:08:29.005,0:08:31.367
In research done at Stanford,

0:08:31.367,0:08:35.597
psychologists explored the case of people

0:08:35.597,0:08:39.166
sentenced for the murder of a white person.

0:08:39.166,0:08:41.970
It turns out, holding everything else constant,

0:08:41.970,0:08:44.340
you are considerably more likely to be executed

0:08:44.340,0:08:46.117
if you look like the man on the right

0:08:46.117,0:08:48.090
than the man on the left,

0:08:48.090,0:08:50.119
and this is in large part because

0:08:50.119,0:08:52.653
the man on the right looks more prototypically black,

0:08:52.653,0:08:55.283
more prototypically African-American,

0:08:55.283,0:08:57.332
and this apparently influences people's decisions

0:08:57.332,0:08:59.103
over what to do about him.

0:08:59.103,0:09:00.650
So now that we know about this,

0:09:00.650,0:09:02.307
how do we combat it?

0:09:02.307,0:09:03.929
And there are different avenues.

0:09:03.929,0:09:05.363
One avenue is to appeal

0:09:05.363,0:09:07.409
to people's emotional responses,

0:09:07.409,0:09:09.542
to appeal to people's empathy,

0:09:09.542,0:09:11.415
and we often do that through stories.

0:09:11.415,0:09:13.980
So if you are a liberal parent

0:09:13.980,0:09:15.852
and you want to encourage your children

0:09:15.852,0:09:18.226
to believe in the merits of nontraditional families,

0:09:18.226,0:09:20.499
you might give them a book like this.[br]["Heather Has Two Mommies"]

0:09:20.499,0:09:22.225
If you are conservative and have a different attitude,

0:09:22.225,0:09:24.156
you might give them a book like this.

0:09:24.156,0:09:25.905
(Laughter)[br]["Help! Mom! There Are Liberals under My Bed!"]

0:09:25.905,0:09:29.241
But in general, stories can turn

0:09:29.241,0:09:31.473
anonymous strangers into people who matter,

0:09:31.473,0:09:34.158
and the idea that we care about people

0:09:34.158,0:09:35.860
when we focus on them as individuals

0:09:35.860,0:09:38.139
is an idea which has shown up across history.

0:09:38.139,0:09:40.722
So Stalin apocryphally said,

0:09:40.722,0:09:42.339
"A single death is a tragedy,

0:09:42.339,0:09:44.379
a million deaths is a statistic,"

0:09:44.379,0:09:45.830
and Mother Teresa said,

0:09:45.830,0:09:47.371
"If I look at the mass, I will never act.

0:09:47.371,0:09:49.696
If I look at the one, I will."

0:09:49.696,0:09:51.766
Psychologists have explored this.

0:09:51.766,0:09:53.067
For instance, in one study,

0:09:53.067,0:09:55.850
people were given a list of facts about a crisis,

0:09:55.850,0:10:00.106
and it was seen how much they would donate

0:10:00.106,0:10:01.690
to solve this crisis,

0:10:01.690,0:10:03.527
and another group was given no facts at all

0:10:03.527,0:10:05.625
but they were told of an individual

0:10:05.625,0:10:08.065
and given a name and given a face,

0:10:08.065,0:10:11.284
and it turns out that they gave far more.

0:10:11.284,0:10:13.145
None of this I think is a secret

0:10:13.145,0:10:15.256
to the people who are engaged in charity work.

0:10:15.256,0:10:17.904
People don't tend to deluge people

0:10:17.904,0:10:19.227
with facts and statistics.

0:10:19.227,0:10:20.249
Rather, you show them faces,

0:10:20.249,0:10:21.985
you show them people.

0:10:21.985,0:10:25.212
It's possible that by extending our sympathies

0:10:25.212,0:10:27.183
to an individual, they can spread

0:10:27.183,0:10:30.061
to the group that the individual belongs to.

0:10:30.061,0:10:32.527
This is Harriet Beecher Stowe.

0:10:32.527,0:10:34.970
The story, perhaps apocryphal,

0:10:34.970,0:10:37.044
is that President Lincoln invited her

0:10:37.044,0:10:39.042
to the White House in the middle of the Civil War

0:10:39.042,0:10:40.626
and said to her,

0:10:40.626,0:10:43.290
"So you're the little lady who started this great war."

0:10:43.290,0:10:45.175
And he was talking about "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

0:10:45.175,0:10:47.706
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not[br]a great book of philosophy

0:10:47.706,0:10:50.850
or of theology or perhaps not even literature,

0:10:50.850,0:10:53.365
but it does a great job

0:10:53.365,0:10:55.863
of getting people to put themselves in the shoes

0:10:55.863,0:10:58.196
of people they wouldn't otherwise be in the shoes of,

0:10:58.196,0:11:00.598
put themselves in the shoes of slaves.

0:11:00.598,0:11:02.379
And that could well have been a catalyst

0:11:02.379,0:11:03.983
for great social change.

0:11:03.983,0:11:06.345
More recently, looking at America

0:11:06.345,0:11:09.414
in the last several decades,

0:11:09.414,0:11:12.563
there's some reason to believe[br]that shows like "The Cosby Show"

0:11:12.563,0:11:15.251
radically changed American attitudes[br]towards African-Americans,

0:11:15.251,0:11:18.234
while shows like "Will and Grace" and "Modern Family"

0:11:18.234,0:11:19.597
changed American attitudes

0:11:19.597,0:11:20.897
towards gay men and women.

0:11:20.897,0:11:23.352
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say

0:11:23.352,0:11:26.013
that the major catalyst in America for moral change

0:11:26.013,0:11:28.906
has been a situation comedy.

0:11:28.906,0:11:30.322
But it's not all emotions,

0:11:30.322,0:11:31.598
and I want to end by appealing

0:11:31.598,0:11:33.833
to the power of reason.

0:11:33.833,0:11:35.989
At some point in his wonderful book

0:11:35.989,0:11:37.212
"The Better Angels of Our Nature,"

0:11:37.212,0:11:39.228
Steven Pinker says,

0:11:39.228,0:11:41.810
the Old Testament says love thy neighbor,

0:11:41.810,0:11:44.532
and the New Testament says love thy enemy,

0:11:44.532,0:11:47.218
but I don't love either one of them, not really,

0:11:47.218,0:11:48.885
but I don't want to kill them.

0:11:48.885,0:11:50.751
I know I have obligations to them,

0:11:50.751,0:11:54.221
but my moral feelings to them, my moral beliefs

0:11:54.221,0:11:55.934
about how I should behave towards them,

0:11:55.934,0:11:57.981
aren't grounded in love.

0:11:57.981,0:11:59.920
What they're grounded in is the[br]understanding of human rights,

0:11:59.920,0:12:02.143
a belief that their life is as valuable to them

0:12:02.143,0:12:04.499
as my life is to me,

0:12:04.499,0:12:06.431
and to support this, he tells a story

0:12:06.431,0:12:08.279
by the great philosopher Adam Smith,

0:12:08.279,0:12:09.965
and I want to tell this story too,

0:12:09.965,0:12:11.261
though I'm going to modify it a little bit

0:12:11.261,0:12:12.939
for modern times.

0:12:12.939,0:12:14.840
So Adam Smith starts by asking you to imagine

0:12:14.840,0:12:16.741
the death of thousands of people,

0:12:16.741,0:12:18.781
and imagine that the thousands of people

0:12:18.781,0:12:21.020
are in a country you are not familiar with.

0:12:21.020,0:12:24.574
It could be China or India or a country in Africa.

0:12:24.574,0:12:27.058
And Smith says, how would you respond?

0:12:27.058,0:12:29.365
And you would say, well that's too bad,

0:12:29.365,0:12:31.241
and you'd go on to the rest of your life.

0:12:31.241,0:12:33.460
If you were to open up The New[br]York Times online or something,

0:12:33.460,0:12:36.420
and discover this, and in fact[br]this happens to us all the time,

0:12:36.420,0:12:37.941
we go about our lives.

0:12:37.941,0:12:40.135
But imagine instead, Smith says,

0:12:40.135,0:12:41.389
you were to learn that tomorrow

0:12:41.389,0:12:43.928
you were to have your little finger chopped off.

0:12:43.928,0:12:46.097
Smith says, that would matter a lot.

0:12:46.097,0:12:47.508
You would not sleep that night

0:12:47.508,0:12:48.861
wondering about that.

0:12:48.861,0:12:50.880
So this raises the question:

0:12:50.880,0:12:53.346
Would you sacrifice thousands of lives

0:12:53.346,0:12:55.315
to save your little finger?

0:12:55.315,0:12:57.633
Now answer this in the privacy of your own head,

0:12:57.633,0:13:00.552
but Smith says, absolutely not,

0:13:00.552,0:13:02.244
what a horrid thought.

0:13:02.244,0:13:04.275
And so this raises the question,

0:13:04.275,0:13:05.649
and so, as Smith puts it,

0:13:05.649,0:13:07.867
"When our passive feelings are almost always

0:13:07.867,0:13:09.315
so sordid and so selfish,

0:13:09.315,0:13:10.780
how comes it that our active principles

0:13:10.780,0:13:13.313
should often be so generous and so noble?"

0:13:13.313,0:13:15.363
And Smith's answer is, "It is reason,

0:13:15.363,0:13:17.138
principle, conscience.

0:13:17.138,0:13:18.679
[This] calls to us,

0:13:18.679,0:13:22.104
with a voice capable of astonishing[br]the most presumptuous of our passions,

0:13:22.104,0:13:23.781
that we are but one of the multitude,

0:13:23.781,0:13:26.222
in no respect better than any other in it."

0:13:26.222,0:13:28.347
And this last part is what is often described

0:13:28.347,0:13:31.555
as the principle of impartiality.

0:13:31.555,0:13:34.184
And this principle of impartiality manifests itself

0:13:34.184,0:13:35.931
in all of the world's religions,

0:13:35.951,0:13:38.209
in all of the different versions of the golden rule,

0:13:38.209,0:13:40.663
and in all of the world's moral philosophies,

0:13:40.663,0:13:41.970
which differ in many ways

0:13:41.970,0:13:44.964
but share the presupposition[br]that we should judge morality

0:13:44.964,0:13:47.949
from sort of an impartial point of view.

0:13:47.949,0:13:49.771
The best articulation of this view

0:13:49.771,0:13:52.856
is actually, for me, it's not from[br]a theologian or from a philosopher,

0:13:52.856,0:13:54.213
but from Humphrey Bogart

0:13:54.213,0:13:55.760
at the end of "Casablanca."

0:13:55.760,0:13:59.536
So, spoiler alert, he's telling his lover

0:13:59.536,0:14:00.676
that they have to separate

0:14:00.676,0:14:02.269
for the more general good,

0:14:02.269,0:14:04.133
and he says to her, and I won't do the accent,

0:14:04.133,0:14:05.915
but he says to her, "It doesn't take much to see

0:14:05.915,0:14:07.274
that the problems of three little people

0:14:07.274,0:14:10.385
don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

0:14:10.385,0:14:13.665
Our reason could cause us to override our passions.

0:14:13.665,0:14:15.381
Our reason could motivate us

0:14:15.381,0:14:16.602
to extend our empathy,

0:14:16.602,0:14:18.929
could motivate us to write a[br]book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"

0:14:18.929,0:14:20.652
or read a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"

0:14:20.652,0:14:23.346
and our reason can motivate us to create

0:14:23.346,0:14:25.308
customs and taboos and laws

0:14:25.308,0:14:27.118
that will constrain us

0:14:27.118,0:14:28.794
from acting upon our impulses

0:14:28.794,0:14:30.383
when, as rational beings, we feel

0:14:30.383,0:14:31.778
we should be constrained.

0:14:31.778,0:14:33.791
This is what a constitution is.

0:14:33.791,0:14:36.712
A constitution is something[br]which was set up in the past

0:14:36.712,0:14:38.019
that applies now in the present,

0:14:38.019,0:14:39.004
and what it says is,

0:14:39.004,0:14:41.231
no matter how much we might to reelect

0:14:41.231,0:14:43.834
a popular president for a third term,

0:14:43.834,0:14:45.929
no matter how much white Americans might choose

0:14:45.929,0:14:49.997
to feel that they want to reinstate[br]the institution of slavery, we can't.

0:14:49.997,0:14:51.673
We have bound ourselves.

0:14:51.673,0:14:54.090
And we bind ourselves in other ways as well.

0:14:54.090,0:14:56.848
We know that when it comes to choosing somebody

0:14:56.848,0:14:59.799
for a job, for an award,

0:14:59.799,0:15:02.757
we are strongly biased by their race,

0:15:02.757,0:15:05.053
we are biased by their gender,

0:15:05.053,0:15:07.268
we are biased by how attractive they are,

0:15:07.268,0:15:09.919
and sometimes we might say,[br]"Well fine, that's the way it should be."

0:15:09.919,0:15:12.226
But other times we say, "This is wrong."

0:15:12.226,0:15:14.115
And so to combat this,

0:15:14.115,0:15:16.366
we don't just try harder,

0:15:16.366,0:15:19.367
but rather what we do is we set up situations

0:15:19.367,0:15:22.406
where these other sources[br]of information can't bias us,

0:15:22.406,0:15:23.721
which is why many orchestras

0:15:23.721,0:15:26.366
audition musicians behind screens,

0:15:26.366,0:15:27.610
so the only information they have

0:15:27.610,0:15:30.303
is the information they believe should matter.

0:15:30.303,0:15:32.626
I think prejudice and bias

0:15:32.626,0:15:35.720
illustrate a fundamental duality of human nature.

0:15:35.720,0:15:39.496
We have gut feelings, instincts, emotions,

0:15:39.496,0:15:41.657
and they affect our judgments and our actions

0:15:41.657,0:15:43.988
for good and for evil,

0:15:43.988,0:15:47.610
but we are also capable of rational deliberation

0:15:47.610,0:15:49.045
and intelligent planning,

0:15:49.045,0:15:51.862
and we can use these to, in some cases,

0:15:51.862,0:15:53.805
accelerate and nourish our emotions,

0:15:53.805,0:15:56.573
and in other cases staunch them.

0:15:56.573,0:15:57.807
And it's in this way

0:15:57.807,0:16:00.574
that reason helps us create a better world.

0:16:00.574,0:16:02.918
Thank you.

0:16:02.918,0:16:06.623
(Applause)