0:00:00.887,0:00:04.345
So I'm starting us out today[br]with a historical mystery.

0:00:05.037,0:00:08.068
In 1957, there were two young women,

0:00:08.068,0:00:09.512
both in their 20s,

0:00:09.512,0:00:10.935
both living in the same city,

0:00:10.935,0:00:13.771
both members of the same political group.

0:00:14.815,0:00:18.587
That year both decided[br]to commit violent attacks.

0:00:19.578,0:00:23.361
One girl took a gun and approached[br]a soldier at a checkpoint.

0:00:24.404,0:00:29.070
The other girl took a bomb[br]and went to a crowded café.

0:00:30.383,0:00:32.082
But here's the thing.

0:00:32.532,0:00:37.028
One of the those girls followed[br]through with the attack,

0:00:37.028,0:00:40.048
but the other turned back.

0:00:41.335,0:00:43.353
So what made the difference?

0:00:44.237,0:00:45.786
I'm a behavioral historian

0:00:45.786,0:00:47.569
and I study aggression,

0:00:47.569,0:00:49.554
moral cognition

0:00:49.554,0:00:52.220
and decision-making in social movements.

0:00:52.720,0:00:53.970
That's a mouthful.

0:00:53.970,0:00:54.972
(Laughing)

0:00:54.972,0:00:57.156
So the translation of that

0:00:57.156,0:01:02.246
is I study the moment an individual[br]decides to pull the trigger,

0:01:02.246,0:01:06.921
the day-to-day decisions[br]that led up to that moment

0:01:06.921,0:01:12.896
and the stories that they tell themselves[br]about why that behavior is justified.

0:01:13.651,0:01:14.852
Now this topic --

0:01:14.852,0:01:16.964
it's not just scholarly for me.

0:01:17.442,0:01:19.226
It's actually a bit personal.

0:01:19.530,0:01:22.782
I grew up in Kootenai County, Idaho,

0:01:22.782,0:01:24.785
and this is very important.

0:01:25.488,0:01:29.385
This is not the part[br]of Idaho with potatoes.

0:01:29.733,0:01:31.796
We have no potatoes.

0:01:32.247,0:01:34.132
And if you ask my about potatoes,

0:01:34.132,0:01:35.341
I will find you.

0:01:35.341,0:01:36.407
(Laughter)

0:01:36.901,0:01:40.222
This part of Idaho is known[br]for mountain lakes,

0:01:40.222,0:01:42.163
horseback riding --

0:01:42.163,0:01:43.411
skiing.

0:01:43.804,0:01:45.165
Unfortunately,

0:01:45.165,0:01:47.021
starting in the 1980s,

0:01:47.021,0:01:50.970
it also became known[br]as the worldwide headquarters

0:01:50.970,0:01:53.048
for the Aryan Nations.

0:01:53.468,0:01:57.054
Every year, members of the local[br]neo-Nazi compound

0:01:57.054,0:01:59.920
would turn out and march through our town,

0:01:59.920,0:02:01.308
and every year,

0:02:01.308,0:02:04.435
members of our town[br]would turn out and protest them.

0:02:04.672,0:02:08.914
Now, in 2001, I graduated from high school

0:02:08.914,0:02:12.470
and I went to college in New York City.

0:02:12.768,0:02:16.426
I arrived in August 2001.

0:02:17.482,0:02:19.790
As many of you probably are aware,

0:02:19.790,0:02:21.736
three weeks later,

0:02:21.736,0:02:23.726
the Twin Towers went down.

0:02:24.244,0:02:27.289
Now, I was shocked.

0:02:28.567,0:02:30.942
I was incredibly angry.

0:02:32.725,0:02:34.403
I wanted to do something

0:02:34.403,0:02:38.420
but the only thing that I could think[br]of doing at that time

0:02:38.420,0:02:40.623
was to study Arabic.

0:02:41.955,0:02:44.931
I will admit I was that girl in class

0:02:44.931,0:02:49.237
that wanted to know why "they hate us."

0:02:49.650,0:02:52.763
I started studying Arabic[br]for very wrong reasons.

0:02:53.381,0:02:55.245
But something unexpected happened.

0:02:55.245,0:02:58.215
I got a scholarship to go study in Israel.

0:02:58.877,0:03:01.486
So the Idaho girl went to the Middle East.

0:03:01.735,0:03:06.204
And while I was there I met[br]Palestinian Muslims,

0:03:06.205,0:03:08.194
Palestinian Christians,

0:03:08.194,0:03:09.270
Israeli settlers,

0:03:09.270,0:03:11.501
Israeli peace activists,

0:03:11.501,0:03:16.035
and what I learned is that[br]every act has an ecology.

0:03:16.736,0:03:18.165
It has a context.

0:03:20.233,0:03:23.809
Now since then I have gone[br]around the world,

0:03:23.809,0:03:27.649
I have studied violent movements,

0:03:27.649,0:03:30.081
I have worked with NGOs

0:03:30.081,0:03:32.693
and ex-combatants in Iraq,

0:03:32.693,0:03:34.037
Syria,

0:03:34.037,0:03:35.243
Vietnam,

0:03:35.243,0:03:36.362
the Balkans --

0:03:36.362,0:03:37.418
Cuba.

0:03:38.510,0:03:40.964
I earned my PhD in History,

0:03:40.964,0:03:43.501
and now what I do is I go[br]to different archives

0:03:43.501,0:03:45.682
and I dig through documents,

0:03:45.682,0:03:49.305
looking for police confessions,

0:03:49.305,0:03:51.822
court cases ...

0:03:51.822,0:03:52.862
diaries,

0:03:52.862,0:03:56.766
manifestos of individuals[br]involved in violent attacks.

0:03:57.332,0:04:00.384
Now you gather all these documents --

0:04:00.384,0:04:01.670
what do they tell you?

0:04:02.011,0:04:05.889
Our brains love causal[br]mysteries, it turns out.

0:04:06.237,0:04:09.203
So any time we see an attack on the news,

0:04:09.203,0:04:11.842
we tend to ask one question:

0:04:11.842,0:04:12.955
why?

0:04:12.955,0:04:14.523
Why did that happen?

0:04:14.523,0:04:17.563
Well, I can tell you I've read[br]thousands of manifestos

0:04:17.563,0:04:21.930
and what you find out is[br]that they are actually imitative.

0:04:21.930,0:04:25.390
They imitate the political movement[br]that they're drawing from.

0:04:25.598,0:04:29.567
So they actually don't tell us[br]a lot about decision-making

0:04:29.567,0:04:31.561
in that particular case.

0:04:32.091,0:04:36.367
So we have to teach ourselves[br]to ask a totally different question.

0:04:36.646,0:04:40.324
Instead of "Why?" we have to ask "How?"

0:04:40.324,0:04:43.372
How did individuals produce these attacks

0:04:43.372,0:04:48.440
and how did their decision-making ecology[br]contribute to violent behavior?

0:04:48.861,0:04:53.203
There's a couple things I've learned[br]from asking this kind of question.

0:04:53.871,0:04:58.576
The most important thing is that political[br]violence is not culturally endemic.

0:04:59.123,0:05:00.313
We create it.

0:05:00.614,0:05:03.099
And whether we realize it or not,

0:05:03.099,0:05:08.303
our day-to-day habits contribute[br]to the creation of violence

0:05:08.303,0:05:09.687
in our environment.

0:05:09.949,0:05:14.631
So here's a couple of habits[br]that I've learned contribute to violence.

0:05:16.322,0:05:19.644
One of the first things that attackers did

0:05:19.644,0:05:23.544
when preparing themselves[br]for a violent event

0:05:23.544,0:05:26.914
was they enclosed themselves[br]in an information bubble.

0:05:27.239,0:05:29.526
We've heard of fake news, yeah?

0:05:29.820,0:05:32.229
Well, this shocked me:

0:05:32.229,0:05:35.444
every group that I studied[br]had some kind of a fake news slogan.

0:05:35.807,0:05:39.169
French communists [br]called it the "putrid press."

0:05:39.182,0:05:43.302
French Nationalists called it[br]the "sellout press"

0:05:43.302,0:05:45.240
and the "treasonous press."

0:05:45.437,0:05:48.721
Islamists in Egypt called it[br]the "depraved news."

0:05:48.971,0:05:52.059
And Egyptian communists called it ...

0:05:52.059,0:05:53.331
"fake news."

0:05:53.434,0:05:57.599
So why do groups spend all this time[br]trying to make these information bubbles?

0:05:57.908,0:06:00.397
The answer is actually really simple.

0:06:00.725,0:06:04.849
We make decisions based on[br]the information we trust, yeah?

0:06:05.380,0:06:09.246
So if we trust bad information,

0:06:09.246,0:06:12.110
we're going to make bad decisions.

0:06:12.110,0:06:15.200
Another interesting habit[br]that individuals used

0:06:15.200,0:06:18.268
when they wanted[br]to produce a violent attack

0:06:18.268,0:06:21.645
was that they looked at their victim[br]not as an individual

0:06:21.645,0:06:24.356
but just as a number of an opposing team.

0:06:25.173,0:06:26.904
Now this gets really weird.

0:06:27.554,0:06:29.289
There's some fun brain science

0:06:29.289,0:06:32.025
behind why that kind[br]of thinking is effective.

0:06:32.025,0:06:35.508
Say I divide all of you guys[br]into two teams:

0:06:35.508,0:06:36.567
blue team,

0:06:36.567,0:06:37.640
red team.

0:06:38.136,0:06:41.282
And then I ask you to compete[br]in a game against each other.

0:06:41.635,0:06:45.587
Well, the funny thing is[br]within milliseconds,

0:06:45.587,0:06:49.578
you will actually start[br]experiencing pleasure ...

0:06:49.578,0:06:54.752
pleasure when something bad happens[br]to members of the other team.

0:06:55.814,0:06:59.974
The funny thing about that is[br]if I ask one of you blue team members

0:06:59.974,0:07:02.836
to go and join the red team,

0:07:02.836,0:07:04.916
your brain recalibates,

0:07:04.916,0:07:06.275
and within milliseconds,

0:07:06.275,0:07:08.836
you will now start experiencing pleasure

0:07:08.836,0:07:12.294
when bad things happen[br]to members of your old team.

0:07:14.144,0:07:16.932
This is a really good example

0:07:16.932,0:07:20.741
of why us/them thinking is so dangerous

0:07:20.741,0:07:22.379
in our political environment.

0:07:22.694,0:07:27.058
Another habit that attackers used[br]to kind of rev themselves up for an attack

0:07:27.058,0:07:29.098
was they focused on differences.

0:07:29.244,0:07:30.238
In other words,

0:07:30.238,0:07:31.571
they looked at their victims

0:07:31.571,0:07:35.304
and they thought "I share[br]nothing in common with that person.

0:07:35.304,0:07:37.374
They are totally different than me."

0:07:38.953,0:07:42.097
Again, this might sound[br]like a really simple concept,

0:07:42.097,0:07:46.173
but there's some fascinating science[br]behind why this works.

0:07:47.377,0:07:52.462
Say I show you guys videos[br]of different-colored hands

0:07:52.462,0:07:56.261
and sharp pins being driven[br]into these different-colored hands,

0:07:56.261,0:07:57.259
OK?

0:07:58.464,0:08:00.413
If you're white,

0:08:00.413,0:08:06.147
the chances are you will experience[br]the most sympathetic activation,

0:08:06.147,0:08:07.565
or the most pain,

0:08:07.565,0:08:10.496
when you see a pin[br]going into the white hand.

0:08:12.209,0:08:15.471
If you are Latin American, Arab, Black,

0:08:15.471,0:08:19.110
you will probably experience[br]the most sympathetic activation

0:08:19.110,0:08:23.688
watching a pin going into the hand[br]that looks most like yours.

0:08:26.921,0:08:30.335
The good news is that's not[br]biologically fixed.

0:08:30.878,0:08:32.673
That is learned behavior.

0:08:33.395,0:08:38.050
Which means the more we spend time[br]with other ethnic communities,

0:08:38.050,0:08:41.216
and the more we see them as similar to us

0:08:41.216,0:08:44.647
and part of our team,

0:08:44.647,0:08:46.675
the more we feel their pain.

0:08:47.016,0:08:49.570
The last habit[br]that I'm going to talk about

0:08:49.570,0:08:54.699
is when attackers prepared themselves[br]to go out and do one of these events,

0:08:54.699,0:08:57.146
they focused on certain emotional cues.

0:08:57.372,0:09:02.961
For months they geared themselves up[br]by focusing on anger cues, for instance.

0:09:03.277,0:09:05.863
I bring this up because[br]it's really popular right now.

0:09:05.863,0:09:09.571
If you read blogs or the news,

0:09:09.571,0:09:13.574
you see talk of two concepts[br]from laboratory science:

0:09:13.574,0:09:16.675
amygdala hijacking[br]and emotional hijacking.

0:09:16.931,0:09:19.493
Now, amygdala hijacking:

0:09:19.493,0:09:22.093
it's the concept that I show you a cue --

0:09:22.093,0:09:23.625
say, a gun --

0:09:23.625,0:09:28.413
and your brain reacts with an automatic[br]threat response to that cue.

0:09:28.693,0:09:29.838
Emotional hijacking --

0:09:29.838,0:09:31.276
it's a very similar concept.

0:09:31.276,0:09:34.840
It's the idea that I show[br]you an anger cue,

0:09:34.840,0:09:36.389
for instance,

0:09:36.389,0:09:41.419
and your brain will react[br]with an automatic anger response

0:09:41.419,0:09:42.568
to that cue.

0:09:42.801,0:09:45.495
I think women usually[br]get this more than men.

0:09:45.495,0:09:46.498
(Laughing)

0:09:46.834,0:09:47.827
(Laughter)

0:09:47.827,0:09:51.376
That kind of a hijacking narrative[br]grabs our attention --

0:09:51.376,0:09:54.049
just the word 'hijacking"[br]grabs our attention.

0:09:54.707,0:09:55.756
The thing is,

0:09:55.756,0:10:00.378
most of the time that's not[br]really how cues work in real life.

0:10:01.084,0:10:02.144
If you study history,

0:10:02.144,0:10:07.430
what you find is that we are bombarded[br]with hundreds of thousands of cues

0:10:07.430,0:10:08.661
every day.

0:10:08.988,0:10:11.239
And so what we do is we learn to filter.

0:10:11.239,0:10:12.907
We ignore some cues;

0:10:12.907,0:10:14.787
we pay attention to other cues.

0:10:15.071,0:10:18.655
For political violence[br]this becomes really important,

0:10:18.655,0:10:24.590
because what it meant is that attackers[br]usually didn't just see an anger cue

0:10:24.590,0:10:26.470
and suddenly snap.

0:10:27.002,0:10:33.197
Instead, politicians,[br]social activists spent weeks

0:10:33.197,0:10:34.204
months,

0:10:34.204,0:10:36.987
years flooding the environment

0:10:36.987,0:10:39.260
with anger cues, for instance.

0:10:40.056,0:10:41.929
And attackers --

0:10:41.929,0:10:44.388
they paid attention to those cues,

0:10:44.388,0:10:47.116
they trusted those cues,

0:10:47.116,0:10:48.592
they focused on them,

0:10:48.592,0:10:50.877
they even memorized those cues.

0:10:51.335,0:10:57.489
All of this just really goes to show[br]how important it is to study history.

0:10:57.677,0:11:01.179
It's one thing to see how cues[br]operate in a laboratory setting.

0:11:01.766,0:11:05.218
And those laboratory experiments[br]are incredibly important.

0:11:05.403,0:11:09.492
They give us a lot of new data[br]about how our bodies work.

0:11:10.269,0:11:15.056
But it's also very important to see[br]how those cues operate in real life.

0:11:18.647,0:11:22.478
So what does all this tell us[br]about political violence?

0:11:24.075,0:11:27.663
Political violence is not[br]culturally endemic.

0:11:28.081,0:11:33.099
It is not an automatic, predetermined[br]response to environmental stimuli.

0:11:33.682,0:11:34.865
We produce it.

0:11:35.436,0:11:37.509
Our everyday habits produce it.

0:11:38.914,0:11:42.875
Let's go back actually to those two[br]women that I mentioned at the start.

0:11:44.084,0:11:49.622
The first woman had been paying[br]attention to those outrage campaigns,

0:11:49.622,0:11:53.361
so she took a gun and approached[br]a soldier at a checkpoint.

0:11:55.477,0:11:56.658
But in that moment,

0:11:56.658,0:11:59.010
something really interesting happened.

0:11:59.131,0:12:01.933
She looked at that soldier

0:12:01.933,0:12:06.247
and she thought to herself,

0:12:06.247,0:12:08.951
"He's the same age as me.

0:12:09.507,0:12:11.251
He looks like me."

0:12:12.876,0:12:14.056
And she put down the gun

0:12:14.056,0:12:16.346
and she walked away

0:12:16.346,0:12:19.086
just from that little bit of similarity.

0:12:20.199,0:12:23.634
The second girl had a totally[br]different outcome.

0:12:25.676,0:12:28.583
She also listened[br]to the outrage campaigns,

0:12:28.583,0:12:31.458
but she surrounded herself[br]with individuals

0:12:31.458,0:12:33.269
who were supportive of violence,

0:12:33.269,0:12:35.775
with peers who supported her violence.

0:12:36.819,0:12:39.835
She enclosed herself[br]in an information bubble.

0:12:40.875,0:12:44.206
She focused on certain[br]emotional cues for months.

0:12:44.484,0:12:49.783
She taught herself to bypass certain[br]cultural inhibitions against violence.

0:12:50.148,0:12:51.918
She practiced her plan,

0:12:51.918,0:12:54.079
she taught herself new habits

0:12:54.079,0:12:55.331
and when the time came,

0:12:55.331,0:12:58.368
she took her bomb to the café

0:12:58.368,0:13:00.831
and she followed through with that attack.

0:13:03.656,0:13:06.166
This was not impulse.

0:13:07.102,0:13:08.656
This was learning.

0:13:10.463,0:13:14.369
Polarization in our society[br]is not impulse,

0:13:14.369,0:13:15.715
it's learning.

0:13:16.391,0:13:19.504
Every day we are teaching ourselves:

0:13:19.504,0:13:21.456
the news we click on,

0:13:21.456,0:13:23.523
the emotions that we focus on,

0:13:23.523,0:13:27.883
the thoughts that we entertain[br]about the red team or the blue team.

0:13:28.284,0:13:30.658
All of this contributes to learning,

0:13:30.658,0:13:32.497
whether we realize it or not.

0:13:32.847,0:13:35.570
The good news

0:13:35.570,0:13:41.549
is that while the individuals[br]I study already made their decisions,

0:13:41.549,0:13:43.969
we can still change our trajectory.

0:13:45.323,0:13:49.006
We might never make[br]the decisions that they made,

0:13:49.006,0:13:52.918
but we can stop contributing[br]to violent ecologies.

0:13:53.664,0:13:58.249
We can get out of whatever[br]news bubble we're in,

0:13:58.249,0:14:02.130
we can be more mindful[br]about the emotional cues

0:14:02.130,0:14:03.383
that we focus on,

0:14:03.383,0:14:05.782
the outrage bait that we click on.

0:14:06.422,0:14:07.634
But most importantly,

0:14:07.634,0:14:09.801
we can stop seeing each other

0:14:09.801,0:14:13.545
as just members of the red team[br]or the blue team.

0:14:14.079,0:14:17.017
Because whether we are Christian,

0:14:17.017,0:14:18.018
Muslim,

0:14:18.018,0:14:19.022
Jewish,

0:14:19.022,0:14:20.080
Atheist,

0:14:20.080,0:14:22.388
Democrat or Republican,

0:14:22.388,0:14:23.568
we're human.

0:14:23.568,0:14:24.843
We're human beings.

0:14:26.128,0:14:29.312
And we often share really similar habits.

0:14:30.328,0:14:31.661
We have differences.

0:14:32.233,0:14:34.400
Those differences are beautiful

0:14:34.400,0:14:36.562
and those differences are very important.

0:14:36.857,0:14:40.422
But our future depends on us

0:14:40.422,0:14:44.628
being able to find common ground[br]with the other side.

0:14:45.785,0:14:49.255
And that's why it is so, so important

0:14:49.255,0:14:51.747
for us to retrain our brains

0:14:51.747,0:14:55.168
and stop contributing[br]to violent ecologies.

0:14:56.272,0:14:57.524
Thank you.

0:14:57.524,0:14:59.374
(Applause)