tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/human-nature-14835/articlesHuman nature – The Conversation2023-05-22T04:14:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027562023-05-22T04:14:32Z2023-05-22T04:14:32ZWhere have all the Luddites gone? Exploring what makes us human – and whether modern technology threatens to destroy it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526362/original/file-20230515-23727-om8jpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=285%2C38%2C3949%2C2781&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The great – if sometimes overlooked – 20th-century philosopher and cultural critic <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-an-obscure-austrian-philosopher-saw-through-our-empty-rhetoric-about-sustainability-77884">Günther Anders</a> once proposed that our modern age is characterised by a dangerous and pervasive “<em>Apocalypse-Blindheit</em>”: a blindness to the apocalypse. </p>
<p>Writing in the midst of the 20th-century nuclear arms race, he suggested an unquestioning faith in science and progress prevents us from seeing the technological catastrophe spreading out all around us.</p>
<p>The reality of human-created climate change has, in recent years, perhaps begun to cure this condition. And there are at least some indications a significant number of people are becoming aware of the mess we’re in.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity – Richard King (Monash University Press)</em></p>
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<p>But, as Richard King notes in his sweeping and ambitious <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/here-be-monsters/">Here Be Monsters</a>, our philosophical or intellectual responses to technology have not really kept pace with events.</p>
<p>Instead, what King calls “the techno-critical tradition”, or a tradition of thinkers who view technological modernity as fundamentally damaging and foreboding, has more or less disappeared.</p>
<p>Thus, once-towering philosophers of technology – figures like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford">Lewis Mumford</a>, who was already warning in the 1950s that unrestricted technological expansion threatened the durability of both the human and the natural worlds, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman">Neil Postman</a>, who in the 1980s described modern society as a “technopoly” in which human behaviour is thoroughly governed and regulated by machines - hardly receive any attention at all.</p>
<p>And the more “techno-critical” elements of those who <em>are</em> studied widely (notably the ubiquitous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt">Hannah Arendt</a>) are quickly glossed over or pushed to the margins.</p>
<p>Why, then, have full-throated critiques of technology become so scarce at the exact moment when they might seem most pertinent? Where have all the Luddites gone?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/feed-me-4-ways-to-take-control-of-social-media-algorithms-and-get-the-content-you-actually-want-204374">Feed me: 4 ways to take control of social media algorithms and get the content you actually want</a>
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<h2>Recovering human nature</h2>
<p>King argues one crucial reason for the decline of the techno-critical tradition is its tendency to rely on the concept of human nature. </p>
<p>We can only maintain our technologies corrupt us if we have some relatively fixed sense of who we would be without them.</p>
<p>But, particularly in the rarefied atmosphere of universities, the concept of human nature has been decidedly unfashionable (indeed all but forbidden) for nearly half a century. It has become commonplace to suggest every definition of the human, no matter how loose or how broad, exists primarily to exclude its opposite. We define the “human”, the argument goes, to mark off forms of life that can be labelled <em>inhuman</em>, and thus justify their elimination.</p>
<p>As King sees it, the widespread abandonment of the concept of human nature might be well-intentioned. But it has inadvertently left us vulnerable to an unthinking veneration of technology - one particularly amendable to the interests of capitalism.</p>
<p>For to strip the human of all natural limits is to present it as nothing more than what King calls a “blank slate” – a programmable machine capable of being engineered for optimal production and consumption, void of any essential needs or desires.</p>
<p>“The danger,” King writes:</p>
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<p>is not that we create a monster that runs amok, or a plague of zombies, or a rogue AI – or a planet of the apes, for that matter – but that we begin to see ourselves and others as something less than fully human, as machines to be rewired or recalibrated in line with the dominant ideological worldview. </p>
<p>In that case, we would <em>already</em> have arrived at a perilous situation – a situation where our perception of ourselves as bounded by and connected through nature had given way to the “post-humanist” view that humans are fleshy automata, subject to endless modification.</p>
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<p>For King, this danger is at a historical tipping point. And we must face it immediately. Doing so, however, will require more than an examination of technology itself.</p>
<p>It will require what King dubs a “radical humanism”, and a fundamental reassessment of what we are – including our relations with ourselves, with one another, and with our common world.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-pioneer-geoffrey-hinton-says-ai-is-a-new-form-of-intelligence-unlike-our-own-have-we-been-getting-it-wrong-this-whole-time-204911">AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton says AI is a new form of intelligence unlike our own. Have we been getting it wrong this whole time?</a>
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<h2>Homo Faber, or the tool-making animal</h2>
<p>Here Be Monsters proposes to develop nothing less than a new definition of human nature.</p>
<p>King, of course, is fully aware of the immensity of the task, and he is careful to qualify his approach in important ways. He acknowledges, for example, the basic difficulty of distinguishing between nature and culture. Any consistent understanding of the former would eventually have to envelop the latter.</p>
<p>It’s part of human nature to produce culture, King allows. The human is “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_faber">homo faber</a>”, he proposes, “man the maker”. And “no less than the instinct for self-preservation or sexual desire, technological creativity is fundamental to our being”.</p>
<p>But from King’s perspective, there is a qualitative difference between building tools that harness the power of nature (for example, a windmill) and using technology to alter its very fabric (for example, splitting the atom).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526359/original/file-20230515-24689-pj3w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">King sees a qualitative difference between creating tools that harness the power of nature and those that alter its very fabric.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charlie Riedel/AP</span></span>
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<p>The line might be hard to pinpoint. But as King sees it, in the age of nuclear energy, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, machine learning, and much more, it was crossed long ago.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-latest-on-gmos-and-gene-edited-foods-and-what-are-the-concerns-an-expert-explains-204275">What’s the latest on GMOs and gene-edited foods – and what are the concerns? An expert explains</a>
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<p>King similarly acknowledges his tendency to frame the problem in ways that primarily concern the wealthy inhabitants of the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/global-north-countries">Global North</a> - and that the same issues will look entirely different from the perspective of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South">Global South</a>. It must be infuriating to hear those who have already reaped most of the benefits of technological development now insist that limits be placed on those who have paid most of the costs.</p>
<p>“Nevertheless,” King insists, “the Global North and Global South […] are at very different stages of development”. And precisely because it has advanced further into the belly of the beast, “the North has problems the South doesn’t have, or has to a lesser degree”. The North, in other words, should not be seen as a model, but as a warning. </p>
<h2>Social, embodied, creative</h2>
<p>Following these introductory remarks, King divides his book into three parts. Each addresses a crucial aspect of the human experience, and the way modern technology threatens to destroy it.</p>
<p>The first part describes humans as essentially social creatures, who require both the physical presence of other humans and a robust political community in order to become themselves.</p>
<p>It argues that social media, algorithmic manipulation, and what King calls “technologies of absence” corrupt this aspect of our existence.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526360/original/file-20230515-19748-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A crowd in Tokyo earlier this month. Humans are essentially social creatures, writes King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kimimasa Mayama/AP</span></span>
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<p>The second part takes up the related question of our embodiment. King proposes neither the mind nor the body can be reduced to mechanistic calculations, and warns against the pernicious effects of attempting to do so.</p>
<p>For King, when we view our mind as nothing more than a large calculator and our body as an object to be constructed and reconstructed at will, we risk losing sight of the very limits that make it possible for us to flourish.</p>
<p>Finally, the third part explores the human capacity for free creation and “the pleasures of practical activity”. Here King seeks to revitalise the familiar Marxist theme of alienation, or the sense in which technological modes of production distance us from the products of our labour. And he begins to sketch out the parameters of what he calls “a new relationship with technology”.</p>
<p>As King sees it, we stand on the verge of a precipice. The technologies we have constructed to make our way in the world are very close to depriving us of any world whatsoever.</p>
<p>“In order to avoid this trap,” King concludes, “we will need to develop a radical humanism that puts the social and creative needs of human beings front and centre” – one that, once again, “is not afraid […] to invoke the concept of human nature”.</p>
<h2>Historicising the human</h2>
<p>Here Be Monsters deals extensively with specific technologies, offering a kind of pessimistic catalogue of their worst potential. But some of its most intriguing arguments concern philosophical and ideological positions that were established long before the advent of either the atomic or the digital age. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526356/original/file-20230515-25-dpd9i2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>King spends a considerable amount of time dismantling the platitudes of utilitarianism, liberalism, and capitalism. </p>
<p>And he shows how these phenomena, which have their roots in the 17th and 18th centuries, provided the intellectual and material foundations of what we now call “neoliberalism”. This is a way of thinking that King takes to be fundamentally at odds with human wellbeing, and with the project of humanity as such. </p>
<p>The problem is, we cannot really historicise one concept of the human – namely the neoliberal concept, which treats humans as self-interested, profit-maximising machines – without historicising the concept of “humanity” as a whole.</p>
<p>That is to say, while the biological species “human being” has obviously existed for a very long time, the notion that all members of that species share a common world, that we all have some common interests, and even that we all possess common rights, is not that old at all.</p>
<p>In this sense, it might be best to think of our humanity, not as an object we might investigate and describe, like a part of the natural world, but more like a response to a crisis or an event. </p>
<p>As we arguably witnessed for fleeting moments during the COVID pandemic, humanity is called into existence – and we belong to it – when something larger than life grips us all, and we are compelled to act in concert.</p>
<p>The question is whether we will ever be able to do this in the sustained manner required to address the overwhelming existential catastrophes outlined by King.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Barbour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book argues our philosophical and intellectual responses to technology have not kept pace with events.Charles Barbour, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934442022-11-09T03:25:05Z2022-11-09T03:25:05ZWhy do we feel bad when our beliefs don’t match our actions? Blame ‘cognitive dissonance’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493733/original/file-20221107-11-6hrlyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C368%2C5604%2C3619&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SewCream/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you ever been out and about, perhaps tackling the Christmas shopping list, and felt a bit thirsty? You buy a drink – say, one that comes in a plastic bottle – and quench your thirst, only to find there’s no recycling nearby. What do you do? </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Two Buttons meme illustrating cognitive dissonance" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493669/original/file-20221106-17-92alwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Two Buttons meme accurately captures cognitive dissonance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Meme Generator</span></span>
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<p>You could hang on to the empty bottle, or throw it in with general rubbish. If you are particularly passionate about recycling, the latter option may feel quite distressing. </p>
<p>However, you might peek into the rubbish bin and notice plenty of others have thrown their recyclables in – so you throw your bottle in there too. After all, it’s not your fault there isn’t a recycling bin around. Suddenly, you feel much better!</p>
<p>If this scenario seems familiar, you have experienced – and resolved – “cognitive dissonance”, one of the most intriguing phenomena discovered in social psychology.</p>
<h2>A famous experiment with menial tasks</h2>
<p>After some hypothesising, US psychologists Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1960-01158-001">first demonstrated cognitive dissonance</a> in the 1950s, in a now famous social psychological experiment.</p>
<p>In the first half, participants had to perform long, menial tasks (such as turning a tray full of wooden pegs a quarter-turn each, again and again, for an hour). These tasks were deliberately not enjoyable. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstration of the famous induced-compliance paradigm used in Festinger and Carlsmith’s study.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Festinger and Carlsmith then offered some participants either $1 or $20 to spruik the study they had just participated in for the next participant (who was secretly “in” on the true experiment).</p>
<p>All participants, including those who were not asked to spruik the study at all (that is, the control group), then went on to complete a presumably unrelated survey on their experience. </p>
<p>Understandably, participants in the control group rated the study as not that enjoyable. Those paid $20 rated it much the same. However, participants paid $1 rated the study as much more enjoyable than those in either of the other groups! </p>
<p>As it turns out, being paid a mere dollar to tell the next person in line that the boring, lengthy task you just sat through was actually quite fun and interesting (this is something called “counterattitudinal behaviour”) induced such psychological discomfort – cognitive dissonance – that participants <em>changed</em> how they viewed the tedious task. </p>
<h2>The physical response to dissonance</h2>
<p>Festinger and Carlsmith’s experimental approach is known as the “induced-compliance paradigm”, and has become one of several ways in which social psychologists can study cognitive dissonance.</p>
<p>Subsequent research has consistently found that inducing cognitive dissonance – for example, by having to write an essay arguing in favour of a belief you don’t hold – increases <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/1995-05331-001.html">subjective feelings of discomfort and heightens “arousal”</a>, as measured by the electrical activity of our sweaty palms.</p>
<p>Recent research using more advanced measurement techniques has shown dissonance relates to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103113000565">activity in muscles that effect facial expressions</a>. Its resolution has been found to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/6/4/460/1648209?">stimulate activity in specific brain regions</a>. </p>
<p>Luckily, in most cases, the feelings associated with cognitive dissonance are <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1998.tb01390.x">fairly short-lived</a>, as we find a way to reduce or eliminate the dissonance - similar to how we are motivated to find food when we are really hungry.</p>
<h2>How can I reduce cognitive dissonance?</h2>
<p>There are two main ways to reduce cognitive dissonance – these have varying chances of success, and are <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.540081/full">highly dependent</a> on the importance of a behaviour or belief that you have.</p>
<p><strong>Changing your beliefs:</strong> perhaps the simplest way is to actually change how we think. For example, you form a New Year’s resolution to run three times a week to improve your health, but quickly lapse to once a week. You could resolve the dissonance by viewing running once a week as still having some benefit (good news – <a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/54/15/898.abstract">it does</a>).</p>
<p><strong>Changing your behaviour:</strong> perhaps the most difficult way to reduce cognitive dissonance is to change our behaviour to fit our attitudes. You might decide that it will take you a while to build up to running three times a week, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jaba.108">make a plan, and seek feedback on your progress</a>.</p>
<h2>Dissonance as a force for good</h2>
<p>Because cognitive dissonance is a powerful motivator, it has been explored as a potential force for good – especially in the context of health behaviours.</p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/bjhp.12035">more effective methods in this space</a> is known as “hypocrisy induction”. Much like the term suggests, we ask people to make a statement about the value of a behaviour, and then reflect on their own failures to engage in that behaviour, to induce cognitive dissonance. </p>
<p>For instance, a smoker might be asked to deliver a speech on the importance of quitting smoking, then complete a questionnaire on their smoking behaviour.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dead-keen-for-a-smoke-puffing-on-with-lung-and-colorectal-cancer-5009">Dead keen for a smoke: puffing on with lung and colorectal cancer</a>
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<p>(However, some smokers appear particularly skilled at reducing cognitive dissonance in a variety of ways, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12529-015-9487-x">as we found</a> when looking at how smokers responded to the introduction of plain packaging legislation.)</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Plain packaging legislation was introduced in Australia in 2012.</span></figcaption>
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<p>For most of us, what helps the most is knowing that cognitive dissonance is an everyday human experience, and likely to pass.</p>
<p>If we are not too hard on ourselves, and open to evaluating our behaviour in a much broader context, we shouldn’t feel too much discomfort. However, you might think about taking a reusable drink bottle to the shops this holiday season, just in case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim M Caudwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Feeling uneasy about a life choice? Cognitive dissonance could be the culprit.Kim M Caudwell, Lecturer - Psychology | Chair, Researchers in Behavioural Addictions, Alcohol and Drugs (BAAD), Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1905232022-10-21T12:38:19Z2022-10-21T12:38:19ZIntuitions about justice are a consistent part of human nature across cultures and millennia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490972/original/file-20221020-19-jm6ebd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1531%2C144%2C4475%2C3287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Laws from different places and eras largely reflect a universal human sense of justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lady-justice-statue-of-justice-in-library-royalty-free-image/1313531795">simpson33/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Thou shalt not kill” may be the most recognizable moral prohibition in societies around the world. </p>
<p>But where does your sense of justice come from?</p>
<p>Throughout history, justice and laws about wrongdoing have been <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Tanakh">attributed to one god or another</a>. More recently, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674518360">justice has been traced to moral truths</a> that can be discovered by judges and other legal experts, and to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41203513">social norms that vary across cultures</a>. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AKHl_vwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">our</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=CzKmINsAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">research</a> instead suggests that the human sense of justice, and criminal laws, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0827-8">is generated by the human brain</a>.</p>
<p>Put simply: Being human makes you a decent lawmaker even if you’ve never stepped foot in law school. To an important extent, criminal laws appear to be the end products of gut feelings about justice that are a part of human nature.</p>
<p>Here’s how we investigated just how universal these intuitions are:</p>
<h2>Testing the human brain’s sense of justice</h2>
<p>Human conflict ranges from the mild, as when neighbors disagree about the appropriate loudness of music, to the serious, including cases of fraud, robbery, rape, homicide – the stuff of criminal law.</p>
<p>Laws and litigation come in handy when you’re butting heads with someone. But your <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262072755/heuristics-and-the-law/">brain automatically generates intuitions about justice</a> when there is even the potential for conflict, long before you set foot in court. People, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1128983">even young children</a>, have strong feelings about what counts as a wrongful action and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1110306108">how much punishment a wrongdoer deserves</a>.</p>
<p>These justice intuitions come naturally to everyone. They’re like human lungs or human retinas – part of being human. </p>
<p>So maybe the standard-issue human brain forms the basis of formal and informal justice. If so, a distinctive prediction follows: Laypeople will make decent lawmakers using their sense of justice even when they have no training in law. Further, laypeople will be able to intuitively recreate core features of actual criminal laws from cultures they are totally unfamiliar with.</p>
<p>We devised a study to test those predictions. We showed participants various offenses drawn from actual criminal codes but not the punishments that the law establishes for those offenses.</p>
<p><iframe id="zIAwq" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zIAwq/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Some of the offenses we presented came from a modern and culturally familiar society, drawn from Title 18 of the <a href="https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/18/18.HTM">Consolidated Pennsylvania Statutes</a>. But other offenses were truly ancient and culturally foreign. Some participants evaluated offenses <a href="https://cart.sbl-site.org/books/061506P">from the Laws of Eshnunna</a>, a 3,800-year-old Mesopotamian legal code – one of humanity’s most ancient legal codes. Other participants saw offenses from the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691636320/the-tang-code-volume-ii">Tang Code, a 1,400-year-old legal code from China</a>.</p>
<p>These archaic laws are the next best thing to time travel. They are like fossils that preserve the legal thinking of ancient lawmakers.</p>
<p>To give some examples, some of the Eshnunna offenses shown to participants included: biting out the eye of another man, seizing a boat fraudulently and failing to keep one’s aggressive ox in check, resulting in a slave being killed by the ox. Such were the offenses of an ancient Mesopotamian society.</p>
<p>Despite the massive cultural differences between the ancient city-state of Eshnunna and modern societies, if the sense of justice, and laws, originates in the human brain, then the king who decreed the Laws of Eshnunna and the participants in the study may be of one mind.</p>
<p>So next we asked participants to rate each of the offenses they saw. Some participants were asked to imagine they were lawmakers; they were asked to mock-legislate the fines each offense would deserve by law. Other participants mock-legislated prison sentences for each offense. To make sure participants were giving their untrained intuitions, we excluded from analyses participants who attended law school. </p>
<p>Indeed, the Eshnunna king and the participants in our study did display a shared sense of justice. The more study participants judged an ancient offense as serious, the higher the actual punishment provided by law for that offense.</p>
<p>This match between participants’ intuitions and ancient laws wasn’t perfect, but it was substantial. It suggests that human beings share a sense of justice and that people today can recreate the core of criminal laws from faraway societies that are thousands of years in the past.</p>
<h2>Cultural effects on the sense of justice</h2>
<p>A shared sense of justice that is part of human nature does not deny cultural differences. </p>
<p>Consider this Tang offense: “All cases of a master who kills a slave who has not committed an offense are punished by one year of penal servitude (NB: redeemable by paying a fine of 20 copper chin).” The Tang Code considers this offense to be relatively mild – consider, for example, that “beating and killing a person in an affray” was punished by the Tang Code with strangulation or a fine of 120 copper chin. In contrast, study participants judged “killing a slave who has not committed an offense” a very serious transgression.</p>
<p>And yet, participants’ intuitive responses generally matched the responses called for in the ancient criminal codes. For instance, participants agreed with the Tang lawmakers that beating and killing a person in a fight is a worse offense than betting goods and articles in games of chance.</p>
<p>To us, this mix of cross-cultural differences and similarities suggests that the brain machinery that generates the sense of justice combines universal principles with open parameters that are filled in with local information. The universal principles may explain why participants generally saw eye to eye with the Eshnunna king and the Tang lawmakers. The open parameters may explain cultural variation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two bighorn sheep butt heads" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490973/original/file-20221020-15-6tujk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">People, animals, even very simple organisms can be in conflict.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/bighorn-sheep-rams-in-rut-butting-heads-royalty-free-image/1057145660">Stan Tekiela Author/Naturalist/Wildlife Photographer/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Evolutionary roots of a sense of justice</h2>
<p>Conflict is evolutionarily ancient. Organisms, including nonhuman animals, can offend against others – for example, by preying on them. And so natural selection would have endowed organisms with means that help them solve conflicts in their favor: fangs, antlers, neurotoxic venoms. These defenses and weapons are useful. Our ancestors lived in a world without police, and so they had to be their own police if they were to survive and thrive.</p>
<p>But human conflict is special. With their ingenuity and knack for cooperation, people can produce a huge array of goods and services that other people can swindle, rob, adulterate, counterfeit, embezzle and destroy. So the scope of human conflict is vast. </p>
<p>Brawn may help in human conflict, but brain is key. Humans live in an information-dense world, where it’s important to know precisely how much harm is being done to you when someone offends against you. Accurately appraising wrongs allows victims to demand or deliver an amount of punishment that is, as in the story of Goldilocks, just right: neither too small that an undeterred offender will re-offend, nor too great that the offender will counter-punish the original victim. Our human ancestors didn’t have price tags or written laws to appraise wrongful actions, so they needed to appraise wrongful actions with their brains.</p>
<p>The brain mechanisms for appraising wrongdoing appear to be part of human nature – the same in all times and places humans have lived in. Of course, justice intuitions and criminal laws vary across cultures. Grand theft auto wasn’t appraised in Sparta because there were no cars 2,500 years ago. Written criminal laws are absent in societies without writing systems.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0047-2352(02)00198-8">human sense of justice</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911517117">seems to be fundamentally similar across space and time</a>. And criminal laws everywhere may be shaped by a sense of justice and offense-appraising mechanisms that are universal – akin to how <a href="https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2009.27462B">universal mechanisms of taste perception</a> give rise to the world’s diverse cuisines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Sznycer received funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec and Quebec Bio-Imaging Network </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlton Patrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What people consider to be fair and just today are in line with the laws of ancient Mesopotamia and the Tang Dynasty in China – suggesting that these intuitions are part of human nature.Daniel Sznycer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Oklahoma State UniversityCarlton Patrick, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies, University of Central FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1773232022-02-17T19:04:42Z2022-02-17T19:04:42ZResearch finds countries that focus the most on happiness can end up making people feel worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446934/original/file-20220217-21-1a5cs5l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=55%2C55%2C4079%2C2573&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you looked at the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world">international rankings</a> of the world’s happiest countries lately? </p>
<p>Measuring a country’s subjective levels of happiness has become something of an international sport. People look with interest (and a little jealousy) to nations such as Denmark, which consistently tops the world happiness rankings. </p>
<p>It has also led to Danish practices such as the “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/hygge-lykke-scandinavian-buzzwords-stop-living-lifestyle-trends-fetish-a8058931.html">hygge</a>” lifestyle gaining popularity elsewhere. If only we could add more cosiness to our lives, perhaps we would be as happy as the Danish!</p>
<p>But is living in one of the worlds happiest nations all it’s cracked up to be? What happens if you struggle to find or maintain happiness in a sea of (supposedly) happy people?</p>
<p>In our new research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-04262-z">published in Scientific Reports</a>, we found that in countries which rank the highest in national happiness, people are also more likely to experience poor well-being due to the societal pressure to be happy. </p>
<p>So living in happier countries may be good for many. But for some, it can end up feeling like too much to live up to, and have the opposite effect.</p>
<h2>Broadening our search</h2>
<p>For several years, my colleagues and I have been researching the social pressure people may feel to experience positive emotions and avoid negative ones. </p>
<p>This pressure is also communicated to us through channels such as social media, self-help books and advertising. Eventually people develop a sense of what kinds of emotion are valued (or not valued) by those around them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/so-many-in-the-west-are-depressed-because-theyre-expected-not-to-be-79672">So many in the West are depressed because they're expected not to be</a>
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<p>In an ironic twist, our past research has shown that the more people experience pressure to feel happy and not sad, the more they <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/da.22653">tend to experience depression</a>. </p>
<p>While this previous research has mostly focused on people living in Australia or the United States, we were curious about how these effects might also be evident in other countries.</p>
<p>For our latest study we surveyed 7,443 people from 40 countries on their emotional well-being, satisfaction with life (cognitive well-being) and mood complaints (clinical well-being). We then weighed this against their perception of social pressure to feel positive.</p>
<p>What we found confirmed our previous findings. Worldwide, when people report feeling pressure to experience happiness and avoid sadness, they tend to experience deficits in mental health.</p>
<p>That is, they experience lower satisfaction with their lives, more negative emotion, less positive emotion and higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress.</p>
<p>Interestingly, our global sample allowed us to go beyond our prior work and examine whether there were differences in this relationship across countries. Are there some countries in which this relationship is especially strong? And if so, why might that be?</p>
<h2>Not a uniform problem</h2>
<p>To investigate this, we obtained data for each of the 40 counties from the <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/">World Happiness Index</a>, collected by the Gallup World Poll. This index is based on the subjective happiness ratings of large-scale nationally representative samples.</p>
<p>It allowed us to determine how the overall happiness of a nation, and therefore the social pressure on individuals to be happy, might influence individuals’ well-being. </p>
<p>We found the relationship did indeed change, and was stronger in countries that ranked more highly on the World Happiness Index. That is, in countries such as Denmark, the social pressure some people felt to be happy was especially predictive of poor mental health. </p>
<p>That’s not to say on average people are not happier in those countries – apparently they are - but that for those who already feel a great deal of pressure to keep their chin up, living in happier nations can lead to poorer well-being. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446936/original/file-20220217-21-134jkyd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Feeling blue? You can’t always count on other people’s happiness rubbing off on you.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Why might this be the case? We reasoned that being surrounded by a sea of happy faces may aggravate the effects of already feeling socially pressured to be happy.</p>
<p>Of course, signs of others’ happiness are not limited to the explicit expression of happiness, but are also evident in other more subtle cues, such as having more social contact or engaging in pleasurable activities. These signals tend to be stronger in happier countries, ratcheting up the effects of social expectations.</p>
<p>In these countries, feeling happy can easily be viewed as the expected norm. This adds to the social pressure people feel to adhere to this norm, and exacerbates the fallout for those who fail to achieve it.</p>
<h2>What’s the solution?</h2>
<p>So what can we do? At a personal level, feeling and expressing happiness is a good thing. But as other research <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0034442">has found</a>, it’s sometimes good to be sensitive about how our expression of positive emotion may affect others. </p>
<p>While it’s good to bring happiness and positivity to our interactions, it’s also good to know when to tone it down – and avoid alienating those who may not share our joy in the moment.</p>
<p>More broadly, perhaps it’s time to rethink how we measure national well-being. We already know that flourishing in life isn’t just about positive emotion, but also about responding well to negative emotion, finding value in discomfort, and focusing on other factors such as meaning and interpersonal connection. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s time to rank countries not only by how happy they are, but how safe and open they are to the full range of human experiences.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-avoid-toxic-positivity-and-take-the-less-direct-route-to-happiness-170260">How to avoid 'toxic positivity' and take the less direct route to happiness</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brock Bastian receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Egon Dejonckheere receives funding from FWO Vlaanderen. He is also a part-time Assistant Professor at Tilburg University.</span></em></p>They say to improve your mood you should fake a smile and roll with the crowd. But research suggests the more pressure you feel to be happy, the worse you’ll end up feeling.Brock Bastian, Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of MelbourneEgon Dejonckheere, Postdoctoral Researcher, KU LeuvenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487742020-11-16T13:21:19Z2020-11-16T13:21:19ZPro-mask or anti-mask? Your moral beliefs probably predict your stance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368031/original/file-20201106-23-60c36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4410%2C2924&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Moral combat: Do you wear a face mask to show you care about others? Or do you refuse because you believe they defy human nature?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-argument-takes-place-between-a-passer-by-and-a-protester-news-photo/1229121409?adppopup=true">Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Governments around the world have <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/international-affairs-division/covid-dashboard">recommended or mandated</a> various behaviors to slow the spread of COVID-19. These include staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing.</p>
<p>Yet individuals continue to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/people-flouting-coronavirus-social-distancing-precautions-save-lives/story?id=70880349">flout these recommendations</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/06/17/airlines-us-face-masks-passengers-banned-flying/#6c9a5e9a3e2d">ignore explicit rules about wearing face masks</a>. In the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/us/protests-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders/index.html">U.S.</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-54678374">U.K.</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-23/anti-lockdown-protesters-converge-on-melbourne-shrine/12706900">Australia</a>, crowds have gathered closely together to protest against lockdowns.</p>
<p>All this poses the question: Why are people not following the rules that protect not only their own health but the health of their community and nation? And how can policymakers and public health officials design better messages to encourage uptake?</p>
<h2>How morals guide our decisions</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.paid.2020.110463">my latest research</a>, I studied how people perceive the three main recommended behaviors as either “right” or “wrong.” I grounded my research on <a href="https://moralfoundations.org/">Moral Foundations Theory</a>, which states that people judge the “rightness” or “wrongness” of behaviors along five different moral concerns or “foundations.” </p>
<p>The first is whether an action shows you care; the second is whether an action upholds standards of equality; the third is whether it shows loyalty to the group; the fourth is whether it shows deference to authority; and the last is whether it conforms to impulses and the natural way of doing things.</p>
<p>Some foundations are relevant to certain behaviors; others, not so much. For example, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0256-5">parents who are “anti-vaxxers”</a> hold this view because they see vaccines as harming a child’s natural immunological defenses. Although that is <a href="https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/immune-system-and-health">not true</a>, vaccines still challenge their perception of what’s natural. Likewise, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.07.001">when it comes to charitable giving</a>, people donate because they see it as showing they care – not because they see it as “natural” to do so.</p>
<p>One benefit of exploring which moral foundation is relevant to a certain behavior is that it offers a better understanding of how to encourage or discourage that behavior. </p>
<p>For example, policymakers now understand that to encourage vaccinations for children, messages aimed at hesitant parents need to help them see how vaccinations can actually boost a child’s natural defenses. But telling these parents that “it shows you care for your child” has little effect, because the “caring” foundation is less relevant.</p>
<h2>Morality and COVID-19</h2>
<p>I surveyed 1,033 Americans during the last week in April 2020, asking them how relevant each moral foundation is to staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing.</p>
<p>I found that Americans, on the whole, associated all three behaviors with the “caring” and “equality” foundations. Indeed, staying at home when you don’t need to go out shows you care about others – I call this the caring foundation. But staying at home helps flatten the curve only if everyone does it – the equality foundation. The same can be said for wearing face masks and social distancing.</p>
<p>But I also found important age differences in two other moral foundations. </p>
<p>Younger adults felt that staying at home and wearing face masks go against their nature – what I call the nature foundation. It would make sense. Younger adults are more likely to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/04/885546281/why-some-young-people-fear-social-isolation-more-than-covid-19">crave social interactions</a>, and so staying at home goes against what they perceive to be natural human behavior. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, wearing face masks not only is uncomfortable but hides one’s face, which also goes against beliefs about how human beings are supposed to socialize.</p>
<p>Older adults, on the other hand, felt that all three behaviors show a greater value placed on communal goals and public health over personal comfort.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the authority foundation didn’t relate to any of the three behaviors, regardless of age.</p>
<h2>Policy implications</h2>
<p>By understanding which moral foundations are relevant, social marketers, public health officials and policymakers can design more effective appeals to get people to stay at home, wear face masks and stay 6 feet apart.</p>
<p>For example, because Americans see the actions as showing they care, emphasizing how those behaviors show caring will likely increase compliance. </p>
<p>To target younger adults, who see staying at home and wearing face masks as going against the social nature of human beings, messages should suggest how these actions can actually facilitate socialization. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>For example: “Wearing a mask lets you stay in touch, safely.” Common slogans such as “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2020/04/10/staying-apart-together-newsletter-help-us-cope-coronavirus/2953992001/">Staying Apart, Together</a>,” while whimsical and a play on words, are unlikely to increase younger adults’ uptake, since the “communal” foundation is a less relevant concern for them. Those slogans may be more effective for older adults. </p>
<p>If governments and public health officials really want to promote staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, they can’t just say “it’s moral to do so.” They might want to learn to appeal to the relevant moral convictions of the population they are targeting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eugene Y. Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Here’s how governments can get more people to follow COVID-19 guidelines.Eugene Y. Chan, Associate Professor, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1440162020-09-11T13:26:20Z2020-09-11T13:26:20ZHow tech billionaires’ visions of human nature shape our world<p>In the 20th century, politicians’ views of human nature shaped societies. But now, <a href="https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian">creators of new technologies</a> increasingly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/28/bezos-zuckerberg-us-tech-billions">drive societal change</a>. Their view of human nature may shape the 21st century. We must know what technologists see in humanity’s heart.</p>
<p>The economist <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/thomas-sowell/a-conflict-of-visions/9780465002054/">Thomas Sowell</a> proposed two visions of human nature. The <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/290730/the-blank-slate-by-steven-pinker/">utopian vision</a> sees people as naturally good. The world corrupts us, but the wise can perfect us. </p>
<p>The tragic vision sees us as inherently flawed. Our sickness is selfishness. We cannot be trusted with power over others. There are no perfect solutions, only imperfect trade-offs.</p>
<p>Science <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/290730/the-blank-slate-by-steven-pinker/">supports the tragic vision</a>. So does history. The <a href="https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/david-andress/the-terror/9780349115887/">French</a>, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/timothy-snyder/bloodlands/9780465032976/">Russian</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/maos-great-famine-9780802779281/">Chinese</a> revolutions were utopian visions. They paved their paths to paradise with 50 million dead.</p>
<p>The USA’s founding fathers held the tragic vision. They <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/290730/the-blank-slate-by-steven-pinker/">created checks and balances</a> to constrain political leaders’ worst impulses.</p>
<h2>Technologists’ visions</h2>
<p>Yet when Americans founded online social networks, the tragic vision was forgotten. Founders were trusted to juggle their self-interest and the public interest when designing these networks and gaining vast data troves.</p>
<p>Users, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23736992.2018.1477047">companies</a> and <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf">countries</a> were trusted not to abuse their new social-networked power. Mobs were <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/">not constrained</a>. This led to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3292522.3326034">abuse</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2018.1477047">manipulation</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.eubios.info/UNESCO/precprin.pdf">Belatedly</a>, social networks have adopted <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2018/Serving_Healthy_Conversation.html">tragic visions</a>. Facebook <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17575158/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-full-transcript-kara-swisher">now acknowledges regulation</a> is needed to get the best from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp.10.1.33_1">social media</a>. </p>
<p>Tech billionaire Elon Musk dabbles in both the tragic and utopian visions. He thinks “<a href="https://sonix.ai/resources/full-transcript-joe-rogan-experience-elon-musk/">most people are actually pretty good</a>”. But he supports <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/joe-rogan-elon-musk-podcast-transcript-may-7-2020">market, not government control</a>, wants competition to <a href="https://surfcoderepeat.com/elon-on-governments">keep us honest</a>, and <a href="https://sonix.ai/resources/full-transcript-joe-rogan-experience-elon-musk/">sees evil in individuals</a>. </p>
<p>Musk’s tragic vision <a href="https://www.spacex.com/">propels us to Mars</a> in case short-sighted selfishness destroys Earth. Yet his utopian vision assumes people on Mars could be entrusted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBfi2AcGrTY&list=PLKof9YSAshgyPqlK-UUYrHfIQaOzFPSL4&index=4">with the direct democracy</a> that America’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/">founding fathers feared</a>. His utopian vision also assumes giving us tools to <a href="https://neuralink.com/">think better</a> won’t simply enhance our Machiavellianism.</p>
<p>Bill Gates leans to the tragic and tries to create a better world within humanity’s constraints. Gates <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/2008/01/24/bill-gates-world-economic-forum-2008/">recognises our self-interest</a> and supports market-based rewards to help us behave better. Yet he believes “creative capitalism” can tie self-interest to our inbuilt desire to help others, benefiting all. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Peter Tiel stood in front of screen displaying computer code." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357446/original/file-20200910-25-174iq53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Thiel considers the code of human nature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/heisenbergmedia/14051014116/">Heisenberg Media/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A different tragic vision lies in the writings of Peter Thiel. This billionaire tech investor <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">was influenced by</a> philosophers <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strauss-leo/">Leo Strauss</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/carl-schmitt-nazi-era-philosopher-who-wrote-blueprint-for-new-authoritarianism-59835">Carl Schmitt</a>. Both believed evil, in the form of a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Cloaked-in-Virtue-Unveiling-Leo-Strauss-and-the-Rhetoric-of-American-Foreign/Xenos/p/book/9780415950893">drive for dominance</a>, is part of our nature.</p>
<p>Thiel dismisses the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">Enlightenment view of the natural goodness of humanity</a>”. Instead, he approvingly cites the view that humans are “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">potentially evil or at least dangerous beings</a>”. </p>
<h2>The consequences of seeing evil</h2>
<p>The German philosopher <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ie/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-texts/nietzsche-beyond-good-and-evil-prelude-philosophy-future?format=PB">Friedrich Nietzsche warned</a> that those who fight monsters must beware of becoming monsters themselves. He was right.</p>
<p>People who believe in evil are more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.037">demonise, dehumanise, and punish</a> wrongdoers. They are more likely to support violence <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213496282">before</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213500997">after</a> another’s transgression. They feel that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213500997">redemptive violence</a> can eradicate evil and save the world. Americans who believe in evil are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213500997">more likely to support</a> torture, killing terrorists and America’s possession of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Technologists who see evil risk creating coercive solutions. Those who believe in evil are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213496282">less likely to think deeply</a> about why people act as they do. They are also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.037">less likely to see</a> how situations influence people’s actions. </p>
<p>Two years after 9/11, Peter Thiel founded <a href="https://www.palantir.com/">Palantir</a>. This company creates software to analyse big data sets, helping businesses fight fraud and the US government combat crime.</p>
<p>Thiel is a Republican-supporting libertarian. Yet, he appointed a Democrat-supporting <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/">neo-Marxist</a>, Alex Karp, as Palantir’s CEO. Beneath their differences lies a shared belief in the inherent dangerousness of humans. Karp’s PhD thesis argued that we have a fundamental aggressive drive towards <a href="https://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/">death and destruction</a>.</p>
<p>Just as believing in evil is associated with supporting pre-emptive aggression, Palantir doesn’t just wait for people to commit crimes. It <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170293847A1">has patented</a> a “crime risk forecasting system” to predict crimes and has <a href="https://harvardcrcl.org/minority-report-why-we-should-question-predictive-policing/#:%7E:text=The%20predictive%20policing%20system%20Palantir,'t%20completely%20new%2C%20either.&text=Predictive%20policing%20tries%20to%20make,take%20steps%20to%20prevent%20it.">trialled predictive policing</a>. This has <a href="https://harvardcrcl.org/minority-report-why-we-should-question-predictive-policing/#:%7E:text=The%20predictive%20policing%20system%20Palantir,'t%20completely%20new%2C%20either.&text=Predictive%20policing%20tries%20to%20make,take%20steps%20to%20prevent%20it.">raised concerns</a>.</p>
<p>Karp’s tragic vision acknowledges that Palantir needs constraints. He stresses the judiciary must put “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHUXGd4gJU">checks and balances on the implementation</a>” of Palantir’s technology. He says the use of Palantir’s software should be “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHUXGd4gJU">decided by society in an open debate</a>”, rather than by Silicon Valley engineers.</p>
<p>Yet, Thiel cites philosopher Leo Strauss’ suggestion that America <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">partly owes her greatness</a> “to her occasional deviation” from principles of freedom and justice. Strauss <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">recommended hiding</a> such deviations under a veil. </p>
<p>Thiel <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/j.ctt7zt6qq?turn_away=true">introduces the Straussian argument that</a> only “the secret coordination of the world’s intelligence services” can support a US-led international peace. This recalls Colonel Jessop in the film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/">A Few Good Men</a>, who felt he should deal with dangerous truths in darkness.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Can we handle the truth?</span></figcaption>
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<p>Seeing evil after 9/11 led technologists and governments to overreach in their surveillance. This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data">included using the formerly secret XKEYSCORE computer system</a> used by the US National Security Agency to colllect people’s internet data, which is <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/">linked to Palantir</a>. The American people rejected this approach and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/03/us-modest-step-curb-spy-excesses">democratic processes</a> increased oversight and limited surveillance.</p>
<h2>Facing the abyss</h2>
<p>Tragic visions pose risks. Freedom may be unnecessarily and coercively limited. External roots of violence, like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.07.007">scarcity</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6309619/">exclusion</a>, may be overlooked. Yet if <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/against-edenism">technology creates economic growth</a> it will address many external causes of conflict.</p>
<p>Utopian visions ignore the dangers within. Technology that only changes the world is insufficient to save us from our selfishness and, as I argue in a forthcoming book, <a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/spite-hb.html">our spite</a>.</p>
<p>Technology must change the world working within the constraints of human nature. Crucially, <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm#rom904406_6">as Karp notes</a>, democratic institutions, not technologists, must ultimately decide society’s shape. Technology’s outputs must be democracy’s inputs.</p>
<p>This may involve us acknowledging hard truths about our nature. But what if society does not wish to face these? Those who cannot handle truth make others fear to speak it. </p>
<p>Straussian technologists, who believe but dare not speak dangerous truths, may feel compelled to protect society in undemocratic darkness. They overstep, yet are encouraged to by those who see more harm in speech than its suppression.</p>
<p>The ancient Greeks had a name for someone with <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403986689">the courage to tell truths that could put them in danger</a> - the parrhesiast. But the parrhesiast needed a listener who promised to not to react with anger. This <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403986689">parrhesiastic contract</a> allowed dangerous truth-telling.</p>
<p>We have shredded this contract. We must renew it. Armed with the truth, the Greeks felt they could <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403986689">take care of themselves and others</a>. Armed with both truth and technology we can move closer to fulfilling this promise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144016/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McCarthy-Jones receives funding from the US-based Brain and Behavior Research Foundation</span></em></p>What world will tech billionaires move us towards if they believe that humans are fundamentally dangerous?Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1420192020-09-10T12:19:52Z2020-09-10T12:19:52ZWhy our screens leave us hungry for more nutritious forms of social interaction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357210/original/file-20200909-16-m7mi64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=412%2C226%2C4172%2C2832&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/facial-expression-female-teenager-screaming-while-564380758">Shutterstock/LukyToky</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>COVID-19 has seen all the rules change when it comes to social engagement. Workplaces and schools have closed, gatherings have been banned, and the use of social media and other online tools <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/09/08/coronavirus-depression-spike-suggests-social-media-is-no-substitute-for-real-life/#ddaeacd61033">has risen</a> to bridge the gap.</p>
<p>But as we continue to adapt to the various restrictions, we should remember that social media is the refined sugar of social interaction. In the same way that producing a bowl of white granules means removing minerals and vitamins from the sugarcane plant, social media strips out many valuable and sometimes necessarily challenging parts of “whole” human communication. </p>
<p>Fundamentally, social media dispenses with the nuance of dealing with a person in the flesh and all the signalling complexities of body language, vocal tone and speed of utterance. The immediacy and anonymity of social media also remove the (healthy) challenges of paying attention, properly processing information and responding with civility.</p>
<p>As a result, social media is a fast and easy way to communicate. But while the removal of complexity is certainly convenient, a diet high in connections through social media has been widely shown to have a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain">detrimental effect</a> on our physical and emotional wellbeing. </p>
<p>Increased <a href="http://www.anxiety.org/strong-online-social-media-identity-can-lead-to-anxiety">anxiety and depression</a> are well-known side-effects. There are also consequences for making decisions based on simplistic, “refined” sources of information. We may be less discerning when it comes to evaluating such information, responding with far less reflection. We see a tweet, and we are triggered by it immediately – not unlike a sugar hit from a bar of chocolate.</p>
<p>More complex kinds of communication demand more of us, as we learn to recognise and engage with the complexities of face-to-face interaction – the tempo, closeness and body language that make up the non-verbal cues of communication that are missing in social media.</p>
<p>These cues may even exist because we have evolved to be with others, to work with others. Consider, for example, the hormone oxytoxin, which is associated with trust and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28864973/">lower stress levels</a> and triggered when we are in the physical company of others. </p>
<p>Another indicator of trust and engagement is the fact that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28864973/">group heart rates synchronise</a> when working together. But achieving such rhythm of communication takes effort, skill and practice. </p>
<h2>Pause for thought</h2>
<p>There’s an interesting element of elite athletic performance known as “quiet eye”. It refers to the brief moment of pause before a tennis player serves or a footballer takes a penalty to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27633956/">focus on the goal</a>. Good communicators, too, seem to take this pause, whether it’s in a presentation or a conversation – a moment lost in social media’s rush for an immediate anonymous response.</p>
<p>Having said all this, I don’t believe social media – or table sugar for that matter – is fundamentally wrong. As with a slice of cake on a special occasion, it can be a delight, a treat and a rush. But problems appear when it is our dominant form of communication. As with only eating cake, it weakens us, leaving us far less able to thrive in more challenging environments. </p>
<p>COVID-19 has meant a greater proportion of many people’s lives are spent online. But even Zoom meetings and gatherings, while more intimate than a tweet or social media post, also have limitations and <a href="https://theconversation.com/finding-endless-video-calls-exhausting-youre-not-alone-137936">lead to fatigue</a>. </p>
<p>In physiological terms, part of the reason for these experiences being so challenging is that we are supposed to connect with each other in person. We are wired to deal with every aspect of physically present personal contact – from the uncomfortable conversations to the hugely gratifying exchanges. </p>
<p>We suffer without it. We see this in energy levels, overall health and mental stability. It’s physical as well as emotional in effect. Indeed, researchers have shown for over a decade now that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20668659/">loneliness kills</a>. What research has yet to show is if social media mitigates this. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-experts-in-evolution-explain-why-social-distancing-feels-so-unnatural-134271">Coronavirus: experts in evolution explain why social distancing feels so unnatural</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>Again, virtual meetings are not intrinsically wrong. But they are not sufficient, in human physiological terms, to sustain what we have come to need after 300,000 years of evolution. </p>
<p>Even in the days before coronavirus, social media had been evolving into a dominant means of communication for many. Fast and easy, but also often mean, judgemental, fleeting – something that does not bring out the best in us. </p>
<p>The hope in offering this analogy is that by contextualising how social media works in terms of our physiology, we can start to understand how we may need to balance social media with other more challenging, but ultimately more satisfying forms of communication. And also how we may need to design virtual methods of communication that embrace more of the <a href="https://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/6676">physiology of social contact that we need</a>, and which helps us to thrive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142019/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>mc schraefel receives funding from UKRI EPSRC. </span></em></p>Social media is the refined sugar of human communication.mc schraefel, Professor of Computer Science and Human Performance, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761722017-04-19T10:54:30Z2017-04-19T10:54:30ZDoh! What budding animators can learn from The Simpsons at 30<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165664/original/image-20170418-20614-1qusqsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/circa-march-2014-berlin-characters-simpson-188008028?src=QQb2TF89OHTqt3uyXQwohg-1-61">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With an impressive 28 seasons under its belt, and a 29th and 30th run recently commissioned, The Simpsons is an incredible example of primetime television show longevity. It will leave <a href="http://www.tvland.com/shows/gunsmoke">Gunsmoke</a> holstering its weapon as it takes the record for the most episodes of a scripted television series.</p>
<p>The Simpsons’ appeal lies in the affectionate mockery of its characters’ “everyman” qualities. Most of us can identify with elements of this family set-up – the dysfunction, the flaws and the character traits, whether that’s Marge’s warm moral centre, or Homer’s weak, venal, selfish immaturity which exists to some degree in all of us. Watching Homer gives us a chance to acknowledge this crappy, least admirable version of ourselves, and creates myriad opportunities for humour and in-jokes that remind us that we are all only human.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/10/matt_groening_s_life_in_hell_a_tribute_in_comics_by_alison_bechdel_tom_tomorrow_and_others_.html">Life in Hell</a> comic book illustrator Matt Groening created The Simpsons back in 1987 for James L. Brook’s <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/40-best-sketch-comedy-tv-shows-20150327/the-tracey-ullman-show-1987-1990-20150226">The Tracey Ullman Show</a>. It started life as a run of short cartoon stings between the live action sketches, before graduating to its own full series in 1989.</p>
<p>The early animation work was crude, but the premise was intriguing enough to be developed further by Groening and Brooks. They were later joined by the late Sam Simon, who brought on board the initial team of writers and encouraged the voice artists to record the dialogue tracks together, rather than remotely. Simon’s influence and development of the show was significant, even though he would later leave due to creative differences.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165671/original/image-20170418-32696-b7va8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bart Simpson originally was intended as the star of the show, but has since been eclipsed by his father, Homer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/united-states-circa-2009-postage-stamp-189533048?src=QQb2TF89OHTqt3uyXQwohg-3-1">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The early episodes are tonally and visually different from the show now, although its heart prevails. Initially, the focus was on Bart Simpson, who seemed like the most bankable “star”. However, as time went on, Homer Simpson, superbly voiced by Dan Castellaneta, a jobbing actor from Illinois, became the main focus of attention. The casting of the voice talent on this show cannot be underestimated. </p>
<p>The animation style is unique, and heavily influenced by Matt Groening’s technique. This was honed on his self-published comic Life in Hell, which depicted life in Los Angeles to his friends, and was first published in the late 1970s. Again, although quite simple in their execution, the character designs in the strip shone through. The rather deceptive low-fi look and framing of the comic clearly had a major influence on the early animation work of The Simpsons.</p>
<p>In the comic, his characters are distinctive, but are constructed from basic inked open-line or <a href="https://comicbookglossary.wordpress.com/ligne-claire/">“ligne claire”</a> illustrations such as those pioneered by Hergé, creator of Tintin. The lettering dominates Groening’s early strips, showing how important the dialogue is in his work. The stories are snappy, gag-based, observational vignettes on life. The “camera angles” employed in the comic are set at a three-quarter viewpoint for the characters and the environments, something which is common in The Simpsons TV series, too.</p>
<p>People may be surprised to learn that there is now a very strict style guide for animators on The Simpsons, based on some of the rules Groening set out in Life in Hell and the early Simpsons episodes. The stylised construction of the characters from geometric shapes, betrays the actual complexities of the characters. They are not actually that easy to draw consistently. </p>
<h2>Essential reading</h2>
<p>When teaching animation, I often refer to <a href="http://www.animationmeat.com/pdf/televisionanimation/strybrd_the_simpsonsway.pdf">Storyboarding The Simpsons Way</a> by former Simpsons animator and storyboard artist Chris Roman. This practical guide was given to the artists working on the show. Even though it is aimed at the production team of The Simpsons, some of the rules created for the show are just as relevant to other animation production work.</p>
<p>Again, these guidelines are deceptively simple, but much harder to implement. Roman goes into great detail of the type of shots to use, the transitions, continuity and staying on the good side of the camera line. What is fantastic about this how-to guide is that it is delivered through the visual medium; it reads like a comic strip itself. The storytelling and message is clear, much like the television show. It is a guide every young animator or filmmaker should read.</p>
<p>So why has the show lasted for so long? The key factor is the quality of the writing. As with any long-running show, some complain that it is “not as good as it used to be”. But sometimes familiarity breeds contempt. Because the show is now ubiquitous, viewers and critics alike can become complacent, spoiled even. When you average 22 episodes per season, there will always be dips in the quality.</p>
<p>But over the years the references to pop culture, the characterisation and the quickfire gags have maintained the interest of the mainstream audience. The show can still surprise even the most cynical viewer and it does not look like it is going to disappear from our screens any time soon. What other show could have predicted a world where Donald Trump was President of the United States, 16 years before it actually happened? Long may The Simpsons continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip Vaughan receives funding from ESRC.</span></em></p>Still going strong in its 30th year, The Simpsons follows a strict animation style guide based on Matt Groening’s own rules, and has much to teach young animatorsPhillip Vaughan, Director MSc Animation and VFX, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700282017-01-23T09:18:26Z2017-01-23T09:18:26ZBiosocial science: The murky history of the nature and nurture debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153100/original/image-20170117-21159-nhbk9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">enzozo/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Self-righteousness, gratitude, sympathy, sincerity, and guilt – what if these social behaviours are biologically influenced, encoded within our genes and shaped by the forces of evolution to promote the survival of the human species? Does free will truly exist if our genes are inherited and our environment is a series of events set in motion before we are born?</p>
<p>American biologist E O Wilson made these arguments when he published <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674002357">Sociobiology: The New Synthesis</a> in 1975 and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674016385&content=reviews">On Human Nature</a> in 1978. Wilson is the father of sociobiology, a field that believes social behaviour in animals, including humans, is biologically determined – partially shaped by genes and the forces of evolution. Time magazine picked up the emerging new scientific field, dedicating the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19770801,00.html">August 1977 cover</a> to “Sociobiology: A New Theory of Behavior.”</p>
<p>Today, it is a field still shrouded with controversy, but one which is offering new views on how our environment influences who we are and what we do. </p>
<h2>Likened to eugenics</h2>
<p>At its conception, sociobiology ignited <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobiology/">heated criticism </a>from prominent biologists including Stephen Jay Gould and Robert Lewontin. They argued that the field was biologically determinist and perpetuated eugenic ideologies that sought to legitimise racial and social hierarchies. As critics pointed out, while “sociobiology” as a formal field did not come into existence until the 1970s, research that used biological explanations to justify social phenomena was not new. </p>
<p>To figures such as Gould and Lewontin, this “biosocial” scientific language lived in the fields of physical anthropology and eugenics. In the early 20th century, eugenicists like Madison Grant had used this kind of language to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/207903?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">explain</a> and justify class and race hierarchies. Supporters of such ideas used them to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Study_of_American_Intelligence.html?id=IGxEAAAAYAAJcitation">advocate</a> for social policies prohibiting class and racial mixing, and restrictions on immigration. </p>
<p>Biosocial science was soon used as a guise for the eugenics movement. The American Eugenics Society changed its name in 1972 to the Society for the Study of Social Biology, three years before the field of “sociobiology” was formally established. The society’s official journal Eugenics Quarterly, whose first volume in 1954 focused heavily on IQ differences between population groups, changed its name to Social Biology in 1969. It continues to exist today under the name of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hsbi20">Biodemography and Social Biology</a>.</p>
<h2>Social life in ‘molecular terms’</h2>
<p>Sociobiology has also influenced the development of “sociogenomics” – a term coined in 2005 by molecular biologist Gene Robinson whose <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/342901?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">work</a> examines the genetic mechanisms governing social behaviour in the honeybee. Though early sociogenomics work focused primarily on insect populations, the field has moved to include an examination of human populations. </p>
<p>Sociogenomics is a field driven by two desires. The first is to identify the genes and pathways that regulate aspects of development, physiology and behaviour that in turn influence the way animals or humans develop social links and form cooperative communities. The second is to determine how these genes and pathways themselves are <a href="http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v6/n4/full/nrg1575.html">influenced by social life</a> and social evolution. Yet in practice, these two main components of sociogenomics research seem to be in conflict. </p>
<p>One side tries to identify genetic markers associated with behaviours commonly thought to be shaped by social interactions. Researchers have looked at everything from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952512001114">political orientation</a> to <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6139/1467">educational attainment</a> and antisocial behaviour <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224540903366503">linked to criminality</a>. </p>
<p>Some studies have <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(16)31119-8">sought</a> to find genetic variations linked to social phenomena like social deprivation and household income. One <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(16)31119-8">study</a> claimed to have identified common genetic variations that can explain up to 21% of the observed differences in social deprivation between individuals. </p>
<p>Such research has, however, garnered some more recent criticism from researchers critical of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Trouble_with_Twin_Studies.html?id=AkCLBQAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y&hl=en">underlying methods</a> used and the field’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Misbehaving_Science.html?id=9bHBAwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">ethical implications</a>.</p>
<h2>Nature and nurture</h2>
<p>The other side of sociogenomics examines how the environment moderates what’s called “gene expression”. This is the process by which genes are “activated” to synthesise proteins that allow the genotype (an individual’s genetic makeup) to give rise to a phenotype (an observed behaviour or trait). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153266/original/image-20170118-26577-8pmy0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not just one or the other.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stuart Miles/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this form of sociogenomics, the classical argument of “nature versus nurture” becomes more clearly a matter of both “nature and nurture”. Social or environmental conditions such as low social status, social isolation or low socioeconomic status have been found to change the expression of hundreds of genes in both <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1041">animals</a> and humans.</p>
<p>This is now considered by some to be potentially <a href="https://livestream.com/BayStateEventSolutions/tannerlectures2?t=1478203316">transformative</a> in our approach to addressing inequality. For example, biosocial research which shows how structural or environmental aspects influence biological processes could throw much needed weight behind socially-oriented policies. On the other hand, biosocial researchers might argue that rather than fix what’s happening in society, we could focus on trying to treat biological deficits. </p>
<p>“Gene x environment” studies, as they are called, have <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1475.x">found</a> that in the US, low socioeconomic status represses an individual’s genetic potential. This means, for example, that the high estimates for genetic influence on educational attainment may only fully apply to those living in well-off circumstances, where money, status, and comfort are not pressing concerns.</p>
<h2>Mixing the hard and social sciences</h2>
<p><a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10801.html">Some advocates</a> for the biosocial sciences believe the social sciences will become more robust and more highly regarded with the incorporation of genetics research. There are sociologists, economists, and political scientists who are already beginning to bring genetic analyses into their work. They <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094306114539640">argue that</a> this additional data may help the social sciences “better understand patterns of human behavior, enhance individuals’ self-understanding, and design optimal public policy”.</p>
<p>Such mixing of the traditionally hard and social sciences has produced studies in sociogenomics <a href="http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050576">examining</a> how high taxation of tobacco products meant to discourage people from purchasing harmful products may not be beneficial for those with a particular variant of the nicotine receptor that might make them willing to pay more for tobacco. It has also contributed to research looking at cortisol levels in young ethnic-minorities as they note racism or discrimination. This <a href="http://www.psyneuen-journal.com/article/S0306-4530(14)00343-6/abstract">work has highlighted</a> how everyday micro-aggressions and social inequality can have real and harmful biological consequences. </p>
<p>These studies point to the continued desire to explain social phenomena through biology. As the biosocial sciences continue the journey to analyse everyday human life and behaviour, they have the potential to have a profound impact – both positive and negative – on our understandings of how we as individuals and we as a society operate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daphne Martschenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why research that links our social behaviour to our genes is still controversial today.Daphne Martschenko, PhD Candidate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/712302017-01-17T14:30:00Z2017-01-17T14:30:00ZHow to be human when technology is driving the new industrial revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153013/original/image-20170117-23058-2gvqlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=242%2C97%2C3709%2C2258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/planetart/6431819321/in/photolist-aNmKNz-dTyUyH-8oiQUR-dTEtAd-8oixkk-8on5fq-8oiuNg-dTECg1-dTEzGm-8on5Wb-8oiGmF-8omEJh-8oisRZ-dTz5xH-qGxDDp-8omEWm-dTyWRr-8oiv5Z-8omUfG-8oiKhH-dTEw57-8omG8E-dTEjPu-8oiw1a-dTyNMB-8omCsf-dTEBeo-8oisfT-dTz4bK-8oiRxi-dTyDGn-8oiS94-8omGXy-8oiW5k-8oiMPM-8omKfj-8oiu1P-5Chrb1-8oiV8P-8omHrQ-dTEzgo-8omXiN-5Cd9pg-dTyXF4-8omYLu-8on2PL-8oiRQe-8omXJd-dTErHG-dTyXuT">PLANETART/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, on the agenda for the assembled super-rich, politicians and celebrities will be the implications of a dramatic and impending shift in how our world works. This transition, the so-called fourth industrial revolution, brings us the convergence of effectively unlimited computer power, ever-smarter artificial intelligence (AI) and globalisation. They will combine to challenge our understanding of what it means to be a worker, and even <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/">what it means to be human</a>.</p>
<p>Proponents of this revolution offer the promise that automation and AI will remove the need to work, or viewed less favourably, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/">take people’s jobs</a>. In truth, these dire warnings have been coming regularly for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/steven-rattner-fear-not-the-coming-of-the-robots.html">centuries</a>.</p>
<p>But while it is easy to be alarmed by the implications of automation and AI, a careful look at the nature of humans, computers and how they interact points to a way forward. </p>
<h2>Skill sets</h2>
<p>In their prescient 2000 book <a href="http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Eduguid/SLOFI/toc.htm">The Social Life of Information</a> (due to be <a href="http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Eduguid/SLOFI/">re-issued</a>) John Seeley Brown and Paul Duguid explored why claims of an IT revolution often fall flat – remember the <a href="http://economia.icaew.com/features/july-2014/paper-weight">promise of a paperless office</a>? Their answer was simple – humans are social creatures and the way we learn and interact depends on our interactions with others. You learn more discussing something with someone than by sitting alone, head in a book, memorising facts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153017/original/image-20170117-23034-8kx86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist Aram Bartholl’s Google Maps pin drop project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/8419867339/in/photolist-dQ32dx-8T8nMg-BD6rA-BD63v-BD6sB-dQ2ZEx-BD6dD-8TdcsY-BD6fA-BD6kb-BD6hA">Amber Case/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even our relationship with technology is mediated by our own social nature, and this will continue to be the case in a world going through rapid technological change. The things that IT has done thus far are, let’s face it, the easy stuff: maps are organised, websites published, contacts managed, and social networks made simpler. The hard stuff – and the things that humans do well – are the things that involve knowhow, experience and creativity. </p>
<p>The challenge is to structure our education system to prepare students for this future, in which the ability to be flexible, intuitive and creative will be vital. Then, we might get workforces with skills which are relevant to a global economy undergoing profound change. </p>
<p>In the UK, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25187997">much has been made</a> of the country’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/10488555/OECD-education-report-subject-results-in-full.html">relatively low position</a> in international student tables. But academic performance only gets you so far.</p>
<p>Those “hard skills” – the cognitive and mathematical skills that are measured in academic rankings – are the things that machine learning and AI technologies will find easy. “Soft skills” like motivation, teamwork and social skills <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537112000577">are vital</a> for pupils, and workers, but far more difficult to replicate. </p>
<p>Calculating insurance claims based on a range of expenses? <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance">A computer can do that</a>. Gently convincing a customer to change his or her mind on a business matter, or <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/ais-attempt-write-christmas-carol-absolutely-bone--247140">writing a decent Christmas carol</a>? That is much harder.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153025/original/image-20170117-23071-1ygx8ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carol singers. No robots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/deventer-netherlands-costumed-participants-dickens-festival-335035247?src=gy5j1xeXUdBMhTRfLON3Pg-1-1">Chantal de Bruijne/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>STEAM powered</h2>
<p>Ultimately the human touch also matters to how innovative an economy can be. Recently, <a href="https://www.ed.gov/stem">there has been considerable</a> <a href="https://www.stem.org.uk">emphasis</a> <a href="https://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/restoring-focus-stem-schools-initiative">worldwide</a> on the encouragement and funding of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills. While the societal and economic benefits are clear – <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-innovation-survey-highly-innovative-firms-and-growth">research on the most innovative UK firms</a> has identified clear innovation and performance benefits from investing in STEM skills – these subjects are expensive to teach and suffer from considerable <a href="http://www.esa.doc.gov/reports/women-stem-gender-gap-innovation">gender gaps</a>. That has led to an series of <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/kess/stem/">policy commitments</a> around the world aimed at <a href="https://www.ed.gov/Stem">increasing the number of students</a> studying STEM subjects. </p>
<p>However, the risk of this approach is to lionise STEM at the expense of other subjects. In Britain, while science budgets have been largely protected from austerity, arts education has faced a much more difficult funding environment: departments have closed and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38172253">A-level courses threatened with the chop</a>. Yet this comes at a time when the UK creative industries are proving to be an economic success story, growing faster than the UK economy as a whole <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015-key-findings">and employing over 1.7m people</a>. The <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/manifesto-creative-economy">creative economy</a> (the wider economy which draws indirectly upon creative skills), is larger still, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015-key-findings">employing 2.6m people</a>, or one in 12 UK jobs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153032/original/image-20170117-23043-1if72x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hogwarts delivers a boost to the creative economy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nivrae/10507607156/in/photolist-h1wewC-ozknLH-cuDLrE-a1QmYx-qfKoE2-a1TeKN-86zezt-r7toTT-ovtxMQ-canmwh-8mneaR-p4CoQy-7C4Uxy-rg4J34-5Dx8p9-cfVGDL-7C4Uww-c8wuVq-aWHvGr-edL6Ty-c9N2mA-dssdNn-bVhynB-bXoz5v-dZX3L1-HNrH99-99qXp6-canxgy-jsMu8g-8FiGQ9-do7Amv-pm6FcA-cohZ7q-cAVkYm-bVhyVk-ceL57w-qnctMG-c6UtsW-3KhVpe-c8EMgW-cuEz7w-kQgEhg-kQiq6p-a1YicU-ipcCVy-a3m75F-mgKnBV-pYbFoY-mgJBtB-2j6zod">Elen Nivrae/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what is the impact of those creative skills? Our recent report <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/fusion-effect-economic-returns-combining-arts-and-science-skills">The Fusion Effect, published by Nesta</a>, finds that companies which combine creative and STEM skills outperform those that focus on just one, not just in one industry but in nearly all industries. The implication of this is clear – creative and arts skills are not simply a “nice to have”, but play a vital role in the economy. </p>
<p>Given that companies do better when they marry creative skills with STEM skills, <a href="http://stemtosteam.org/">recent</a> <a href="http://www.steamco.org.uk">efforts</a> to shift the discussion from STEM to STEAM (Science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) are welcome and valuable. Together, these elements – soft skills, collaboration and creativity – are the types of things that humans do well, and will be <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/future-shock/creativity-vs-robots">hard for robots to replicate</a>. </p>
<p>Of course the world faces innumerable complex challenges – climate change, economic inequality, gender inequality, and governance of these new technologies being just a few. It goes without saying that soft skills and artists won’t on their own prove to be solutions. But maybe – just maybe – a diverse workforce that is prepared to inspire, collaborate and innovate together may deliver solutions to these challenges which make the fourth industrial revolution a triumphant human endeavour after all.</p>
<p><em>This piece has been published in cooperation with the World Economic Forum to coincide with its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2017">You can read more here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The 'Fusion Effect' report was funded by a research grant from Nesta.</span></em></p>The defining characteristics of our species will make us and our labour relevant in a new era.Josh Siepel, Lecturer in Management, SPRU, University of Sussex Business School, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/515752015-12-08T19:15:42Z2015-12-08T19:15:42ZWant to save the environment? Let’s leave the collapse porn under the mattress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103836/original/image-20151201-26582-16okcs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is the "end of the world" the best way to understand our ecological woes?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chiotsrun/5262936843">chiotsrun/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Collapse porn. Apocalyptica. Eco-rapture.</p>
<p>These are labels UK science journalist Leigh Phillips has given to a growing genre of environmental writing. Prominent among them are Naomi Klein’s <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/This-Changes-Everything/Naomi-Klein/9781451697391">This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate</a> (2014), James Kunstler’s <a href="http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=The+Long+Emergency">The Long Emergency</a> (2005), Paul Kingsnorth’s <a href="http://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/">Uncivilization</a> (2009), John Zerzan <a href="https://archive.org/details/AgainstCivilization">Against Civilization</a> (2005), and Dereck Jensen’s <a href="http://www.derrickjensen.org/purchase/#endgame1">Endgame: The problem of civilization</a> (2006).</p>
<p>In his book <a href="http://www.zero-books.net/books/austerity-ecology-collapse-porn-addicts">Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn-addicts: a defence of growth, technology, industry and stuff</a> (2015) published last month, Phillips points to the collapse merchants’ belief in a mythical time when humanity lived in harmony with nature.</p>
<h2>Idealising the past</h2>
<p>A common feature of the genre is the idea of overshoot, the metaphor that humanity is hurtling down a road at 100 km/hr towards a cliff and there’s bugger all we can do. But if we’re overshooting now, was there a period when were we travelling OK? At what time in history do these authors think humans had it right?</p>
<p>From five authors, Phillips extracts six favoured periods of apparent harmony. Naomi Klein, between This Changes Everything and articles in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jun/19/naomi-klein-gulf-oil-spill">The Guardian</a> and <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/17181/naomi_klein_we_cant_dodge_this_fight_between_capitalism_and_climate_change">In These Times</a>, offers four: the 1970s before consumerism became rampant; 1776 when James Watt’s invention of the steam engine kick started the industrial revolution; the early 17th century just before the scientific revolution took off; and pre-agricultural society.</p>
<p>Adding to the list, James Kunstler suggests the Amish have got it right. Paul Kingsnorth, whose historical novel <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/books/wake">The Wake</a> (2013) was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, favours pre-Cromwell Britain. And both John Zerzan and Dereck Jensen go right back to pre-agricultural society.</p>
<p>The trouble with picking dates, says Phillips quoting David Deutsch’s <a href="http://beginningofinfinity.com/">The Beginning of Infinity</a> (2011), is that human history is a story of transforming inhospitable environments to suit ourselves, right back to the Palaeolithic and beyond. There is not, never was, and never will be an Eden — just the inevitability of problems to be solved.</p>
<p>What Phillips suggests is that somewhere between the half-hearted techno-utopianism of the right and the fervent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism">neo-luddism</a> of the gloomy left is Promethean optimism. This is the recognition that human history is a series of solutions to problems that themselves create more problems, for which we have to continually find even more solutions. And the big problem of our times is clean energy.</p>
<h2>Reality check: bigger may be better</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/archaeology/archaeological-theory-and-methods/collapse-complex-societies?format=PB">Joseph Tainter’s</a> message from his classic study, The Collapse of Complex Societies, is that problem solving requires consuming more energy, not less. Austerity, rationing, and efficiency won’t power the breakthroughs we need.</p>
<p>History also tells us that the Stone Age didn’t end for want of stones; humans learnt how to use metals. We didn’t run out of whale blubber; we switched to kerosene. And more than likely, the fossil fuel epoch won’t end because we run out, but because we move to alternatives.</p>
<p>Here’s Phillips on austerity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The anti-consumerist, back-to-the-land, small-is-beautiful, civilisation-hating, progress-questioning ideology of de-growth, limits, and retreat is hegemonic not just on the green left but across the political spectrum. Far from being central to progressive thought, this cauldron of seething effervescent misanthropy is utterly foreign to the rich tradition of humanism on the left and must be thoroughly excised from our ranks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Phillips argues that, to solve the problems of climate and energy, we need a return to big publicly-funded programs on the scale of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program, and the Snowy Mountain Scheme. The trouble with the case for big government is the 20th century’s appalling record of central planning. The distinction Phillips makes, however, is between autocratic central planning and social democratic economic planning.</p>
<p>Maybe the rise of <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-corbyn-and-the-economics-of-the-real-world-47314">Jeremy Corbyn</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/scholars-on-the-democratic-debate-hillary-wins-bernie-hits-a-nerve-48961">Bernie Sanders</a> suggests there’s an appetite for change after 30 years of neo-liberal, small government, leave-it-to-the-market problem solving. But that’s a tricky argument to run, and the weakest aspect of this otherwise sometimes angry, mostly serious, and at times very funny book.</p>
<p>Developing abundant cheap sources of energy that can compete with fossils fuels in all latitudes is not a task for crowd-sourced, ride-sharing start-ups, argues Phillips. Relying on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-biography-portrays-a-brutal-character-driven-by-lofty-dreams-41995">genius of Elon Musk</a> or a breakthrough from the next boy/girl wonder out of Silicon Valley is casual outsourcing. The Tesla battery will only be a breakthrough when the energy it stores comes from sources both cleaner and cheaper than coal. That means greater <a href="http://arena.gov.au/programmes/research-and-development-programme/">public investment in R&D</a> to further reduce the cost of wind and solar.</p>
<p>In the case of nuclear, established plants might be competitive, but the next generation reactors face the legacy of 30 years of bad press and stalled innovation. Despite the advocacy of <a href="http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/372493/c25ebfa5d2/1603503199/be41125912/">James Hansen</a> at COP21 in Paris, nuclear is unlikely to be widely embraced until it is safer, <a href="http://thebulletin.org/2015/november/joe-romm-why-nuclear-power-will-not-be-whole-solution-climate-change8844">modular</a> and cheaper over the fuel cycle. And you won’t crowd-source that.</p>
<h2>Human nature: a case of good vs. wicked?</h2>
<p>Ultimately, Phillips’ point in this long letter to the left is that the purveyors of collapse porn are objecting to more than big government, capitalism, growth, technology, or big kit. They have a fundamental problem with the human enterprise that goes back at least four centuries.</p>
<p>This genre, he suggests, is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the latest episode in what has been an eternal battle between those who recognise within our species while there is potential both for greatness and wickedness, overall we are ascending, and those who focus on our wickedness and believe us to have fallen long ago.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Lefroy has received funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program. </span></em></p>Collapse porn. Apocalyptica. Eco-rapture. A growing genre of environmental writing that sees endless economic growth as the enemy.Ted Lefroy, Director, Centre for Environment, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371802015-02-10T06:46:52Z2015-02-10T06:46:52ZIt’s against human nature to send two-year-olds to school<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71462/original/image-20150209-24664-1ogpid6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Processing children into units of human capital as quickly as possible risks the production of 'damaged goods'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Genius baby via Bartosz Budrewicz/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In order to make young children “school ready”, the English <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26031574">government is now encouraging</a> parents to place their children in school nurseries <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24818439">shortly after their second birthday</a>. But there is evidence to suggest that this policy might be poorly aligned to the developmental needs of such young children and that it contravenes their underlying human nature.</p>
<p>In the broader history of humanity, state-funded schooling is a very recent public strategy and is only about two centuries old in England. It arose from the industrial revolution as a process to instill the population with basic literacy and numeracy skills. Until even more recently, there was never any suggestion that a school environment was the right place in which to nurture children under five years of age. </p>
<p>So let’s take a step back and consider whether our human hunter-gatherer heritage has really attuned infants towards such an environment during this very early stage of their development. Human beings are, at base, linguistic primates, born with <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-nature-nurture-and-neuroplasticity-10734">brains that are highly “plastic”</a>, which subsequently undergo a huge amount of development in interaction with the environment and, most importantly, other people. </p>
<h2>Start up the jazz</h2>
<p>The core human skills are rooted in communication. This requires a child to learn how to independently translate highly abstract thoughts into a complex combination of symbols which coalesce in spoken language. The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/icd.457/abstract">psychologist Suzanne Zeedyk</a> proposes that what happens between infants and carers in one-to-one interactions is a type of improvised symbolic “dance”, which she refers to as a “jazz duet”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71461/original/image-20150209-24704-1lj08x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1020&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Learning to play life’s rhythms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thundershead/3524477568/sizes/l">Thundershead</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be truly what psychologists call “intersubjective” – able to communicate our meanings to other people and to grasp their meanings in return – such interactions must be completely spontaneous. Each party – the child and the carer – must freely respond to the communications of the other. To give an analogy, as every jazz musician knows, in order to “jam”, you have to learn how to tune into the rhythms of others. </p>
<p>The way in which human beings naturally “boot” this system in early childhood is through spontaneous, play-based interaction with both peers and adults. From simple beginnings, the infant then becomes increasingly adept at effectively responding to the communications of others. The process of environmentally “booting” such an evolved system is not peculiar to human beings – it is also observed in other animals. For example, <a href="http://www.toomuchtoosoon.org/uploads/2/0/3/8/20381265/school_starting_age_-_final.pdf">researchers have found</a> that in young rats, free play activity builds neuronal connections in the amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain, which deal with emotion regulation and social skills. </p>
<h2>Results factories</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ux9Hg5sHaiY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>If modern zoos rightly go to great lengths to create environments that are as natural as possible for the animals they house, why do we care so little about extending this care and consideration to our own species? Politicians in England would appear to be focused on a futile mission to eradicate millions of years of evolution in order to subjugate human nature to the demands of international capitalist markets. </p>
<p>At the genesis of this process, which resulted in the imposition of a national curriculum for schools steeped in concepts of “employability”, <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104475">Margaret Thatcher bluntly stated</a> that: “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.” The steady march of this philosophy is now poised at the threshold of the nursery, with the coalition’s recent requirement for a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/progress-check-at-age-2-and-eyfs-profile">progress report on two-year-olds</a>, and New Labour’s previous imposition of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-scrap-new-baseline-tests-for-primary-school-children-36558">formal assessment</a> for five-year-olds.</p>
<p>For the past 35 years, successive governments have doggedly pursued the mission of “education as production of economic capital” through a state education system that has been increasingly monitored and directed by the government watchdog Ofsted, with its focus on data generated from standard assessments such as GCSEs. While each successive government argues that it has raised achievement, this is a spurious premise. </p>
<p>What they have in fact done is drive teachers into programming children towards specific test responses, in order to artificially raise achievement data. The current government now wishes to extend this process into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-scrap-new-baseline-tests-for-primary-school-children-36558">very earliest stages of childhood</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, other nations have made far greater recent gains in literacy performance in the mid-teenage years. The 2009 results for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s programme for international student assessments found that Shanghai China, Korea and Finland were the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46660259.pdf">best performing nations</a> in terms of literacy. There are vast cultural differences between these nations, but they do have one feature in common – a <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.AGES">school entry age</a> of seven. The nations directly below them, but above the UK, have a school entry age of six.</p>
<h2>Kids in a cage?</h2>
<p>Internationally renowned psychologist <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.html">Alison Gopnik’s research</a> shows that direct teaching at an early stage in a child’s development:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Leads children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Schooling infants is therefore commensurate with placing a young animal in a cage. Human beings <a href="http://evolution.about.com/od/Evolution-Glossary/a/What-Is-A-Niche.htm">evolved in a niche</a> in which the requirement to learn how to engage in complex spontaneous interaction is paramount. Taking short cuts in early childhood in pursuit of processing human beings into units of human capital as quickly as possible risks the production of “damaged goods”. </p>
<p>The question for the English government should not be how to find funds to build more schools and put more teachers into more classrooms to deal with an increasing number of ever-younger pupils. Instead, it should be about supporting families and local communities to care for and educate young children within environments that are most appropriate to their biologically evolved needs. </p>
<hr>
<p>Next read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-at-what-age-are-children-ready-for-school-29005">At what age are children ready for school?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37180/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pam Jarvis is a member of the academic advisory team for the National "Save Childhood" and "Too Much, Too Soon" campaign.</span></em></p>In order to make young children “school ready”, the English government is now encouraging parents to place their children in school nurseries shortly after their second birthday. But there is evidence…Pam Jarvis, Senior Lecturer, Department of Children, Young People and Families, Leeds Trinity UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.