So a friend of mine was riding in a taxi to the airport the other day, and on the way, she was chatting with the taxi driver, and he said to her, with total sincerity, "I can tell you are a really good person." And when she told me this story later, she said she couldn't believe how good it made her feel, that it meant a lot to her. Now that may seem like a strong reaction from my friend to the words of a total stranger, but she's not alone.
Jedna moja prijateljica se vozila taksijem do aerodroma pre neki dan. Na putu do aerodroma je ćaskala sa taksistom i on joj je rekao, krajnje iskreno: „Vidi se da si baš dobra osoba.“ Kada mi je kasnije ispričala tu priču, rekla je da nije mogla da veruje koliko se dobro zbog toga osetila, da joj je to mnogo značilo. Ovo može delovati kao preterana reakcija moje drugarice na reči potpunog neznanca, ali ona nije jedina u tome.
I'm a social scientist. I study the psychology of good people, and research in my field says many of us care deeply about feeling like a good person and being seen as a good person. Now, your definition of "good person" and your definition of "good person" and maybe the taxi driver's definition of "good person" -- we may not all have the same definition, but within whatever our definition is, that moral identity is important to many of us.
Ja sam društvena naučnica. Izučavam psihologiju dobrih ljudi, a istraživanje u mojoj oblasti kaže da je mnogima među nama duboko stalo da se osećamo kao dobra osoba i da nas drugi vide kao dobru osobu. E, sad, vaša definicija „dobre osobe“ i vaša definicija „dobre osobe“ i možda taksistina definicija „dobre osobe“ - ne moramo svi imati istu definiciju, ali šta god da je naša definicija, taj moralni identitet je važan za mnoge među nama.
Now, if somebody challenges it, like they question us for a joke we tell, or maybe we say our workforce is homogenous, or a slippery business expense, we go into red-zone defensiveness a lot of the time. I mean, sometimes we call out all the ways in which we help people from marginalized groups, or we donate to charity, or the hours we volunteer to nonprofits. We work to protect that good person identity. It's important to many of us.
Ako ga neko dovede u pitanje, na primer, preispituju nas zbog šale koju ispričamo, ili je možda, recimo, naša radna snaga homogena ili imamo nezgodan poslovni izdatak, često zauzimamo odbrambeni stav. Mislim, ponekad se pozivamo na sve načine na koje pomažemo ljudima iz marginalizovanih grupa, na donacije u dobrotvorne svrhe ili na sve naše sate volonterskog rada za neprofitne organizacije. Trudimo se da zaštitimo taj identitet dobre osobe. To je mnogima od nas važno.
But what if I told you this? What if I told you that our attachment to being good people is getting in the way of us being better people? What if I told you that our definition of "good person" is so narrow, it's scientifically impossible to meet? And what if I told you the path to being better people just begins with letting go of being a good person?
Ali, šta ako vam kažem sledeće? Šta ako bih vam rekla da nas vezanost za to da smo dobri ljudi sputava u tome da budemo bolji ljudi? Šta ako vam kažem da je naša definicija „dobre osobe“ toliko uska da je naučno nemoguće dostići je? Šta ako bih vam rekla da put do toga da postanete bolja osoba počinje time što se oslobodite toga da ste dobra osoba?
Now, let me tell you a little bit about the research about how the human mind works to explain. The brain relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work. That means a lot of the time, your mental processes are taking place outside of your awareness, like in low-battery, low-power mode in the back of your mind. That's, in fact, the premise of bounded rationality. Bounded rationality is the Nobel Prize-winning idea that the human mind has limited storage resources, limited processing power, and as a result, it relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work. So for example, some scientists estimate that in any given moment ... Better, better click, right? There we go.
Da vam sada ispričam ponešto o istraživanju načina na koji ljudski um funkcioniše da bih ovo objasnila. Mozak se oslanja na prečice da bi obavio dobar deo svojih zadataka. To znači da se često vaši mentalni procesi obavljaju izvan vaše svesti, kao da su u režimu smanjenog korišćenja baterije, negde u nesvesnom delu uma. To je zapravo pretpostavka ograničene racionalnosti. Ograničena racionalnost je ideja dobitnika Nobelove nagrade da ljudski um poseduje ograničene resurse za skladištenje, ograničenu moć obrade, i posledično se oslanja na prečice da bi obavio veliki deo posla. Tako, na primer, neki naučnici procenjuju da u svakom trenutku... Treba da bolje pucnem, je l' da? Evo.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
At any given moment, 11 million pieces of information are coming into your mind. Eleven million. And only 40 of them are being processed consciously. So 11 million, 40.
U svakom datom momentu, 11 miliona pojedinačnih informacija pristiže u naš um. Jedanaest miliona. A samo 40 njih se svesno obradi. Dakle, 11 miliona, 40.
I mean, has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a really busy day at work, and you drive home, and when you get in the door, you realize you don't even remember the drive home, like whether you had green lights or red lights. You don't even remember. You were on autopilot. Or have you ever opened the fridge, looked for the butter, swore there is no butter, and then realized the butter was right in front of you the whole time? These are the kinds of "whoops" moments that make us giggle, and this is what happens in a brain that can handle 11 million pieces of information coming in with only 40 being processed consciously. That's the bounded part of bounded rationality.
Mislim, da li vam se ikada ovo desilo? Da li ste nekada imali zaista užurban dan na poslu, vozite se kući, i kada stignete do vrata, shvatate da se ni ne sećate vožnje do kuće, na primer, da li ste naletali na zelena ili crvena svetla. Uopšte se ne sećate. Bili ste na autopilotu. Ili da li ste nekada otvorili frižider, tražili puter, mogli ste se zakleti da ga nije bilo, a zatim ste shvatili da je puter sve vreme bio pred vama? To su ti trenuci pravljenja grešaka kojima se smejemo, a to je nešto što se dešava u mozgu koji može da podnese da u njega uđe 11 miliona podataka, a da samo 40 bude svesno obrađeno. To je ograničeni deo ograničene racionalnosti.
This work on bounded rationality is what's inspired work I've done with my collaborators Max Bazerman and Mahzarin Banaji, on what we call bounded ethicality. So it's the same premise as bounded rationality, that we have a human mind that is bounded in some sort of way and relying on shortcuts, and that those shortcuts can sometimes lead us astray. With bounded rationality, perhaps it affects the cereal we buy in the grocery store, or the product we launch in the boardroom. With bounded ethicality, the human mind, the same human mind, is making decisions, and here, it's about who to hire next, or what joke to tell or that slippery business decision.
Ovaj rad na temu ograničene racionalnosti inspirisao je moje radove u saradnji sa Maksom Bejzermanom i Mazarin Benaži na temu nečega što zovemo ograničenom etičnošću. Ista je pretpostavka kao i kod ograničene racionalnosti, da imamo ljudski um koji je ograničen na neki način i oslanja se na prečice, a te prečice nas nekada mogu navesti na pogrešan put. Kod ograničene racionalnosti, to će možda uticati na to koje žitarice ćemo kupiti u prodavnici ili na to koji ćemo proizvod predstaviti na zasedanju odbora. Uz ograničenu etičnost, ljudski um, isti ljudski um donosi odluke, a ovde se radi o tome koga sledećeg zaposliti, koji vic ispričati ili da li treba doneti nezgodnu poslovnu odluku.
So let me give you an example of bounded ethicality at work. Unconscious bias is one place where we see the effects of bounded ethicality. So unconscious bias refers to associations we have in our mind, the shortcuts your brain is using to organize information, very likely outside of your awareness, not necessarily lining up with your conscious beliefs. Researchers Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald have looked at data from millions of people, and what they've found is, for example, most white Americans can more quickly and easily associate white people and good things than black people and good things, and most men and women can more quickly and easily associate men and science than women and science. And these associations don't necessarily line up with what people consciously think. They may have very egalitarian views, in fact. So sometimes, that 11 million and that 40 just don't line up.
Dozvolite da vam iznesem primer ograničene etičnosti na poslu. Nesvesna pristrasnost je jedno od područja gde vidimo efekte ograničene etičnosti. Nesvesna pristrasnost se odnosi na asocijacije koje imamo u umu, prečice koje mozak koristi da bi organizovao informacije, vrlo verovatno izvan vaše svesti i ne podudaraju se nužno da vašim svesnim uverenjima. Istraživači Nosek, Benaži i Grinvald pregledali su podatke dobijene od nekoliko miliona ljudi i našli su da, na primer, većina Amerikanaca bele rase može brže i lakše da poveže bele ljude i dobre stvari nego crne ljude i dobre stvari, a većina muškaraca i žena može brže i lakše da dovede u vezu muškarce i nauku nego žene i nauku. Ove asocijacije se ne poklapaju nužno sa onim što ljudi svesno misle. Oni u stvari mogu imati vrlo egalitarna gledišta. Tako se ponekad tih 11 miliona i tih 40 informacija prosto ne uklapaju.
And here's another example: conflicts of interest. So we tend to underestimate how much a small gift -- imagine a ballpoint pen or dinner -- how much that small gift can affect our decision making. We don't realize that our mind is unconsciously lining up evidence to support the point of view of the gift-giver, no matter how hard we're consciously trying to be objective and professional. We also see bounded ethicality -- despite our attachment to being good people, we still make mistakes, and we make mistakes that sometimes hurt other people, that sometimes promote injustice, despite our best attempts, and we explain away our mistakes rather than learning from them. Like, for example, when I got an email from a female student in my class saying that a reading I had assigned, a reading I had been assigning for years, was sexist. Or when I confused two students in my class of the same race -- look nothing alike -- when I confused them for each other more than once, in front of everybody.
Evo još jednog primera: konflikt interesa. Skloni smo tome da potcenimo koliko mali poklon - zamislite hemijsku ili večeru - koliko taj mali poklon može uticati na naše odlučivanje. Ne shvatamo da naš um nesvesno izdvaja dokaze da bi podržao stanovište onoga ko je dao poklon, bez obzira na to koliko se svesno trudimo da budemo objektivni i profesionalni. Takođe vidimo ograničenu etičnost - uprkos našoj privrženosti tome da budemo dobri ljudi, ipak pravimo greške, i to pravimo greške koje nekada povređuju druge, koje nekad podstiču nepravdu, uprkos najboljim nastojanjima, i branimo svoje greške umesto da učimo iz njih. Na primer, kada sam dobila imejl od studentkinje iz svoje grupe u kome je stajalo da je tekst koji sam zadala, koji sam zadavala godinama, seksistički. Ili kada sam pomešala dva studenta u grupi koji su bili iste rase - a uopšte nisu ličili - kada sam ih pomešala više puta, pred svima.
These kinds of mistakes send us, send me, into red-zone defensiveness. They leave us fighting for that good person identity. But the latest work that I've been doing on bounded ethicality with Mary Kern says that we're not only prone to mistakes -- that tendency towards mistakes depends on how close we are to that red zone. So most of the time, nobody's challenging our good person identity, and so we're not thinking too much about the ethical implications of our decisions, and our model shows that we're then spiraling towards less and less ethical behavior most of the time.
Takve greške šalju nas, šalju mene, u opasno odbrambeno stanje. Ostavljaju nas da se borimo za taj identitet dobre osobe. Ali, najnoviji rad na kome sam radila vezan za ograničenu etičnost sa Meri Kern kaže da ne samo da smo skloni greškama, već da ta sklonost ka pravljenju grešaka zavisi od toga koliko smo blizu toj opasnoj zoni. Većim delom vremena niko ne dovodi u pitanje naš identitet dobre osobe, tako da ne razmišljamo previše o etičkim posledicama svojih odluka i naš model pokazuje da se tada sve više okrećemo ponašanjima koja su sve manje etična, u većini slučajeva.
On the other hand, somebody might challenge our identity, or, upon reflection, we may be challenging it ourselves. So the ethical implications of our decisions become really salient, and in those cases, we spiral towards more and more good person behavior, or, to be more precise, towards more and more behavior that makes us feel like a good person, which isn't always the same, of course. The idea with bounded ethicality is that we are perhaps overestimating the importance our inner compass is playing in our ethical decisions. We perhaps are overestimating how much our self-interest is driving our decisions, and perhaps we don't realize how much our self-view as a good person is affecting our behavior, that in fact, we're working so hard to protect that good person identity, to keep out of that red zone, that we're not actually giving ourselves space to learn from our mistakes and actually be better people.
Sa druge strane, neko bi mogao preispitati naš identitet ili bismo to učinili mi sami, nakon promišljanja. Tako etičke implikacije naših odluka postaju zaista primetne, i u tim situacijama se sve više okrećemo postupcima dobre osobe ili, da budemo precizniji, sve više ka postupcima zbog kojih se osećamo kao dobra osoba, što, naravno, nije uvek isto. Ideja ograničene etičnosti je da možda precenjujemo značaj uloge unutrašnjeg kompasa u našim etičkim odlukama. Možda precenjujemo koliko naš lični interes pokreće naše odluke i možda ne shvatamo koliko naša slika o sebi kao dobroj osobi utiče na naše ponašanje, da se zapravo toliko trudimo da zaštitimo taj identitet dobre osobe, da se klonimo te zone opasnosti, da ne dajemo prostora sebi da učimo iz svojih grešaka i da zaista budemo bolji ljudi.
It's perhaps because we expect it to be easy. We have this definition of good person that's either-or. Either you are a good person or you're not. Either you have integrity or you don't. Either you are a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or you're not. And in this either-or definition, there's no room to grow. And by the way, this is not what we do in most parts of our lives. Life, if you needed to learn accounting, you would take an accounting class, or if you become a parent, we pick up a book and we read about it. We talk to experts, we learn from our mistakes, we update our knowledge, we just keep getting better. But when it comes to being a good person, we think it's something we're just supposed to know, we're just supposed to do, without the benefit of effort or growth.
Možda je to tako jer očekujemo da to bude lako. Imamo definiciju dobre osobe koja je ili-ili. Ili ste dobra osoba ili niste. Ili imate integritet ili nemate. Ili jeste rasista, seksista, ili homofob ili niste. A u ovoj definiciji ili-ili nema mesta za razvoj. A inače, to ne radimo u većini segmenata života. Na primer, ako treba da naučite računovodstvo, išli biste na časove računovodstva ili, ako postanete roditelj, uzmete knjigu i čitate o tome. Pričamo sa stručnjacima, učimo iz svojih grešaka, dopunjavamo znanje, jednostavno stalno napredujemo. Ali, kada se radi o tome da budemo dobri ljudi, mislimo da je to nešto što prosto treba da znamo, što se podrazumeva da radimo, bez ikakvog truda ili razvoja.
So what I've been thinking about is what if we were to just forget about being good people, just let it go, and instead, set a higher standard, a higher standard of being a good-ish person? A good-ish person absolutely still makes mistakes. As a good-ish person, I'm making them all the time. But as a good-ish person, I'm trying to learn from them, own them. I expect them and I go after them. I understand there are costs to these mistakes. When it comes to issues like ethics and bias and diversity and inclusion, there are real costs to real people, and I accept that. As a good-ish person, in fact, I become better at noticing my own mistakes. I don't wait for people to point them out. I practice finding them, and as a result ... Sure, sometimes it can be embarrassing, it can be uncomfortable. We put ourselves in a vulnerable place, sometimes. But through all that vulnerability, just like in everything else we've tried to ever get better at, we see progress. We see growth. We allow ourselves to get better.
Zato sam razmišljala šta bi bilo da prosto zaboravimo na to da budemo dobri ljudi, prosto da se oslobodimo toga, i da umesto toga postavimo viši standard, da budemo donekle dobra osoba? Donekle dobra osoba zasigurno i dalje pravi greške. Kao donekle dobra osoba, stalno pravim greške. Ali, kao donekle dobra osoba, trudim se da učim iz njih, da ih prisvojim. Očekujem ih i tragam za njima. Shvatam da postoji cena ovih grešaka. Kada se radi o pitanjima poput etike, predrasuda, raznolikosti i inkluzije, postoji stvarna cena za stvarne ljude, i to prihvatam. Kao donekle dobra osoba, zapravo, postajem bolja u prepoznavanju sopstvenih grešaka. Ne čekam da mi ljudi ukažu na njih. Vežbam da ih pronalazim, i kao rezultat... Naravno, to ponekad može da izazove osećaj sramote i da bude neprijatno. Ponekad postavimo sebe u ranjiv položaj. Ali, kroz svu tu ranjivost, kao i u svemu ostalom u čemu pokušavamo da budemo bolji, vidimo napredak. Vidimo razvoj. Omogućavamo sebi da postanemo bolji.
Why wouldn't we give ourselves that? In every other part of our lives, we give ourselves room to grow -- except in this one, where it matters most.
Zašto ne bismo to pružili sebi? U svakom drugom području života, dajemo sebi prostora za razvoj - osim u ovome, gde je to najvažnije.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)