WEBVTT 00:00:03.070 --> 00:00:06.740 - I find these pictures of World War II leaders as children 00:00:07.010 --> 00:00:10.807 kind of fascinating, because it grounds you. It makes you realize 00:00:10.890 --> 00:00:17.047 that there is a whole story there of environment, of development through their 00:00:17.130 --> 00:00:22.177 childhood, through their teenage years. You just remember they're all kids. 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:25.097 Except Stalin. He was looking evil already when young. 00:00:25.180 --> 00:00:27.180 - Well, people used to not smile in photos as well. 00:00:27.263 --> 00:00:28.997 So looking at historical photos of children, 00:00:29.080 --> 00:00:31.741 or sometimes even kids in other cultures, it's like, "Oh, 00:00:31.824 --> 00:00:34.721 why are they all so serious?" But our creepiness radars are also way off. 00:00:34.805 --> 00:00:37.137 This is something that I've been interested in for a long time as 00:00:37.220 --> 00:00:41.097 well, is that we have this intuitive perception of whether or 00:00:41.180 --> 00:00:44.837 not somebody is trustworthy. And that intuitive perception, according to 00:00:44.920 --> 00:00:48.577 ample studies at this point, is not to be trusted. And one thing in 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:52.357 particular is whether or not we think someone is creepy, including children, but 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:55.877 usually the research is done, of course, on adult faces and with adults. 00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:59.857 And only recently did we even really define 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:03.917 what that vague feeling of creepiness is. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:07.857 It has a lot to do with not following social norms. This is something 00:01:07.940 --> 00:01:11.617 we see that transfers to other contexts, like why people are afraid of 00:01:11.700 --> 00:01:15.320 people with severe mental illness and psychosis. If you're on 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:18.808 the bus or the Tube in London, and someone's talking to themselves 00:01:18.891 --> 00:01:19.457 and they're 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:22.923 acting in an erratic way, we know that people are more likely to keep a distance. 00:01:23.006 --> 00:01:23.157 There 00:01:23.240 --> 00:01:26.717 There was one study where they literally had a waiting room where they also had 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:30.637 people with chairs, and the question was, "How many chairs would you sit away 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:32.943 from someone you know has a severe mental illness?" 00:01:33.027 --> 00:01:34.657 And the answer is you sit more chairs 00:01:34.740 --> 00:01:38.257 away, and there's a physical and psychological distancing that's 00:01:38.340 --> 00:01:42.237 happening there. And it's not because people with severe mental 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:46.310 illness are inherently more violent or more dangerous. That is not 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:50.117 actually what the research finds. It's that we perceive them as such 00:01:50.200 --> 00:01:51.550 because we perceive them as 00:01:52.540 --> 00:01:56.460 weird basically. We go, "This isn't how you're supposed to be behaving, and 00:01:56.560 --> 00:02:00.397 so I'm worried about this and so I'm going to keep my distance." And so 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:04.297 creepiness is much the same, and that's where you can totally misfire 00:02:04.380 --> 00:02:07.997 whom you perceive as creepy just because they're not acting in the way that you 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:09.917 expect people to act in society. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:15.760 - Well, what are the sort of concrete features that contribute to our creepiness 00:02:16.380 --> 00:02:20.277 metric? Is that meme accurate that when the person's attractive, you're 00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:22.657 less likely to label them as creepy? 00:02:22.740 --> 00:02:25.890 - It depends. If they're too attractive, it can be. So there's- 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:28.297 There's, there's effects that interact there. 00:02:28.380 --> 00:02:29.177 - That's hilarious. 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:33.200 - And we also don't trust people potentially who are too attractive. 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:36.797 But again, deviation from the norm. And so if you're 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:40.557 deviating in any way, that can lead to 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:45.710 well, your assessment being more wrong, but also you assessing people as more 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:50.397 negative. And so with creepiness, the 00:02:50.480 --> 00:02:54.140 main thing that bothers me as a criminal psychologist 00:02:54.600 --> 00:02:58.500 is that tangential to creepiness is this general idea of trustworthiness 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:02.717 and that you can tell whether somebody is lying. And I've done research on this, 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:06.517 as have lots of other people, like Aldert Vrij is one of the leading researchers on 00:03:06.600 --> 00:03:10.470 deception detection. And he has found in so 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:14.397 many studies that it's really hard to detect whether someone is 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:18.237 lying reliably, and that people, especially police 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:22.220 officers, people who do investigative interviewing, they have this high 00:03:22.360 --> 00:03:26.217 confidence level that they, because of their vast experience, 00:03:26.300 --> 00:03:29.049 can in fact tell whether the person across from them is lying to them, 00:03:29.132 --> 00:03:33.537 this witness, the suspect. And the answer is that, even that, if you take them into 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:37.320 experimental settings, they are no better than chance at detecting 00:03:37.500 --> 00:03:41.257 lies, and yet they think they are. And so again, you get into this path 00:03:41.340 --> 00:03:45.237 where you're going to miss people who are actually lying to you potentially, and 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:47.784 you're going to potentially point at innocent people and say, 00:03:47.867 --> 00:03:49.097 "I think you're guilty of this 00:03:49.180 --> 00:03:52.797 crime," and you go hard on that person in a way that might even lead to a wrongful 00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:53.713 conviction. 00:03:54.440 --> 00:03:58.130 - So it's the fact that it's very difficult to detect lies and 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:03.797 overconfidence in policing creates a huge problem. 00:04:03.880 --> 00:04:07.837 - Not just policing, in relationships and in lots of other contexts as well. 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:11.003 I mean, a lot of jealousy is born out of uncertainty. Jealousy isn't, 00:04:11.086 --> 00:04:11.797 "I know for sure 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:14.389 that you have done something that is threatening our relationship." 00:04:14.472 --> 00:04:15.737 A lot of jealousy is, "What's in 00:04:15.820 --> 00:04:19.300 my head because I am assuming that you might be thinking or doing 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:22.937 X." And that is also basically an exercise in lie 00:04:23.020 --> 00:04:26.230 detection. And there as well, we are very bad at it. 00:04:26.620 --> 00:04:32.888 - Is there a combination of the dark tetrad and how good you are at lying? 00:04:32.971 --> 00:04:36.844 Like, are people with certain traits, maybe psychopathy, 00:04:36.928 --> 00:04:39.137 are better at lying than others? 00:04:39.220 --> 00:04:41.668 - There's definitely some research to support the idea that people 00:04:41.751 --> 00:04:43.117 with psychopathy are better at lying. 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:46.680 There's also some research specifically on sort of faking good 00:04:46.780 --> 00:04:50.667 in, for example, parole decisions. So when it comes up to 00:04:50.750 --> 00:04:54.457 someone who is... There's a legal decision to be made as to whether this 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:58.177 person can be released from prison or released from just detention in general. 00:04:58.260 --> 00:05:02.157 And then the person will act in a particular way, sort 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:06.117 of mimic a good prisoner, mimic someone who's safe to be released into 00:05:06.200 --> 00:05:10.037 society. And then the committee goes, "Oh, well, you know, this, 00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:12.708 this person's doing great," and so they're ready to be released. 00:05:12.791 --> 00:05:15.817 And then they make the wrong decision because that person has been faking it. 00:05:15.900 --> 00:05:21.177 So I think with psychopathy, it's a bit complicated. There has been 00:05:21.260 --> 00:05:25.180 some sort of, historically as well, some concern that certain treatment for 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:28.797 psychopathy, especially empathy-focused treatment, makes people with 00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:32.717 psychopathy more likely to fake empathy and to 00:05:32.800 --> 00:05:36.537 weaponize it. But then there's other research which finds that if you use other 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:40.477 kinds of interventions, so like Jennifer Skeem in 00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:44.477 California who does research on people with psychopathy who have 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:47.508 committed severe crimes. And she specifically creates these treatment 00:05:47.591 --> 00:05:48.417 programs that aren't 00:05:48.500 --> 00:05:51.593 just around empathy, but they're more around almost learning the rules 00:05:51.676 --> 00:05:52.510 of society 00:05:52.600 --> 00:05:56.457 and convincing people that actually being pro-social is a better way to get 00:05:56.540 --> 00:06:00.437 what you want in life. And so there's a real need 00:06:00.520 --> 00:06:03.857 for tailored treatments to deal with especially certain kinds of 00:06:03.940 --> 00:06:07.417 personality traits, dark personality traits, to try and convince people 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:11.337 basically, actually being pro-social is the better path, rather 00:06:11.420 --> 00:06:15.337 than just going hard on, you know, empathy and things that they don't maybe also see 00:06:15.420 --> 00:06:20.660 as faults with themselves. - Is there a psychological cost to empathizing with... 00:06:21.270 --> 00:06:24.807 - so-called monsters? You referenced Nietzsche in the 00:06:24.890 --> 00:06:28.387 book, you know, "Gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into 00:06:28.470 --> 00:06:32.217 you." If you study, quote unquote, 00:06:32.300 --> 00:06:35.857 "evil" or study monsters that you may become that. 00:06:35.940 --> 00:06:39.707 Is there a danger of that? I don't think so. I think that's what 00:06:39.790 --> 00:06:43.647 people fear. So, a lot of the Nietzsche quotes I use as well are... Some of them I 00:06:43.730 --> 00:06:46.256 like because they speak to the chapters I write about, but... 00:06:46.339 --> 00:06:47.507 and the issues I write about. 00:06:47.590 --> 00:06:51.470 But some of them I also like because they are how people think about evil 00:06:51.890 --> 00:06:54.190 and people who are labeled evil. And 00:06:55.010 --> 00:06:58.787 I do think with gazing into the abyss and the abyss gazing back, 00:06:58.870 --> 00:07:02.377 it's more of a... You're trying to find it. 00:07:02.460 --> 00:07:06.447 And that's why in some ways that doesn't work actually, because it isn't a total 00:07:06.530 --> 00:07:10.350 blank. It isn't the abyss. There are in fact things that you can see, 00:07:10.510 --> 00:07:14.387 even, even if it's just superficially, and patterns you can recognize to help 00:07:14.470 --> 00:07:18.347 you and key decision-makers, especially in legal settings, make better 00:07:18.430 --> 00:07:21.499 decisions around people like this. So, when they see these patterns, 00:07:21.582 --> 00:07:26.150 they act a better way. So yeah, I get asked a lot 00:07:26.510 --> 00:07:30.347 as a criminal psychologist, "Do you carry the cases that you deal around 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:34.247 with you?" So, some of the cases involve, you know, huge 00:07:34.330 --> 00:07:36.365 amounts of witnesses, huge amounts of potential victims, 00:07:36.448 --> 00:07:38.087 and so in these cases there are very visceral 00:07:38.170 --> 00:07:42.087 victims, and so in these cases there are very visceral 00:07:42.170 --> 00:07:45.210 descriptions sometimes of heinous crimes. And 00:07:46.370 --> 00:07:50.030 I think that as someone who does this work, you 00:07:50.130 --> 00:07:53.530 can't be someone who sees it as anything other than a puzzle. 00:07:54.690 --> 00:07:58.000 So, you have to look at it and go, "Here's the different pieces of information. 00:07:58.083 --> 00:08:02.467 What I am doing is pattern recognition. I'm not here to emotionally 00:08:02.550 --> 00:08:04.609 invest in each of these victims or potential victims. 00:08:04.692 --> 00:08:06.347 That's not my role. There's therapists for 00:08:06.430 --> 00:08:08.279 that. There's other people who do that work. 00:08:08.362 --> 00:08:10.207 I am here working with the police. I'm here 00:08:10.290 --> 00:08:13.447 working with lawyers. I'm here looking at it more objectively 00:08:13.530 --> 00:08:17.140 to see how this all fits together." And so, I think that's how 00:08:17.570 --> 00:08:21.427 I engage with it. I see it as this puzzle that I'm trying to figure out. I worry 00:08:21.510 --> 00:08:25.307 for my own brain that when I confront people 00:08:25.390 --> 00:08:29.247 and see them as a puzzle, which I do. I see the beauty in 00:08:29.330 --> 00:08:33.167 the puzzle. All the puzzles look beautiful to me. 00:08:33.250 --> 00:08:37.167 I'm sometimes like a Prince Myshkin character from The Idiot 00:08:37.250 --> 00:08:40.850 by Dostoevsky, where you just see... It's not the good in 00:08:40.950 --> 00:08:44.050 people, but the beauty in the puzzle. And I 00:08:44.330 --> 00:08:48.110 think you can lose your footing on the moral landscape if you 00:08:48.630 --> 00:08:52.167 see the beauty in everything a bit too much. 00:08:52.250 --> 00:08:56.067 Because, everyone is interesting. Everyone 00:08:56.150 --> 00:08:59.747 is complicated. It's the classic scientist response as 00:08:59.830 --> 00:09:03.667 well to what other people in society go, "Ooh." They go, you know, "This 00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:07.227 is horrible," or, "This atrocious thing has happened," or, "This shocking, 00:09:07.310 --> 00:09:11.107 existential crisis inducing thing I've just found is, you 00:09:11.190 --> 00:09:15.120 know, giving me existential crisis." And scientists instead go, "Oh, 00:09:15.210 --> 00:09:18.927 wow!" And you can sort of see the delight in discovery as well. 00:09:19.010 --> 00:09:22.570 And I think sometimes scientists read as callous because we 00:09:22.710 --> 00:09:26.467 enjoy this discovery of knowledge and the discovery of insights. 00:09:26.550 --> 00:09:30.327 And it just feels like this little light bulb has gone off and you go, "Oh, I 00:09:30.410 --> 00:09:33.616 understand a tiny bit more about the human experience or about the world around us." 00:09:33.699 --> 00:09:38.327 And I think it must be similar. I don't know that I feel or worry that I sort 00:09:38.410 --> 00:09:42.170 of become more, quote unquote, "evil." I think it's more 00:09:42.350 --> 00:09:46.227 that you add this nuance, which 00:09:46.310 --> 00:09:49.270 I guess sometimes can be estranging to other people. So, there's that. 00:09:49.354 --> 00:09:50.147 When you speak with 00:09:50.230 --> 00:09:53.441 others, sometimes, like even when I say, "We shouldn't use the word evil," 00:09:53.525 --> 00:09:56.432 people go, "No, but you have to. Does that mean you're trivializing things?" 00:09:56.515 --> 00:09:57.467 The answer is no, I'm not 00:09:57.550 --> 00:10:01.367 trivializing. I'm just trying to understand. Also, sympathizing 00:10:01.450 --> 00:10:05.347 or being empathetic towards people whom others have written off is always going to 00:10:05.430 --> 00:10:07.330 get that response from some people. I mean, 00:10:07.413 --> 00:10:09.277 there are real questions around whom we're 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:13.187 platforming and what that has and what role we have as content creators, 00:10:13.270 --> 00:10:16.867 both of us, of the people we talk about, how we cover them. I 00:10:16.950 --> 00:10:20.867 often come across this in true crime work that I do, because I get asked 00:10:20.950 --> 00:10:24.767 to do TV shows. I host TV shows, and I host BBC podcasts. 00:10:24.850 --> 00:10:28.470 And there's always the question of sometimes people commit 00:10:28.630 --> 00:10:32.387 murder to become famous. And should it be a 00:10:32.470 --> 00:10:34.538 blanket ban that we don't cover those cases, 00:10:34.621 --> 00:10:36.407 or should we cover those cases but in 00:10:36.490 --> 00:10:40.407 a different way, or should we anonymize the… So, it doesn't mean that 00:10:40.490 --> 00:10:44.490 you should never cover that case. It just means that you need to think about it.