amazing grade calculator

the following content isprovided under a creative commons license. your support will help mitopencourseware continue to offer high quality educationalresources for free. to make a donation or viewadditional materials from hundreds of mit courses, visitmit opencourseware at ocw.mit.edu. professor: good afternoon. congratulations for braving itthrough what's now become a

weekly snow disaster. this week's maybe threeof them or something. my name's john gabrieli. this is introductory topsychology, 9.00. this is a course about you. the entire course is what do weunderstand in a scientific way about human nature-- how people's minds work, howpeople's brains work that supports their mind.

this entire course is aboutwhat's a scientific way to understanding how people feel,think, and act in the world. and so we're trying to say thatwe constantly think you must in your everyday life thinkabout why do you have your preferences,your desires? what's easy for you? what's hard for you? what's delightful for you? why do other people behavethe way they do?

how do they think? how do they feel? and so there's a lot of realmsof this that are tough to get to by science. but what we're going to focus onthis semester is where the scientific approach has shedlight in the way that we used to think about experimentsand evidence, about how humans tick. and as we go through thissemester, we'll talk about the

brain, we'll talk a fair bitabout chapters from this book, the man who mistook his wife fora hat, from oliver sacks. it was a bestseller even when itwasn't [? a scienceware ?] course. it's a great book. you'll enjoy it. short, really fun chapters. we'll talk about how we perceivethe world; how we see; especially, a little bit,how we hear; how we think; how

we feel; personality; how wediffer from one to the other; and what we're sort of like;and how we behave in the world; development fromchildhood and infancy through adolescence, through youngadulthood, where you are mostly, through getting older,where i am; social interaction, how we behave ingroups and think about other people; and variation inthe mental health or psychopathology. and increasingly, we understandthat there's a huge

number of people who, at somemoment in their life or another, struggle with someaspect of mental health. and then we'll focus a lot on,not only the psychological aspects of what we study interms of behavior, but also the brain basis of that, andthink a little bit about to what extent the mind is what thebrain does, to what extent the mind is whatthe brain does. and so for every dimension ofbeing a human being that we'll talk about, we'll also talkabout what we understand

currently from theneurological and neuroscientific literatureabout how the human brain supports and contributesto different aspects of being a person. ok. so everybody who works in acertain field thinks that their field is really, really,really special, right? so here's why psychologyis really, really, really special.

so it's really, really special,i think, most of all, because every endeavor that weundertake at a university or in society as a whole-- it's about people, right, exceptfor when we think about the rest of nature. but people study biology,chemistry, and physics. and they think, right, that thesun orbits the earth for some period of time. and then they thinkit's the other way

around currently, right? ok, so people come up withthese conclusions. even though we're trying tounderstand nature, it's people who make certain investmentsin economics or behave in a certain way or votein a certain way. it's people who make music andappreciate music, make art and appreciate art, read and writeliterature, right? so in all these dimensions,there's something very fundamental about what it isabout the human mind that

gives birth to these areas ofinquiry and how those areas, domains of human experience,are enacted. so my only goal today is totry to convince you in a number of different ways thatwe're not simple video camera in our minds between our ears,recording the world in some objective, simple way, thateven the simplest, most obvious things areinterpretations of the world around us at many differentlevels of thought and feeling and perception.

and then our minds, the wayour minds are constructed, determines the world that weexperience, that we see, that we act upon. and even very simple thingsthat we think are pretty objective and simple, rightin front of our eyes, are determined by inferences anddeductions that our mind makes, weighing sources ofevidence in the world and coming to conclusions aboutwhat's around us, what we hear, what we see,and how we think.

so let's start with seeing. if your vision is reasonable,we say we see something, we believe it, right? so let's start with somethingvery simple-- these lines. so one of the tough things aboutpsychology is ever since the internet came intoexistence, people know every cool thing there isto know, right? i can tell you when i beganteaching, people said, oh my

gosh, i've never seensuch a thing. it's unbelievable! and then now, it's like twothirds of the class is like, yeah, i've got that onmy computer at home. we did that in thirdgrade or whatever. so all i'm saying is enjoy theones you haven't seen before, don't ruin it for your neighborstoday, because it's harder and harder tosurprise the world in a nice way, right?

ok, but let's look at theselines for a moment here. and perhaps you'll have thesense, and maybe-- is it glaring up there, sir? let's see. ok, is that better? maybe not. so you might have the sense thatthis line is a different length than this line. and this might be somewhereintermediate, right?

now you know, because ofpsychology, it's all a trick. but what's simpler thanthe length of a line? what's more objectivein some sense than the length of a line? but if we look at the actuallengths, they're all literally identical. but that center partlooks different. so what does it mean forit to look different? it means our minds aredetermining as simple a thing

as how long a line is dependingon the other information surrounding it. it's an interpretationin context. if we're simply looking, thelines will look the same. let's try another one. it's remarkable that those twolines are identical in length. [laughter] professor: ok, all right. it's ok to test the limitsof the credibility of the

audience, right? all right. yeah. of course, if our visual systemwere ludicrously off, we'd be constantly walking intowalls and falling out windows and things like that,right, if we were misestimating at that length. so the idea where we have visualillusions-- and i'll show you some more that i thinkyou'll be impressed by--

it's not that our visual systemis messed up or that psychologists think it'shilarious to trick us. it's that lots of things ourvisual system is a brilliant at, but it's brilliant byhaving certain laws or principles that it follows. and we can show this followingthose principles by seeing that when we mess with thetypical circumstances, those principles calculatethe wrong answer. so here's another one.

so, to most people, which linelooks bigger, the one in the middle or the one on the side? i know you know it'sall a trick, right? what could be more obviousthan that this is longer? it's just a simple line, but ifwe draw red lines on top of it then move them over here,they're dead identical. the central circle-- does one of them, themiddle circle, look larger than the other?

now you already know,intellectually, that it will turn out those two circles inthe middle will be the same. but you have to convinceyourself that it still looks like they're different. here there in red. here they are nextto each other. they're identical. again, this is evidence that,even for a simple thing like the size of a circle, your mindis making inferences.

and there are principles andlaws that it's following that determine what it is youthink that you see. here is two monsterschasing each other. but in fact, they'reidentical in size. the perspective cues makethe more distant one look much bigger. this is from ted adelson. this is a beautifuldemonstration of an illusion. ted adelson's in the psychologydepartment.

there's a letter a here. and believe it or not, there'sa letter b there. let's see if this looks anybetter when it goes like this. it doesn't. so one of the important thingsabout illusions, demonstrations in this class--and you will learn this as we go along-- is occasionally theyfail, and we come back and discover what thelesson of that is. so i'm just telling youit's showing you on my

monitor much brighter. it always has before. we'll adjust that. so i'm going to skip this, buti'll show you another time, because it's so good. and i'm going to feelbad about this. now, let's see. this'll work. all the same shadeof grey, right?

professor: did that workreasonably from where you sat? we'll try a few more. maybe. for some reason,my connection's always like this, sorry. does that one look lighterthan that one that way? now they look radicallydifferent, right? it's the same grey constantly. but again, the context is hugelydetermining how to

bright you see that grey. there it is. two boxes equal grey. so things as simple as howbright something is or how long something is dependon interpretation. here's an illusion fromroger shepard. it's kind of great. so here's two kind of different looking tables, right?

but they're not thatdifferent. and watch. there goes one tabletop. you're not impressed that thoseare identical tables? want me to do it again? that's the identical tabletop. to me, the one on the left lookspretty rectangular and the one on the right lookspretty square-ish. you're not easy toimpress, are you?

professor: you see that thosetwo bars are moving together at the same time. does it look like they'relittle steps? it'll show you. all right, fine. it's just like that, butnow you add those bars. does it look like little steps? professor: one moreof this kind. this is kind of fun.

you see the way that themask is turning? it always looks like it'stowards you, even though i'm-- one of the rotations-- it'sbecause of the way you're interpreting the light isinfluencing how you interpreting what's-- so that's simply a consequence,as far as people understand that, that the sourceof the illumination is not where you're used to, soyou're misinterpreting where the illumination is comingfrom for the depth of the

face, what's front and what'sback, whether the nose is sticking in or sticking out. so again, the point in theseillusions is, even for very simple things our, minds makecertain assumptions about how we interpret the world. and that drives everything thatwe see and how we act upon what we see. so at a slightly higheror more conceptual level, i need your help.

now, there's lots of thesethings we'll do this semester where you get to participate. the fun thing about-- i said this course was aboutyou-- when you could have thought that was a bitrhetorical, it's not. it's truly about you. so you get to be yourown laboratory. we get to share a laboratorysitting here. and what i'm going to do is askfor you to participate.

you don't have to do any ofthese things sitting at your seat, but i think it's usuallyfun to do them. so what's going to happenis i'm going to show you a drawing. if the people to my left-- so about in the middle, but youcan decide for yourself-- about this way, let's have yoube group a if you're willing to be that way. because of that, ican't call you--

i was going to call you guysgroup b, but i already see that's getting me in trouble. so we'll call it group b, butthat really means equals a. but i'll just call it b, ok? so a and b, ok? so what i need is group b-- b for best, a for awesome, ok. professor: --group b to closeyour eyes for a moment. group b, if you want to have funwith this, close your eyes

for a moment. group a, you're gonna see someinstructions, and read them silently to yourself. and then i'll ask you a questionabout the picture. ok, group a, you'renow reading. group b has your eyes closed. so read the instructionssilently to yourself. ok? now group a, close your eyes.

everybody has their eyesclosed for a moment. everybody has theireyes closed. now group b, look atyour instructions. so a has their eyes closed,b is reading instructions. everybody's eyes are open now. everybody's eyes are open. here's your picture. take it in and i'm goingto ask you a few questions about it.

look at it for a momentand inspect it. ok, here we go, ready? so just out loud-- was there an automobilein the picture? audience: no. professor: ok. see, this is a smart class. we're gonna have a-- was there a man inthe picture?

audience: yes. professor: was there awoman in the picture? this side again, womanin the picture? professor: all right,all right. ok, a child? professor: an animal? professor: ah. and now it gets a little wild. a whip?

a sword? professor: all right,a man's hat? professor: a ball? professor: a fish? professor: all right, sothere's disagreement. and that's-- we're a democracy, right? so all these things arebig setups, right? so here's what happened.

group a was told they were gonnalook at a picture of a trained seal act. and group b got the identicalinstructions, but they were told you're gonna lookat a costume ball. so you had an expectation ofwhat you were going to see. that expectation drives yourinterpretation of the very thing you see next, whichis this picture. [chatter] professor: ok, isthat all right?

and this is justfor fun, right? it's a set up. you're participating nicely. but in the world, when groupsthat are arguing with each other about things like peacesettlements, read a document, or make a statement, how muchdo you think the perspective they start with guides theinterpretation of what they read or what they hear? because you didn't havebig stakes in this.

you weren't going, i believe infish and if i don't see a fish, i know things aren't justand my group will be not treated fairly. you're not emotionally investedin, probably, whether there was a fish present. so your interpretation, yourbeliefs guide tremendously what you think you see and howyou interpret the situation-- for complicated thingsor even easy things like lines or squares.

and here's another kind of anexample where you would interpret that as ab for "baker" or 13 if it's in numbers. again, the context is drivinga lot of the interpretation. now this is one of thoseexamples that, again, when-- some number of years ago,it was a huge hit. and now, mostly people say,can't you come up with something betterthat we haven't all seen on the internet?

so if you know this, don'truin it for the other individuals. but what i need is afew volunteers-- you'll be facing methis way-- who are willing to count something. and it's mit, we're prettygood at counting. so what's the message of that? the message is-- we've talked about what weperceive, what we see by

expectations in context. but it's also we have verylimited what psychologists call attentional resources. we can pay attentionto a limited number of things at a time. and even when those things canbe right in front of us, if our attention is focused oroccupied by something else, like counting the passesin a difficult scene-- it wouldn't work if there wasone or two passes only,

because you would notice it. but when your mind is focused onidentifying all the passes among the players-- and thewhite shirts are moving, they're weaving with the otherplayers and so on-- then your attention is absorbedby that, and some of it is not left over to noticewhat's right in front of you. and we'll talk moreabout that. but it's a huge thing withhumans that we can pay attention pretty well, onaverage, to a thing at a time

under many circumstances. and the other things escape uscompletely, even if they're obviously present if we werelooking at them or paying attention to them. so here's another example of howour minds make our world-- what we see and what we don'tsee, what we pay attention to and what we don't payattention to. and that's something todo with how we hear. ok, so i'm goingto replay this.

so listen to what theguy is saying. take a look, andjust tell he-- he's saying some letters,ok, just not a word. what is it? ok, most people think he'ssaying "da." "da da, da da, da da." now let's try that again. i'm going to turn off thesound and i'm going to run the same film. what does his mouth looklike it's saying?

"ga ga." ok? but now we'll do one more thing,which is turn the sound back on, have you closeyour eyes, and listen to what he's saying. what's he saying? audience: "ba." professor: yeah. so it doesn't work foreverybody every time. but the basic idea is mostpeople think they hear the

word "da" coming fromthe speaker. and in fact, in their mind theydo because that's how they interpret whatthey're hearing. but in reality, the film clipis a film clip of the person saying "ba ba ba." and then anaudio recording of the person saying "ga ga ga." your mindintertwines across modalities what you hear and what you see,integrates them in some way below your levelof consciousness. you're not thinking about it.

and you come up with a differentinterpretation of what you hear. right? so what you see wouldbe this one thing. what you hear isanother thing. when your eyes are open and yourears are open, they meld together and producesomething-- a third thing that'sentirely different. again, your mind interpretedwhat you hear, not your ear

interpreting what you hear,in a simple sense. how about things that we know? so let's think about this. if somebody were to ask youwhich is farther east, closer to the atlantic-- san diego, california,or reno, nevada? who likes san diego asbeing farther east? a few hands. who likes reno as beingfarther east?

so, here's the mental map mostpeople have-- the mental map-- which is we know california'sright next to the ocean with arnold schwarzenegger protectingus on that side of the country, right? and then nevada's a little bitmore towards boston, right? that's a mental map thatmost people have. and that's how thehands went up. this is the actual map. and the only actual map you'veever seen, ever-- on a globe,

on a map, anything. because california takes a bigturn on the south, san diego's further east than reno. why do we imagine, and mostpeople do, that reno is further east, when you've neverseen a map or globe that's shown you that? never ever, ever. professor: because it's fartherfrom the ocean, because in our mind we go,california's way out there.

there's nothing-- hawaii is the only one out therefurther west, right? so our mind makes thisanswer despite that. and that's what we thinkwe might know. now, we might not betotally certain. we might not bet thefarm on that. which is farther north-- philadelphia, pennsylvania,or rome, italy? so start to think-- how wouldyou think about that?

it's not something you know. nobody memorizes it, right? but how would you beginto think which is probably more northern? what's your first gut? how many people likephiladelphia being more north? how many people like romebeing more north? there's kind of a mixtureof hands. the answer is that rome isnorth of philadelphia.

mostly people will answer thatphiladelphia is north. why they do that is they thinkthe us and europe, they're both sort of above the equator,below antarctica, kind of a aligned, evenhistorically, culturally. so they think, well, rome ispretty south in europe. and it is. it's in italy. philadelphia's reasonablynorth in the us. it gets winters and allthat kinds of stuff.

so a northern city in the ushas got to be north of a southern city in europe. but in fact, europe is-- thewhole continent is shifted up compared to the us. so you won't-- wait until getyour mind around this. which is further north,atlanta or chicago? sorry. it's sort of a joke. because sometimes when you dothis, people go like, wait a

minute, all my assumptionsare off. like, where am i? what's reality? here's one more-- two more. which is further north,portland or toronto? now you are already learningthe lesson go opposite. whatever i thought, goopposite, right? but why do you think mostpeople will answer that toronto is further north?

canada is up there, us isbelow it, but in fact-- that's the mental mapin the colors. but in fact, portlandin oregon is actually north of toronto. we'll do one last one. which is further west? which is further west, miami,florida-- which that's all the way towards the atlanticocean-- or santiago, chili-- which istowards the pacific ocean.

further west. so most people have a mentalmap that north america and south america are kind oflined up like that. and so you say well, miami isfurther east and santiago's farther west. but in fact, south america isfairly shifted compared to north america. and santiago is actually moreeastern or miami is more western, one relativeto the other.

because in our head, we kindof think, north and south america-- they're kind of linedup even though we never saw a global map like that. so again, some of our knowledgeguides how we think about the world and whatwe believe we know. so what's the point of this? it's what used to be calledtelephone, right? their story keeps changing. and it's hard to rememberdetails in a story.

people remember a nugget, orwhat we call a gist in psychology, a little point. and second, what you take as apoint is how you then tell the next person, the way youinterpret the story, something like that. thanks very much,that was good. [applause] professor: again, two things--our memory for precise details is surprisingly modest.

and how we interpret thingsmatter changes things a lot. so now, you had four bravestudents demonstrating some of the limits and propertiesof memory. so now, here's an exercise youcan do in your own seat. ok, you're just knowingyourself how you did, but here we go. i'm going to readyou some words. and then just give you-- don'thave to write anything down. if you write it down,it's no good.

and then i'm going to ask you ona recognition test, whether you heard a word or not. ready? so here's the list. so just listen and theni'll test your memory for it right after. here's the list. sour, candy, sugar, bitter,good, taste, tooth, nice, honey, soda, chocolate, heart,cake, tart, pie.

all right, how manypeople heard the word "sour?" all right. yeah, excellent, thank you. "chair." "candy." hey. "honey." "building." "sweet."every hand up there, you have a false memory. professor: now, it'sa set up ok? because here's the way they makethese lists, it's a set up, but there's a huge lesson.

and in fact, you may heardebates about what are real memories, what are falsememories, in court cases, in clinical cases. this is a laboratory experimentthat's been the testing ground for lots of ideasabout how we make real memories and how we end upwith false memories. so here's the way theymade the list. they took the word "sour." andthey took a lot of students basically like you and said,what's the first word you

think of that goes with sour? and people came up withthis kind of a list. candy, sugar, bitter, good,taste, tooth, nice, honey, soda, chocolate, heart,cake, tart, pie. but they left out oneword that people came up with a lot. the word "sweet." ok? so your mind interpretedthe list. you said, hey, this is all aboutthings that are related

to sweet things in one way oranother-- sweet sugar, sweet candy, sweet and sour, honey issweet, chocolate is sweet. so your mind imagined it heardthe word "sweet." and the majority of you put your hand upthat you actually heard the word "sweet." your mind imaginedit was there because that was generally whatwas going on. that was the gist ofthe experience, ok? so this idea is it's veryeasy, because of the way memory works, we remember thegist of things because that's

what's the important part. it's hard to rememberthe details. but that gist is aninterpreted gist. the gist was it'ssweet things. so the word "sweet" feels likeit was part of the memory. and we'll come back to thatlater on in the course. so one of the themes we'll talkabout a lot in the course is both an amazing power of thehuman mind and an amazing peril of the human mind.

and it's what psychologistscall automaticity. it's that our mind, in orderto be efficient and quick, does things automaticallywithout thought, without consciousness. it lets us walk withoutthinking a lot about where our feet are. it lets us speak quickly withoutthinking about the syntax and the vocabulary,right? it lets us do a lot of things.

so that's the power of it. the peril is when somethingbecomes automatic, we lose control of it withinourselves. so i need somebody at theirseat who's willing to read aloud something as fast as theycan when they see it on the computer monitor. if i can get a volunteerat your seat. ok, all the way backthere, ok. and then i'll come to youfor the second one.

here it comes. as fast as you can, go. audience: one waynot do enter. professor: ok, then,you got it. i couldn't trick you. but you might imagine a personmight mistake that, right? was there another one? was it you? ok, ready?

here we go. go. audience: paris in spring. i got you on that. professor: because your mindis automatically reading. we have lots of evidence inpsychology that you're barely looking at words like"the." you're assuming over those things. they're almost invisible to youthere even though they're

physically present, because yourmind is looking for the big content, right? who cares about the word "the?"your mind is going for the essential information, andit becomes literally blind to what's in front of you, becauseit knows what it's looking for. here's a fun one. you've seen things likethis before, but it's always fun to try.

it's the same principle. how many letter f's do youfind in this display? can i get some numbers? audience: 6. audience: 4. audience: 5. professor: 4, 5, 6. those are all good. we're not an exact science.

[clamoring] professor: some of you may havemissed one or two f's. again, it's because yourmind is automatically-- typical readers read atspectacular speeds. and the way you read at aspectacular speed is you don't look for little details. you get the big words and thebig ideas and you zoom through for the big meaning. and you're leaving behind whatyou consider to be details.

audience: so if you ask thisquestion to a society that pronounces "of" justlike "off," would that change anything? professor: the question was ifwe asked a society that didn't pronounce f's or somethinglike that. audience: that didn't pronouncef's as f's. in america, we pronounceit "of." professor: "of," you meanlike a "v" sound or does that matter for this?

yes. it also matters a lot that wordslike "of" are little preposition words that wedon't think much about. so this is a set up. like "finish," mostpeople get. or the beginning of a wordyou're more likely to get. i think the pronunciationprobably matters. i don't know that for sure. that's a very good thought.

and certainly, hiding it inwords that seem low in content for interpreting a sentence isabout the best way we did it. that's why the second "the"disappeared too. it's sort of a lowcontent word for processing a sentence. this is an example that youknow, but it's a nice example and we can come back toit a couple times. so let me think aboutthis for one second. maybe we'll do it this way--that we'll ask somebody at

their seat who has typicalcolor vision. if you're color blind, this oneis not a good one for you. some percentage are. is somebody willing at theirseat to read aloud stuff they see on a monitor? ok, thank you. so you're gonna see wordsthat are printed in different colors. your job is to name aloud thecolor of the ink that it's

printed in. does that make sense? so like on this f, youwould say it's red on that f. is that ok? so start here and just go. audience: red, orange. professor: as fast as youcan, just keep going. audience: green, brown, pink,green, blue, yellow, red. professor: great, excellent.

same thing. read the color of the inkexactly like you were doing. audience: green, blue, red,blue, red, yellow, red. professor: ah, you'repretty good. it's supposed to slow you downwhen you get the ink in the wrong colors. and it usually does. but you were very good. again, if you know this fromcourses and the internet,

don't ruin it for others, butthink about it for yourself. so now we're gonnaturn to thought. there's 30 people in a room. just imagine you sat-- there'just groups of 30 here. you get the month and date ofeach person's birthday. so it's not the year they wereborn, but it could be december 1 or february 5 or somethinglike that. what is the approximateprobability that two people will have the exactsame birthday?

i can tell you the vast majorityof people under slightly less suspiciouscircumstances of this will answer about 10%. that's the vast majority. the correct answer is-- why do you think-- this is work from kahnemanand tversky. we'll come back to this. why do you think people tendto answer 10%, some 30%?

very few people give youthe mathematically correct answer of 70%. why do they do that? because they tend to think, howoften have i met somebody who has my exact birthday? and you go, not that often. it's not like every 30 peoplei meet, somebody says, you were born on march 3. i was born in march 3.

and then you go have lunchand you go, hey, i was born on march 3. and you go have dinner withanother group and they go, i was born on march 3. it's not something thathappens a lot, right? so you go, well, in reallife it doesn't seem to happen very often. that's what we call aheuristic-- a simple way to think about it.

because your experienceis kind of like that. but why is that incorrect mathematically for this question? because the math depends onnot that's exactly your birthday, but any pair ofbirthdays among the 30 people. and then it goes way up. in fact, it goes to 70%. and if it's 24 people,it's 50%. if you're a group of 36 people,there's a 90% chance,

just mathematically, thattwo people will share the same birthday. because when we face things thatare hard to think about, because there's no easy answer,humans tend to take shortcuts and say, what's thegist of my experience, and that's what i thinkthe answer is. even when a calculableanswer is available. it's human nature to make ashortcut based on your sense of your experience.

so there's a very interestingline of work-- dan gilbert of harvardis a leading figure-- about this idea of thinkingabout your future. now, thinking about our futureis a big thing, right? we're thinking about what's itlike in this course, what's it like in college, what's ourfriendship like, relations with parents, what's our futurecareer paths, what kind of life will we lead, right? our future is something that'shugely on our mind, i think,

very powerfully when you'rea college student or a graduate student. what's my future? and a big question that peoplehave is what will make me happy in a deep sense? what will make me happyin a deep sense? because that's the lifei want to lead-- the values i want to have, thekind of career choices and personal choices i want to make,where i will devote my

time on this earth. so most people, first of all,tend to think about good things, positive things. actually, i can tell you whatcomes later in the course. it's good to think that lots of positive things are happening. it's kind of a nice placeto be in terms of being a happy person. but it turns out that peoplehave done studies like this.

so now this is particularlysensitive for a faculty member, but it could work forany sports team you've tried out or anything you've triedout for in your life. so what happens when we getreviewed for tenure? and you hear a bit about that. this was an easy study fora psychologist to do. what they did is they called uppeople in the fall who were being reviewed for tenure. and you get tenureor you don't.

and it's a bit of a sad processif you don't, right, because you don't get tenure,and then you don't feel happy about that. and you have to call yourparents and say, i didn't get tenure, and your parents go,come on, if you just slept better, you would'vegotten tenure. professor: remember the pianolessons you didn't take. so it's a bit of anuisance, right? on top of that--

because weirdly, in academics,we tend to be super specialized-- you haveto move out of town. you don't have to, buttypically, a person who doesn't get tenure will geta job somewhere else. there's plenty of stories ofpeople who don't get tenure at awesome places who weregeniuses in history. the tenure decisionsare often wrong. but still, you'd ratherget it than not. you'd rather get into themedical school than not.

you'd rather make a sportsteam you want to be on than not. so here's what they found out. if they asked them what happensif you don't get tenure, everybody says, oh,it's gonna be awful. it's gonna be miserable. i'm gonna be such anunhappy person. two years later, the averagehappiness of people who didn't get tenure was equal to theaverage happiness of people

who did get tenure. so you can say, well,tenure-- only professors care about tenure. well, how about winningthe lottery? what if i won hundreds ofthousands of dollars? there' been a lot of psychologyon this, actually. in about a year to two, theaverage happiness of a lottery winner who won a substantialamount of money is rated the same by him or her as it wasthe population as a whole.

yeah? audience: how did they go about measuring average happiness? professor: yeah, so we'llcome back to this, but i'll tell you. you can like this ornot like this. in some parts of psychology,we measure things like reaction time to themillisecond. that's good data, right?

our brain activation,that's good data. when you ask a person how happythey are, the only thing we can do is have you basicallyfill a scale from one to seven. how happy are you? and you could go, well i'm alittle worried about that, because sometimes people say, ihope that it makes you happy or something. so you could say, howmuch can we trust

subjective reports of happiness? and that's a verygood question. on the other hand, it's hardto know what would be better than that. if we measure yourpulse, is that a better measure of happiness? your pulse could be racingbecause you're sad or happy, scared or enthusiastic. so we don't have a better onethat we can think of.

but psychologists do worry thatsometimes people will just say what they'resupposed to say. or they'll pretend they're happyor things like that. we have to worry aboutthose things. so you could worry deep down,but a year or two later, people who win huge amounts ofmoney don't report themselves as any happier than peoplearound them. and kind of amazingly-- but i think it's deepabout life--

accidents leading toquadriplegia or paraplegia, accidents that, before you hadsuch an accident you would imagine that it would besomething extremely difficult. and it can be in many ways. but by self report, ratings ofhappiness return to typical average populationsof the same age in about three months. so what's a huge lesson herein happiness research-- a huge surprise.

it's two things. we're kind of bad at predictingwhat will make us happy or sad, which iskind of weird, right? we're kind of bad atpredicting it. here's all these things wherewe think they would make us happy or make us not so happy. it turns out we're wrong whenthis is studied at all scientifically. so we'll come back to that lateron, because it's a very

deep thing aboutbeing a human-- what makes you happy andyour wrong guesses sometimes about what does. so let me end with alast experiment. so we've really haven't doneexperiments until right now. and this is now a sensitive anddifficult issue, which is problems we have in dealingwith racism. and here's a study thatdid the following. it said, well, in north america,certainly, canada,

the us-- a study wasdone in canada-- racism is widely condemned,as i think most of us believe it should be. but examples of blatantracism still occurred. one recent poll said thatabout a third of white individuals reported hearinganti-black slurs in the workplace in the lastcouple years-- to pick one thing. so how does this happen in asociety that speaks so much

about not being racist, abouttreating everybody equally and fairly and kindly? how does it happen thatwe still struggle. and it's such a very deep,difficult question about human nature and the worldwe live in. but here's something againthat's a hint about why it's hard to get society to changesome of its behaviors. so here's the experiment-- so it's an actual experiment.

so they took two groups ofcollege undergraduates and randomly assigned one to bein the forecaster group. that's a group that tells youhow they think they would feel and how they think they wouldact under certain circumstances. and then an experiencergroup-- that's a group who actuallyundergoes an experience, and i'll tell you whatthat is now. so in the experiencer group,pretend you were their

research participant. you walk into a room, and yousee in that room a black male and a white male. now those two are whatpsychologists, for some reason, have calledconfederates. those are role players. they know what they're doing. they have a plan of whatthey're going to do. they're going to put ona little show for you.

but you don't know that. and the black male stands up andleaves the room to get his cell phone, and he gently bumpsthe white male's knee. this is all set up. you're just sitting there andyou see that little bump. and now, there's threedifferent groups. one group, that's it. nothing else happens-- a small bump, and theperson leaves.

a second group-- as you sit there, the blackindividual leaves the room and the white individual says,quote, "typical, i hate it when black people do that."it's meant to be obviously provocative and racist. and then what they consideran extreme slur-- the white person in the roomplaying this role uses the derogatory word that's meantto be an extreme slur. so there's one more thingyou need to know.

now, you're sitting there, andyou're either in the control group where there's been theslight bump, or there's been a moderate slur, or an extremeslur in their words. the black male returns. don't forget, he's in on it,and so is that white male. but you're not in on it. you just think there was a bump,and something else may have happened, depending onwhich condition you're in. and the experimenter then givesyou a survey about how

you feel right now. sort of like the happiness,but it's not that. it's like, how do youfeel right now? and then asks you to pickbetween those two people a partner for an anagramexperiment that you're about to do. so they're going to ask you-- this is sort of thisquestion you have. what's the difference orsimilarity between what you

say you're feeling is andwhat you really do? both things are important,but do they line up, do they not line up? so here's the results. here's a graph. and here's how this works. negative emotional distress thehigher the bar, the more you say, i feel really bad aboutwhat's just happened. i just heard this commentor no comment.

so let's take a look,the higher the bar. if you heard no comment,here's how you begin. so let's start withthe forecasters. all of you are forecasters,because you're pretending you're in the situationbut you're not in it. so here is there wasno comments. that's sort of averageor something. and then you said if youheard a racial slur you would feel terrible.

you would feel terrible. but look at the other studentswho are randomly picked. so we don't think it's adifference among students. look at these grey bars. they're pretty flat. the person on the spot issomehow not processing this. and they're filling out,i feel average. you see the split-- the split between the valuesthat the person thinks they

would have, and the values thatare responded to on the spot in the moment. and what we'll talk about lateron in social psychology is there's a tough gap, often,between the values we espouse and how we act when there'sespecially unexpected, difficult things. and very often-- if you've had any experiencelike this-- afterwards, you go, oh, what i shouldhave done is this.

or i wish i would'vesaid that. but that moment is not happeningat that moment, probably because you'rekind of weirded out by the whole thing. what's going on? why would the person say this? something doesn't seem right. i can't sort it out. and so people tend to shrinkin terms of making a strong

conclusion of what's going onif something seems unusually provocative. and you could say, well, ok,that's their attitudes. but how about their action? who do they pick tobe their partner? and again, the peopleforecasting said, if i was in this situation, i would neverpick that racist white person to be my partner, becausethat person stinks-- if i was in that situation.

but if the people arein the situation-- look at the grey bars-- pretty flat. it's a if on the spot, in themoment, they can't quite process the values theyfeel and the action they're going to take. and we'll talk about that. and it's very hard, often,in part, to be brave and stand up to things.

it turns out there's a lotof evidence for this. it's a human nature thing. it's very hard to be brave andstand up to things when things are kind of weird, becausealmost everybody at first thinks, i don't want tomake a fool of myself. i don't want make trouble. maybe i'm not getting thewhole picture on this. and we shrink back from actingin a way that aligns with the values that are clearlyshown here.

so this, again, is somethingabout human nature that's very weird. and it's powerful to comeinto social psychology. and that's why it's very hardto stand up to things like oppression and bias. it's very hard to do, becausewe tend to not act on our values when we'rein complicated situations on the spot. and there's a tremendous amountof evidence for that.

so again, how we interpretthe situation-- very different in our mind whenwe imagine we're there, and when we actuallysit there. and so what these researcherssay is this is partly why it's been hard to eradicate somevestiges of stereotypes and racism, because people have ahard time clamping down on it in the moment. so that's a tough topic, but weknow we want to deal both with things that are lesscontroversial but also things

that touch people's livesin the real world that we live in. so we talked about ascientific study of the human nature-- mind and behavior-- how what we see and hear isdetermined so much but how our mind interprets the world aroundus; how we remember things like word lists orstories, that's hugely influenced by what we expect tosee, like in the picture;

how we think we know things likewhere reno is compared to san francisco; how we thinkabout things like the probability that somebody elsewill have the same birthday, that somebody else will in agroup; and the relationship between how we feeland how we act. the very feelings we have areoften disconnected for actions and sometimes that has a sortof a difficult consequence. and so we'll explore all thesethings through the semester, all the different facets that wecould possibly get through

in one semester of what it is tobe human, and where science has showed us something abouthuman nature, the mind, and the brain.