WEBVTT 00:01.390 --> 00:07.390 PROFESSOR: So I want to begin today by continuing at the 00:07.390 --> 00:11.260 point where we left off the in the previous lecture. 00:11.260 --> 00:15.990 Which was to talk about, in the context of Jonathan Shay's 00:15.990 --> 00:22.030 work, Achilles In Vietnam, the costs that seem to arise when 00:22.030 --> 00:26.560 people find themselves through circumstance engaging in 00:26.560 --> 00:29.940 behavior that they, on reflection, believe to be 00:29.940 --> 00:32.950 immoral or unjust. 00:32.950 --> 00:39.150 So in 1961, in newspapers throughout the New Haven area, 00:39.150 --> 00:42.190 the following advertisement appeared. 00:42.190 --> 00:44.140 It said, "Public announcement. 00:44.140 --> 00:45.770 We will pay you $4"-- 00:45.765 --> 00:48.685 that was quite a bit of money at that time-- "$4 for one 00:48.690 --> 00:50.000 hour of your time. 00:50.000 --> 00:52.830 Persons needed for study of memory. 00:52.830 --> 00:56.050 We will pay $500 New Haven men to help us complete a 00:56.050 --> 00:58.780 scientific study of memory and learning. 00:58.780 --> 01:01.000 The study is being done at Yale University. 01:01.000 --> 01:05.500 Each person who participates will be will be paid $4, plus 01:05.500 --> 01:09.660 $0.50 in carfare, for approximately one hour's time. 01:09.660 --> 01:11.670 We need you only for that one hour. 01:11.670 --> 01:13.260 There no further obligations. 01:13.260 --> 01:15.810 You may choose the time that you would like to come, 01:15.810 --> 01:18.400 evenings, and weekends, or weekdays." And then the ad 01:18.400 --> 01:21.050 continued by saying that "no special training, education, 01:21.050 --> 01:24.390 or experience was needed," that they wanted "factory 01:24.390 --> 01:28.780 workers, city employees, laborers, barbers, 01:28.780 --> 01:31.940 businessmen, clerks, professional people, telephone 01:31.940 --> 01:35.010 workers, construction workers, salespeople, white collar 01:35.010 --> 01:37.720 workers, and others." 01:37.720 --> 01:43.010 So when people answered this advertisement, they were 01:43.010 --> 01:48.400 invited to come to a building whose exterior should be 01:48.400 --> 01:50.740 familiar to you. 01:50.740 --> 01:54.080 The building was Linsley-Chittenden Hall. 01:54.080 --> 01:59.710 And when they walked into that building, they encountered the 01:59.710 --> 02:04.440 study of a gentleman who looked like this. 02:04.440 --> 02:07.620 The advertisement that I've just shown you is, of course, 02:07.620 --> 02:11.780 the advertisement recruiting subject to participate in the 02:11.780 --> 02:14.540 famous Milgram study. 02:14.540 --> 02:18.790 So the participants filled out the coupon at the bottom of 02:18.790 --> 02:24.270 the ad and came to laboratory in what is now 02:24.270 --> 02:25.720 Linsley-Chittenden Hall. 02:25.720 --> 02:28.320 The configuration of the building was different then, 02:28.320 --> 02:33.210 but the facade was grand, and the lab was elegant. 02:33.210 --> 02:37.500 When subjects entered the lab, they were told that they would 02:37.500 --> 02:42.200 be participating in a study of learning and memory, and they 02:42.200 --> 02:46.170 were told that there were two roles that they might play. 02:46.170 --> 02:51.590 They might be the teacher, or they might be the learner. 02:51.590 --> 02:55.580 But as a matter of fact, when they drew the folded pieces of 02:55.580 --> 02:59.810 paper, both of them said "teacher," and the other 02:59.810 --> 03:03.300 subject, who was apparently participating in this study, 03:03.300 --> 03:06.290 was in fact the collaborator. 03:06.290 --> 03:10.130 So when the study was actually carried out, the people who 03:10.130 --> 03:14.900 played the role of teacher were forty men from the New 03:14.900 --> 03:18.840 Haven area who had responded to these ads who ranged in age 03:18.840 --> 03:21.920 from twenty to fifty, who had a wide range of occupations 03:21.920 --> 03:24.200 and education levels. 03:24.200 --> 03:28.200 And all of them were told that that they were going to engage 03:28.200 --> 03:33.220 in a task that involved testing the role of punishment 03:33.220 --> 03:36.760 on learning, and they were told that the second 03:36.760 --> 03:40.480 character, the learner, who was a forty seven year old 03:40.480 --> 03:43.670 accountant of Irish-American stock whom almost all of them 03:43.670 --> 03:49.100 described as mild-mannered and likeable, would be presented 03:49.100 --> 03:52.660 with a series of pairs of words, and that their task 03:52.660 --> 03:56.830 would simply be to provide him with an electric shock every 03:56.829 --> 04:00.079 time he got the answer wrong. 04:00.079 --> 04:04.899 And in order to supervise the study as it went on, there was 04:04.900 --> 04:06.690 a third person present-- 04:06.690 --> 04:08.170 the experimenter-- 04:08.170 --> 04:12.700 who was a stern, impassive thirty one year old high 04:12.700 --> 04:14.840 school biology teacher. 04:14.840 --> 04:17.840 So in every single one of the cases, two of the figures, the 04:17.840 --> 04:20.850 experimenter and the learner, were the same, and one of the 04:20.850 --> 04:24.000 figures, the teacher, varied. 04:24.000 --> 04:27.330 The task was as follows. 04:27.330 --> 04:33.150 They were presented with a machine that had on it a 04:33.150 --> 04:37.560 series of switches that began with the label "slight shock," 04:37.560 --> 04:42.080 15 volt, 30 volt, 45 volt, 60 volt, and continued in 04:42.080 --> 04:50.320 increments of 15, 75, 90, 105, 120, et cetera, all the way 04:50.320 --> 04:56.140 through "intense shock" : 255, 270, 285, 300, "danger severe 04:56.140 --> 05:01.000 shock," and finally, (don't search for this on Google!) 05:01.002 --> 05:03.862 "XXX." 05:03.860 --> 05:07.980 So they were each given in a shock, purportedly by the 05:07.980 --> 05:10.780 machine, of 45 volts, which most of them 05:10.780 --> 05:12.680 estimated to be 70 volts. 05:12.680 --> 05:15.420 That is, they felt it quite intensely. 05:15.420 --> 05:19.050 And then they were told that they would need to administer 05:19.050 --> 05:24.180 a shock to the learner every time he made a mistake. 05:24.180 --> 05:27.870 Now, before Milgram conducted this study, he surveyed a 05:27.870 --> 05:32.180 bunch of Yale senior psychology majors who make 05:32.180 --> 05:37.650 predictions about how many shocks the teachers would be 05:37.650 --> 05:38.780 willing to give. 05:38.780 --> 05:42.010 And if you can see from this graph, that prediction was 05:42.010 --> 05:46.700 that no more than 3% of subjects would give shocks at 05:46.695 --> 05:51.385 the level 20, which is down at the level of danger, and that 05:51.390 --> 05:55.050 virtually no one would go to the highest level. 05:55.050 --> 05:59.080 What happened instead, all of you know, with respect to the 05:59.080 --> 06:05.430 slight shocks (15, 30, 45, 60), 100% of the 06:05.430 --> 06:08.270 teachers gave them. 06:08.270 --> 06:17.340 With respect to the intense shocks (255, 270, 285, 300), 06:17.340 --> 06:21.320 88% of the subjects went there. 06:21.320 --> 06:24.450 When they expressed dissatisfaction at continuing, 06:24.450 --> 06:26.870 they were told by the experimenter, "Please 06:26.870 --> 06:32.910 continue," or "The experiment requires that you continue" or 06:32.910 --> 06:36.950 "It is absolutely essential that you continue," or "You 06:36.950 --> 06:41.840 have no other choice, you must go on," but no other 06:41.840 --> 06:44.760 encouragement was provided. 06:44.760 --> 06:52.060 Nonetheless, up to the level of "danger, severe shock," 68% 06:52.060 --> 06:55.090 of the subjects continued, and all the way up to the very 06:55.090 --> 07:00.120 last level, 65% continued. 07:00.120 --> 07:05.060 This much is frequently emphasized when people discuss 07:05.060 --> 07:09.500 the Milgram experiment, and its extraordinary fact about 07:09.500 --> 07:14.440 human beings that Milgram was prompted to investigate 07:14.440 --> 07:17.680 because, of course, this possibility had just been 07:17.680 --> 07:22.240 demonstrated profoundly for the world outside of the 07:22.240 --> 07:23.530 laboratory. 07:23.530 --> 07:27.640 The research that Milgram conducted was inspired by an 07:27.640 --> 07:32.280 attempt to understand what could possibly have explained 07:32.280 --> 07:34.730 the behavior of ordinary German 07:34.730 --> 07:38.500 citizens in Nazi Germany. 07:38.500 --> 07:42.740 That said, what I want to bring out about the Milgram 07:42.740 --> 07:46.210 study is in fact the part of the discussion that comes 07:46.210 --> 07:49.100 subsequent to what I've just presented. 07:49.100 --> 07:52.830 Which is the discussion of what it felt like, 07:52.830 --> 07:56.890 subjectively, to these subjects, when they felt 07:56.890 --> 08:02.460 themselves to be perpetrating painful behavior on another. 08:02.460 --> 08:08.530 As, as you can see from this slide, so many of them did. 08:08.530 --> 08:13.150 The psychological response of the subjects sounds like what 08:13.150 --> 08:18.400 we read in Jonathan Shay's book for the last lecture. 08:18.400 --> 08:21.760 Many subjects showed "signs of nervousness, especially upon 08:21.760 --> 08:23.910 administering the more powerful shock. 08:23.910 --> 08:26.770 In a large number of cases, the degree of tension reached 08:26.770 --> 08:30.790 extremes rarely seen in such laboratory subjects. 08:30.790 --> 08:33.610 They were observed to sweat, to stutter, to bite their 08:33.610 --> 08:36.610 lips, to groan, to dig their fingernails into their flesh." 08:36.610 --> 08:38.280 These were characteristic rather 08:38.280 --> 08:40.060 than exceptional responses. 08:40.060 --> 08:44.330 And if you've never seen the film that Milgram made in 08:44.330 --> 08:47.290 conducting the experiments-- 08:47.290 --> 08:50.220 which are not public domain, but I here just give you 08:50.220 --> 08:53.680 information about something that's on the Iinternet-- 08:53.680 --> 08:58.910 you can listen to the experimenter's calm voice, and 08:58.910 --> 09:01.390 watch the subjects' agitation. 09:01.390 --> 09:02.760 Here's a description. 09:02.760 --> 09:05.440 "One might suppose," says Milgram, reporting "that a 09:05.440 --> 09:07.480 subject would simply break off, or continue as his 09:07.480 --> 09:08.970 conscience dictated. 09:08.970 --> 09:11.160 Yet this is far from what happened. 09:11.160 --> 09:12.740 There were striking reactions of tension 09:12.735 --> 09:14.015 and emotional strain. 09:14.020 --> 09:18.280 One observer related, 'I observed a mature and 09:18.280 --> 09:22.860 initially poised businessman enter the laboratory, smiling 09:22.860 --> 09:23.590 and confident. 09:23.590 --> 09:27.700 Within twenty minutes, he was reduced to a twitching, 09:27.700 --> 09:29.560 stuttering wreck. 09:29.560 --> 09:31.980 He constantly pulled on his earlobe. 09:31.980 --> 09:33.280 He twisted his hands. 09:33.280 --> 09:35.970 At one point, he pushed his fist into his forehead, and 09:35.970 --> 09:40.850 muttered, "Oh God, let's stop it," and yet, and yet he 09:40.850 --> 09:44.180 continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and 09:44.180 --> 09:46.880 obeyed to the end.'" 09:46.880 --> 09:51.870 So it's a funny thing about we human creatures. 09:51.870 --> 09:59.150 That on the one hand, we seem to have a sense of what we can 09:59.150 --> 10:02.000 comfortably put up with. 10:02.002 --> 10:08.302 And we have, on the contrary, an ability to go beyond that. 10:08.300 --> 10:15.230 That capacity can be exploited for the good or for the bad. 10:15.230 --> 10:18.030 Those of you who are on sports teams know the experience of 10:18.030 --> 10:22.620 being pushed past what you thought could possibly be your 10:22.620 --> 10:27.260 limit, and finding yourself carrying through, despite the 10:27.260 --> 10:30.990 fact that initially it seems like something impossible. 10:30.990 --> 10:35.130 But it's always the case that things with which we feel 10:35.130 --> 10:39.290 repulsion are things that we may find 10:39.290 --> 10:42.310 ourselves carrying out. 10:42.310 --> 10:46.050 Nonetheless, that carries with it psychic costs. 10:46.050 --> 10:49.030 And that's the second answer that I want to give in the 10:49.030 --> 10:54.290 context of the lecture on themis to Glaucon's challenge. 10:54.290 --> 10:58.310 I want to turn now to the topic of today's lecture, 10:58.310 --> 11:02.820 flourishing and attachment, by actually continuing with a 11:02.820 --> 11:06.050 variation on the Milgram studies. 11:06.050 --> 11:10.340 Because after Milgram found these results through the 1961 11:10.340 --> 11:15.110 work, he was gripped by the question, under what 11:15.110 --> 11:21.260 circumstances was compliance more or less likely? 11:21.260 --> 11:26.090 So in a follow-up study done the next year, Milgram 11:26.090 --> 11:30.350 explored the question in its most general form, as follows. 11:30.350 --> 11:34.390 In its most general form, the problem is this: "if X tells Y 11:34.392 --> 11:39.172 to hurt Z, under what conditions will Y carry out 11:39.170 --> 11:41.530 the command of X, and under what 11:41.530 --> 11:45.030 conditions will he refuse? 11:45.030 --> 11:47.420 In the more limited form possible in laboratory 11:47.420 --> 11:49.990 research, the question becomes: if an experimenter 11:49.990 --> 11:53.200 tells a subject to hurt another person, under what 11:53.200 --> 11:56.270 conditions will the subject go along with this instruction, 11:56.270 --> 12:00.970 and under what conditions will he refuse to obey?" 12:00.970 --> 12:07.120 Milgram set out to test this by varying along a continuum 12:07.120 --> 12:12.910 the degree of human interaction in the study. 12:12.910 --> 12:16.170 So in one series of studies, the experimenter, the one 12:16.170 --> 12:20.530 telling you to continue, was either in the room with you, 12:20.530 --> 12:25.720 or on the phone with you, or such that you only received 12:25.720 --> 12:27.730 written instructions. 12:27.730 --> 12:33.180 And the tendency of subject to collaborate, to cooperate, to 12:33.180 --> 12:38.680 do what was act of them, declined directly with whether 12:38.680 --> 12:42.350 the experimenter was present in the room with them. 12:42.350 --> 12:48.280 Likewise, Milgram varied the extent to which the subject 12:48.280 --> 12:51.800 received feedback from the person being shocked. 12:51.800 --> 12:55.750 Did they receive no feedback, called the remote condition? 12:55.750 --> 12:58.230 Did they receive the sort of voice feedback, as in the 12:58.230 --> 13:00.960 initial experiments, where you'd hear the person shouting 13:00.960 --> 13:03.050 through the wall, "It's painful, I'm 13:03.050 --> 13:05.110 hurting, please stop"? 13:05.110 --> 13:09.720 Were they in the room with the subject, observing him suffer, 13:09.720 --> 13:13.780 or did they finally, in the most extreme condition, need 13:13.780 --> 13:20.130 to take the subject's arm, put it onto a metal plate, and 13:20.130 --> 13:24.840 hold the there in order to give him a shock? 13:24.840 --> 13:29.020 What Milgram discovered is that although compliance is 13:29.020 --> 13:34.380 extremely high when there's no feedback from the sufferer, 13:34.380 --> 13:39.130 it's lower when there's voice feedback, lower still when 13:39.130 --> 13:43.050 you're in the room with the person you're harming, and 13:43.050 --> 13:47.600 lower still when you yourself need to use your 13:47.600 --> 13:51.040 body to cause harm. 13:51.040 --> 13:53.930 You'll recall in the very first lecture, the 13:53.930 --> 13:58.030 introductory lecture, when I was telling you about one of 13:58.030 --> 14:00.270 the questions we would discuss this term. 14:00.270 --> 14:02.500 That I presented you with something called the trolley 14:02.500 --> 14:05.530 problem, a case where a trolley is hurtling down a 14:05.530 --> 14:10.650 track, and it's headed towards five people. 14:10.650 --> 14:14.200 And in the first version of that study, I asked you 14:14.200 --> 14:16.800 whether it would be morally acceptable to divert the 14:16.800 --> 14:19.680 trolley in such a way that it went onto a track where there 14:19.680 --> 14:23.050 was only one person, and most of you thought 14:23.050 --> 14:25.240 that was all right. 14:25.240 --> 14:29.110 In the second variation of the study, I asked you whether it 14:29.110 --> 14:34.220 would be OK to stop the trolley by pushing into the 14:34.220 --> 14:38.810 track of a trolley a fat man who was standing next to you 14:38.810 --> 14:41.660 on a bridge overlooking the tracks. 14:41.660 --> 14:46.030 And most of you thought that was not OK. 14:46.030 --> 14:51.330 There's something in the human perception of our interactions 14:51.330 --> 14:59.160 with one another that seems to give rise to anxiety in the 14:59.160 --> 15:04.400 face of caused harms whose consequences we see. 15:04.400 --> 15:06.440 Milgram articulates it thus. 15:06.440 --> 15:09.710 He says, "In the remote, and to a lesser extent, the voice 15:09.710 --> 15:13.570 feedback condition, the victim suffering possesses an 15:13.570 --> 15:16.160 abstract, remote quality for the subject. 15:16.160 --> 15:21.080 He's aware, but only in a conceptual sense." His reason 15:21.080 --> 15:24.990 knows, in Plato's terminology, but the other parts of his 15:24.990 --> 15:28.590 soul haven't registered what's going on. 15:28.590 --> 15:32.370 "This phenomenon," Milgram continues, "is common enough. 15:32.370 --> 15:35.330 The bombardier can reasonably suppose that his weapons will 15:35.330 --> 15:36.590 inflict suffering and death. 15:36.590 --> 15:39.810 In fact, they do just as good a job killing people as 15:39.810 --> 15:41.240 bayonets do. 15:41.240 --> 15:45.490 But this knowledge is divested of affect, and does not move 15:45.490 --> 15:50.530 him to a felt emotional response to the sufferings of 15:50.530 --> 15:53.010 his actions." 15:53.010 --> 15:56.000 Similar observations had been made in wartime. 15:56.000 --> 15:59.660 Visual cues associated with the victim's suffering trigger 15:59.660 --> 16:02.990 empathic responses in the subject and provide him with a 16:02.990 --> 16:06.800 more complete grasp of the victim's experience. 16:06.800 --> 16:11.250 And it turns out that one of the major strategies in Nazi 16:11.250 --> 16:16.530 Germany to enable people to commit harm against their 16:16.530 --> 16:22.640 neighbors was to use a language of dehumanization 16:22.640 --> 16:27.300 that referred to groups being harmed--the Jews, the gypsies, 16:27.300 --> 16:32.670 the homosexuals--as non-human in some way. 16:32.670 --> 16:38.490 When we perceive another as human, it is difficult to 16:38.490 --> 16:43.040 overcome the tendency not to want to harm them. 16:43.040 --> 16:46.430 And though I've given you a number of examples of the way 16:46.430 --> 16:51.410 in which military resistance can be a powerful mechanism 16:51.410 --> 16:57.360 for pursuing one's will, this fact that Milgram observes is 16:57.359 --> 17:01.459 actually what underlies the possibility of another form of 17:01.460 --> 17:04.230 resistance which has been, in some 17:04.230 --> 17:07.770 circumstances, shockingly effective. 17:07.770 --> 17:15.250 Here's Gandhi, engaging in nonviolent protests in India 17:15.250 --> 17:18.260 in the 1940s. 17:18.260 --> 17:22.500 Here's a sit-in at the lunch counters in 17:22.500 --> 17:27.600 Selma, Alabama in 1963. 17:27.600 --> 17:31.890 And here, of course, is one of the most famous pictures of 17:31.890 --> 17:34.140 the last two decades. 17:34.140 --> 17:40.200 An individual standing alone before tanks in a way that 17:40.200 --> 17:45.350 causes them to halt their motion in Tiananmen Square. 17:45.350 --> 17:50.150 So what is it in about human beings that makes it easier 17:50.150 --> 17:54.310 for us to avoid demands when the person making the demands 17:54.310 --> 17:58.520 of us isn't present, and harder for us to carry through 17:58.520 --> 18:03.450 demands when we have to look face to face at the person we 18:03.450 --> 18:05.200 are harming? 18:05.200 --> 18:09.250 Well, what it is about human beings is the unsurprising 18:09.250 --> 18:12.780 fact that we are fundamentally, deep down, and 18:12.780 --> 18:16.770 profoundly social entities. 18:16.770 --> 18:21.640 And we're social entities in a way that is continuous with 18:21.640 --> 18:25.980 our non-human primate ancestors. 18:25.980 --> 18:31.650 So Harry Harlow, in the first half of the century, conducted 18:31.650 --> 18:37.310 a number of studies using non-human primates to try to 18:37.310 --> 18:42.480 figure out what role emotional connection and social bonding 18:42.480 --> 18:45.720 played in allowing them to flourish. 18:45.720 --> 18:48.720 So in the famous wire versus cloth 18:48.720 --> 18:51.080 mother studies, monkeys-- 18:51.080 --> 18:52.940 there's a little one right there-- 18:52.940 --> 18:57.740 were presented with two beings, wire beings with whom 18:57.740 --> 18:59.530 they could spend their time. 18:59.530 --> 19:04.690 The wire mother had milk, and they needed to go to her to 19:04.690 --> 19:10.320 get food, but the cloth mother had comfort, and if they 19:10.320 --> 19:14.330 wanted to be consoled, they needed to go to her. 19:14.330 --> 19:19.380 And monkey after monkey after monkey did what you see in 19:19.380 --> 19:21.130 this picture. 19:21.130 --> 19:21.710 Went-- 19:21.710 --> 19:26.560 and the fact that you're saying "aw" is evidence of the 19:26.560 --> 19:29.120 point that I'm making. 19:29.120 --> 19:33.500 So we think this is adorable. 19:33.500 --> 19:34.460 We think-- 19:34.460 --> 19:38.310 in fact, it's very hard to control your facial muscles 19:38.310 --> 19:39.580 when you look at that picture. 19:39.580 --> 19:40.510 Right? 19:40.510 --> 19:45.260 All of us are looking at it, seeing these big warm eyes, 19:45.260 --> 19:48.950 and this expression of affection. 19:48.950 --> 19:56.140 It is part of the primate maturation experience that in 19:56.140 --> 20:00.200 order to become a healthy and flourishing member of the 20:00.200 --> 20:05.700 species, early social contact is crucial. 20:05.700 --> 20:09.970 And indeed, some of Harlow's more morally problematic 20:09.970 --> 20:15.950 studies involved subjecting young monkeys to complete 20:15.950 --> 20:21.400 social deprivation, and discovering afterwards that 20:21.400 --> 20:24.490 when they came out of that deprivation, their behavior 20:24.490 --> 20:29.990 was incompatible with living in a community. 20:29.990 --> 20:32.660 Not only were they hostile and aggressive towards their 20:32.660 --> 20:37.400 peers, even with respect to the children that they had, 20:37.400 --> 20:41.730 they were incapable of engaging in nurturing. 20:41.730 --> 20:45.930 So one might wonder, as Harlow's student John Bowlby 20:45.930 --> 20:49.390 and his collaborator, Mary Ainsworth, did, whether 20:49.390 --> 20:53.370 there's anything that can be said about what's required for 20:53.370 --> 20:56.940 human beings to flourish that can be learned from the 20:56.940 --> 20:59.680 picture that we see in the Harlow wire 20:59.680 --> 21:01.810 baby cloth baby studies. 21:01.810 --> 21:06.840 That is, is it possible that for human beings to thrive, we 21:06.840 --> 21:11.550 need a certain sort of warmth and interaction that isn't 21:11.550 --> 21:17.290 limited merely to the receipt of nutrients required for 21:17.290 --> 21:21.940 maturation from a wire mother? 21:21.940 --> 21:27.440 So I take this next slide, this next chart, from a 21:27.440 --> 21:31.140 website called "Positive Parenting," because I want you 21:31.140 --> 21:36.230 to recognize how much the picture that Bowlby and 21:36.230 --> 21:40.120 Ainsworth have advanced has permeated contemporary 21:40.120 --> 21:44.500 conceptions of how it is that it's appropriate to parent 21:44.500 --> 21:46.560 one's children. 21:46.560 --> 21:50.450 So famously, Mary Ainsworth brought young children, 21:50.450 --> 21:54.000 roughly two years old, into a laboratory setting along with 21:54.000 --> 21:56.140 their primary caregiver. 21:56.140 --> 22:01.200 And the question she wanted to see was, how comfortable were 22:01.200 --> 22:05.310 the children in what was known as a strange situation, a 22:05.310 --> 22:09.520 situation in which they would be required to set out on 22:09.520 --> 22:13.760 their own, away from their caregiver, in order to engage 22:13.760 --> 22:16.690 with some appealing toys. 22:16.690 --> 22:20.760 And on the basis of that, that she identified three-- 22:20.760 --> 22:23.190 it's now been expanded to four-- 22:23.190 --> 22:27.510 three styles of attachment that children might have to 22:27.510 --> 22:29.410 their caregivers. 22:29.410 --> 22:33.580 The first, which she called secure attachment, results 22:33.580 --> 22:37.690 from early childhood experience that involves 22:37.690 --> 22:43.100 predictable responsiveness to one's needs by somebody who 22:43.100 --> 22:46.380 feels affection for you. 22:46.380 --> 22:48.890 If you are hungry, somebody responds by 22:48.890 --> 22:50.140 providing you with food. 22:50.140 --> 22:54.150 If you are sore, somebody responds by 22:54.150 --> 22:55.290 comforting your pain. 22:55.290 --> 22:58.590 If you are cold, somebody responds by warming you up. 22:58.590 --> 23:03.060 And all of this is done in such a way that you begin to 23:03.060 --> 23:10.240 form an impression of yourself as an agent in the world whose 23:10.240 --> 23:16.530 expression of needs and desires can evince in other 23:16.530 --> 23:21.560 conscious beings responses that reflect what it is that 23:21.560 --> 23:23.790 you need and desire. 23:23.790 --> 23:28.820 The world becomes a place in which social trust is 23:28.820 --> 23:32.800 possible, and the early instincts that you come to 23:32.800 --> 23:37.440 have, when presented with the faces and bodies of 23:37.440 --> 23:43.130 conspecifics, cause you, later on, to have as your most 23:43.130 --> 23:48.550 primitive response pattern an expectation that, if there's 23:48.550 --> 23:53.320 no evidence to the contrary, that conspecific is going to 23:53.320 --> 24:00.440 be responsive to your honest and expressed needs. 24:00.440 --> 24:05.840 By contrast, a smaller percentage of the children 24:05.840 --> 24:11.770 exhibited what Ainsworth called avoidant attachment. 24:11.770 --> 24:17.050 They were unwilling to explore the room, and they were 24:17.045 --> 24:20.805 unwilling to do so, hypothesized Ainsworth, 24:20.810 --> 24:26.210 because their early childhood experience had been one with a 24:26.210 --> 24:31.200 disengaged or distant caregiver. 24:31.200 --> 24:35.480 Upon expression of need, there was no sense that if there's a 24:35.480 --> 24:39.730 social other, that social other will respond to what it 24:39.725 --> 24:42.245 is that you are asking for. 24:42.250 --> 24:47.000 So there's a sense that developed that the world is 24:47.000 --> 24:52.880 not a safe and cooperative place. 24:52.880 --> 24:56.730 The third group were children that she called 24:56.730 --> 24:59.460 ambivalently attached. 24:59.460 --> 25:03.770 Ambivalently attached children experienced a regimen of 25:03.770 --> 25:08.080 response which was sometimes in keeping with what they 25:08.080 --> 25:12.260 asked, and sometimes ignoring them entirely. 25:12.260 --> 25:14.900 So although they didn't have the sense that the world never 25:14.900 --> 25:18.500 does what you ask it too, they did have the sense that the 25:18.500 --> 25:22.830 world doesn't reliably do what you ask it to. 25:22.830 --> 25:27.810 And finally, into a fourth category added subsequently, 25:27.810 --> 25:33.100 fall children who are not merely ignored, but who are in 25:33.100 --> 25:39.590 fact abused or mistreated in the face of 25:39.590 --> 25:42.760 expression of need. 25:42.760 --> 25:48.230 Now, this taxonomy is not of a level of precision that it 25:48.230 --> 25:53.580 will tell you easily for every child into which category they 25:53.580 --> 25:56.300 fall as a result of their treatment. 25:56.300 --> 25:59.760 There are lots of issues about innate dispositions that 25:59.760 --> 26:03.960 children have, and there are lots of cases where it might 26:03.960 --> 26:07.910 not be clear how to put children into this taxonomy. 26:07.910 --> 26:11.840 Nonetheless, it has served as the basis for one of the most 26:11.840 --> 26:16.390 extraordinary scientific studies conducted in the last 26:16.390 --> 26:21.230 century, which is a thirty year longitudinal study 26:21.230 --> 26:27.850 conducted by people who took attachment theory seriously, 26:27.850 --> 26:32.630 who looked at the extent to which predictors of subsequent 26:32.630 --> 26:37.270 flourishing could be traced to early childhood experience. 26:37.270 --> 26:40.900 And this book, The Development of the Person (which I read 26:40.900 --> 26:46.080 over the summer) is extraordinary in the sense 26:46.080 --> 26:51.040 that it shows what it takes to establish a complicated social 26:51.040 --> 26:53.590 scientific hypothesis with even a 26:53.590 --> 26:56.770 reasonable degree of certainty. 26:56.770 --> 26:59.520 Because of course, if you want to find out about whether 26:59.520 --> 27:02.390 early childhood experience affects subsequent 27:02.390 --> 27:08.780 development, we can't use you guys, because we 27:08.780 --> 27:11.360 lost our time machine. 27:11.360 --> 27:13.590 We left it in the future. 27:13.590 --> 27:15.700 So we can't go back and look at what your 27:15.700 --> 27:16.950 childhoods were like. 27:16.950 --> 27:20.910 All of these studies needed to be done perspectively. 27:20.910 --> 27:25.350 So what this group did was to study hundreds and hundreds 27:25.350 --> 27:30.670 and hundreds of children, with incredible effort to follow 27:30.670 --> 27:33.610 them even when they moved away. 27:33.610 --> 27:36.870 And the basic conclusion that they draw-- 27:36.870 --> 27:40.430 the book is several hundred pages long, but the basic 27:40.430 --> 27:45.460 conclusion that they draw confirms the thesis that 27:45.460 --> 27:47.940 attachment theory hypothesizes. 27:47.940 --> 27:50.340 That early childhood experience, and particularly 27:50.340 --> 27:53.290 early childhood experience of a trusting and responsive 27:53.290 --> 27:57.060 relationship, significantly shapes later patterns of 27:57.060 --> 27:58.730 response to the world. 27:58.730 --> 28:03.790 But of course, we've heard that before. 28:03.790 --> 28:07.110 We heard it when we were told that "it's not unimportant to 28:07.110 --> 28:10.790 acquire one sort of habit or another right from youth. 28:10.790 --> 28:14.810 It is, in fact, all-important." 28:14.810 --> 28:18.700 Now, none of this is to say that those whose early 28:18.700 --> 28:21.710 childhood experiences were not optimal will 28:21.710 --> 28:24.510 never flourish or thrive. 28:24.510 --> 28:30.190 The human spirit is remarkably resilient, and it is possible, 28:30.190 --> 28:34.500 through certain kinds of therapeutic interaction, or 28:34.500 --> 28:38.100 certain kinds of cultivation of other trusting relations, 28:38.100 --> 28:42.710 to overcome early childhood deprivation. 28:42.710 --> 28:48.340 But there is an easier path to flourishing, and that is the 28:48.340 --> 28:53.510 one that goes through trusting early childhood. 28:53.510 --> 28:57.670 Now, the fact that human beings are social beings 28:57.665 --> 29:02.395 affects us not just at the beginning of the lifespan, but 29:02.400 --> 29:05.130 also at the end. 29:05.130 --> 29:08.410 "If you want to predict," points out Jonathan Haidt, 29:08.410 --> 29:15.130 "how happy someone is, or how long they're likely to live, 29:15.130 --> 29:19.470 you should find out about their social relationships. 29:19.470 --> 29:22.280 Having strong social relationships strengthens the 29:22.280 --> 29:23.480 immune system. 29:23.480 --> 29:26.810 It extends life more than quitting smoking. 29:26.810 --> 29:29.630 It speeds recovery from surgery, reduces the risk of 29:29.630 --> 29:32.700 depression and anxiety disorders." Social 29:32.700 --> 29:39.610 interactions are crucial to human flourishing. 29:39.610 --> 29:44.310 And this is not just something that we discover in the west. 29:44.310 --> 29:49.830 Here are some titles of articles that I pulled out of 29:49.830 --> 29:51.830 Google Scholar when I was doing my 29:51.830 --> 29:55.520 directed exercise three. 29:55.524 --> 29:57.804 "Effects of Social Integration: On Preserving 29:57.800 --> 30:01.300 Memory Function in a U.S. Elderly Population." Here's 30:01.300 --> 30:05.540 one about ten-year survival rate in an Australian society. 30:05.540 --> 30:07.830 Here's one about social integration and 30:07.830 --> 30:10.550 mortality in France. 30:10.550 --> 30:12.960 Here's one about social interaction and 30:12.960 --> 30:14.830 mortality in Sweden. 30:14.830 --> 30:16.400 Here's one in Finland. 30:16.400 --> 30:17.930 Here's one in Japan. 30:17.930 --> 30:19.570 Here's one in China. 30:19.570 --> 30:24.100 In every culture which anybody has looked at, social 30:24.100 --> 30:30.170 engagement is crucial to human flourishing. 30:30.170 --> 30:38.140 Now, we might want ask whether this tells us anything about 30:38.140 --> 30:40.830 the question that we're concerned within this segment 30:40.830 --> 30:44.350 of the course--the question of human flourishing--and whether 30:44.350 --> 30:46.730 this tells us anything about the questions that we're going 30:46.725 --> 30:49.795 to address in the subsequent units of the course. 30:49.800 --> 30:52.300 Our discussions of morality and our discussions of 30:52.300 --> 30:54.540 political philosophy. 30:54.540 --> 31:00.680 So Harrow and Bowlby and the Minnesota study have pointed 31:00.680 --> 31:05.220 out that in order for human beings to develop the kind of 31:05.220 --> 31:10.560 trusting relationship that enables a society even to get 31:10.560 --> 31:14.970 off the ground, it's crucial that there be a certain sort 31:14.970 --> 31:19.390 of stable social connection in infancy. 31:19.390 --> 31:23.630 We'll ask, in the context of our discussion of political 31:23.630 --> 31:30.330 philosophy, whether this has any implications for how a 31:30.330 --> 31:37.100 society needs to be structured if we hope to cultivate in it 31:37.100 --> 31:41.550 just citizens capable of domestic and democratic 31:41.550 --> 31:43.460 participation. 31:43.460 --> 31:47.980 Does it mean, astoundingly, that something we might think 31:47.980 --> 31:51.660 would be of no concern as far as political philosophy goes, 31:51.660 --> 31:57.330 the internal structure of the family, is of concern, as far 31:57.330 --> 31:59.860 as political philosophy goes? 31:59.860 --> 32:05.870 And if so, does that turn out to be a victory for the left? 32:05.870 --> 32:07.570 For the right? 32:07.570 --> 32:11.020 Or something else altogether? 32:11.020 --> 32:16.490 We'll ask in the context of Haidt's discussion of romantic 32:16.490 --> 32:20.390 love as an extraordinary combination, as you read, of 32:20.390 --> 32:24.120 our capacity for attachment, our capacity for caregiving, 32:24.120 --> 32:29.670 and our capacity for mating, whether any moral code we have 32:29.670 --> 32:32.880 needs to respect the fact that we will have special 32:32.880 --> 32:36.440 relationships to certain individuals that will render 32:36.435 --> 32:41.775 us incapable of treating them as one among many, even though 32:41.780 --> 32:45.400 what morality seems to demand of us is that we treat 32:45.400 --> 32:47.280 everybody equally. 32:47.280 --> 32:51.370 We'll ask, in the context of Nozick's discussion in the 32:51.370 --> 32:57.760 paper that we read of love as a formation of a we, whether 32:57.760 --> 33:02.120 when we form connections that extend beyond individuals 33:02.120 --> 33:06.140 connections to things like neighborhoods or religious 33:06.140 --> 33:12.920 communities or nations, whether that itself has any 33:12.920 --> 33:16.150 moral or political bearing. 33:16.150 --> 33:19.530 We'll turn back to the question raised by James 33:19.530 --> 33:24.170 Stockdale who pointed out to us the importance of 33:24.170 --> 33:28.100 friendship, of unit cohesion, and of close camaraderie in 33:28.100 --> 33:32.440 permitting resilience in the face of suffering, whether 33:32.440 --> 33:36.420 it's in fact incumbent upon political structures to 33:36.420 --> 33:41.410 promote stability in communities so as to allow 33:41.410 --> 33:46.850 people to whether the storms that fortune brings. 33:46.851 --> 33:50.291 And in so doing, we'll be able to make sense of this 33:50.290 --> 33:53.810 extraordinarily strange phenomenon, which is that 33:53.810 --> 33:58.400 Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a book about ethics 33:58.400 --> 34:02.950 that grounds the Western ethical tradition, includes 34:02.949 --> 34:09.159 within its twelve chapters two full chapters devoted to the 34:09.159 --> 34:13.949 question of friendship, in which Aristotle begins by 34:13.949 --> 34:17.949 pointing out that if you are young or if you are old, if 34:17.949 --> 34:20.689 you are rich, if you are poor, if you are at a time of your 34:20.690 --> 34:22.920 life when things are going well or if you're at a time of 34:22.920 --> 34:26.880 your life where things are going badly, nothing plays a 34:26.880 --> 34:30.620 more central role in allowing you to flourish than 34:30.620 --> 34:33.620 friendship does. 34:33.620 --> 34:35.920 Thanks to all of you for coming by 34:35.920 --> 34:37.500 for an extra lecture. 34:37.500 --> 34:41.310 I'm happy to take questions, though technically we've come 34:41.310 --> 34:45.040 to the end of the fifty minutes that we were allotted. 34:45.040 --> 34:46.270 But I'm happy to answer questions, 34:46.270 --> 34:47.780 because there's no deadline. 34:47.780 --> 34:48.600 Hello, yeah. 34:48.600 --> 34:49.850 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 34:51.860 --> 34:54.010 PROFESSOR: No, people can go! 34:54.010 --> 34:54.720 Ask your question. 34:54.720 --> 34:55.960 I'd love to answer it. 34:55.956 --> 34:57.206 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 34:59.428 --> 35:03.888 between early childhood nurturing, which leads to 35:03.892 --> 35:07.862 flourishing, and neglect, which would lead 35:07.860 --> 35:10.840 to something bad. 35:10.836 --> 35:14.556 But that seems to be kind of morally-charged, there's a 35:14.556 --> 35:16.786 value judgment inherent in all of this. 35:16.788 --> 35:20.508 And I've been wondering because I think that book that 35:20.508 --> 35:23.728 you mentioned about different facets of our personality 35:23.732 --> 35:24.722 [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 35:24.724 --> 35:30.684 experience because we can't say that necessarily there's a 35:30.676 --> 35:34.186 good way to know how to raise your child. 35:34.190 --> 35:40.640 PROFESSOR: OK so the question was, look, I made a statement 35:40.640 --> 35:43.920 that a certain kind of early childhood nurturing seems to 35:43.920 --> 35:48.980 lead to social capabilities of a certain kind, whereas early 35:48.980 --> 35:52.440 childhood neglect seems to lead to social disabilities. 35:52.440 --> 35:56.630 In making that statement, A, I making a value judgment that's 35:56.630 --> 35:59.190 illegitimate about how we want to be able to function in 35:59.190 --> 36:02.770 society, B, am I making a value judgment that's 36:02.770 --> 36:06.960 illegitimate about what's appropriate in child rearing? 36:06.960 --> 36:11.750 So let me turn to the second first. The claims about early 36:11.750 --> 36:16.210 childhood nurturing that are made here are primarily about 36:16.210 --> 36:19.040 roughly the first eighteen months of life. 36:19.040 --> 36:24.030 There is great dispute here on campus and elsewhere about 36:24.030 --> 36:27.740 what is appropriate after those first eighteen months. 36:27.740 --> 36:30.420 But there seems to be pretty clear evidence, both 36:30.420 --> 36:33.740 domestically and cross-culturally, that during 36:33.740 --> 36:38.700 the first eighteen months, the idea of too much nurturing, 36:38.700 --> 36:41.560 too much responsiveness, is one on which it's 36:41.560 --> 36:43.180 hard to get a handle. 36:43.180 --> 36:47.390 That is, being such that your needs are responded to seems 36:47.390 --> 36:48.990 to be a way of promoting 36:48.990 --> 36:50.960 stability and trust. OK. 36:50.960 --> 36:52.430 Back to your first question. 36:52.430 --> 36:55.790 Are we making value judgments about what it's like to be a 36:55.790 --> 36:59.940 good person when we say: we're looking to cultivate in 36:59.940 --> 37:04.080 ourselves the possibility of trust and connection instead 37:04.080 --> 37:07.280 of a life of distrust? 37:07.280 --> 37:10.450 I suppose there are circumstances, societies in 37:10.450 --> 37:14.200 which being trusting would be a detriment. 37:14.200 --> 37:18.850 Being able to respond to somebody without constantly 37:18.850 --> 37:21.430 being on guard would be dangerous. 37:21.430 --> 37:25.930 And in those circumstances, it would perhaps make sense to 37:25.930 --> 37:29.280 cultivate a different kind of early childhood experience. 37:29.280 --> 37:35.090 Whether that shows that we've found two equally good forms 37:35.090 --> 37:38.020 of flourishing is something we'll talk about when we talk 37:38.020 --> 37:40.330 about moral relativism in a few weeks. 37:43.540 --> 37:44.020 Good. 37:44.020 --> 37:45.270 Thanks.