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ROBIN ROSENBERG: Thank you.
My talk today is "Superheroes and the Life Lessons They
Teach Us." And part of my mission is that I think the
scientific psychology, we know a lot of fun facts to know and
tell that can more importantly improve people's lives
if only they knew.
And even if they knew, the important thing
is that they remember.
So what I try to do is teach these little kernels in ways
that are memorable.
And popular culture figures are great examples.
Superheroes, in particular, are wonderful examples.
Let me tell you a little bit about how I got started on
this venture, in this trajectory, if you will.
I have three sons.
And when the oldest two were in preschool, they came home
talking about the X-Men.
So I read comics as a kid.
Mostly DC, I have to admit.
And the X-Men was after my time as a kid.
And so they were coming home wanting to know about X-Men,
or wanting to watch Saturday morning cartoons and talking
about X-Men.
And so I bought some X-Men cartoons,
comic books, and videos.
And I was also writing an introductory psychology
textbook at the time for college students.
And I opened up the X-Men comics, and I was blown away
by how much psychology there was.
Show of hands, how many people are familiar with X-Men?
OK, good.
And so that started me on this path.
So I'll be using a lot of examples as
you'll be able to see.
I'm going to talk about hopefully four, but
realistically probably three lessons.
One is being different can give you power.
Another is adversity can be overcome.
And the costume counts.
My mother was right.
And then if we have time, I'll do superheroes aren't the only
ones with alter-egos.
OK, so being different can give you power.
Show of hands, how many people here
grew up feeling different?
How many people grew up not feeling different?
Wow.
OK, so one person raised their hand.
It's unusual.
Usually everybody raises their hand.
So we can talk more afterwards.
There is a phenomenon in psychology where human beings
are wired with something called social categorization.
We're prone to divide the world into "us" versus "them."
And we are always in "us," wherever we are.
"Them," the technical term is outgroup.
And those people are generally considered more negatively.
They have more undesirable attributes.
And outgroup is seen as more homogeneous than it really is.
So, for instance, vampires, unless there's something I
don't know going on, are the outgroup.
And so we view them as pretty similar--
fangs, suck blood, that kind of thing.
And we don't generally like them, at least until recently.
And that's another example of an outgroup.
That's the 1966 "Batman" villains.
I mean, they're very colorful.
But we it's all "them."
"Us," the term is the ingroup.
And we consider ourselves generally more positively.
And we are more likely to help, trust, and cooperate
with members of our group.
So this is Buffy.
Show of hands, familiar with "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer"?
OK, great.
So this is her.
And the Scoobies.
And eventually, it includes vampires.
So the "us" gets wider.
And it's not simply vampires versus humans.
But it becomes a little bit more complex.
And the ingroup, everyone has their own back story.
It's interesting.
That's another us, DC superheroes.
And so we are prone to divide the world into "us" versus
"them." And whenever we do, we amplify the differences.
Blue eyes versus brown eyes--
I don't know how many-- elementary school, there was
this program going on for kids.
Now being different can refer to variety
of different qualities.
You can be physically different, like Nightcrawler,
who is blue and has a tail and can teleport.
This is a version of the Bat Girl character, Barbara
Gordon, where her back is broken by the Joker.
And so she's in a wheelchair.
You can be psychologically different.
These are five different psychological dimensions of
personality.
And so people fall on each of the five lines.
They'll have a point on which they fall on those dimensions.
And your profile will be unique because, really, the
points are infinite on the continuum.
And so you are different.
People at the extremes are quite different.
But everyone is different, psychologically,
from someone else.
You can be different by virtue of having an
unusual personal history.
For instance, Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents' death.
Hopefully, that is unusual.
But, unfortunately, he's not the only one
who's experienced that.
So there are a lot of different ways to be and feel
different within a given social context.
And I'm going to come back to the
importance of social context.
So this is normal curve, the bell curve.
People are undoubtedly familiar with it.
And we typically think of being different as being in
the yellow parts, or maybe part of the
reddish pink parts.
And psychologically, depends on what you're talking about,
whether being different is restricted to the tails.
Basically because of the social categorization "us"
versus "them" phenomenon, whenever you're feeling
different about something, it puts you at risk to feel part
of the outgroup when you're out in the larger world.
So you could be in the blue normal curve, the biggest
part, the most frequent part of the bell curve.
But if you're with people who are in either of the yellow
parts, you will feel different, even though
statistically you're not.
But that won't matter.
Your psychological experience of being different is totally
based on your social context.
So if you were really smart, for instance, and didn't have
a magnet class or a magnet school, and you were with
other kids who weren't as smart or gifted in a
particular way, you would feel different.
But if you had gone to a magnet school with other
people like you, you wouldn't feel different.
Everybody with me on that?
How many people here went to some kind of special school,
magnet school?
Interesting.
So this is the Thing from the Fantastic Four.
And he is walking through a glass doorway, which breaks
because he's too big for it.
And he says, "Why must they build doorways so narrow?"
And the point here is simply that, again, when he's out in
the social world of everybody else, all the people in the
blue part of the normal curve, he feels really different,
which isn't as noticeable depending
on his social context.
So being different usually means being part of an
outgroup unless you're fortunate to be in a place
where there are lots of other different people like you.
So it's a little bit of a problem to be different.
And you may have experienced this.
There's this tension between wanting to either be or appear
normal, to fit in, to be like everybody else in your social
context, versus accepting yourself as you are.
Because if you want to be or appear normal, there's a part
where you don't like yourself, which is an
uncomfortable way to be.
So I'm going to show you some little clips from "X-Men First
Class," which is the prequel to "X-Men." It's the film in
which they start to realize they have powers and find each
other and feel a sense of belonging.
Show of hands, how many people have seen "X-Men First Class"?
Cool.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-You have no idea what I'd give to feel normal.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: So that the guy on the right becomes the
character Beast.
He so desperately wants to feel normal that he injects--
he basically tries out a serum on himself and ends up
becoming even more mutated.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-You want society to accept you, but you
can't even accept yourself.
-Should we have to hide?
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Should we have to hide who we are?
So that's one.
People are struggling with this
issue about being different.
This is a clip from "The Incredibles." Show of hands,
how many people have seen "The Incredibles"?
OK, so it's a grown-up cartoon film.
Kids think they understand it, but they don't.
It's really for adults.
And it's a family.
The superheroes have kind of gone underground because there
was a lot of bad press and stuff.
So they are trying to be normal, be like everyone else.
The older daughter has a power where
she can become invisible.
So her name is Violet.
And the younger son Dash is like the Flash.
He can be really fast.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Normal?
What do you know about normal?
What does anyone in this family know about normal?
-Now, wait a minute, young lady.
-We act normal, Mom.
I want to be normal.
The only one normal is Jack Jack.
And he's--
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: And he's a baby.
OK.
And then we have Dash.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-I want to go out for sports.
-Honey, you know why we can't do that.
-But I promise I'll slow up.
I'll only be the best by a tiny bit.
-Patience.
-You always say, do your best.
But you don't really mean it.
Why can't I do the best that I can do?
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: So it's the other side.
So in the family, they're playing out both
sides of this dilemma.
So people in real life and superheroes find different
solutions to this.
Show of hands, how many people have
seen the TV show "Heroes"?
OK, first season was great.
But it was really hard to know where to go with it.
So in the TV show, it's like X-Men that people have powers
that they develop.
It's a mysterious process.
And one of them can talk to electronic devices or
electrical devices.
And he doesn't really spread the word around because people
would think he was really weird.
So he says-- this is a cartoon version--
but I keep that a secret.
You never how some people react to secrets.
So he hides it.
The solution is to pass, if you will.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: This is Mystique, who is, in her
natural state, blue.
Her dilemma is to pass or not pass.
And in the beginning, she passes.
Another solution is to pretend that your
differences are flukes.
This is an early Superboy cartoon when he lifts a car to
save someone.
And his friends see.
And they're wowed.
And he says, I guess something happened just for a minute to
give me super strength.
Right?
And people do actually exhibit super strength when there are
emergencies like this, so OK.
Another solution, which is the one that I advocate, is to
accept and, if possible, enjoy being different.
And that when you're by yourself, or with family and
friends who are supportive, being different can be a
positive force.
So this is Superboy being alone and having fun just
exploring his powers, leaping tall barns in a single bound.
And this is the kid from "Heroes." And his mom thinks
what he can do is amazing.
And she just thinks he's the cat's meow.
And loves spending time with him.
And it really helps him be comfortable with himself.
This is the Fantastic Four.
And in contrast to when the Thing is out in public
breaking glass doorways, when he's with other people who are
sort of like him in that they got morphed, he can be really
comfortable and be himself and feel proud and good.
"X-Men First Class," when they find each other, again, it's
about finding your people, if you will.
Whoops--and that was "The Incredibles" when they
acknowledge their differences and don their tights.
So how can you make being different work for you?
So superheroes teach us to recognize and acknowledge the
ways that we're different.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be
ashamed of.
Our powers made us special.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Thank you, Dash.
So with recognition, when you acknowledge and recognize,
comes exploration.
Again, these three little steps are what
superheroes teach us.
When you realize you're different, you want to know,
so what does that mean?
What are the parameters about being different?
How different am I?
So, from the TV show "Heroes," this young woman realizes this
she's never been sick.
If she hurts herself, she gets better right away.
So in exploring, she puts her hand down the garbage disposal
and turns it on.
It heals right away.
It was a little cool CGI.
But exploration is really important.
This is a schematic of Spiderman's spider-injecting,
spider-webbing stuff.
It's a little creepy, the idea that it
comes out of his wrist.
But it was a schematic so he could understand and explore.
What are the limits of this?
What are the parameters?
And in the film, he tries to see how much he can get away
with without going on empty.
And this is what happens when you don't explore.
This is not a DC Comic.
It says, "Superboy politely apologizes for ripping some
dude's arm off." And he says, "Aw man, I'm sorry.
That's totally my bad." Because he didn't know the
limits of his strength.
This is a version in which he did not explore the parameters
of his ability to be different.
Also, there's control.
So one of the things that Luke Skywalker does is learn to
control the ways that he's different.
Buffy learns to control.
She has some super strength.
She learns to control that.
The other thing that happens when you're different and you
acknowledge that is you hopefully will decide to what
purpose should that different-ness be put.
Superman, Clark Kent, struggles with the gifts that
he's been given and how should he use them.
NPR a while back had a little radio poll.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
And people would say, oh, X-ray vision so I could see in
the girls' locker room, or invisibility
and I'd rob a bank.
And I think at some point, it gets kind of boring.
You know, how many girls' locker rooms you want to look
in before you decide, OK, now what?
And that's--
I mean, unless you're a really early
pubescent teenager or something.
So purpose becomes really important.
All the superheroes have this.
They have an ability.
How do they want to use it?
That's Hermione Granger, who's definitely a
superhero in my book.
Tony Stark, Iron Man.
So the other thing superheroes teach us is to band together
with like-minded folks.
So these are the X-Men, Fantastic Four, DC
superheroes.
So this is Comic-Con, banding together
with like-minded folks.
I don't know what these people are, but they're clearly
banding together and they're like-minded.
Banding together with like-minded folks--
I mean, people are amazing.
There's so many different ways we can be different.
Banding together with like-minded folks.
Sometimes you are the only one.
There is no one else like you.
And so in the middle, this is Clark Kent from "Smallville."
And until his cousin appears, there is no
other alien from Krypton.
So the best you can do is band together with people who
accept the ways that you're different and support you.
And those are his friends who know that he's super.
This is Hell Boy and Abe Sapien.
They are the only ones on Earth.
But they band together with people who support them.
So lesson one, acknowledge the ways in
which you're different.
Until you claim it is a part of yourself, you'll be
fighting against it.
Explore the boundaries of your different-ness.
Learn to control it.
Think about how you want to use it.
And then band together with like-minded folks.
OK, so each of us is different from everyone else.
But we're similar in that we're all
different from each other.
That's the take-home message.
All right.
Adversity can be overcome.
Show of hands, how many people here have experience--
I'm not going to ask any more details than this--
experienced a traumatic stress or significant adversity?
How many people have not?
You are really lucky.
And I hope that that lasts.
Most people will in their lifetimes experience
significant adversity.
And a fun fact to know and tell--
well, actually, first let me ask you this other question.
So based on what you know of the world, if someone has a
traumatic event, do you think the likelihood is greater than
50% that they'll develop
post-traumatic stress disorder?
So if you agree that at least 50% of the people who
experience the trauma will get PTSD, raise your hand.
Wow.
As a psychologist, I was in this group until I read the
statistic that only 20% of people who experience a trauma
go on to develop PTSD, which is not what's portrayed in the
films and movies and books.
And so I just thought that was really interesting.
And we know a lot at now about what makes people more
vulnerable to developing it.
But I'm not talking about PTSD today.
It's a little interesting fact.
I want to talk about the 80% of people, and the people who
have PTSD who moved past it, which is
adversity can be overcome.
Many superheroes have
experienced significant adversity.
Just to name a few, we've got Peter Parker, who initiated a
series of events that led to the *** of his beloved
uncle and guardian Ben.
Prof.
Charles Xavier is a telepath and was through the Holocaust
and experienced many peoples' deaths in his mind.
Jean Grey is similar.
As a kid, she's a telepath and experienced the death of her
friend in a car crash, depending on which version.
Anakin Skywalker, where do we start?
But he witnessed the torture and then death of his mother,
then turned to the dark side.
Many of us, as I said, have experienced some kind of
traumatic stressor or significant adversity.
How are we doing on time?
OK.
I'm going to skip over the specific kind of stressors and
adversity that people can have because we know them.
But if we look at our superheroes, what type did
they experience?
So this is Bruce Wayne and witnessed the
*** of his parents.
And his own life was in danger.
And then I'm going to show you Tony stark from "Iron Man 1."
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: And for those of you in the know, in the
film, in contrast to the comics, this was intended.
He was the target versus him being an accidental target in
the comic, which actually makes the story, I think, I
think a bit richer.
Intended personal violence is the one that tends to leave
the biggest wake.
So if you were assaulted versus in a natural disaster,
you're more likely to have a bigger psychological effect.
People cope with adversity and trauma by making meaning of
their events and aftermath.
And they understand it in a larger framework about the
meaning of life.
So for most of us, before adversity hits, we have a set
of global beliefs.
They include a belief in a just world, which is that you
deserve what you get and you get what you deserve.
It's a little circular, a little childish, but
nonetheless, that we're human, that it's
possible to trust others--
not all others, but there are some
trustworthy people out there--
and that it's possible to be effective in the world.
These beliefs drive our global goals.
Whatever we're striving toward, we're striving because
we believe that if we work hard, we'll have an effect.
That if we work at a relationship, you know
inherently the person will be trustworthy.
We should try to find friends and an intimate partner.
And that if we do good, we should get good-- a belief in
a just world.
And then the beliefs and the goals give us a sense that
life has purpose.
We're moving forward.
We have meaning.
Unfortunately, when you experience significant
adversity or trauma, you say, why did this happen?
Or if a loved one experienced it, why did it happen to them?
Because it really challenges a belief in a just world.
If I'm a basically good person and something bad happens to
me, does it mean I deserved it?
Because I get what I deserve and I deserve what I get.
So it challenges the beliefs.
Oh, whoops, wrong button.
So, again, it challenges belief in a just world.
If the trauma or adversity involved another person who
was untrustworthy that we trusted, it calls into
question our ability to evaluate people and decide who
is trustworthy and who isn't.
And that's pretty scary.
And if we weren't able to protect ourselves or the other
person that we care about, then how can we be effective
in the world?
Because that's really the most important thing is to really
protect yourself or other people.
And these are pretty grim existential questions that
people ask themselves after adversity or a trauma.
So you question your global beliefs which causes you to
question your goals.
Because why am I working so hard if I
don't get what I deserve?
If I can't be effective, what's the point?
And, in fact, life can feel meaningless and purposeless.
There's a natural process.
People work through this.
Human beings are absolutely amazing.
And part of how we work through it and the process of
working through it is to develop a fuller understanding
of why the negative events happened, thinking through the
implications, which may be changing the idea that you
don't get what you deserve--
you know, life isn't fair--
discovering possible silver linings; recognizing that
other people are often worse off, and putting the events in
a broader context.
So with resolution, people get a heightened sense of self
where they're aware of their vulnerability.
They appreciate life more.
And Nietzsche was right, a sense of being stronger for
having survived.
They have an increased connection to other people.
They're more expressive emotionally, more disclosing
about what happened to them, and, in general, an increased
empathy for others.
And they have an altered philosophy of life.
And this is, I think, where superheroes model for us.
They're more spiritual.
They live life more fully.
But they're also social activists.
So I'm going to go through the story of Batman.
Does anyone here not know Batman's origin story?
Great.
Really quick, bottom panel's his parents get killed.
This is the original 1939 comic, by the way.
It was his back story developed in the
sixth Batman comic.
Bruce Wayne is incredibly precocious in so many ways.
And so the important panel is the last one, which is "Days
later, a curious and strange scene takes place." For most
people, this is not days.
This may not even be weeks or months.
But because he's Bruce Wayne, it happens in days.
"And I swear by the spirit of my parents to avenge their
deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all
criminals."
So he has gone through all of this resolution process within
a few days of this terrible thing happened to me.
It causes me to challenge my beliefs and goals.
And I now have a new goal.
And it makes my life feel meaningful.
He then proceeds to dedicate the next decade or so of his
life to not just becoming a scientist detective, but also
being at the peak physical shape.
Is it fiction?
So psychologically, there's no one who's really wealthy, who
has all these gadgets, who's going around.
There are real-life superheroes in New York, but I
don't think any of them are like Bruce Wayne.
Psychologically, show of hands, how many people think
it's fiction, doesn't really ring true?
I've already got--
no, it's not.
So I don't know how many of you people remembered Adam
Walsh, a young kid who was kidnapped in the '80s and then
later found murdered.
His parents started the Adam Walsh Foundation to help
families of missing kids.
His dad, David Walsh, went on to be on "America's Most
Wanted."
So these are all variants of the psychologically
true story of Batman.
So David Walsh dedicated the rest of his life to helping
prevent what happened to him, to his son, and after the
fact, helping people if it did happen.
Jill Markussen was a mortgage broker.
And in 2008, she lost her job and almost lost her home.
And her community pitched in to help her make her mortgage
so she didn't lose her home.
And when she got back on her feet, she started Project
Flipmode to help other people who are in danger of losing
their homes.
Willie Minniefield, his brother needed a new kidney.
And minorities tend not to donate organs at the same rate
as do whites.
And so, unfortunately, it didn't work in time, but he
developed a Minority Organ Donation Education Program to
encourage minority organ donation.
Christy Nicholson, her husband was killed in a
shootout with someone.
She, every year, does a huge blood drive that have saved
hundreds of lives.
These are all real stories.
I mean, it's easy to find these.
I mean, it's totally easy.
They're all over.
And these are the true Batman stories.
So the writers of Batman, Bob Kane and Bill Finger really
found something that was true.
And they translated it into a superhero form.
But what they created was real, psychologically.
Unfortunately, there's another way to resolve this
discrepancy.
And that's to become cynical and bitter.
And this is true.
And we, unfortunately, see this in real life.
You have people who develop global beliefs
that they're cynical.
They're greedy.
And they're hedonistic.
And they say, hey, life is short.
I want to get mine while I can.
We see this on Wall Street.
We see it in companies.
We see it in relationships.
And we see it in our villains.
So Magneto came through the other side of the Holocaust
and had a very different philosophy than Professor X.
The Joker--
whatever his back story is, and we will
never know the truth--
he certainly came out the other side with the sense of,
hey, live for today.
See how much sick fun you can have.
And Two-Face, same thing.
Life is capricious.
Things are taken away from me.
I'm going to get mine.
So be a superhero.
Develop new global beliefs, new global goals, new meaning
and purpose.
The costume counts.
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, my mother--
going shopping for clothes was exquisite torture.
Because I wanted to dress how I wanted to dress.
And she would say, no, it's really important to make an
impression.
To this day, I will not go shopping
with anyone for clothes.
But it had an impact on me.
Her words resonate in my head.
And for many, many years, I didn't believe her.
And then I became a psychologist.
And it was really hard to admit that she was right.
What you wear affects you and other people and the way they
respond to you.
And I'm going to walk you through a little bit about the
science about this and what we learn from superheroes.
Choose wisely.
I did not take her advice for a very long time.
That's a costume.
These are all costumes.
Costumes are not just for superheroes or Halloween.
We live in New York.
You know this.
Costumes are everywhere.
This is a costume.
Costumes.
CCer Certainly a costume.
So a costume communicates something about ourselves,
what we wear.
It is a costume.
Everyone, we're all wearing costumes
I'm wearing a costume.
You're wearing a costume.
So our dress communicates a public self.
So this is Britney Spears in her public
costume, such as it is.
And there's also what we want to communicate about our
private selves.
And that's her private self.
How we dress also communicates some aspect of a role that
we're playing.
And so we role play with costumes.
In our daily wear, , again, it's a costume.
We're communicating something about ourselves.
In our evening or weekend wear, we're communicating
something about ourselves.
And at special events, we're communicating
something about ourselves.
So at weddings, at live action role plays, we are
communicating something about ourselves.
Superheroes are communicating something about themselves
when they wear their costume.
We also communicate something about ourselves and our
costume electronically with our profiles and blogs, with
our avatars for those who have an avatar.
And when we don these costumes, we're also
communicating how we want to influence how other people
view us and treat us.
Or we should be.
I mean, I didn't think I was, but my mother was right.
So people do form impressions of you based on what the glean
from your costume and your appearance.
So, OK, what do you think about her?
Real quick, just shout out whatever.
What do you think of her?
What are you inferring about her?
AUDIENCE: Preppy.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Happy?
AUDIENCE: Preppy.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Preppy.
OK, what made her look preppy?
AUDIENCE: The plaid.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: The plaid.
OK.
Anything else?
Any other thoughts?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
into manga.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Into manga.
AUDIENCE: Because of her costume, it looks manga-esque.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Because of her costume, it looks
manga-esque.
Any other thoughts?
OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] ironic.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Ironic because?
AUDIENCE: She's sort of going over the top in the schoolgirl
sense and kind of back around the other way.
Or at least that's one way to think about it.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK.
Going over the top.
Good.
I gave this talk last night.
And I've never had this happen before, but someone said they
thought she was a ***.
And another person thought that she was a stripper.
Wow.
That had never entered my mind.
Show of hands, actually, how many think that's possible
from seeing this photograph?
Whoa.
So the point is we all make inferences about each other.
Some of us make different inferences than others.
But we all make inferences about people based on how they
look and how they dress.
There also is a whole other [INAUDIBLE].
Her posture is also such that it's going to lead you to make
these-- it's not simply what she's wearing, but it's her
non-verbals as well.
So it happens really quickly.
We just make these evaluations.
How does this process work?
So there are two ways we evaluate people
based on their costume.
One is a controlled, deliberate,
and effortful process.
And we use it less frequently.
And I'm going to show you why.
Show of hands, how many people have seen "Men in Black"?
For those of you who haven't, in this scene that I'm going
to show you, Will Smith plays a New York cop who doesn't
always play by the rules.
He's really good, but he's fast and loose.
And he was invited to apply for a job that was an elite
job, but he had no idea what it was.
And he took all these paper and pencil tests in the room
with people, high-ranking generals from the military.
And all of that group that are in the room applying for this
job and filling out forms are now invited into a room where
they're going to be given a gun.
And they're going to be asked to shoot fake people, the
little cardboard kinds of things.
So let's watch this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[SIREN]
[BUZZER]
[BUZZER]
[GUNSHOTS]
-Edwards, what the hell happened?
-Hesitated.
-May I ask why you felt little Tiffany deserved to die?
-Well, she was only one that actually seemed dangerous at
the time, sir.
-How'd you come to that conclusion?
-Well, first I was going to pop this guy hanging from the
streetlight.
And then I realized, you know, he was just working out.
I mean, how would I feel if somebody come running into the
gym, bust me in my *** while I'm on the treadmill?
Then I saw this snarling beast guy.
And I noticed he had a tissue in his hand.
And I realized, you know, he's not snarling, he's sneezing.
You know, ain't not real threat there.
Then I saw a little Tiffany.
I'm thinking, you know, eight-year-old white girl,
middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time a night
with quantum physics books.
She about to start some ***, Zed.
She's about eight years old.
Those books are way too advanced for her.
If you ask me, I say she's up to something.
And to be honest, I'd appreciate it if you'd ease up
off my back about it.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Why don't we do this all the time?
It takes way too much effort to sustain this.
We actually cannot do what Will Smith did all the time.
Or if we did, we wouldn't be able to function and do
anything else.
The cognitive load is so high.
We can do it sometimes when we try, when it
counts, like he did.
But it's just not possible to sustain.
So what do we do?
Instead, we use what's called automatic processing.
And we take minimal information and we classify
people according to the traits that we infer about them.
So like the woman in the plaid skirt, we're going to just see
plaid skirt, weird shirt, pigeon-toed, and then whatever
you think-- stripper, ironic, whatever your own personal
tastes are.
So we do this, again, through social categorization, the
"us" versus "them" thing.
So we look at what they're wearing.
And we say, oh, that's like us.
That's like them, you know, which them, which us.
And then when we just assume it.
So there's a cognitive bias that we know about in
psychology called the Halo Effect, which is if an
individual has an important attribute in one situation or
context, we infer that this individual has additional
related attributes.
So villain or hero?
AUDIENCE: Hero.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Hero.
OK, why?
AUDIENCE: The hair.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: The hair?
No, it's the Superman little twisty thing.
No, that's true.
AUDIENCE: Square--
ROBIN ROSENBERG: What?
AUDIENCE: Square jaw.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Square jaw, yep.
OK.
Cleft chin, right?
Any other thoughts?
AUDIENCE: Smiling.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Smiling, OK.
AUDIENCE: Nice cape.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Nice cape, OK.
AUDIENCE: Common pose, too.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Common pose, OK.
So all of this happened instantly, before I even asked
you a question about it.
Once you saw it, you made all of these assumptions.
So you looked at the cleft chin, and you inferred other
qualities about it.
So in real life, we have examples of this
in our daily life.
These are well-founded, well-researched things.
So we think that good-looking people are kinder,
which is not true.
I mean, a given person may or may not be, but in general,
good looking people aren't kinder.
And that we think well-groomed job
applicants are more competent.
But, again, we are making all these assumptions because it
helps us get by with less cognitive effort.
OK, so there's a flip side of this called the Devil Effect
or the Horn Effect.
And if someone has undesirable attributes, then we infer that
the person has additional related negative attributes.
So hero or villain?
AUDIENCE: Villain.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Villain.
Why?
AUDIENCE: Dark colors.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Say?
AUDIENCE: Dark colors.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Dark colors.
OK.
AUDIENCE: Scowling.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Scowling, frown, yep.
AUDIENCE: Small head compared to the body.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Small head, right.
AUDIENCE: He's looking down at us.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: He's looking down at us.
Cool, OK.
AUDIENCE: His arms are crossed.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: His arms are crossed.
OK.
Cool.
Now, ironically, this stance is very close to the Superman
stance, which is legs spread.
Its hands on hips.
We have seen Superman in this pose.
So it's not simply the pose.
But you see how all of a sudden, you saw this and you
instantly made a decision, villain.
The metallic part probably helped.
I assume it's metallic.
I'm not sure, but it's shiny like metal.
And so we made all of these attributes.
So I'm going to tell you about a study--
people are already laughing.
So there was a study that was done.
And you, as a participant, were brought into the lab.
And you were shown photographs of people.
Some of them were wearing a plain T-shirt.
And some of them were wearing what I'd
call an alcohol T-shirt.
It had Jack Daniels or something on it.
In the photograph in the lab, I had the same person.
Sometimes it was plain.
And I had photographs of it being plain.
And I had photographs of it being alcohol.
So the people are the same.
It's just we both conditions, if you will.
You were asked to rate people, just like tell us what you
think about this person.
And some of those people wearing a plain T-shirt and
some of them were wearing an alcohol T-shirt.
Nothing else was different except the alcohol words.
So what the participants said is that the people in the
photographs who were wearing an alcohol
T-shirt were rated as--
long list--
less honest, less independent, less responsible, less
reliable, less religious, less likely to be on time, less
likely to do well in school.
They were more likely to smoke, to be a party animal,
drink or swear, and be risk-taker.
All of this inferred from alcohol words.
I think it's probably true.
I mean, I know I should know better, but I would make the
same assumptions.
But we don't know where the person got the T-shirt.
It was a gift, it was--
I mean, It's just interesting how all of this
negative stuff came out.
So social categorization reduces the
effort we have to expend.
We don't have to think if the guy in the cape was a bad guy.
We just immediately make these assumptions.
But it makes us more likely to make biased judgments.
So people categorize us based on how we dress.
And then they treat us accordingly.
My mother was right.
Now the interesting thing is that the way they treat us can
elicit certain behaviors from us.
And my mother didn't quite tell me this part.
Although I think she have intuited because she's a good
lay psychologist.
There was a study done.
There was another study.
You're brought into the lab.
You are a woman.
And you're told you're going to have a telephone
conversation with another participant in the study.
And so you go into this cubicle, and you'll
speak to him there.
And whatever they told me, to talk about whatever.
If you are a guy and you came into the lab, you were shown a
photograph.
And you were told this is the woman you're going to talk to.
Come into this cubicle.
Now it turns out, half the guys were shown a photograph
of an attractive woman.
And half the guys were shown a photograph of an
unattractive woman.
And these were objectively rated beforehand.
People rated the photographs of who is
attractive and who wasn't.
These photographs had nothing to do with the actual woman in
the cubicle waiting to talk to the guy.
So just again to reiterate the set-up, they're told they're
going to talk to a woman who's either attractive or
unattractive.
So that's the panel on the left.
In the middle panel, they have their conversation.
They're separately tape-recorded.
They leave the lab.
They're done.
In the lab, a rater who works for the professor is listening
to the women's part of the conversation only.
And they are rating her tone of voice for warmth and
friendliness.
That's their job.
And then they rate them.
And then they look back and see did the guys think that
these were attractive women or unattractive women.
And it turns out that the women who were rated as warm
and friendly were the women where the guy thought that she
was going to be attractive.
So what happened is the guy thinks, I'm going to talk to
someone who's attractive.
And he somehow interacts with her in a way that elicits this
warmth and friendliness from her.
And he didn't even see her.
It was just on the phone, something
in his tone of voice--
they, it was a lot of guys, it wasn't just one guy.
Something elicited from her behavior that made her conform
to how he assumed she was.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the way you
dress causes people to treat you accordingly.
And how they treat you, then, elicits that behavior from
you, whether you want to or not.
It's all unconscious.
This happens like in the ether between people.
It elicits the behavior.
And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So people will make inferences about you based on your
appearance.
And most of the time, they will not be Will Smith.
They will not make that extra effort and go
beyond a snap judgment.
So their judgments affect their behavior, which affects
your behavior and thoughts and feelings without your
knowing about it.
And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So what costume do you want to wear?
You should ask yourself what part of yourself do you want
to hide or express?
What role do you want to play?
What snap judgments do you want other people to make of
you because they will?
Are you willing to have these become a
self-fulfilling prophecy?
And I think we don't--
I have time for questions, so I'll just
skip over this lesson.
Questions, thoughts, ideas?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: So I actually have a question and a comment.
So I'll start with the comment about the
experiment with the shirts.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK.
One second.
Is there a mic they're supposed to go to?
Oh, I'm sorry, if you have a question, just go to a mic.
Sorry, I forgot about that.
AUDIENCE: So the comment is about the experiment with the
shirts with the Jack Daniels.
So as you were describing that, I was thinking to
myself, well, OK, but what--
I'll just speak for myself, but I think
this is fairly typical.
What happens is a lot of times with things like that is
there's a thing that goes on in your mind where you say--
not particularly about the Jack Daniels shirt, that's
fairly innocuous--
but somebody wears a particular shirt and so
immediately the place you go to is, well, you made a
conscious choice to wear that shirt, right?
So the wearer is trying to transmit something about
themselves.
Whether that's right or wrong, it doesn't matter.
But that's sort of what goes on in your head as the
observer is, well, you chose to wear that shirt.
You're trying to send out some kind of signal.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Right.
AUDIENCE: Which could be totally wrong.
The other thing is about superheros.
So I'm the father of two boys who are both adults now.
But the one thing that struck me-- and I know, I watched, I
read comic books when I was a kid.
And I'm old enough that I remember the George Reeves
Superman, although it was in reruns.
I'm not quite that old.
But one thing that struck me with both of my sons was how
early the hook sank about superheroes.
I mean, I can remember my older son being like 18 months
old, taking his baby blanket and asking us to wrap it
around his neck as a cape.
In fact, at this point, I wish they'd wean themselves from
that stuff, but maybe by 40 they will.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Or not.
AUDIENCE: But yeah, maybe not.
But one thing that struck me was there's got to be
something deeper going on there, right?
There's something in their very, very young minds.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Primal.
AUDIENCE: There's something that's resonating in terms of
what they desire to be.
Or I'm not sure exactly what it is, but that the
hook sinks so early.
I mean, obviously there's a lot more.
If all your friends are surrounding you and they're
all carrying Spiderman lunch boxes, and there's a lot more
of that stuff, certainly, than when I was younger.
But I'm wondering if there's something deeper than that,
that's it's not just media pressure, that there's some
hook that sets in very early.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Absolutely.
And actually the book that's not on sale there, "Our
Superheroes, Ourselves" addresses
some of this question.
It's essays by psychologists talking about our relationship
with superheroes and the ways in which we're similar to and
different from superheroes.
So before there were superheros, it
was cowboys and Indians.
It was probably Sampson versus Delilah.
I mean, throughout history kids play.
And they play about characters that they know, Bible figures.
If they're exposed to superheroes, it's superheroes.
Kids really want moral clarity about right and wrong.
And I think part of what superhero stories offer, aside
from the violent part, is the kid superhero stories offer
moral clarity.
And they also show that sometimes doing the right
thing is hard, which is a lesson that we actually want
adults to remember.
So being a whistle-blower is a great example that's a
superhero tale without the power.
So kids are just gravitated toward moral
clarity and also power.
I mean, kids are unbelievably powerless in the world.
They have so little control over anything.
And the idea of being this superhero and having all of
these powers and being able to do all
these things is amazing.
And then the other piece, just to address that, is the kids
are easily self-hypnotizable.
In the Western world, most of us lose our ability to
hypnotize ourselves.
But kids are amazing at it.
That's their fantasy play.
They are there.
And so superhero stories, when they imagine them, it is
incredibly vivid as if it's real.
And so when they put on a cape and imagine themselves flying,
they are self-hypnotized.
I mean, they're not going to jump out a window or
anything like that.
Or, unfortunately, occasionally that happens if
there aren't screens on the window.
But it's very vivid and powerful for them in a way
that dream life can be this amazing release and experience
that when they imagine being a superhero, it taps into
something very primal.
Before it was superheroes, it was something else.
But I think that urge is there.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So you talked about the inferences that we
automatically make based on the visual
cues that we observe.
And I understand that as an empirical observation.
You also give the advice that, be careful what you wear.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Yes.
AUDIENCE: I felt like that was a little insufficient if you
don't talk about the conditioning that is done on
society and why those inferences are actually made.
Because there's nothing about looking at a character from
below or looking at a character from above that is
any correlation to good or bad, negative or positive.
So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about
re-conditioning.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Sure.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: So all of us have our own
unique learning history.
Some of it is shared.
If we watch the same films and movies and TVs, or read the
same books, and are exposed to things, then part of our
learning history is shared.
And part of it is unique to our family and our community.
And then our own personal, unique
history that no one shares.
And all of those go into the assumptions and inferences
that you make about people.
So for instance, I have two sons who work at Google.
So I feel like I can say this.
So if you grow up in a family where people
don't iron their shirts.
Your kids will have certain assumptions that are going to
be different about people who wear non-ironed shirts, who
wear rumpled shirts, than someone who grows up in a
family where the underwear was ironed.
And so that will influence what you think when you see
someone in a rumpled shirt.
You can absolutely overwrite what you've
learned with new learning.
And so if instead of working at Google, you now end up
working on Wall Street, and you are told in no uncertain
terms that you need to have a suit and tie every day.
And it needs to be really expensive suit.
And you should definitely have ironed shirts.
You will have new learning.
And you will learn whatever the culture there wants you to
learn about ironed shirts, about what it means.
So humans are great learners, some of the time.
And so in this context, you would learn new things.
If a film came out that shot the superhero the other way
around and the villain from above, and that was the new
point-of-view style, then we would just unlearn that.
This new learning would overwrite the old learning.
Did that answer your question?
AUDIENCE: That wasn't my question.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: No, did that answer your question?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK, not really?
AUDIENCE: So I totally understand the conditioning of
inferences.
But what I was getting at is I think they are very
subjective.
And they sometimes result in undesirable effects against
other people.
So I think there has to be an effort to recondition those
factors that cause the inferences so
that they, I guess--
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Ah, OK.
Right.
So the effort to recondition more accurately.
The problem is it's like the Will Smith dilemma.
We can't do that all the time.
We just can't function in the world and simultaneously be
reconditioning ourselves and checking whether the
assumptions we're making about people, is that true.
We can do it some of the time, when it counts.
When we care, we can do it.
When I'm meeting someone for the first time and I know if
I'm looking, and I say, oh, this person is X, Y, and Z
based on how they look.
I can take the time to get to know that person.
I can make a decision to take the time to get to know the
person to see, are my hypotheses about them correct?
But we can't do that all the time.
It's just a huge amount of effort.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Question about your specific choice of hero
exemplar for lesson two, specifically Batman as an
example of someone who is psychologically well adjusted
to psychological shock.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK.
Let's put down the gauntlets here.
OK, go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I think especially in the post-Alan Moore, post
'80s comic hero era, we have started looking at superheroes
who are simply not
psychologically well put together.
And Batman, the vigilante who has serious issues in current
generation post-rebirth DC comics, why?
There are--
ROBIN ROSENBERG: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: --any number of people who are better put--
even Cyclops as fewer issues than Batman who is
fundamentally a broken person.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK, so I don't agree with you.
I wrote a book called "Whats the Matter with Batman?"
AUDIENCE: I will be buying that.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: I will send you a copy.
Come afterwards.
And I kind of go through the likely diagnoses for him.
And part of where I come out is that everyone has issues.
You cannot live in this world and not have issues.
His issues are obvious, granted.
But I don't think that he's really screwed up.
I think that this is a man who is a serious guy, perhaps by
temperament, we don't know.
I mean, it's hard to say what he was like before.
I mean, I think "Batman Begins" film is really
interesting in how it portrayed
him how he was before.
And that's really an interesting take.
But he's a serious guy.
I don't think being serious means your screwed up.
It just means you're serious.
He has issues with relationships.
Who doesn't?
I mean, put aside the 50% divorce rate, how many
relationships don't work?
I mean most intimate relationships we have in life
don't work out.
I'm not going to say he's screwed up for that reason.
Then all of us would be screwed up.
If you go down the list of the ways--
he's serious, and he's a dedicated guy.
It's like to say that Navy SEALs would be screwed up, or
thoracic surgeons who spend--I don't know--
20 years in training and are on call all the time and often
have difficult marriages and lives because they're on call
all the time and it's incredibly--
you have to have a certain personality to get to be a
thoracic surgeon, to get to the end stage.
It's sort of an occupational hazard.
Being a cop changes people.
Any discipline, any occupation changes
people in certain ways.
So I would take issue with you about that.
And I was intentional.
AUDIENCE: I appreciate that.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK.
But give me your address.
I'll send you a copy of the book.
Any other questions?
No more people want to take on Batman?
I'm ready.
I'm prepared.
Anything else?
Oh, yeah?
AUDIENCE: It's sort of a
follow-up to the last question.
Then where did the dark age come from?
I mean we had in the '30s and the '40s, we had the golden
age, which was these really naive characters, and the '50s
in the '60s.
In the '60s and '70s, they got a little more serious.
And then with "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns," all
of a sudden, they were all, if not broken, then a whole lot
less pure and a whole lot harder to root for.
Some of that, I think, just came from the changes in how
comic books got sold in the 1980s.
But that was a long time ago.
And we had a dark Superman movie this
year, or so I've told.
Where does the attraction with dark superheroes come from?
I mean, light superheros, I understand.
Have we grown up?
ROBIN ROSENBERG: I actually think part of it is that we
have grown up.
So those of us who read comics as kids, or Saturday morning
cartoons, we grew up.
And those simple moral tales that appealed to us as kids do
not appeal to us now.
They were simplistic.
And they are not consistent with our nuanced experience of
the world where morality is often relative and it depends
on context.
And so I think that Alan Moore unleashed the pent-up desire
for more sophisticated stories.
And then I think with that, we started wondering, so what
would it be like to be a superhero?
What would it be like to be Batman?
Or Superman is actually a harder one, but what would it
be to live day in, day out as a superhero?
And we want to see our characters
suffer a little bit.
So if it gets darker, it's because they get real.
AUDIENCE: But why did our generation change?
Because my mom bought "Action" number one and regretted the
rest of her life not keeping it.
So she grew up on the really simplistic superheros.
And then she grew up.
Did she just ignore all the comic book superheroes?
Or did something happen with this generation that wanted
darker superheros that didn't happen with the previous
generation that was happy to have the more pure ones?
ROBIN ROSENBERG: I think two things happened.
One is realism in general.
Psychological realism was just in all other
genres, so why no.
I mean, even in spaghetti
Westerns, it started happening.
Clint Eastwood became a three-dimensional
character in his films.
So I think it was in the zeitgeist at the time.
And I also think that for your mom, maybe you went with your
mom to see the first Chris Reeves' "Superman" film?
Maybe it was a family affair, maybe not.
AUDIENCE: She watched "Star Trek" with me, which fits me a
little bit better.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: OK, she watched "Star Trek."
AUDIENCE: Almost superheroes.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Right.
But I think we also delayed having kids.
And so we were happy to have
adult-oriented superhero stories.
Where when people had kids sooner, it
was a family affair.
Reading comics together, talking about and
watching the TV shows.
And so I think it was a more private experience.
And that's what was offered.
And honestly, I think we just all became more
psychologically sophisticated and wanted our
heroes to be, too.
AUDIENCE: OK, thank you.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: A great question, though.
And any other questions?
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Isn't it the case of the early Batman was a lot
more violent than later?
And it certainly was the case the comics in the early '50s
were a lot more violent than they were
before the comic code.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Yes.
AUDIENCE: And before the "Watchmen," there was Frank
Miller turning daredevil into somebody who drops somebody to
break all the bones in his body.
I mean, it didn't happen immediately.
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Right.
Every decade is a little bit different.
And there's a history, the pendulum swings to and from.
And the original Batman was really dark.
And so many people view the Christopher Nolan films as a
return to his roots.
It was very dark for its time.
So, right, it depends on which era.
Michael Uslan, who was the executive producer of all of
the recent Batman films since 1989 and has thought deeply
about Batman says that-- he extends it beyond Batman--
but whenever you were first exposed to a superhero,
whatever version that was it its moment in time, that's
your template of the real superhero.
And everything else is sort of a deviation from that.
It's like an imprinting.
And I think there is something to that.
Yeah.
Any other questions?
OK.
Thanks.
Great questions.
[APPLAUSE]
ROBIN ROSENBERG: Thank you.