Hello.
Hello.
Thanks for joining.
My nameis Dan Ariely, and I'm the James B.
Duke Professor of Psychology and behavioral economics andwe're here today to Discuss this crazy crisis in from a socialscience perspective and think a little bit about together about the future.
So the plan is to for me to talk for about30 minutes and then to get the question, so please and ask, and hopefully we'll be ableto get to some of those questions and.
Okay, so first of all a little bit about kind ofa Corona crisis through my eyes.
So about a month ago, I was very happily atDuke.
Things were closing down but my research lab, the Center for Advanced Einstein wasgoing strong people working hard.
And then I started getting lots of phone callsat all hours of the night, and mostly from the Israeli Government but little bit from the Britishlive with from the Brazilian and about the current crisis and the talks became a moreand more intensive and then eventually I realized I can't help from Durham to Israel, so I Ishowed up here in Israel.
About a month ago and basically been on thischair for almost a constantly And they're helping different parts of thegovernment.
And I'm telling you this Part, it might be interesting, but partiallybecause it kind of helps, I think, and help explain the role of social science in allof this.
So when they came initially were the challengewas how to give instructions in ways that people could basically adhere to them.
You know, if we say to people, don't leavehome that's not going to be like there's a limit to how much Money you cannot leave home.
And then if youbreak the rule ones are you going to keep on breaking if we say don't leave home unlessit's for the supermarket, maybe we get people walking to the supermarket back and forthall the time.
So, so we started thinking about how to Help people get instructions and it was veryclear that the principles were tell people what not to do.
But there are people alsowants to do.
You can't just leave a gap, a vacuum of what You have to make it look socially acceptableand socially desirable and indeed we got some campaign to get people to to adhere in general.
Things have been successful so far, you know, Israel has about 15, 000 people who are sick and about 1% ofthat but hundred and 70 people who sadly passed away, but but there's been a dramatic.
crunch on that.
And the next challenge wasto think about what to do with the Orthodox community.
And the challenge is finding today.
Was what to do with the Muslim community andthe Orthodox community was because some of the Jewish holiday, the Muslim community wasbecause of Ramadan.
Saturday and and the rules of religion forpeople who believe in God are much above the rules of the state.
How do you, how do youmake it happen.
It turns out the same principles apply tellpeople what not to do give them alternatives, how to pray in a in a different way.
How todo other rituals in way and then make it desirable acceptable.
The thing that everybody does.
Okay, so that was kind of step one.
Not easy, but that was step one, step two, was to try and help the education system, all of a sudden education system have to teachremotely, guess what.
Nobody was a prepared for that.
And we startedstudying what worked better in worse.
So we created a study in which we studied the characteristicof characteristics of each teach And each subject and the particular environmentor teaching from in their home and the material that are using and the students and their Study environment in their parents and othersiblings at home, and we're trying to identify sweet spots.
So you can say You know, from all of these combination ofall of these things happen.
What are the combinations of teacher, teacher characteristics technology.
Subject material students Student, Environmentscertain characteristic characteristics of their home and siblings that make things lookbetter.
And we hope next week to have some conclusion to try and figure out how to advisethe education system to move to move forward.
And then we learned a very, very sadly.
Andthat's true for the whole world and the domestic violence is on the rise.
Some against women, a lot against kids and You know, there's, there's, it's, it's unbelievablypainful to to be part of those discussions and to realize that domestic violence is isincreasing.
And I'm by, by far, no no expert in this, but we've basically started creating two approaches.
One is for adults and the approach for adultis recognizing the pressure that they're getting and the stress and how stress gets out and Get them to try and understand and controltheir own stress and then for kids.
We have a chat bot that checks on them once a weekin all kinds of ways.
And then if we see it.
There's traces of verbal or physical violence we go more deeply.
Into that and there were, of course, lotsof questions about the stimulus package.
You know you can give $1 in different ways, then you might not remember but in 2007 2008 we had to stimulus packages that came fromBush and from Obama And they were very, very different Bush gavepeople a check, and it was a refund check that we got the for taxes and Obama decreasethe taxes, people got so it was a small increment to to the salary.
It turns out, none of thosehad a big impact on the economy.
Bush's approach gave people money back ina way that they thought it was there was any way.
So why spend it right, you could say.
Here's a refund check.
That's a very differentframing than saying, here's a check the government's money go and spend it and they Obama's planhad had a very small amount.
Of change and you didn't really get peopleto to spend more.
But anyway, those are two programs.
Now we're talking about much biggeramounts and, of course, is what, what are some ways.
To take money and get it out in a way thatwould be efficient, of course, the government money is not going to be enough.
So we, we have a big drive now to get peopleto donate more money to charities.
We have a big drive to get people to buy in advance.
From companies.
Imagine that there's a placethat I like coffee.
How about if I would, would spend $500 for the whole year next yearand now prepay for coffee and now that company could get some Money in advance and the liquidity could increase And we're also and tracking a movement inthe country, trying to get an A, an understanding of how many people are moving and not movingstaying at home.
Just going out going to grocery stores andso on.
How many people are violating the rules and we created an index, not just for thewhole country but per city.
And we're trying to get a city mayors to competeon those on those index when we originally came out with that index i get lots of callsfrom lots of angry mayors and they thought that I'm doing something, you know, againstthem personally and It was it was tough to explain to them.
That'sjust the data.
Let's focus on what we could do to help not not NY your last place.
And end in we're now trying to come up witha very complex index.
About the cost of the actions to slow downCorona, right.
So, of course, it started by being about saving lives and not reachingthe capacity of the healthcare system.
But to other costs, their costs for peoplestaying at home and their cost of people not doing preventative care you know the numberof colonoscopies and mammograms has has gone down, it does costof the fact that people are not afraid of going to hospitals.
So, even people with cancertreatment sometimes don't go.
We had a few cases of people that had heart conditions that out of fear stayed athome and then sadly passed away.
How do you take that into account in the calculus and.
And of course, there's the question of economic growth and it costs in general and So anyway, those are the kind of things thatthat we're dealing with.
Oh, of course, there's a question of how do we get out.
Right.
Whatare the steps to go out again.
What are the instruction that we can give people that theywould adhere to.
And if we say be home with very limited amountthat's relatively easy simple instructions to follow, relatively speaking.
But if we say, You're free to go.
Just pleasekeep social distances and on go to too many places now the the opportunities for messingup is going to be Is going to be very, very high.
And so thoseare some of the projects that we're trying to deal with and You know it's it's it's very clear how neededsocial sciences.
It's true that you know this is mostly about, you know, biology, and we'retrying to understand the virus and what are its characteristics and how do we create avaccination medication.
What's the role of antibodies.
Lots of modelsof epidemiology, but at the end of the day.
We have people and people have to change behaviorand we have to take into account in the models that we do, how do we get people to actuallychange behavior.
And anyway, so that's that's my life.
Maybe I'll say one more thing, and You know, my, my, my regular research Ducatiat the Center for Advanced hindsight, we mostly study financial decision making and health.
And we study financial decision making offthe median and lower how to get people to better use food stamps and pay back loansand not to spend too much and create emergency savings.
And health.
How do we get people to exercise, take the medication.
Sleep better And in generally kind of in a regular monthI go through ups and downs, I feel that we're making some progress.
And then I feel that bureaucracies against us and I feel that andyou know there are too many people who are kind of just needed a new not able to helpeverybody.
And then I feel yes we are making progress, and there's like a cycle of helpfulness and feeling of success and lessand and it goes on and and now in Quran a time.
It's basically the same thing.
It'sonly happens, you know, three times a day, and We're feeling making some strides.
Thingsare going back just to the magnitude of the of the problem is is tremendous and the The barriers that are standing in our wayare amazing.
This is going to be a very, very tough very, very tough period and to see peoplewho are in already and losing their home and losing their businesses and to get peoplewho are so lonely.
Just incredible In Israel, we had a memorial day and let'ssorry, we'll have him Morial day we had the moral day for the Holocaust.
Victims and a few days ago and will have themoral day for all the soldiers who died in the country and on Tuesday, and they're notgoing to allow family members to go to the graves of their loved ones.
What a terrible Challenge one, one of many right so many ofthem okay so complex, difficult Very good for social scientists in some, insome ways, my My first book predictably irrational cameout in the beginning of 2008 exactly when the financial crisis was hitting and it wasa real I didn't time it, of course, but it was a really good time.
For a book about irrationality.
And I said, hey, people are rational and here the financial crisis came to to pick it up.
I don't thinkI needed the Quran, the virus to Gather more evidence that people are irrational, but you certainly see see a lot.
Okay, so And I want, I want to share Some, some more.
Thoughts thoughts with you.
And There's one more project.
I didn't tell youabout You know, for a long time.
We have been tryingto study work from home.
If people work from home, they don't need to drive it could savethem time.
This could save Resource for the environment, reduce trafficjams all kinds of good things.
But guess what we had a really hard time Getting people to do this experiment withus, we would go to an employer and say, Hey, let's do a study of getting people to workfrom home for a month.
And people said, You must be kidding me.
No way that I can do that.
Well, guess what.
We got that experiment.
It's not the perfectexperiment and people now working with kids at home, and so on.
But still we got peoplethat we never thought would work from home to work from home, and it's a good opportunityto To study this.
So if you have some time, pleasetake the study.
It's a little long but I think you'll learn a lot from it and we will learn A lot from it.
I think will will really youthe link after we're finished today and and if you can share it around, because we'retrying to get a very large sample to understand this issue.
Okay, so, and let me say, kindof a few general things about how I think we We got here and some things to think about.
So why did it take us a while to to act.
And there are many reasons for that.
One ofthem is that viruses are invisible enemy.
We don't see it.
And we used to thinking aboutviruses and not being that afraid.
Right.
We all have experience of Having viruses before and the moment.
Somethingis called the virus, we put in the category of other viruses and we say, hey, we've hadthis before we don't see it.
Will not that that the phrase, if it had adifferent name right.
Just imagine it was not called the virus, if it had a differentname, maybe we would have been a bit more worried, but the moment it was called thevirus.
We have a mental model of what viruses areand and having a high mortality rate from a virus is not part of our mental model.
There's also the issue of small probabilityevents.
Think back to the time when you were stilldriving and think about something like texting and driving Imagine that you think that the probabilityof texting and driving and something bad happened is about 1% and one day you take a risk andyou text while driving and nothing bad happened it's only 1% But at the end of these texting and driving, do you say to yourself, all it was 1% chance it's still 1% know You basically say, oh, I have experiencedthis as being less dangerous I've experienced this is nothing but it happened.
And now youupdate Your probability and maybe you think it'sall point nine.
So basically when things are heading low probability events every timewe experience something and we don't learn a negative lesson we don't get hit by anothercar we get the wrong impression that you'd say, for then we thought In the beginning, and of course with viruses.
I was in New York City, when in the various happened.
I must have met people who are sick.
I don'tthink I got I got sick.
We we experience things in a way that that make it harder for us toto learn about things being risky when it's a small probability event.
And then of course it also takes a while.
Right.
So you could get sick.
Nothing happened.
And nothing happened for a while and thereforewe we misbehave.
So that's kind of them.
We can talk more about that, but that's kindof topic.
Number one about why is it difficult to react very urgently to things like a virus.
And the second thing is about the political perspective and here too.
I have a long listof of Factors that I think are are contributing But am Let me, let me kind of Focus on a couple of them.
In the coronavirus we have fight for the inthe coronavirus we've all been recruited and we are spending a tremendous amount of timeand effort to save lives.
And in one way to ask is, Is this consistentwith what we have been doing all the time.
So, for example, the, the best estimates wehave is that to save a life of a child from malaria.
It costs about $3, 400 have we beeninterested in doing that.
I know there are lots of kids who are dyingfrom malaria and there's lots of ways to save life by fighting infections in hospitals, for example, or reducing obesity or reducing blood pressure problems, there's lots of thingsthat we do.
And if I all of a sudden gave you A trillion Dollars and I say, go ahead and improve healthcare, you would find lots of ways to increase and health span, you would get people to livemuch longer in all kinds of ways.
But, but if you think about our history.
Wedidn't seem to care that much.
In fact, all the people in society said very, very sadto say so.
But People did not rush to save them within seelots of out for attention and wanting to spend more money and so on.
Clearly the Quran time is something very different.
If you just looked at the Quran, a time when you were an economist.
And you would say Let me figure out how much people care aboutthe lives of people who are in high risk and a relatively old age, you would say, oh mygoodness, people are just care a lot about that if you look at the year ago and you say, how much do people care, you would say not that much.
So what has happened here.
Why, why is itthat we show so much care now and did not so much care before I think it's about thenature of Khurana In psychology.
There's something called theidentifiable victim effect.
And if you remember there was a baby, Jessica.
Some of you mightremember her baby Jessica fell too well.
She was stuck there for a while.
It was very sad.
Eventually they released her the person whoreleased her gut his picture.
He was a fireman on on the cover of Time Magazine.
It was coveredin all the TV stations, baby.
Jessica, she must be inher early 20s.
These days, he got lots of donation, but she also got more till TV coveragein Rwanda and therefore put together.
So there was something about baby Jessicato get us to care and give her money by the way they gave her money after she was outalready, which is nice thing to do, but it didn't solve the problem.
On the other hand, there are lots of tragediesthat we don't seem to care about and in the analysis of the baby Jessica effect was theidentifiable victim effect you identify one person your hearts go to them and you wantand you want to save them.
Or think about another example.
Imagine thatyou walk over a bridge, you walk over a bridge you're on your way to a job interview.
And you have a new suit and new tie in newsocks and underwear and new shoes and everything is doing, you're going for your dream Interview.
Interview for your dream job.
Absolutely amazing job and you walk over thisbridge and all of a sudden you hear a cry and you look over the side of the bridge and You see a baby about to to draw And you know that if you'll jump and savethe baby, you'll not get your, your job.
Now the rational economists would say go and getyour job.
And promise to donate 10% of your income tosave babies with 10% of your income, you'll save much more than saving one baby, you'llget your dream job.
And you'll save lots of babies, that's a better outcome.
But of course, None of us can can think this way.
Right, it's it's science sounds cruel in.
You mean this this is called rational perspective.
But, but it does show that sometimes our actionsare designed to satisfy our emotion and not to make The optimal global solution, because of coursebabies die all the time and for very small effort we can usually save a life or improvelife.
And we usually don't do it.
So, something happened with the corona.
Itwas the idea that the whole world was surrounded by it was in the news.
We were interestedin this, we had the image of people dying without ventilators, and that they're very, very toughimage.
So, all kinds of things happen.
And as a consequence, we are pulling an amazingamount of resource into this, into this issue, not necessarily In the most rational way.
And I also added some other factors here, but the last one is this consistency by this Inconsistency bias is our desire to do repeatour actions.
We basically don't like to admit when we'rewrong.
And it means that once we get the particularaction going we're liking to keep on with the same the same action.
Mentioned opportunity cost.
I want to showyou two quotes from opportunity costs.
The first one says my budget includes the largestincrease in defense spending in two decades.
Because, because while the price of freedomand security is high, it is never too high.
Whatever it costs to defend our to defendour country.
We will pay.
That's, that's one approach.
The second approach and I'm trying to my screenis off the screen.
The second approach says the world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its labor, thegenius of its scientist, the hopes of children, the cost of one modern heavy bomber is this And modern brick schools in more than 30 cities, it is to electric power plants it serving a town of 60, 000 We pay for a single fighter with a half amillion bushel of wheat, we pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housemore than 1000 people This is not a way of life at all.
It is humanityhanging from across fine.
Now you might say maybe the person that gave the quote on theleft, understand the military.
Maybe the person who understand the one onthe right.
It doesn't understand anything about the military.
But the reality is thatthe person that gave us a quote on the left.
Is George Bush who took lots of pictures inthe military and the one on the right was a Eisenhower, who was certainly Very knowledgeable about today, the military, but but the point is that when we do make when we do make decisions.
They have opportunitycosts.
And one of the things we haven't really considered very carefully and is is the opportunitycost of the actions that were taking Opportunity.
Yes, I'm just going to jump inand ask you if you can advance your slides, we're only seeing still the first title slide.
Really.
Yep.
Sorry, I see the new ones.
Um, can you try on sharing and then re sharingyour screen.
Okay, stop share And then let's be sure you miss such goodslides.
And let, let me see.
So maybe, maybe I'llshow the whole the whole slide you see it now.
Yes, thank you.
And in one in now.
Yes.
Okay.
So, you missed a lot of things.
So it will send you the slides later but but we had topics that we covered and this isthe Okay.
There's one more topic I want to cover, whichis something called learned helplessness and maybe I'll stop sharing for a second and getbigger on your screen.
And there's no question that there's a lotof anxiety around these days.
And there was a very famous and disturbing study about learnedhelplessness in it study There were two dogs dog in one in room onenumber one got light and a few seconds later electrical shock light electrical shock lightelectrical shock and random times the light would come and then in a fixed time afterthat the electrical shock.
The second dog just got the electrical shockthe same time his dog.
Number one, just got the electrical shocks, but there was no warning.
Now, think about the difference between thosetwo cases one has a predictable amount of pain when it's coming in.
One has unpredictableamount of pain, what, what's happened And then they moved both of those dogs intoa new environment.
One of the time it was a room with the partition and from time totime, a bell camp.
And if the dog stays in their side of thepartition.
They got electrical shock and if they jumped over the partition they escaped.
The first dog.
The dog that had the predictablelife walked around got some electrical shocks explore their environment and figure out atsome point that if jumping would Get them over the electrical shock WOULD ELIMINATETHE SECOND DOG basically was just whimpering the second dog just later on the floor.
Secondhave just lost all hope that they can do something inthe world.
And that's, that's the term learned helplessness and.
And the idea is that wehave a tremendous amount of resilience But to have that amount of resilience.
Wehave to understand when things are coming.
We have to get instructions are clear.
We have to have a vision for the future.
Wecan stand the electrical shock if we know when and why and so on.
And part of the challengeof these period is that things are so unclear right so unclear what instructions are coming, where they're coming from.
You know, if you think about what what theleadership is saying it's very hard to be it to be consistent and understand understandthis.
Okay, and And now I want to move to The next topic and I want to talk a littlebit about I'm hoping you can see my screen.
Yes.
Okay.
So I want us to think a little bit about whatthings are going to stay and what things will will not So, so imagine.
Imagine the following case.
Imagine there's a range of behaviors and it includes everything all the things that wedo.
And we had all kinds of behaviors in beforeCorona time and we had going out to eat and coffee and going for vacation and we had goingto work and kids going to school.
We had a large range of behaviors.
And then during current time we had some ofthose behaviors.
Right.
Some of the before Corona behavior state and some new ones came, for example, staying late and watching Netflix.
And that's and that's this period now.
Andthen there's going to be kind of in my mind to two important period.
The first one I call the day after in bracketsbecause this is not really the day after its during Khurana times as we start to understandrelax live with Corona for a while and we don't know how long it will be.
But let'ssay it's a it's a year.
And then, and then we have the time.
Afterthat, which I called the real day after, and I separate into two three components y x andz.
And the question is, what kind of behaviors, will we will we have so so here's kind ofthe idea, the idea is that During quarantine or heavy, heavy restrictions.
This is a now.
The day after his restrictions are going tobe slowly lifted and we're going to to change in all kinds of ways.
And then at some point.
They'll tell us that we don't need to worry anymore and then there'll be kind of threetypes of behaviors.
There'll be behaviors like why the top The top one, which will basically the habitswill go back to normal.
They would increase and change.
And I think TV watching will belike that.
Maybe we'll even watch more TV than we did before corona.
And there'll be some things that will staythe same.
They will not change when the corona.
Threat would go away and you'll be some thingsthat will disappear.
And I kind of gave a scale here from TV watchingto Disneyland.
I'm not Hoping that this would go away.
But if youthink about discipline is a category.
It's an activity that relies on lots of peopleto come together in small proximity and the longer The longer Khurana crisis is with us, theless and less likely that that would be.
And I don't know about you, but When I when I watch a movie or something andI see two strangers hard kind of my first reaction is, Oh, be careful.
It's almost likea horror movie to see his this thing happening.
I think it'll take a long time to do So, so we will have these three period.
NowI wrote here on the bottom is is does it have to have to be this way.
And I think the answeris no.
And there are things we can do to shape habits.
So, you know, if we take Khurana days and the day after without any effort.
I thinkwill certainly get more TV after that will get Less Reading books, it will get more looking atthe news, very quickly, many times a day.
There'll be all kinds of things will get willget less And less sleep less exercise all kinds ofthings like that but but I don't think it has to be this way.
I think we can try tocreate A better habits and and that's, that's oneof the hopes of the Quran, a time because we have time now we have some some amountof time unknown exactly how much to either get sucked into bad habits or Get into into better habits.
So, for example, for our education system here we're recommending that kids and each day by reading a book inbed.
Right, that's, that's a good habit to getto get going.
On the other hand, if you didn't do that.
And it would be Tick tock.
That wouldfill the time there's a good chance it would keep on going after that we try to get allkids to Write something in the diary.
Every morning, because if they do that, there'sa good chance that this habit will stay.
And if they don't, this it will likely go away.
And and these habits are for all of us.
Right.
I'm sure we all have list of things, who would like to change in our lives.
And sleep meditation eating exercise spendingtime with loved ones, all kinds of things like that.
And we can we can actually thinkabout how do we deal with this in period one and then pure too so that we have good habitsin periods in period three.
Okay.
I'm going to skip the issue about employeemotivation goodwill and loyalty and maybe we'll do it in another time and two last points.
You know, we have been designing systems basicallyfor resilience.
Oops, I need to figure out how to how to do this.
Okay.
We have basically been designing a systemfor for for efficiency right with design system for efficiency, I'm An ideal airline is an airline with the planesland get refueled people get out food is being put in any takes up again and I did hospitalis one that has zero extra capacity all the beds are being used in a deal business isa business where the Raw material comes in gets used and get shippedout all in real time basically cut the fat out That's the opposite.
Of resilience, right, because if you havea system that is perfectly tuned, it's perfect when everything is perfect.
But when something is go goes wrong, thenthe system can get into real trouble.
So we've been really good at building system for efficiencyand almost no system for resilience and the current crisis.
I think should let us rethinkabout it.
By the way, the only system that we have thatis not truly built for efficiency.
Is the military, right, the military.
Youdon't say show me your exact needs right now.
Now, the military is all about planning forall kinds of scenarios and being ready for all kinds of things you don't say let's makeit efficient, you say, let's be prepared for a large range of things.
And then, and then the very last thing I wantto say is that It for me that the maybe the most bright sideof this crisis is that there's never been a time in modern history when it is so clearthat our future is both fragile and that we're so connected, you know, different countries, right, we can think of self is not being aligned Khurana came and said, No, you're all in thesame in the same boat right if the Chinese have a bad relationship with the Americans, the next In fact, the next virus.
If it comes fromChina.
Again, they will not report it in the same we're all in it together.
And not only are we all in it together fromfrom different countries, we're all in it together within a country.
Imagine the situation in which 10% of the people don't pay taxes, we havethe US 10% of the people don't pay taxes we have 10% less taxes.
That's, that's it.
Right.
It's a linear every person who doesn't pay taxes.
We have less less taxes.
What about the world in which 10% of the peopledon't adhere to the rules of social distancing if you feeling sick isolate yourself and soon.
Their effect is not 10% they can destroy everythingfor everybody.
Right.
You can have.
And we've seen that right we've seen super spreaderswe've seen super spread took the Corona from Italy to Argentina, and we'veseen super spreaders in all kinds of places.
You don't need a lot of them.
You can youneed a few people who just seems to be walking A lot and don't care.
And we've also seenpeople with low income who don't feel they have a choice.
So even though they have symptomsthey Go to work and in and meet people.
So, sofor me it's a important proof of how connected we are right.
If we don't take care of everybody, we're all going to pay a price for that and maybe it's a good lesson for how we continueto run Our lives.
So with this, I will stop.
I willstop here and I will take questions, comments, concerns.
Okay, so, so one question that I have herefrom poll Is a does shared adversity tend to make uskinder or more selfish.
Very, very good question.
So we sadly.
A don't work out very well whenwe are afraid right when we're afraid.
Our first instinct is survival.
It's not caringabout others.
So show the diversity is very good.
If we're not individually stressed, so If you look at how we're functioning as auniversity right you know we are, I mean it's amazing, it's just Just beautiful the camaraderie, the caring, the way people participate that people volunteer.
I mean, it's just, it's just an amazing thingnow.
Is it is it difficult time absolute difficulttime a people's research will stop the education was stopped lots of things were stopped, butnobody feels individually threat right nobody feels that They will not have food on the table and Next week so so in conditions of adversitywithout threat adversity is incredibly helpful.
But, but take other cases into account.
Ifyou've seen, you know, we see it from from tracking people here in Israel.
But you see, it also from the Google Trends.
In the US, and adherence to the corona rulesare very much based on a level of income and social economic status.
Very, very tough forsome people.
So if you're not sure, or you saw the peoplewho are delivering food and things from Amazon about a how unhappy.
They are they are notfeeling camaraderie, they are feeling extra stressed and and this is not the right casefor camaraderie.
This is, by the way, another another reasonto be more clear about the stimulus package.
Right.
So if you have people who are dramaticallystressed.
That's not the time to To create a camaraderie.
So, and I mentionedkind of learned helplessness, but communicating, you know, the government is here will supporteach other.
How will this work is is incredibly, incredibly important.
I don't know.
I don't know if you saw a wholeNew Zealand and they'll be the coronavirus but but their prime minister is is amazing, right.
She stands you communicate.
You tell them where they're going, lays out the plan.
Promises people that if they can't pay rent.
They'll help them.
I mean, very much eliminating this survival needs and laying off the plan.
So no survival need and a plan for action.
Which is which is incredibly important tofeel that you have some some agency.
Okay.
Okay, next question.
If, if I were hired torun a campaign to encourage American to donate a stimulus relief check to charity.
How wouldyou design it.
Okay, so first of all, we, we are doing something like that.
But I'll tell you how how I would do it.
Andthe first thing that that I would do is I would get people to reflect on how lucky theyare Right, because to basically be willing totake something from us and give it to somebody else we need to reflect on that.
So I would Ask people on the scale to say how how luckyyou are.
And the reason we do that is that answering questions is often the best wayto get people to reflect on something.
So if I come to you.
This was Carol, if Ican say Carol.
You're really lucky.
It's not the same.
If I say Carol.
How lucky are you On the range of all the people in the worldwho suffered the corona.
That would be more impactful.
So I would get that And then I would ask you to estimate the devastationof the Quran, I would say, how many people do you think are going to lose their job.
And how many people are going to lose their homes and I will ask you two or three questionsto to understand the magnitude Of devastation.
And then I would ask you to pre commit I would not wait until you receive the check.
Because if you receive the check and you deposited.
It's going to be Harder.
But if you commit beforehand thatthat will be easier.
By the way, we also see that, for example, we've been doing campaigns, trying to get Americans to pre commit to save Their tax rebate.
And if you get people to do it early on andpromise they save much more than if you wait until they get their, their tax rebate him.
A check.
And then the other thing is I wouldmake it a socially desirable and normative and I don't mean normative in economic sense.
I mean, that's the norm.
That's what people should should do so.
For example, in Israel when we've been tryingto get people to donate the stimulus check We got lots of opinion leaders to basicallylead with that right and and they do it in a way that doesn't say everybody should doit because not everybody should do it, but they say if you have it.
You know, we need, we need to help each otherand it comes from all kinds of people who are opinion, opinion leaders.
Okay.
Next question, and fear plays a big factorin getting people to follow the rules, but then the opposite force is the need to socializeand earning a mental, physical fitness.
How long can you drive the behavior.
So, Fear is a tough emotions in general, get invokedin us and then they dissipate.
Even the good ones right emotions don't lastvery, very long in the case of fear.
I think all kinds of governments are trying to usefear to get people to adhere to some rules.
But then fear doesn't work for very long.
And ironically, if the field worked and peoplestayed more in social distance.
Then they look around them and they say it wasn't thatbad.
Why did they frighten me so much.
Right.
And in fear.
A is not a sustainablelong term behavior and be it's not A recipe for adherence in what I call theday after case.
So fear is very good to stay at home.
Don't do anything, stay at home, stay at home, stay at home.
Funeral is very good for that if you startto tell people, you know, go to work and come back the go to the supermarket but try towear a mask and Don't try and do too much gathering.
That'snot fear right that's it that's fear is more a approach avoidance doing don't do And what we need is to move quite quicklyto something more more nuanced than that.
And because we use fear.
It's a little harderto move to To something else and and I see here, rightthere, people are used to seeing the numbers.
Here's the number of the dead.
And here'sthe number of the people who are seeking Those two numbers can best stay flat.
Theycan never get better.
Right, it's cumulative numbers, these arenumbers are designed to create fear if you wanted to create fear show the cumulativenumber of people who have been dying.
If you did not want to show fear you wouldshow the number of people who are dying from Khurana compared to the people who die ina general In an average a week, right, that would thatwould be very different.
And you would show that to people who've been tested positive compared to the number ofpeople you've tested.
I mean, there's lots of things to to show what you would show whathappened the last week, not cumulative the whole time.
But, but, yes, we're, we're getting peopleused, I think, to too much fear and that will make the transition to Living with Corona tougher and I mostly worriedabout the people that Feel that there are high risk populationswe pumped into them.
The fear we pop the few to also society and how are they going toleave the home right how, what, what's the next step in, could they, could they psychologicallyand leave home after being so so afraid.
So I do worry about it.
Okay, the next question.
Referral from Chile.
A despite globalization, a While why we couldn't organized a coordinatedresponse and why is it so irrational.
The first step it taken to stop the virus gettingout of China.
Yeah, so, so First of all, you know, our research centeris called the Center for Advanced hindsight, because we want to remind ourselves that In hindsight, everything is simpler than, than in foresight.
You know, you could have said let's let'srealize that one day we'll have another virus and let's prepare for that.
But there's lotsof things to prepare for We need to prepare for a terror attacks, weneed to prepare for cyber attacks.
I mean, there's lots of things to prepare for andand I understand that that we can be prepared for everything and You know, maybe we should have prepared forit.
But, but we can't say we should have prepared for this because there's a lot of things thatwe That we need to prepare for.
I'm not surethat's the highest likelihood to have happen but but the question of why couldn't we worktogether.
It's because we just don't You know, I tried from time to time to spendtime in the UN and help them on the behavioral team and sometimes I meet the delegates andwe just don't we just don't work together.
It's, it's, it's heartbreaking.
But, but we compete.
And we don't work together and we often workagainst Each other.
And You know, science is the only thing that'ssort of a collective collaborative right I have colleagues that I work on projects fromall over the world.
But even for science right funding from theUS goes to US scientists and from Europe to European scientists.
It's not truly It's more collaborative than anything else, but it's not a truly collaborative and by the way, I think it's a beautiful hour forscience right you see universities and pharma companies and people are working andmaking amazing, amazing progress working very hard.
So, so I think it's a science.
Most beautiful hour hopefully they'll comeup with something right it's it's a it's it's a gamble.
But hopefully it would it wouldwork out and but but for me, one of the one of the issues is that we, we do have to worktogether in a much, much deeper way.
So, And and there are conditions to work together.
And one of the conditions is trust.
And we don't have that much trust right if you askyourself, You know, you're from, you're from Chile, you know, ask yourself how much people in Peru are trusting the people from Chile, youknow, not so much.
Right.
You can't.
You can't go and do all kinds of things in in one country, in this particular case, I think they're really angry.
That that you call their national drink yoursright, I forgot the name of that.
Drink and Pisco Sour Pisco Sour.
No, no, Iforgot.
Anyway, but But, but, you know, you, there's a lot ofeconomic Challenges and that creates a level of distrustthat then make it harder to to collaborate.
So I think that's why, you know, even thoughthe UN is not the most functional organization and the World Health Organization might not be getting enough fundingand support and collaboration.
I think those things are are crucially important.
Okay, so I'm hoping but but on the backgroundof competition, it's very hard to create this collaboration.
And Okay.
And another question from Steve is, I said, you mentioned, I mentioned that super spreaders could potentially set us back butyour example left the as symptomatic carriers, how can we educate people to be careful, evenif they aren't feeling well.
Yeah, so I meant to include The symptomatic.
And that's really tough.
So imagine, for example, a person Who cross paths with somebody with corona.
So now I hear that I cross paths with somebody with corona, the day before.
I have no symptoms.
But I really have to go to work.
It will I even go to be tested.
Maybe I don'twant to be tested, because I don't want to know.
You know, Can we can we, and then if I'm testedand it's up to me to report, maybe I wouldn't report.
So you're absolutely right, there'sthe question of what do we do with people who just can't afford The two weeks in isolation.
Right.
And ifyou can't afford the two weeks in isolation, maybe you wouldn't be tested.
Maybe you wouldbe tested.
You wouldn't tell anybody.
And this is a again a public goods question.
So imagine that we took people that were tested positive and we say, you know what, if youneed to go to isolation for two weeks.
It's important for us.
You might never, youmight not be able to afford it.
But for us it's important.
So we'll pay you to stay athome.
Just imagine that was the case.
Otherwise, how are we expecting people tostay at home.
Can you imagine a person who's the sole breadwinner in the family.
If theydon't show up to work, they work on an hourly wages.
In all of a sudden you say if you don't work.
Please don't work, but we're not going to pay you and your family will start not goingto work out.
So, so it's a further I think an example ofwe're all in this together and people who can't obey the rules.
It's not because they'renecessarily bad people also some bad people, but We need to figure out if they can't obey therules because they don't have the tools.
It's important for us that they obey rural let'slet's help them do that.
Okay, I'll take last question.
From geeky done a.
Do you think that our generaltrust in stranger is going to be compromised by this pandemic.
A.
Do you think Do you think if that were to happen, it wouldbe cause for horizon individual and national security.
Okay.
So, so I think, you know, we will have betterhygiene right if if for the next three months we'll all wash your hands better somethingfrom that will stay for a long time.
Right.
We'll get we'll get used to it.
I don't knowabout you, but I learned all kinds of things about salmon and all kinds of things abouthow to wash my hands and I wash my hands.
Or frequently and better, and it's a habit.
I don't think about it anymore.
It just now happens more frequently in in better and Now, no gig.
His question is, would be, wouldwe be afraid of everybody would we be more afraid of strangers.
And I think we would be more afraid of strangersand everybody is a potential carrier, but the people that we are familiar with.
We'regoing to have experience with So imagine that I meet you every day and nothinghappened for three months.
I basically get trust in you because.
I know you and I've seen you in my experiencesystem tells me you Sigi you shake your hand, you got close to her you in the same elevator, nothing, nothing happened.
But people who are outside of our group, we don't have thatexperience as much.
So I think that our anxiety.
Like you know the day that will go back tothe office, the Duke Is a day in which out see more of the peopleI interact with on a daily basis.
And after a while, we all realize that nothing bad ishappening.
And even if we keep social distance.
I don't need to worry that much.
Nothing ishappening.
If somebody new is coming.
It's not that we'regoing to say, oh, this is a bad person, but we don't have the same experience with them.
So we'll be at the higher level of alertness for that.
And because we don't seestrangers that often, if we saw them often they wouldn't be strangers.
I think therewill be a bit more stranger anxiety.
And would we then creates More separation in society and i don't knowi don't know but it's it's worse than I thought.
And I think you can imagine that happeningwhere you can also imagine Things about other countries being afraidof viruses that come with other countries, they will see what rules and would happen.
So that's a that's going to be a complex Okay, so, so, our time is up.
I don't wantto finish with this question because it was so depressing.
Thank you for it but but depressing.
So, and I want to leave us maybe with a with a with a thought about Where do we stand here.
And so we have lots of uncertainty.
Right.
Think about kind of all the people in the world from them.
We have people who are sickfrom them.
We have people who are sick and know that they're safe from then we have peoplewho are very sick from them.
We have people who sadly passed away.
But, but the amount of unknown is tremendous.
We don't yet know Immunization and A cure.
We don't know about herd immunity, we don't know about the antibody antibodies.
There's just so much we don't know, and we'llfind out.
And I think the next month.
It will be incredibly important to find out lots oflots of things.
But this uncertainty, both the health concernthe economic uncertainty is very, very hard to deal with.
What, what can we do The things we can do our things about ourlife and take some control.
So one thing that helps with control, but please don't do itis shopping therapy.
We do shopping therapy, we feel we're making a change in the world.
This coat was here.
Now it's mine.
This bikewas here.
Now it's mine.
We make an effort.
So that's a way to show control but not advisableone.
There are other ways to show control.
start meditating exercising eating betteropen Rate rainy day saving account start puttingmoney into other things have a long term plan for something fun to do.
After the corona time try and take controlinstead of we're all victims of this global thing but but to be healthy mentally healthy, we need to take control.
Even on small things.
And with that, I willbe due for well and I'll say thank you very much for your time and hopefully we'll meetagain in not too long.
Bye for now.
.
