Of Marshmallows and Life - two TED U talks

Joachim de Posada broke TED rules by getting into book-promotion mode. However, his talk was rather interesting, discussing the 'marshmallow experiment'. In the 60's, some experimenters at Stanford did a landmark study offering some four-year-olds a marshmallow. They were told they could eat the marshmallow now; alternatively, if they could wait until the experimenter returned from an errand, some 15 or 20 minutes later, they could have two marshmallows.

Approximately one third of the kids were able to delay gratification and wait for the second marshmallow. Looking at these same kids years later, their SAT scores were over 200 points higher, and they were more adjusted, happier and more successful in every way. It's been concluded that this ability to delay gratification might just be the most significant predictor of life success. de Posada has written several books about the topic. He entertained us with the antics of the kids' behaviour as they touched, smelled, licked, or pushed away the marshmallows as they tried to resist.

Philip Zimbardo elaborated on this idea. He classified people into three types: those who live in the present (who ate the marshmallow immediately), those who live in the future (those who waited long enough to get the second marshmall0w) and those who live in the past. He said that, although future orientation could lead to considerable 'success', one needed to balance this with a present focus in order to attain happiness. He considers our weakness in management of time in general and our time focus as illustrating The Time Paradox in our lives.

Will Evil Prevail?

Philip Zimbardo, social psychologist, is the author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How GOod People Turn Evil.

He started by describing the famous (infamous) experiment where volunteers were recruited, ostensibly to help other volunteers to learn by applying electrical shocks. The experiment starts with them applying 15V, which is clearly not painful to the shockees. As the experiment progresses, at the encouragement of the experimenters who say that the learners are clearly not getting enough yet to cause the desired improvement in learning, the shockers apply larger and larger shocks, even to levels where the voltage levels on the equipment are clearly marked as dangerous and the shockers can see the obvious pain of the learners. In this experiment, fully 2/3 of the shockers went up to 450V(!), the limit on the dial clearly marked as a red zone, which caused the learners to writhe in pain. Zimbardo’s lesson – all evil starts with 15V.

Zimbardo himself conducted a prisoner experiment where two sets of college students were recruited to play prisoners and guards. Over the course of a few days, the brutality of the guards deteriorated so badly that a student not part of the experiment with the objectivity to see it from the outside, came to him and protested that the experiment should be terminated. Without someone with the courage to take him on and jolt him out of his complacency, the experiment could well have continued, although some students had already suffered psychological damage. (As an aside he pointed out that this courageous woman had become his wife). He felt the dehumanization of the uniforms (both prisoners and guards were in uniforms that overrode their individuality) was a factor in the emergence of such evil behaviour by the 'guards'.

That and other experiments are the basis of his theory that most ordinary people can succumb to evil under the right circumstances.

As part of his study of evil, he had become an expert witness in the trial of one of the accused from the Abu Ghraib prison, and showed us a series of photos of the misdeeds in the prison. While we’ve all seen a photo in a newspaper, it was truly a different level of experience to see a series. He told of the American soldier who had first reported the Abu Ghraib who had paid for his courage by attacks on him and his family. In fact, his family had to go into hiding.

After all his study, he has categorized people into 3 categories:
1 People who are evil – the bad apples
2. People who can become evil in certain circumstances – the bad barrel
3. Systems that create circumstances where people can become evil – bad barrelmakers

He categorizes Abu Ghraib in Category 3, because of the orders that a bunch of relatively untrained National Guards were given to go to all lengths to extract information.

He ended on a more positive note. He noted the courage of his wife and the American soldier and stated that ordinary people are responsible for most heroic acts. We need to stop the adulation of the very special people who could be ‘expected’ to be heroic and to cultivate admiration of the ‘ordinary heroes’, and in fact to train young people to be ready to step up when their moment for heroism appears. In a post-conference note, he marvelled at the response he had received at TED, with many people approaching him to understand how they could help with this Hero Project. As corny as it sounds, TED really helps so many people make connections that might just possibly contribute to a better world.

Will Evil Prevail?

Exploring this big question was a rare descent into pessimism for TED, but offered some interesting fare, and ended with calls for heroism, so it was true TED fare.

Irwin Redlener, a public health doctor, addressed the question of nuclear threat. He described the nuclear threat from 49-19 as being threat of nation-nation nuclear threat, mostly mitigated by the principle of mutually assured destruction. During this period, there was virtually nothing you could do cope with possible nuclear events (despite the futile duck-and-cover campaigns) because a first strike would inevitably be followed by nuclear bombs raining on all participants – and thus resistance was futile.
His message was that the nuclear threat of today came from possible terrorist use of the stockpiles (left after disarmament), many of which are extremely insecure. Between 95 and 2006, there were 175 cases of nuclear theft. But there is something that can be done to prepare for such localized terrorist nuclear threats. The old advice to get protected from the immediate blast makes sense when it’s likely to a single blast. Moreover, with proper preparation for evacuation a huge proportion of people in the fallout zone could actually escape it. However, no American cities have such a plan.

Philip Zimbardo, social psychologist, is most famous for a prisoner experiment that degenerated so brutally over a few days that it had to be stopped – the woman who was to become Zimbardo’s wife, who was not part of the experiment, protested in order for it to be stopped. That and other experiments are the basis of his theory that ordinary people can succumb to evil under the right circumstances. In fact, he categorized people into 3 categories:
People who are evil – the bad apples
People who can become evil in certain circumstances – the bad barrel
Systems that create circumstances where people can become evil – bad barrelmakers

In narrating the horror of a series of Abu Ghraib photos what he gained access to through being an expert witness in the trial, he professed that it was a case of bad barrelmakers.
It takes courage to diverge from the norm, as was the case for the American who reported Abu Ghraib whose family had to go into hiding. He pleaded for early education about heroism and that it was the domain of ordinary people, so that people could step up when the need arose.

Samantha Power, political scientist and journalist, told us all a story, that exemplified such heroic courage, of the remarkable Sergio de Mello, the UN envoy who was killed in a terrorist blast in Iraq. “The world needs more Sergio”, she declaimed. He embodied four principles
Get in the room and talk to evil in order to try to reach some balance and accommodation
Have a reverence for dignity
Fear is a bad advisor –rise above it
Be humbled and aware of complexity but not paralyzed by it