WEBVTT 00:00:00.793 --> 00:00:02.967 I want you to, for a moment, 00:00:02.967 --> 00:00:06.817 think about playing a game of Monopoly, 00:00:06.817 --> 00:00:09.224 except in this game, that combination 00:00:09.224 --> 00:00:12.393 of skill, talent, and luck 00:00:12.393 --> 00:00:14.901 that helped earn you success in games, as in life, 00:00:14.901 --> 00:00:16.347 has been rendered irrelevant, 00:00:16.347 --> 00:00:18.642 because this game's been rigged, 00:00:18.642 --> 00:00:20.522 and you've got the upper hand. 00:00:20.522 --> 00:00:22.401 You've got more money, 00:00:22.401 --> 00:00:24.961 more opportunities to move around the board, 00:00:24.961 --> 00:00:27.186 and more access to resources. 00:00:27.186 --> 00:00:28.517 And as you think about that experience, 00:00:28.517 --> 00:00:31.105 I want you to ask yourself, 00:00:31.105 --> 00:00:32.875 how might that experience of being 00:00:32.875 --> 00:00:36.005 a privileged player in a rigged game 00:00:36.005 --> 00:00:38.928 change the way that you think about yourself 00:00:38.928 --> 00:00:42.786 and regard that other player? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:42.786 --> 00:00:45.833 So we ran a study on the UC-Berkeley campus 00:00:45.833 --> 00:00:48.135 to look at exactly that question. 00:00:48.135 --> 00:00:49.793 We brought in more than a hundred pairs 00:00:49.793 --> 00:00:52.554 of strangers into the lab, 00:00:52.554 --> 00:00:54.374 and with the flip of a coin 00:00:54.374 --> 00:00:56.161 randomly assigned one of the two 00:00:56.161 --> 00:00:58.506 to be a rich player in a rigged game. 00:00:58.506 --> 00:01:01.327 They got two times as much money. 00:01:01.327 --> 00:01:02.828 When they passed go, 00:01:02.828 --> 00:01:05.034 they collected twice the salary, 00:01:05.034 --> 00:01:07.007 and they got to roll both dice instead of one, 00:01:07.007 --> 00:01:08.818 so they got to move around the board a lot more. 00:01:08.818 --> 00:01:11.824 (Laughter) 00:01:11.824 --> 00:01:13.537 And over the course of 15 minutes, 00:01:13.537 --> 00:01:17.067 we watched through hidden cameras what happened. 00:01:17.067 --> 00:01:18.888 And what I want to do today, for the first time, 00:01:18.888 --> 00:01:21.400 is show you a little bit of what we saw. 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:22.909 You're going to have to pardon the sound quality, 00:01:22.909 --> 00:01:24.073 in some cases, because again, 00:01:24.073 --> 00:01:25.580 these were hidden cameras. 00:01:25.580 --> 00:01:27.775 So we've provided subtitles. 00:01:27.775 --> 00:01:29.565 Rich Player: How many 500s did you have? 00:01:29.565 --> 00:01:30.400 Poor Player: Just one. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:31.517 Rich Player: Are you serious. Poor Player: Yeah. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:31.517 --> 00:01:33.270 Rich Player: I have three. (Laughs) 00:01:33.270 --> 00:01:35.196 I don't know why they gave me so much. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:35.196 --> 00:01:36.819 Paul Piff: Okay, so it was quickly apparent to players 00:01:36.819 --> 00:01:38.376 that something was up. 00:01:38.376 --> 00:01:40.671 One person clearly has a lot more money 00:01:40.671 --> 00:01:42.820 than the other person, and yet, 00:01:42.820 --> 00:01:44.962 as the game unfolded, 00:01:44.962 --> 00:01:46.967 we saw very notable differences 00:01:46.967 --> 00:01:49.416 and dramatic differences begin to emerge 00:01:49.416 --> 00:01:51.290 between the two players. 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:53.010 The rich player 00:01:53.010 --> 00:01:55.588 started to move around the board louder, 00:01:55.588 --> 00:01:57.469 literally smacking the board with their piece 00:01:57.469 --> 00:02:00.389 as he went around. 00:02:00.389 --> 00:02:03.382 We were more likely to see signs of dominance 00:02:03.382 --> 00:02:05.296 and non-verbal signs of display, 00:02:05.296 --> 00:02:07.394 displays of power 00:02:07.394 --> 00:02:11.349 and celebration among the rich players. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:11.349 --> 00:02:13.870 All right. We had a bowl of pretzels positioned off to the side. 00:02:13.870 --> 00:02:15.531 It's on the bottom right corner there. 00:02:15.531 --> 00:02:19.018 That allowed us to watch participants' consummatory behavior. 00:02:19.018 --> 00:02:23.636 So we're just tracking how many pretzels participants eat. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:23.636 --> 00:02:25.569 Rich Player: Are those pretzels a trick? NOTE Paragraph 00:02:25.569 --> 00:02:27.495 Poor Player: I don't know. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:27.495 --> 00:02:30.634 PP: Okay, so no surprises, people are onto us. 00:02:30.634 --> 00:02:32.139 They wonder what that bowl of pretzels 00:02:32.139 --> 00:02:33.920 is doing there in the first place. 00:02:33.920 --> 00:02:35.834 One even asks, like you just saw, 00:02:35.834 --> 00:02:38.793 is that bowl of pretzels there as a trick? 00:02:38.793 --> 00:02:41.703 And yet, despite that, the power of the situation 00:02:41.703 --> 00:02:44.004 seems to inevitably dominate, 00:02:44.004 --> 00:02:48.457 and those rich players start to eat more pretzels. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:51.976 --> 00:02:54.073 Rich Player: I love pretzels. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:54.073 --> 00:02:56.402 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:57.988 --> 00:03:00.118 PP: And as the game went on, 00:03:00.118 --> 00:03:02.450 one of the really interesting and dramatic patterns 00:03:02.450 --> 00:03:06.108 that we observed begin to emerge 00:03:06.108 --> 00:03:07.394 was that the rich players actually 00:03:07.394 --> 00:03:10.978 started to become ruder toward the other person, 00:03:10.978 --> 00:03:12.387 less and less sensitive to the plight 00:03:12.387 --> 00:03:14.431 of those poor, poor players, 00:03:14.431 --> 00:03:16.502 and more and more demonstrative 00:03:16.502 --> 00:03:18.971 of their material success, 00:03:18.971 --> 00:03:22.177 more likely to showcase how well they're doing. 00:03:23.589 --> 00:03:27.699 Rich Player: I have money for everything. 00:03:27.699 --> 00:03:29.317 Poor Player: How much is that? 00:03:29.317 --> 00:03:33.279 Rich Player: You owe me... 24 dollars. 00:03:33.279 --> 00:03:36.135 You're going to lose all your money soon. 00:03:36.135 --> 00:03:38.295 I'll buy it! I have so much money. 00:03:38.295 --> 00:03:40.241 I have so much money, it takes me for ever. 00:03:40.241 --> 00:03:42.201 Rich Player 2: I'm going to buy out this whole board. 00:03:42.201 --> 00:03:43.931 Rich Player 3: You're going to run out of money soon. 00:03:43.931 --> 00:03:46.779 I'm pretty much untouchable at this point. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:46.779 --> 00:03:49.095 PP: Okay, and here's what I think 00:03:49.095 --> 00:03:50.843 was really, really interesting, 00:03:50.843 --> 00:03:54.097 is that at the end of the 15 minutes, 00:03:54.097 --> 00:03:58.490 we asked the players to talk about their experience during the game. 00:03:58.490 --> 00:04:00.565 And when the rich players talked about 00:04:00.565 --> 00:04:02.447 why they had inevitably won 00:04:02.447 --> 00:04:04.466 in this rigged game of Monopoly 00:04:04.466 --> 00:04:09.275 —(Laughter)— 00:04:09.275 --> 00:04:12.839 they talked about what they'd done 00:04:12.839 --> 00:04:15.653 to buy those different properties 00:04:15.653 --> 00:04:18.435 and earn their success in the game, 00:04:18.435 --> 00:04:20.924 and they became far less attuned 00:04:20.924 --> 00:04:23.639 to all those different features of the situation, 00:04:23.639 --> 00:04:26.312 including that flip of a coin 00:04:26.312 --> 00:04:28.489 that had randomly gotten them into 00:04:28.489 --> 00:04:31.616 that privileged position in the first place. 00:04:31.616 --> 00:04:34.454 And that's a really, really incredible insight 00:04:34.454 --> 00:04:39.909 into how the mind makes sense of advantage. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:39.909 --> 00:04:42.130 Now this game of Monopoly can be used 00:04:42.130 --> 00:04:44.973 as a metaphor for understanding society 00:04:44.973 --> 00:04:48.258 and its hierarchical structure, wherein some people 00:04:48.258 --> 00:04:50.650 have a lot of wealth and a lot of status, 00:04:50.650 --> 00:04:52.127 and a lot of people don't. 00:04:52.127 --> 00:04:55.060 They have a lot less wealth and a lot less status 00:04:55.060 --> 00:04:58.174 and a lot less access to valued resources. 00:04:58.174 --> 00:05:01.410 And what my colleagues and I for the last seven years have been doing 00:05:01.410 --> 00:05:05.479 is studying the effects of these kinds of hierarchies. 00:05:05.479 --> 00:05:08.763 What we've been finding across dozens of studies 00:05:08.763 --> 00:05:12.180 and thousands of participants across this country 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:16.712 is that as a person's levels of wealth increase, 00:05:16.712 --> 00:05:22.780 their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, 00:05:22.780 --> 00:05:26.551 and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, 00:05:26.551 --> 00:05:31.099 and their ideology of self-interest increases. 00:05:31.099 --> 00:05:33.158 In surveys, we found that it's actually 00:05:33.158 --> 00:05:35.035 wealthier individuals who are more likely 00:05:35.035 --> 00:05:38.075 to moralize greed being good, 00:05:38.075 --> 00:05:40.078 and that the pursuit of self-interest 00:05:40.078 --> 00:05:42.794 is favorable and moral. 00:05:42.794 --> 00:05:44.643 Now what I want to do today is talk about 00:05:44.643 --> 00:05:49.464 some of the implications of this ideology self-interest, 00:05:49.464 --> 00:05:51.827 talk about why we should care about those implications, 00:05:51.827 --> 00:05:55.469 and end with what might be done. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:55.469 --> 00:05:57.634 Some of the first studies that we ran in this area 00:05:57.634 --> 00:05:58.920 looked at helping behavior, 00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:01.079 something social psychologists call 00:06:01.079 --> 00:06:03.170 pro-social behavior. 00:06:03.170 --> 00:06:05.622 And we were really interested in who's more likely 00:06:05.622 --> 00:06:08.231 to offer help to another person, 00:06:08.231 --> 00:06:11.388 someone who's rich or someone who's poor. 00:06:11.388 --> 00:06:15.790 In one of the studies, we bring in rich and poor 00:06:15.790 --> 00:06:18.090 members of the community into the lab 00:06:18.090 --> 00:06:21.584 and give each of them the equivalent of 10 dollars. 00:06:21.584 --> 00:06:23.194 We told the participants 00:06:23.194 --> 00:06:25.642 that they could keep these 10 dollars for themselves, 00:06:25.642 --> 00:06:27.617 or they could share a portion of it, 00:06:27.617 --> 00:06:29.612 if they wanted to, with a stranger 00:06:29.612 --> 00:06:31.083 who is totally anonymous. 00:06:31.083 --> 00:06:34.119 They'll never meet that stranger and the stranger will never meet them. 00:06:34.119 --> 00:06:37.337 And we just monitor how much people give. 00:06:37.337 --> 00:06:39.687 Individuals who made 25, sometimes 00:06:39.687 --> 00:06:42.014 under 15,000 dollars a year, 00:06:42.014 --> 00:06:44.241 gave 44 percent more of their money 00:06:44.241 --> 00:06:45.324 to this stranger 00:06:45.324 --> 00:06:47.632 than did individuals making 150, 00:06:47.632 --> 00:06:50.879 200,000 dollars a year. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:50.879 --> 00:06:53.627 We've had people play games 00:06:53.627 --> 00:06:56.258 to see who's more or less likely to cheat 00:06:56.258 --> 00:06:58.652 to increase their chances of winning a prize. 00:06:58.652 --> 00:07:01.372 In one of the games, we actually rigged a computer 00:07:01.372 --> 00:07:04.164 so that die rolls over a certain score 00:07:04.164 --> 00:07:05.150 were impossible. 00:07:05.150 --> 00:07:08.242 You couldn't get above 12 in this game, 00:07:08.242 --> 00:07:11.354 and yet, the richer you were, 00:07:11.354 --> 00:07:13.111 the more likely you were to cheat in this game 00:07:13.111 --> 00:07:17.010 to earn credits toward a $50 cash prize, 00:07:17.010 --> 00:07:20.855 sometimes by three to four times as much. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:20.855 --> 00:07:23.088 We ran another study where we looked at whether 00:07:23.088 --> 00:07:26.311 people would be inclined to take candy 00:07:26.311 --> 00:07:28.802 from a jar of candy that we explicitly identified 00:07:28.802 --> 00:07:31.042 as being reserved for children 00:07:31.042 --> 00:07:34.484 —(Laughter)— 00:07:34.484 --> 00:07:36.325 participating, I'm not kidding, 00:07:36.325 --> 00:07:39.054 I know it sounds like I'm making a joke, 00:07:39.054 --> 00:07:41.295 we explicitly told participants 00:07:41.295 --> 00:07:43.164 this jar of candy's for children participating 00:07:43.164 --> 00:07:45.648 in a developmental lab nearby. 00:07:45.648 --> 00:07:47.698 They're in studies. This is for them. 00:07:47.698 --> 00:07:51.341 And we just monitored how much candy participants took. 00:07:51.341 --> 00:07:52.854 Participants who felt rich 00:07:52.854 --> 00:07:54.259 took two times as much candy 00:07:54.259 --> 00:07:57.408 as participants who felt poor. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:57.408 --> 00:08:00.061 We've even studied cars, 00:08:00.061 --> 00:08:01.923 not just any cars, 00:08:01.923 --> 00:08:04.994 but whether drivers of different kinds of cars 00:08:04.994 --> 00:08:08.097 are more or less inclined to break the law. 00:08:08.097 --> 00:08:10.934 In one of these studies, we looked at 00:08:10.934 --> 00:08:15.090 whether drivers would stop for a pedestrian 00:08:15.090 --> 00:08:17.989 that we had posed waiting to cross at a crosswalk. 00:08:17.989 --> 00:08:19.733 Now in California, as you all know, 00:08:19.733 --> 00:08:22.257 because I'm sure we all do this, 00:08:22.257 --> 00:08:26.185 it's the law to stop for a pedestrian who's waiting to cross. 00:08:26.185 --> 00:08:28.117 So here's an example of how we did it. 00:08:28.117 --> 00:08:30.418 That's our confederate off to the left 00:08:30.418 --> 00:08:31.499 posing as a pedestrian. 00:08:31.499 --> 00:08:36.073 He approaches as the red truck successfully stops. 00:08:36.073 --> 00:08:38.391 In typical California fashion, it's overtaken 00:08:38.391 --> 00:08:40.728 by the bus who almost runs our pedestrian over. 00:08:40.728 --> 00:08:42.284 (Laughter) 00:08:42.284 --> 00:08:44.151 Now here's an example of a more expensive car, 00:08:44.151 --> 00:08:45.889 a Prius, driving through, 00:08:45.889 --> 00:08:50.197 and a BMW doing the same. 00:08:51.388 --> 00:08:53.887 So we did this for hundreds of vehicles 00:08:53.887 --> 00:08:56.243 on several days, 00:08:56.243 --> 00:08:59.195 just tracking who stops and who doesn't. 00:09:00.466 --> 00:09:02.660 What we found was that as the expensiveness 00:09:02.660 --> 00:09:06.960 of a car increased, 00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:08.844 the driver's tendencies to break the law 00:09:08.844 --> 00:09:10.088 increased as well. 00:09:10.088 --> 00:09:12.780 None of the cars, none of the cars 00:09:12.780 --> 00:09:16.080 in our least expensive car category 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:17.645 broke the law. 00:09:17.645 --> 00:09:20.038 Close to 50 percent of the cars 00:09:20.038 --> 00:09:22.446 in our most expensive vehicle category 00:09:22.446 --> 00:09:25.289 broke the law. 00:09:25.289 --> 00:09:27.182 We've run other studies finding that 00:09:27.182 --> 00:09:30.518 wealthier individuals are more likely to lie in negotiations, 00:09:30.518 --> 00:09:32.639 to endorse unethical behavior at work 00:09:32.639 --> 00:09:35.431 like stealing cash from the cash register, 00:09:35.431 --> 00:09:40.514 taking bribes, lying to customers. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:40.514 --> 00:09:42.076 Now I don't mean to suggest 00:09:42.076 --> 00:09:43.779 that it's only wealthy people 00:09:43.779 --> 00:09:45.691 who show these patterns of behavior. 00:09:45.691 --> 00:09:48.460 Not at all. In fact, I think that we all, 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:51.424 in our day-to-day, minute-by-minute lives, 00:09:51.424 --> 00:09:54.396 struggle with these competing motivations 00:09:54.396 --> 00:09:57.693 of when, or if, to put our own interests 00:09:57.693 --> 00:10:00.047 above the interests of other people. 00:10:00.047 --> 00:10:02.429 And that's understandable because 00:10:02.429 --> 00:10:04.992 the American dream is an idea 00:10:04.992 --> 00:10:08.091 in which we all have an equal opportunity 00:10:08.091 --> 00:10:10.125 to succeed and prosper, 00:10:10.125 --> 00:10:12.682 as long as we apply ourselves and work hard, 00:10:12.682 --> 00:10:15.386 and a piece of that means that sometimes, 00:10:15.386 --> 00:10:18.485 you need to put your own interests 00:10:18.485 --> 00:10:21.915 above the interests and well-being of other people around you. 00:10:21.915 --> 00:10:24.084 But what we're finding is that, 00:10:24.084 --> 00:10:26.492 the wealthier you are, the more likely you are 00:10:26.492 --> 00:10:29.207 to pursue a vision of personal success, 00:10:29.207 --> 00:10:31.442 of achievement and accomplishment, 00:10:31.442 --> 00:10:34.790 to the detriment of others around you. 00:10:34.790 --> 00:10:37.554 Here I've plotted for you the mean household income 00:10:37.554 --> 00:10:41.170 received by each fifth and top five percent of the population 00:10:41.170 --> 00:10:43.340 over the last 20 years. 00:10:43.340 --> 00:10:45.882 In 1993, the differences between the different 00:10:45.882 --> 00:10:48.967 quintiles of the population, in terms of income, 00:10:48.967 --> 00:10:51.564 are fairly egregious. 00:10:51.564 --> 00:10:54.161 It's not difficult to discern that there are differences. 00:10:54.161 --> 00:10:57.045 But over the last 20 years, that significant difference 00:10:57.045 --> 00:10:59.219 has become a grand canyon of sorts 00:10:59.219 --> 00:11:02.373 between those at the top and everyone else. 00:11:02.373 --> 00:11:06.065 In fact, the top 20 percent of our population 00:11:06.065 --> 00:11:09.143 own close to 90 percent of the total wealth in this country. 00:11:09.143 --> 00:11:11.402 We're at unprecedented levels 00:11:11.402 --> 00:11:13.890 of economic inequality. 00:11:15.634 --> 00:11:17.970 What that means is that wealth is not only becoming 00:11:17.970 --> 00:11:22.450 increasingly concentrated in the hands of a select group of individuals, 00:11:22.450 --> 00:11:24.834 but the American dream is becoming 00:11:24.834 --> 00:11:26.782 increasingly unattainable 00:11:26.782 --> 00:11:29.975 for an increasing majority of us. 00:11:29.975 --> 00:11:32.242 And if it's the case, as we've been finding, 00:11:32.242 --> 00:11:34.237 that the wealthier you are, 00:11:34.237 --> 00:11:36.779 the more entitled you feel to that wealth, 00:11:36.779 --> 00:11:39.772 and the more likely you are to prioritize your own interests 00:11:39.772 --> 00:11:41.739 above the interests of other people, 00:11:41.739 --> 00:11:45.129 and be willing to do things to serve that self-interest, 00:11:45.129 --> 00:11:46.863 well then there's no reason to think 00:11:46.863 --> 00:11:48.961 that those patterns will change. 00:11:48.961 --> 00:11:50.504 In fact, there's every reason to think 00:11:50.504 --> 00:11:52.487 that they'll only get worse, 00:11:52.487 --> 00:11:53.396 and that's what it would look like 00:11:53.396 --> 00:11:55.321 if things just stayed the same, 00:11:55.321 --> 00:11:59.961 at the same linear rate, over the next 20 years. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:59.961 --> 00:12:02.682 Now, inequality, economic inequality, 00:12:02.682 --> 00:12:04.606 is something we should all be concerned about, 00:12:04.606 --> 00:12:07.135 and not just because of those at the bottom 00:12:07.135 --> 00:12:08.649 of the social hierarchy, 00:12:08.649 --> 00:12:10.889 but because individuals and groups 00:12:10.889 --> 00:12:16.089 with lots of economic inequality do worse, 00:12:16.089 --> 00:12:18.928 not just the people at the bottom, everyone. 00:12:18.928 --> 00:12:20.794 There's a lot of really compelling research 00:12:20.794 --> 00:12:23.647 coming out from top labs all over the world 00:12:23.647 --> 00:12:26.535 showcasing the range of things 00:12:26.535 --> 00:12:28.424 that are undermined 00:12:28.424 --> 00:12:31.064 as economic inequality gets worse. 00:12:31.064 --> 00:12:33.717 Social mobility, things we really care about, 00:12:33.717 --> 00:12:36.198 physical health, social trust, 00:12:36.198 --> 00:12:39.243 all go down as inequality goes up. 00:12:39.243 --> 00:12:41.258 Similarly, negative things 00:12:41.258 --> 00:12:43.870 in social collectives and societies, 00:12:43.870 --> 00:12:45.964 things like obesity, and violence, 00:12:45.964 --> 00:12:47.585 imprisonment, and punishment, 00:12:47.585 --> 00:12:51.727 are exacerbated as economic inequality increases. 00:12:51.727 --> 00:12:54.137 Again, these our outcomes not just experienced 00:12:54.137 --> 00:12:56.015 by a few, but that resound 00:12:56.015 --> 00:12:58.799 across all strata of society. 00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:01.915 Even people at the top experience these outcomes. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:01.915 --> 00:13:05.158 So what do we do? 00:13:05.158 --> 00:13:08.629 This cascade of self-perpetuating, 00:13:08.629 --> 00:13:11.137 pernicious, negative effects 00:13:11.137 --> 00:13:14.546 could seem like something that's spun out of control, 00:13:14.546 --> 00:13:16.464 and there's nothing we can do about it, 00:13:16.464 --> 00:13:19.260 certainly nothing we as individuals could do. 00:13:19.260 --> 00:13:23.093 But in fact, we've been finding 00:13:23.093 --> 00:13:26.281 in our own laboratory research 00:13:26.281 --> 00:13:31.371 that small, small psychological interventions, 00:13:31.371 --> 00:13:34.680 small changes to people's values, 00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:37.903 small nudges in certain directions, 00:13:37.903 --> 00:13:41.468 can restore levels of egalitarianism and empathy. 00:13:41.468 --> 00:13:43.520 For instance, reminding people 00:13:43.520 --> 00:13:45.776 of the benefits of cooperation, 00:13:45.776 --> 00:13:48.680 or the advantages of community, 00:13:48.680 --> 00:13:52.615 cause wealthier individuals to be just as egalitarian 00:13:52.615 --> 00:13:55.150 as poor people. 00:13:55.150 --> 00:13:58.527 In one study, we had people watch a brief video, 00:13:58.527 --> 00:14:02.888 just 46 seconds long, about childhood poverty 00:14:02.888 --> 00:14:05.938 that served as a reminder of the needs of others 00:14:05.938 --> 00:14:07.964 in the world around them, 00:14:07.964 --> 00:14:09.994 and after watching that, 00:14:09.994 --> 00:14:11.692 we looked at how willing people were 00:14:11.692 --> 00:14:15.396 to offer up their own time to a stranger 00:14:15.396 --> 00:14:18.815 presented to them in the lab who was in distress. 00:14:18.815 --> 00:14:22.082 After watching this video, an hour later, 00:14:22.082 --> 00:14:24.452 rich people became just as generous 00:14:24.452 --> 00:14:26.411 of their own time to help out this other person, 00:14:26.411 --> 00:14:29.116 a stranger, as someone who's poor, 00:14:29.116 --> 00:14:31.567 suggesting that these differences are not 00:14:31.567 --> 00:14:33.450 innate or categorical, 00:14:33.450 --> 00:14:35.174 but are so malleable 00:14:35.174 --> 00:14:37.100 to slight changes in people's values, 00:14:37.100 --> 00:14:39.381 and little nudges of compassion 00:14:39.381 --> 00:14:41.036 and bumps of empathy. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:41.036 --> 00:14:42.654 And beyond the walls of our lab, we're even 00:14:42.654 --> 00:14:46.622 beginning to see signs of change in society. 00:14:46.622 --> 00:14:50.065 Bill Gates, one of our nation's wealthiest individuals, 00:14:50.065 --> 00:14:51.810 in his Harvard commencement speech, 00:14:51.810 --> 00:14:53.934 talked about the problem facing society 00:14:53.934 --> 00:14:57.284 of inequality as being the most daunting challenge, 00:14:57.284 --> 00:14:59.880 and talked about what must be done to combat it, 00:14:59.880 --> 00:15:03.115 saying, "Humanity's greatest advances 00:15:03.115 --> 00:15:05.066 are not in its discoveries, 00:15:05.066 --> 00:15:08.217 but in how those discoveries are applied 00:15:08.217 --> 00:15:11.031 to reduce inequity." 00:15:11.031 --> 00:15:13.034 And there's the Giving Pledge, 00:15:13.034 --> 00:15:15.456 in which more than a hundred of our nation's 00:15:15.456 --> 00:15:17.843 wealthiest individuals 00:15:17.843 --> 00:15:21.757 are pledging half of their fortunes to charity. 00:15:21.757 --> 00:15:23.381 And there's the emergence 00:15:23.381 --> 00:15:27.014 of dozens of grassroots movements, 00:15:27.014 --> 00:15:29.317 like We Are The One Percent, 00:15:29.317 --> 00:15:31.181 the Resource Generation, 00:15:31.181 --> 00:15:33.302 or Wealth For Common Good, 00:15:33.302 --> 00:15:35.869 in which the most privileged 00:15:35.869 --> 00:15:37.694 members of the population, 00:15:37.694 --> 00:15:40.450 members of the one percent and elsewhere, 00:15:40.450 --> 00:15:42.381 people who are wealthy, 00:15:42.381 --> 00:15:45.969 are using their own economic resources, 00:15:45.969 --> 00:15:50.229 adults and youth alike, that's what's most striking to me, 00:15:50.229 --> 00:15:51.647 leveraging their own privilege, 00:15:51.647 --> 00:15:53.718 their own economic resources, 00:15:53.718 --> 00:15:56.745 to combat inequality 00:15:56.745 --> 00:15:59.655 by advocating for social policies, 00:15:59.655 --> 00:16:01.536 changes in social values, 00:16:01.536 --> 00:16:03.910 and changes in people's behavior, 00:16:03.910 --> 00:16:06.973 that work against their own economic interests 00:16:06.973 --> 00:16:11.246 but that may ultimately restore the American dream. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:11.246 --> 00:16:13.246 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:13.246 --> 00:16:17.246 (Applause)