All language subtitles for Through the Wormhole s06e01 Are We All Bigots.eng

Morgan: If you think
you see everyone as equal,

you're kidding yourself.

We all have biases.

[ Sighs ]

And no matter
how open-minded...

We think we are...

Morgan: Stereotypes color
our judgment of others.

[ Gun cocks ]

...and can lead us badly astray.

We live in a society fractured
by race, religion,

even our favorite sports teams.

[ Baseball bat cracks ]

Man:
Going, going, gone!

Yes! Yes!

Morgan: We divide ourselves
into rival tribes.

The political divide
between us grows deeper

with every passing year.

When did hate become hard-wired
into our brains?

We live in two different
americas, one for the rich...

Are we all born to discriminate
against our fellow humans?

Are we all bigots?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

-- Captions by vitac --
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
discovery communications

Have you ever thought about
who you instinctively trust

and who you instinctively fear?

Someone's walking toward you
down a dark alley...

[ Metallic click ]
Holding something in his hand.

Now, I think of myself
as an open-minded person.

But scientists tell me
I'm kidding myself

and so are you.

We all look at the world
with prejudice,

and when you have
only a split second to decide,

your own snap judgments
may shock you.

Josh Correll grew up
solving puzzles for fun,

but now, as a psychologist,

he's trying to solve
the puzzle of racism.

And his work is
a matter of life and death.

Correll:
So, my research was originally inspired by Amadou Diallo.

He came home, went back outside
to sit on his front porch,

basically, the stoop
of the apartment building.

[ Vehicle approaches, stops ]

Morgan: It was the early hours
of February 4, 1999.

[ Car doors open ]

Four New York police officers
approached him.

Diallo reached for his wallet

when one of the officers
shouted,

"gun! He's got a gun!"

[ Gunfire ]

They fired 41 rounds,
killing him at the scene.

The police officers were
acquitted of all charges,

sparking
a heated national debate.

[ Crowd chanting indistinctly ]

It was a tragedy that has
since repeated itself

in the death of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri,

the death of Tamir Rice
in Cleveland, Ohio,

the death of John Crawford
in Beavercreek, Ohio.

And so, that presented a puzzle.

That presented a question.

How can we determine whether
or not race was actually

what drove the officers
to shoot?

Some of them will be armed.

Morgan:
Josh is about to run an experiment with live ammunition

and with participants
who are not policemen.

He asks his white test subject

to treat the simulation
as if it is real life.

A potentially lethal person is
about to confront him,

and he will have less than
one second to make a decision.

There's time pressure.
They have to react quickly.

And we can look and see

whether when we change
the race of the suspect

from black to white
or white to black,

does that influence
a person's behavior.

Morgan:
The subject will see a scene appear on a screen downrange.

Then, a white man will appear
holding either a gun

or a cellphone

or it will be a black man
with a gun or a cellphone.

The image of the man is only up
for one second.

Time to decide.

Shoot or hold fire?

Mistake the gun for a phone
and die.

Mistake the phone for a gun
and kill an innocent person.

[ Gun cocks ]

So, what we want to look at is,
in that situation

where there's not good,
clear information

where people have
to respond quickly,

did they use race
to inform their decisions?

Morgan: The simulation cycles
through dozens of confrontations

equally split between white
and black male subjects.

Josh records
how long it takes subjects

to make a decision

and whether or not they kill
an innocent person

or die themselves.

It's worth noting
that, in this game,

people are pretty good.

They don't make
a ton of mistakes.

10%, 15% of the time,
they make a mistake.

But when we look
at those mistakes,

we see racial bias
in the errors.

[ Gunshot ]

So they're faster
to shoot the armed target

if he's black rather than white.

[ Gunshot ]

When the target's got
a cellphone,

they're much more likely
to make that decision

to shoot an innocent target
when he's black...

Rather than white.

Morgan:
Josh has run this experiment on thousands of people.

On average, white subjects are
quicker to shoot the black male

and are 30% to 40% more likely
to mistake his phone for a gun.

When Josh performs
this experiment

with law-enforcement officers,

he finds
that their expert training

significantly reduced the
occurrence of fatal mistakes.

But no matter what
their background or training,

most participants are quicker
to shoot at a black target.

Does this mean

that white Americans are
inherently bigoted?

An utterly shocking trend
with Josh's black participants

suggests that it's
much more complicated than that.

[ Gunshot ]

We see that black participants
show the same anti-black bias

that white participants do.

Actually when we test

to see if there is a difference
in the two groups,

white participants
versus black participants,

they are not statistically
different from each other.

[ Gunshot ]

So, we think this represents

an awareness
of a cultural stereotype,

not that our participants
believe necessarily

that black men are
more dangerous than white men.

[ Gun cocks ]

But by virtue of the movies
that they watch,

the music that they listen to,
news reports,

they're getting the idea

that "black male" goes
with "violent."

[ Siren wails ]

The group and the idea are
linked together in their brains

whether they agree
with that stereotype or not.

Why would we make
life-and-death decisions

based on stereotypes
we don't even believe?

I've always thought

we could overcome
these bigoted ideas.

But one neuroscientist says
it's not that simple.

Racist stereotypes hijack
our subconscious minds.

Neuroscientist
Jon Freeman believes

that we all carry around
stereotypes in our subconscious.

In fact, the instant
you see another person's face,

your brain first perceives them
as a stereotype of their race,

gender, or sexual orientation.

So when you first lay eyes
on a young Asian student,

she might register as...

The stereotypical
Asian overachiever...

But only for an instant.

The way we make snap judgments
about others is

nowhere near
politically correct.

Whether you like it or not,

a well-groomed man
may first trigger

a stale stereotype
in your subconscious mind...

[ Whistle blows,
upbeat music plays ]

Until your conscious mind
corrects you.

Jon wants
to understand precisely

why first impressions
conjure up clich?s.

Woman:
Excuse me. Jon?

I'm a docile white girl.

And he wants to learn
if there's a way for us

to see through these clich?s.

Jon: It takes hundreds
of milliseconds

for that judgment
to sort of crystallize and form,

and a lot happens
during that process.

And we are only beginning
to understand

what the implications
of that might be.

Jon uses brain scanners
to determine exactly

what is going on in the brain

during the first fraction
of a second of perception,

long before we are
consciously aware

of what we're looking at.

The brain is like an office,

where two key desks handle most
of the face-analyzing workload,

the fusiform face area...

And the orbitofrontal cortex.

When a visual signal arrives,

they both get to work
simultaneously to process it

in their own specialized ways.

Jon: The fusiform face area is

involved in taking
visual information

and forming
a coherent representation

of the identity
and, say, the gender

and the race of the face.

Morgan: But across the way,
the orbitofrontal cortex is

focused on associating that face
with all the knowledge it has

about the world.

Jon: The orbitofrontal cortex is
retrieving

all of the associations
spontaneously without awareness.

Morgan:
When it sees a black man's face,

the orbitofrontal cortex
quickly looks up

all the general information
the brain has about black men,

including many stereotypes,
and alters the visual signal.

So, some brain regions can sort
of convince other brain regions

to be in line with them.

Morgan: Because of this,
stereotypes can hijack

the signal from our eyes...

And change what we perceive.

When test subjects look

at a black male
with a neutral expression,

their brains
immediately light up

as if they are perceiving anger.

And even though
they don't realize it,

when they look at a white female
with a blank gaze,

their brain's instant reaction
is to perceive happiness.

These stereotypes take place in
all of the brains Jon studied,

no matter their gender, race,
or sexual orientation.

These prejudiced thoughts are
quickly snuffed out

by the conscious mind,

but that doesn't mean
that they're harmless.

Those stereotypes can actually
wind up impacting behavior.

So, for example,

if individuals unconsciously see
African-American faces

as being slightly more angry
than they are,

that's probably going to impact
how much they approach

or avoid that individual
at a spontaneous level.

Morgan: If we recognize that we
are all prone to these biases,

maybe we can compensate...

[ Gunshot ]

...and avoid unintended acts
of prejudice.

But one biologist is attempting
to go one step further

to manipulate animal minds...

And override their bigotry.

A stereotype is
the brain's way of saving time.

It looks at people or objects

and makes quick decisions
about them.

Who'd want to eat
this disgusting thing?

But these mental shortcuts
can lead us astray.

Mmm.

Delicious.

Can we look beyond appearances

and see people
for who they really are?

Neuroscientist Peggy Mason knows

that getting through
her daily routine

requires looking at everything
as a stereotype.

A basket
of freshly plucked vegetables is

a vegetable basket.

Vegetable baskets contain
vegetables.

don't they?

Mason: We make expectations
about everything,

and they smooth the way.

They're shortcuts.

They make our life happen much
faster and much more easily.

Morgan: Without the ability
to stereotype,

everything we do would take
enormous mental effort

to understand.

We could take nothing
for granted.

We have relied
on stereotyping for eons

to quickly tell our tribe
from outsiders.

For all the hurt
that stereotyping causes,

it's fundamental
to how our brains work.

So, we're more likely
to help those closest to us,

and for complete strangers

that we've never even seen
the likes of,

we're not so likely
to help them.

Morgan: Peggy wanted to see
if there might be a way

to get the brain
to overcome these biases.

I think
that we humans act in part

due to our shared
mammalian biology,

and I think that we can
increase social cohesion

in modern society
amongst humans.

Morgan:
She began with a mammal that has a simpler brain than ours...

[ Rat squeaking ]

Mason: Hey, little guys.
How you doing?

You're okay, little buddy.

Morgan: ...The rat,
a creature who typically

only aids members
of its own strain.

Peggy's experiment involves

temporarily trapping a rat
in a plastic tube.

The tube has just one way out,

through a door that can
only be opened by another rat.

When another rat
from the same strain is added

to the chamber,
it's not long

before he works out how to free
his imprisoned fellow tribesman.

Mason: These are all albino rats
of the sprague dawley stock.

And so,
while they are not identical

and they've never met
each other,

they also might look like
the fifth cousin twice removed.

Morgan: If the rat looks
familiar, the other rat helps.

But then Peggy repeats
the experiment

with rats of unrelated strains.

Now it's a black capped rat
in the tube,

and an albino rat has
the option to free him.

Mason: They've never met
a black capped rat before.

They don't open for them.

They have no affiliative bond,

and therefore
they do not act prosocially

towards these very
strange-looking type of rats.

Morgan: But can a rat
ever change its ways?

To find out,
Peggy exposes a white rat

to a black capped rat.

Mason:
We took albino rats.

We housed them
with black capped rats

for two weeks.

Then we rehoused them
with an albino rat

so they've known
one black capped rat.

Morgan: Does this experience
make the albino empathetic

to all black capped rats?

To find out, she places him
in the arena

with a trapped black capped rat
that he's never met before.

[ Rat squeaking ]

The albino rat breaks
through the color line.

Mason: What that suggested was
that just having a bond

to one black capped rat
would allow an albino rat

to generalize
all the black capped rats.

They've known one.
They've lived with one.

Now they get tested
with strangers.

And lo and behold,

they're perfectly helpful
to the strangers.

So that was
really exceptional to me

because it showed
that experience was so powerful.

Morgan: It may not be
as hard as you think

for a bigot to have
a change of heart.

If any of us has
a positive experience

with someone
from a different racial group,

biology has the power
to make us feel empathy

for a stranger from that group.

In fact, Peggy believes that
empathy is a primal instinct

for all mammals.

What rats tell us is that
we have a mammalian inheritance

which makes us want to help
another in distress.

But the amazing thing
that we learn from the rats is

that what the rats need to do is
to have an experience

with a different type of rat,

and then that rat can be part
of their ingroup, too.

And that's really an amazing
and hopeful message, I think.

Empathy has enormous power.

Images of Nelson Mandela
behind bars

evoked such compassion
from people of all races

that they helped end apartheid
in South Africa.

But there's another darker side
to the human mind,

one that allows us
to take pleasure

in the pain of others

and could make us addicted
to bigotry.

Bigotry is as old
as human society.

We persecute people
of different skin color,

of different religion.

We discriminate
between men and women.

But bigotry isn't just about
the circumstances of your birth.

Even fans of rival sports teams
can learn to hate one another

with all the venom of a bigot.

Harvard psychologist Mina cikara
has been thinking

about how human beings move
from individuals, to groups

to bitter, violent rivals.

Imagine a group
of perfect strangers.

It takes very little for them
to form devout tribal alliances.

Well, one of the most amazing
things about humans is

how readily they form groups.

In fact, psychological research
has shown

that you can
randomly assign people

to red team or blue team,

and that's enough
to make them show

what we call ingroup bias.

They prefer their ingroup,
they treat them better,

they devote
more resources to them,

and, in general, it's just
a part of human nature.

Morgan:
Since the dawn of humanity,

we have needed the support
of others to thrive and survive.

So when two groups come
into direct competition,

no matter arbitrarily
those groups were formed,

the individuals will put
the needs of the group

above themselves.

A line is drawn in the sand.

Out.
Nice job.

"Out"?
What... give me a break.

All-out violence needs
only a little provocation.

You were out.

[ Scoffs ]

A dose of escalation...

And both sides will...

[ All shouting indistinctly ]

Charge.

[ Shouting continues ]

[ Upbeat music plays ]

[ Crashing, thumping ]

In general, people are adverse
to treating other people badly.

But that's the thing
about competition.

Being a good ingroup member

means being a jerk
to the out group.

Aah!

It's not just that you want
your own team to do well.

It's that you have to make sure
that the other team doesn't.

Aaaaaah!

Aaaah!

Morgan: Mina wants to know
why this desire

to persecute the other overrides
our better judgment.

Aaaaah!

These two are
a couple of stand-up guys.

They certainly would never beat
each other into a pulp...

Unless it's game day.

Today Mina is going
to scan their brains

as they watch
their rival team suffer.

So, what we did was we recruited

18 die-hard Red Sox
and Yankees fans.

And the idea was
we wanted people to watch plays

where their rivals did poorly
against another third team,

the orioles.

[ Crowd cheering ]

The Red Sox fan watches a video

where Alex Rodriguez
of the Yankees is pelted

by a 100-mile-per-hour
fast ball.

[ Baseball thuds,
crowd groans ]

Man: Ooh!
That's gonna leave a mark.

Morgan: The Yankees fan gets
to enjoy an embarrassing mistake

that cost the Red Sox three runs
in a single play.

[ Baseball bat cracks,
crowd groans ]

Man: What a disaster.

Ooh, how embarrassing
for the Red Sox.

Morgan: Mina discovered

that this feeling of pleasure
at our rival's pain,

what the Germans call
schadenfreude,

is something our brains learn
to crave.

When participants watch
their rivals fail,

what we saw
that there was activations

of the region called
the ventral striatum.

The way that this region
purportedly works is

that it basically tags
positive information,

rewarding events,
so that people then can say,

"oh, I should come back to this
in order to get pleasure again."

Morgan: The ventral striatum is
at the core of many addictions.

When a smoker sees a cigarette,

their ventral striatum
reminds them of its pleasures.

And just as a cigarette a day
can soon become a pack a day,

couldn't seeing
your rival suffer

make you want to see it happen
more and more?

Cikara:
So, the question then is

whether or not watching
your rival suffer misfortune

makes you then more likely
to endorse harm

or actually do harm
to the rival team

and affiliated individuals.

Well, we have evidence
to suggest that it does.

Morgan:
What troubles Mina is

that this line
of group-oriented thinking

extends beyond sports teams.

In fact,
we see everybody belonging

to one
of four social categories.

The first time you meet
a new person or a group,

there are two questions
you need answered right away.

The first is "friend or foe,"

and the second is,
"how capable are they

of enacting their intentions
toward me, good or ill?"

Morgan: First, there are
the friendly groups.

Bright, young kids and doctors,
for example,

we usually see as competent.

Less capable friendly groups,
like the elderly and infirm,

usually invoke pity.

Drug addicts
or teenage Internet bullies,

we categorize as foe.

But these groups aren't
competent enough

to spend much energy hating.

It's the people seen both
as foe and highly competent

who stir the strong urges
toward bigotry.

This includes investment bankers
but also groups like asians

or professional women in domains
where men generally dominate.

Morgan: Mina studied hundreds
of subjects

who report feeling pleasure when
members of these groups suffer.

Cikara: When you ask them
who they're most likely to harm,

to just hurt, not actually kill,

they're most willing
to harm these competent groups

that are competitive
with our own interests.

So what's really interesting
about these groups is

that, in times
of social stability,

people go along
to get along with them

because they control resources.

But they're also the first ones
to get scapegoated

when social relations
become unstable.

Morgan:
Being part of a group is

an unavoidable part
of being human.

But groupism does more
than just block

our natural empathy for others.

When it involves
a political agenda,

groupism may actually hack
our brains

into perceiving a false reality.

Do you see the world
as it really is

or how your political party
wants you to see it?

We're a tribal species,

and we all want
to be in the winning tribe.

But surely humanity can aspire
to rise above this,

to bridge the divide
between us.

Democracy was founded
in the principle of equality,

that we could reach
across the aisle and compromise.

But with
every passing year,

political parties seem
to be getting

more and more divided.

Maybe it's because
conservatives are bigoted

against liberals.

I think
you have it backward.

Darren Schreiber is
an American political scientist

now working in exeter, u.K.

If there's one thing
he's learned

from moving across the pond,

it's that no matter
where you go,

liberals and conservatives are
not from the same planet.

Do you see yourself
as being more liberal

or more conservative?

Definitely
more conservative.

I'd see myself
more liberal.

Military intervention
in the middle east...

How do you feel
about that?

I think
it's absolutely fundamental.

Each country should be allowed
to determine their own future.

What do you think
about immigration policy?

The borders need
to be slightly more closed.

We should have
an open-border policy.

Liberals and conservatives
rarely see eye to eye.

Could it be that they have
different brains?

Darren decided he would try
to uncover the truth

by using an mri brain scanner
to see

how the brains of liberals
and conservatives handled

decision-making
in a simple gambling game.

Today, Darren and his students
are re-creating that experiment

but without the mri.

Each test subject is given ?1...
About a buck and a half.

They can keep the money,
or they can gamble with it.

There's a chance
to double the winnings

but also a risk
of losing it all.

Do you want to keep that ?1,
or do you want to take a risk

at potentially winning
or losing ?2?

I will risk ?2.

All right,
so open up the envelope

and see what you get.

I've won ?2.

Good. All right.

So here's ?2.

Do you want to keep
the ?1,

or do you want
to risk potentially winning

or losing ?2?

I think I'll take a risk
at winning ?2.

Okay.

I've won ?2.

Whoo-hoo.
Congratulations.

So, here's your ?2.

[ Laughing ]
I've lost ?1.

You've lost.
All right.

Well, you have
to give me ?4 now.

Thanks, Sophie.

Darren doesn't care
who wins or loses.

His only interest is
in how their brains deal

with taking gambling risks,

an act that has
no intrinsic political slant.

But to his surprise, liberals
and conservatives processed risk

with wildly different regions
of their brains.

Conservative brains consistently
use the amygdala

to make the decisions
to risk everything.

This region is associated
with gut feeling

and fight-or-flight responses.

Red brains experienced risk

as a threat
with a potential reward.

Liberal brains consistently use
the insula when gambling,

a region associated

with perception
of one's own feelings.

Blue brains experienced risk
as a problem to be solved.

Both brains end up at similar
conclusions about taking risks,

but their brains experience it
differently.

What it tells us is
that being a political liberal

or a political conservative
influences

everything that we see,

that we see the world
in really different ways,

we use different mental tools
when we're processing

even basic things like gambling

that appear to have nothing
to do with politics.

And that just blew our minds.

Morgan:
So, why is this?

Are we born
with our future politics

already fixed
in the structure of our brains?

We're unsure about this,

and I actually have a study
where we're gonna be looking

to see with a data set
that has studied children

from age 4 to 20,

the differences
in people's brains

and do they change over time.

But what we know right now is
that people,

when they're around 20,

seem to have different sizes
of amygdala and insula

depending on whether they're
liberals or conservatives.

Morgan: Darren expects
that, by the time we are 20,

most of us will have solidified

the color
of our political brain.

The possibility of Harmony

between liberals
and conservatives is

therefore unlikely.

Politicians and politically
active citizens cannot

truly see things
from the other side.

Their brains won't let them.

Our intense partisanship is
probably here to stay.

But there may be a way
to reshape our brains

to Cherish the greater good
of all mankind

and open our minds and hearts
to one another

if we all play

ultra-violent video games.

[ Gunfire ]

[ Gun cocks ]

The world is full of hate.

Eliminating bigotry seems
hopeless.

But there may be a way...

Pure, unadulterated violence
in an alternate reality.

[ Gunfire ]
Man: Aah!

Professor Matthew grizzard has
spent a lot of time

playing video games.

[ Gunfire ]

But
as a communications researcher,

these mediated realities are
more than just entertainment.

[ Gunfire ]

We don't necessarily distinguish
very much

between mediated reality
and real reality.

We see visual elements.

We hear things,
auditory elements.

And our bodies respond
to those elements

as if they were real.

Morgan:
Immersed in a game,

Matthew can feel
his pulse pounding

and his stomach churning from
the intensity of the experience.

[ Gunfire ]

But one day, a level in a game
downright disturbed him.

Grizzard:
So, I'm in an elevator.

And I'm looking around,

and there's a lot of armed men
in military fatigues with me.

At that point,
elevator doors open.

[ Elevator bell dings ]

And we step out into what
appears to be a crowded airport.

[ Intercom chatter,
[ Indistinct conversations ]

And at that point,
the order is given,

and we raise our guns
to point at innocent civilians

surrounding this airport.

[ Gun cocks ]

And then, we start firing.

[ Gunfire,
people screaming ]

[ People moaning, sobbing ]

Morgan: Matthew felt guilty

for murdering
so many innocent pixels.

But as a social psychologist,
he knows that guilt is a feeling

that can profoundly change
our behavior.

Grizzard:
We wanted to see if this guilt

that was elicited
from virtual environments

could cause people to think more
about real-world morality

and could actually increase
their moral sensitivity

to real-world issues.

Morgan: Media pundits
often accuse violent video games

of destroying
the morality of our youth.

Is that really true?

Matthew has a series
of test subjects play a game

where they can hurt
simulated human beings.

So, Matthew gives the order

to commit blatant crimes
against humanity.

So, we set up a situation
where people are gonna play

a violent first-person shooter

where they're engaging
in terrorist behaviors,

where they're
committing genocides

and they're killing
innocent civilians,

they're bombing areas,
they're gauging in things

that would be considered morally
reprehensible in the real world.

Morgan:
Matthew's subjects surrender

to the alternative reality
of the game.

[ Gun cocks ]

Inside their minds...

[ Gun cocks ]

They are living
through the experience

of being a mass murder.

The game is guilt-inducing...
[ Gun cocks ]

To say the least.

So we also had a control group
because we wanted to see

and distinguish
video-game-induced guilt

from real-world guilt.

So we had individuals remember
a situation

in which they felt
particularly guilty.

Morgan: Writing this out is
emotionally taxing.

It brings back painful memories,

perhaps of the time
they cheated on a lover

or lied
and got someone else in trouble

or sabotaged a friend
for selfish gain.

In every case,
real people were really hurt.

Matthew compared this group
to the murder-simulator group.

So, our findings showed
that individuals recalling

a real-world guilty experience
actually felt more guilt

but that guilt solicited
by video game

was positively associated with
increased moral sensitivity.

Morgan:
Committing virtual mass murder

gave his subjects
a stronger sense of morality.

[ Gun cocks ]

It's a surprising result,

but Matthew thinks
he knows why it's the case.

The players violated their
own personal sense of fairness.

They cannot right the wrongs
they have committed,

so they atone
with a subconscious desire

to be a better person.

I think that's
the real power of video games.

You can think of them
as kind of moral sandboxes,

as areas where we can explore
different aspects of morality

or even take viewpoints
that are opposed

to our very core of morality.

Morgan: But it's hard to imagine
everyone agreeing

to play
guilt-inducting video games.

And there will
always be sociopaths

whose bigotry spreads
through society

like a deadly virus.

Could it be that we're just
too tolerant of intolerance?

What would really happen if
we cut off the worst offenders?

Could we ever do it?

In the past century,

we've broken down
a lot of walls that divided us.

More social groups have been
accepted into the mainstream.

Segregation and prejudice are
no longer the laws of the land.

But there are still those
who think they're superior

because of their skin color,
their age, or their gender.

There may be a way to deal

with these bigots
and their bigotry...

Build walls around them.

Sociologist and physician
Nicholas christakis is taking

a bird's eye view
of human society.

From his perspective,

when bigots flourish
in a social network,

it is partly the fault
of the group itself.

Christakis: So we're embedded
in these networks.

How we act
in the world is affected

by how the people we know act

but also even
by how people we don't know act

as things ripple
through the network

and come to affect us.

Morgan: Nicholas and long-time
collaborator James Fowler are

studying how social connections
change the behavior

of the group as a whole.

Christakis: When you add
these ties between people,

the particular number of ties,
the particular pattern of ties

then confers on the group

properties it didn't
necessarily have before.

Morgan:
Patterns and wiring matter.

Think of the Internet.

It's a highly dynamic network
of computers.

If one area goes down,

the data simply move
around the blockage.

But the electrical grid is
more vulnerable.

One bad node can damage all of
its neighboring connections...

Or even bring
the whole network down.

Nicholas is
performing experiments

to see if he can re-engineer
human social networks

to be more like the Internet.

His student volunteers
form a single social network

divided
into four separate groups.

Every student's goal is to make
as much money as possible.

Okay, guys, so here's
what we're gonna do.

Each of you has a dollar
and a pad in front of you.

In a moment, I'm gonna ask you
to write "give" or "take."

You can contribute
to the collective,

or you can be a parasite
and take advantage

of the collective...
"Give" or "take."

Then you'll be asked
to reveal your choice

and to contribute your dollar
or not towards the middle.

I will double the pot,

and then we'll divide
the money equally

amongst everyone at every table.

If everybody shares,

everybody makes
a good amount of money.

If nobody shares,
nobody makes any money.

So, reveal.

All right.
You're all givers.

So make your contributions,
as well, accordingly.

And so, what we're gonna do is

we're gonna double that
and share.

Morgan: At first,
most are nice to each other

and share in the rewards.

But a few players choose
not to contribute.

When the pot is doubled,
they get more than their peers.

In these rounds,

the students cannot change
their society's social wiring.

So you're assigned
a position in the network,

and you're told,
"these are your neighbors.

These are your friends
for the next hour.

And you're stuck now interacting
with these jerks."

And you don't like it,
but all you can do is control

whether you cooperate or defect,
whether you share or take.

And what happens
after you've been sharing

and some of the people
around you are taking is

you say,
"I'm not gonna do that anymore,"

and you switching to taking,
as well.

And sharing disappears
from the system.

Cooperation goes away.

And what you find is that you
have then a society of takers.

Morgan: But now Nicholas adds
one important rule.

After each round,

each student has
the option of moving seats.

Now you can cut the ties
to the people who are defectors,

the people who are
taking advantage of you

and preferentially form ties

to other nice people
in the network,

to other cooperators.

And if you do that,

if you make that small change
in the social order,

what you find is cooperation
flourishes in the system.

Morgan: The selfish people
haven't gone away,

but the society
that everybody now lives in

has a completely
different culture.

Nicholas believes humans
and societies are

like groups of carbon atoms.

Arrange them one way,

and you get soft,
opaque graphite.

But if you arrange
those same atoms just right,

you get strong, clear,
sparkling diamond.

And so, these properties
of softness and darkness

aren't properties
of the carbon atoms.

And it's just like that
with our social groups.

The same human beings
connected different ways

gives the group
different properties.

Some corporations are
experimenting

with an open social network
architecture.

Employees are free
to break bonds

with any other employee
they don't work well with

and form new ones.

Could a similar strategy work
for our national

or even global society?

If we were all free
to move around,

would there be less hate?

Christakis: Network science
doesn't offer one prescription.

It's not as if there's
one network structure

that's optimal for everything.

What I can tell you is
that network structure matters

to lots of problems,
and understanding the rules

of social network structure
and function gives us

a new set of tools to intervene
in the world to make it better.

Morgan: We may not find
a solution to bigotry soon,

but science is
at last exposing its roots...

Our biased,
snap judgments of others,

our innate groupism,

our rigid political filters.

For now, our best tool
to fight bigotry lies

within ourselves...

The courage to walk away.

We all have bigotry inside us.

Most of us work hard to suppress
our innate prejudices.

But some don't.

And their bigotry is infectious.

The solution
to bigotry does not start

with governments and laws.

It starts with understanding
and neutralizing its source

and with you and me doing
our best to change.

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