Performative virtue signaling rewires your brain
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jonathan Haid, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto, joins Dr. Kelly to talk about the growing problem of conformity on campus, and the neurobiological evidence behind it. Dr. Haid and his co-author, Kevin W. Walkman, discuss the neurobiology of conformity and how it impacts the development of the brain.
Transcript
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Say you're a student in university with a professor with some views that, well, just don't
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align with yours. Did you ever consider pretending to hold the same views just to get by? Say to ace
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a test or a paper? Psychology researchers Forrest Rome and Kevin Walkman asked over 1,452 students
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whether they have ever done the same. Their study centered around the question, what happens to
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identity formation when belief is replaced by the adherence to orthodoxy? So we do believe that
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the long-term consequences of the conformity are real and that they go deeper than just like a
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fitting in situation. So when young adults consistently silence or reshape parts of
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themselves to meet the external expectations that we're talking about on the university campus,
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it does reshape a sense of identity at a developmental stage where authenticity and autonomy are supposed
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to be consolidating. And it matters because if students conform to avoid conflict or to gain
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approval, they end up with what we call identity foreclosure. And so that's adopting identities
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that are handed to them rather than ones that they're genuinely testing themselves. So this can
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create fragility in adulthood and where one's identity feels conditional upon approval rather
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than being rooted in actual internal conviction. And so repeatedly suppressing authentic expression
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does reinforce certain neural pathways that we're starting to learn more about. So Forrest and I are more
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into the psychological side of things, but we've been reaching out and learning more about the
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neurobiological issues. And so these stress responses are actually something that we need to
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factor in as well. So conformity doesn't just change behavior. It actually rewires the brain to
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prioritize external validation over self-regulation. And that's something that does have long-term mental
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health risks. So sustained conformity and it can lead to anxiety, depression and burnout.
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Roman Walkman also note that conformity bleeds into relationships and can even contribute to the
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feeling of loneliness. So people who live with, you know, this false sense of performative self often
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report a sense of emptiness or loss of meaning or even resentment later in life. So it's not just
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what we're experiencing with the kids on campus. It's we're predicting that this actually is going to be
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tougher than later on the road. Wow. Yeah. I would just add that we're interested in this on a personal
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individual level, how it impacts the psychological development of individual people, but also the
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ramifications of that developmental impingement on a larger social scale. So for individuals,
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I see it as having two main impacts. One is it makes it, it interferes with people's process of
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developing an internal moral framework, like being able to determine for themselves what's right and
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what's wrong. And that's difficult. Like that's a problem on different levels, but it also messes with
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people's ability to think critically. If they're just used to either internalizing and regurgitating
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certain progressive, I would say even radical talking points, they're not really sifting through
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information themselves and developing the ability to discern between truth and untruth. And on a
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personal level, it's an issue for the reasons Kevin just described, but on a larger social level,
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it's an issue particularly because it, without an internal framework guiding you and without the sense of
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agency and autonomy that comes from thinking for yourself, people are very susceptible to ideologies
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that are designed to fragment society, to erode social cohesion, to radicalize people in different
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ways towards the left and the right of the political spectrum. So it actually has implications,
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not to sound hyperbolic, but that's the stuff of civilizational decline.
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You know, we've also, one of the really, um, alarming keys that we're starting to, um, uh,
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realize here is that, um, on a relational level, this conformity fosters really shallow connections.
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Um, so friendships and professional relationships built on this sort of appeasement rather than honesty,
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they really do lack true intimacy. And this is creating, um, uh, just, uh, um, more of the,
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more of a tendency to have like these, the depression and anxiety and a lack of trust in other people.
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We're learning that a lot of these students don't even trust their best friends because they're so
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used to this performative virtue signaling that it really, because the consequences go beyond now,
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um, uh, the classroom, it's now in society on the campus itself.
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I'm not sure who coined the term. I think of it as originating with Jonathan Haidt, the social
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psychologist, the crisis of meaning. But I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's
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going on. And of course we're, of course we're in a crisis of meaning if people aren't actually
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learning to figure out what's meaningful for themselves. But if there are criticisms, one of
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them is that, well, human beings have always conformed and always been likely to try to, you know,
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fit into a group and it's true. There are evolutionary biological reasons for conformity
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and young people have always been especially susceptible to it. I think, yes, it's definitely
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on a new scale. And I think one of the reasons is that there's almost zero viewpoint diversity on
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campuses, at least in the U S so people would conform into their groups originally, but those
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groups could be young Republicans, young Democrats. There was a variety of interests
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represented that people could conform to, so to speak. And now, I mean, colleges have always leaned
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left at least here for the most part, but you would be really hard pressed to find a conservative or even
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a centrist perspective on our elite, the campuses of our elite institutions. And so there's no debate,
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there's no pushback and there's no dialogue. Really, the discourse is dominated by, in my opinion,
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very radical progressive ideologies. So it's new in that sense. Like, yes, conformity has always
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existed and it always will exist, but it hasn't been mandated to this degree in our society before.