185 - Masks

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2020

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode we explore the psychology behind why some people don't want to wear masks, why they get angry at the idea, and why they sometimes take to the streets and city council meetings to voice that anger. Four guests help us to understand how masks, during a the COVID-19 pandemic, became politicized and what we can learn from this going forward to help prevent a similar reaction when it comes time to convince to public they should get vaccinated.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Transcript

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0:00.0	Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.
0:27.0	Episode 185. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, and do me. This is an episode about why some people refuse to wear masks during a pandemic, why they get mad about it, why they are viscerally upset over the very idea of
0:57.7	masks in general. We're going to explore all that and we're going to get into the science behind it. But before we get into the
1:04.1	ends and outs of why this would be a thing, we need to lay some groundwork. And it
1:08.8	starts about two years ago when we explored on this podcast on two separate shows an idea that at the time was just
1:16.1	becoming top of mind both in political science social sciences and in public discourse within pop culture and politics, social media, meme space, all of that.
1:28.3	There are a lot of terms for it in psychology and in political science and sociology and so on. I called it tribal psychology
1:36.4	but it's also called partisanship, cultural cognition, things like that.
1:47.0	It's the idea that humans are motivated reasoners who consider the outcomes of thinking and feeling certain ways based on the goals they're
1:52.4	trying to achieve and in service of those goals, like
1:56.2	belonging, which is so vital to our survival, humans will value being good members of their
2:02.1	tribes much more than they value being good members of their tribes much more than they value being correct,
2:06.3	so much so that we will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers.
2:13.6	Now this is not entirely irrational.
2:16.0	A human alone in this world faces a lot of difficulty,
2:18.9	but being alone in the world before modern times was almost certainly a death sentence.
2:25.0	So we carry with us an innate drive to form groups, join groups, remain in those groups,
2:31.7	and oppose other groups in times of conflict.
2:35.5	There's so much to say about tribal psychology, but I think we can boil it down to four principles.
2:41.7	Let's go through them right now.
2:44.0	Principal one is that humans aren't just a social animal, we are an ultra-social animal.
2:57.5	We're a kind of primate that survives by forming and maintaining groups.
	...

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