Why Do We Turn on Innocent People?

Why do we turn on innocent people? A convincing story, a suspicious glance and suddenly everyone’s an armchair detective. But what happens when the crowd gets it completely wrong? Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens explore the psychology of false accusations, witch hunts and mob mentality, starting with Richard Jewell, the security guard hailed as a hero after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing before becoming the target of a media storm. From the Salem witch trials and the Satanic Panic to internet detectives and social media pile-ons, they investigate how a hunch snowballs into certainty. Along the way: confirmation bias, beliefs that refuse to budge, and the famous Asch conformity experiments that show how easily we join the crowd, even when the crowd is obviously wrong. Plus, Michael tackles accusations that Vsauce’s Mind Field was faked, Hannah shares her own brush with conspiracy theories, and they ask why we’re so convinced we can spot a liar when the evidence suggests we’re barely better than a coin toss. It’s a journey through outrage, misinformation and our very human enthusiasm for pointing the finger. Because once people think you’re guilty, even defending yourself can look suspicious. ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek Animator: Sam Benson Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe Producer: Simona Rata Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Science. I'm Michael Stevens.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  And I'm Hannah Frank. For no reason at all, I thought I'd do an episode about lying.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  An episode about accusations, about about false accusations, about witch hunts. That's um, I don't know, there's nothing in particular that gave me this as an inspiration, but.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Apropos of nothing.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Apropos of nothing. Let's talk about.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Here's an episode about

• 0:29Speaker 00

  traits or personalities and lying and accusing people of things that they may be innocent of.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Apropos of nothing, of nothing at all.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  As if they weren't cool enough already, some astronauts have now added cancer scientists to their CEB. They are making use of microgravity conditions in space to carry out experiments.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  That's because the same thing that lets astronauts experience weightlessness also affects how cancer cells grow, behave and respond to drugs.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  And back down on Earth, Cancer Research UK is working with astronomers to explore tumors with technologies that are typically used to map the Milky Way, which I think gives you an idea of just how complex this disease is.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  That's right. There are over 200 different types of cancer, but by pushing boundaries and embracing the latest technologies, Cancer Research UK has helped double cancer survival in the UK over the past 50 years.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  And today it is continuing to save and improve lives around the world. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/restiscience.

• 1:47Speaker 02

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• 2:18Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18 plus.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It was during the Olympics in 96 in Atlanta and security guards found this unattended backpack.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was 10 when it happened.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  But I've I've read a little bit about it since.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Go on, you tell me it. You tell me it. Because because I only, I mean, I only found out about it like two days ago.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Well, from what I remember, a guy was falsely accused for quite a while. He was like a security guard there.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  And the poor guy like really was just fingered. And and for quite a while, it was like, yeah, it was him. And when the true perpetrator or perpetrators were discovered, the guy's life had been ruined. And there wasn't nearly as much attention on like, oh, no, actually, forget everything that we said about him. So he just kind of became the bomber, the Olympic bomber. But it wasn't him at all.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. This story didn't have cut through here at all. When I came across it, I was really astounded. So for those of you who haven't heard this story before, this is Olympics 1996. There's a a security guard that that finds this unattended backpack. Officers begin clearing the area and they managed to do it really quickly. So when the bomb explodes, only one person dies. Somebody else has a heart attack. There's 111 people who are injured, but it would have been way, way, way, way, way, way, way worse had there not been the sort of this quick response. So in the first 24 hours, the security guard, a guy called Richard Jewell, he's called a hero by the press. Everyone is like really thankful to him for everything he did.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  But then, exactly as you describe, somebody calls the FBI with a tip saying that they know they know Richard Jewell and they think that he might have planted the bomb himself in order to look like a hero. And then, you know, the FBI do this complete 182 on this guy, just classify him as as a prime suspect. And then the the information gets leaked to the press and there is this massive witch hunt about this guy.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  So yeah, what I thought I would do today is talk to you about witch hunts more generally, about why we end up falsely accusing people, about why those false accusations can take hold, and about what you can possibly do to defend yourself, which is, as it turns out, not very much.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  First of all, we should say Richard Jewell didn't do it. The true perpetrator was Eric Rudolph. And the one victim was a 44-year-old woman named Alice Hawthorne. I say her name because that that story reminded me of this comedian I watched recently, who was like, you know, the worst way to die is to be the only person who died in something really huge and newsworthy. Because when people see on the news, you know, oh, a bridge collapsed. Oh, my goodness, how many people? Only one fatality. Everyone goes, oh, okay, well, God, that's not bad. And you're like, no, but it was me.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Or it was someone I love. Like, come on. It's terrible to be the one fatality in a massive tragic event because everyone goes, well, that wasn't bad.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Gosh, what a great point. What a great point.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. If you were one of a thousand.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  At the same time, there's sort of a notoriety to it. I don't know.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  There is, but how many people know the name of Alice Hawthorne? I mean, not that everyone knows the name of everyone who's died in every tragedy, but Alice Hawthorne, she was killed by a nail, a piece of shrapnel from the bomb that was planted by Eric Rudolph, not Richard Jewell.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Which we now know for sure. We now know for sure. But that's certainly not what the press was saying.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Someone called the FBI and said, I don't know, this Richard Jewell, he uh, he saved a lot of lives that day. Pretty, pretty good result for him, maybe a little too good.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  And I bet people loved that that angle because it was so, so dramatic. It was so like made for TV, which is how everyone heard about the story.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  So the guy who called was Piedmont College president Ray Cleary, who had worked with him before. But it was just a suspicion, like there wasn't sort of any evidence at all. Just this this Ray Cleary was like, hmm, I don't know. The thing is that there have actually been a number of instances in history where it hasn't just been about one person who's been accused, falsely accused, but there's been a sort of a fever that has been whipped up around false accusations. And these happen, these situations happen in particular, when there is some sort of benefit

• 7:48Speaker 01

  to the accuser rather than than to the accused. And probably the most, I mean, notorious example of this is the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. So the Gestapo, they're actually this really small organization. There's, you know, there wasn't like this sort of loads and loads and loads of them. But because there was like, there were no repercussions for false accusations. And they're sort of like, kind of seen as doing a good thing to to make an accusation. It really opened the door for people to use this to settle their personal disputes.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  So there's, you know, it was estimated that actually only 15% of Gestapo cases actually started because of some kind of surveillance, despite the fact that everybody sort of felt that they were under surveillance all the time. Most of them came from from tip-offs from from people in the public. And every single accusation, even if it was really trivial, they treated with this, this, they were meticulous about it. They were like, let's thoroughly investigate this. Let's treat it as our prime suspect. Let's sort of, you know, guilty until proven innocent. And it's estimated that around 40% of those accusations were somehow personally motivated.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  So so for example, there were a married couple. The wife accused the husband of carrying out illegal abortions, which is like Gestapo territory. So he ends up getting arrested and getting imprisoned. But he says his wife has this this motive, which is that he had inadvertently passed on a sexually transmitted disease to his wife. And while he was having this love affair.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  And so that was the reason why she was getting her revenge. Anyway, in the end, he had served eight months in prison before this was was established as the actual motive.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Basically, there's lots of evidence of people using this stuff for personal gain. In the end, the Gestapo realized that actually these these people who are making these false accusations were were wasting loads of their time. The Ministry of Justice in Berlin wrote this letter in 1943 saying, the denouncer is the biggest scoundrel in the whole country. I think they finally worked out that that maybe just letting people accuse their neighbors of of anything wasn't a good idea.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Besides wasting the Gestapo's time, I guess you also create a weird society where everyone is kind of on eggshells around everyone else and.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  People, uh, false accusations really highlight the monopoly of force that the authorities have. It's like, I need to get back at you. And the only weapon I have is the authorities, because they can actually do something. So I'm gonna have to just use them, grab a hold of them however I can.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  The thing I think is interesting about that is how easy it is for people to suddenly slip into wanting to do extremely dark things to their, to their family and neighbors. Knowing the full consequences of what they are, uh, uh, of the, the full repercussions of, of, of the sort of the, the, the chain of events that are unfolding. It's just that when you create the right environment to do so, all of this stuff ends up coming out. You know, the Salem witch trials is another example, right? They're like, these people, uh, in, in exactly the same way, you would get these false accusations flying around all over the place. Because it's like, oh, you know, I quite, I quite want to have my neighbor's horse. So

• 11:33Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll make this false accusation and then I can make a sweep in.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  If you, if you just try to take the horse yourself, that's a big risk. But if you can diffuse that, that risk amongst everyone else and amongst the authorities and the police and the clergy, then it feels a little less bad. The guilt isn't all on you. And you do that through a public accusation. Now that horse should be mine and like everyone kind of agrees. So I don't really feel bad that I had to call you a witch to do it because I, I didn't, I, I was only one of the 12 people who threw you in the river. Okay? I'm only a 12th respons-

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. Does that make you worry there a little bit? But actually there are all of these people who would willingly throw you under a bus. Literally as well as metaphorically and, and only don't because it's not easy to. That does sort of make me worry about society more broadly and generally.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  I get, yeah. I'm trying to think like, yes, but I, that's, but I've always lived in that world. I don't know. That's the way we all are.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  I don't know a world where like God shows up in the courtroom and is like, nah, it didn't happen. And we all go, oh, okay. So there's always that fear, not just of a, a false accusation that's, that's made on purpose as revenge, but just a, an innocently mistaken accusation. Like someone thought they saw you do something.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Right, totally.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  They don't, they're not even confident in it, but it's the only lead anyone has. And gosh, that can be pretty bad.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Right. Another really famous case, lots of these are from America. Um, I wonder why that is. The, the daycare satanic panic. Do you know about the satanic panic?

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I was a kid during it.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Why are you?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, it was like every song had some kind of satanic message. Every act of vandalism a teenager did at night was because of Satan. And I thought it was going to be a much bigger part of my adult life and it just isn't. It was this really strange panic where suddenly everyone you don't know is, is, is likely to be influenced by some satanic motivation.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  So part of the reason why this started was that there was a preschool case. So this is a McMartin preschool. It's in Manhattan Beach and, uh, it was this, you know, family owned preschool. There's this little two year old boy who was attending that preschool in 1983. And one day he came home and he had like, he had a bit of a sore bum, basically. And the mom was like, what on earth is going on here? And, uh, he said that the, the, the, the male provider of the nursing home had taken his temperature by rectally, right? By using a thermometer. And the boy's mom was like really worried that, that her son had been sexually abused. So she, she goes into the police.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And then when the, the police interview the boy, he doesn't say anything about there being any abuse or anything. But the mom is like, no, no, no. When we were at home, he told me and I'm, I'm, I'm telling you for sure, this is something that has happened. So what ends up happening, the local police who, who, you know, took her at her word, as I think you, you should with an accusation that's that serious. They then send letters to 200 parents, uh, across the preschool, asking them to like question their children. The adults are there trying to get the children to say the things that they're looking for. And so the children are like, okay, well, maybe it was, maybe it's something like this. Maybe it's something like this.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Sort of coming up with, with all of these different kind of things until they've noticed that the adults are sort of latching on to something, at which point they start expanding their stories. And very soon that there's these like incredible stories of animal sacrifices and blood drinking and cannibalism and live burials that are coming out from, from these children, not using those words, but those words are sort of interpreted by the adults who are, who are then questioning them. Then it just sort of takes off and has a life of its own. You've got stories of like mutilation of corpses and secret rooms and trapdoors and like devils and witches. Um, and in the end, the, the, the law enforcement identified 350 children as, as victims.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  All seven of these providers of this, this, this nursing, um, facility as though they're these like satanic ritual abusers. By the way, none of this happened. None of this happened.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, there's a reason I wasn't allowed to wear black shoes, right? Black sneakers, you know, my mom wouldn't get me because I think it's smacked of the devil and being a part of some organization that was satanic or siding with the devil. Yeah. And it was like, oh, wow. It's pretty scary. And, and now I own black shoes. And I'm like, no, actually I just got black shoes.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Hang on, let me see your T-shirt today. This looks, looking pretty satanic from here.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  This is an art deco depiction of Rutherford's alpha particle experiment on the gold atoms.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Or is it, right? What does it really mean? What sinister motives are there here? I mean, there's something really, really special about that time period. The nineties were a time where, first of all, information could spread really quickly. It had for a while. But we had suddenly like an interstate highway system and access to cars that allowed people to move around a lot, that allowed ideas to spread a lot, but we weren't yet at a place where security had caught up. You couldn't have CCTV cameras everywhere. You didn't have

• 17:27Speaker 00

  keypad locks and, and everything recorded. So you, you also find like a lot of serial killers in that zone. It, in the second half of the 1900s where people can kind of go around and quickly evade, but they can also kind of blend into these big cities. And yet you don't quite have the DNA technology or security camera technology that would make catching them easy. Same goes for a lot of these accusations that are sort of hard to prove, but they're also hard to disprove. There's a, a human tendency to take the safe route and just assume that the worst is true because, you know, then I won't feel guilty.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Right. And this, I, I think you're absolutely right. That you're also, you're tapping into people's really darkest fears. This is also a period of time where you move away from single income households to two parents being at work. You have just the idea of sort of daycare centers is actually a pretty new phenomenon at this point.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  You've got mothers who are dropping off their tiny little babies and really worried about the environment that they're going to be in. And you kind of put those two things together. The underlying fear of society, along with the opportunity, there's no wonder that something like this really ends up catching.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  Exactly. Right. Yeah. I mean, shared childcare, allo parenting is as old as our species, but for the people caring for your child to be essentially strangers, employees as opposed to aunts and uncles and neighbors. That really hit, uh, like a, a, a major inflection point around that time. And so those fears come about because it's really different. We, we, we didn't. Grow up prepared for that. And so we react to it. And it, and you know, sometimes it's helpful and sometimes it goes overboard.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so, okay, if this is the reason why false accusations start, sometimes for personal gain, sometimes because of misunderstanding, sometimes because of personal fear. The question is, how do they then end up taking hold? If they're so obviously wrong, if they're not grounded in fact, how can it possibly be that suspicion can end up becoming certainty? How does it end up that people are completely sure this person must be guilty or this, this particular thing must be happening? And this is where the fact that humans are a complete wobbly mess of biases really ends up coming into play. So probably the first thing is confirmation bias. As soon as you've decided that somebody is guilty, everything they subsequently do ends up confirming your suspicion.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  And the problem is, is that the way that people act when they're innocent and defending themselves can look a lot like the way that guilty people act.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Going red in the face. All of those kinds of things would be equally as true of somebody who had been accused incorrectly as it might be of somebody who actually was genuinely guilty.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's hard to tease out that difference. And a lot of the like clues that you hear about are really soft. It's like, oh, watch if their eyes look to the left. And it's like, oh, brother, you know, there's a lot of other reasons why someone's eyes might do what they're doing. You've got that confirmation bias and you've got even just the suspicion is the kind of thing that'll snowball, creates this feedback loop. As soon as Richard Jewell is called a person of interest, he becomes more suspicious. He hasn't even been accused of it yet. And by the way, person of interest is an incredibly euphemistic phrase. Like,

• 21:07Speaker 00

  you're, you're just of interest. We are interested in you. We're not saying anything else. But yet, through this like euphemistic treadmill, that word comes to mean he did it. Right? Suddenly, just the littlest shifts in how language is used change how everyone approaches the question and the guy's guilt. And suddenly this guy's like, whether he did it or not, he kind, he kind of needs to be punished. He needs to be off the streets, right? These kinds of things spiral.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  I was thinking about Amanda Knox here. Do you remember when Amanda Knox was arrested? She, in the, when she was in the police station, she was doing things like handstands and cartwheels. And even the police in that situation were saying, okay, well, that's the, that's the behavior of a guilty person. There's no way an innocent person would be doing this. Except the problem is, is that you can't actually decide what is guilty behavior and what is not guilty behavior, because different people behave in different ways.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah, we are all different people. There might be a way Hannah behaves when she's guilty. And there might be a way I behave when I'm guilty. But there isn't a way humans behave when they're guilty. And so, right, you, you try to find patterns and come to conclusions maybe more quickly than you should.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  So the confirmation bias in the case of, of Richard Jewell is like, okay, well, he was a guy who found the bomb and he helped to clear the area. And that, on the one hand, is like, oh, well, that's just somebody who's, who's doing their job and trying to help.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  But as soon as you decide that he is actually the bomber, well, then it's like, well, he, he wanted to be the hero. So he knew exactly what was going on. He planted the bomb in the first place so that he could discover it and, and receive praise. After the bombing, he, um, he said that he would like to, you know, he wanted to meet President Clinton. He didn't mind the media attention. And then as soon as people decided that, okay, no, actually, he's guilty, they recast that same behavior of him being like, oh, you know, thank you for like treating me like a hero. As the possible motive, that he was like, oh, no, he actually wanted to meet Clinton all along. That was the reason why he did it in the first place. There was also the fact that actually, nobody remembered selling

• 23:22Speaker 01

  him any bomb making materials at a hardware store. They'd sort of asked around. But people managed to explain that way by saying, well, okay, you know, a salesperson wouldn't remember every sale. Maybe he was sort of covering his tracks. Maybe he was doing it in different places. And that, I think, is like, really demonstrates this idea of confirmation bias, that even when you don't have supporting evidence, you can sort of see that there's a way around to make it compatible with your theory, where you're saying, this is what I think happened, and making the evidence fit the story rather than the other way around.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  I think there's probably a kind of bias we have where an accusation or a theory is convincing, and then the lack of evidence against it doesn't change how we feel. What I'm bringing this up off of a specific example I heard from some lawyer who was like, you know, anything you say to the police is usually bad. Even if you're completely innocent and you didn't do it, and you've got an alibi, and you can say, I couldn't have done it. I was across town getting gas at a, at a gas station at that time. You've opened yourself

• 24:34Speaker 00

  up to this question of, okay, well, prove it. And you're like, okay. So you go to the gas station and they don't have any security cam footage because they weren't working that day and you don't have the receipt. Now it's actually suspicious that you can't prove your story. And if you had just said nothing, you would have been better off.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's called belief perseverance.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  So you've got this belief and it's just really hard for that belief to be changed. It's easier to, to keep structuring the same belief than it is to change it, which makes sense. It's a, it's a big cognitive demand to change your beliefs. But it's, it's almost trivial and, and automatic to reinforce your current beliefs.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Right. To reverse engineer whatever evidence comes forward as, as, as a way to support the thing that you've already decided.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  There's also informational cascades that happen here as well. When you've got one individual person who is being accused, one person has a hunch, another person has a hunch, there's a little bit of information here, there's a little bit of information over there. And then all of a sudden, it looks like this overwhelming amount of, of data and evidence, despite the fact that actually individually, none of these things are particularly important or credible.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I mean, this, I think is something that happens in particular with like the TikTok swarms, when there is, um, uh, you know, a, a missing person or a murder, and then the TikTok detectives want to try and solve the case. This happened with the Boston bomber, I think, didn't it?

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Where people on Reddit believed that they had like pinpointed the, the, the culprit despite it being completely wrong.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Hello, The Rest is Science listeners. This is Richard Amorina here from The Rest is Entertainment.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  And right now, we are obsessed with Hannah Fry's performance on The Celebrity Traitors. She is not allowed to say a word about the show, and I've told her not to until the final airs. But Richard and I have no such restraint.

• 26:37Speaker 03

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  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18 plus.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Have you ever been falsely accused of anything?

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Um, let's see. You know, I've been falsely accused of being the most handsome man in the world. I'm not, despite how many people keep saying it. No, um, I'd say the, the, the sort of false accusation that I get the most, and it's not even that many people, but it's accusations that the Mindfield show was fake. And I don't know how to like prove this, um, because I mean, all I can say is, well, look, we're, we're just replicating things that have been shown in study after study, after experiment, after experiment. But there are people who are like really certain of things. They'll,

• 29:21Speaker 00

  they'll, they'll say things like a website where TV shows are reviewed and, and Mindfield has one review there where a guy is like, this is obviously fake because you have to get everyone to sign a release before you even film. They all knew they were in an experiment. And I'm like, well, no, that's not how it works. People sign the release afterwards. They'd sign one before, like, I acknowledge I'm going to be recorded, blah, blah, blah, here are the known risks and da, da, da, da, da. And then after they've, they've gone through the entire experience, we say, okay, so here's what happened and here's why the results are really fascinating and insightful, and you shouldn't be embarrassed. Uh, you have really helped us demonstrate and understand human behavior. And now here's a release and they can say no. And the people who are in the

• 30:05Speaker 00

  show all said, yeah, I, I want to be in. And I don't know, do I need to just like constantly get on camera and explain why things happened? It, it can get confusing because there are moments where the editors would edit things and like switch moments in time or, or jump through moments of time. So someone's cup is on a table and in the next shot it's not. And so that's proof that it's all, they're all just actors. Instead of like cheaply hiring people for, you know, a hundred bucks a day to come do a study. Instead, we like hired actors and had them learn lines-

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Train them and yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  -make human behavior. And I'm like, no, the editor just cut that moment when they put the cup down on the floor because it was boring. Or they wanted to heighten the, the tension. And so they made that moment last a little bit longer. And that's why you see that one scene twice. It was very, it's very frustrating. I would have no interest in having people pretend to do what we already know humans already do naturally. That's the only one I can think of right now where I'm like, oh, please, guys.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  I think that's it. Humans are an absolute mess. Like, we cannot make consistent, unbiased decisions for Toffy. Like, we're all over the shop. You really don't have to try very hard to, to get some really interesting results.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  No, and we like to feel like we have access to special information. Like, I know that you did something wrong because I, I can see through your lies. And if you, no matter how hard you try to explain all of their issues, it's, it's more important to them to have that knowledge and to be right about something that's being hidden from them. And so, anything you do to try to help bring people towards the truth is just going to get turned into more armor for their position. Their identity is wrapped up in this accusation they've made.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  The other problem with all of this is that one, once this idea starts to cut, to take hold, once, you know, you've got belief persistence and confirmation bias and informational cascades, there's also the problem that people are not very good at sticking their neck out and disagreeing with mob mentality. So there's a really amazing experiment that, um, that I think demonstrates this really nicely. This is in Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  They got a group of participants to do what they thought was a vision test. And what you do is you show them three lines and they're obviously different lengths. And then you ask them which one matches a target line. Okay. And I mean, as with all psychology experiments, it's like the actual test is not the thing that they think it is. Because what ends up happening is that everyone else in the group, apart from the subject themselves, has been told to give the wrong answer. So it's really simple, right? There's, there's one line that very clearly matches the target line and two that clearly don't. And yet, when everyone in the room is like, oh, well, that one matches, the, the people who are being tested start to doubt what they

• 33:08Speaker 01

  themselves are seeing. And that, in fact, actually, in this particular experiment, which was admittedly in the 1950s, three quarters of the participants went along with the obviously false consensus at least once. They're like, they're not able to say, guys, I don't think that that's, I don't think that that's right.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, and, and that wasn't just one study. That's been repeated over and over again, including in an episode of Mindfield.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 33:38Speaker 00

  We did the ASH conformity study and it's just amazing to see it happen. I mean, I think so much is going on in people's minds. But yeah, we brought in like, you know, one person and we had five employees of the production pretend to also be showing up to do it. And they would lie and say, oh, well, obviously line C is the same length as the target. And we would do close up, secret cam footage of the, of the subject who's like, wait, what? And I think sometimes they just thought, maybe I misunderstood the instructions. And they would just go along with what all the Confederates were saying because I think in some ways they thought, oh, does it really matter? You know, and, and, and they thought, oh, maybe I don't get it,

• 34:19Speaker 00

  or maybe I'm not seeing this right. But I don't want to, I don't want the attention of standing out. So I'm just going to go along with it. And when that happens on a, a TV show, it's funny. But when it happens in real life, it can, it can be bad.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And I think that actually, in a lot of ways, social media makes this whole thing way worse. So there is, um, this article called Moral Outrage in the Digital Age by this psychologist called Molly Crockett. She says, obviously outrage is like as old as civilization itself. But she kind of makes this argument about how digital media fuels it. I mean, look, this is not a surprise, right? I think all of us have had this, this literal experience of this. There was one point a few years ago, maybe eight years ago, where I had this realization that I think that I was getting addicted to outrage. That I just loved the storms that would happen on like Twitter so much that I was like constantly looking for like the feeling of being outraged.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  But anyway, her conclusion in this paper are that what, uh, what's, what's social media does is it inflates the sort of triggering stimuli of, of outrage, right? That you're like, okay, this person has done this. Uh, it's just so easy to find even the smallest little thing. And then, uh, it's really easy for that to spread. But it also reduced the costs. So if you are anonymous on the internet, it's really easy to like join in on a pylon, whereas actually in person, you might be, you might be more cautious about stopping that. But then also that it amplifies the personal benefits of it, that people have made their entire careers just by being outrageous and doing outrageous things and making outrageous accusations, um, of other

• 36:01Speaker 01

  individuals. I do, um, I do think all of that stuff is, uh, is really noticeable.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Yes. And one thing I've been thinking about for, for years is the fact that the costs of accusations and, and gossip are lower online. But also, there's a big difference between real life and online when it comes to showing disagreement and disengagement. Okay. So if someone is pushing a theory that is wrong, and I don't see it, well, then I don't leave a comment. But if I do see it and I don't like it, I swipe away and I haven't left a comment. So the difference between he hasn't heard and he disagrees is nothing. There's no way to show,

• 36:51Speaker 00

  I don't like this, but by watching it, by having it show up in my feed, I've given it a view. So like, no matter what my reaction is, I'm just giving engagement. Whereas in the real world, if someone is acting in a way that is, uh, antisocial or dangerous, we have so many even like paralinguistic and like body language type reactions that everyone picks up on. And those don't come through on the internet where we're disembodied and all we have is, did he leave a comment or not? Instead, someone's acting in a way that is, is, is negatively valence to

• 37:31Speaker 00

  everyone around. They move away, they change the subject, the way they look, their body posture, all of that conveys that message. But online, there's, there aren't that many ways to do it. You're either saying, I, I disagree in a comment, or you're saying, I do agree. And it's just so much more flat that we lose a lot of those more subtle- More like non-consciously convincing ways of showing how we feel.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  It's the nuances, right? But then I also think that in that sort of flattened, simplified space, I think that there's very limited ways for you to demonstrate who you are as a person. And I think actually, a lot of the time, being visibly outraged is like individuals signaling to others what kind of person they are, right? It's like them sort of like framing themselves. I mean, we're sort of moving slightly away from false accusations here into outrage. But I think that the two are ultimately connected in a lot of ways. So actually, on this topic, there's, there's a, a study that came out of Northwestern University uh, about how outrage ends up helping misinformation to spread online.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And they did this analysis that, that found that posts from misinformation sources were more likely than those from trustworthy news organizations to, to elicit this sort of moral outrage. And that people were more likely to reshare them without reading them. So it's like the act of being outraged, the act of like turning against a particular individual group of people is the thing that, that ends up being the sort of social cohesion that, that, that allows things to spread more quickly and easily. But on the flip side of this, if you get too much exposure to outrage inducing content, it means that it creates fatigue in people that just makes them not want to participate in political action.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  And I think if I'm honest with you, that's sort of where I am right now. Like I'm obsessed with politics. I'm like non-stop gobble up politics, but I think that I am fatigued by the amount of outrage that there is around it.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's only so long you can feel so powerless before you're like, all right, I'm actually going to move on to something that I can control. And maybe that's my own life, my own neighborhood, you know?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Like I, I, I'm just, I can't just be unsettled about stuff that actually doesn't change my day.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Right. And didn't you say this before, that like the amount of information that you're getting about the wider world is way more than we ever should have, than we ever, ever were designed to hear.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I don't know what we were designed for, but I can certainly say that like, we still live in the telegraph age. You know, the smartphone is just a better telegraph. That difference between before the telegraph and after is basically a bigger deal than B C A D, right? It, it was, can I know what's going on a thousand miles away as though I'm there or not? Suddenly, like you need to be worried about the fact that something happened in Ohio. Yet it doesn't actually, uh, knowing about that, doesn't change your plans for the day or give you information to solve a problem you're required to solve or anything. It's just a brand new kind of life that we can live in what I call a heterotopia.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  It's another place and it's this place that's on screens and in our minds. And we can be really active there and we can, and face a lot of challenges and we can get a lot of, you know, meaning from it. And yet it's a different place.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  It is, is a very much a different place.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Can I ask, um, I forgot to ask, have, have you ever been falsely accused of something?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Um, Michael, I'm an absolute goody two shades. Are you joking me?

• 41:22Speaker 00

  No, but that's a perfect person to falsely accuse.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  You're right. People have accused me of the scamdemic. Do you remember I told you this story?

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, people have accused me of being part.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  That you got so many things right.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  It's quite convenient that I made a program about a flu-like pandemic spreading through the world about a year before it actually happened. And do you know what? When it came to that, once that spread like wildfire online. And I just didn't bother to defend it because, because I knew all of this stuff about, um, false accusations. There comes a point where really nothing you say will be, uh, will be used to reverse people's opinions.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  The innocence, irrespective of whether it's true or not, will end up looking like guilt. Um, I think the other thing that's, that's part of this is that people think that they're really good at telling when somebody is lying. But they're really not, right? Like all the evidence says that we absolutely cannot tell at all. There's these meta-studies that, that look at our ability to distinguish lies from honesty. And actually, on average, we get it correct 54% of the time, which is, you know, it's a coin flip. It's a coin flip. We're inclined more towards truth. So we tend to believe people, but we definitely believe that we are much better at detecting lies than we actually are.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  And I can only imagine how much worse this would be if it's not only the internet and random strangers on the internet, but law enforcement too, who are really behind this false accusation.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh. I mean, imagine being the woman whose baby was eaten by a dingo.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Classic case of like, we all thought it was just hilarious what she was saying. And, and, and it certainly didn't happen. This is a story that I don't know enough details about. I did watch a documentary about it years ago. That whole phrase, a dingo ate my baby, became a catchphrase. And everyone thought, no, she did it. She committed the, the crime.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Most horrific crime.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  We find out, of course, much later, that it probably actually was a dingo. I don't know if, if we, we all kind of bond during a pile on and gravitate towards the more dramatic, um, norm violating versions of stories. Like if, if a dingo did it, then it's just kind of sad and we don't want to live in a world where that happens. But if it was this one particular mother, oh, we can all hate her together and become more close. So the, the, the, the false accusation grows.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Right. Unites the rest of us while leaving this one individual feeling really isolated. The story with Richard Jewell is he spent 88 days in total as a suspect. And nearly three months, he had this media siege. There were reporters who were camped outside of the flat that he shared with his mother. There was the FBI who was searching their home, who were taking their belongings. He had his face on every single news channel. This guy had done nothing wrong, by the way. You know, late night comedians were making him a punchline. He was, uh, in the end, he, he was formally cleared in October 1996. But by that point, I mean, the damage had been done. All of his life had already completely fallen apart. In the end, he sued lots of media organizations, NBC, CNN, um, New York Post.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  People didn't apologize. I mean, not that the apologies were done, do it either. Um, it just, uh, he said also, by the way, that the settlements that he got from, um, from, from suing people, 73% of it went to his lawyers and to tax. And he used some of it to buy his mother a place to live. Um, but you know, he, he did the cases because he, he really wanted to, to make sure that the truth was told.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  The thing is, is that these, the repercussions of false accusations could be really, really harsh. So there was one study where they had 30 participants who had, uh, who had, had been on the receiving end of a false accusation. And many of them felt that they had permanent changes to their personality as a result of it, right? Anxiety and, um, and paranoia. I think it, it ends up making you just extremely mistrustful of other people if you end up being on the receiving end of this kind of thing.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Well, yeah. And you know what? It's almost like Russian nesting dolls because the person who makes an accusation can then themselves get accused of offering a false accusation. So now they're being accused of something that they may not have done. And everyone just winds up getting accused and, and, and, and feeling guilty and, and, and, and having guilt, you know, suspected of them. Even if they initially were the ones who were assigning guilt. It's a, it's a mess.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And that is why I think erring on the side of properly investigating accusations, but innocent until proven guilty, I think that is the, uh, that, that is the, the sensible way forward for things.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Yes. There's a reason that method is so famous.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Right. There really is. And I think the really key thing about the Jewell story is that it was leaked to the press. And once it gets leaked to the press, this thing can take on a life of its own. And I think this is, you know, as you say, right? There is a reason why law enforcement don't release the names of suspects unless they absolutely have to. They try and keep things, you know, under wraps for as long as possible. Because you don't want to be in a situation where you are doing this to an innocent party, where you are essentially convicting an innocent party without trial or without due process.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  And on the flip side, you don't want to be in a situation where you're not taking accusations seriously and that somebody could be doing something like having a satanic ritual with children across an entire country simultaneously and get away with it because you don't want to, you don't want to say the wrong thing.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  That's what I always say.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  I think here's the thing about all of this, right? I think that this is something that our, that culture is completely fascinated by. You know, I think the number of crime documentaries, the number of like murder investigations, the number of dramatic stories and novels that have been written about this idea of like whodunnits and accusations and false accusations and so on and so on and witch hunts and everything. I think this is a really enduring part of our culture. It can take quite a dark turn. Have you come across the game Mafia, Michael?

• 48:02Speaker 00

  It sounds familiar, but no, tell me.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  It's sort of a dinner party game where you have a large group of people and you have a small number of people who have complete information. They're part of the mafia. They know who each other are, but they are unknown to the rest of the, rest of the table.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And over the course of the game, essentially people have to try and work out who they are. So the whole thing was set up as like a psychological experiment to see if a small number of people could control a situation just by allowing misinformation and false accusations to spread out amongst other people. Right, this is like, we're talking, you know, Soviet Russia. This is the, the point of when this was made. It was in the psychology department of Moscow State University in 1987. This particular game, uh, which I think demonstrates all of these points so acutely, ended up, um, sort of spreading like wildfire outside of the classroom,

• 49:03Speaker 01

  outside of the original setting. No publisher, no advertising campaign, just, you know, people playing this game and passing it on, which I think does demonstrate just how intrigued we are by these ideas, you know, as, as a sort of cultural phenomenon.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  That's right. It, it happens on the playground every day and sometimes it's about nothing. But I think almost all the time, it's rarely mainly about justice and the truth. It's about identity. It's about expressing who we all are. Hey, in that crime story, I think that it was so and so. And that's, shows something about me and how I think and how I feel. And I'm on this team or I'm on that team. And it's, and very few people are on the team of truth, right? They're on the team of these values, this perspective. And it's how we not only show who we are, but it's how we figure out who we are.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Tell you what, Michael, there are some people on the team of truth. And it's us and the people who listen to the rest of the science. Cause, uh, cause that's what we're here for. We're bringing you truth bombs, left, right and center twice a week. It's delivered to your screens and we will be back later this week with yet another truth bomb for you. With field notes coming up.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  So, uh, don't finger Richard Jewell over these truth bombs. It's a hundred percent Hannah and I, we deserve the blame and the credit.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Michael, you know that that means something quite different in the UK.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, what? Fingered? I live in a 1930s pulp comic. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

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