Hidden Brain - Episode 36: Science of Deception

Episode Date: June 28, 2016

This week on Hidden Brain, we find out what makes humans of all ages cheat. Plus in Stopwatch Science, Dan Pink comes armed with studies on how our social context influences our cheating habits.

The Hidden Brain. Revealing patterns of the mind. Please do not be alarmed. The adults in my life know where I am. They practice something called free range parenting. We've gone out with them. We've talked them out across the street. We've observed them.

You know, it's not like we somehow drop them off in the middle of a jungle and said, fed for yourselves, kid. But the state has now set the Matees a letter saying what they've done is unsubstantiated child neglect. The Matees say the county's applying a law that says you can't leave a young child alone in a car or building. To them, that law can be stretched to be up anywhere, playgrounds, walking open school, and to us, that's Apple's and oranges.

Is what I'm doing messing up my kid? That's the question many parents ask, and it's the subject of today's hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vidantham and I too am a parent. The new slips we heard from W USA 9 and DC's Fox 5 local news are of the Matee family in Silver Spring, Maryland. Daniel and Alexander Matee have allowed their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter to walk one mile home from a park without adult supervision. They believe in free-range parenting, and that's pretty much the opposite

of helicopter parenting. The idea is you teach your children to be independent instead of providing close supervision at all times. Parents in both camps will tell you they are simply doing their best to make good decisions for their children every day, but sometimes the decisions that parents make for children can have unintentionally negative consequences. NPR science correspondent John Hamilton recently had a story about one such parent making one such choice. I asked him to join me in the studio to talk about the story of a Tennessee mother named Juniper Russo.

John, thanks for joining me. Pleasure to be here. You did this wonderful story recently for morning edition about this Tennessee mother. Can you tell me about her? Well I was interested in somebody whose views on something had changed. So this is a woman who, when she started out, she got pregnant and she wanted to do everything just perfect for her unborn child. And so she was an organic and natural. She describes herself as a crunchy mom. So she was doing all the things that crunchy moms do to try to take care of themselves and ensure

the best for their kids. And she genuinely had the best interest of her child at heart as she was doing these things. Absolutely. And when her child was born, one of the decisions she made was she didn't think she wanted to get her child vaccinated because she was concerned that vaccines might do some kind of harm to her child. Is it because there was sort of an unnatural kind of thing? They were putting in toxic and foreign substances into your body? Was that her concern? Part of it was a fear that she described of toxic substances,

bad things happening because of vaccine, but there was something else too. And I have a little piece of tape here that where she explains her point of view. I wanted to live in the kind of world where it was safe to always have babies naturally and where you could expect your children to survive to adulthood without necessarily needing modern medicine.

So you can kind of hear that she wants to believe she's raising her child in a kind of utopian world. And again, this is wishing the best. And so what I find really interesting here is, of course, this is not a parent who is callous about their child. This is not a parent who is neglectful of anything. It's the opposite. It's a parent who is deeply involved and wants the best thing for their child and makes this decision that runs contrary to

what public health officials tell us all the time. What public health officials say, but of course she's hearing from a group of people who are very concerned about a possible link between vaccination and autism, and she is terribly afraid that her daughter might grow up to have autism. So she decided eventually to get her child vaccinated? Yeah, and a number of things happened. She began to read the literature and questioned a little bit some of the echo chamber she was in.

But the other thing that happened was as her daughter began to get a little bit older, she started not to meet certain developmental milestones. Now she hadn't gotten vaccinated after this point. No, she had not been vaccinated up to this point. And so what Juniper knew was that there was no way vaccines could be causing any sort of problems. And it was interesting how she talked about when she first

learned what was going on. Here's a little piece of tape where she talks about it. I had like this immediate crisis when the doctor told me that she had developmental delays because I thought I had done everything absolutely right. And developmental delays are for those parents who do everything wrong. And so of course the irony here is that she's trying her best to protect her child and she's doing something that's in the child's best interest and it turns out not to be the case.

Not at all. And eventually her child did go on to get a diagnosis of autism. Now along the way, she began having the greatest thing she feared was a child with autism, and now she has one. She began to rethink two things. One was her thoughts about autism. It wasn't the terrible thing she had imagined might be, wasn't the worst thing ever. She also began to think, oh, this is not necessarily the thing that happens if you're the wrong kind of parent. And so she started to get her child vaccinated and eventually she got all caught up. So I'm fascinated by this, John, because I want to explore this larger world of how parents

are constantly making choices for their children. Now some parents, of course, are abusive and neglectful, but the vast majority of parents actually want to communicate the best things to their children. They're trying to communicate ethical behavior and they're trying to communicate how to be a good citizen and how to study hard and they're trying to do all these things, but sometimes the things that parents are doing can have unintended or counterproductive effects. I think that's what happens most of the time when something bad happens. I mean, I think it's pretty hard to find a parent who is not trying to do the best thing

for their child. But, depending on their information and depending on how they go about doing something, it may not turn out that way. John, thanks so much for talking with me. Delighted to be here. That was NPR Science correspondent, John Hamilton. This is the Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Feet Anthony. We all want our children to grow up to be honest. We communicate this to our kids in all kinds of ways. So parents seem to model honest behavior to their children.

That's research or onion-samek, and she finds that parents want to do the right thing, but there's a catch. They tend to do that more for their daughters than for their sons. So you're saying that parents are more honest in front of their children, but you're saying that this actually might not actually be driven by both sets of children or both sons and daughters. That's right. So it's driven by girls.

Let's back up a minute and tell you how Samak came to this conclusion. In her study, Samak wanted to see how parents behave with and without that children around. In her laboratory, she had parents play a game. So in this game, you flip two coins in private, and in this case, because we did this with children as well, we had coins that had a blue side and a green side. And so you have these two coins. If both land on green, then you're going to get a prize. Now here's the thing, the parents were free to report any outcome they wanted. You definitely can act dishonest because nobody is in the room observing you. Samak didn't watch the parents play the game, but she relied on statistics to prove whether the parents were cheating.

We actually find that people cheat a lot, so we expect 25% of the time people will win. They actually win 40% of the time. Parents will put in situations where they could win money for themselves or win a toy for their child. Samak tested the parents with their children in and out of the room and here's where she discovered something interesting. When parents were with their daughters, they were scrupulously honest. When they were with their sons, not so much. And that's interesting because what we observe in the world is that men tend to be more dishonest than women in these games with adults, but also in various empirical evidence that's

been collected. And so one thing that could be happening here is that we see a correlation. Parents, knowing that they want to transmit honest behavior to their daughters, do that and then daughters grow up to be more honest. Or parents see that it's more socially acceptable for men to be dishonest than women and then transmit honest behavior to their daughters. What's the implication of this work? I mean, when you look at parents and the behavior of parents and you look at the behavior of parents and with their children and with their sons and daughters, are there, I mean besides just being

interesting, is there anything that people can say, you know, this is something that's actionable that I can take and do something with? Sure, well, I think for a long time we thought that perhaps we had honest people in the world and we had dishonest people in the world and we had dishonest people in the world. But what we see now is that context actually really matters. And we also see that if we believe the correlation goes the way that we had speculated, we see that parents' modeling behavior actually does seem to affect children. And we do observe parents that are modeling this behavior. So if anything you should make sure you act honestly in front of your

kids. Do you have do you have children yourself? No. Okay you don't. So I'm curious whether you behave differently or I mean even if you don't have children yourself, have you ever been in situations where you're around small kids and you feel like your behavior is changing, you feel like you need to be the upright citizen that you might not always be. All right, so I was trying to think about, we go down to these schools and we have hundreds of four-year-olds that I interact with on a daily basis running these different studies with them. One of the things that we have often is we have these programs that we randomize kids

into. I actually flip a lot of coins. Kids and parents come into the school and I flip coins to determine whether certain kids will get into the preschool program that we have down in Chicago or will be in our control group. One of the ways that I can cheat is actually to misreport these cointosses. And I always feel, and I normally would not cheat

if it was to help myself, but I always feel like I would like to cheat to help some of these kids who I really like to get the green coin to get into these programs. But I've never actually done it. So it shows the power of society to keep me honest. Now have you, would you have, would anyone know if you cheated? I don't think so actually.

And it's such a tempting thing because it feels like obviously you're not, it doesn't feel like you're harming anyone. And in this case, it actually would feel like you're helping someone and that that's the temptation, isn't it? Which is actually would feel like you're helping someone and that's the temptation isn't it which is that it feels like you're doing this for a good cause and that's what makes it so so seductive. Right and I think that's where we have this moral wiggle room as well as that parents feel they don't want to be dishonest but if they're it's for a good cause they're helping their own child then they'll do things like cheat on this coin task to get a toy for their child and they may cheat on which school district they report that they're in to get

into a better school and so on. Wonderful. Ania, I really want to thank you for making the time to talk with me today. This has been really wonderful and so interesting and such fascinating work. Thank you. So if you put the thing in about my desire to cheat to get people into programs, be sure you put the thing in about how I don't do it. Oh, do it. Now here's a tricky thing. I could say that I'm going to do that and then go back on my word. We are talking about cheating after all.

Wow. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yes. I have some professional integrity to guard as well. Good. Okay, good. Coming up, stop watch signs with author Daniel Pink.

We'll tell you about four parenting studies in under a minute each. After this. This is the Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vidantan. It's time now for another episode of Stopwatch Science. I'm joined by author and commentator Daniel Pink, Dan Hi. Hi Shankar. In Stopwatch Science, Dan and I challenge one another to talk about our favorite pieces of research in under 60 seconds.

Can it be done? We're going to find out, we also have a couple of props in the studio. I have an iPhone that's going to run a timer on Dan as he talks, and if he exceeds his minute as he is frequently prone to do, this is what he's going to hear. I'm trying to find the most irritating children's toy that I could find at home, and so that's what I brought in this studio. And I think he's succeeded. Great, wonderful. So today we're going to be talking about all the ways in which parents influence their children, but not always for good.

Dan, if you're ready, your first minute starts now. OK, so this is a study from Nicholas Sim, at the University of Adelaide in Australia, Sim is an economist. And this study could be published in, if there were such a journal, the annals of bad parenting ideas. So he's how it goes.

He went to Singapore. Now Singapore is a heavily Chinese culture. And in Chinese cultures, there's a lot of respect for zodiac signs. Some signs, for instance, the year of the dragon are auspicious. Others less auspicious. And so parents actually try to have kids born in the year of the dragon. As soon as to give, absolutely. Actually actually fertility spikes in years of the dragon. It's a crazy chart.

And so parents are trying to give their kids an edge. I want my kid to be born in the year of the dragon. Right. Well, Sim looked at this and he found out that there is a dramatic, pretty significant dragon effect. Wow. The kids born in the year of the dragon do worse. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that's not, that everybody else, and the reason for that

is that there's a premium to a university education. And so there's so many kids born in the year of the dragon. Oh, there's so many kids born in the year of the dragon that there's incredible competition for university spaces. So a lot of dragon kids don't get in, and therefore their earnings are lower. So what you want is you want to have a kid in the year of the monkey.

So in other words, when everyone's zigs, you want a zag. And precisely. It's like this talk market, when everyone's buying, you want to be careful, when everyone's fearful, you want to be getting in. It's exactly the same with kids. You got it exactly right. To me, it's like parenting meets economics meets game theory.

It's a wonderful study, and I was also born in the year of the dragon which explains my meager professional performance well speaking of uh... some choices beginning other choices i'm now handing over the buzzer and the timer to dan okay i hope he will be kinder to me than i was to him and i will not so here we go your time shank, for your one minute starts right now. All right, so this is also a study that comes to us from Australian researchers, funnily enough, this research looks at the behavior of young Australian drivers.

Now very much like young American drivers, young Australian drivers sometimes take unnecessary risks on the road. And the researchers try to find out what causes the drivers to take these risks. And they find not surprisingly that context matters. If you're surrounded by a lot of peers who take a lot of risks, you're more likely to be a risky driver. Now that's not particularly surprising. The thing that I found really interesting was that the driver's parents seem to have a really powerful role in what kind of driver you become and there's a gender aspect of this young women tend to drive like their mothers young men tend to drive

like that that's now this is a small study i don't know if you can extrapolate this internationally but what this does mean is that if you pull over a teenager you know the cop shouldn't just say can i have your license in registration please the cop should say can i get the name of your dad so i can give him a call. Oh, I made it. I made it. I made it. That's just under the wire. Oh my gosh.

That's like the ball going through the net as the seconds take off the clock. That was impressive. That was swish. That's interesting. So sort of what you're suggesting because we hear a lot about driverless cars these days, ultimately driverless cars. So the interim step there is follow list cars. Anyway, I know that Dan's trying to distract me from what really is the interim step there is follow this car

anyway i know that that's trying to distract me from what really is at hand which is he's trying to buy time yeah but i'm not gonna let him do that because at the clock actually starts right now oh man okay so uh... parents one of the things that parents do is they have to watch out what their kids watch on television and movies and so forth so you would never let to chunker your daughter watch pulp Fiction. Of course not. Of course not.

Instead, you would have her watch cartoons or Disney movies. Well, there's a great new study out of the British Medical Journal. Oh, no. Yeah, you got it. Showing, and this are their words, that children's animated films are in fact,

quote, hotbeds of murder and mayhem. That principal cartoon characters are more than twice as likely to be killed off as their counterparts in films for adults. Oh my God. The parents of main characters were five times more likely to die in children's cartoons as they were in films aimed at adults. So what we have is that instead of having, by protecting our kids from so-called violent films, we're sticking them in front of kids fair that are at some level terrifying.

It's a bloodbath these cartoons and animated films are. Oh my gosh. And the sad part of your study, Dan, is that you came in right under the wire, so I didn't get the pleasure of buzzing you. I'm handing the stopwatch and time or back to Dan. I'm gonna try and find out if I can beat my own record the last time of finishing it. Nevermind. It's not about you, Shankar. It's about understanding science. I'm gonna try and find out if I can beat my own record the last time of finishing 59 seconds. It's not about you, Shankar. It's about understanding science. So don't feel too much pressure here, even though there is a clock ticking down.

So here we go. We, Shankar, you're one minute. If you can handle it, start right now. All right, so we've given parents three things to think about today. Three ways in which they are messing up their children. And just to make sure that we're leaving them with a nice, even number, I'm gonna add a fourth idea to this. There's a lot of research that's been done that looks at why young girls often seem to perform better than young boys in school.

And a couple of economists decided to look at three countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and they find there are many reasons that this could be happening, but one important reason might be the behavior of their parents. It turns out parents systematically spend more time with their daughters doing cognitive activities than they do with their sons.

And in fact, when the economists measure the disparity in the amount of time parents spend with their daughters and with their sons, the extent of this disparity seems to match, correlate with the disparity that we see in early test scores between young boys and young girls. In other words, here's one more reason if you're a parent, especially the parent of young boys, for you to blame yourself. Well, you're well and under the wire here. So this is very heartening for me, Shankar, because as someone who's a bad driver and a poor student, it's not my fault now. It's all my parents fault. who's a bad driver and a poor student, it's not my fault now, it's all my parents fault. On that happy note, Dan Pink is the author of Drive, several other books about human behavior, Dan thanks for joining us today. Always a pleasure.

This was another episode of Stop What Science. For more of the Hidden Brain, find us on Facebook and Twitter at HiddenBrain and at HiddenBrain.npr.org. We want your questions and ideas for future episodes. Do you have a story that you think might reveal something interesting about human nature? Email us at HiddenBrain.NPR.org with Story in the subject line. The Hidden Brain is produced by Kara Magar-Kalasin. I'm Shankar Vedantam and this is NPR. his NPR.