Fighting With Mirages of Each Other — with Adam Mastroianni
09/22/22 • 39 min
2 Listeners
Have you ever lost a friend to misperception? Have you lost a friend or a family member to the idea that your views got so different, that it was time to end the relationship — perhaps by unfriending each other on Facebook?
As it turns out, we often think our ideological differences are far greater than they actually are. Which means: we’re losing relationships and getting mired in polarization based on warped visions of each other.
This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School who studies how we perceive and misperceive our social worlds. Together with Adam, we're going to explore how accurate — and inaccurate — our views of each other are. As you listen to our conversation, keep in mind that relationship you might have lost to misperception, and that you might be able to revive as a result of what you hear.
CORRECTIONS: In the episode, Adam says in 1978, 85% of people said they'd vote for a Black president, but the actual percentage is 80.4%. Tristan says that Republicans estimate that more than a third of Democrats are LGBTQ, but the actual percentage is 32%. Finally, Tristan refers to Anil Seth's notion of cognitive impenetrability, but that term was actually coined by the Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher Zenon W. Pylyshyn.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Widespread Misperceptions of Long-term Attitude Change
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2107260119
Adam Mastroianni's research paper showing how stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and how these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer
Experimental History
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/
Adam's blog, where he shares original data and thinks through ideas
Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y
Academic study showing that Americans are living in what researchers called a “false social reality” with respect to misperceptions about climate views
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/33-mind-the-perception-gap
The Courage to Connect. Guests: Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr.
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/30-the-courage-to-connect
Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/52-transcending-the-internet-hate-game
Have you ever lost a friend to misperception? Have you lost a friend or a family member to the idea that your views got so different, that it was time to end the relationship — perhaps by unfriending each other on Facebook?
As it turns out, we often think our ideological differences are far greater than they actually are. Which means: we’re losing relationships and getting mired in polarization based on warped visions of each other.
This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School who studies how we perceive and misperceive our social worlds. Together with Adam, we're going to explore how accurate — and inaccurate — our views of each other are. As you listen to our conversation, keep in mind that relationship you might have lost to misperception, and that you might be able to revive as a result of what you hear.
CORRECTIONS: In the episode, Adam says in 1978, 85% of people said they'd vote for a Black president, but the actual percentage is 80.4%. Tristan says that Republicans estimate that more than a third of Democrats are LGBTQ, but the actual percentage is 32%. Finally, Tristan refers to Anil Seth's notion of cognitive impenetrability, but that term was actually coined by the Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher Zenon W. Pylyshyn.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Widespread Misperceptions of Long-term Attitude Change
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2107260119
Adam Mastroianni's research paper showing how stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and how these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer
Experimental History
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/
Adam's blog, where he shares original data and thinks through ideas
Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y
Academic study showing that Americans are living in what researchers called a “false social reality” with respect to misperceptions about climate views
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/33-mind-the-perception-gap
The Courage to Connect. Guests: Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr.
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/30-the-courage-to-connect
Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/52-transcending-the-internet-hate-game
Previous Episode
Spotlight — Addressing the TikTok Threat
Imagine it's the Cold War. Imagine that the Soviet Union puts itself in a position to influence the television programming of the entire Western world — more than a billion viewers.
While this might sound like science fiction, it’s representative of the world we're living in, with TikTok being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok, the flagship app of the Chinese company Bytedance, recently surpassed Google and Facebook as the most popular site on the internet in 2021, and is expected to reach more than 1.8 billion users by the end of 2022. The Chinese government doesn't control TikTok, but has influence over it. What are the implications of this influence, given that China is the main geopolitical rival of the United States?
This week on Your Undivided Attention, we bring you a bonus episode about TikTok. Co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the nature of the TikTok threat, and how we might address it.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Pew Research Center's "Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022"
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/
Pew's recent study on how TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens
Axios' "Washington turns up the heat on TikTok"
Article on recent Congressional responses to the threat of TikTok
Felix Krause on TikTok's keystroke tracking
https://twitter.com/KrauseFx/status/1560372509639311366
A revelation that TikTok has code to observe keypad input and all taps
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES
A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/44-a-fresh-take-on-tech-in-china
A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen
From Russia with Likes (Part 1). Guest: Renée DiResta
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/5-from-russia-with-likes-part-1
From Russia with Likes (Part 2). Guest: Renée DiResta
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/6-from-russia-with-likes-part-2
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_
Next Episode
Stepping Into the Metaverse — with Dr. Courtney Cogburn and Prof. Jeremy Bailenson
The next frontier of the internet is the metaverse. That's why Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta, and just sold $10 billion in corporate bonds to raise money for metaverse-related projects.
How might we learn from our experience with social media, and anticipate the harms of the metaverse before they arise? What would it look like to design a humane metaverse — that respects our attention, improves our well-being, and strengthens our democracy?
This week on Your Undivided Attention, we talk with two pioneers who are thinking critically about the development of the metaverse. Professor Jeremy Bailenson is the Founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, where he studies how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. Dr. Courtney Cogburn is an Associate Professor at Columbia's School of Social Work, where she examines associations between racism and stress-related disease. Jeremy and Courtney collaborated on 1000 Cut Journey, a virtual reality experience about systemic racism.
CORRECTIONS:
- In the episode, Courtney says that the average US adult consumes 9 hours of media per day, but the actual number in 2022 is closer to 13 hours.
- Finally, Aza mentions the "pockets of 4.6 billion people" — implying that there are 4.6 billion smartphone users. The global number of social media users is 4.7 billion, and the number of smartphone users is actually 6.6 billion.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA:
Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do
https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Demand-Virtual-Reality-Works/dp/0393253694
Jeremy Bailenson's 2018 book exploring how virtual reality can be harnessed to improve our everyday lives
Experiencing Racism in VR
https://www.ted.com/talks/courtney_cogburn_experiencing_racism_in_vr_courtney_d_cogburn_phd_tedxrva
Courtney Cogburn's 2017 TEDx talk about how using virtual reality to help people experience the complexities of racism
Do Artifacts Have Politics?
https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf
Technology philosopher Langdon Winner’s seminal 1980 article, in which he writes, "by far the greatest latitude of choice exists the very first time a particular instrument, system, or technique is introduced."
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES:
Do You Want To Become A Vampire? with LA Paul
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/39-do-you-want-to-become-a-vampire
Pardon the Interruptions with Gloria Mark
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/7-pardon-the-interruptions
Bonus - What Is Humane Technology?
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/bonus-what-is-humane-technology
Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_
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