AS278: No Child Left Alone

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 278 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. First order of business, I'm sure you've heard by now, but just in case you haven't, Vulgarity for Charity is back. That is the really, really, truly incredible fundraiser that Scathing Atheists and now Cogdiss are putting on together. They've already raised an incredible amount of money. They picked a great charity called Modest Needs, again, if you haven't heard it already, it's a charity that pays the bills of people who are in trouble, who are underemployed, unemployed, out of work, and it pays directly to the creditor, so there's no chance of abuse or anything, and as sad as it is to have to worry about that, it is something that happens, and having a charity where the money is clearly going to who needs it, it paying down the debts, it going straight to the debtors, and it's, it's really cool.

0:01:24 Thomas: They've already raised a ton, but go to scathingatheist.com and I'm sure you'll find the post explaining it. You can make a donation and if it's high enough, and if you're lucky enough, you can get a guest insult by me. If you want, you Can, uh, there's, there's instructions there. So find them there, but you can donate and write that you want me to insult somebody if you want. But I'm not that good at it. So I'm okay.

If you don't, you could have Eli do it or something, or you can have him write something for me either Either way, but But the bottom line is, whatever you do, whoever you want to have insulted, uh, the donation is key, and it's, it's really cool, the charity is, it, I'm, I really, I am proud to be any small, tiny, little, itsy part of it, because they're raising a ton of money, and its, its really something cool to, to behold, so, uh If you're in a position to give, Then, then check it out and listen to the episodes. I'm gonna be, I'm already, already recorded part of it. I'm on one of them, and then we're gonna record more later because the response has been great, because atheists are so generous. I really think, I really think atheists do incredible charity. Every time I've seen it, it's, it's been charity with no strings attached, which is, which is what people need, you know. They don't need to be preached at or they don't need to find Jesus.

They need help with a bill, with a electric bill that they can't pay, or whatever it may be. So, really cool thing, I hope you'll participate. All right, on to today's show. Now I'm very excited to bring you these guests. So I had seen this study covered in an NPR article. I'll link the article. It has a link to the study within it.

0:02:56 Thomas: And I was blown away by it because it's, it's everything I care about, which is the profound effects of our fears and our intuitions and our paranoia being out of line with actual data. And it, in this case, in the case we're about to talk about, it matters and it could affect you. It could affect me. Uh, and, and so I'm, I'm really excited to talk to the researchers who did this study. And with that, I'll just get right over to it.

0:03:36 Thomas: Joining me right now are professors Barbara Sarnecka, I hope I pronounced that correctly, and professor Kyle Stanford, both of UC Irvine, welcome correct? To the show. I'm so happy to have you. So I was thinking, before we delve into it, if you wouldn't mind, how about in random order starting, we'll start with Barbara. Two-minute [0:03:57] I'm Condensed version, little bit of background, background, how you got to where you are, why you, you picked your particular area of study, that sort of thing.

[0:04:03] a developmental psychologist. Most of my work is actually on how children learn language and develop concepts, particularly number concepts and math concepts. This study was kind of a departure from what I've done for the past 10, 15 years, but this study is more in the realm of social psychology and moral reasoning. So I don't have a good explanation for Okay.

[0:04:30] How I'm doing this study. It was interesting. It's not really in my main area of research, but it was really interesting. Sounded like a fun thing to do. It sounded like a pretty easy thing to with the behavioral methods that we've got. I recruited Ashley and Kyle and did the study. Sure.

0:04:46 Thomas: Well, we'll get more into, uh, into how the study started later, but, uh, Kyle, how about you, brief biography, if you don't mind. Right. [0:04:52] Well, if it's a departure for Barbara, it's, uh, 10 times as much a departure for me from what we, uh, what I regularly do, my most of my work's in the, in the philosophy of science, but recently, uh, I have been getting interested in starting to write about, uh, evolutionary explanations of human moral cognition, and so that led pretty naturally to this as a specific instance that found out about through Barbara, right? She sort of was talking to me about work she was doing, and we started thinking together about, well, she was talking to be about work that she and Ashley were already doing. We started thinking together, about how to make some things work, how to solve some problems. But yeah, I have a broad interest in human moral cognition.

0:05:34 Thomas: So, uh, you referenced the, uh, the missing link here is Ashley, um, who, so who came up with the study, was it, uh, who, whose initial idea was it, or, or was it a combination of ideas? [0:05:45] think it was my idea, and I immediately immediately texted Ashley and said, this is probably a stupid idea, right? Should we do this? And she said, no, it's a great idea. We should do it. If she had said, I think it's a stupid ideia, then probably we wouldn't have pursued it. You know, you have like a little idea. You don't know if it's a good idea Right. [0:05:59] or not until you bounce it off somebody else. And so we started talking about how to do it, and then I happened to be talking to Kyle one day because our kids were doing something in the same, we live in the samem neighborhood, and our kids were playing Dungeons and Dragons or something, Oh, [0:06:13] Or wow. [0:06:14] Were together.

0:06:14 Thomas: That [0:06:14] Other, or is [0:06:15] Magic so Stranger [0:06:16] The gathering, Things. [0:06:16] And Yeah. [0:06:17] I was talking to somebody about this idea for a study that I had, and Kyle said, "What's this I hear? Do I hear somebody talking about moral cognition and reasoning?" And I said, "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, Kyle, tell me what you think of this idea we had for a steady." And so Kyle came on board, and and the three of us have been working together since the beginning. We designed all the vignettes together and thought about all the methods together and everything, thing.

0:06:39 Thomas: Wow. For someone like me who has no graduate school experience, what's the timeline of that project? How long did it take you from initial idea to where we are now, I suppose? [0:06:53] I think it was two years, right Oh, [0:06:54] around two Oh, wow. [0:06:55] years. Is that right, Kyle? That sounds about right. I mean, it was when the Magic the Gathering Club was still going on. And that's been quite a while now.

0:07:04 Thomas: Well, [0:07:04] So two we all know [0:07:05] years when that [0:07:05] sounds was. [0:07:05] about Yeah. [0:07:06] right. The famous Irvine Yeah, [0:07:09] Magic the gathering yeah, yeah. [0:07:10] club. It's a reference point for us all, I think.

0:07:14 Thomas: That wow, I that's that's a that seems like a long time to me. But is that typical? Is that it just takes that long to, along with everything else you're doing in your lives and your schedules, to [0:07:24] Well, to [0:07:25] for do [0:07:25] me a project [0:07:26] that's like this.

[0:07:27] About typical, that's even short for a Oh, [0:07:29] project okay. [0:07:29] in my lab, because we usually test we collect data from infants or young children, and that's much more time intensive than asking adults to fill out surveys on Yeah. First [0:07:39] the internet. You have [0:07:39] So to make one [0:07:40] so and then, [0:07:40] we oh no, you're just fine.

[0:07:43] have to well, to to test infants and kill children, it's much tougher. You got to like go to where they are. You got either call, call families and get moms to bring babies into the lab, or you got to go to preschools, or you gotta go to schools and get the parents to give consent. And then you got to play with the kids a couple of times, so they're not afraid of you. And then you've got to bring them into the lab and test them. It's really hard.

0:08:01 Thomas: Wow. [0:08:01] So we typically take two, three years minimum to do a study in my lab, but this one seemed so easy because all we had to do was come up with the vignettes and put them on Amazon Mechanical Turk. And two hours later we had 600 responses, you know?

0:08:15 Thomas: Oh, wow. [0:08:16] That's part of why it struck everybody as a good idea is it would be so easy to actually execute it and get data. I think it actually still was, Kyle. It was still easy compared to most of the empirical studies we do. But for Kyle, as a philosopher, I don't know, how long do your things usually take? You don't collect data, Well, [0:08:32] do you? You just have to dream stuff up, right? Just thought experiment.

[0:08:36] So it's 15 [0:08:36] funny, minutes. [0:08:37] right? Yeah, [0:08:37] There's well, [0:08:37] no data collection part of the things that I write. So it really varies for me because, yeah, yeah, most of what you're doing is figuring out, uh, what you think the right view of something is and, and why you're not satisfied with the existing views. The, this, uh... I have a big paper on the evolution of human moral psychology that I've been working on for about five years now that, that I'm still, uh ... getting into shape that I am happy enough to, to sense. But, you know, usually my time ... depends on the kind of thing that it is, but you ... usually my, My timeline for original research would probably be a year or two also.

0:09:18 Thomas: As soon as that paper's, you ready to go, feel free to let me know and come back on and talk about that. [0:09:23] I will be happy to do so.

0:09:25 Thomas: Awesome. So, let's get into, thanks for that background info. Let's get in to the study itself. Let' get in into some of the reasons you guys wanted to do this background. Maybe let's start with Barbara. How about that? [0:09:35] Sure. And we should say, actually, that the first author on the study is Ashley, Right. [0:09:39] but she is on her honeymoon in Paris right now. So she Which is an okay [0:09:43] could excuse, [0:09:43] not join us, I [0:09:44] which suppose. [0:09:44] is the We'll have to [0:09:45] way, give [0:09:46] I her [0:09:46] mean, that [0:09:46] you one. [0:09:46] know, I'm sure she'll be disappointed when she finds out that she had to just be on some boring honeymoon instead of on this Yeah. [0:09:52] podcast. But that's right. We get all the fun because we're still here. Okay, so what was the question?

0:09:59 Thomas: Well, we'll talk about it. There's so many different things we could talk about with this, but I would like to hear about some of the examples I think I've seen you discuss in the study and in other interviews about what made you start thinking about this. Examples of child, know, child services being called and that sort [0:10:16] Oh, of thing.

[0:10:17] yeah, Oh [0:10:17] yeah. Well, so, I mean, there are so many. Once you start becoming aware of this issue, you see them everywhere, everywhere. So the example that originally got me thinking was the piece and Slate that Kim Brooks wrote about how she let her four-year-old child wait in the car for something like five, between five and ten minutes, or five minutes. She was on her way out of town.

She had a four- year-old and a one-year old She needed to grab a pair of headphones so that the four-ear-old could could watch movies on this long flight they were going to take. And she drove to the store and said, "Come on, come one, we got to go inside." And the four-year-old wanted to stay in the car and keep playing on the iPad. And I can either dash in, get the headphones, [0:11:05] or I can have a big knockdown drag out fight with this four-year-old, take the iPad out of his hands and drag him kicking and screaming through the store while I grab the headphones and come back out.

[0:11:17] And let him stay in the car and play on the iPad while she went in and grabbed the headphones. She went in, got the headphones, came out, drove home, went on her trip, and then she was later contacted by the police because some person had seen this four-year-old in the car, and had videotaped, taken pictures or video of the child happily sitting in the car playing on an iPad, and gotten the license plate of the car reported her to the police. The police traced the license plate, you know, and charged her with abuse and neglect or something, placed her on the child abuse registry. It was a whole legal

0:11:54 Thomas: My gosh. [0:11:54] battle. For five or 10 minutes of, [0:11:57] Yeah, yeah. [0:11:57] Yeah, everybody agrees that it was under 10 minutes. And the kid is perfectly fine. And, you you know, it was she didn't do anything wrong. I don't think she even broke any laws, but she was really it was a big deal. Like she ended up pleading guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, which is crazy because and the argument, I mean, she pled guilty because she was told that she could lose custody of her kids if she didn's. And Wow. [0:12:27] Um, the argument that they used for this charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor was that if you place a child in a let me see a case where they might need emergency services that's considered contributing to their delinquancy and the idea was that the child might have needed emergency services if something had happened to him.

0:12:49 Thomas: Well, [0:12:49] It's isn't that all the time? [0:12:50] Yeah. I mean, this [0:12:51] It's crazy, it's completely nuts. And that's that's what got me thinking like this is this is so crazy. And I was just struck by how irrational the whole thing was, like how it's just not supported by data. And it doesn't what people are afraid of. In this case, the judges and the bystander and the cops and everybody seemed to be convinced that this child was in terrible danger. And it was just by the grace of God that the child didn't drop dead the minute she walked away from the car. And it's just it doesn't make any sense. Is [0:13:21] Right. I mean, just so out exactly [0:13:22] of touch. Why I wanted to talk to you guys, because when I read the NPR article, that was the first time I saw this study. I had the exact same thoughts. It's like I'm so interested in when our intuitions are completely in contrast with the data and sometimes [0:13:42] Right.

0:13:43 Thomas: It [0:13:43] Right. Doesn't matter and sometimes it really really does matter and you [0:13:46] Yeah.

0:13:48 Thomas: Can't help but laugh but that's a pretty serious situation to have to plead [0:13:52] Yeah.

0:13:52 Thomas: Guilty to a crime for nothing [0:13:54] That's You know, like that's [0:13:55] What struck And [0:13:56] Me about it. I [0:13:56] Because yeah Was I can think back to my childhood being left in the car for what feels like hours at a time. Now, maybe my [0:14:04] Yeah. Perception was different because I was a kid and everything took forever. Summer to Christmas was approximately 40 years, but [0:14:11] No. Still, I remember it being a significant amount of time and I survived. I suppose I got lucky, huh?

[0:14:20] I mean you rolled That was a [0:14:22] The softball [0:14:23] Dice and setup [0:14:23] Got got for you guys. [0:14:24] Average you got exactly I got [0:14:26] What average.

[0:14:26] We should expect you to get, which is nothing happened Most [0:14:29] Because Of my life, I've been getting average. That's a good, yeah. [0:14:32] Because, Yeah. [0:14:32] I mean, the thing that you're referencing there about your own childhood and your own parents, though, is another aspect of what got us interested in the study, right? So there's this rash of, women being arrested, women getting incarcerated, having to plead guilty to crimes that's happening. But they were right in all of these cases, they were being prosecuted or arrested or the cops were coming in response to things that were absolutely commonplace, just like one generation ago.

0:15:00 Thomas: Right. [0:15:00] And that's what seemed made it seem extra crazy that, know, such a wide range of everybody was sure that kids were in so much in terrible danger if they were left on their own. So the other thing we wanted to explain was, why is this happening now? That's Yeah.

[0:15:17] The other reason we wanted the wanted wanted to do the study. And as Barbara mentioned a minute ago, I mean, there are a lot there are lots of, you know, horrifying individual studies about this. But one that I that did strike me, it's not one I found, but we talk about it at the very beginning of the paper.

These were kids who were picked up by the police walking home from a park, delivered at home and and told their parents that they've been walking alone and all this. The Meitiv case. That's right. And the Meitiv said, yeah, they have our permission to do that. We think that's okay. And the cop, the police officer is quoted as saying to the father in that family, don't you realize how dangerous the world is? Don't you watch TV? And, and so this is the

0:16:05 Thomas: Haven't [0:16:06] Part of the reason that You seen [0:16:06] Was Jaws there [0:16:07] Part Might be a shark that just comes out [0:16:09] Of And eats you at any time, yeah, yeah. [0:16:12] Part of what that, what really struck me about that was it seemed it occurred to me. Yeah, look, I mean, you know, child endangerment or neglect is in to a very great extent in the hands of or in the eye of outside witnesses. And if police officers are being as irrational about these risks as everybody else in the world is, So [0:16:35] well, then it's a then it'S a legal problem. Then we're, the basis of these, what turn out to be very unreliable intuitions, right, making it the case that people have violated criminal laws because of these intuitions about danger that are unfounded, right?

0:16:52 Thomas: You've [0:16:52] So Also [0:16:52] that's Found [0:16:52] the kind of That [0:16:53] thing. It's gone so far as to be reinforced by law enforcement, obviously, so because I could imagine that, okay, maybe parental instincts are going a little crazy, but the police come and like they do sometimes say, uh, this is nothing, why did you call us. But that's, that seems to not be the case.

[0:17:10] Yeah, that's what's really, what's shocking about it is not just, so as a psychologist, I look at it and say, this is a phobia, right. Right? Being Right.

[0:17:18] irrationally afraid of something that's very unlikely to happen. There's a word for that. It's called a phobia, right? So if you're afraid Yeah. [0:17:26] to get an elevator because you think it's going to crash and you're going to die, if you'RE afraid to go outside because there are spiders or something, we have a word for that, and what's weird about this one is it seems to be this phobia that so many people share, that the judges and the police and the bystanders and the reporters. It's like one of those sort of farcical comedies where one person is sane and everybody else is nuts. And the sane person seems crazy because they're not in line with everybody else, but actually everybody else's crazy, you know?

0:17:57 Thomas: Yeah, [0:17:57] And so it's like everybody in this story, except for the mom who decided to leave the kid in the car, everybody is operating under the same weird, irrational, unsupported phobia. And so that's an interesting thing. Like how does, how does an irrational belief become so widespread? And then it has the force of law. So it's when [0:18:19] not just like, I'm afraid of spiders, so I won't go outside. It's like, I'm scared of spiders. So I'm calling the police if anybody goes outside and then the police are arresting them for going outside because everybody's afraid of spiders, they should [0:18:30] you just [0:18:31] know? Be arresting the spiders. I see what you're saying. No, yeah, I totally, [0:18:34] Yeah. And another element that was particularly worrisome that, that I'm sure you're going to get to is the difference in socioeconomic status and how that impacts people differently. There was an example, I believe, where where a single mother, was working at a fast food restaurant, maybe, and had to leave their kid in a park, I think it was. Is that right?

[0:18:56] Well, she, that was Debra Harrell, the case of Debra Harrell, very famous case. So she has a nine-year-old daughter, the daughter, she works at McDonald's. McDonald's obviously doesn't provide child care, and with on what you make at McDonald's you can't really afford to pay a babysitter. And the kid is nine, so you know, she's So, [0:19:12] a pretty responsible what do you do, [0:19:12] little you know?

[0:19:13] girl, so she was, um, coming to McDonald's, her mom was having her just sit in that McDonald's restaurant for all the hours that her mother was working and play on a tablet computer, but the tablet was stolen. So then the kid is really bored. And she's saying, please, please can I not have to sit here at McDonald's? Can I please go play in the park? And her mom very reasonably said, yeah, that's, that's fine. Like it's the middle of the afternoon.

It's a park full of people. It's six minutes walk from our house and you have a cell phone. So go ahead. And so the kid was playing in this park and some, some other adult asked her, where's your mom? And she said, my mom's at work and here, you know, I can call her. Here's a cell phone. And this other adult called the police, and the police, God, what happened to her?

[0:20:00] They took, I think they took custody of the child. I think the mother was jailed for some period of time, maybe overnight or something. They treated her horribly.

0:20:10 Thomas: Yeah. [0:20:11] And it was just, it's justifiably a famous, it should be a famous case because this is crazy. What is this person supposed to do? The fact is, the kid was not in danger. I Right.

[0:20:20] mean, not in enough danger that it, that it, you know, that anybody should be calling the cops. I'm playing in a park. I always think about this, because I had a similar experience when my, my son, I have two sons. And when the older one was in third grade or something, there was a park next to his elementary school that he liked to play in after school.

And after a while, I got tired of showing up at the end of the day and watching him play for an hour. So I would just show up an hour after school got out when it was time to drive him home, and I'd let him play in the park, and at some point, you, he was throwing pine cones or something, and so some other mom said, where's your mom? And he said, my mom isn't here yet.

And this other mom reported me to the principal and reported, she called my husband, she emailed my husband, I don't know how, how [0:21:06] she got his email, but it was this whole like tattling, like, your wife wasn't there at the park where she was supposed to be, and the principal called to chew me out and say he shouldn't be allowed to be in the park, um, and like the whole thing was absurd, and I said, he's not on school property, it's not during school hours, his father and I think this is a reasonable thing, it's three o'clock in the afternoon, this is the safest city in America, you know, we think it's fine. And, of, of course, what I was thinking was like, mind your own business.

0:21:36 Thomas: Yeah. [0:21:36] Right. [0:21:38] But, I was going [0:21:39] okay. To say, it's okay if you curse on this show. I don't know if you're thinking, if you censored, no, I'm just kidding. Mind your [0:21:44] It own, Yeah, I [0:21:45] sounded, it really sounded like she wanted to cruise. I was, I felt [0:21:47] was thinkin' about it. It. That's why, yeah.

[0:21:49] And then, you know, now my son is 16, and he's taking driver's ed, and nobody thinks that it's crazy for me to let him drive. But of course he's Yeah, [0:21:59] incurring right.

[0:22:00] so much more risk by driving as a 16-year-old than he was by playing in a park as an eight-year old and and exactly. [0:22:07] similarly, like, people are angry at Debra Harrell for letting her nine-year old play in a part, but that's so much safer than all sorts of other things that people think are fine. So, uh, Yeah. Go ahead, Kyle.

[0:22:17] so, I mean, part of the idea, uh, that you were raising, right, you know, maybe it might seem harmless if, uh, for whatever reason, everybody's a little more freaked out about out danger to kids than they should be. And so they, you know, make inferences and, and adopt attitudes that aren't justifiable, but cases like that one illustrate where the rubber hits the road. Uh, not everybody can afford to indulge the

0:22:43 Thomas: Yeah, [0:22:44] fantasy, uh protecting being there to protect my child every minute of every day. And so, right. When it gets to the point that it's not just a widespread false belief, right? But we're starting to impose this belief, as Barbara said, with the force of law on people who can't afford to the irrational prejudices we've come to broadly share as a society. Absolutely. So let's move from maybe the justification and the reasons you were interested in the study to what the study actually wanted to accomplish. So what was your, I guess the theory you wanted to test.

[0:23:21] We started talking about all these cases, right, particular cases, and wondering what's going on in them. And I mean, Barbara and Ashley already had this much put together before I ever got involved. The thought was, look, what people are, it seems like what people are really doing is is morally judging the parents, vignettes, right?

And so we, that's what got us thinking about, is there a way you could actually test that, if there, if moral judgments are making a difference to how much danger, uh, people think that the child is in. And so that's what generated the kind of vignette, uh, questionnaire, uh, structure. And the idea was, I mean, in a way this is the crucial idea of the study, right, you have vignetts described children in exactly the same circumstances, uh, nothing is different between them except the [0:24:11] reason that the parent is gone, right?

Um, what's clever about that, I can call it clever because it wasn't my idea, uh, is, uh, it's intuitively obvious to everybody that the reason for the parent's absence doesn't make any difference to how much danger the child, child is in, any given set of circumstances while they're gone. And so, uh, you know, we did a bunch of things to, to double check and, and make sure that what we thought was happening was really happening. But the big idea was to be able to show that, uh, people give different estimates of how much danger the child is, depending on their moral, their moral judgment of the reason that the parent isn't there.

0:24:47 Thomas: So why don't you give one of the real examples of how you did that in the question? Because that is very clever. I love it. [0:24:54] So for example, let's take the one, the youngest one was about a 10 month old. So we said, so if you were a subject in the study, if you Were a person taking these surveys, you would read a story that went like this. Sandy A, 26, 26 years old is a safety inspector and the mother of 10-month-old baby Olivia. On Tuesday evening, Sandy takes Olivia to a parent-child exercise class at a gym.

One evening in early fall, Sandy and Olivia finish class and return to their car, which is parked in the gym's cool underground parking garage. Sandy buckles Olivia into her car seat, where Olivia immediately falls asleep, locks the car, and walks a few steps to the parking machine to pay for their parking. On her way back, Sandy is hit by a car and knocked unconscious. Driver immediately calls an ambulance which takes Sandy to the hospital.

[0:25:40] No one realizes that Sandy had a child with her or that Olivia is asleep in the back of the car. Olivia is in the car asleep for about 10 minutes until Sandy regains consciousness and alerts hospital staff. So you might read that and then you would be asked on a scale of one to ten with one being the safest, least risk and ten being the most dangerous, highest risk. How dangerous do you you think this situation is? How risky?

What are the chances of something bad happening to the child during the time that the parent is gone? Now, other people who took the survey would have seen almost the same story. But instead, they would read a story about Sandy, who's 26, and Olivia, who is 10 months old.

[0:26:28] And so for example, here's on Tuesday evening, Sandy goes to a cardio fitness class at the gym. At these times, she leaves Olivia with her mom, Olivia's grandma. One evening in early fall, Olivia, his grandma is out of town. So Sandy drives to the gym and parks in the gym's cool underground parking garage. Olivia, who is buckled into her car seat, falls asleep.

As soon as the car stops moving, Sandy locks the car, goes into the gym, Olivia is in the car asleep for about minutes until Sandy returns. So it's the same amount of time, it's the same place. It's the car. She's asleep. The baby's asleep in a car seat in the gym's cool underground parking garage. Right. Um, but in one case she's there because the mother got hit by a car and knocked unconscious. And in another case, she's here because, uh, the mother chose to let her stay there while she went into the gym. That makes sense.

0:27:18 Thomas: Yeah. So by definition, if we could get like a computer to evaluate the risk, it would say same for both circumstances, circumstances, exact same amount of time, same situation, has to be the same amount of risk. But since we're dealing with humans, we don't get that answer. So, and it's something I guess I didn't pick up on initially, but maybe would be obvious to someone who does these studies, so you only ask one set, to one set of people, right? [0:27:45] Right? So each person who Okay. [0:27:47] took the study would have read five stories. One And [0:27:50] would then [0:27:50] be other [0:27:50] about a group [0:27:50] 10 month old would [0:27:51] baby.

0:27:51 Thomas: Yeah, okay. [0:27:52] One and [0:27:52] is about a two and a half year old child. One's about a four year old, a six year old and an eight year old. They're all left alone for different periods of time. And they're all left alone in different places and for different reasons. So This [0:28:04] if is also [0:28:04] you were, randomized [0:28:05] yes, somehow, like, just randomly people [0:28:07] yeah, got. Okay. Got [0:28:08] it's it. [0:28:08] randomized.

0:28:08 Thomas: Oh, [0:28:09] Well, it starts with the constraint that each person would read a story. Each of the, each person Would read five stories, one story would be you'd always read You would read about a 10-month-old, a two-year-old a four, a six, and an eight-year old. And you would always read one of each moral condition. So that's mother leaves unintentionally, mother leaves to work, mother leave to relax, mother leaves to volunteer for okay.

[0:28:30] charity, or mother leaves meet her illicit lover. So these are, you'd I can't wait [0:28:36] read for that [0:28:36] always, one. [0:28:37] yeah, that was the best. [0:28:41] Most importantly, we're not asking a single individual person, how Right, right, right.

[0:28:47] much danger do you think they're in when this is the reason? Okay, now how much danger do you think they are in when that's the reason?" We're comparing for the same story across people, but that's where really reliable differences come up, right? If you ask people how much danger you think you're in, and the version of the story they got is that the mom was knocked unconscious, they think the child is in significantly less danger than who who got the story with the reason that the mom was going to the gym or going to meet an illicit lover, et cetera?

0:29:23 Thomas: Yeah. So, so should we talk about the results? Do you want to talk about kind of the strength of the results and the different answers you got? [0:29:28] Sure. What we found was a robust effect that people definitely thought kids were in more danger when the parent chose to leave them alone than when the parent got knocked unconscious and left them alone by accident. And in most cases, they also thought the kids were significantly more danger than when they left the gym, for any of the other voluntary reasons, like work or relaxing or volunteering. But the big effect was between leaving intentionally and leaving unintentionally.

0:29:57 Thomas: So how, and how big are [0:29:59] And, we talking? Oh, go ahead, Kyle. [0:30:00] Well, I was just going to say, as we point out in the paper, even, I mean, that finding, that the unintentional-intentional difference is a funny indicator of something going wrong here. If you stop and think about it, parents who leave children alone on purpose, uh, that situation is likely safer than when they leave them alone by accident because Yeah, [0:30:23] After all, they can take steps to make the situation, to make it safe, to make sure the kid has a phone or knows how to get in contact with them, or remembers they can review the safety rules, whatever it is, right. But people thought the opposite.

People thought that kids were in more danger when a parent chose voluntarily to leave them alone. Right. So let me, let me ask you this actually. And I don't think this is necessarily the right answer or something, but something occurred to me that I wonder if could be in the mix at all, which is when I see those situations, and by the way, I do think, I think your theory explains it best, which they're making moral judgments and that's changing the element of danger. But I'm wondering if there's any part of it that mixed in that could be, okay, this is a child who has a parent or parents who think it's okay to leave it alone. Like, they're making an overall danger assessment of that child in [0:31:20] Right, general, and [0:31:21] right.

0:31:21 Thomas: That's leaking into, like, this particular instance. Does that make sense? [0:31:26] Sure. So that's the first objection that occurs to all brilliant people, including you, Thomas, and Well, [0:31:34] including the I feel pretty [0:31:34] reviewer, dumb for asking it. I didn't [0:31:36] including read that. I suspected [0:31:37] the reviewers. We've gotten this question a lot. So I have three answers for I have you [0:31:43] a three-part answer. Might.

[0:31:45] Part one is we tried to minimize that by specifically asking people, what's the danger of something bad happening during the time Right. [0:31:54] that a parent is gone? So even if you think that child is generally in more danger, what are the chances in this 15 minutes? That should be the same, or this 20 minutes, or whatever. Whatever. Also, we asked people what, in one of the studies, we replicated this main effect six times, by the way. So in one Of them, we ask people to list the actual dangers, what bad thing do you think could happen? And theoretically, if people were literally imagining different dangers, if they were saying, well, you know, a parent who would leave the child alone must be the kind of parent who leaves, you now, cocaine in the car and open flames and sharp I [0:32:31] knives, then they have [0:32:33] would list all those [0:32:33] different things in my car.

[0:32:34] dangers, Yeah, that's true. [0:32:35] right? Yeah, but they didn't. They didn't list different dangers. The number one danger they listed was the danger of stranger abduction. And then they said accidents, which is kind of vague, right. So we didn't get any hint that they actually imagined different dangers.

0:32:50 Thomas: Right, [0:32:50] I mean, there yeah, [0:32:51] could be a rational explanation. For example, if you thought that the mother goes to meet her lover, and maybe her jealous husband is going to come and like, you right.

[0:32:59] know, crashed the car in a rage, then that would, you could say, well, I think the kid's in more danger because the jealous husband is out there somewhere. But nobody said that. Nobody actually said any, I mean, very few people mentioned anything that had anything to do with a specific case. So they had, they had a sort of vague, ill-specified fear that bad things happen when children are left alone.

And they just thought it was more likely to happen when you you chose to leave the child alone? And finally, the last part of my answer would be, even if that's, I think that's sort of a post hoc rationalization. I think what people do is they make the risk assessment. And then when you present them with the evidence that they've done this irrational thing, they say, well, somebody who would leave their child alone is a bad mother anyway. And that's why the kid's in danger.

But it's actually just an illustration of what we were studying. [0:33:49] It's not a counter argument, right? It just illustrates the reasoning process that we documented, which is anyone who would leave a child alone is X, fill in the blank, immoral, negligent, irresponsible, uncaring, and that kind of parent puts their kid in danger. So if you think that anyone who will leave a child alone is fill in different blanks, busy, rational, well informed, thoughtful, somebody who values responsibility. So when I when I thought about this, I thought About the first time I let my oldest son stay home alone. He's now almost 17. But I was thinking about it the other day, I hadn't thought about it in years, I have a, my kids are six years apart.

[0:34:36] So I have I remember there was a day where the seven-year-old, he was home from school. He had done his homework. He was finally sitting down on the couch to watch TV. He was so happy his homework was done. He finally got to relax. And I said, okay, get your shoes on. Come on, get in the car. We got to go pick up your brother from daycare to pick up the one-year old. And the seven year old just looked at me and said, oh, please, please.

Can I just stay here on the coach and watch TV? And I was like, no, you can't. Come on. You're too little. You got to come with me. And he said, why? Why can't I just say here? Here. I'm not going to do anything. I promise. I'll just stay here and watch TV. And I said, well, and I started thinking, I don't know why. And he said, what if there's a fire? And he said, I'm going to use the

0:35:19 Thomas: Yeah, [0:35:19] stove and I promise I won't light any matches. Honestly, please let me watch TV. And I said, well, what if, I don't know, what if a stranger comes to the door? He said, I promise I won't open the door for any strangers. And we, we kind of stared, stared at each other and I said, "Earthquake." And we kind of both laughed and I said, you know what, you're right, you're right, okay. You can, you can stay here. I'll be back in under half an hour.

And you know, if you do anything wrong or cause any messes or get in any trouble, then I'm not going to let you stay here alone next time. And he said, I know, I know, I promise, I promised, I won't, stay, you know, you won't do anything. Uh, and so I went and got the baby and I let my seven-year-old stay home alone and he was happy as a clam. He was really thrilled to have the responsibility to be allowed to sit on the couch and it's [0:36:00] not pick something we all want.

[0:36:01] the Yeah. Yeah, [0:36:03] channel and what's [0:36:03] right particularly powerful, I think Kyle referenced earlier, is it's not just a question of, well, I can imagine something would happen. I could imagine, oh, maybe your kid's a liar, and he's actually going to go start all those fires and do all this. [0:36:16] Absolutely.

0:36:16 Thomas: You can imagine that, but you have to evaluate the danger of a car ride, which is far [0:36:22] Right. More dangerous, likely, than any of those scenarios. [0:36:26] And so if that's the kind of scenario you picture when you hear, you know, mother let seven-year-old stay home for half an hour alone, then you don't, you don't think, uh, well, that must be a negligent, irresponsible, thoughtless person, right? If you hear about the whole thought process that I went through, I wasn't being negligent or irresponsible or thoughtless at all.

I was being extremely thoughtful and talking it over with him and making a really reasoned decision about whether he was mature enough to handle it and letting him try it out a little bit at a time. And so there's no inference licensed there that somehow I was leaving him in a dangerous situation or that because I would leave him at all, I must be the kind of person who would leave him in an dangerous situation.

I was just going to connect that up to the point Barbara was making about people's reactions, right, that that this seems like [0:37:13] the sort of case in which the moral reaction is coming first and then when you call people on it, they're, they're scrambling

0:37:20 Thomas: Mm [0:37:20] to find hmm. [0:37:20] A rationalization or justification, uh, for that. So the the third part of her three-part answer, right, if you, if what, if the, if the thing that's going, that's that's operating on subjects, is, oh, huh, a mother who would do that would probably do a lot of bunch of other dangerous things. To a certain extent, we're already, we've already got the problem in place there, right, because they're vastly overestimating how dangerous a thing it is to leave your child of Right.

[0:37:48] whatever age alone Yeah. [0:37:49] for Yeah, that [0:37:50] this occurred [0:37:50] kind of to [0:37:50] time me, [0:37:50] right too. You wouldn't, you would already know the problem is there because they're looking at it in that way. Yeah, so [0:37:55] but you're right about what the worry is, and we did work, uh, in the ways that Barbara just described to try to make sure that that's not what was going on. People weren't imagining actually differences in the details of the scenario that were not specified hmm, right [0:38:09] or something, something like that, because and [0:38:10] the reasons were changing. And we found no evidence at all of that.

0:38:13 Thomas: I think [0:38:14] Oh, I think I would say, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the difference, the big difference between the affair and another situation where they're, they're intentionally leaving them alone, that would also suggest a more moral judgment versus, because just, just the intent in itself would cover whether you're apt to do that a lot or whatever. So yeah, uh, regret, thinking of a question that everyone else already asked you, but, uh. Sorry about [0:38:38] sorry. That. But here's, [0:38:39] No, no, here's [0:38:39] it's, one that [0:38:40] yeah, I actually am fairly serious about that, might seem like a joke.

Did you guys think about it, all the fact, it would not surprise me if there's some small percentage of this going on that, certain that, it seems like people have an innate sense of karma. Did you ever think about that, like, because someone is doing a wrong thing and leaving their kid, like, somehow something will happen, like, there's more likelihood that something will happen, it may be a way of restating the problem, anyway, but did you think about it from that angle at all, or no? [0:39:07] we don't, I don't think we've been tested it in any way. It's certainly something that's come up a few times in the discussions, like that.

0:39:13 Thomas: Yeah. [0:39:13] You know, do we imagine that, you know, if you dare to do a naughty thing that, Yeah. [0:39:18] Uh, you'll be punished? Like, I mean, that, that I, so I, I find it plausible that people are, are doing what you're, what you suggest, uh, in a way, uh, that would be a broad general phenomenon that the specific Right.

[0:39:32] instance we looked into would just sort of be the tip of the iceberg, right, that it's not just, oh, this kind of immoral thing changing the danger, it's that people are, uh, inclined to think that, well, you get, you're more likely to get what you deserve, uh, Yeah, [0:39:47] whether we [0:39:47] you're right, whether they're evaluating your action positively or negatively or whatever the rest. And so we're hoping to actually follow up this study by taking a look at other situations where there could isolate [0:39:58] are consequences. That more.

[0:40:00] That's right. Right? [0:40:01] We're working on that now. But I think, I mean, it seems to me a plausible suggestion right, I don't think this is a limited just happens in this one thing. I think there's probably a broader pattern here. The thing that is extra surprising and intriguing about this case is that whatever these, the source of these irrational attitudes, whatever, it's changed recently, right?

0:40:24 Thomas: Yeah, [0:40:25] It's yeah. [0:40:25] different now than it was very recently. And Let's [0:40:28] so that's talk about [0:40:28] something. That. You guys have a theory on that, right? A feedback loop, possibly, among other things. You want to go into that?

[0:40:36] Sure, go ahead, Kyle. Uh, sure. So, so the idea of the, the feedback loop is this, right? This particular situation, judging the, uh, the danger that a child is in when a parent leaves them on their own, right, is unusual in a particular, in a particularly particular way. We think that initial fears about bad things happening to children when they're on their own were initially elevated by something that's well-known and is called the availability heuristic. And the availability heuristic really just captures the idea that people think something's more likely to happen if they can more easily call it to mind, right? And so, you know, what happens in the 80s and 90s, there's the exploding news cycle.

[0:41:24] There's the kind of infotainment about cases of child abduction. And so people get the idea that these things are more widespread than previous generation had. But the interesting bit is this. Once that norm, you don't leave your children alone, it's bad parenting to leave your child alone, is in place, the moral outrage condemning parents who violate the norm and estimates of danger to children left alone become mutually reinforcing. Right, so our, the explanation we give in the paper for, uh, that, right, people essentially, what's going on is people are making that moral judgment and then elevating their estimates of how much danger the child was in as a way of, of rationalizing or defending, right, or protecting those, those judgments. But if you think about it, right.

[0:42:16] So suppose we've got a little, the belief that children are, how much danger children are facing when they're alone, goes up a little. We get the norm, right. But once the norm is in place, people are trying to justify their condemnation. And so they elevate the danger to children left alone even further. Well, that makes the norm even stronger, even more entrenched. People are even more outraged by parents who leave their kids alone, which in turn elevates the risk that they're right there. But each thing pushes the other, it gets higher. And so that's the feedback loop, right? It's that estimates of risk to children left alone and degree of moral outrage or condemnation of parents who do leave them alone are mutually reinforcing.

0:43:03 Thomas: Wow. So where's the ceiling on this? Where are we going to be in one more generation? You give some hypotheticals And to be honest, they're not that outlandish when you think about it relative to what we're seeing here.

[0:43:17] Well, the hope is that we're at the peak now. Maybe But [0:43:21] That's optimistic. But, I mean, obviously there's a limit to how far this can go. People have other sources of evidence that tell them that children do not spontaneously burst into flames the moment you turn your back on them, right? So it can't go forever, right, but it can go to the point where people are maximally condemning parents who, that's the worst possible thing in the world you could do, and because it will instantly kill your child if you're not watching them, right.

People have, have enough evidence, uh, that that's not true, that they're not going to wind up with that conclusion. And so, but, but again, right, part of what's interesting here is the speed at which this has changed has changed, and that's what the feedback loop is supposed to help a point, how could it happen so far, change so far so fast, and it's the feedback that's supposed to have done, done that, uh, if it would have gone on, uh, or is going to go on much, um, to elevate [0:44:15] even more the moral condemnation of parents who leave children alone and the degree of risk seen as facing those children. Uh, well, we're changing things now because we're, right, you know, this study is intended to push back on that, uh, that process, right.

And if people become, if people can be convinced that their moral outrage, rather than their just, than any objective or justifiable estimate of risk to the child, is, uh, driving those attitudes, then the hope is for those attitudes to, to be less, them to trust, be confident in their own intuitions about how much a child of danger is, how much danger a child is in when left alone, less than they do. In a way, that's the problem with the legal case, right?

Both cops and judges and DAs, they're all relying on a sort of gut sense or moral, a gut intuition about what's okay and what isn't okay, what [0:45:13] subjects a child to danger and what doesn't, right? And part of what our study shows is that those intuitions are simply not to be relied on because they're not responsive to objective evidence of risk to children. They're responsive to these other things.

0:45:54 Thomas: All right, that's it for part one. We talked about a lot more. Part two has got just as much action as part one, really interesting stuff. If you want to hear part two early, of course, you can head over to patreon.com/atheist. If not, no big deal. You'll hear it Monday. All right, I've got to thank my new patrons. Thank you so much. Hal Lee, Randall Nelson-Peterman, ahman, Lane, TheLawlessOne, Ian Rosano, John Hirt, Ross Balmer, Elliott H Lamm, Chuck Dukhoff, John Bowness, Phil Moore, Neal Soutter, Roger Metcalf, Emily, Michael Horniak, Frances McGrogan, Neil Dodsworth, Ed Hernandez, Ben, Tom MacMillan, Larry Wilson, Kyle Mangan, and Rapture Squirrel. I like it, Rapture Squirrel.

0:46:39 Thomas: Thank you guys so much for pledging. I really, really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed the, Oh, I should have mentioned there's a bonus with Ishmael. It's really good. It should be a regular episode because we had an awesome discussion on the Sam Harris, uh, Hannibal Burris exchange. And we talked about race. We talked about statistics. We talking about all that stuff. Really good episode. Uh, but that's a bonus content only. So check that out. All you fine, fine patrons. And now I gotta thank my all-time greats. That's Hunter Ashe, Sakashite Fukasumi, Jesse in Sighting Incident Podcast, Along Blackhawk, Kylie Riser, Zima Zinu Jr., Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwald, Ian Rosano, Roger Metcalf, robert schepis, Sammy, Adrian Borschoff, Blackhawks, Aerosign, Sharks, Steve Sigman, Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, Matt, Garrett.

0:47:31 Thomas: Thank you guys very much for being my top all- time greats, you're the best. Alright, look forward to part two. It's just as good as Part 1, and we cover some interesting territory. I'm curious to see what you guys think, and I have a few thoughts for the end because, boy, interesting stuff. All right. I will see you guys next time.