AS279: No Child Left Alone, Part 2

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 279, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, let's just get right back over to part two with the researchers who did the No Child Left Alone study. Really interesting stuff. People had some comments. I think a lot of the comments may actually be answered in part two. So I'll give you part two, and then we'll see where we are from there. Thanks I guess maybe I'm a little more worried than you that the evidence is great and the study is great, but how much are people going to listen to evidence and studies, you know?

Are you worried that we won't be? And to Be Honest, this really is the reason I wanted to have you guys on because this this seems like a gigantic issue to me. Like, it's not, I [0:01:30] Yeah. Really don't want to leave my kid in the car for five minutes and get arrested. Like it's a, it really should concern everybody. But at the same time, I mean, there are still all kinds of phobias people have that data hasn't really impacted, you know, and do you [0:01:46] Yeah, worry that [0:01:46] it's it won't be enough?

[0:01:47] almost half. [0:01:47] the definition of a Yeah, [0:01:48] phobia, right, exactly. [0:01:49] and it's like it's impervious to Right, [0:01:52] data. I mean, if right, [0:01:52] you're, right.

[0:01:53] So for example, a lot of my peers now that I know, um, are afraid to leave their kids alone, not because they think anything will happen to the kids, but because they're afraid that somebody will call the cops.

0:02:04 Thomas: Right. [0:02:04] And that's, I don't think that's a phobia because it's relatively Yeah. [0:02:07] common, so Yeah that's [0:02:09] I not. Yeah certainly. [0:02:10] mean, it's not actually an unrealistic fear. Um, my hope is, in, let me see, a couple of things, um, there's a strong libertarian tradition in the U.S. There's a tradition of people saying, you know, parents should be able to make decisions for their kids and the law should not get involved unless there's real statistically significant, not just statistically significant, but practically significant danger.

0:02:36 Thomas: Yeah. [0:02:36] And so that's one argument that can be made that I think gets a lot of traction. Also, there are people who pride themselves on making decisions rationally, and among them, I hope, are judges and people who make laws and policies, that if we can put data, well-documented, clear arguments out there that say this doesn't make sense and it's not supported by data, maybe people who consider it their job to make decisions based on data will listen.

So that I don't have much hope that people will stop taking videos of somebody who walks, you know, there was a, there was the thing last week where this couple went to a restaurant, strapped their baby into the [0:03:22] baby seat at the table and then got up and walked six feet away to the buffet to get their food, and some guy at the next table took video of it and posted it on Facebook saying these horrible people abandoned their child. Like, yeah, they walked six foot away, away, and it got like four million views on Facebook, and Facebook Well, [0:03:40] is, you know, it got huge, you know, the comments are just, you know, really hateful, and like these horrible people should be locked

0:03:47 Thomas: Well, I [0:03:48] up just [0:03:48] and love [0:03:49] Yeah. That's, that's what's so ridiculous to me, people's, people's [0:03:51] Yeah. View of what criminals are doing, like, like criminal child, uh, uh, predators, they go to restaurants, see, and they, and they order food [0:03:59] You're and then they sit [0:04:01] right, there, [0:04:01] they and they wait, they wait for [0:04:02] wait you to [0:04:02] until walk [0:04:03] you six feet [0:04:03] walk away [0:04:03] six and [0:04:04] feet away they're [0:04:04] for that one just [0:04:05] chance Ready. Yeah, exactly. And they're, they're wearing running shoes and they just, you see, they just [0:04:10] and run and they bolt. Yeah. Like I [0:04:12] they're don't. [0:04:12] gonna be at least six feet ahead of you at Yeah [0:04:14] least yeah. [0:04:15] 6, 6 foot lead, and that's enough.

0:04:17 Thomas: And that's, it's the same thing. Like, I, I let's say I went to the bank the other day and I it's so hot. I'm in, I'm in, oh, I guess we're, we're all in California, but it's, so hot where I am that I wanted to, I just left the car running so that I could keep the AC going. It's only going to be a minute, it. You know, I know apologies for the environmental impact there, but, but my wife reacted like you just left the keys in the car and you left the car running while you're, while you were at the ATM. And I said, yeah, I just don't, I don't think car thieves are roaming parking lots, like just waiting for the perfect [0:04:48] Right. Opportunity. You can't see [0:04:49] Right. That a car is running really. I mean, it's kind of hard, especially newer cars [0:04:53] No, and [0:04:54] I mean, it seems like the kind of decision we all make every day, Yeah.

[0:04:57] right? You, Yeah, [0:04:57] you, it [0:04:57] like when I, I walked here, I live pretty close to my office. So I walked here. So yeah, I took on some risks, right. There could be snipers on the building roofs, there could happened [0:05:08] be muggers, I could in [0:05:09] be, the 60s, [0:05:10] I right? And yet [0:05:11] could be raped and murdered and shot. We there was a professor at UCLA who was shot by a student and killed, right, the student was was unhappy with his grade, but, and yet all of us you still [0:05:20] continue.

0:05:20 Thomas: Give your students bad grades. [0:05:22] We Yeah. [0:05:22] come to class, you know, we come to work. I walk to work like you make you, there are some risks that even though they're not zero, they're so small that it would be crazy to act like they were likely to happen. So you don't, every time you walk into a grocery store, you don't make an escape plan for if terrorists bomb the grocery store while you're in there. Or if there's a, you know, there are shootings in movie theaters, but I still go to the movies. I understand that there's not a zero chance that there could be a mass shooting in the movie theater while I'm in there. The chance is not zero, but the chance is very, very low. And so I don't plan my day around it, you know?

0:05:57 Thomas: Yeah, apportioning your fears to the data is probably the best idea. But [0:06:01] gets to the point you were starting with. I mean, maybe it is too much Much to hope that, you know, we can change hearts and minds across the spectrum of every everybody. But it would be satisfying enough if you could get the legal system to stop Yeah...

[0:06:18] relying on intuitions that are demonstrably unreliable. And in a way, we don't know if that's possible yet or not. To this point. Right. People, judges, cops, nobody's had a reason to question the reliability of their own intuitions about Yeah, [0:06:34] when kids actually, [0:06:35] are I [0:06:35] in was [0:06:35] danger. Going to ask, did you look at the kinds of laws that are allowing this to happen? Is it that they're worded so vaguely [0:06:42] Well, as [0:06:43] yeah. To allow for any...

[0:06:43] In most cases, they're worded to say like if a child – so there's a couple of cases. There are cases where the laws would not seem to apply, but people apply them anyway. So like the story we started talking about where the woman let a four-year-old wait in the car for five minutes and she's charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, that looks to me like a case where they just couldn't find anything to actually charge Yeah. [0:07:07] her with, so they made something up.

0:07:09 Thomas: But the whole town knew just found [0:07:11] Right. Something. [0:07:12] Exactly. Yeah. [0:07:13] And then the Meitiv case in Maryland, you know, the law in Maryland actually said that children, it was like, the children under eight or something are not allowed to be locked in a car or a building or an enclosure alone for some period of time. And these kids were walking on the street. So it doesn't seem like it should apply at all. But didn't stop Child Protective Services from picking up the kids twice. It didn't stop the cops from picking them up.

So there are cases where the law doesn't, it's not against the law, but people are so sure that something must be terribly wrong with it that they're trying to apply laws. And then there are other cases where the law is just vague. So it just says, if the police officer thinks the child is in danger, then he or she can take the child. If the caseworker thinks the childhood is in danger, they can remove the kids.

[0:08:01] So there's definitely the policies in many cases are written in such a way as to trust the judgment and intuitions of people like police officers and social workers and judges. And that's a problem if their intuitions are demonstrably biased, as we've shown. And unfortunately, one depressing thing about cognitive, one depressing thing that cognitive, two depressing things that cognitive science has shown is not only that people's decision making is systematically biased, but that people are systematically confident about their decisions. So even if you say to people, you know, your decision making as biased in this way, they don't want to believe it, right? So so they really think that they are, [0:08:46] we all really believe that we're good at making decisions and that our decisions are not biased. If

0:08:51 Thomas: Yeah, [0:08:51] you give people the evidence on the dangers of driving while being on a cell phone, for example, will come to believe that other people's driving is very badly right. [0:09:01] affected by their cell phone use, but they don't believe that about themselves.

0:09:06 Thomas: How much did you look at just the role that social media plays in your feedback loop? Because I can imagine that perhaps that's a giant factor because let's say, let's picture the same feedback loop, but without social media, people just call the police and And there's a baby in a car, whatever it is. And they get a bit of a warm feeling because they're like, OK, I did the right thing. But now magnify that times a billion because now there's you put the video on, you're a hero, you get to be this moral figure for like saving this child or, you know, saving this dog. There's a lot of those videos. Did you did you look at that at all? Is there anything interesting to say about that?

[0:09:44] We didn't look at the role of social media. I think it's a really interesting question. And it's another, certainly, candidate for why this could be spiraling as quickly as it is. But we didn't have anything to say about it. Yeah. Notice, it doesn't need to be nearly that fancy for something like social media to play a big role here. Part of what's important here is that people are making a moral judgment. And they're reinforced in that moral judgment by how many other people

0:10:15 Thomas: Right, [0:10:15] share right, right. [0:10:16] it and jump on it. It's [0:10:17] And like [0:10:17] so, an accelerator, [0:10:17] yeah, that's like it's like it already takes the problem you've outlined outlined and it just kind of magnifies it even more. Yeah.

[0:10:24] right. Given that other people agree with them, oh, yes, that was a terrible thing for that mother to do, Right. [0:10:32] they are reassured and more confident that their gut instincts about what's acceptable and what isn't or what's dangerous and what it isn't are correct, correct, and that there's just a lot more of that reinforcement going on given the existence of social media, right? Given how more much more connected people are, it's interesting with with the social media case too, and I don't, I don't like to read the comments in those things because Right, [0:11:01] they're so awful, but um, I don't get a lot of sense of concern for the baby, right? Yeah.

[0:11:07] you don't, you don't, people are not posting these things and saying, oh my gosh, was the baby okay? I mean, the the baby is quite obviously okay. Like the baby is sitting The [0:11:16] in baby's always [0:11:17] a okay, [0:11:17] high chair. Yeah, yeah [0:11:18] Fine. What you get is a lot of anger at the parents, particularly yeah.

[0:11:22] the mothers, right? You get a lot of like really nasty language about, about the mother, um, or the parents Oh [0:11:31] or, yeah, [0:11:32] you know, we [0:11:32] whatever forgot [0:11:32] parent to talk [0:11:33] it was.

0:11:33 Thomas: About that. There's a difference in status of, I guess, demographics of how they responded to the questions. You want to go into that a little little bit, the groups that responded one way versus another?

[0:11:45] Sure. Um, so we, one of the things we asked people, we asked them the people who filled out the survey and there There were a total of, I think we ended up with 1,501 or something people across all the studies. We asked them a bunch of questions about themselves. So we asked their age, sex, whether they had kids or not, racial or ethnic identity, how many years of education they had. I think that was it.

And of those demographic variables, the only two that made a difference were whether they were male or female and whether they had kids or not. And so what we found was that women and the effect, it wasn't a difference in the effect. Everybody showed the effect that is everybody's judgments were biased by their moral, everybody's risk assessments were biased by their oral judgments.

[0:12:33] But what we saw a difference in was the, just the absolute risk assessments that people made. So how dangerous they thought it was. Women thought it was, women gave higher risk estimates than men and people with children gave higher risk estimates than people without children. So, if you put those two factors together, what you get is that mothers make the highest risk estimates, followed by fathers, followed by childless women, and then childless men.

So it was the same pattern of behavior across all the groups, but the absolute amount of overestimation of risk was affected by those things. You might also be thinking, though, Thomas, about the difference that we found when when we made the parent who was leaving the child a father rather than a mother. Is that what

0:13:15 Thomas: That [0:13:16] you too. [0:13:16] had in mind? Yeah, yeah. That's interesting to talk about as well. [0:13:18] So that's not the demographics of the subject pool, No, yeah, no, I was actually talking about the single. I was going to say because I'm a childless dude that I could [0:13:28] Yes, be one reason [0:13:29] that's I'm the [0:13:30] right. Most. Yeah.

[0:13:31] You don't care. You're not I [0:13:33] afraid don't [0:13:33] enough. Care. Yeah? [0:13:35] Actually, a striking feature of the study, too, was, I mean, the difference is Barbara just sketched emerged, But it's also true that across the board, people's risk estimates were incredibly high, Yeah.

[0:13:49] Right? We gave gave them on a scale from one to 10. We wound up shortening the amount of times, the amount time that kids were alone, because when we had longer times, you couldn't get anybody to say anything, except that all the kids were about to die immediately. And it's still, it was still the case, uh, that on our, um, right, that the average risk estimate to, uh, the modal, well, the average is about seven, right? And the most common answer, uh, to how much danger a child was in in any of these situations was 10, 10, Oh, [0:14:26] out of 10, uh, wow.

[0:14:27] it's, there's nothing more, more dangerous, I [0:14:29] right, hope [0:14:29] in this, this [0:14:29] but, isn't [0:14:30] we, a dumb question, but is it possible? Could it have, have been worded in a way that wasn't like how much danger, and therefore your mind goes to danger, do you think that could have made any difference, like if maybe if, if it was like, how safe are [0:14:43] used

0:14:43 Thomas: They, or [0:14:44] both did [0:14:44] we said you okay [0:14:45] with on uh-huh [0:14:45] a scale of one to ten, with one being the safest slash least dangerous, ten being okay [0:14:52] the least safe slash most dangerous, so we use the word safe and dangerous, uh, or okay [0:14:57] risky, in both, it and it didn't, didn't make any [0:15:00] didn't difference, right?

[0:15:01] seem okay [0:15:01] to matter, seem and [0:15:03] to manner, uh, but sorry, I interrupted [0:15:05] get you, [0:15:05] it, Kyle, [0:15:05] that's go ahead, man, mm-hmm. [0:15:06] Okay, get, let me just quickly get back to the, um, the fathers versus mothers yeah [0:15:10] Thing, uh, so So, right, there, it's not the demographics, it's the subject pool. So we asked people, in one of our studies, we gave all the same vignettes, same amount of time, left alone, same reasons, but made the parent who was leaving the child alone a father rather than a mother. Found the same effect, right? The same thing happens. We replicated it again with one kind of intriguing difference. And that difference is this, right.

So in other studies or the other replications, people found They found intentional absences to be much more dangerous than unintentional absences, right? But there wasn't any difference among the different unintentional abstences except for the illicit affair, right, that was more dangerous than leaving to work, leaving to volunteer, or leaving to exercise or relax.

[0:16:10] But with fathers, that wasn't true. There's a little bit of a difference. A father's work-related absence was not seen as any more dangerous to the child than an unintentional absence, a—I mean, it's an effect we haven't replicated yet. We're hesitant to put too much weight on it, but it's suggestive, right. One possibility that it's suggested above, of course, is that is viewed as more obligatory for fathers than mothers.

0:16:37 Thomas: Right. [0:16:37] And so they are, to a certain extent, making less of a choice when they leave a child alone to go work. So it's certainly not the only possibility, right? But it's for those kinds of reasons that the findings is suggestive. It seems that there may well be a double standard.

0:16:53 Thomas: Yeah, it certainly sounds like it could be some sort of sexism, like the female has more of a responsibility, and so therefore you make more of an moral judgment, maybe. Yeah, interesting. So let's talk about maybe the, another reason why THIS matters so much is the fact that constant supervision may have bad effects. Do you want to talk about that, [0:17:13] Yeah.

0:17:13 Thomas: Barbara? [0:17:14] Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that one of the, one of the things that people do when they think through these scenarios is they have this kind of conversation with themselves where they say, you should, I, so take the example I gave you before, where I'm deciding whether to let the seven year old stay on the couch and watch TV, or thinking do I force him to come along with me to pick up the one year old.

And I think people sometimes have this thought process where they say, well, I know the chances of anything terrible happening while he's here alone are low, but what does it hurt to just bring him along? I mean, I'll just be on the safe side. There's no cost to bringing him along. It's a little bit inconvenient for me, but at least, you know, X, whatever horrible low frequency thing won't happen.

Um, and it, and there's no harm done if I bring him, and it doesn't, you know, there's no chance of a bad thing happening if I bring him. [0:18:03] So I think that's wrong, right? I think we need to start talking about what is lost when children are never allowed any independence or any responsibility. And I say this as a developmental psychologist, like it's not only that by taking the child along, I would have subjected him to the risk of a car accident, which is much higher than the risk, you know, something terrible befalling him while he sat on the couch watching TV.

Um, but it's also that, you know, he was, it was, it was appropriate, it was age appropriate, it was developmentally appropriate for us to have a conversation about whether he was old enough to be alone and what things he needed to do to make sure that he was safe and what kind of responsibility it involved, and like you're not going to play with matches and you're not going to use knives and you're not going to yada yada yada, and [0:18:51] if you do all these things right and you show me that you can be responsible, then maybe I'll let you stay alone another time for 25 minutes instead of 20 minutes, right, like that's appropriate, appropriate, and it's, he was, it's good for kids' development, I think it was good for him, he was proud of himself, he felt responsible and grown up.

0:19:08 Thomas: Yeah. [0:19:08] And, you, and anyway, if I had never done that, what would the end game be, like he's 17 now, he's gonna move out next year, like Well, [0:19:15] if you're going to [0:19:16] he have to [0:19:16] had go to college with him and [0:19:17] exactly you're gonna have to, [0:19:17] like yeah.

[0:19:18] like sooner or later, right, your kids are not dogs, He [0:19:21] you can't [0:19:21] don't keep be in [0:19:22] them a dorm [0:19:22] forever room by [0:19:22] ever himself. That won't work.

[0:19:24] you can't, yeah, you, there, you have to turn them into adults, right, that's You [0:19:29] the job know, [0:19:30] as parents is that, like, you gently, gradually let them turn into humans who can live on their own without you, and if there's, um, sort of hysterical paranoid obsession with never ever letting them be subjected to a couple of very tiny risks and no thought given to like their need to develop responsibility and good judgment and independence on their own, then I think that's, I think that's being lost, right, in this conversation, that there's all this focus on the kids going to be abducted by a stranger and no focus on what are the psychological implications of being raised as though you're in, you know, Aleppo or something, right?

0:20:14 Thomas: Just because it's so interesting and I don't think anyone stated it explicitly, what is the actual risk? Because I think you you, you had the numbers of your child being abducted. Yeah. [0:20:24] So Daniel Gardner estimates it at one in 1.4 million annually. Annually. But there's a British author who, you know, 1.4 million is kind of hard to understand. But if you break that down to the risk of any given child, there was a British author who tried to estimate if you wanted your child to be abducted for some reason, how long would you have to leave them outside in Yes. [0:20:51] order Good [0:20:52] to info. [0:20:52] make it statistically Okay. [0:20:53] likely?

0:20:53 Thomas: Good [0:20:53] And it info [0:20:54] came for, [0:20:54] came out for [0:20:54] to be unhappy [0:20:55] indeed parents. Yeah, [0:20:56] Do you want to take a guess how [0:20:58] What, yeah, long of just time, [0:21:00] how time [0:21:01] long alone?

[0:21:01] would you have to leave a kid outside in a, I believe it was a stand, the average British suburb, uh, Gosh. [0:21:06] to make it likely that Well, [0:21:07] they would be abducted does it, okay, [0:21:08] it was does matter where it is because the British population versus the, so was that one out of one, one something million of British?

[0:21:14] The number of, no, the one out of 1.4 million was, uh, America, but Okay, [0:21:19] what, what you'd have to do okay. [0:21:19] is then you have to know the number of children in America and I may not [0:21:23] figure be able to do [0:21:24] out this [0:21:24] for in [0:21:24] individual my head, [0:21:25] child. So So I'll [0:21:26] Well, what just [0:21:27] he guess.

[0:21:27] came up with How [0:21:28] something about, [0:21:28] like, I [0:21:28] go ahead. Will guess, just to do a terrible calculation. Let's guess 50 years. [0:21:37] He came up with 600,000 years.

[0:21:42] So Come [0:21:42] now on, [0:21:42] obviously get on it, [0:21:43] you criminals. Jeez, [0:21:44] have you're lazy. Wow. [0:21:46] to, so you have know the population of kids in the country, the, the incidence of stranger abduction, the amount of the number spend outside the crime rate, you know, it's it's actually hard to quantify exactly what it is, but it's a tiny, tiny not accounting [0:22:01] risk.

0:22:01 Thomas: For the buzz that this would create [0:22:03] abducting in the child, you know, kidnapping community. Did you see this kid? [0:22:07] community. Right. Yeah, yeah. [0:22:08] Right. This kid, every day he's there. He just sits there. [0:22:11] yeah. There. He's just waiting to be taken. [0:22:14] So if you, if you look at the odds for any individual child, it's crazy, like Yeah, [0:22:18] I mean, yeah. [0:22:19] they would be, they would not be a child long before the chances would be that, uh, would be anything That's [0:22:24] like a good [0:22:24] high that point. [0:22:25] they could All [0:22:25] be you [0:22:26] I have to do is get to adulthood. You just have to get that, [0:22:28] mean yeah, a couple [0:22:28] anything. Years. [0:22:29] more. More than like 10 years is irrelevant, right? Because they're not a child anymore.

0:22:32 Thomas: Yeah. [0:22:32] So the, I kind of variables like what the location is and what the crime rate is there and stuff like that, all of those things certainly matter to the answer to the question, what was the actual risk for this person in this environment? But across the board, no matter what those statistics are like, it's going to be tiny. It's going to be tiny compared to risks that people are ignoring when they instead take the kid with them in a car or whatever, right?

So it's not, it can't be the case that some people are really reacting to, you know, having a reasonable reaction to their circumstances and then other people aren't, right. Right. Nobody, nobody who has this attitude has it because they have good objective evidence that at least around here, kids get You [0:23:19] abducted all the time. Right. That's not true anywhere. That's true. Know, I'm wondering, just a random question, why do you think people are so... It must be something else going on, but people minimize the car auto accident risk, it seems seems like. Because when you look at the availability heuristic, it's not like we don't see auto accidents in the news every day. I mean, I said certainly [0:23:42] Yeah, every [0:23:42] I day [0:23:43] don't there's [0:23:43] they don't even a car [0:23:44] make accident.

[0:23:44] the news a Yeah, [0:23:45] lot of the exactly. [0:23:45] time for them because they're not even newsworthy. You Right. [0:23:49] probably know because you've been in a few of them or you've had friends who have been in auto accidents.

0:23:53 Thomas: Well, [0:23:53] I if you want to flip on the news around commute time, you're always going to see an auto accident. And that's the reason why. And I wonder, is it just a question of we just need to drive? So we decide, eh, whatever. But we don't necessarily necessarily need to fly in a plane every day. So then we look at it as like this other thing. I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on that, because it's interesting that through [0:24:12] think it all [0:24:12] might be this, [0:24:13] related. We [0:24:13] Yeah. Minimize the car risk, like driving [0:24:15] Absolutely. The kid away, you know.

[0:24:18] Yeah, I think it might be related to what Kyle was talking about earlier when he said, you know, hopefully people, was saying people get evidence that children don't burst into flames the minute you look away, right? People look away and the children don'T burst into flame. And I was thinking when you were saying that, Kyle, like, well, actually, people don't get as much evidence of that as they once did. Because if you refuse to ever leave your child alone, you can continue to believe that if you ever left your child alone, the child would burst into to flames, Right.

[0:24:42] right? So in a sense, they're denying themselves the opportunity to gather the evidence that this is not actually as dangerous as it seems. But with car journeys, people get that evidence all the time.

0:24:58 Thomas: Yeah. [0:24:59] You know, they can hear about, basically people are terrible at thinking about statistics and statistical arguments about how rare something is just don't penetrate people's reasoning Yeah, [0:25:11] very well at all. And so you can talk about the odds of a car crash, but what people think in a car crashes, you know, about they think about car crashes. They think, well, I drive every day and I'm fine. You know, I've been driving for years and I find, well, there was that one accident five years ago, but I've driven every day since then. And I'm fine. And, and I think this is what people used to think when kids were routinely spending a lot of time on their own, they would hear about some terrible thing and it would traumatize them.

[0:25:39] But the neighborhood were outside every day, and nothing was happening, and it was clearly fine. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. [0:25:45] The other thing, so I think that really matters, that people have all this other evidence that, you know, they don't wreck every time they take their car out and stuff like that. It does seem to me there's also likely to be some element here of seeming like more of a choice, right? So if you say, right, it's not a practical possibility to not ever drive around with the kids, right.

0:26:13 Thomas: Right, yeah. [0:26:14] And if you stay to someone, well, you know, you realize you're subjecting them to this small, but, but not zero risk of dying by driving them to school, people's natural reaction is that, well what are you supposed to do? Right. Do [0:26:29] I'm they [0:26:30] sorry, just [0:26:30] that's put [0:26:30] a risk, but it [0:26:31] I in their minds as like part of the background risk of being a human, they just say this is a necessity, [0:26:36] think, yeah, [0:26:36] I think yeah, mm-hmm.

[0:26:38] It's a matter of change in what we're treating as the background, right? So Yeah, [0:26:43] a generation could [0:26:44] ago, you know, it would seem ridiculous for someone to say to someone else, well, you realize that you're exposing your children to a non-zero risk of being abducted if you let them play out by themselves at the park or in the backyard or whatever it is. And the naturalness of doing that, the frequency, uh, the, the how common it is for parents to do that, that doesn't seem like a reasonable reaction to the risk. And they were right, a generation ago.

It's not, uh, now we've, we've got the, this, the moral reinforcement of these beliefs about the, about risk. It, the scenarios we gave, all the voluntary ones, very much seemed like a choice. You were choosing to subject your child to, uh, a risk that, you, that marked you as [0:27:31] a bad parent or something like that, right? Whereas they don't think of, they're inclined to think of driving the kids around to something you have to do, there's no way other way you're going to get them to, right, do stuff you need to do. Of course, an example

0:27:43 Thomas: Leave them [0:27:43] of at [0:27:43] that home [0:27:44] Kyle yeah [0:27:44] an yeah [0:27:45] example of the, of the background changing, we, a friend of mine was, uh, telling me the other day that, so my friend is in her 50s, she has, uh, she was telling me about a friend of hers who is a man in his maybe 60s now, his parents were Holocaust survivors, and he grew up in New York City, and, uh, his, his mom, and, you know, the other moms of the kids he knew, um, a lot of them had survived the Holocaust, right.

And they were traumatized. And when the kids would walk to school, uh, the parents, the moms would call each other and say, they passed, they've, they've walked past this apartment. They're okay. You know, and they'd walk past the next apartment and the next mom would call and say, "Okay, they walked past his apartment. You know, they've walk past my apartment, they're okay." Which it sounds kind of [0:28:30] crazy in two ways. Like, in one way, it sounds understandably crazy, because if you've been through some horrific event where yeah [0:28:36] many of your family members have been killed, then you can understand being so traumatized that you would, you know, be just terrified for your child's safety. But also they let them walk to school. Like

0:28:46 Thomas: Well [0:28:47] today, where no, none of these parents of young children could possibly be a Holocaust survivor. They're acting more traumatized than people who actually I [0:28:57] did survive the Holocaust, right? They're not letting their kids walk to to school because they think it's too dangerous. Assume if they had time to talk on the phone, they could just walked with them, right? So, like, that [0:29:06] Yeah, yeah [0:29:06] theoretically. But I think at that time, I mean, I was wondering, like, why didn't they just, you know, walk with them? But probably yeah [0:29:13] the kids would have said, Mom, geez, don't right [0:29:15] embarrass me. Like, all the kids are walking to school alone. Leave me right [0:29:18] alone. You know, they were kind of doing what the culture did, which was let the kids walk to school. Makes sense, so [0:29:23] It's as, as culture changes, as it sort of goes, it fades into our background assessment of [0:29:28] right. Risk that we always just have to put up with. Interesting.

[0:29:32] What rests are reasonable. It's actually the point about the Holocaust surviving, the hypothetical Holocaust surviving parent, uh, is connected to the thing you, we were saying about the demographic differences, right? Uh, I think we were surprised, right? So you might think parents would be more relaxed about this than non-parents, because they know more, they have way more Yeah, [0:29:53] evidence of that's [0:29:53] right, what actually happens to kids when you do this or do that or do the other thing, um, the fact that it's the opposite way is actually a reason to belief that what's going on here is moral judgments are inflating estimates of risk to children, because the people who are in a better position to know that those risks are overblown are the people who, uh, judge most harshly, and so it suggests that, right, that's another reason to think it's, so why would it be more, there well, people, people who are parents are more willing to morally judge other people's parenting, right? And so, well, maybe they're more aware, they're more aware of the norm

0:30:38 Thomas: Yeah. [0:30:38] or I was going to say, [0:30:39] they'reもう I could [0:30:39] afraid imagine that [0:30:39] of being going [0:30:40] judged either [0:30:40] that's way. [0:30:40] also Yeah [0:30:40] also possible. That's also possible, yeah. But it's not that how much this affects you depends on how much evidence you have about kids, right? That doesn't seem to be... I was really surprised by that, because I, as a mom, I thought, come on, anybody who thinks that you're going to raise kids without ever leaving them out of your sight for a second has not tried to raise children. That has kids. That is just ridiculous.

And I thought anybody who has kids understands that, it's, as life doesn't work that way, you can't stare at them every minute and still, you know, get the groceries bought and make their dinner and, you know, walk the dog and whatever, but that's [0:31:21] I was wrong, I was, right, more hysterical and judgmental. Really [0:31:28] yeah interesting. I would love to know more about why that is for for sure. It's, it's like there, like Kyle was saying, I suppose, is that still in the theory phase? Are you still just have a number of different ideas about why that might be? Or do you think you have a good explanation for that?

[0:31:45] we haven't, we don't know why, I Yeah. [0:31:46] mean, we see, we see the effects, but we Yeah. [0:31:48] haven' tested any hypotheses about why, about Cause, cause [0:31:51] the it [0:31:51] the demographic difference.

0:31:51 Thomas: Really seems [0:31:52] Yeah. Like it could go either way. I think your intuition makes sense that once you experience the reality of trying to raise kids, you're like, well, there's no way I'm going to watch this kid every second. And it's impossible. But man, it's weird. It's like it's like becoming a parent. You take on those judgments more all of a sudden, like you're in that world more. So you yeah, it'S really interesting. [0:32:10] And I think actually that people, I think there's a quality of superstition about it in the sense Hmm. [0:32:16] that like, you know, there are lots of superstitious practices that are designed to protect you from horrible things. So like you're going to throw salt over your left shoulder and it's going to keep the devil away or something.

0:32:27 Thomas: Mm-hmm. [0:32:27] And I think this idea, you're a parent, you have a kid, you contemplate this horrific nightmarish scenario where someone someone kidnaps and rapes and murders your child. And it's so awful that psychologically you have to, you have to protect yourself from it. So you start thinking, well, it'll never happen to me because I will do blank, right? So you kind of make this bargain where you say like, I will do this thing.

And as long as I do this things, this, the terrible thing will never happen to my kid. And I think that the, the bargain that has been sort of widely accepted is that if you never let your kid out of your sight, then nothing bad will ever happen to them. And and that would explain why mothers and fathers were more subject to it than non-parents, right? Because they have more investment in believing that this magical formula works.

[0:33:13] Like if you never stop looking at the child, then nothing, no bad thing will ever happen. And of course, most of the bad things that happen to kids have nothing to do with parental supervision. Like, you know, kids die from diseases that they would not get, you you know, childhood obesity is really,

0:33:31 Thomas: Yeah, [0:33:31] really yeah. [0:33:31] Up in recent years, right? If kids were spending hours and hours playing outside, like they did a generation ago, they would have, you know, be said to have a longer lifespan than their parents instead of a shorter lifespan for the first time in history. So there's all, you know, most of the bad things that are going to happen to your kid have nothing to do with you watching them or not watching them.

0:33:50 Thomas: Yeah. [0:33:50] Things like juvenile, type two diabetes and heart disease and cancer and, you know, car accidents and fires.

0:33:57 Thomas: Well, and it's like that stat might have been a Freakonomics thing or something, like you should be far more worried about your pool than having a gun in the house or something like that, you know, where people just are [0:34:06] Yeah. Not able [0:34:07] I mean that. To align their fears with the stats.

[0:34:10] Yeah. Another thing that's interesting is if you look at the actual accident, um, the most common accidental deaths are all things that really can't happen to a baby or a toddler who's strapped into a car seat, for example. So people are very freaked out about babies being in cars, but, um. The most common causes of accidental deaths or first of all, car accidents. But then I believe, I think in order it's drowning and then fires and falls and poisoning. So a baby strapped into a car seat can't drown or start a fire or fall down or be poisoned, Yeah, [0:34:43] right? Like yeah, [0:34:43] the baby is basically protected from all the bad things that that's [0:34:48] they're at a good [0:34:49] risk point. [0:34:49] from. I mean, babies are actually more at risk for congenital birth defects. That's why babies die the most. Yeah.

0:34:55 Thomas: Well, you have to watch them, otherwise they'll develop [0:34:57] if a [0:34:58] you stare birth defect. [0:34:58] at them, they Yeah. [0:34:59] develop those. That's right. That [0:35:00] they old saying, [0:35:01] can't the watched [0:35:01] they can't baby [0:35:02] get those never [0:35:02] when you stare develops [0:35:03] up, never it. Yeah yeah. [0:35:04] develops spina bifida. Uh, well.

0:35:08 Thomas: Go ahead, Kyle. You have something to chime in? [0:35:10] I was just going to say that this is, I mean, in a way, this is, this is part of why it's so important, uh, for understanding the the situation we're in, that there's a a norm now, right, in place because Yeah [0:35:21] that's yeah [0:35:22] part of what, right. Right. That's what makes it seem like part of the background or not. Right. Yeah. [0:35:28] There's, because we've entrenched this norm that you don't leave, leave children alone. Right. That's that's that, that's right, that that that starts people thinking, oh, but I would like to leave this child alone in a set of circumstances and I think it's safe. But what if something happened? Right. I would blame myself. Right, it makes an enormous difference for there to be a norm that you are violating, uh, Right Right. [0:35:49] by doing this thing that people broadly have the attitude you should not do, right.

0:35:53 Thomas: Right. So you should [0:35:54] right think if it happened, you should think, wow, that was unfortunate. But since you're looking at it as a norm, you're thinking, I did this wrong and therefore I brought this on.

[0:36:05] I couldn't Yeah. [0:36:06] live with myself Yeah, [0:36:07] if something yeah. [0:36:07] did happen, so I'll bring her along with me, even though I know the chances are low, uh, you know, right. I was doing research on weird causes of death, and apparently, uh, 150 Americans a year die from falling out of bed. And they're mostly You [0:36:21] old people or little kids. And I started thinking about it. And you know, yeah, my my older son has fallen out of bed twice that I can remember, he, you know, he had a bed with a railing on it in our house. But then we were in a hotel once, we were on a trip, and he fell out of the hotel bed, and actually smacked his face on the on the bedside table. And he has a scar on his chin that he'll probably have forever. Um, and it never, I I didn't beat myself up, I didn't think like, oh my god, oh my god, I let him sleep in

0:36:49 Thomas: Should [0:36:49] this bed have roped [0:36:50] you him in. [0:36:50] know, like how You should. Yeah. [0:36:51] could I have done that Why [0:36:52] you know don't [0:36:52] like you buy [0:36:53] it never the new [0:36:53] because bed harness that harnesses [0:36:55] it's you? Yeah. [0:36:56] a social, like it's normal to let your kids sleep in a bed That [0:36:59] right makes [0:37:00] so I didn't feel like I had to beat myself up about it, uh, sense. [0:37:03] whereas I suppose if when he was left at that park alone, if he had somehow fallen on something and gotten a scar on on his chin, everybody would be like, see, that's why you don't leave him at a park alone.

0:37:13 Thomas: Yeah. Well, we're getting a little low on time, I'd say. So are In closing, I suppose I would just say I did find this very interesting for the reasons I stated before. And I'm willing to be a test case for maybe the Supreme Court or something. I'll have a kid and [0:37:28] All I'm just going [0:37:28] right. To leave him or [0:37:29] I her everywhere [0:37:30] guess one and get a [0:37:31] last thought lawyer.

[0:37:32] I have is that I Yeah. [0:37:33] don't want, I wouldn't want people to hear about this issue and think, oh my God, I have to stop. You know, if to whatever degree people are giving their children a little bit of independence, I Wouldn't want them to hear this podcast and then be like that's it. It. No more walking to school. You know, I just found out that, That [0:37:52] you know, they'll [0:37:52] people get [0:37:53] get arrested.

[0:37:53] arrested all Yeah, [0:37:54] the time. Yeah, [0:37:54] I think the, it would be really unfortunate if the effect of this study was to raise people's awareness of the hysteria and make them feel like they had to conform to it because they, you know, like I didn't realize that the cops were being called. Um, so I would say if you're letting your kids walk to school, bravo, you knows, yeah.

[0:38:12] stand tall. Uh, our research supports you making rational decisions, even if everybody around you thinks you're crazy, because you're not crazy. And also, I would say, we, this is a small thing, but we keep talking about children being alone. They're not necessarily alone, just because there's no adult there. A generation ago, kids were walking to school in groups, they were playing in parks with a lot of other kids, right?

The kids in the neighborhood would play on the street in the park in the neighbourhood, they would walk to school. And so sometimes I feel like this conversation falls into the trap of thinking that you're either a mother and a child or a father and a child alone or a child alone, like the child sitting there alone. Just because an adult is around doesn't mean the kids are alone, right? They could be with other kids.

0:38:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah. [0:39:00] one other point that's worth making. I mean, in talking about an issue like this, I think, I mean it is important to recognize that child endangerment is real, right? People Sure. [0:39:09] do do things that are incredibly stupid and that put their kids at danger or in danger. And really what we're supporting is, so we're not saying, okay, stop worrying about kids, right, in any circumstance, it's that you should only be worried when there's real evidence of a danger Yeah [0:39:29] and right [0:39:30] and there isn't real evidence that the danger across so many circumstances where uh parents assume there is, and as we were saying before, cops and DA's and judges trust their gut intuitions about whether a child is in danger or not, and so in a way, right, we're not trying to get everybody to to uh ignore their kids more so much as we're trying to get people to apportion their actions to the evidence of actual risks, right? Exactly. [0:39:59] and that's what seems to be missing.

0:40:01 Thomas: All right well said and I want to give you one more big thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Professor Barbara Sarnecka, Professor Kyle Stanford, Stanford, thank you so much. And I mean it, Kyle, when you finish your paper, I would love to hear more about it. That's another area of interest for me, moral philosophy [0:40:18] thanks and the [0:40:19] a like.

[0:40:19] lot, Thomas, it was really great talking to you, thanks Thank you guys [0:40:21] for so [0:40:22] having much, [0:40:22] us All right, thanks again so much to my guests, and I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I did. Now, there were a few people who, I don't know, maybe weren't on board with the entire concept initially. Now of course I'm recording this part early, so I'll see what the full reaction is once I've heard from everybody. Please comment wherever you want, if you want your opinion heard, and maybe I'll read it on the show at some point.

But I'm just extremely interested in these situations because, like I said, to start all of this, and and I'm sure, like was mentioned throughout the show, I mean this could happen to any of us. As a parent, we could make a decision, just imagine the principle of making a decision that, you know, is entirely in your child's best interest. Now let's say you have two choices.

0:41:31 Thomas: One is to leave them in a nice cool car secured in a car seat or something where you know they're not going to get too hot, they're going to fall, they are not going start the car, nothing like that. Or let's, you have to walk them through a dangerous situation, like through a parking lot, or keep them somewhere where you're not sure you're going to be able to keep an eye on them, like you're trying to do some shopping, something like that, or just driving them somewhere. Actual alternatives where you know that the science, the data tells you you are doing the safer thing, but society tells you, you're a monster because you left your kid alone for a few minutes, even though nothing is going to happen. Odds are, it's not that it's impossible.

0:42:18 Thomas: It's that just overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, the odds are nothing is going to happen. And as someone who grew up in the country where we just were outside all day, I mean, I suppose we weren't alone, well, no, we were alone quite a bit, and we were, my siblings, we would be left in the car for hours at a time, it was just nobody cared back then, I know it's anecdotal to say, oh, nothing ever happened to me and I'm fine, except that the data shows that nothing ever ever happened to any of us except, you know, one or two.

And for the most part, it's just it's it's an outlier that seems more likely than than it is. And, uh, for that reason, for me, like I don't have kids yet, but I can imagine that being incredibly traumatic, frustrating, just, I, it's so many feelings, Uh, really bitter feelings when I think of what would happen, how, what my my reaction would be if the the police or child services was called on me when I was doing something I knew the data proves is correct. Now that would be, that would really difficult for me to handle. I don't know how I would, that's a situation where, I don't know how to handle that. And I'm really hoping that studies like these and maybe others will bring us more towards sanity on all this stuff. So I'm really happy to have had these guests, uh... And I hope to do more like this in the future. I think getting awareness of actual good science is important out there and something I want to do with the show.

0:43:52 Thomas: So thank you so much for listening. That's all I have for you today. I'll I want to thank my wonderful production assistant, Haley, for setting up that conversation and for setting the one that's going to be the next episode, and likely most future episodes, going to very interesting stuff, and I hope you'll enjoy it. Alright, I'll see you then!