meet Johan Johan was born in rural
Germany in the early nineteen hundreds
his father was a farmer
and his mother was a homemaker from a
very young age
Johan participated actively in his
family’s farm he particularly liked
animals so much so that he refused to
hunt them Johan refused to hunt animals
because he did not want to harm them in
1933 Adolf Hitler rose to power in
Germany
soon after Johann joined the Nazi regime
a couple of years into the Second World
War
your Hans brother was killed by the
Allied forces following the death of his
brother Johann participated much more
actively in the war believing more
ardently in its ideals he was part of
the Nazi invasion of France he was part
of Operation Barbarossa
and he even marched on Russia so how did
this man Johan go from not wanting to
hunt animals because he didn’t want to
harm them to participating actively in
the Nazi regime I’ve spent the last
almost decade of my life studying
interviewing people serving people and
really trying to quantify the factors
that influence people’s behavior for
good or for bad I’ve seen good people
fathers mum mothers sometimes my own
family members sit at the dinner table
and justify everything from small-scale
wrongdoings to large-scale atrocities
when I was 16 years old I sat across the
table over dinner
from a very close family member of mine
who was a military official at the time
and asked him what was it like as you
are defending our country to know that
on some level you may be harming some
people and his response to this was the
military does not harm people it’s
always self-defense
I found this statement incredibly
fascinating psychologists call it moral
disengagement strategies that we as
humans used to justify our behavior on
an individual and on a group level on an
individual level we do this to reduce
what we call cognitive dissonance
basically so that we are able to live
with ourselves so that our brains are
not completely confused by the fact that
wait I know that what I’m about to do is
wrong I’ve been socialized to think
about it as wrong but I’m doing it so
and I need to live with myself I can’t
live with myself knowing that I’m a bad
person so I need to justify this very
importantly we also need to justify our
behavior on a group level our behavior
needs to line up with our group
ideologies humans are social animals and
we know that aligning ourselves with
certain groups makes our chances of
survival a lot better the very important
link the key link to draw here is that
our group norms our group ideologies
strongly influence our individual
behaviors and attitudes and ideologies
to contextualize this within the Sri
Lankan context we conducted a study in
2012 where we interviewed and surveyed
both single Eze and tunnels from across
the island people from different walks
of life homemakers
military officials political officers
businessmen and women and we found that
74% of both single E’s
tamils justified their behavior and
disengage from certain behaviors that
they or their group or their group
committed against the other group some
of these justifications included using
whitewashing language we need to
sacrifice the few for the many one that
has been used throughout the ages and
interesting ly enough was the one that
was the strategy that was used the most
within our sample was displacement of
responsibility my commanding officer
told me to do it someone else told me to
do it so I did it
it can include out right denial or
discrediting of evidence no I cannot
accept that my group did that or maybe
they did do that but not the way that
you’re saying that I did no that did not
happen I cannot accept that one that I
find particularly interesting is
essentialist attribution and this is the
notion that you did something wrong
because of some inherent innate
characteristic that you are born with it
is in your blood you are stubborn you
did not give in so we had to go in there
and commit some level of violence
against you this is related to a robust
literature in psychology where we find
that whenever you do something wrong I
tend to make very internal attributions
say things like your you didn’t do that
right because you’re not intelligent
enough it’s in your blood you’re too
stubborn so we had to do this but if I
do something wrong I usually make very
external attributions things like I
didn’t have time to think this through
my commanding officer told me to do it
someone else told me to do it or I shot
at you because you shot at me self
defense this research was conducted in
2012 if we look at 2018 preliminary
research that we conducted following the
communal violence indigenous Srilanka
shows the exact same strategies we need
to fight violence
violence it’s only self-defense the key
thing to understand here is that we all
do it there’s no point in pointing
fingers at other people because we have
been justifying humans have been
justifying and disengaging from our
behaviors from across the ages globally
if we look at johan adolf hitler and the
nazi regime were very skilled at
engineering the norms in germany so that
it made it very easy for people like
johann to justify any and all atrocities
that they committed against a variety of
different minorities you the jews are
stealing our jobs you the jews are
ruining our economy you the jews are
stealing our culture ruining our culture
so it made it very easy for people like
johann to go in and say well i’m just
defending our group right setting the
default to conscription so that everyone
from a very young age had to participate
in the war normalize it even further so
that everyone could say well everyone
else is doing it so i guess it must be
normal so i guess i have to do it my
group is doing it adolf hitler even had
a ministry of propaganda dedicated to
influencing group norms we are all a
product of our group norms but what if
our group norms could be influenced for
good take an average day a typical day
in your life we receive our information
from a variety of different sources
these sources can include people people
whom we interact with on a day-to-day
basis or irregularly religious leaders
political leaders our parents friends
colleagues bosses we could receive this
information from actual signs signs
which say don’t
can drive say no to sexual harassment
and domestic abuse these this
information can be delivered we have
face-to-face interactions but also
virtually via whatsapp Facebook
Instagram the key thing to identify here
is that certain people are much more
effective at influencing our behavior
over others to take an example of this
research that was conducted to identify
how we can reduce the incidence of
bullying found that within in within
school children found that the most
effective influences of school
children’s behavior was it the Kumar
Sangakkara of the kanye west’s or the
taylor swift’s of their time regardless
of their celebrity status no it was
actually other school kids that the rest
of their peers interacted with think
about it popular kids in classrooms
dictate to their peers what to wear
where to go how to speak what school and
these researchers found that working
with these identified popular kids who
had influence over the rest of their
peers getting them to speak out against
bullying and actually wear physical
markers which say that like bracelets
which say that they were against
bullying across 56 schools and over
24,000 students this experiment reduced
the incidence of bullying by 30 percent
in just one year the power of social
norms to influence behaviors for good
has also been found within the context
of intergroup conflict Rwanda is now a
post-war society but in 1990 just 18
years ago the Rwandan Civil War began
the Rwandan civil war culminated in the
Rwandan genocide where within the space
of just three months close to 1 million
people
estimates suggest that close to 1
million people were killed the Rondon
civil war was waged between the two
major warring groups the Hutus and the
Tutsis 10 years after the Rwandan Civil
War ended an experiment was conducted in
a small community in Rwanda where a
radio drama was aired this radio drama
told a story of a community something
the Rwandan that the Hoosiers and the
Tutsis could actually identify it with
two groups that were in conflict who had
social tensions and they crafted
characters whom the listeners could
actually properly identify with but very
importantly this radio drama crafting
these characters also showed these
characters coming across community lines
they showed these characters having
intermarriages between the two groups
and they had these characters speak out
against leaders who promote violence and
as a result of this experiment
researchers found that I as a Hutu may
not even like you as a Tutsi on a
personal level but if I’m made to
believe that my group supports inter
marriages between Hutus and Tutsis that
my group supports individuals who speak
out against leaders who promote violence
then I am much more likely to do the
same regardless of my own personal
beliefs this is a powerful indication of
how our group norms can strongly
influence our individual behaviors and
even override them this experiment also
tells us the important distinction
between storytelling and factual
messaging factual messaging is just
throwing positive information about a
group that you may not like at you
throwing means that about a group
positive means about a group that you
may not like at you humans tend to
internalize information that supports
already pre held pre-existing worldviews
and reject information that challenges
it but storytelling is a powerful way
with which we can circumvent this
problem because we can craft characters
that the listeners can identify with so
that they can actually start to think
well if this character is doing it does
my group actually support this if my
character is doing this then maybe I can
do it too and if we look at Johan
following the end of the second world
war the social norms in Germany
completely shifted radio messaging in
this case went from xenophobia to we
need to rebuild Germany together schools
started teaching their students exactly
what happened during the Second World
War about the wrongdoings that had been
committed so that their students
understood exactly why it must never
happen again
the norm went from blind patriotism to
being critical being critical of the
information that they received on a day
to day basis on newspapers and and
Instagram etc no Instagram is now back
then it was newspapers I think in TV and
radio we have at our disposal powerful
tools which we can use to influence our
group norms for good 96% of people in
Sri Lanka who have regular access to the
Internet or on Facebook these tools can
include Facebook but it can also include
we need to question the information that
we receive via these tools is that
what’s that message that you just
received being used to influence our
group norms for
or for bad and we ourselves can use
these tools to influence our group norms
for good and if you’re still in doubt as
to the power of social norms and if
social norms can actually be influenced
for good let’s look at Johan Johan who
participated actively in the Nazi regime
Johan who lost his brother during the
Second World War
Johan who used to sign his letters with
Johan also happens to be my grandfather
Yohann had a family and a grandson who
embraced me with open arms into their
lives as a social psychologist I can
tell you with conviction we are not born
to hate we learn to hate and in the same
way we can learn to accept we can learn
to empathize we can learn to accept our
fellow human beings regardless of the
different groups that they choose to
identify with we can learn to use the
tools at our disposal to influence our
group norms for good and move forward
and rebuild our country together thank
you for listening
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
Germany in the early nineteen hundreds
his father was a farmer
and his mother was a homemaker from a
very young age
Johan participated actively in his
family’s farm he particularly liked
animals so much so that he refused to
hunt them Johan refused to hunt animals
because he did not want to harm them in
1933 Adolf Hitler rose to power in
Germany
soon after Johann joined the Nazi regime
a couple of years into the Second World
War
your Hans brother was killed by the
Allied forces following the death of his
brother Johann participated much more
actively in the war believing more
ardently in its ideals he was part of
the Nazi invasion of France he was part
of Operation Barbarossa
and he even marched on Russia so how did
this man Johan go from not wanting to
hunt animals because he didn’t want to
harm them to participating actively in
the Nazi regime I’ve spent the last
almost decade of my life studying
interviewing people serving people and
really trying to quantify the factors
that influence people’s behavior for
good or for bad I’ve seen good people
fathers mum mothers sometimes my own
family members sit at the dinner table
and justify everything from small-scale
wrongdoings to large-scale atrocities
when I was 16 years old I sat across the
table over dinner
from a very close family member of mine
who was a military official at the time
and asked him what was it like as you
are defending our country to know that
on some level you may be harming some
people and his response to this was the
military does not harm people it’s
always self-defense
I found this statement incredibly
fascinating psychologists call it moral
disengagement strategies that we as
humans used to justify our behavior on
an individual and on a group level on an
individual level we do this to reduce
what we call cognitive dissonance
basically so that we are able to live
with ourselves so that our brains are
not completely confused by the fact that
wait I know that what I’m about to do is
wrong I’ve been socialized to think
about it as wrong but I’m doing it so
and I need to live with myself I can’t
live with myself knowing that I’m a bad
person so I need to justify this very
importantly we also need to justify our
behavior on a group level our behavior
needs to line up with our group
ideologies humans are social animals and
we know that aligning ourselves with
certain groups makes our chances of
survival a lot better the very important
link the key link to draw here is that
our group norms our group ideologies
strongly influence our individual
behaviors and attitudes and ideologies
to contextualize this within the Sri
Lankan context we conducted a study in
2012 where we interviewed and surveyed
both single Eze and tunnels from across
the island people from different walks
of life homemakers
military officials political officers
businessmen and women and we found that
74% of both single E’s
tamils justified their behavior and
disengage from certain behaviors that
they or their group or their group
committed against the other group some
of these justifications included using
whitewashing language we need to
sacrifice the few for the many one that
has been used throughout the ages and
interesting ly enough was the one that
was the strategy that was used the most
within our sample was displacement of
responsibility my commanding officer
told me to do it someone else told me to
do it so I did it
it can include out right denial or
discrediting of evidence no I cannot
accept that my group did that or maybe
they did do that but not the way that
you’re saying that I did no that did not
happen I cannot accept that one that I
find particularly interesting is
essentialist attribution and this is the
notion that you did something wrong
because of some inherent innate
characteristic that you are born with it
is in your blood you are stubborn you
did not give in so we had to go in there
and commit some level of violence
against you this is related to a robust
literature in psychology where we find
that whenever you do something wrong I
tend to make very internal attributions
say things like your you didn’t do that
right because you’re not intelligent
enough it’s in your blood you’re too
stubborn so we had to do this but if I
do something wrong I usually make very
external attributions things like I
didn’t have time to think this through
my commanding officer told me to do it
someone else told me to do it or I shot
at you because you shot at me self
defense this research was conducted in
2012 if we look at 2018 preliminary
research that we conducted following the
communal violence indigenous Srilanka
shows the exact same strategies we need
to fight violence
violence it’s only self-defense the key
thing to understand here is that we all
do it there’s no point in pointing
fingers at other people because we have
been justifying humans have been
justifying and disengaging from our
behaviors from across the ages globally
if we look at johan adolf hitler and the
nazi regime were very skilled at
engineering the norms in germany so that
it made it very easy for people like
johann to justify any and all atrocities
that they committed against a variety of
different minorities you the jews are
stealing our jobs you the jews are
ruining our economy you the jews are
stealing our culture ruining our culture
so it made it very easy for people like
johann to go in and say well i’m just
defending our group right setting the
default to conscription so that everyone
from a very young age had to participate
in the war normalize it even further so
that everyone could say well everyone
else is doing it so i guess it must be
normal so i guess i have to do it my
group is doing it adolf hitler even had
a ministry of propaganda dedicated to
influencing group norms we are all a
product of our group norms but what if
our group norms could be influenced for
good take an average day a typical day
in your life we receive our information
from a variety of different sources
these sources can include people people
whom we interact with on a day-to-day
basis or irregularly religious leaders
political leaders our parents friends
colleagues bosses we could receive this
information from actual signs signs
which say don’t
can drive say no to sexual harassment
and domestic abuse these this
information can be delivered we have
face-to-face interactions but also
virtually via whatsapp Facebook
Instagram the key thing to identify here
is that certain people are much more
effective at influencing our behavior
over others to take an example of this
research that was conducted to identify
how we can reduce the incidence of
bullying found that within in within
school children found that the most
effective influences of school
children’s behavior was it the Kumar
Sangakkara of the kanye west’s or the
taylor swift’s of their time regardless
of their celebrity status no it was
actually other school kids that the rest
of their peers interacted with think
about it popular kids in classrooms
dictate to their peers what to wear
where to go how to speak what school and
these researchers found that working
with these identified popular kids who
had influence over the rest of their
peers getting them to speak out against
bullying and actually wear physical
markers which say that like bracelets
which say that they were against
bullying across 56 schools and over
24,000 students this experiment reduced
the incidence of bullying by 30 percent
in just one year the power of social
norms to influence behaviors for good
has also been found within the context
of intergroup conflict Rwanda is now a
post-war society but in 1990 just 18
years ago the Rwandan Civil War began
the Rwandan civil war culminated in the
Rwandan genocide where within the space
of just three months close to 1 million
people
estimates suggest that close to 1
million people were killed the Rondon
civil war was waged between the two
major warring groups the Hutus and the
Tutsis 10 years after the Rwandan Civil
War ended an experiment was conducted in
a small community in Rwanda where a
radio drama was aired this radio drama
told a story of a community something
the Rwandan that the Hoosiers and the
Tutsis could actually identify it with
two groups that were in conflict who had
social tensions and they crafted
characters whom the listeners could
actually properly identify with but very
importantly this radio drama crafting
these characters also showed these
characters coming across community lines
they showed these characters having
intermarriages between the two groups
and they had these characters speak out
against leaders who promote violence and
as a result of this experiment
researchers found that I as a Hutu may
not even like you as a Tutsi on a
personal level but if I’m made to
believe that my group supports inter
marriages between Hutus and Tutsis that
my group supports individuals who speak
out against leaders who promote violence
then I am much more likely to do the
same regardless of my own personal
beliefs this is a powerful indication of
how our group norms can strongly
influence our individual behaviors and
even override them this experiment also
tells us the important distinction
between storytelling and factual
messaging factual messaging is just
throwing positive information about a
group that you may not like at you
throwing means that about a group
positive means about a group that you
may not like at you humans tend to
internalize information that supports
already pre held pre-existing worldviews
and reject information that challenges
it but storytelling is a powerful way
with which we can circumvent this
problem because we can craft characters
that the listeners can identify with so
that they can actually start to think
well if this character is doing it does
my group actually support this if my
character is doing this then maybe I can
do it too and if we look at Johan
following the end of the second world
war the social norms in Germany
completely shifted radio messaging in
this case went from xenophobia to we
need to rebuild Germany together schools
started teaching their students exactly
what happened during the Second World
War about the wrongdoings that had been
committed so that their students
understood exactly why it must never
happen again
the norm went from blind patriotism to
being critical being critical of the
information that they received on a day
to day basis on newspapers and and
Instagram etc no Instagram is now back
then it was newspapers I think in TV and
radio we have at our disposal powerful
tools which we can use to influence our
group norms for good 96% of people in
Sri Lanka who have regular access to the
Internet or on Facebook these tools can
include Facebook but it can also include
we need to question the information that
we receive via these tools is that
what’s that message that you just
received being used to influence our
group norms for
or for bad and we ourselves can use
these tools to influence our group norms
for good and if you’re still in doubt as
to the power of social norms and if
social norms can actually be influenced
for good let’s look at Johan Johan who
participated actively in the Nazi regime
Johan who lost his brother during the
Second World War
Johan who used to sign his letters with
Johan also happens to be my grandfather
Yohann had a family and a grandson who
embraced me with open arms into their
lives as a social psychologist I can
tell you with conviction we are not born
to hate we learn to hate and in the same
way we can learn to accept we can learn
to empathize we can learn to accept our
fellow human beings regardless of the
different groups that they choose to
identify with we can learn to use the
tools at our disposal to influence our
group norms for good and move forward
and rebuild our country together thank
you for listening
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
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