12: Jay Van Bavel
Welcome to Episode 12, where JAY VAN BAVEL and I discuss the effect of moralizing language on political debates, how scientists--how we all--use social media to settle disputes, and how a kid from Fox Creek, Alberta manages to become a renowned social scientist at New York University. Jay is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University and an affiliate scholar at the Stern School of Business, in their Managment and Organizations program. Jay's work on group identity, social motivation, moral values, and political beliefs have rocketed him to the national spotlight as one of social science's most influential young scholars. Jay's work and perspective has increasingly seen him working with, and for, such popular outlets as Scientific American and the New York Times. Interested in learning more about Jay Van Bavel’s work? Check out some of these links: Jay Van Bavel on TwitterThe Flexibility of Racial Bias (with Mina Cikara)Twitter’s Passion Politics * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
-
Jim Coan
From VQR and the Center for Media and citizenship, this is Episode 12, of Circle of Willis, where I chat with social neuroscientist Jay Van Bavel, about the effect of moralizing language on political debates, how scientists, or really how we all use social media to settle disputes, and how a kid from the sticks of northern Alberta manages to become a renowned social scientist at New York University.
Jim Coan
Hey everyone it's Jim Coan. Yep, this is still my podcast, Circle of Willis. I got Jay Van Bavel on the show. Jay is an assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University and an affiliate scholar at the Stern School of Business in their management and organizations program. Jay's work on group identity, social motivation, moral values and political beliefs have rocketed him to the national and even international spotlight as one of Social Sciences most influential young scholars. More and more, Jay's work in perspective has seen him working with and for such popular outlets as Scientific American, and the New York Times. So he's also something of a public intellectual, which is, I think, kind of a, a tough trick for a scientist to pull off. Anyway, I didn't really know Jay that well before our conversation, we'd never met before in person, though we'd had a fair amount of interaction on social media. And social media is in fact a large part of what we talk about here. That and the effect of moralizing language on political debates. Spoiler, moralizing language and social media interact in important ways. So pay attention to that. But we also talk a bit about Jay's personal story, his journey from first generation college student from northern Alberta - that's in Canada, folks - to the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. It's a good story, it's a Canadian story. Canadian stories always cheer me up. That's partly because I have a lot of Canadian roots of my own, but it's also because, well, because Canada's a little bit funny to me. Just about all the time. I'm not... I don't, I don't necessarily want to deconstruct why that is, but it must have something to do with hockey. And moose. Mooses, meese? I'm not. Alright, I'm momentarily blanking on the plural form of moose, and I'm feeling too pressed for time to stop and look it up. Moose? I think it's just moose for both the plural and singular. But, but whatever. See what I mean? Canada's kind of funny. Anyway, whatever your tastes in intellectual stimulation or scientific biography, this conversation delivers. So I'm gonna stop rambling now. And just let you hear from the man himself. Ready? Here's Jay van Babel.
Jim Coan
So how are things going? Yeah. What are you guys working on these days? What's still this sort of latest stuff? What's the what's the hot off the presses kind of thing?
Jay Van Bavel
Okay. I'll tell you something that we've just resubmitted.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Jay Van Bavel
That we're excited about. We analyze Twitter data.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And it's my first ever big data project.
Jim Coan
Oh, yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And we were looking at whether moral language is more likely to go viral.
Jim Coan
Moral language? What's moral language?
Jay Van Bavel
So like, we used databases that exist, so different moral words. So like, the word hate-
Jim Coan
Like hate is a moral word?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Well, it's moralized.
Jim Coan
Because it's a moral judgment.
Jay Van Bavel
It's moralized.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
It's morally negative. Virtue would be a morally positive word.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Jay Van Bavel
And it turns out, in particular, moral emotions, if you have them in your tweets - this is a bit of advice for you, Jim.
Jim Coan
Haha, oh shit.
Jay Van Bavel
In every moral, emotional word you have increases the probability that we'll get your message will get retweeted by about 20%.
Jim Coan
20%?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
That's a bad, that's a bad thing. Don't you think it's a bad thing?
Jay Van Bavel
So here's why it's bad.
Jim Coan
Hm, tell us why it's bad.
Jay Van Bavel
Okay. The reason why it's bad in part of the paper, is that what ends up happening is if you plot... we have this way of inferring people's political belief system based on who they follow and who follows them, developed by political scientists. And if you plot all the retweet networks, there's two jobs giant clusters. And it turns out it's liberals and conservatives. And if you tweet moral language, it only gets shared within your ideological cluster.
Jim Coan
So it gets retweeted a bunch within your group?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. So you have like an echo chamber effect, really, which is liberals, the moment you start using moral language, it only gets shared by people who are like minded. The problem is that then that creates like group cohesion and clustering and polarization. If you don't use moral language, it's just as likely to get shared by people from the left and from the right. And so-
Jim Coan
But it won't be it won't get shared as much?
Jay Van Bavel
It won't get shared as much. Yeah, so it's a trade off. If you want something to go viral thing is you got to talk to your ingroup. I mean, these were in fairness, political topics, like same sex marriage, climate change, gun control,
Jim Coan
Which, you know, these things come up on Twitter.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, occasionally. I was thinking about the replication crisis being a case where I bet if we plotted the moralized language there you up with two clusters as well.
Jim Coan
Yeah, we were talking about this last night, that whole the whole infusion of moralized language into that whole debate drives me up the wall.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Well, it means that you- moral language, there's research on this that came out recently, that it starts it's a it's a signal. It's a signal to your using more language on a topic, it's a signal that you're a good group member,
Jim Coan
That you're a good group member?
Jay Van Bavel
But what it does is it can actually lead people, with intent of signaling they're a good group member, can actually make them take more extreme stances than they actually believe in.
Jim Coan
Right, so that's it. I mean, I don't even know if that's if we characterize that from the perspective of the group itself as a trade off. Right? You know, because you're whipping up the group into uh group-ness groupishness.
Jay Van Bavel
I love the word whip. I mean, that makes it like that's what you call the person for a political party who lines everybody up for a vote, right? Like they go round, twisting arms and bending people behind the scenes and making sure they follow the-
Jim Coan
Same language. Yeah, no doubt.
Jay Van Bavel
Or we will make sure that you don't get reelected in your district.
Jim Coan
Do you think that the risk there is that by sort of whipping up your group into getting your in group in line, that that very process can put your group at risk for being less influential? In competing with other groups.
Jay Van Bavel
Potentially, if people start to react against you because they feel like you're pushing forth a group interest.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Or if they see you as an outgroup, they might react against what you're saying, even if it's a legitimately reasonable claim.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
You see that in politics all the time, that I think Obama's health care act is a good example of that. It was actually an idea from a right wing Think Tank.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
But the moment it was coming from Obama, people, Republicans reacted negatively against it. So, that he was hoping I think that he took some ideas from the right, they might actually be receptive and get on board. And you can imagine that playing out in negative ways scientifically, too. If I have an agenda item that I think is really compelling, but if you see me as an out group member, you react against it because maybe you distrust me, or maybe it's your way of signaling to other group members, your loyalty. And that means it might be hard to broker a compromise.
Jim Coan
Right, right. It seems to me that that's, I mean, I sort of can understand that in the context of political battles because politics is always sort of been that way. In some ways. Although, you know, the whole James Madison project in constructing the way that the American government works, is to constrain that, like, keep that from being effective, those kinds of emotional appeals, right?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
But one of the things that I wonder about is how it's playing out in scientific communication these days. I mean, one of the reasons that I'm doing this, you know, talking with people while the recorders on is because it seems like and I don't know whether this is really true or not, but it just seems to me from my own experience that the social media environment somehow encourages the moralistic language, or at least if it's not specifically moralistic, it's language that rips people into line, right? That creates this very groupish kind of- Do you think there's something to that? Do you think that's really true?
Jay Van Bavel
I think that there's multiple elements to it. One is, Twitter and other social media platforms have a trolling problem. This extends well beyond science, where when people are behind an icon, and it's a bit more anonymized, or at least you're not sitting across the table, face to face like you would at a conference,
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
You're much more likely to be provocative, to challenge somebody, maybe to say something more egregious or offensive than you otherwise would. So we know that... Now science is using those technological tools. And it's not surprising as humans, we run into some of the same problems.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Jay Van Bavel
So that's not, but it now infuses itself in scientific dialogue. The other thing I think, is that, as I was just saying, people will probably have a pretty good intuition that certain types of language makes their content go viral. And so think of the reward contingencies on the social media. It's retweets, likes, shares, right Facebook, Facebook are blocked views-
Jim Coan
Like the ghost of Skinner coming in-
Jay Van Bavel
And you're getting these little hits.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Every time you like open your phone, or you have these applications open, I get them too. And it's like, I know-
Jim Coan
I turned off all notifications, because otherwise I go crazy.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, it's like you get a little beep or jiggle even in your pocket or something like that. And that means like rewards are coming in. And so I think that there is an incentive structure to using the type of language that actually erodes the debate.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And it's also like, we know this, like with BuzzFeed, and these types of places use like all these little hooks and strategies to catch your interest. And oftentimes, they're subtly deceptive to get you to click the link so they get advertising dollars.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
Scientists are susceptible to the same things. They might not have advertising dollars coming in for their blog, but they're checking how many blog hits they've got. Sure, and they're getting a sense of what works and what doesn't work.
Jim Coan
It drives me crazy. My one stupid blog post I ever wrote, is already, like, easily the most widely read thing I've ever put out there. Either that or I'm crazy. I mean, I get these stats.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
You know, all the time. It just keeps coming in.
Jay Van Bavel
How many times has it been read? I'm totally curious.
Jim Coan
Something like 17,000 times.
Jim Coan
Okay, yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot.
Jim Coan
The next most read thing I've ever written can't be more than 500.
Jay Van Bavel
Seems like an order of magnitude, more influence. Yeah.
Jim Coan
And I, you know, as as a scientist, you know, we all are trained to try to get people to see our work, to hear our ideas, righ? And the typical medium, going through all the bullshit of peer review, and the aggravation of reviewer three or whatever. It just, it takes a year to get your precious thing. And then nobody reads it. It's like, Ah, Jesus, it's so punishing. And so now, we've got blogging, and Facebook and Twitter. And we can just like, put the thing out there and immediately get this feedback that people are looking at it or getting impressions or whatever the hell it is. I don't understand half the metrics.
Jay Van Bavel
I think the other thing you've touched on it, it's interesting as well is the reward structure is immediate versus long term. And we know that humans are pretty terrible at delayed gratification.
Jim Coan
Yes.
Jay Van Bavel
And temporal discounting.
Jim Coan
I can't speak for anyone else.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. And so it's almost like the type of feedback we get, not only is it quantifiable, and it's orders of magnitude greater in terms of impact the number of people who read your writing, but it's immediate.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so you have almost like, if you could engineer something that triggers like, all these kind of primitive cues in the human brain that's, and there's social feedback too, its social reward, which we know is like, like, worse than cocaine for us in a lot of ways, right? Like belongingness is pretty fundamental human need, triggers all that. So primitive reward systems.
Jim Coan
Yeah. To have people around us who are part of our tribe.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Well, so it makes me wonder a little bit whether social media, I'm gonna say something kind of provocative here. I don't know, whether social media is sort of like one of the new problems for scientific discourse. Now, a lot of people, people that we know, they, they think that social media is like the future of scientific discourse, and that it's precisely because of its immediate feedback that it's so useful. So I wonder about that.
Jay Van Bavel
So let's play with that. I mean, sure,
Jim Coan
It has worked out well in politics, hasn't it?
Jay Van Bavel
I think that social media is good and bad.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Jay Van Bavel
I mean, I don't see it as a net. I must see it as a net positive if you judge my behavior, because I'm on Twitter.
Jim Coan
I wouldn't say that about, I'm me too and I don't think that's that's a verdict in favor of, of those media.
Jay Van Bavel
Okay. True.
Jim Coan
That's maybe a verdict of my own sort of personal weaknesses, right?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, so, so I have a colleague over at the business school here, Adam Alter, who last week or so just came up with a book called "Irresistible," which is about-
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
-how technologies exist are addictive. Yeah, Adam, so I'll give Adam a plug.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And we are humans, scientists are humans. That's something we often forget, right? We act like we're objective, impartial observers of nature. And the fact is that we're human. So we have the same sensitivities and weaknesses that other humans have. And so it's easy to get drawn into these types of issues. And we should be mindful of human nature when we're trying to like create systems and technology that are going to help science.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Jay Van Bavel
I tell my students-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
-that the way that scientists disseminate information, most of them is woefully outdated. It was stopped with like these ideas of going to a conference paying $2,000 for your flight, your registration, your membership, your hotel for four days, your food, your poster printing cost, yeah, to go stand in front of a poster and I've had posters where two people have come by.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
My best poster of all all time had about 50 people come by it.
Jim Coan
Oh, wow.
Jay Van Bavel
Man, I was living large that day it was like, right during the lunch session.
Jim Coan
This is at like SPS-?
Jay Van Bavel
SPSP. Yeah, but it takes like a day or two to put a poster together and you know, four days to go-
Jim Coan
I know.
Jay Van Bavel
-set it up. Or you can write a blog post of that exact same project, you can actually get multiple people to edit it the same way. And it goes online. And it's more public people who couldn't afford to go to the conference or interest in that topic, but don't normally go to that conference can see it, they can give you comments, you can have a better dialogue. So from that perspective, it's way more efficient economically.
Jim Coan
Sure, no question. No question. It's more efficient economically. I mean, the investment that you have to put in, as you laid out playing, you know, comparing the making a poster and going to a conference versus writing up something and putting it online, even if you do have multiple editors, investment differences is huge. What a- net savings.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
I do wonder what the trade off actually is, though.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
I mean, I don't think I don't think that people are interacting. I don't want to overstate this too much. But the kind of the way that we're sort of shaped by natural selection to behave with each other. There's another thing about blogs and social media and things like that, that I think I see in my colleagues is, and that is the sort of need to demonstrate our cleverness.
Jay Van Bavel
Oh, yeah.
Jim Coan
No, that can, we want, we all want to be like a little HL Mencken, or Mark Twain or something, when we're when we're writing about somebody's silly stats conclusion or something, you know? We have to, we have to not just say what we think we have to say it in a very clever thing, way, because we're using written English or whatever. But we don't, you don't worry about that so much when you're sitting around talking with somebody, you know, at a conference.
Jay Van Bavel
I think it's multiple things. One is that you conform to the norms of the medium of communication that you're using.
Jim Coan
Well put.
Jay Van Bavel
When I'm writing an article for a scientific journal, I take all of that stuff out. Even if it starts with something interesting, it ends up becoming a rather very rather boring document, right?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Or one of my colleagues would be like, I'm uncomfortable, you know, making that quip. At best, you're allowed to put it in the footnote.
Jim Coan
Right, Right.
Jay Van Bavel
Of course, it's much more fun to read your colleagues when they actually have a little bit of life in their writing.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
But with blogs, it's we write in a way that's normal for blogs. And so we're reading blogs online all the time, that are outside academia, and there's a different norm set of norms about how to communicate, and we conform our thinking and our expressions to that medium.
Jim Coan
And it's more sort of hip. It's more funny. And, yeah, informal.
Jay Van Bavel
And I love I have to say like, they're more fun to read.
Jim Coan
I know. They're, they are. I'm not disputing any of that. But I wonder if that's part of the problem, too. I mean, look, I don't really feel strongly about any of these positions. I really don't. But I sort of feel like, for some reason, voicing them this morning.
Jay Van Bavel
Okay, so let me play this out. So I've been the advocate for blogs and social media. So let me push back on my own arguments. So here's some of the trade offs. One of the trade offs, I think, is that for very junior people, I actually think that blogs could be more harmful than helpful for multiple reasons. Sure, can get their name out, but their papers are very carefully curated by their advisors, reviewers, editors, their their lab members, friends, colleagues. Their blog thoughts, but almost by definition, are not curated. So they're throwing something out there. And from a faculty member who has been in the field for five years, or 10 years, they've gotten hopefully enough criticism over the time, they probably know what the landmines are and what they can claim and can't claim.
Jim Coan
Yeah,
Jay Van Bavel
Whereas somebody who's new to the field might not realize some of these landmines that they're stepping into. And so it's in their best interest to have more curated content. When I think of my ideas, and my first drafts of papers that I sent to my advisor in grad school, they came back covered in read ink. Will, Will will vouch for that.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
I was a terrible writer, and not the best thinker. And that's why I was doing my PhD, right? And I'm still evolving my thinking all the time. But I will guarantee you the quality of what I would write today in a blog is 10 times better than what I would have written as a third year graduate student.
Jim Coan
Sure.
Jay Van Bavel
And so I for one am grateful some of my first initial submissions of papers weren't accepted as is.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And that they either got thoroughly torn apart and I had to go back to the drawing board, or I'll say, had to carefully revise them.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so I would not want a public record of my terrible thinking. I'm really grateful that that process writer, yeah, yeah. So. And also, the other thing about blogs, I'll say this, something I do on Twitter. There's an app that deletes all my tweets that are more than six months old.
Jim Coan
There is?
Jay Van Bavel
There is an app and so every time I tweet something six months from now will just be automatically deleted. And the reason for that is because when you're engaging in conversation on social media, it's often in a context.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
So you're saying something in light of a debate that's happening right now, which is what makes it fun and relevant and engaging.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
But looking back on in two years, it might, out of context, it might look offensive or inappropriate, or at the very minimum, be misconstrued, yeah wrong. And so I actually intentionally have that, because the types of comments I make on social media are not curated in the same way my articles are. And they haven't gone through the review process. There's a thought I had in light of some debate that's going on that makes sense to all the people in that debate at that moment.
Jim Coan
Right, or to you in that moment.
Jay Van Bavel
Or to me in that moment, and I don't expect it to stand the test of time, or to make sense outside of that context. And I've seen this with some people where they've said something, and people have gone back through the bunch of their old comments and pulled out stuff that looked bad in retrospect, but maybe at the time, didn't seem that bad.
Jim Coan
Well, I mean, this is part of what we're learning about the medium, right? Over time, too, is that when Twitter's first out, when I first start using Twitter, I'm being really flippant all the time.
Jay Van Bavel
Yes.
Jim Coan
It just doesn't seem serious to me.
Jay Van Bavel
Totally.
Jim Coan
It's not a serious medium. It's just for bullshitting with people who want to bullshit back and there's no serious content. I didn't hold myself to any kind of standard of seriousness, when I'm first using it. Then I went through a phase where I'm like, writing clever aphorisms, you know, you know, and trying to impress my colleagues with my with my sheer cleverness, and that was, god, that's so embarrassing. It's horrible.
Jay Van Bavel
You look like you're trying too hard.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Oh, Jesus. And then it's just like posting articles or whatever. And yeah, and then the debates about the reproducibility, the great prize...
Jay Van Bavel
The reproducibility debate!
Jim Coan
And, and so I guess now I'm sort of back, I've sort of come full circle in a way, where I'm not behaving like a jackass as much as I used to. But, I again, once again, can't take it very seriously. I just can't. I can't do it! I'm as liable now to publish, you know, to post a picture of my dog!
Jay Van Bavel
I think it was a video of a panda that you-
Jim Coan
Yeah! A video of a panda, right. See, the panda rolling downhill was funny. And I wanted to show that to somebody, I don't even know who's following me. But they're gonna see a panda now.
Jay Van Bavel
That's what I saw when I woke up this morning. Thanks for that.
Jim Coan
You got it. That's what Twitter is now.
Jay Van Bavel
It's eventually just gonna come full circle to Bieber comments and cat videos.
Jim Coan
And I think that does suggest something about the medium. I mean, it really does. You know, that's kind of what you can do with that kind of medium. It's not about serious conversations. It just can't be or at least, I mean, I think that some people can do it, I can't figure it out. It's exhausting, to me to use that medium. It's chopped up, you know, I have to read people's like, one slash two slashes so that they can complete an actual thought, in return and send tweets. Forget it!
Jay Van Bavel
So, so one way I like Twitter is saying something but then linking to some longer article or story you've read or magazine piece.
Jim Coan
Yeah, linking to articles is useful. And I have learned about really great research that, and I like it for that.
Jay Van Bavel
And I have a curated list of people who are interesting. And I follow and I learned about things way outside my normal scope, because they're good curators.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
What it's terrible for that I agree with is debate. Because you can't provide context or qualification as type of things that are normally part of the scientific dialogue.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Is I acknowledged three points, but I'm making a fourth point over here.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And then you're like, Okay, you've acknowledged my three points. Let's debate, let's drill down on that fourth.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Jay Van Bavel
But if I have to get immediately to my criticism of you, and I can affirm that the shared ground, we end up shouting past one another. And we both get frustrated, it escalates. And so I've really decided that the format of Twitter is terrible for debate of almost any kind, but especially scientific debate.
Jim Coan
Yeah, I agree.
Jay Van Bavel
Which is often very complex.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So, but I think it has other value, but I agree. 100% with that.
Jim Coan
So, then the question is, what is the best venue? For that kind of debate? I haven't, I haven't enjoyed Facebook either. I've left all the various iterations and versions of PsychMAP including the PsychMAP plus, plus, plus plus.
Jay Van Bavel
Oh man, how could you leave PsychMap plus plus plus?
Jim Coan
Actually I don't think I left that one. I didn't leave that one.
Jay Van Bavel
That's my favorite one.
Jim Coan
That's my favorite one, too. It's the only one that I can take seriously.
Jay Van Bavel
It's a parody Facebook group.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
I've left all those groups too.
Jim Coan
Because, well, go ahead. Why would you leave them?
Jay Van Bavel
I was gonna say, I thought they were, I thought Facebook is a better place for dialogue and discussion.
Jim Coan
I did too.
Jay Van Bavel
Than Twitter, it is better. I think there's no question because it's richer.
Jim Coan
You can make more of it.
Jay Van Bavel
You can make a paragraph point. But even there... it what is it? The claim that every argument on the internet eventually boils down to somebody else calling somebody Hitler.
Jim Coan
Hitler, right.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. And now it's really Trump.
Jim Coan
Yeah, right.
Jay Van Bavel
Any argument you fall long enough, and it was people, someone on there is having a serious discussion, I thought about some scientific practice. And they started referring to me as George Bush. Now, I'm sure they would have called me Donald Trump.
Jim Coan
Did they know that you're painting portraits now?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Bush has gone up in the public opinion so.
Jim Coan
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
I think maybe it was a backhanded compliment. I'm not sure.
Jim Coan
Yeah, good.
Jay Van Bavel
So, but then I was like, I'm spending time reading paragraphs.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And some people are just really thoughtful. They'll write a really thoughtful set of comments.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
On some issue. And I was trying to do that, too. I certainly emulate that approach for a scientific dialogue. And then I realized, like, how much time it was sucking from writing, the things I actually cared about.
Jim Coan
It really sucks a lot of time. And it's not clear why I'm doing it, other than I get caught in the stream.
Jay Van Bavel
Yes!
Jim Coan
You know, it's like, it just sucks me in. And then I have suddenly something to say, but I didn't give a shit about like, five minutes before. And I have all this other stuff to do. So I look at it, and suddenly I'm forced to give a shit about a thing and then respond to it. Not forced, but and I have personal failings too. I mean, I have personal pride, like I get angry. Like, it's really hard for me not to get angry when I read stuff in print. But I hardly ever get angry when I'm face to face with somebody.
Jay Van Bavel
Same
Jim Coan
So I don't understand what accounts for the difference.
Jay Van Bavel
There was this great video, I forget what it was from one of the late night TV shows maybe the late show or something. And Robinson Cano who was an all star player for the New York Yankees. He was a free agent. And he signed with Seattle, and he was coming back to New York for his first game. And so they set up this picture of him somewhere in like Manhattan on the street. And they brought like people off the street. And they said, "Are you Yankees fan?" And people come up the street and they said, "Are you gonna come to the Yankees game tonight or this weekend?" And they're like "Yeah, I'm gonna come." And they're like, "there's a picture Robinson Cano. It's his first time back. How do you feel about him?" And they're like "I hate that guy, such a traitor." And they said, "now's your chance to boo boo him, you know, show him how much how displeased, you are that he left and he sold out." And they boo this this giant picture of Robinson Cano's head and then Robinson Cano is hiding behind this picture. And he comes around and they realize they're booing at the real person.
Jim Coan
Oh my God!
Jay Van Bavel
They're face to face like we are and then also like, "Hey, man, how's it going?" They give him a high five, they shake his hand. And they're like, "sorry about that I was just playing." And it's like, we are really good at humans that like booing something that's a step removed from the representation. Yeah, right. But the moment we're interacting, and we see- this is like a very primitive part of human nature too - is like, you're looking in their eye, their flesh and blood, you can see their emotional response. Very hard for us. Yeah, to be mean to a person face to face.
Jim Coan
I wonder about that, in terms of, you know, sort of, what do representations of a person afford?
Jay Van Bavel
So there's a good, there's this movie, I forget what it's called, but it had maybe Keanu Reeves, and parts of the scene were vertical. So like a real movie?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And then they had parts of the movie that were filmed where they I think, was waking life or something like that.
Jim Coan
Oh, right.
Jay Van Bavel
And they looked cartoonish?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so as the actors, but they had some veneer that made them look like a cartoon.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so they cut back and forth. And so someone did, Raman Mar did the study in the scanner, with the vertical scenes in the movie versus the cartoon scenes in the movie, of the same characters-
Jim Coan
Interesting.
Jay Van Bavel
It looks just like Keanu Reeves, real versus cartoon version. And what happens, as you might predict is all these regions of the brain involved in social cognition are just much more strongly active when you're seeing the real version of him, even though all the other stimuli are pretty carefully controlled. The voice is the same, the type of actions are the same. But the more real somebody is to you, it triggers these basic social cognitive systems in a much stronger way.
Jim Coan
So I wonder if that suggests a couple of things. Right? If we're going to be using these, these media, we have to know this. That there's this tendency and sort of come up with some, some maybe some principles for how to approach communication through those media. The other thing is, we don't use those media for some of these purposes.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
You know, I have colleagues, Dan Willingham, who basically is like, "Yeah, I'm not going to debate with anybody on on Facebook or Twitter. I'm going to post my pictures of my kids to my friends and talk about birthday cakes and things."
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah so, so I kind of do a hybrid. I decided I'm not going to debate people, but I read what they post. So I'll go read the blog post, I'll read the link to an article if it's interesting. I really appreciate that. It's super useful. And I as much as I don't really blog that much, I read a lot of blogs, the good ones. I know who has quality writing. And the problem, of course with blogs is there's no barrier to posting.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So you have no curation. So eventually you learn by the reputation of the blogger, what's going to be good and what's not.
Jim Coan
Right. Sure.
Jay Van Bavel
But I feel like now I know that landscape. And so I don't belong to PsychMAP, but I'll tune in once a week, and scroll through all the posts and see if there's anything interesting that I need to know. So I appreciate those platforms, even as I've removed myself, from them.
Jim Coan
Right, right. Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And I think like that's actually made my mental health so much better and made me more productive.
Jim Coan
No question. I've been a much happier, more productive person since I stopped engaging with that stuff.
Jay Van Bavel
And a better parent! Like-
Jim Coan
Better parent, better husband.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, if you're getting comments at 6/7pm on your phone, and someone's criticizing you publicly-
Jim Coan
You've got to pay attention.
Jay Van Bavel
There's a strong desire to manage your reputation-
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
-Jump in and defend yourself.
Jim Coan
That's right.
Jay Van Bavel
And that's a very basic human thing, especially if you think now in these these forums, these discussions, there's 5000 people or members, and you're thinking the whole field is watching somebody critique me.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And it doesn't seem fair, so, or they're wrong. So I have to go on and say why.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
It's very hard to you know, feed your kids dinner.
Jim Coan
Sure.
Jay Van Bavel
And so by removing myself from those, I feel better, I still get all the information. And I'm a better partner, a better parent.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Better mentor to my students and more time for them.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
I'm less sucked into it.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
So I feel like all of the people I actually care about benefit from me having boundaries that are healthy. Well, as a scientist, I can still read any of the blogs or articles that are posted-
Jim Coan
If you want.
Jay Van Bavel
-if I want to, if they're, if they're relevant to what I do.
Jim Coan
So what about that... you also write a fair amount for popular audiences. So you have written for like Scientific American and New York Times and places like that? How does that fit into this sort of broader ecosystem of communication?
Jay Van Bavel
So there's multiple things and this is part of reason I'm a defender of public communication on blogs is that, I feel like part of what we do as scientists, a lot of it is funded by the government.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And I feel like we have an obligation to give back to the public. I also know that public scientific literacy is remarkably low. So it's easy to think of like a lot of myths about the brain, right?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
We use 10% of our brain, left brain and right brain people. Teachers should, there's different learning styles, right. And so scientifically, so many of these things have been debunked.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so if we know something that's going on, we have I think, if we do research in that area, we have a responsibility to share those insights with the public.
Jim Coan
Yeah, sure.
Jay Van Bavel
There's always a fine line where you start to oversell because there's this separate set of reward structures they're-
Jim Coan
Writing in those media. Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
But I will say part of the reason I like to write in the public, I've written about my own work. And part of the reason I do that, for the public is... I had this really funny experience with a press release. So when I started as a young faculty member, my advisor, Will Cuningham, has never done a press release in his life.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So he just has disdain for that stuff.
Jim Coan
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Which I respect, but I remember seeing a bunch of my other colleagues doing it. I remember reading an article saying, like, if you get press coverage of a paper, it increases academic citations by 15, or 20%. So I thought, all of this is part of like the dissemination with article process.
Jim Coan
I've done press releases.
Jay Van Bavel
Yes, so I've done, I did a few as a junior faculty member. And I thought they went well. It wasn't like the, the press properly represented the work, when it was, it was covered, it didn't get a ton of coverage. But the coverage was good. But then I went to do a press release for one of my students papers. And um, I like our press office people here, but they sent back what they're going to do for the press release to myself and my students. I said, "look it over Lior, let me know what you think, is accurate representation of our work before we approve this." And he came to my office and he said, "they quoted me here, but I never met with the guy. So like, I didn't I didn't do an interview yet. I'm quoted as if I did an interview."
Jim Coan
Wow.
Jay Van Bavel
And he's like, "is this normal for press releases?" And then I looked at the quotes for me, and I wasn't looking carefully at those. And I'm like, "yeah, that doesn't sound like something I would say." I don't remember what I said for my one on one, but that doesn't sound like me.
Jim Coan
Wow.
Jay Van Bavel
And so I realized what they're doing is they're, they're filling in the blanks and are hoping you just approve, or you will edit it.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And they're trying to enrich it with quotes, even if they haven't spoken to you. But at that point, I decided...
Jim Coan
That takes it a little far.
Jay Van Bavel
It felt a little too far. So I think in the last five years, I've done one press release. But for the most part now, what I decided I'm more comfortable with is writing an op ed and like 750 or 1000 words, which is just a longer abstract.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
And if it's interesting to the public, I'll write it for the public if it's more for scientists, I might write it for Scientific American.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so for some articles, maybe a handful articles I've done that and I like it because-
Jim Coan
And you just submit them? What?
Jay Van Bavel
Well you contact an editor. At first you don't know what the hell you're doing.
Jim Coan
Right, yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
I don't know, who, who's who, but yeah, eventually I learned who the people were at these places. That's what how the Press Office helps me now they, here's the person to contact there.
Jim Coan
Perfect.
Jay Van Bavel
And then you send a few sentences, and they'll tell if they're interested or not. And then you write it. And there's a lot of back and forth as they have their audience. And yeah, and you want to make sure that it's rigorous. I have to say, when I've written those, the best compliment that I can get, because you get crazy emails, I've gotten hate mail and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Jim Coan
I've got, I had been down that road, too. We've gotten some press in the past.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, so I've gotten hate mail, if you go to my office door, there's a bunch of like, postcards from, like, the Unabomber on my wall, basically. All the stuff he hates of mine. So I wear that like a bit of a badge of honor. But the stuff I really love is, I had a senior colleague who said, "I read this, I hadn't read your article, but I read this. And I liked it." And another colleague said, "I'm gonna use this in the class I'm teaching, it's great."
Jim Coan
That's nice.
Jay Van Bavel
Another colleague at NIH said, "I'm going to create an infographic and use this to educate about implicit bias here." So it's when my colleagues who are scientists see it, and they think this is a great distillation of what we know. One person, senior colleague at Columbia emailed me, and he, I don't think read anything of mine. And he said, "he wrote this a lot of integrity." And what I took that to mean was that it actually kept to the science but made it accessible.
Jim Coan
That's a real skill. That's hard to pull off.
Jay Van Bavel
That's, that's exactly what I try to aim for.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Um, is not stretch the science in any way that's untrue, but make it interesting, connected to broader issues. And so that's kind of the sweet spot I end up aiming for.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Because I do know, I cringe if I have a colleague and they write something for the New York Times, and they just make categorical claims.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And I'm just like, you just can't do that.
Jim Coan
Well, you know, it's really instructive to me about hearing, what you're doing is that I realize, I've sort of responded to press about my own work kind of helplessly, just like AH! I didn't, you know, I talked to them for a half an hour on the phone, and now I am, it's completely out of my control.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
And I think a lot of people feel that way. And that sort of sets up this sort of antagonistic kind of...
Jay Van Bavel
People often feel burned. But when you talk to my colleagues, they had a bad press write up of something. They had an interview for half an hour-
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
-They pulled the, journalist pulls one quote that-
Jim Coan
Exactly.
Jay Van Bavel
-out of context, and they're pissed.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And that's happened to me. So I really, if you write the lead piece, you kind of control the message.
Jim Coan
You shape the message. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. I think we ought to do more of that.
Jay Van Bavel
So I really liked that. And I feel like what we do in our research area is interesting to human beings. And I have to say, I would always rather see any scientist I know, speaking to the public than I would to see some pundits like Ann Coulter, telling people about vaccinations.
Jim Coan
Yeah, exactly.
Jay Van Bavel
So I always feel like any scientist I see, even if they're slightly untethered from the data, almost still always does a better job than whoever is going to fill that space in the newspaper or on CNN or whatever.
Jim Coan
Well, and it strikes me that there's one thing that you said about writing something first, say that the New York Times, yeah, that's different. That's pretty different from say, writing a blog, which is the feedback and the editorial process.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, they have a lot of oversight.
Jim Coan
The editors...
Jay Van Bavel
I have to say, for everything I've ever written with editorial sight, oversight has gotten better.
Jim Coan
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So I deeply appreciate that. It makes it more clear. They make sure there's quality. They do their own fact checks.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So they're not perfect. They have different set of standards. But it's better than just me spewing something.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
I'm saying that every journal article I've ever written, guaranteed has gotten better from the review process from reviewers and editors. No question. Reviewers aren't perfect. Their reviews tend to be uncorrelated with other reviewers.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
But there's almost always some nugget of gold in every review that you can use.
Jim Coan
I agree. Yeah, most of the time. It works out well. Every once in a while, it doesn't. And then those are the ones you remember. The reviewers and the editors are the unsung heroes. Yeah
Jay Van Bavel
But there are exceptions... And that they're doing volunteer work.
Jim Coan
Exactly. Yeah. All right. So how'd you get here? What are you doing here? What in the hell? You're at New York University, you're doing this great work that's getting all these awards and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah? Words blah, blah... And and you're writing for the New York Times now in Scientific American. Yeah, how did you.. What-What's the, where do you come from?
Jay Van Bavel
So you know, the backstory here.
Jim Coan
A little bit. I know you're from like, north of Edmonton.
Jay Van Bavel
So I grew up in a small town Fox Creek, Alberta,
Jim Coan
Fox Creek, Alberta.
Jay Van Bavel
It was, it was in the woods.
Jim Coan
I didn't think you were supposed to come from there. Isn't that against the law?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, I think I, every time I go home, all my family and friends ask what are you gonna move back? Why would you want to stay in New York?
Jim Coan
Why would you want to do that?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
You're from Fox Creek. Yeah. We can't get a full hockey team together without you. Our curling team is dying.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, they need to, they need a skip.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Right.
Jay Van Bavel
So I grew up in a town of two thousand people. And it was there was no radio at the time.
Jim Coan
There was no radio?
Jay Van Bavel
No radio out there. There's no movie theater.
Jim Coan
What happened if you fell and hit your head or something?
Jay Van Bavel
Uh, I mean...
Jim Coan
Just die?
Jay Van Bavel
There was a little hospital in town. Okay, but that was...
Jim Coan
If anybody found you just find you with snow drifts collecting in your glassy eyeball.
Jay Van Bavel
I had a friend on my hockey team who had too much to drink and fell asleep in a snowdrift and we had the bus ready next morning to go on-
Jim Coan
I was joking!
Jay Van Bavel
-to a trip and a hockey game. He didn't show up for the bus at like seven in the morning. And someone went driving around and found him. He had fallen asleep in a snowbank he'd like hypothermia. And so that's like a joke, but it's a legitimate thing, man, and we warmed him up on the bus.
Jim Coan
It gets really cold up there.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Oh, it's cold. It's gets to about minus 40.
Jim Coan
Yeah. I know.
Jay Van Bavel
Which is the point at which Fahrenheit meets Celsius, minus 40 is the same thing no matter where you're from.
Jim Coan
Did you get into Edmonton? Edmonton much? Yeah, Edmonton's a nice town.
Jay Van Bavel
So I went to University of Alberta. So I lived in Edmonton for five years. And yeah, I liked Edmonton a lot.
Jim Coan
So that's where you did undergrad?
Jay Van Bavel
So I did my undergrad. Yes. Spend a lot of time at West Edmonton Mall.
Jim Coan
And what did your parents do?
Jay Van Bavel
My parents. My stepdad worked in the oil field, which is why we're in Fox Creek.
Jim Coan
The oil field! Yeah, right. Of course. Yeah. The oil fields of Alberta. The famous...
Jay Van Bavel
That's what got me through college man working in the oil field.
Jim Coan
Really? You worked in the summers?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
So your dad. What did he do? Was he like a chemist or something?
Jay Van Bavel
No, he was the warehouse guy.
Jim Coan
He was the warehouse guy?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
What does that mean?
Jay Van Bavel
Like he would order in supplies and chemicals and stuff.
Jim Coan
Like a foreman or something? Or?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was a manager.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And my mom worked for fish and wildlife. So she worked for the Alberta government.
Jim Coan
Nice. Doing what?
Jay Van Bavel
She was like the receptionist at the Fish and Wildlife office where they-
Jim Coan
Were they college educated folks where they-?
Jay Van Bavel
So I'm the first person in my entire family, I think in any branch to get a college degree.
Jim Coan
Nice man.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
High-five.
Jay Van Bavel
So that helped open up opportunities. That was my mum who pushed me to go because she had gone to college and had to drop out because her family... I think her dad had a business where they-
Jim Coan
Were they from Fox Creek?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Wow. So you were second generation Fox Creek, at least.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Fox Creek turns 50 This year, so it's only 50 years old. And I'm turning 39. So yeah, my mom was like, first generation Fox Creek.
Jim Coan
The founders.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
So, So you went to University of Alberta in Edmonton?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
That's pretty neat. I like Edmonton. And you know, I think I told you, I, my father's side of the family is vastly Canadian. Right. So we moved to Canada when I was seven and I was there till about nine. We lived in Lethbridge Alberta.
Jay Van Bavel
Not that far from...
Jim Coan
Not that far. Yeah, yeah. We, we go up there every now and then go to Calgary more often.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, Calgary is close.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So yeah, I went to, lived in Edmonton for five years. Um, so I'm like a diehard Edmonton Oilers fan.
Jim Coan
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were too. Although we had our Lethbridge team as well.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
And I started playing hockey, you know, right away.
Jay Van Bavel
Same here.
Jim Coan
I remember just playing goalie because I couldn't skate.
Jay Van Bavel
I was a goalie too. Yeah, because I couldn't skate!
Jim Coan
Because I couldn't skate. And my parents had got me these ice skates that were too small. I just, my dominant memory of hockey in Canada's just like frozen toes crunched up against the metal of the ice skates and just torture.
Jay Van Bavel
Mine was um, as I got up and I became a better goalie, I played for the men's team. And I was like the underage player. And I got a hockey puck a slap shot so hard in my face and the mask that shattered my teeth in the middle of a hockey game.
Jim Coan
It shattered your teeth?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, so these teeth for like it, it wasn't a some random small town in rural Alberta.
Jim Coan
You were traveling around.
Jay Van Bavel
We had to like call the dentist in-
Jim Coan
... like the A-team...
Jay Van Bavel
It was like yeah, it was like traveling and middle the night, like a Friday night, to call the dentist to come into like his office and like, give me some gas and like impromptu root canal in the middle of the night.
Jim Coan
That's I'm gonna go ahead and nominate that for Canadian story of the year. That's a very Canadian story. The only thing that could make it more Canadian is that you lost your teeth because a moose kicked you.
Jay Van Bavel
Oh, okay. Let me tell you my moose story.
Jim Coan
You have a moose story! Okay, here it goes.
Jay Van Bavel
First year of college, I was almost killed by Moose.
Jim Coan
You were?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
They're mean motherfuckers.
Jay Van Bavel
They're mean and big.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So I was, I was my first year of college. I had my girlfriend was in grade 12. So she was one year younger than me. So I was coming back to Fox Creek to hang out with my girlfriend on the weekend. I was in the passenger side of the front seat of the car. My friend Terrell was driving.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
I'm sitting in the front, I'm reading an Archie comics, because that's what I read back then. And all of a sudden she kind of gasped, I look up there's this moose walking across the road. And we're going too fast.
Jim Coan
So you're going to hit the moose?
Jay Van Bavel
So we hit it head on.
Jim Coan
Oh my god.
Jay Van Bavel
The problem with hitting a moose-
Jim Coan
What kind of car were you driving?
Jay Van Bavel
Just a small little white car
Jim Coan
A little white car?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, it was totaled.
Jim Coan
What kind of car is a white car? I don't know like a Datsun or something?
Jay Van Bavel
Like a Datsun or something. And, and no people haven't lived around moose don't know this. If you hit a deer, almost every car will is high enough to hit the deer in the body.
Jim Coan
Yeah I've hit a deer before.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, so you hit a deer and-
Jim Coan
It does a lot of damage.
Jay Van Bavel
It does damage to the car but it will never almost go into the windshield.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
A moose is so tall that what happens when you hit it is you take out the legs and it's huge body collapses on the hood of the car.
Jim Coan
That's terrifying.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. And so I know people who've been like scalped because it came down the moose came down to like cut off the top of their head and-
Jim Coan
Oh my god
Jay Van Bavel
-crazy thing. So it came down it smashed on the windshield and I ducked but I had a huge cut all the way down the side of my face down to my neck. And I was like this close, I'm probably inches away from getting decapitated. Yeah.
Jim Coan
Artery...
Jay Van Bavel
Or getting my neck cut off. So I was fine.
Jim Coan
Don't go to Canada, folks. That's the rule.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, that's...
Jim Coan
Dont' go to Canada unless you're there with body armor.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Because the moose will get you.
Jim Coan
So that was my moose, my moose story.
Jim Coan
Good story.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, it's like, and it's true. When you almost die, everything slows down.
Jim Coan
It's really true?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah. So that's stuff, that's no fun. So you go to University of Alberta, what do you... what are you getting your degree in psychology?
Jay Van Bavel
So I have this story where I went to be a Criminology major. So I had to start in psychology
Jim Coan
You're going to... because you're gonna start cops.
Jay Van Bavel
Well, what I wanted to... what I wanted to do was be a probation officer in northern Alberta. I was hoping I'd go get my degree come back to Grand Prairie or northern Alberta-
Jim Coan
That's nice. Pro-social kind of thing to do.
Jay Van Bavel
It was because I was hooked on all those shows like X Files and Silence of the Lambs. And so I thought-
Jim Coan
I want to be a probation officer?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. Or well, it was like I wasn't ambitious enough yet to go for a forensic psychologist.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So I applied to... to transfer the forensic or the criminology program two years in a row, and I didn't get in.
Jim Coan
You didn't?
Jay Van Bavel
I got rejected both my first two years of college.
Jim Coan
Why? You were shitty student.
Jay Van Bavel
I was a mediocre student. I was like, above average, but not great.
Jim Coan
Okay.
Jay Van Bavel
And I didn't have enough experience.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Other students like volunteered at police offices and stuff. And so it was really a story of failure that landed me in psychology. So then I end up-
Jim Coan
That's just the way it goes.
Jay Van Bavel
I was also a, no one in my family had graduated college or university.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
So it wasn't until my third year I ended up doing this internship at this longterm care center that, and I was on the research side with doing research on Alzheimer's
Jim Coan
In... at University of Alberta?
Jay Van Bavel
In Edmonton, at U Alberta. So I took a year off College, they had this internship program, you could get research experience, or practical experience. I wanted to work, again, like in a hospital doing research, like with, you know, forensic psychology type of stuff. And I applied for those jobs and did interviews and didn't get it. And I applied for a job at a probation office that I was volunteering at and didn't get it. So I ended up getting this Alzheimer's research job. And that was when I got introduced to research. And that was my third year of college. And I will say, before then I didn't know where research came from. I literally-
Jim Coan
How does research happen?
Jay Van Bavel
I would just read a textbook and it's all these things-
Jim Coan
People know, smart people know.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah!
Jim Coan
Working their white plastic machine somewhere.
Jay Van Bavel
And I had never, I had never questioned it, I had never asked.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Where is this research coming from? I didn't, I was at one of the biggest research universities in Canada. I had no idea that my professors who were teaching me did research. I thought they taught.
Jim Coan
They created original knowledge.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
That's, that's pretty exciting.
Jay Van Bavel
And it wasn't until I did that internship, I started to learn what a PhD was and what, where how research happens. And then I went back and I had to-
Jim Coan
Did you learn about tenure?
Jay Van Bavel
Um, no, I didn't know about tenure yet, it took me about two more years.
Jim Coan
I remember when I learned about tenure. I was like, What are you talking about? Are you kidding me? Are you shitting me?
Jay Van Bavel
I have a great story. I was on the phone with one of my best friends from high school. And he's a police officer in Edmonton, Edmonton city police. And I was telling him about my sabbatical. So I'm on sabbatical right now I just got tenure. I'm at a private research institute, the Russell Sage Foundation.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
Every day I have to take the subway in and I have to check in. They do attendance. I have to be there. 75% of the days of the year or they're gonna like doc my, they're covering part of my pay.
Jim Coan
Alright, good. Keep you in line.
Jay Van Bavel
But all you have to do is go in and have lunch. That's the requirement. You go in. You have lunch and they serve you they have on staff chefs.
Jim Coan
I did something like this in the Netherlands. Same kind of thing. They took attendance.
Jay Van Bavel
They take attendance because they're paying part of your salary. But yeah, you don't do anything. You just have to go hang out and be part of the intellectual environment.
Jim Coan
Sounds good.
Jay Van Bavel
And so this sounds awesome, right? But I was whining about it. Because as you know, I have a five minute walk to work.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And suddenly it's a half hour there half our back. And so it's kind of complaining to my friend, I gotta go in. I gotta take a half hour subway, have lunch and then I can come home. And he's taught, and he looked and he looks -I'm on Skype with him and he looks at me like I'm crazy. He's like, "so you're telling me that someone's paying your salary for you to come in for them to have chefs make you lunch and then you go home?"
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
He was like-
Jim Coan
I'm gonna kick your ass.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, he's like, "I'm gonna kick your fucking ass. Why are you complaining about this?" And I was like, Oh, yeah.
Jim Coan
I'm doing nothing for all the people in my family that think that I have the cushiest job in the world. Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. So, so that's the tenure thing. Yeah. But I have to say, as you know, it's like, you're still swamped with reviews and papers and mentoring and Lab meetings...
Jim Coan
And in the assistant professor years, it's no, it's no cakewalk.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
So, so what, when did you go to grad school?
Jay Van Bavel
So I took a year off. And this was kind of a turning point for me. The year after I graduated, I worked for a nonprofit against racism. And so we did research on racism in the education system. And I'd had to go to high schools, and we had to give talks to like grade 10, grade 11 kids about prejudice, racism, sexism, and we did like skits and and had conversations. And it was fun, but it was also deeply disheartening because you hear these kids and how racist they were. And the ideas they had gotten from their parents and things.
Jim Coan
That's no good.
Jay Van Bavel
And then that's what hooked me, I think really made it clear to me I needed to study groups and prejudice.
Jim Coan
Yeah, you really have, too.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Really. I mean, that's like, right in your wheelhouse.
Jay Van Bavel
I'm still at it.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
So that was the turning point. So I worked also for government that year on the research end, but it wasn't doing research I was passionate about and so I got to the University of Toronto, and I worked with Ken Dion. And he was a kind of a senior intergroup relations. Yeah, faculty member, he was about 60. And we hit it off, he was a fantastic mentor. And then after I defended my thesis, I met with him to design a follow up study, like 4pm, we settled on the materials. And then he went home and had a heart attack, like an hour after I saw him.
Jim Coan
Oh shit.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. And died.
Jim Coan
Sorry to hear that.
Jay Van Bavel
Oh, it was it was uh, I mean, it was awful. It was. I mean, I, I, and I was basically effectively kind of like, orphaned. And then I ended up being lucky professionally, because Will Cunningham
Jim Coan
Will Cunningham.
Jay Van Bavel
He had just arrived.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And he-
Jim Coan
I love that guy.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. And I met him on his first day as a faculty member.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
He- I knew he was coming because we had hired him and he took a year leave, like time to finish his postdoc before he came. And so for months before he came, I had emailed him said, I'd love to do my outside project with you. And so literally, the first day that he arrived was July 1, it was like a holiday. And he wanted me on day one, because he's Will.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And he didn't have a key to the office. It was a Saturday, or something, the university was closed.
Jim Coan
Did he want to go for a walk, or anything?
Jay Van Bavel
He wanted to go for a walk and meet me for lunch. So I met him at the department, he didn't have a key. And he just said, "Let's go grab a bite." Because this is Will, he wanted to go walk around, get a bite. He just moved in.
Jim Coan
He's a walker.
Jay Van Bavel
And I had three ideas picked out that I was going to pitch him. Beacuse I want to do a project with him. And I thought he's like, you know, Will has his pedigree. He's from Yale, and all these fancy places.
Jim Coan
He's fancy.
Jay Van Bavel
And I was like an Alberta boy like these are like places in movies, right?
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
And so I met him for lunch. And I had these three ideas, A, B, and C. And I pitched him a and he loved it. And I was like, Okay, we're good! We're done. And so I already was working with him. And he offered me to join his lab, and I became his first or second student, depending on how you slice it. And then a year later, he got an offer to go to Ohio State. So I moved with him to Ohio State, and I had a fellowship from the Canadian government that I could take. So I was still Toronto student.
Jim Coan
That's good.
Jay Van Bavel
And I could just hang out at Columbus.
Jim Coan
Oh, I see. So you remained a student of the University of Toronto working out of Columbus?
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jim Coan
That's a good deal.
Jay Van Bavel
So, so I spent three years at Toronto and three and a half at Ohio State. So it's kind of like a really short PhD really long postdoc kinda...
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
And so I went there with him. And the fun story was that since I was still Toronto student, I still had to do all my like my comprehensive exams, my dissertation proposal, my dissertation defense. And so the only and all my committee was Toronto Faculty other than Will, who retained just kind of affiliation to mentor me. I had to meet my committee at SPSP each year at the conference in the conference hotel. So the only time we'd all get together at the same place.
Jim Coan
That's creative problem solving.
Jay Van Bavel
So, so I remember doing my defense. And I'm in the lobby of the hotel, it was all these other prominent people, famous people in my field surrounding me-
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
-On coaches come just off us and I'm getting grilled by my committee. And I remember they asked me a question about social identity theory. And right behind my advisor was Dominique Abrams, one of the top people. And she, one of my committee members said, what's she said, "what's the future of social identity work?" Like as kind of a great probe how much I know how-
Jim Coan
That's appropriate.
Jay Van Bavel
-normal question and I have to say, I know more about social identity than any of my committee members. That's like a softball question.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
At that time yeah.
Jim Coan
You're gonna destroy that question.
Jay Van Bavel
She's like, give me a softball question. And I was so anxious of misstating it and having Dominique Abrams over here me and turn and say no, that's not right. Then I froze. I panic. I thought this is gonna be devastating.
Jim Coan
Everybody's got to have a panic story.
Jay Van Bavel
So I had this panic.
Jim Coan
Oh shit, sorry dude.
Jay Van Bavel
The thing ended and I walked away and they came back.
Jim Coan
What did you do when you were panicking? Did wet your pants? What did you?
Jay Van Bavel
I stumbled-
Jim Coan
Did you say anything?
Jay Van Bavel
We had tea set up, I had brought over tea for everybody from like, the bar or whatever. And if you ever put lemon and milk in your tea-
Jim Coan
Yes.
Jay Van Bavel
And it all curdles, right?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Jay Van Bavel
You're supposed to put lemon or milk in your tea.
Jim Coan
Right.
Jay Van Bavel
I ended up putting both in my tea. And so I had this tea with all this curdled milk in it. And I'm trying not to show that I'm anxious so I'm drinking it. I'm drinking this tea, with this curdled milk. And I'm probably sweating and panicking. And I mumbled my way through it, try not to say anything that would be seen as idiotic. And then I went away and they came back and I said, "you nailed the whole thing. But you stumbled on what we thought was easiest question. We don't like... have you read that literature?" And then by then Abrams was gone and I told them all what had happened. Because they didn't know he's right- but he was in there right behind them.
Jim Coan
Oh brother.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah. So.
Jim Coan
But you got your PhD?
Jay Van Bavel
So I got my PhD.
Jim Coan
Successfully?
Jay Van Bavel
Passed it. Yeah.
Jim Coan
Did you get a job here right away?
Jay Van Bavel
I got a job here right away. So I was really lucky, so hard that job market...
Jim Coan
That is a pretty good story.
Jay Van Bavel
The other thing about the job market was that I was on the job market the year that the economy crashed. And so I remember applying to jobs- it was my first year my postdoc, I stayed at Ohio State. And I remember getting these emails from like, I applied to Columbia, and it's like, "we've canceled our search," you know? All these places started about... a third of the jobs just got canceled because that was when the economy was just absolutely cratering.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Right.
Jay Van Bavel
And then I ended up getting this offer at NYU. And I remember think- being just so grateful that I got anything because... and then the, the job market in our world was terrible for five years after!
Jim Coan
I know.
Jay Van Bavel
And you had a backlog of people-
Jim Coan
Just brutal.
Jay Van Bavel
-with like three, four or five years of postdoctoral experience, who would have got jobs in the previous years now competing against new graduate students. And so we're finally out of it, but I mean, I was lucky that I got it when I did. I'm grateful.
Jim Coan
And now here you are. You just got tenure.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah!
Jim Coan
So congratulations, man.
Jay Van Bavel
That's all downhill from here.
Jim Coan
Yeah, that's right. Well, it's all just you know, putting your feet up watching TV now drinking beer. Nothing to it. And we eat and some lunch.
Jay Van Bavel
Had some beer last night. I can finally read the paper again.
Jim Coan
Yeah. Well, thanks for talking to me, man. That was really fun.
Jay Van Bavel
Yeah, it was fun. Thanks, Jim.
Jim Coan
Okay, that's it. Thanks to Jay Van Bavel for an altogether enjoyable conversation. I hope you liked it as much as I did. You probably didn't. But that's only because it's hard to compete with me for how much I like things. You know what, if you liked what you heard, I'm gonna go ahead and do something now that I've never done before, which is recommend that you follow Jay on Twitter. You can find them with the the Jay Van Bavel handle, there, all one word. Or you can just do a search for him. I don't know how to tell you how to find him. But you'll find him, if you want. I don't follow too many people on Twitter. As you heard just now, Twitter kind of freaks me out. But Jay does a nice job of being relevant to a broad audience, from working scientists to science journalists, and even to the average... the I don't, I don't know exactly what I want to say right now! The average, let's say the average Twitter user. Point is you'll like it. I think that will be particularly true if you're a young scholar, as Jay has been full of good mentoring of late on that platform. In any case, Jay, thanks, man. That was a lot of fun. And I hope it was at least fun enough for you to be willing to do it again. Folks, the music on Circle of Willis was written by Tom Stauffer and Gean Ruley and performed by their band The New Drakes. For information on how to purchase their music, check the about page at circleofwillispodcast.com. Don't forget that Circle of Willis is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. And that Circle of Willis is a member of the TJ FM network. You can find out more about that at Teej dot F M (changed to wtju.net). If you liked this podcast, give us a review at iTunes. Let us know how we're doing. It's easy. And we like it, or send us an email by going to circleofwillispodcast.com and clicking on the Contact tab. In any case, I'll see you at episode 13 where I talk with Nilanjana Dasgupta, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. We talk about the conditions that affect the likelihood that women and minority stick with or leave the STEM disciplines during college. It's important work and I can't wait for you to hear about it. Until then, bye bye!