#918 Antoine Marie: The Biases of People with Strong Political and Moral Convictions

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Center. I'm your host, Ricardo Loops. And today I'm joined by Doctor Antoine Marie. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at a University in Denmark. Uh We've already had an interview on the show. I'm leaving a link to it in the description box of this one where we talked basically about misinformation, conspiracy theories and some other topics. And today we're going to expand a little bit on that and also talk about a few more topics like for example, how people evaluate political decisions, the sharing of fake news on social media, gender biases in hiring processes, the repression of free speech, political activism. And basically, as we go through those topics, we're going to focus mostly on the biases that arise from people having strong moral convictions and the consequences of those moral convictions. So, Antoine, welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to everyone.

01:01 Antoine Marie: Thanks a lot, Ricardo and uh thanks a lot for having me again.

01:05 Ricardo Lopes: So starting with how people evaluate political decisions. I mean, is it that they care more about the concrete impact that certain political decisions have on society or do they care more about the values and perhaps symbols that drive those same political decisions?

01:29 Antoine Marie: Mm. So it's a big topic. I imagine you're referring to uh pre print that I have with the co-author uh I got had and brand, brand Freeland who was my ph advisor, it provisionally called intentions and efficiency and policy variations. But I would like to rename maybe something like people don't care too much about policy efficiency and they value a lot, the the intentions are driving them. And so basically what we're doing in that, in that pretty simple um setup is that we present participants with like the new little vignette that present, you know, the, the sort of like the decision making process of a politician or a CEO who's willing to implement a new policy for uh for instance, I don't know, do you know co2 emissions and you know, protect the environment or whatnot? We provide information about the level of efficiency or impact that the policy has its financial cost? Is it gonna cause, you know, the state or the or the company to lose vast amounts of money or to save vast amounts of money and we manipulate whether the decision maker is altruistic motivated. You know, I, I want to do that because I want to help the issue I want to protect the environment versus um I really don't care about the environment. All I'm interested in is to improve the image of our company or, you know, uh increase chances that we get re elected at the next election or whatnot. And so, so it's, it's a pretty simple setup, you know, it does, it doesn't necessarily max out in terms of like external validity, but it allows us to pretty carefully manipulate factors that are seemingly of interest in how people, you know, ordinary people form attitudes uh about whether a political, political decision is good or bad, you know, laudable or not, et cetera. And what we tend to find is that even when, even when the policy is, is described as having, you know, absolutely anecdotal positive impact, like less than 1% efficiency, decreasing CO2 emissions. And when it described as being, you know, costing a huge fortune to the company or to the state, in other words, when the policy is described as being vastly inefficient, just the fact that we described the policy as being otherwise altruistically motivated, you know, in the way it's being implemented by the minister or, or the CEO leads most participants to rate the policy as being more commendable or to or to support it more than an alternative policy that is described as being super, super efficient, uh as you know, allowing the organization to save vast amounts of money. But that is described as being implemented for reasons that have to do with the pursuit of, you know, a good image being re-elected or whatnot. And so we think that's a little of concern because, you know, in uh modern societies, many of the motivations that private actors, but also potentially public actors have on the market in society is to um uh make profits, is to, you know, give themselves a good image is to potentially uh you know, find technological solutions that will allow them to become richer. And so if people punish or do not support um policy programs uh policy uh initiatives, they are motivated by, you know, the willingness to uh make money to become richer, to have a successful company, even when they're actually immensely beneficial for society, even when they massively, you know, help at solving a given problem that, you know, humanity is facing, that's clearly problematic. And so, well, we're just finding that in that in, in, in those in those set of studies that people don't seem to be very consequentialist or very pragmatic in the way that they rate policy decisions. They seem to care a lot about the intentions that drive the poli political policies and they seem to disregard a lot um the the policy impact. Now I should specify that the way we describe the policy impact is not completely neutral, we provide um uh information about the efficiency in numerical format. We don't provide graphs that is not in the current version of the experiments. So the defense of that choice is to say, well, you know, very often information about political policies impact is provided in numerical format, in journals, in newspapers, etcetera. So it's fairly ecologically valid. But at the same time, you could say, well, yeah, but no surprise that people are not really reacting too much to, you know, uh numerical descriptions of, of imbalances in policy efficiency. Because the the mind is not particularly equipped to, you know, give a lot of like intuitive meaning to figures, to big figures to represent all those of magnitude clearly et Zara. And of course, I would of course agree with that. And that's also one of the arguments in the paper, we essentially say that people tend to deviate from the principles of pragmatism when assessing uh the political policy that we expose them to and that we present them to because essentially the mind is mostly shaped by natural selection to react to signals about, you know, the value as a cooperator of potential uh social actors. Be it the CEO be it the minister so that people will spontaneously attend to, they will care whether or not this or that politician seems to be a good cooperator and they will take into account the intentions that animates them in implementing the policy a lot. But as for the the the more abstract, the more delayed, the more macro you know, level uh impact of the policy, that's not something that the mind in two D process is very well unfort unfortunately, and that we think, you know, the the two mechanisms combined we think are leading people to, to become so uh so insensitive to, to the principles of, of pragmatic. Yeah.

06:36 Ricardo Lopes: A a and also I'm not completely sure if this is relevant to the particular context of this study and what we're you were trying to understand there. But I, isn't it also the case that for many, if not most political decisions, uh people many times do not really have access to very accurate data or perhaps sometimes it's also very hard to predict the precise impact that specific policies will have on society.

07:09 Antoine Marie: No, of course, I mean, 100% agreement. Uh That's obviously the case. Um YOU know, a fact like is that politician good or bad as a person, is there more character, you know, two or three or three in the, in the perspective of cooperating with them? That's almost like a fact, something that you can assess, you know, by direct observation, by interacting with people or by seeing how they talk, by seeing how their, you know, claims over time are consistent with each other, whether they do what they say and they say what they do or what not. So that seems relatively easy to assess but policy efficiency, not so right. It's like very high level facts. It's often very much delayed in time. You know, you will only know if um a political program, you know, meant to fight. Uh I don't know poverty in Africa or meant to reduce inequalities or to uh reduce unemployment or whatnot. You will only know if it will bear its fruits in the, in the midterm future, even in the long term future, it interacts like a zillion number of variables in the national economy and in the global economy that you have no control over, it's extremely hard to run randomized control trials on economic outcomes or, you know, public policies, everything interacts with, with a bit of everything. Of course, economists are skilled at kind of like, you know, maximizing uh the possibility of like answering scientifically to those questions and assessing policy impact. But it's always very difficult for everyone, including for them. And it's obviously not surprising that the lay citizen, you know, the man in the street, the woman in the street is not well equipped to anticipate um you know, what will be the, the the macros social impact of a policy, I mean to, to, to infer to, to induce any sort of like conclusion about whether a policy works or doesn't work. You have to, you would have to ideally have access to facts and outcomes that are distributed on the on the territory, which is of course impossible to do individually. Uh Most people are not professional scientists, uh social scientists, sociologists, economists. Um AND, and even assuming that people have access to relatively reliable policy information, which is already extremely hard to do, you know, requires representative samples, it requires the econometric method, etcetera, etcetera. Even assuming that people have that information very often that information that rigors, uh you know, opinion that they may come up with about whether a given program works or, or or doesn't work at, you know, advancing a given political issue. People will often not have the motivation to act on the, on the, on the basis of that. So for instance, I might know that it's, you know, bad nowadays to eat meat and to take the plane. And I might know very well reflectively that I'm supposed to stop eating meat or at least beef and take the plane less. Well, it's pretty hard from a mot visional perspective to be completely compelled to act in accordance with those principles. I try, I try my best but very often, you know, I'm experiencing a sort of like weakness of will and I will fail to meet in practice those sort of like more standards that I claim to have and that I claim to follow.

10:02 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh Let me just ask you one more question before we move on to another topic about this. And this is perhaps something that I will also ask you when it comes to other topics we're going to explore here today. But when it comes to this particular study, I mean, do you expect this to apply to basically everyone, regardless of their, for example, political ideology or partisanship or I mean, is there any way, by which perhaps there are some differences between, for example, left and right liberals and conservatives or not?

10:38 Antoine Marie: Um, IT'S a, it's a big question. I wouldn't claim to be able to answer this one. So I'm a political psychologist but I don't really claim to be a specialist of like, uh, you know, subgroup differences or, or more, more differences across, um, uh, yeah, across differences of partisanship or, or more sensitivity. I would say that a tendency to overvalue intentions with respect to causes that you care about, you know, to, to want to positively reward or, or, or thank, you know, politicians or social actors who are helping an issue versus wanting to punish those who are selfish or who disregard the cause that you care about that will tend to be universal, I think because it's very likely to be part of our sort of like universal, you know, social cognition package. It's like cognitive skills that you need to engage all the time every day and that you would have had to engage, you know, ancestrally regularly over the millennials to gauge the trustworthiness of potential co-operation partners. So this you should expect will be so much universal. Now, at the same time, of course, there are differences are, you know, relevant morally. And so it's possible that people who are a bit like, you know, who have a bit of a effective altruist sensitivity or who are maybe a bit more libertarian or maybe a bit more on the autistic spectrum or whatnot. It's possible that people who have those personality characteristics who are a little less, you know, um, elsewhere than in the cognitive average of the population. It's possible that those people may on average spontaneously or being or, or maybe educated to value policy impact a bit more than the good principles and the intentions that drive them, that they may be a bit more psychologically compatible with the principles of utilitarianism and pragmatism. Uh I think there's some evidence doing that, but I don't claim to be a, I don't claim to be a specialist of that. And um and yeah, and as regards the policy efficiency, I think, yeah, most people will have difficulty, you know, representing uh orders of magnitudes and, and, and impacts and to gauge policy efficiency based on figures. But of course, here again, there's a bit of margin of leeway. If you, you know, learn for many years that if you work for many years at the Ministry of the Economy or whatnot, you learn to many people and to handle figures and to represent what they mean a bit more, you have more of a sense of like, you know what 10 million represents with respect to as compared to 1 billion. And you are be able to get a sense of like what is the budget of the state? What is the budget of the company and that puts you in a better position to reason about figures. I think, I think even in my conference since our French president, he is probably much better at reasoning about figures when it comes to economic. Although men than I myself, just because he was the minister of the economy for many years. And he's a professional doing that. And you would hope that politicians are good at doing that. And to be honest, I don't know what my colleagues in political science who work on political elites are finding, I hope that they are finding that they had a decent numerical literacy, but I'm not completely convinced.

13:27 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, le let's see, let's see about that. So, OK, so in our previous conversation, we talked a little bit about misinformation and just to try to perhaps establish a bridge between our two conversations here. Uh WHEN it comes to sharing partisan news on social media specifically. So you mean

13:47 Antoine Marie: you mean making partisan news of, of, of, of news finds us sorry, like you mean like sharing, sharing you selectively in a way that is partisan?

13:56 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So do do strong moral convictions also play a role there. And if so what are the consequences?

14:07 Antoine Marie: Um Yes, they do. They absolutely do. So we have, we have that uh that paper recently published in, in Pnes Nexus with um my friends Sasha Altai and, and Brain Street Clan again, in which we essentially show using you know, relatively simple online experiments that the more people that, that first of all people are, are, are disposed to engage in what we call my side sharing or partisan sharing. They report higher willingness to share, you know, news items either true or false that fit the ideology. You know, there are congruent to their side that for instance, portray, you know, um a social threat that they are likely to believe in. Let's say I'm a democrat, I'm gonna want to pass along and I'm gonna be more likely to pass along the news that a piece of news that says that, I don't know, there's a big problem but like uh 3d printing of guns because it's gonna cause, you know, the spread of, of, of, of, of like homemade guns in the US or whatnot. So people tend to share news that are con to their side uh plausible threats. Um Statistical facts that they think are true. You know, for instance, um you should take a bunch of like a liberal participants. They are fairly likely to pass along. Uh A news item that says that this, for instance, you know, five or 10% gender pay gap between men and women in the US, which is roughly true, right? But they're also pretty likely to want to share um a piece of fake news that will say that there's a 60% pay gap between men and women, which is false, which is vastly exaggerated. Right. So, yeah, news items, claims, uh rumors, true or false when they fit people's uh prior expectations and moral commitments, you know, uh political convictions, um, activist motivations or whatnot uh will tend to be passed along more in real life and social media. The, the, the studies that are included in the paper that I'm talking about are only on social media, but we also know that that's the case in, in real life. Um So, yeah, people have the tendency that 10 is amplified by uh the degree to which demoralize or that they deem you know, certain issue to be of like political priority for them. So whether, you know, they see a political issue, gun control abortion or, or the, or the ban on abortion, for instance, for, for conservatives as being like a core value for their moral identity, for instance, or are being central to their moral identity when people, you know, rate. Um I mean, report that they highly more or less an issue that amplifies identity to share uh new selectively. Uh And we also find unsurprisingly that people who are more extreme on an issue, even when they don't moralize, it are more likely to uh to share news related to that issue in ways that are, that are partisan. So what does that mean? Um It can mean a mix of several things. Um The spontaneous interpretation would simply be to say that, you know, the more people care about an issue. They want, people want to tackle a social problem. They want to, with the more they want to advance or cause the, the more they are to behave like little activists, like little, you know, militant members of a tribe. And they want to pass along, you know, um claims information that they think will mobilize other people to take action or that potentially can also um they, they can also pass along those militant claims because they expect that they will therefore be able to signal, you know, a group memberships. I think both motivations are taking place. I think both mechanisms uh are driving part sharing to some extent. Um But we admit that it's also unclear whether um people are not also simply sharing uh you know, news items in partition ways because they think that the message that the, that the claim and caption, it is more plausible. So there's a sort of like there's a sort of like, you know, um it's hard to tell to what extent partisan safety sharing is carried forward by stronger prior beliefs or strong convictions that the claim is true versus more motivated thinking or more political or, or more motivations that, that, that sort of like motivate people to act in somewhat activist ways by signaling allegiances and by trying to influence the the belief of others about those, those um those social topics potentially to, to mobilize them or to prompt them to act, that's a little unclear. Uh And in that paper, we're not in a position to, to tell what is the relative contribution of the two mechanisms. And there's a big debate right now in political behavior, political psychology, political science about the extent to which um you know, differences between partisans in behavior, in news consumption, in judgments of accuracy of a given claim in decisions to share news, et cetera. To what extent those differences between partisans between political subgroups are explained by, you know, political motivated thinking, instrumental, instrumental motives as opposed to more, uh you know, accuracy oriented, just differences in part of beliefs. Uh It's a big, it's a big debate right now. I can only recommend your uh your viewers to check out the work of Ben Tappin, which has done a lot of good work with the Golden Penny Cook and David ran about that. But they try to, to argue that much, many instances of what seem to be partisan motivated thinking might actually boil down to different in priors. I think, I think the argument that they make is pretty convincing. I still think that motivated thinking is real. I still think that it's very real. Um But it's clearly the case that a lot in a lot of like survey contexts, a lot of like social science context, what might be taken at face value as evidence of motivated thinking might actually boil down to just partisan disagreements in what is true in the world and what is plausible piece of information. You know. Now I think you asked me, you, you, you asked me about the consequences of moralizing the topic and, and the, the impact of uh of that on, on, on, on, on partisan sharing of, of news items. So, yeah, as I said, it amplifies your, your propensity to, to effectively share news that fit your ideology. But in the paper, we, we don't just describe uh we don't just register that fact. We also try to um test to what extent it is robust and to what extent it can be kind of like influenced or mitigated by interventions. And so when we manipulated the the perceived um audience of the sharing, is it the group? Is it the art group didn't seem to have much of an effect? But I can come back to that because we have another paper in which the my machine works. Uh We in the same paper with ASHA Alai and, and BR Mle, we also manipulated whether the people are imagining to share news from a anonymous personal account, didn't have any effect on the the patterns of sharing, still engaging in public but sharing. And towards the end of the paper, we also tested an intervention which in which we told participants that essentially they have a confirmation bias and that, that may potentially bias, you know, their new sharing decisions. And the last experiment in which we tell them that they also have a sharing bias that they have a propensity to share more stuff that align with their, with their ideology that tells them what they want to hear. And neither of those, uh, two last interventions really had much of an effect. I think they tended to reduce a little bit overall showing but small effect, very small effect. It didn't, uh, reduce people's propensity to share news selectively. It didn't make people more likely to share incongruent news and less likely to share congruent news. Ok. So what it would, what all that suggests, I think is that selective sharing and its amplification by moralization and actually extremity is very robust. It's something that is deeply entrenched in people's cognitive uh dispositions and that makes sense if um it's underpinned by more motivations, we know that more motivations are trade off insensitive, right? If you really care about defending abortion, if you are, you know, a, a convinced conservative, why would you, why would you swayed in your moral in your political fight by a small, you know, intervention, you know, sort of experiments, of course, that's unlikely to have much of an effect because, you know, we are touching upon deeply entrenched, um you know, identity relevant moral convictions. And if, and to the extent that the part is sharing is driven by sincere convictions about, you know, there being a threat associated to a given issue or um beliefs about the fact that the art group is really evil and really stupid. Well, here again, it's not a small intervention in a sort of experiment that is gonna sway that belief that you have acquired over the years, over, over, you know, many repeated trials of like consuming partisan media and conversations with people, etcetera, etcetera. So in general, it's very hard to change uh people's news diets, uh intuitive reactions to political messages simply because they have a long biographical history and they are deeply entrenched either in people's expectations about the world or their political commitments and that's hard to modify and surprisingly.

22:17 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So it's, it seems to me that it's difficult, at least as far as we know to curb this tendency that most people have to share strongly partisan news, including sometimes fake news. Right. Yeah.

22:34 Antoine Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Um IT is generally difficult. Um SOME people like uh Sasha Altai and Hugo Messi would even argue that, you know, should we be spending that much uh of our work and our, you know, money on trying to come up with like interventions and get misinformation. Um The spread of misinformation is to begin with not that big of a problem. At least in the West, people don't consume that much uh fake news. You know, most of the fake news are shared by a tiny little majority of Twitter users and Facebook and Facebook users does the work for instance of uh you know, um Matias Osmundsen and Michael Ben Pearson and others, you know, who have a American Political Science review that shows that most of the spreaders of part fake news are actually less than 1% of the Twitter sample that they could get access to. And that, that less than 1% is showing 90% of the fake news or something like that. So it's on the whole, in addition to the fact that few fake news are being shared in the, in the sample. Ok. So there's few, there's little circulation of misinformation overall, you know, a lot of studies and that that's what they find. And a very small minority of like pretty cynical activists seem to be doing the heavy lifting of sharing that information. So maybe we're exaggerating the seriousness of misinformation. It doesn't mean that it's not a problem at all. It is for sure a problem. It is a problem that, for instance, you know, people increasingly uh in some areas of the world are dispersed full of vaccines. It is a problem that the Russians are spreading, you know, anti-french propaganda uh in Africa and taking advantage of that, of those misinformation campaigns to send their Wagner soldiers and to increase their influence in West Africa. That's of course a problem. But as far as like the circulation of misinformation on social media about politics in the West is concerned is possible that we're exaggerating a little bit. Uh THE seriousness of the problem. And so what, what people like Sasha Alta and Yuma would say, and I'm, and I'm sure they're, they're right if they thought about it more than I have, what we should instead say is to try to focus our efforts and our time and our money on making people care more about trusting uh reliable sources. OK. Like increasing people's trust in uh the Washington Post, the New York Times, Le Monde le Figaro, uh El Pais and whatnot. OK. So the priority should not be in trying to fight misinformation. It's hard. It may, it may even backfire by reinforcing conspiracy theories and whatnot. The priority should be to try to restore a little bit trust in institutions and trust in journalism. And if we, and if we manage to increase a little bit people's trust in a legitimate legacy news media, if we manage to make them consume a bit more reliable information, we would diminish the amount of false beliefs and misinformation in society much more than we would if we manage to make people a bit more distrustful of uh you know, fake news sources and whatnot. At least that's the argument that they defend. So I don't know if it answers a bit what you were saying, but that's my uh interpretation of uh I mean, what would be said, what would have to be said here?

25:27 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah. And actually I have uh seal t on the show two or three years ago and when it comes to the seriousness of the sharing of fake news online in social media, particularly, uh if I remember correctly said basically the same you said there. And I, I think that uh you were focusing mostly on people who share fake news there. But uh it also applies to people who actually produce fake news and put, put it into circulation on the internet. It's just a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people doing that. Right.

26:04 Antoine Marie: Yeah, I imagine so. I haven't, I haven't worked on like, you know, the, the famous producers, like the websites who, uh, you know, who output fake news online, of course, they're pursuing, you know, clicks and, and attention and revenue when they're here for the, for the money, for the most part, they might also have, you know, disruptive motivations, like more political motivations to undermine trust in the establishment or in journalism or in, you know, the current politicians or whatnot. Um, I, I don't know, I don't know what I mean here again, I think, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the proportion of information producers who are intentionally cynical, intentionally spreading misinformation is extremely small. Uh Of course, it's absolutely problematic that they exist and there should be, you know, uh probably penal sanctions against them and, you know, the, the government should crack down on them at Zara, but it's easy to overestimate the gravity of the issue simply because, you know, um the mind is extremely uh uh you know, hyper sensitive to, to threat in general. So that's true of like citizens. That's true of journalists, that's true of politicians or researchers. So any information that somehow contributes to saying that there is something that is not working well in society will be a bit more, you know, believed a bit more uh culturally successful uh holding constant other factors. Of course, I'm not saying that you can make people believe, you know, anything and everything, people aren't completely good. But if the threat seems plausible and if it seems relevant, uh it's gonna spread far and wide. And so there's a tendency for the broad public and, and, and, and, and sentence themselves to, to think that it, to think that the, the problem of misinformation is very broad is very big and they indicate can potentially also have, you know, a career incentives, publication incentives to also further exa exaggerate the threat. So I think we have to keep that in mind. Yeah, like the mind is super attentive to threat, we easily exaggerate things. It's relevant, right? Makes us sound interesting in the conversation and it creates opportunities for publication for talks for uh you know, a commission that the parliament or what not. And um and that will, that will make sense. I mean, I'm not necessarily, you know, throwing stones at people who participate in that I have perhaps participated in that kind of like more panic about misinformation myself intentionally or not. But we should keep in mind that. Yeah, the, the, the problem is probably not as serious as the climate changes or the, the war in uh in Israel is.

28:21 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So, in a related topic, uh in our previous conversation, we've also talked a little bit about conspiracy theories. And in this time, I would like to ask you about specifically when it comes to political conspiracy theories and other kinds of rebased narratives. Are there social functions to holding and disseminating them?

28:48 Antoine Marie: Yeah, presumably at least that's what we argue with uh Mika Pearson and, and others, but Mikel Bang, in particular, in, in at least a couple of pieces that we have written together. Um So again, the mind is very, is very susceptible to threatening information, right? Uh We are a loss of earth. It makes sense to, you know, um get ourselves ready for, for threatening a threat. So it's obviously adaptive to overreact to information that there may be a social threat um in particular social threats that, you know, take a group based form, right? Because uh we humans evolved in an essential environment in which presumably there was a fair amount of group competition and group conflict. Um And so it's, it's adaptive to overreact to be kind of like on the on the lookout for potential or coordinate social threats directed against us, directed against our in group are keen and Sarah and once people have that predisposition to find, you know, threat based narratives, appealing like conspiracy theories, um potentially also some popular forms of like uh Marxism, anti racist discourse, anti-communist discourse, et cetera, much of ideologies, threat based narratives, right? I mean, whether you're trying to, you know, um motivate people to um take action against communism or whether you're trying to motivate your population to take actions against the capitalist imperialism and to endorse communism In all those cases, you're going to try to spin threat based narratives and to, you know, uh diffuse them in society through the journals of propaganda through the channels of general education, through the, the radio, et cetera. So threat based narratives are absolutely central in politics and in, in, in, in ideological phenomena. And so once you have that ubiquitous with based narratives uh that, you know, uh the mind responds to and finds intuitive attention grabbing and uh well pay attention to it becomes possible to use them instrumentally strategically to influence how people think of yourself and, and, and, and, and act. So if I, if I had a good, you know, threat based narrative that can get my group to team up together and to attack or defend against an enemy group, if I can somehow convince that, you know, there's a dangerous art group right there in the neighboring um behind the neighboring hill or in the neighboring nation that is poi poised to attack us and who wants to exterminate us. I will easily be able to reap the benefits of like mobilizing my group against that art group. OK. So they are mobilizing benefits in, in using instrumentally threads narratives. And we suspect that at least sometimes that's how PC theories are being used. Uh People use them to kind of like recruit um new individuals to join a political fight, a political cause that they care about. For instance, you know, anti-establishment uh uh narrative or, or some kind of like a more racist narrative against uh you know, the neighboring tribe that you, that you may be living close to in like the Middle East or in Africa or whatnot. And so, and so, yeah, it becomes possible to, to kind of like instrumentally agitate a sense of threat in other people to mobilize them to side with you and to take action with you on your side and to potentially uh yeah, organize collectively to, to, to thwart a potential threat. Um And, and there's at least another potential um social use that can be made of uh of this narrative that is also very instrumental that it is also a little exploitative, which is a signaling, of course, you know, by, by saying how much you hate an art group, by saying how much you think that the art group is uh dangerous, uh you know, uh conspiring against you with Zara. Zara, you can express a sense of loyalty to your own group, you can, you can by, by see who you hated society, you're potentially sort of like, you know, distinguishing yourself from a food that in group and also potentially neutral audiences who don't care about it and you're singling you, you're signing. So you're expressing who you're sending with. And that can be uh that can be useful to um that can be useful to uh to, to express to potential allies to potential recruits, you know, that you're standing with them, that you care about the interests itself. Um As you mentioned, one important thing about the mobilization argument, which is that this, there's kind of a debate in the country, sciences, of culture and political science and what not about the extent to which those um threat based narratives really persuade people or really motivate people to act so on, on a sort of like optimistic accounts when you spread, you know, threat based rumor or conspiracy theory that seems to be believable or, you know, a cons spiritual narrative or like a sort of like um ethnic rumor about the fact that, you know, the neighboring Tutsi are gonna want to massacre all your uh um Hutu fellows or whatnot under an optimistic argument, uh an optimistic view of the argument, those claims will persuade and will really get people to act because they're afraid of threat, which we really have motivational impact. I think sometimes it's the case. Um BUT people like Michael B, Peterson and maybe also Hugo Mercier have argued and I'm pretty convinced by that, by that argument that very often people are not so much convinced, you know, prompted to act and to take arms against the threat as they are more using the information as a way of like signaling that they are willing to attack, that they're ready to attack already. And they're using the propaganda, the threat based rumor, the narrative as a way of like saying, hey, I'm one of those guys who hate the other group. I'm willing to take action. And I'm saying that to you in order to signal that I'm ready to coordinate with you in a potential collective action that we might want to take against the other group. OK. So under a sort of like strong form of the claim, the negative information really persuades people to act under, under a broader exception of the, of the argument or, or the thesis, it doesn't really prompt people to act, but it helps people who are already motivated to act for other reasons, to organize collectivity, to coordinate and to prepare a collective action that may potentially, you know, target the other group.

34:48 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. Uh And if that second um interpretation of it is the correct one. Could it, could it be that in this case uh conspiracy, a political conspiracy theory or any other sort of threat based narrative could function more as a sort of justification to act than really uh as motivating people to act upon it.

35:15 Antoine Marie: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um It could, it could serve, it could allow individuals to rationalize an already existing motivation to, you know, organize collective action and to attack or to defend against the art group. Um Stereotypes, you know, are not necessarily always super, super believable. Uh Conspiracy theories are not always super super believable, but just the fact that they are superficially plausible or that they um can be at least, you know, superficially endorsed by your allies may suffice for them to function as like postdoc rationalizations of an already existing disposition to hate the art group and to want to attack against the other group. Yes. Yes. And, and by, by, by, by, by, by expressing endorsement of the conspiracy theory or the, the, the ethnic rumor or whatnot, but just saying that you believe it or by disseminating it on yourself, you also signal that you're one of those individuals who want to act. So there's also a signaling value, at least it contributes to co-ordination of collective action. So it signals a membership, it gets you closer to a coordinate action that is meaningful in terms of collective action that may be hostile to the art group. And you're right, it can also uh rationalize under under the existing motivation to, to take action.

36:30 Ricardo Lopes: Uh And uh I mean, just before we move to, we move to another topic, uh you mentioned there, the fact that it's still debatable to what extent conspiracy theories might have actual behavioral effects. I mean, in terms of mobilizing people to do something uh that also apply. I mean, this is an ongoing debate also that applies to things like the spread of misinformation, political ads during campaigns, online, et cetera. Right? I mean, we're still not sure to what extent stuff like that, particularly on social media and the internet more generally really translating to actual offline behavior. Right.

37:16 Antoine Marie: Yeah, and, and offline behavior as well. Um I mean, here I can be, I can be, again, the echo of, you know, the work of Hugo me here for a second because I think it's very uh it's very convincing even if I sometimes think that Hugo is going a tad too far and his optimism about human rationality. But I think the, the general arguments are pretty, pretty strong, pretty valid. People are not easily gullible, they are not easily um fooled, they have intuitive capacities to gauge the coherence and consistency of new information with what they already believe. And they're pretty good at gauging whether sources of information and messages have their interests at heart or are trying to deceive them and whatnot. So that's what he calls, you know, epistemic vigilance or in a in a more novel formulation, open open visions. So I think that's very true. Of course, um you won't easily um you know, make Germans become anti Semitic if there's not an already pretty strong pre-existing disposition for anti-semitism in German culture that is, you know, plunging in roots um, in, you know, several centuries of, of, of, uh Catholic uh and, and partisan history, you won't easily get people to buy products that they absolutely don't need. You won't create helo um, new desires. Uh That's, I think actually, by the way, if you, if you allow me to, um hit a little bit on the standard of social scientists who are not cognitive and who are not evolutionary, I think that's often like a sort of like a misconception that a lot of people in traditional sociology or whatnot may have is that they think that capitalism advertisement propaganda, um it's have the capacity to generate non practicing desires. I think that there, that's, that's generally misconception, human nature is about the same for everybody and it's pretty deeply structured by a transaction pressures. You won't easily persuade people to desire commodities or activities that they are not evolution be predisposed to like. Right. So in general, what advertisement does is that it will exploit and obey the existing predisposition for, I don't know, um junk food, you know, fat stuff, sugary stuff. It will explode to pre uh predi predisposition to, you know, want to have sex and to um want to see, you know, attractive sexual partners, et Zara and he's going to present products or services that tap those pre-existing desires. Uh And, and if it manages to sell more new services, new goods. It's because it's making products that type, that tap those already existing desires, more salient, more visible it for them, but it's not creating desires from nothing. Ethnic yellow at all, I think. Mhm. Uh, YEAH. I don't know if it's, if it's answering your, your question in any way.

39:53 Ricardo Lopes: No, no. Maybe, maybe

39:55 Antoine Marie: a little, if you, maybe a little element that I think I should add about like the, the the potency of like propaganda and, and, and rumors and you know, like kind of like discourses that aim to persuade and to mobilize people. Um An argument that Hugo would make in this case and that I'm increasingly convinced by is that um very often when people say that the endorsement theories or that they endorse, you know, ideologies like Marxism or like a, a pretty radical ideology very often what is likely to be happening in their heads is that people claim to be endorsing the, the, the statement of the belief they ascend to it. They say that they believe it, but in fact, deep down in their and conscious other systems are, are like uh not really, you know, like they're not really taking the information super seriously to the extent of motivating costly action, costly action, big efforts on the part of the individual. So very often people will say that they endorse fashionable beliefs because they allow them to, you know, seem informed, to seem like they care about certain values that other people care about. Um, THEY'RE gonna endorse them to, um, to seem like, yeah, trustworthy, competent to seem like they care about politics, etcetera. But in fact, they very rarely will deviate from their, you know, personal comfort or like, you know, everyday ways of doing things and, you know, private little self interest. Um, ON the basis of those belies very often, the, the, the epistemic visions mechanisms are, it's not that they are like turning down the information on the endorsement of the narrative, but it's more like they are keeping it in a sort of like isolated co format which, you know, me be would call reflective without really trying to connect them with like costly actions that would potentially entail sacrifices for the individuals. And uh and also big efforts in terms of like mobilizing others and really, you know, like spending money and time on like uh political calls that people claim to care about. But in fact, don't really do much to it in general. And, and by the way, I'm completely, I'm completely guilty of the same problem myself. OK? Like I'm giving a bit of money every month to uh to give well, and I'm trying to do a few, like not so costly altruistic stuff. Uh But I really take costly action in favor of more values that, that, that I claim that I claim to care about. Uh I claim to care about the environment, but I'm still playing way too much and still eating a bit, a bit too much chicken. And so I'm, I'm completely guilty of the same mechanism that I'm describing here. Uh

42:22 Ricardo Lopes: But so I, if that's true, then in this particular case, uh people manifesting certain specific beliefs would, would serve mainly a social signaling function, right? In terms of signaling, their, I guess, group affiliations,

42:41 Antoine Marie: yeah, signaling. Um So I think, you know, what's happening very often is that we have mechanisms in the mind that are, that evolve for tax benefits that were essentially relevant, you know, getting your coalition to co-operate together to solve a problem or throw out an enemy to signal your trustworthiness to be kept and admitted as a group as a good group member and whatnot and those motivations. So those many divisions would have expressed themselves with like intensity in the past when there was like, like a lot of fitness interdependence. And when there was like a lot of like external threat on the group or whatnot, there are people would have, you know, spent a lot of energy to um get their group to team up together, or they would have spent a lot of energy to signal their devotion to the group by incurring pretty costly sacrifices to deserve their place in the group at Zara because back at the time, the environment was very threatening. But nowadays, typically, most of us would live in you know, relatively peaceful western societies in which there is no war, there is no famine, there are no uh natural catastrophes and whatnot. And so we are not in dire need to mobilize other people in collective action or we do, we are not as much in dire need to signal group memberships as, as we, as we used to potentially. And so we're gonna, we're gonna still have those mechanisms opening in our, in the background of our heads. We're still gonna be doing a little bit of, of like political and, and more signaling but not with the same intensity, not at the price of like as costly actions as maybe we would have in intra context in, in context of like group conflict or in or with as much intensity as we would in like contemporary context that are prone to war or where, you know, people are a bit more in danger. So I would say that the motivations are there uh But they are only operating in a sort of like weak diminished form in people's heads. But still, it's enough that they're operating in a sort of like, you know, uh minimal mode for the, for the belief that people, for people to endorse beliefs and to disseminate claims in ways that, you know, seem to, yeah, that, that seem that still seem to fulfill signaling functions and, and potentially uh mobilization functions.

44:51 Ricardo Lopes: So changing topics, you have a paper where you explore the ways by which strongly motivate people that are strongly morally motivated or committed to gender equality in this specific case process and understand evidence regarding gender bias hiring processes. So, uh and the and of course, there are benefits to being committed to gender equality in this specific case. But in the paper, you also talk about potential costs. Could you explain what's going on here?

45:31 Antoine Marie: Yeah, it's all very simple. So we have that uh we have that pre print paper that uh got rejected from many places, but I hope it will one day be accepted by a decent social psychology journal uh with um co authors um uh Hu Ling Xiao, who's a, who's a Chinese colleague and Andre Mle, my former PH advisor in which we look at like how people consume um simplified scientific accounts, uh simplified, you know, research summaries about the topic of gender bias in hiring in organizations and doctor in stem. And we look at how the degree of like feminism, if you will the de the degree to which they moralize gender equality influences those evaluations, the degree to which they think those scientific uh reports are credible, the methods are rigorous, you know, the the findings are convincing sr itself. And so there's, there's a, there's a, there's a PNS paper that came out in 2015, I think by Henry at a that showed that essentially when people were presented with uh scientific demonstrations using, you know, randomized control trials or like rigorous experimental methods. When people were exposed to those uh proofs that um having processes in academia favor uh men over women with equal credentials, they found that men were less receptive to that uh type of scientific result that women were more likely to believe them and to want to take action against, against those uh against those findings. OK. So they found that there was some kind of like a sex difference in how receptive or how um how truthful people were at that demonstration. And so here, what we tried to do was to was to see first is that sex effect, video, sex effect or is it more like an moral ideology effect that is associated or co varying with the sex difference? Is it possible that the sex difference is in fact reducible to differences in moral commitments in the degree to which people care about sex equality um in our, in our, you know, uh population of participants. And yes, it seems to be the, it seems to be the case when we control for more commitment very often the sex effect disappears. And when we add more commitment as a covariance of people, the variations of the degree to which they trust the science they think is believable. Um We find that the more people care about more equality, the more they will trust, the more they will deem plausible uh convincing those scientific reports that demonstrate experimentally that uh women are being discriminated against in having processes in academia. So that's, that's a bright side. Ok. So we, we, we, we expand already existing study. We showed that what seemed to be a sex effect is actually maybe more like a moral ideology effect. And we find that good news, people who care more about equality will uh welcome more with more receptivity, those rigorous demonstrations that we may not be discriminated against. However, on the flip side, we also find that people who are more uh more committed to equality, uh see as more persuading, as more persuasive, sorry. Um MORE bogus demonstrations or conclusions that there is gender bias in having taking place. So here, what we did is that we substituted the rigorous uh experimental demonstration of gender bias in hiring with a more observational and fishy study that essentially looks at the pre hiring um proportion of men and women in stem and the post hiring proportions. And that finds that in fact, the post hiring proportions of women is greater than the pre hiring proportions. So clearly, there's no gender bias in having against women. And and, and we, and we visualize that graphically with like pretty clear about shots and like there's no ambiguity about the fact that women are really favored in having process. And yet the research Army concludes that the fact that women on the whole, even after hiring are still a minority because they, they are a minority before and after hiring, the fact that women are a minority in science in the scientific labs is a rigorous demonstration of the fact that, you know, there's gender bias in hiring. So that's a fac conclusion because people infer from the fact that women are less generous, the notion that there should be inevitably uh you know, gender-based in having against them, even when the presented data is clearly showing that women all things equal, actually favored in the recruiting recruitment process. OK. And so here we find that people um generally tend to do not process the contribution between the result and the conclusion and the higher and more commitment to the equality, the more people are likely to rate that bogus scientific conclusion as being, you know, convincing. OK. So overall, in summary, if you care, it seems that if you care more about gender equality, if you're more of a feminist, you will. And that's a and that's a good thing rate more positively believe more rigorous demonstration of their being uh gender bias against women. But you will also be more receptive and more believing of bogus demonstrations that only rely on observational evidence and that are even, you know, showing results that are contradictory with the conclusion. So this of course, does not, you know, amount to uh saying that we should stop being uh caring about gender equality. We should, of course uh uh keep caring about that sort of like moral and political targets, a very important one. But the lesson that we are trying to teach here and we're not the first ones to be making that argument is that um when you are very committed to a cause, it can potentially blend you a little bit, you know, to the details of a reasoning, it can make you a bit more susceptible to confirmation bias or um or belief bias in the sense that if you really endorse a conclusion, if you think that the conclusion is true, if you think that the conclusion is more desirable, it makes you a bit more likely to neglect the inferential steps or the reasoning that back it up and that lead to it. And that's what we're trying to show essentially, you know, morality binds and blinds. As Jonathan, he would say it, it can make people a bit more irrational uh at the margins, even even if you know, the aggregate social effects are on average positive, at least sometimes it's gonna bias people's reasoning and we want to show that.

51:33 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So when it comes to these ideological commitments that some people have, uh you've also been working on ideological orthodoxy and specifically on the repression of free speech. So what do we know about what might motivate and what might be the goals that a strong political activists try to pursue when repressing free speech?

52:02 Antoine Marie: OK. So here you're referring to my work with uh Mika Van Heeren um recent work, you know, just published or still in the pipes at Sara. So not much is is out yet. We have um we have a we have a commentary article on, on David Pino and our uh the alliance theory of ideology that, that our commentary is called speech prepress and outrage from orthodox activists as attempts at fascinating mobilizations and getting service among allies. I'm sorry, the title is a little long but you know, your, your viewers are welcome to check it out. And we have also like a longer piece in preparation that is currently called the Ky Foundations of Orthodoxy in which we try to expand a bit those arguments in a somewhat more detailed form. So, yeah, Michael and I have taken the phenomenon of like political dogmatism and speech repression as our sort of like object of inquiry. Recently, we've become interested in that um for various reasons. Uh One because we think that, you know, there's a bit too much repression of speech in the world uh nowadays still obviously also because um we think that there's a bit too much of it in uh in, in the west, in, in the US, in particular, there's a somewhat, you know, concerning phenomenon of cancel culture that is threatening uh universities and intellectual professions that we think is pretty problematic. And of course, because, you know, speech is still massively repressed in authoritarian countries uh the world over and we, and we told, we told ourselves that, well, it seems like there's not really a, a mature cognitive and evolutionary theory of like, why people are orthodox or we press free speech in ideological movements, you know, be they moral movements, religious movements, political movements and whatnot. And so we, we told ourselves, well, let's try to develop a theory of like why there is, you know, the anti-communist witch hunt in the fifties. Why is there, uh you know, the repression and the surveillance of political dissent in China right now? Why did the Catholic church, you know, persecute the heretics in the middle ages and why is there a cancel culture in the US right now? Both on the left and on the right. So that's a bit explanatory target if I, if I may say and so what we say is essentially pretty similar to, you know, what we've been saying about the conspiracy theories and what, you know, people like cosine and tube and, and, and other authors have been saying about, you know, um more beliefs and political beliefs, essentially, we are proposing that people re speech for two main reasons. Uh Mobilization goals and signaling goals. So the mobilization goal would be fulfilled in the following way. If you care a lot about the issue, uh you will want to, you know, uh rally your life and to motivate your life to, you know, create a coalition, create, create a sort of like group uh behind yourself with yourself to tackle the threat, right? You might want to vanquish uh racism in the US. For instance, you might want to, um, you know, um thwart the threat of communist infiltration in the US in the 19 fifties if you're like a, like a ma artist or what not. And so there's a sort of like intrinsic desire or need to organize collective action if you want to advance a cult or if you want to defeat an enemy, be it also like an intellectual enemy, it doesn't have to be a human out group. It can be like dangerous ideas that you think are exerting, you know, a corruptive influence on your society or whatnot. And so in those conditions, that goal of mobilization becomes to try to influence people's beliefs so that they believe that uh the mobilization is, is justified, is necessary. And typically, one way of doing that is to tell people that there's a threat because if there's a threat, you know, it's gonna activate our evolved sense of like threat, avoidance. It's very powerful from a motivational perspective. And so often you can motivate people to gang together behind you to organize for your side if you can convince them that they are facing a threat. And in that context, what we're saying is that people activists, political leaders, ideological entrepreneurs, et cetera, et cetera, they will try to, they will tend to try to regulate free speech and to maybe repress free speech when they think that the speech in question is potentially demobilizing when, when they think that potentially the information is contrarian or is kind of like calling into question the legitimacy of the fight or it contributes to nuance or procession of the threat or contributes to uh say that the threat is not that bad after all or what not, you know what I mean? So like uh if I take the example of, you know, the the canceling of controversial speakers on us campuses uh recently by the left, but also by the right, if you're a staunch anti racist, you may want to deplatform or to cancel the invitation or to stop um the, the, the talk from taking place of a biologist who's doing research on, let's say the link between genetics and, and, and personality or someone who's investigating potential, you know, psychological differences or IQ differences between populations and whatnot because rightfully or wrongfully, I don't know, it's, it's an open question. You might think that those pieces of information in, if it's sif research, those pieces of information may contribute to normalize, to justify uh racism, not necessarily directly but even indirectly as you know, making like uh maybe a biological conception of human nature a bit more popular or a bit more plausible and whatnot. So you might, you might be motivated to be press speech that you think is contrarian or susceptible to undermine uh the third need for the necessity of the mobilization against racism. And in particular, you will try to repress speech that you think is undermining people's perception of threat, right? For instance, you know, research also that may downplay the notion that there is a link between, you know, um the race of the defendant and police violence, for instance, will typically be seen as being contrarian as being dangerous by anti racist activists because they fear that its dissemination in society may influence people's prior beliefs towards them. Believing that the, the the the problem of racism is not that bad or that, you know, it's it's exaggerated or whatnot and that may have demobilizing effects and the same like on the right people may want to repress free speech of um the free expression of, for instance, you know, um critical race theory or, you know, uh the notion that, you know, gender roles are at least partly socially constructed because they feel like dissemination of those contracting messages may kind of like diminish or undermine the the enthusiasm that people have for traditional Christian values, et cetera. And they see that as a threat. Ok. So one core function we think of speech repression and speech regulation is you try to control people's beliefs by intervening on information flows so that people stay motivated for causes that you think will bring about shared benefits in particular against, you know, social threats. And of course, once there are those efforts to mobilize allies for causes and against enemies that creates individual incentives for people to signal devotion to certain causes to those causes and to the group. So once people care vastly about anti-racism, once people have a moral panic about communist influence in the US, in the, in the fifties, once conservative America is going through a more panic about critical race theory being taught at university or at high school that creates individual opportunities for repetition and enhancement. Uh It creates incentives for individuals to seem like they're gonna be um very tough with uh you know, uh control on ideas with like ideas that they are in group, dislike as a way of showing their degree of commitment for those ideas. Um SORRY for the group. Uh AND, and, and for the causes that they are trying to advance, like, if I'm, let's say a po position in 19 fifties like Maar and there it is and is a sort of like more panic against uh about the influence of communism in American culture and institutions. Well, I may see it as an opportunity to try to erect, to emerge myself as a tough politician, as a reliable politician who will defend, you know, the traditional values of corporate liberal America against the threat of communism. And so he quits um by repressing speech um of people who are suspected of Soviet sympathies. Someone like Mac mccalley can emerge as someone who's committed to protect regional America against the threat. And so, yeah, you, you, you know, you appear tough against the contractions, you appear tough against the enemies against people who disagree with you. And that can potentially allow you to score reputational points. Ok. So, uh,

1:00:20 Ricardo Lopes: uh, yeah, II, I have one more question or topic to explore about political activists but, uh, still on the topic of repressing free speech. I mean, I've asked you a similar kind of question when earlier we talked about uh spreading uh fake news and all of that and uh how basically uh people care more about or a apparently care more about the values and symbols driving political decisions than uh the concrete effects they have on society. Uh I mean, in this particular case, are you also interested in trying to understand perhaps if there would be any ways we could try to curb the repression of free speech or is that not something that you are really studying?

1:01:15 Antoine Marie: Uh I mean, I'm obviously interested in that question because, you know, the, the, the very fact that, that I think that there's a need for a g theory of free speech. Um Is it still a reflection of the fact that I think that, you know, the repression of free speech is at least sometimes bad even if sometimes it's also desirable. Um I think it's a good thing that for instance, in Europe, we're trying to, you know, fight uh neo Nazi propaganda by making it illegal to have a swat seekers and uh and to, and to sing a neo Nazi chants in the streets. Um So there are cases where, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a free speech. Absolutely alone. Even if I'm very pro free speech, what can we do to reinforce or to strengthen free speech? Um I don't know, Ricardo, I don't really know. I haven't really studied that, uh that question yet. Um I guess, I guess, I guess decreasing the level of like polarization of society and trying to make our national societies a little less conflictual will help because um as we argue in our work with Michael, um it seems pretty clear that motivations, we press free speech co vary and are sort of like upregulated, increased by perceptions of society, be conflict ridden, you know. Mhm. When you think that there's a dangerous out group that is threatening your in group, which is like a, like a, like a by definition, your perception of conflict, um you will feel an increased need to um motivate my group to form like a cohesive coalition or to, you know, rally new life to, to, to fight that threat. And um and it's to that extent that people is to the extent that people feel that they have benefits in mobilizing, that they will feel that they also have benefits in repressing speech that they think could be demobilizing, right? So the more society is harmonious uh and the more, you know, the different subgroups that compose society can live their lives fairly freely. And the more uh the, the less inequality maybe there is and the less effective polarization there is, the less it should be a problem. Um The, the, the less you should have motivations from activists on, on either side to want to be press and to police the speech of others because yeah, again, like um motivation to repress speech are impossible to dissociate from threat, perceptions and motivations to, to motivate your own group to do stuff in the world and often what motivates. Um Yeah, that, that, that mobilization effort is perception of threat. So I would say that, yeah, you have to make societies a bit more peaceful and a little less polarized as for more. So that's of course, very difficult, right? Uh It's a sort of like, you know, um basic fundamental uh program for policymakers and uh you know, it involves, you know, maybe uh changing a bit the economy, it involves changing. Uh MAYBE the way the the news media are functioning to make them a little less uh to make them uh to make them a little less polarizing, a little less partisan. It calls for a number of reforms in many, many different sectors of society. Uh I'm not here to make, you know, specific policy recommendations. That's something that I hope to maybe think a bit more about in the future Michael, uh, might have recommendations to that effect. I think he's giving a talk about the future of free speech in, um, in Sweden, uh, early December. That may be of interest to some of your viewers. Uh, WELL, it will probably be too late by the time your podcast is out. But, yeah, a lot of people who are more or less influential, are interested in how to foor free speech. Uh, I think, um Jacob, um what is his name? Uh Meena who wrote like a History of Free Speech, um probably also has pretty interesting positive recommendations about that. He's got a very interesting book called um Free Speech or History from Socrates to uh to I forget what that is really good and that I can recommend your viewers to, to check out. Uh But yeah, I'm not, I'm not gonna venture into like specific, you know, policy recommendations in terms of like what to do to enforce free speech. Um I don't really know but, but for sure that value needs to be protected and uh and it's a cardinal value of, of us um scientists and I assume, you know, most regional liberals of, of, of, of, of the West right now?

1:05:29 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So, uh would you like to tell people just before we go the kinds of work you're doing on right now, what kinds of topics you're working on? And, and by the way, I didn't mention this at the beginning in our in, in the introduction. But in the near future, you will also be moving to one stick to Jean Nico.

1:05:50 Antoine Marie: Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my, my contract at university is reaching its end in um end of March 24 and I have a new job at the Envision Nico in Paris. Uh I'll be part of the um evolution and the social team. So evolution and social cognition and my P I is going to be Olivia Mohan, who's a cultural evolutionist, who's mostly been uh been doing work on like uh the cult evolution of uh of, of uh scriptural systems of languages. But he's interested in cultural conservatism. Why do people want to prefer the status quo in many cases with respect to like, you know, preserving uh cultural traditions, preferring um the status quo in, in between group relationships in politics, etcetera. And so, yeah, we're going to try to explore like what, what motivations people may have in, in, in, in preferring the status quo. And so I'll be back in various and working from France, studying from uh yeah, the spring 24 and as, as well as my current work. Well, I would say that many of the papers that have been talk uh that I've been talking about today are not necessarily published yet. Uh So I'm still like working on them a little bit. Uh And in particular, what occupies most of my time right now is our work with Michael Mikel Bang um about orthodoxy and speech repression. I'm trying to write a relatively long theory piece about, about that and the social functions of mobilizations and, and, and signaling that we think it fulfills. Um And so that's my main piece of work right now. Yes.

1:07:17 Ricardo Lopes: Uh And by the way, where can people find you on the internet?

1:07:21 Antoine Marie: Uh They can find me on Twitter. Uh Of course, my handle is um a capital A uh underscore Marie um Ma Rie underscore S CIA Marie. I like science and also have a website that I need to um that maybe you, you would be able to uh to cite another video, I guess in some websites. Um What I and you can shoot me an email at Antoine dot Marie dot sc I at gmail.com if they also want to. Of course, and I'm on Facebook and you know, find the ball through many channels.

1:07:56 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So look Antoine. Thank you so much for coming on the show again, as I said at the beginning of the show, it was great. Fun to talk to you.

1:08:05 Antoine Marie: Thanks a lot. Have a good day. See

1:08:06 Ricardo Lopes: you. Hi guys. Thank you for watching this interview. Until the end. If you liked it, please share it. Leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by the N Lights learning and development. Then differently check the website at N lights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or paypal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and Paypal supporters, Perera Larson, Jerry Muller and Frederick Suno, Bernard Seche O of Alex Adam, Castle Matthew Whitten Bear. No wolf, Tim Ho Erica LJ Connors, Philip Forrest Connolly. Then the Met Robert Wine in NAI Z Mar Nevs calling in Hobel Governor Mikel Stormer Samuel Andre Francis for Agns Ferger and H her me and Lain Jung Y and the Samuel K Hes Mark Smith J Tom Hummel S Friends, David Sloan Wilson, ya de ro ro Diego, Jan Punter Romani Charlotte, Bli Nico Barba, Adam Hunt Pavlo Stassi Nale medicine, Gary G Alman, Sam Ofri and YPJ Barboa, Julian Price Edward Hall, Eden Broner Douglas Fry Franca Beto Lati Cortez Solis Scott Zachary ftdw Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Giorgio, Luke Loki, Georgio Theophano. Chris Williams and Peter Wo David Williams Di Costa Anton Erickson Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralie Chevalier, Bangalore Larry Dey junior, Old Ebon, Starry Michael Bailey. Then Spur by Robert Grassy Zorn. Jeff mcmahon, Jake Zul Barnabas Radis Mark Kemple Thomas Dvor Luke Neeson, Chris to Kimberley Johnson, Benjamin Gilbert, Jessica, Nicky Linda Brendan Nicholas Carlson Ismael Bensley Man George Katis, Valentine Steinman, Perros, Kate Von Goler, Alexander Albert Liam Dan Biar Masoud Ali Mohammadi Perpendicular J Ner Urla. Good enough Gregory Hastings David Pins of Sean Nelson, Mike Levin and Jos Net. A special thanks to my producers is our web, Jim Frank Luca Toni, Tom Veg and Bernard N Cortes Dixon Bendik Muller Thomas Trumble, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carl, Negro, Nick Ortiz and Nick Golden. And to my executive producers, Matthew lavender, Si Adrian Bogdan Knits and Rosie. Thank you for all.