Lessons - How to Understand Anyone in 5 Minutes | Bob Raleigh PhD - Author of The Search for Why

In this lessons episode, explore how moral psychology and cognitive science are redefining models of decision-making. Discover why instinctual patterns reveal more than demographics, understand how life experiences and core instincts shape worldview, and uncover how these profiles can predict behavior, influence choices, and guide strategy. And after you align with these data scientists, then you then obviously, this, this, uh, is starting to manifest, yeah. So when it, when I guess my, I'll ask you, when is this turning to, um, I guess pathsites or, or is this, like, when is this actually turning to something tangible that you can build a model out of, and what does that model start to look like? Yeah, so six, six years ago, we, we, we found that there was this melding of, of, uh, disciplines, and I became enthralled with the area of moral psychology. I, I, and that's a long story, but suffice it to say that if we believe that if the brain allows you to, um, work, or help, helps us figure out how you, how you can create, um, a moral point of view in terms of your decision making values and things like that. And if in fact, you, you used all that brain power to create your, your, um, moral point of view, don't you think there was a, and a half for me, that if that is consuming a lot of what your brain does, don't you think it would have, you pick what is use beyond moral judgments? And that was the premise, that was the, that was the premise. So why, why take, um, something and use it for, uh, esoteric choices, when it could be front and center, and how you decide what you like, how you vote, um, what you join, who you love, all those things are really moral decisions. So I really felt there was a great, melding of those things with our, with the models that we've, we talked about. And so, um, we took some basic, uh, decision making models and merged them with, uh, an applied model of cognitive psychology to, to look at what we knew about how people make those decisions. And then we found that these moral decisions were, were tied to these deeply, um, embedded instincts that were showing signs of, of, of, of, um, being significant all the way back to the, the, the Stone Age. So you may, maybe have heard of a lot of the work of Jonathan Hayton, moral foundations. Um, those, those were the, the, uh, uh, uh, instincts that I felt, wow, finally we have a, a score card to be able to take some of these points of view, quantify them and look for ways that they can influence decision making and, and behavior change. So we put all that together and started to look at what does the data tell us about what we could reasonably expect. And I guess my, I have questions about what that result is. But my, before, before that, I think I would ask, is this, this is, is this a dangerous model to build? Is this, um, a model that could cause, like dangerous as if you, if you can predict how somebody makes decisions. Could that be, could that be used to influence like, I don't know. I'm trying to think of the implications of building out a model where you can predict certain things that certain people can do or, or decisions that they would make? Well, let me start by saying, the human interface is the most complex node on the most complex network in, we've ever experienced. So you, I'm flattered, but we don't have that degree of, of, of, of predictability yet. What we, what we have is something that goes beyond anything we've ever had, but it's still, you know, it still, um, leaves a lot that we don't know. So what we've, we've done is, you know, for a hundred years, the conventional wisdom was that demographics really, um, could be used to, to tell us why we did these things. You know, but, um, after a hundred years, we know a lot about demographics. They tell us kind of who we are and what we do, but they are really lousy at telling us why, why do, why do we do it? And there's so many, um, segmentation models that are based on, on those precepts of, of, of demographics. And, and they've all, sooner or later, wielded, under scrutiny, scrutiny. And, um, so we added these instinctual points of view. Um, these are five instincts of, instinctually, how do you care about, um, children? Um, what is your, your need for fairness? What's your, who, who are you loyal to, who, how do you, what are the rules of the game? What's your authority idea? And then this, this, uh, instinct for, uh, purity. So what, what they are, they're, they're, they're not to be confused with an instinct like when we, you go into the doctorate and cross your legs and you get a patellar in, instinct where you kick the, the doctor, right? Look at, look at, look at, look at the full response. Exactly. Yeah. Those, it's not like that. It's not, you, you, you trigger the care instinct and bam, something automatic comes in. But what these do, the patterns of those instincts, uh, you, you do have a, have a, uh, early early in child that we've figured out that you have a pattern of which, which ones of these instincts you're sensitive to. And what happens as you go through life and your, your life experiences edit those, those instincts, we know that how you see the world, your worldview is constructed, um, by those life experiences and your instincts and your demographics. And all the other things that we, we've known over the years, go into creating an identity. And we've, we've decoded that we think there are five of these instinctual patterns that we can identify. But two of them are really, really significant. And these two are what we see all the time referenced in in our tribal world, you know, the, the, and they're, they're referenced in politics and philosophy and all sorts of things. But these two are really, really, uh, kind of, we bifurcate the world in, in terms of these two major, um, instinctual profiles. And then the three in the middle are the kind of the way we, marry up, which part of, of the, of the two instincts are, are you most influenced by? So they're think kind of more back and forth. So really it's these two, two big ones that are really are, are the immovable forces. And, and the rest of the other three would just to draw a parallel to be almost like a, a Venn diagram of crossover of various components between the two major polarizing ones and then the smaller, exactly. Okay. And, and, and, and, um, yeah. And so what we've done is we've started over the last six years to explore the way these profiles can predict what people, how people will, will, uh, respond to different environments, different problems, different, um, stimuli and things like that. So the, the, the real wild card is to say, what do we, what do we think these instinctual patterns are? Because we've done a lot of the work on the, on the back end of saying, oh, if we know you have this one instinctual pattern, likely you're going to be really, fair-minded, empathy is, is, is, is, is, is a given. You're probably, um, fight the conformity of, of, of a cultural mandate, but you're, you're, you're probably going to look for new and different problems to solve and, and trends to, uh, to, to make friends with. So that would be one. And then we can get all sorts of detail about what that looks like. And so what we've, what we've done then is created this intelligent advisor so that one, somebody says, I'm, I'm interested in my brand, for example, and I'd, I'd like to figure out who likes to do, doesn't like it and what can I do about it? And those, those are kind of the simple questions that we can answer now. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.