Key Discussion Points:
- Understanding Mechanisms for Institutional Change: How different mechanisms influence behavior and the importance of choosing the right one to avoid unintended results.
- Broad Definition of Learning: Learning extends beyond knowledge acquisition to include changes in behavior based on experiences.
- Operant Conditioning: Explanation of consequence-based learning, where behaviors are influenced by rewards or punishments.
- Behaviorism and Its Applications: Insights into B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism and its real-world applications, including in animal studies and human behavioral modification.
- Evolutionary Perspective: Discussion on how evolutionary psychology provides a broader understanding of learning mechanisms beyond operant conditioning.
- Failures of Operant Conditioning: Examples where operant conditioning fails to explain human behavior and the importance of alternative mechanisms like social learning.
- Gene-Culture Coevolution: How human genetic evolution interacts with cultural practices, illustrated by the evolution of lactose tolerance.
- Practical Implications for Leaders and Managers: The necessity of understanding multiple social mechanisms to effectively manage and influence behavior in organizational settings.
Additional Resources from Dr. Max Krasnow:
- Lab Website: Evolutionary Psychology Lab
- Key Publications:
- Mehr, S. A., Krasnow, M. M., Bryant, G. A., Hagen, E. A. (preprint). Origins of music in credible signaling.
- Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W. (preprint). Is it modeling the world or hacking the model?
- Eisenbruch, A., Krasnow, M. M. (preprint). Why warmth matters more than competence: New evolutionary models. Link to preprint
- Howard, R. M., Spokes, A. C., Mehr, S. A., Krasnow, M. M. (preprint). Welfare tradeoff psychology is present in children and adults. Link to preprint
- Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., York, H. W., Glowacki, L., Krasnow, M. M. (2018). Form and function in human song. Current Biology, 28(3) 356-368.
Upcoming Episodes:
- Next Episode: Diving deeper into operant conditioning with a focus on positive and negative reinforcement.
Call to Action:
- Feedback Mechanism Exercise: Sketch out feedback mechanisms in your work environment that produce positive or negative consequences and consider their broader impact beyond simple conditioning.
Max Krasnow [Guest], received his Ph.D in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in the area of Developmental and Evolutionary Psychology. His primary line of research focuses on the evolutionary origins and computational design of the mechanisms underlying human cooperation and social behavior. One line of this research, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has explored how facets of the ancestral information landscape—that the future of any interaction is uncertain—conspire with distinctive features of the hominin social niche to select for organisms that are more generous, trusting and cooperative than an otherwise rational analysis would predict. In related work, he has shown in a series of behavioral experiments how these and other fundamental components of human social behavior, like our concern for the treatment of others and our punitive sentiments towards bad actors, show intricate design to support the cultivation of mutually beneficial cooperative relationships and to improve their terms when they begin to function poorly.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the ways to be successful in organizing groups
of humans is to understandwhich mechanism you're tapping
when you're attempting to makean institutional change to
elicit a different behavior,because if you end up
interfacing with the wrongmechanism, you can get an
unintended result.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox
toolbox.
I'm your host, Travis Mallett,and I'm thrilled to have you
join me on this journey ofcontinuous learning and growth
as we navigate the dynamic worldof management.
Now this isn't your typicalmanagement podcast.
Yes, there are plenty ofresources out there that will
give you the ABCs of how to runa meeting, hire someone or even
(00:40):
how to fake a sick day withoutgetting caught, but here we like
to talk about the behind thescenes topics, those concepts
and ideas which transcendspecific management practices,
rather than simply restate them.
We aren't going to give youspecific tips and tricks for
becoming an effective manager.
Here at the Management TheoryToolbox, we're interested in the
(01:01):
why behind it all thediscoveries of behavioral
science, psychology, businessand economics that will open our
eyes to what's happening behindthe scenes.
Our journey into organizationaltheories have led us to this
topic of learning, and in thepast two episodes we started
exploring the ideas ofindividual and organizational
(01:22):
learning at a high level,looking at different metaphors
to describe human learning, aswell as some specific ideas
related to learning anddevelopment in an organizational
setting, like upskilling andreskilling.
If you're like me and someonementions the topic of learning,
you immediately think aboutknowledge acquisition.
Images of studying from atextbook, being able to recall
(01:44):
information on demand for a test, or learning a new skill that
can be exercised at will, areall commonly associated with the
word learning.
But if you think about it,almost all of our behaviors,
whether we're conscious of themor not, are learned behaviors.
We weren't born with the habitof shaking someone's hand when
we meet them the first time, orwith knowing how to get to work
(02:06):
on time, or even understandingwhy or if that's important how
to drive, write an email, followan R&D development process,
address a superior, negotiate asalary, work for a paycheck,
create a good impression toothers, dress or act
professionally, work diligentlywith a focus, follow cultural
norms or time management skills.
These are all behaviors andskills we learn after we are
(02:29):
born.
And if we broaden ourdefinition of learning to
include processes whereindividuals change their
behavior in general, then wehave a much wider and deeper
field to work with.
And that brings us to a topiccalled operant conditioning,
which is an explanation forconsequence-based learning.
That assumes learning resultsfrom simple conditioning and
(02:52):
higher level mental functioningis often irrelevant.
For example, in elementaryschool we all probably made the
mistake of saying some overlymean things to a friend, only to
have them shun us for the restof the school year.
For many people, thatexperience may result in a
learned behavior of avoidingconflict or significantly
(03:13):
tempering what they say, toavoid disrupting social
connections.
Similarly, when we're praisedby a manager for doing diligent
work, that positive consequencemay result in increased
intensity of work.
Another learned behaviorconditioned by the consequences,
but I'm no expert in operatingconditioning, so we're going to
(03:35):
need some help for thisexploration.
So let's give our time travelguide George a call.
Hi George and welcome back.
Hi George and welcome back.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
My dear friend, where might we venture today?
Or, to be more precise, towhich moment in time shall we
journey?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
We're exploring the topic of operant conditioning.
Do you know where we mightstart?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Ah, the scent of inquiry is indeed sweet.
The path you seek is sowell-trodden that one might have
ventured there with littleguidance.
Yet it is always a joy toaccompany a fellow sojourner.
Let us set our course forHarvard University some decades
past.
It is there, amidst thehallowed halls of academia, that
(04:21):
our adventure finds its genesis.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Forward my friend.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So what are we here for?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Behold, william James Hall looms before us a bastion
of learning and a beacon tominds thirsty for knowledge.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Here I'll get the door when to Upwards we ascend
to the seventh floor, thereresides Dr BF Skinner, a sage of
the modern mind, a herald ofbehaviorism.
What's behaviorism?
An excellent question indeed.
Behaviorism, at its very heart,is a philosophy of the mind
(05:08):
concerned most keenly withobservable behaviors rather than
internal thoughts or feelings.
It posits that behaviors areacquired through conditioning
and thus can be altered throughsimilar means.
It is the external rather thanthe internal that shapes us, so
to speak.
(05:29):
So it's about how what happensaround us influences what we do
Precisely my dear chap, ouractions are responses to the
stimuli that the world presents,and by understanding these one
can predict and modify behavior.
Now let us not tarry longerhere in the hallway.
(05:49):
A mind most brilliant awaits us.
Dr Skinner, it's always adelight.
Allow me to introduce Travis, aseeker of knowledge.
We're here to understand someof what you've learned in the
field of operant conditioning.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Travis, please enter and observe my laboratory.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, this is interesting.
I'm not sure what I expectedfrom a psychologist's lab, but I
wasn't expecting it to looklike a pet store.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Indeed, in this laboratory, we engage in
numerous experiments withanimals to derive principles
applicable to human behavior.
Allow me to demonstrate usingwhat has come to be known as the
Skinner box, though I typicallycall it an operant conditioning
chamber.
How does it work exactly?
Watch closely now.
(06:40):
Initially, the rat exhibitsrandom movement within the
chamber.
However, it will by chance,activate the lever.
Observe the immediateconsequence it receives a food
pellet.
The rat rapidly learns thatlever pressing is linked to this
reward.
This phenomenon is calledpositive reinforcement, where a
(07:03):
behavior is strengthened by aresulting pleasant outcome.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
So how do you apply this principle to humans?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
This principle is crucial for understanding human
behavior as well.
Humans, much like the rat,modify their behavior based on
the outcomes of their actions.
This process of reinforcementis instrumental across various
applications education,therapeutic interventions,
parenting and even personalbehavior management.
(07:33):
Our behaviors are continuallymolded by the consequences they
elicit.
By understanding theseprinciples, we can craft
environments that promotebeneficial behaviors and
discourage harmful ones.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's really insightful.
Well, thank you for sharingyour work with me.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Thank you for visiting Travis.
It's been rewarding to sharethese insights with you.
Farewell, and keep exploringthe science of behavior.
And keep exploring the scienceof behavior.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Thanks for bringing me here, george.
So, if I'm understanding itcorrectly, the point of all this
is that if we can figure outwhat influences or conditions
people's behavior, then leadersand managers can be more adept
at managing behavior ordesigning systems and processes
to achieve a desired result.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Indeed, you have grasped the essence quite
rapidly.
Yet therein lies an irony thehuman ability to learn after a
short conversation itself posesa significant blow to the very
theory of operant conditioning.
We explore Really Quite soconditioning.
We explore Really Quite soWhile operant conditioning
(08:50):
splendidly predicts certainaspects of human behavior and
learning, it is but a thread ofthis rich fabric.
Yet let not your enthusiasmwane, for operant conditioning
is still laden with a myriad ofinsights.
Before you venture deeper, mayI suggest that you speak with
someone familiar with the fieldof evolutionary psychology to
get a better understanding ofoperant conditioning and its
(09:12):
limitations.
In fact, if you're ready, let'sremain here on Harvard's campus
and advance the clock byseveral decades.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So you want me to speak to someone else at Harvard
.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yes, specifically an evolutionary psychologist.
Take a seat.
While I retrieve our guestTravis, let me introduce you to
Dr Max Krasnow.
Thanks again, George.
(09:45):
Always a delight, Remember.
Time is the river on which wesail, and understanding its
currents is the art ofnavigation.
Farewell.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Hi Max and welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
Great, I'm really lookingforward to talking with you
today, but before we get started, go ahead and tell us a bit
about your background and yourwork.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Absolutely.
My name is Max Krasnow.
I'm currently an instructor inthe Harvard Division of
Continuing Education.
I teach courses through themaster's program in the
Extension School.
Before I started this job, Iwas a professor and principal
investigator in the HarvardPsychology Department in their
PhD program.
I ran the evolutionarypsychology lab at Harvard, and
(10:30):
the particular focus of myresearch has been how have we
evolved to be such a socialspecies, and so, in multiple
ways that converge from severalangles, I've been studying the
evolution of our socialcognition.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Excellent, and thanks again for joining us.
So in today's episode we'retalking about operant
conditioning and evolutionarypsychology, but for our
listeners who are new to thetopic, can you provide a brief
overview of what operantconditioning is and what it
explains?
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Operant conditioning is a model of learning that had
its origin in the behavioristtradition.
People often associate that withBF Skinner, who interestingly
enough, had his office on theseventh floor of William James
in the psychology department atHarvard, and my own graduate
advisor worked in that lab.
Operant conditioning is a modelwhere an organism changes its
(11:24):
behavior on the basis of thefeedback that it gets after it
engages in a behavior.
So if it takes a behavior whereit then receives a reward, that
behavior is more likely tooccur in the future.
If it engages in a behavior andthen receives a punishment,
that's a behavior that ispredicted to be less likely to
occur in the future.
(11:44):
There are limited circumstanceswhere operant conditioning
makes successful predictionsabout human behavior, for
example and this is a somewhatcontroversial topic in the
treatment programs for childrenwith autism spectrum disorder,
particularly on the more extremeend of that dimension.
The whole fundamentalorganizing principle of applied
(12:06):
behavioral analysis is operantconditioning.
So the program is aboutidentifying what does that child
find rewarding, what does thatchild find punishing, and then
using that information toconstruct a behavior change
program.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
So I don't know much about autism, but is that
because it significantlydisrupts social connections that
it falls back on just operantconditioning?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think that's a really good summary of why that
is a particularly relevantapproach to use in that case.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Now, can you tell us about what we know, about how
the mechanisms behind operantconditioning have evolved in
humans if we know anything atall and how the mechanisms
behind operant conditioning haveevolved in humans if we know
anything at all and are therecases where operant conditioning
fails to explain a behavior butevolutionary psychology tends
to fill in that gap?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So there is somewhat of a dearth of explicit research
testing this theory, and it'sin part because there are
particular ways of testingevolutionary theories as opposed
to other psychological forms oftheory.
But there is a analysis thatI'm somewhat partial to, and the
(13:16):
idea is that what operantconditioning is from an
evolutionary perspective is thefallback mechanism in the case
of confusion.
There are some situations aspecies recurrently experiences.
For example, for hundreds ofthousands of years we've lived
in groups, and in those groupsthere have been reliable
(13:36):
structures present such that thewoman who nursed you is almost
certainly your mother, and thechildren that mother has also
taken care of are almostcertainly your siblings
typically full siblings and sothe mind can come pre-prepared
with those expectations, andthen the mechanisms that use
that information can havespecific structure that is
(14:00):
appropriate for that situation.
One of those regularities thatour species has experienced is
we've reliably been in groups ofpeople across deep stretches of
evolutionary time where thosepeople knew things that we
didn't, including knowing how touse tools, knowing how to
process food, knowing how toforage in particularly effective
(14:22):
ways, how and when to hunt, andhow the approach of an animal
makes it more successful, whatanimals are dangerous, and so
these are cases where selectionpressures on mechanisms of
social learning would bepredicted to have evolved and
there's excellent evidence thathumans have diverse mechanisms
of social learning would bepredicted to have evolved and
there's excellent evidence thathumans have diverse mechanisms
(14:44):
of social learning.
On the other hand, there aresituations that an organism is
going to encounter that are notpart of that reliable structure,
that the mind has not comepre-prepared to deal with in any
specific way, and in that casethe best you can do is learn
through trial and errorreinforcement.
So the failures of thisparticular form of learning
(15:08):
theory operant conditioning andbehaviorism in general.
These theories start with avery strong assumption that this
is how we learn everything andthat the learning principle is
applied equally in allcircumstances.
Based on the description that Ijust gave, it could be obvious
that there's many recurrentsituations that humans and human
(15:30):
ancestors have experienced thatnatural selection would have
opportunity to select formutations that caused better,
more successful behavior thanyou could achieve if you simply
were using operant conditioning.
And these are the examples thatfor the past 70 years have time
(15:51):
and time again shown thatoperant conditioning is
unsuccessful in explaining theacquisition of that behavior.
For example, take a species thathas a particular experience.
Throughout its history, likeraccoons, have been scavengers,
that they frequently encounterdirty food.
And when raccoons are exposedto an operant conditioning
(16:12):
program, this is often called ashaping regime, where you
sequentially reward closer andcloser approximations to the
desired behavioral end goal.
A particular end goal was notable to be conditioned.
They weren't able to getraccoons to do a thing because
it conflicted with the way thatthey're prepared to learn.
(16:33):
In this particular case, theywere conditioning using food,
getting raccoons to seesomething as food, and raccoons
don't give away food, they keepit and they don't treat food as
itself clean.
They often will wash it.
And so in this particularexperiment, which was done by
(16:54):
Skinner's star students, theBreelands, they found that they
couldn't get raccoons to do thething they were trying to shape
them to do, and they got thespontaneous emergence of a
behavior that they didn'tcondition.
It's important to remember thathumans are more complicated than
imagined by behaviorists.
There's problems that weencounter frequently where
(17:16):
people behave in ways that wedon't want.
If you're a parent that has hadyour kids in daycare, you
probably have experienced thedaycare center having a problem
with parents picking their kidsup on time.
They can be very encouraging ofparents picking up on time.
There was an interesting caseof a daycare center trying to
(17:37):
apply behaviorist principles todiscourage parents from picking
up late, and so what they did isthey applied a punishment.
They said if you pick up yourkid late, we're going to impose
a fine.
Contrary to the predictions ofoperant conditioning, that
actually led to an increase inlate pickups.
And if you talk to the parentsand this, I think, also makes
(17:59):
intuitive sense it now felt likethey were buying a service.
They valued the extra 15minutes more than they valued
the money and they feltjustified in doing it.
In that case, they no longerfelt bad about doing it.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Operant conditioning does make some useful
predictions about how humansrespond to rewards or
punishments, but there are somesituations where operant
conditioning gives a completelywrong prediction.
Are there any other cases whereoperant conditioning fails to
explain human learning, andmaybe what are some alternative
(18:35):
explanations for those cases?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
The general category of failures for operant
conditioning is that humans andother species learn a lot more
rapidly than the theoryconsiders.
Language, for example, is oneof the most well-studied cases.
That is just an absolutefailure of operant conditioning
or classic behaviorist learningtheory to actually account for.
Children will learn new wordsin a single instance of exposure
(19:03):
.
This is called one-shotlearning, and there is
absolutely no way that anoperant conditioning program
running on its own withoutspecialized information can
explain the acquisition of wordsin that way.
And so generally, humans learna lot faster than you would
expect if all we had was operantconditioning, and I think that
this is part of the perspectivethat you get from evolutionary
(19:26):
psychology that tends to bemissed in other analyses.
Part of the success of ourspecies is the fact that we do
have multiple mechanisms thateach have specialized features,
but they also interrelate in acomplicated architecture such
that you get a multiplicativeeffect on our abilities.
Adding language to apre-linguistic hominid didn't
(19:50):
simply allow it to talk.
It allowed it to learn betterand coordinate better.
There's clearly the case thatwe've had cultural evolution and
the movement of culture throughtime to allow us to exist in
cultures that never existedbefore.
So, for example, there's lotsof ways in which ancient
mechanisms now in new culturesthat our ancestors never
(20:14):
experienced, are able to acquireinformation that our ancestors
never acquired.
Some of this is a relativelystraightforward simply slotting
new information into old slots.
Our ancestors had what Chomskycalls universal grammar.
We come with the ability tolearn human languages.
A thousand years ago therewasn't modern English, so our
(20:36):
ancestors didn't have a lot ofthe words we have, but our
language acquisition device isable to acquire these new words,
and we have words for conceptsthat our ancestors didn't have,
and so we have the ability toform conceptual representations
that are new.
This process, we can see, playsout in ways that bypass natural
(20:58):
selection on genes.
In ways that bypass naturalselection on genes, we expect
natural selection on genes to berelatively slow, not being able
to show up, for example, withinthe lifespan of an organism
where natural selection couldn'tpossibly have applied to their
genes.
When my parents were born, theydidn't have as many elements on
the periodic table as I hadwhen I was born, and there are
(21:22):
more elements on the periodictable now than there were when I
was born, and so obviouslywe're able to, within a new
generation, accommodateinformation that our genes were
not able to evolve in order tospecialize on.
There are also ways, though, inwhich culture and genetics
interrelate in a way that'soften called gene culture
(21:43):
coevolution.
Some interesting examples ofthat are how exception of
individuals within a species whohave mutations or perturbations
(22:05):
of development such thatthey're lactose intolerant or
allergic to milk all mammalsdrink milk as babies, but,
except for humans, all mammalsstop drinking milk when they get
older.
What humans seem to be uniquein is, even though we get to be
adult in many other aspects, wehave this preserved ability to
(22:26):
digest milk, and inunderstanding how that worked,
we can see that over the lasttens of thousands of years, we
started to raise livestock,we've started to farm other
mammals, and we had their milkas a resource that we had
(22:47):
available to us.
We can think of that originallyas a cultural invention.
The first time that happens,that wasn't something that our
ancestors had genetic adaptationto, but once that was a regular
feature of our environment,natural selection could act on
mutations in our digestiongenetics to prolong the age at
which we're producing thelactose enzyme, which allows you
(23:09):
to digest milk sugars, and so,as cultures reliably had the
presence of mammals as livestockgenes were under selection to
preserve that ability.
So we can see co-evolutionbetween the culture that we have
and the genetics that we have.
That ended up with certainpopulations of humans those that
(23:31):
descend from ancestors whopastured animals tending to have
more lactose tolerance, andother populations of modern
humans who, in their recentancestry, didn't descend from
people who did pasture animals.
So it's a population havinglower levels of lactose
tolerance as adults and that's agenetic difference.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think the big question for our audience is
what are some of theimplications for practitioners,
especially managers or leadersin an organizational setting?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think one of the main implications from taking an
evolutionary analysis of socialbehavior is this recognition
that there are multiplemechanisms of social behavior,
both social learning, but alsoother aspects in which we solve
social problems.
When should we deploy trust,when should our punitive
(24:33):
sentiment be aroused?
When should we get angry?
When should we apologize?
And each of these mechanismshas an internal logic because
they're solving differentproblems in different ways.
One of the ways to besuccessful, therefore, in
organizing groups of humans isto understand which mechanism
you're tapping when you'reattempting to make an
(24:55):
institutional change to elicit adifferent behavior, because if
you end up interfacing with thewrong mechanism, you can get an
unintended result.
I think an interesting exampleand this is not in a small-scale
organizational context, but Ithink it's relevant for a kind
of a contemporary politicalissue is how we understand
(25:16):
problems relating to socialwelfare.
You see reliable differences inhow conservatives and liberals
think about the homeless.
Conservatives tend to thinkabout the homeless as lazy, that
they're homeless or unemployedbecause of a lack of work, that
it's an individual decisionmaking that makes them
(25:37):
responsible for their outcomes.
Liberals, on the other hand,are more likely to see these
problems as the result of luckand circumstance such that, on
the flip of that coin or thetoss of a dice, anyone could be
in those circumstances, and thatit has much less to do with any
individual's hard work.
From an evolutionary analysis,there's been a lot of work that
(26:00):
has demonstrated that we havemultiple mechanisms of social
organization and multiplemechanisms that produce social
intuitions, and that we can lookat two particular mechanisms.
In this case, one of themevolved in order to help us
solve problems related tocooperation that if you're going
(26:20):
to work with somebody else formutual benefit, you don't want
them to exploit you.
If they're not helping you outin return for you helping them,
they're a bad cooperationpartner and continuing to engage
with them would be failing thatproblem.
Finding cooperative partners ispart of the solution to the
(26:41):
ancestral problem of cooperation.
We are also a species thatlived in a world where there was
tons of risk present.
There's some estimates that 30%of hunter-gatherers would have
died if it were not for the helpthey got from their family and
friends.
We help each other out when weget injured, when we get sick,
(27:01):
and injury and illness is muchmore often a product of luck
than it is intentional action.
Also, some of the ways in whichwe make a living, like hunting
or our ancestors made a livingat least are much more
luck-based than some of theother ways that we made a living
, like gathering plant foods andjust through sheer luck you
(27:22):
might be unsuccessful inretrieving animal protein.
Day after day after day, we seemto have a relatively
specialized, evolved system forpooling the risk in our social
environment, such that weinterpret non-contribution or
non-cooperation differently whenwe're thinking of a
(27:43):
relationship as a risk poolingrelationship than we do when
we're thinking about it as acooperation relationship.
And actually research has shownthat you can get conservatives
to have liberal intuitions andliberals to have conservative
intuitions when you manipulatewhich of these mechanisms you're
tapping by the information yougive them.
And so I think this is the kindof insight that business
(28:05):
leaders and managers wouldprofit by being mindful of, that
there's a literature that helpsus understand the specific
nature of our multiplemechanisms of social cognition,
and that there is profit to begained, that there's a way to
have a more successfulorganization by applying that
(28:25):
specialized knowledge.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
This reminds me a bit of Daniel Lieberman's book
Exercised.
He's also here at Harvard overin the Department of Human
Evolutionary Biology, and one ofthe things that he argues is
that we evolved in many ways tobe lazy, to conserve energy and
calories every opportunity weget, and that's what makes it so
hard for us to have themotivation to get out and
(28:48):
exercise.
Now his focus is a lot on thephysical aspects of that burning
less calories through lessphysical movement, but I imagine
there's similar mechanisms inpsychology with respect to
mental energy as well.
Are there evolutionarypressures that conflict with our
higher mental states, as in?
We might have some innate driveto succeed or become
(29:10):
self-actualized, if we'rethinking about Maslow's
hierarchy of needs.
But can that also conflict withother evolutionary pressures
that could end up impacting jobperformance and motivation as
well?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Absolutely and this is a fundamental organizing
principle that essentially allspecies face that natural
selection has been able toexpress feedback like preserve
some mutations at the expense ofother mutations only when those
mutations have yielded benefits.
(29:42):
If hard work didn't result intangible benefits, those
mutations wouldn't have beenselected by natural selection,
and we can imagine that there'slots of circumstances where
additional work wouldn't haveyielded substantial benefit.
Or in the sense that there'sopportunity costs to everything
that you do.
(30:02):
By putting effort in to solveone problem, that's the same as
not putting effort in to solve adifferent problem.
That, thinking about the returnrate of effort across the
multiple problems that humanssolved ancestrally, there would
have been many, many cases wherethe relative return rates
(30:22):
flipped around in the order ofmagnitude where, once you had
given enough effort to oneproject and gotten the
sufficient reward from that, itwas now more profitable to
switch effort into somethingelse.
Now we have a particular way ofunderstanding laziness in the
modern world, and particularlyin the work world.
We think about the work that anemployee puts in, but we didn't
(30:44):
evolve to be workers incompanies, and there's many,
many more things that we asindividuals put our effort into,
and so I think that helps usgive a different understanding
to the modern conception of workand laziness.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, we're about out of time, so I just want to say
thank you so much for joining us.
This was quite fascinating.
I hope we get a chance to chatagain Before we sign off.
Can you tell our listeners howthey can find you and your work?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
My lab website still exists and on that website you
can find a list of mypublications.
That website isprojectsiqharvardedu backslash
EPL, standing for EvolutionaryPsychology Lab.
But probably the easiest way tofind my research is simply to
go on Google Scholar and type inmy name.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Great Well, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
My pleasure.
It's been a great conversation.
Thank you, take care.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Wow, that was a lot of information.
Over the next several episodes,we're going to be exploring the
concepts of operantconditioning in more depth,
since this is extremelyapplicable to modern workplaces,
which are riddled with behaviorfeedback structures.
But, as we learned from DrKrasnow, there are often
multiple mechanisms at play atany moment and leaders should be
(32:02):
aware of these to avoidunintended consequences.
For example, employee of theMonth awards provide a form of
positive reinforcement forhigh-performing employees, but
the public aspect of the rewardcan also enhance observational
learning, where employees learnstrategies from those who are
rewarded, which is a form ofsocial learning and, from an
(32:24):
evolutionary perspective, publicrecognition can trigger an
increase in social standing andrespect among peers, which
historically could influencesurvival and reproduction, but
which may also fuel unintendedinformal hierarchies and power
structures within teams.
Or consider the reward systems,as some companies, which are
designed such that only topperformers receive significant
(32:46):
rewards.
While this might be a veryeffective way to tap into
operant conditioning and othermechanisms like social status,
the results can produce acutthroat competitive
environment where employeesfocus on outperforming peers
rather than working with them,leading to decreases in
innovation or other metrics thanworking with them, leading to
(33:08):
decreases in innovation or othermetrics this week.
Take some time to sketch out afew of the feedback mechanisms
in your work environment thatproduce either positive or
negative consequences forcertain behaviors.
For each of these structures,take a guess at how they might
tap into multiple learningmechanisms beyond just simple
conditioning of behavior.
What unintended consequencesmay result?
Are there remedies for those?
(33:30):
And so, with that, thank youfor joining me on another
episode of the Management TheoryToolbox.
Stay tuned for our next episode, where we dive straight into
the ideas of positive andnegative reinforcement.
In the meantime, keep learning,keep growing and keep building
your management theory toolbox,thank you.
One of the ways to be successful in organizing groups
of humans is to understandwhich mechanism you're tapping
when you're attempting to makean institutional change to
elicit a different behavior,because if you end up
interfacing with the wrongmechanism, you can get an
unintended result.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox
toolbox.
I'm your host, Travis Mallett,and I'm thrilled to have you
join me on this journey ofcontinuous learning and growth
as we navigate the dynamic worldof management.
Now this isn't your typicalmanagement podcast.
Yes, there are plenty ofresources out there that will
give you the ABCs of how to runa meeting, hire someone or even
(00:40):
how to fake a sick day withoutgetting caught, but here we like
to talk about the behind thescenes topics, those concepts
and ideas which transcendspecific management practices,
rather than simply restate them.
We aren't going to give youspecific tips and tricks for
becoming an effective manager.
Here at the Management TheoryToolbox, we're interested in the
(01:01):
why behind it all thediscoveries of behavioral
science, psychology, businessand economics that will open our
eyes to what's happening behindthe scenes.
Our journey into organizationaltheories have led us to this
topic of learning, and in thepast two episodes we started
exploring the ideas ofindividual and organizational
(01:22):
learning at a high level,looking at different metaphors
to describe human learning, aswell as some specific ideas
related to learning anddevelopment in an organizational
setting, like upskilling andreskilling.
If you're like me and someonementions the topic of learning,
you immediately think aboutknowledge acquisition.
Images of studying from atextbook, being able to recall
(01:44):
information on demand for a test, or learning a new skill that
can be exercised at will, areall commonly associated with the
word learning.
But if you think about it,almost all of our behaviors,
whether we're conscious of themor not, are learned behaviors.
We weren't born with the habitof shaking someone's hand when
we meet them the first time, orwith knowing how to get to work
(02:06):
on time, or even understandingwhy or if that's important how
to drive, write an email, followan R&D development process,
address a superior, negotiate asalary, work for a paycheck,
create a good impression toothers, dress or act
professionally, work diligentlywith a focus, follow cultural
norms or time management skills.
These are all behaviors andskills we learn after we are
(02:29):
born.
And if we broaden ourdefinition of learning to
include processes whereindividuals change their
behavior in general, then wehave a much wider and deeper
field to work with.
And that brings us to a topiccalled operant conditioning,
which is an explanation forconsequence-based learning.
That assumes learning resultsfrom simple conditioning and
(02:52):
higher level mental functioningis often irrelevant.
For example, in elementaryschool we all probably made the
mistake of saying some overlymean things to a friend, only to
have them shun us for the restof the school year.
For many people, thatexperience may result in a
learned behavior of avoidingconflict or significantly
(03:13):
tempering what they say, toavoid disrupting social
connections.
Similarly, when we're praisedby a manager for doing diligent
work, that positive consequencemay result in increased
intensity of work.
Another learned behaviorconditioned by the consequences,
but I'm no expert in operatingconditioning, so we're going to
(03:35):
need some help for thisexploration.
So let's give our time travelguide George a call.
Hi George and welcome back.
Hi George and welcome back.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
My dear friend, where might we venture today?
Or, to be more precise, towhich moment in time shall we
journey?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
We're exploring the topic of operant conditioning.
Do you know where we mightstart?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Ah, the scent of inquiry is indeed sweet.
The path you seek is sowell-trodden that one might have
ventured there with littleguidance.
Yet it is always a joy toaccompany a fellow sojourner.
Let us set our course forHarvard University some decades
past.
It is there, amidst thehallowed halls of academia, that
(04:21):
our adventure finds its genesis.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Forward my friend.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So what are we here for?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Behold, william James Hall looms before us a bastion
of learning and a beacon tominds thirsty for knowledge.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Here I'll get the door when to Upwards we ascend
to the seventh floor, thereresides Dr BF Skinner, a sage of
the modern mind, a herald ofbehaviorism.
What's behaviorism?
An excellent question indeed.
Behaviorism, at its very heart,is a philosophy of the mind
(05:08):
concerned most keenly withobservable behaviors rather than
internal thoughts or feelings.
It posits that behaviors areacquired through conditioning
and thus can be altered throughsimilar means.
It is the external rather thanthe internal that shapes us, so
to speak.
(05:29):
So it's about how what happensaround us influences what we do
Precisely my dear chap, ouractions are responses to the
stimuli that the world presents,and by understanding these one
can predict and modify behavior.
Now let us not tarry longerhere in the hallway.
(05:49):
A mind most brilliant awaits us.
Dr Skinner, it's always adelight.
Allow me to introduce Travis, aseeker of knowledge.
We're here to understand someof what you've learned in the
field of operant conditioning.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Travis, please enter and observe my laboratory.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, this is interesting.
I'm not sure what I expectedfrom a psychologist's lab, but I
wasn't expecting it to looklike a pet store.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Indeed, in this laboratory, we engage in
numerous experiments withanimals to derive principles
applicable to human behavior.
Allow me to demonstrate usingwhat has come to be known as the
Skinner box, though I typicallycall it an operant conditioning
chamber.
How does it work exactly?
Watch closely now.
(06:40):
Initially, the rat exhibitsrandom movement within the
chamber.
However, it will by chance,activate the lever.
Observe the immediateconsequence it receives a food
pellet.
The rat rapidly learns thatlever pressing is linked to this
reward.
This phenomenon is calledpositive reinforcement, where a
(07:03):
behavior is strengthened by aresulting pleasant outcome.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
So how do you apply this principle to humans?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
This principle is crucial for understanding human
behavior as well.
Humans, much like the rat,modify their behavior based on
the outcomes of their actions.
This process of reinforcementis instrumental across various
applications education,therapeutic interventions,
parenting and even personalbehavior management.
(07:33):
Our behaviors are continuallymolded by the consequences they
elicit.
By understanding theseprinciples, we can craft
environments that promotebeneficial behaviors and
discourage harmful ones.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's really insightful.
Well, thank you for sharingyour work with me.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Thank you for visiting Travis.
It's been rewarding to sharethese insights with you.
Farewell, and keep exploringthe science of behavior.
And keep exploring the scienceof behavior.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Thanks for bringing me here, george.
So, if I'm understanding itcorrectly, the point of all this
is that if we can figure outwhat influences or conditions
people's behavior, then leadersand managers can be more adept
at managing behavior ordesigning systems and processes
to achieve a desired result.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Indeed, you have grasped the essence quite
rapidly.
Yet therein lies an irony thehuman ability to learn after a
short conversation itself posesa significant blow to the very
theory of operant conditioning.
We explore Really Quite soconditioning.
We explore Really Quite soWhile operant conditioning
(08:50):
splendidly predicts certainaspects of human behavior and
learning, it is but a thread ofthis rich fabric.
Yet let not your enthusiasmwane, for operant conditioning
is still laden with a myriad ofinsights.
Before you venture deeper, mayI suggest that you speak with
someone familiar with the fieldof evolutionary psychology to
get a better understanding ofoperant conditioning and its
(09:12):
limitations.
In fact, if you're ready, let'sremain here on Harvard's campus
and advance the clock byseveral decades.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So you want me to speak to someone else at Harvard
.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yes, specifically an evolutionary psychologist.
Take a seat.
While I retrieve our guestTravis, let me introduce you to
Dr Max Krasnow.
Thanks again, George.
(09:45):
Always a delight, Remember.
Time is the river on which wesail, and understanding its
currents is the art ofnavigation.
Farewell.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Hi Max and welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
Great, I'm really lookingforward to talking with you
today, but before we get started, go ahead and tell us a bit
about your background and yourwork.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Absolutely.
My name is Max Krasnow.
I'm currently an instructor inthe Harvard Division of
Continuing Education.
I teach courses through themaster's program in the
Extension School.
Before I started this job, Iwas a professor and principal
investigator in the HarvardPsychology Department in their
PhD program.
I ran the evolutionarypsychology lab at Harvard, and
(10:30):
the particular focus of myresearch has been how have we
evolved to be such a socialspecies, and so, in multiple
ways that converge from severalangles, I've been studying the
evolution of our socialcognition.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Excellent, and thanks again for joining us.
So in today's episode we'retalking about operant
conditioning and evolutionarypsychology, but for our
listeners who are new to thetopic, can you provide a brief
overview of what operantconditioning is and what it
explains?
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Operant conditioning is a model of learning that had
its origin in the behavioristtradition.
People often associate that withBF Skinner, who interestingly
enough, had his office on theseventh floor of William James
in the psychology department atHarvard, and my own graduate
advisor worked in that lab.
Operant conditioning is a modelwhere an organism changes its
(11:24):
behavior on the basis of thefeedback that it gets after it
engages in a behavior.
So if it takes a behavior whereit then receives a reward, that
behavior is more likely tooccur in the future.
If it engages in a behavior andthen receives a punishment,
that's a behavior that ispredicted to be less likely to
occur in the future.
(11:44):
There are limited circumstanceswhere operant conditioning
makes successful predictionsabout human behavior, for
example and this is a somewhatcontroversial topic in the
treatment programs for childrenwith autism spectrum disorder,
particularly on the more extremeend of that dimension.
The whole fundamentalorganizing principle of applied
(12:06):
behavioral analysis is operantconditioning.
So the program is aboutidentifying what does that child
find rewarding, what does thatchild find punishing, and then
using that information toconstruct a behavior change
program.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
So I don't know much about autism, but is that
because it significantlydisrupts social connections that
it falls back on just operantconditioning?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I think that's a really good summary of why that
is a particularly relevantapproach to use in that case.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Now, can you tell us about what we know, about how
the mechanisms behind operantconditioning have evolved in
humans if we know anything atall and how the mechanisms
behind operant conditioning haveevolved in humans if we know
anything at all and are therecases where operant conditioning
fails to explain a behavior butevolutionary psychology tends
to fill in that gap?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So there is somewhat of a dearth of explicit research
testing this theory, and it'sin part because there are
particular ways of testingevolutionary theories as opposed
to other psychological forms oftheory.
But there is a analysis thatI'm somewhat partial to, and the
(13:16):
idea is that what operantconditioning is from an
evolutionary perspective is thefallback mechanism in the case
of confusion.
There are some situations aspecies recurrently experiences.
For example, for hundreds ofthousands of years we've lived
in groups, and in those groupsthere have been reliable
(13:36):
structures present such that thewoman who nursed you is almost
certainly your mother, and thechildren that mother has also
taken care of are almostcertainly your siblings
typically full siblings and sothe mind can come pre-prepared
with those expectations, andthen the mechanisms that use
that information can havespecific structure that is
(14:00):
appropriate for that situation.
One of those regularities thatour species has experienced is
we've reliably been in groups ofpeople across deep stretches of
evolutionary time where thosepeople knew things that we
didn't, including knowing how touse tools, knowing how to
process food, knowing how toforage in particularly effective
(14:22):
ways, how and when to hunt, andhow the approach of an animal
makes it more successful, whatanimals are dangerous, and so
these are cases where selectionpressures on mechanisms of
social learning would bepredicted to have evolved and
there's excellent evidence thathumans have diverse mechanisms
of social learning would bepredicted to have evolved and
there's excellent evidence thathumans have diverse mechanisms
(14:44):
of social learning.
On the other hand, there aresituations that an organism is
going to encounter that are notpart of that reliable structure,
that the mind has not comepre-prepared to deal with in any
specific way, and in that casethe best you can do is learn
through trial and errorreinforcement.
So the failures of thisparticular form of learning
(15:08):
theory operant conditioning andbehaviorism in general.
These theories start with avery strong assumption that this
is how we learn everything andthat the learning principle is
applied equally in allcircumstances.
Based on the description that Ijust gave, it could be obvious
that there's many recurrentsituations that humans and human
(15:30):
ancestors have experienced thatnatural selection would have
opportunity to select formutations that caused better,
more successful behavior thanyou could achieve if you simply
were using operant conditioning.
And these are the examples thatfor the past 70 years have time
(15:51):
and time again shown thatoperant conditioning is
unsuccessful in explaining theacquisition of that behavior.
For example, take a species thathas a particular experience.
Throughout its history, likeraccoons, have been scavengers,
that they frequently encounterdirty food.
And when raccoons are exposedto an operant conditioning
(16:12):
program, this is often called ashaping regime, where you
sequentially reward closer andcloser approximations to the
desired behavioral end goal.
A particular end goal was notable to be conditioned.
They weren't able to getraccoons to do a thing because
it conflicted with the way thatthey're prepared to learn.
(16:33):
In this particular case, theywere conditioning using food,
getting raccoons to seesomething as food, and raccoons
don't give away food, they keepit and they don't treat food as
itself clean.
They often will wash it.
And so in this particularexperiment, which was done by
(16:54):
Skinner's star students, theBreelands, they found that they
couldn't get raccoons to do thething they were trying to shape
them to do, and they got thespontaneous emergence of a
behavior that they didn'tcondition.
It's important to remember thathumans are more complicated than
imagined by behaviorists.
There's problems that weencounter frequently where
(17:16):
people behave in ways that wedon't want.
If you're a parent that has hadyour kids in daycare, you
probably have experienced thedaycare center having a problem
with parents picking their kidsup on time.
They can be very encouraging ofparents picking up on time.
There was an interesting caseof a daycare center trying to
(17:37):
apply behaviorist principles todiscourage parents from picking
up late, and so what they did isthey applied a punishment.
They said if you pick up yourkid late, we're going to impose
a fine.
Contrary to the predictions ofoperant conditioning, that
actually led to an increase inlate pickups.
And if you talk to the parentsand this, I think, also makes
(17:59):
intuitive sense it now felt likethey were buying a service.
They valued the extra 15minutes more than they valued
the money and they feltjustified in doing it.
In that case, they no longerfelt bad about doing it.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Operant conditioning does make some useful
predictions about how humansrespond to rewards or
punishments, but there are somesituations where operant
conditioning gives a completelywrong prediction.
Are there any other cases whereoperant conditioning fails to
explain human learning, andmaybe what are some alternative
(18:35):
explanations for those cases?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
The general category of failures for operant
conditioning is that humans andother species learn a lot more
rapidly than the theoryconsiders.
Language, for example, is oneof the most well-studied cases.
That is just an absolutefailure of operant conditioning
or classic behaviorist learningtheory to actually account for.
Children will learn new wordsin a single instance of exposure
(19:03):
.
This is called one-shotlearning, and there is
absolutely no way that anoperant conditioning program
running on its own withoutspecialized information can
explain the acquisition of wordsin that way.
And so generally, humans learna lot faster than you would
expect if all we had was operantconditioning, and I think that
this is part of the perspectivethat you get from evolutionary
(19:26):
psychology that tends to bemissed in other analyses.
Part of the success of ourspecies is the fact that we do
have multiple mechanisms thateach have specialized features,
but they also interrelate in acomplicated architecture such
that you get a multiplicativeeffect on our abilities.
Adding language to apre-linguistic hominid didn't
(19:50):
simply allow it to talk.
It allowed it to learn betterand coordinate better.
There's clearly the case thatwe've had cultural evolution and
the movement of culture throughtime to allow us to exist in
cultures that never existedbefore.
So, for example, there's lotsof ways in which ancient
mechanisms now in new culturesthat our ancestors never
(20:14):
experienced, are able to acquireinformation that our ancestors
never acquired.
Some of this is a relativelystraightforward simply slotting
new information into old slots.
Our ancestors had what Chomskycalls universal grammar.
We come with the ability tolearn human languages.
A thousand years ago therewasn't modern English, so our
(20:36):
ancestors didn't have a lot ofthe words we have, but our
language acquisition device isable to acquire these new words,
and we have words for conceptsthat our ancestors didn't have,
and so we have the ability toform conceptual representations
that are new.
This process, we can see, playsout in ways that bypass natural
(20:58):
selection on genes.
In ways that bypass naturalselection on genes, we expect
natural selection on genes to berelatively slow, not being able
to show up, for example, withinthe lifespan of an organism
where natural selection couldn'tpossibly have applied to their
genes.
When my parents were born, theydidn't have as many elements on
the periodic table as I hadwhen I was born, and there are
(21:22):
more elements on the periodictable now than there were when I
was born, and so obviouslywe're able to, within a new
generation, accommodateinformation that our genes were
not able to evolve in order tospecialize on.
There are also ways, though, inwhich culture and genetics
interrelate in a way that'soften called gene culture
(21:43):
coevolution.
Some interesting examples ofthat are how exception of
individuals within a species whohave mutations or perturbations
(22:05):
of development such thatthey're lactose intolerant or
allergic to milk all mammalsdrink milk as babies, but,
except for humans, all mammalsstop drinking milk when they get
older.
What humans seem to be uniquein is, even though we get to be
adult in many other aspects, wehave this preserved ability to
(22:26):
digest milk, and inunderstanding how that worked,
we can see that over the lasttens of thousands of years, we
started to raise livestock,we've started to farm other
mammals, and we had their milkas a resource that we had
(22:47):
available to us.
We can think of that originallyas a cultural invention.
The first time that happens,that wasn't something that our
ancestors had genetic adaptationto, but once that was a regular
feature of our environment,natural selection could act on
mutations in our digestiongenetics to prolong the age at
which we're producing thelactose enzyme, which allows you
(23:09):
to digest milk sugars, and so,as cultures reliably had the
presence of mammals as livestockgenes were under selection to
preserve that ability.
So we can see co-evolutionbetween the culture that we have
and the genetics that we have.
That ended up with certainpopulations of humans those that
(23:31):
descend from ancestors whopastured animals tending to have
more lactose tolerance, andother populations of modern
humans who, in their recentancestry, didn't descend from
people who did pasture animals.
So it's a population havinglower levels of lactose
tolerance as adults and that's agenetic difference.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think the big question for our audience is
what are some of theimplications for practitioners,
especially managers or leadersin an organizational setting?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think one of the main implications from taking an
evolutionary analysis of socialbehavior is this recognition
that there are multiplemechanisms of social behavior,
both social learning, but alsoother aspects in which we solve
social problems.
When should we deploy trust,when should our punitive
(24:33):
sentiment be aroused?
When should we get angry?
When should we apologize?
And each of these mechanismshas an internal logic because
they're solving differentproblems in different ways.
One of the ways to besuccessful, therefore, in
organizing groups of humans isto understand which mechanism
you're tapping when you'reattempting to make an
(24:55):
institutional change to elicit adifferent behavior, because if
you end up interfacing with thewrong mechanism, you can get an
unintended result.
I think an interesting exampleand this is not in a small-scale
organizational context, but Ithink it's relevant for a kind
of a contemporary politicalissue is how we understand
(25:16):
problems relating to socialwelfare.
You see reliable differences inhow conservatives and liberals
think about the homeless.
Conservatives tend to thinkabout the homeless as lazy, that
they're homeless or unemployedbecause of a lack of work, that
it's an individual decisionmaking that makes them
(25:37):
responsible for their outcomes.
Liberals, on the other hand,are more likely to see these
problems as the result of luckand circumstance such that, on
the flip of that coin or thetoss of a dice, anyone could be
in those circumstances, and thatit has much less to do with any
individual's hard work.
From an evolutionary analysis,there's been a lot of work that
(26:00):
has demonstrated that we havemultiple mechanisms of social
organization and multiplemechanisms that produce social
intuitions, and that we can lookat two particular mechanisms.
In this case, one of themevolved in order to help us
solve problems related tocooperation that if you're going
(26:20):
to work with somebody else formutual benefit, you don't want
them to exploit you.
If they're not helping you outin return for you helping them,
they're a bad cooperationpartner and continuing to engage
with them would be failing thatproblem.
Finding cooperative partners ispart of the solution to the
(26:41):
ancestral problem of cooperation.
We are also a species thatlived in a world where there was
tons of risk present.
There's some estimates that 30%of hunter-gatherers would have
died if it were not for the helpthey got from their family and
friends.
We help each other out when weget injured, when we get sick,
(27:01):
and injury and illness is muchmore often a product of luck
than it is intentional action.
Also, some of the ways in whichwe make a living, like hunting
or our ancestors made a livingat least are much more
luck-based than some of theother ways that we made a living
, like gathering plant foods andjust through sheer luck you
(27:22):
might be unsuccessful inretrieving animal protein.
Day after day after day, we seemto have a relatively
specialized, evolved system forpooling the risk in our social
environment, such that weinterpret non-contribution or
non-cooperation differently whenwe're thinking of a
(27:43):
relationship as a risk poolingrelationship than we do when
we're thinking about it as acooperation relationship.
And actually research has shownthat you can get conservatives
to have liberal intuitions andliberals to have conservative
intuitions when you manipulatewhich of these mechanisms you're
tapping by the information yougive them.
And so I think this is the kindof insight that business
(28:05):
leaders and managers wouldprofit by being mindful of, that
there's a literature that helpsus understand the specific
nature of our multiplemechanisms of social cognition,
and that there is profit to begained, that there's a way to
have a more successfulorganization by applying that
(28:25):
specialized knowledge.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
This reminds me a bit of Daniel Lieberman's book
Exercised.
He's also here at Harvard overin the Department of Human
Evolutionary Biology, and one ofthe things that he argues is
that we evolved in many ways tobe lazy, to conserve energy and
calories every opportunity weget, and that's what makes it so
hard for us to have themotivation to get out and
(28:48):
exercise.
Now his focus is a lot on thephysical aspects of that burning
less calories through lessphysical movement, but I imagine
there's similar mechanisms inpsychology with respect to
mental energy as well.
Are there evolutionarypressures that conflict with our
higher mental states, as in?
We might have some innate driveto succeed or become
(29:10):
self-actualized, if we'rethinking about Maslow's
hierarchy of needs.
But can that also conflict withother evolutionary pressures
that could end up impacting jobperformance and motivation as
well?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Absolutely and this is a fundamental organizing
principle that essentially allspecies face that natural
selection has been able toexpress feedback like preserve
some mutations at the expense ofother mutations only when those
mutations have yielded benefits.
(29:42):
If hard work didn't result intangible benefits, those
mutations wouldn't have beenselected by natural selection,
and we can imagine that there'slots of circumstances where
additional work wouldn't haveyielded substantial benefit.
Or in the sense that there'sopportunity costs to everything
that you do.
(30:02):
By putting effort in to solveone problem, that's the same as
not putting effort in to solve adifferent problem.
That, thinking about the returnrate of effort across the
multiple problems that humanssolved ancestrally, there would
have been many, many cases wherethe relative return rates
(30:22):
flipped around in the order ofmagnitude where, once you had
given enough effort to oneproject and gotten the
sufficient reward from that, itwas now more profitable to
switch effort into somethingelse.
Now we have a particular way ofunderstanding laziness in the
modern world, and particularlyin the work world.
We think about the work that anemployee puts in, but we didn't
(30:44):
evolve to be workers incompanies, and there's many,
many more things that we asindividuals put our effort into,
and so I think that helps usgive a different understanding
to the modern conception of workand laziness.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, we're about out of time, so I just want to say
thank you so much for joining us.
This was quite fascinating.
I hope we get a chance to chatagain Before we sign off.
Can you tell our listeners howthey can find you and your work?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
My lab website still exists and on that website you
can find a list of mypublications.
That website isprojectsiqharvardedu backslash
EPL, standing for EvolutionaryPsychology Lab.
But probably the easiest way tofind my research is simply to
go on Google Scholar and type inmy name.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Great Well, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
My pleasure.
It's been a great conversation.
Thank you, take care.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Wow, that was a lot of information.
Over the next several episodes,we're going to be exploring the
concepts of operantconditioning in more depth,
since this is extremelyapplicable to modern workplaces,
which are riddled with behaviorfeedback structures.
But, as we learned from DrKrasnow, there are often
multiple mechanisms at play atany moment and leaders should be
(32:02):
aware of these to avoidunintended consequences.
For example, employee of theMonth awards provide a form of
positive reinforcement forhigh-performing employees, but
the public aspect of the rewardcan also enhance observational
learning, where employees learnstrategies from those who are
rewarded, which is a form ofsocial learning and, from an
(32:24):
evolutionary perspective, publicrecognition can trigger an
increase in social standing andrespect among peers, which
historically could influencesurvival and reproduction, but
which may also fuel unintendedinformal hierarchies and power
structures within teams.
Or consider the reward systems,as some companies, which are
designed such that only topperformers receive significant
(32:46):
rewards.
While this might be a veryeffective way to tap into
operant conditioning and othermechanisms like social status,
the results can produce acutthroat competitive
environment where employeesfocus on outperforming peers
rather than working with them,leading to decreases in
innovation or other metrics thanworking with them, leading to
(33:08):
decreases in innovation or othermetrics this week.
Take some time to sketch out afew of the feedback mechanisms
in your work environment thatproduce either positive or
negative consequences forcertain behaviors.
For each of these structures,take a guess at how they might
tap into multiple learningmechanisms beyond just simple
conditioning of behavior.
What unintended consequencesmay result?
Are there remedies for those?
(33:30):
And so, with that, thank youfor joining me on another
episode of the Management TheoryToolbox.
Stay tuned for our next episode, where we dive straight into
the ideas of positive andnegative reinforcement.
In the meantime, keep learning,keep growing and keep building
your management theory toolbox,thank you.
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