Voices Kurt Gray - Podcast === Kurt Gray: [00:00:00] We massively underestimate how much people like to be asked deep questions. If I ask you, I was wondering if you could tell me how do you think you're gonna die, or when is the last time you felt real joy in your life? Most people think that no one wants to answer that: people love answering those questions. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: Kurt Gray is the Weary Foundation Endowed Chair of Social Psychology at the Ohio State University, College of the Arts and Sciences. He directs the Deepest Belief Lab, [00:01:00] which explores the psychology of morality, politics, and religion, and AI, and also directs the Collaboration for the Science of Polarization and Misinformation, CSPAM, I believe it's called. Welcome to Voices, Dr. Gray. Kurt Gray: Thanks so much for having me, David Staley: And I wanna ask more about CSPAM later, but I wanna begin first with the book you've published called _Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to_ _Find__ a Common Ground_. Tell us about the main argument of the book or the main findings. Kurt Gray: You bet. I mean, no one's a stranger to outrage and political division in the country today. And the book offers a kind of new understanding of why we fight. And I think one that's grounded in the latest science about how our minds work and the argument's pretty simple. It is that the reason that we disagree so much and we get so angry isn't because. You know, we're evil or the other side is evil or stupid. It's really that we're all [00:02:00] focused on protecting ourselves and our families and our communities from harm. But what you see as harmful. Might differ from what someone else might see as harmful. And those kind of disagreements about these perceptions of harm, these assumptions about what's gonna protect us versus what's gonna be harmful for the country, right? That's what's driving disagreement, not because we have fundamentally different kind of moral minds. We have the same moral mind. We just see harms differently. David Staley: How did you come to this conclusion? What was your methodology? Kurt Gray: A lot, a lot of studies. So you know, my lab and I, we published over 140 papers. A lot of those are about morality. But, but a lot of the core methodology is really asking people to make moral judgements about all sorts of different things. So we've got hot button topics abortion, immigration, and we've got. Weird kind of thought experiments that we get people to make moral judgements about. Some of them are grounded in [00:03:00] reality and some of them are a little more farfetched, but these are thought experiments where some people might say they're harmless. Whereas other people, I argue, see real harm. And so based on how people make the, and we can get into those and based on how people make these judgements, you know, I can see that really what drives their moral condemnation are these concerns about harm. Even if you don't see the harm, what someone else sees as wrong. They see it as wrong because they see it as harmful. David Staley: Hmm. Tell us about some of these thought experiments. Let's dive into it. Kurt Gray: Sure. I mean, we can even go for a, a real example that stemmed from, well, from a conversation I had with a philosopher years ago at a conference. But we were arguing about, you know, whether these concerns about harm really drive all our moral judgments. And he says, it can't be the case because people condemn harmless wrongs. And I say, that's not true. That's not true. If you condemn it, it's because you see it ass harmful. You just perhaps as a philosopher and a philosophers [00:04:00] have weird moral intuitions, don't see the harm, and he said that that can't be true because my mom, she thinks that the Barnes collection moving is, is wrong, but it's harmless. What's the Barnes Collection? It's a museum in Philadelphia. And this industrialist made a ton of money. He bought a ton of art. He had it at his house in the suburbs, and he said The only way that we can have this museum open is by keeping it at my house in the suburbs. Turns out the house in the suburbs was a real pain to get to, right. It. It was too small. It wasn't great for many ways. And so the foundation moved the Barnes collection into the city downtown. There was some outrage about this, right? This was in his, his will, and you're, you're not doing what he said. And he says, look, my mom thinks this is, is totally wrong, but it's harmless. And I said, that's not true. I don't know your mom, but she thinks it's harmful if she says it's wrong. [00:05:00] And he says, well, I guess it's your word against mine. And I said, no, let's phone your mom. David Staley: Seriously. Kurt Gray: Seriously. So we're at the bar, it's like nine 30 at night. Well, let's do it. You know? And so in ... David Staley: Empiricism. Kurt Gray: Yeah, right. This is what science is all about. You can even do science after a couple drinks. And so he phones his mom. You know, like the, who wants to be a millionaire kind of thing, right? Hey mom. And she's like, is everything okay? I know you're at a conference. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Talking here, we've got a question. And as the mom of a philosopher, I think she's used to some weird questions and to his credit, he does a really good job, doesn't lead the witness. You know, he says, mom, you know the Barnes collection? Yeah, absolutely. You know what you think about that, right? Yeah. I think it's wrong. Now here's a question for you, mom. Do you think what's happening. Harmful. And she says, absolutely right. It's harmful because it harms everyone who wants their wishes respected after they're dead. It's harmful to the kind of spirit of, of Mr. Barnes, right? It's [00:06:00] harmful to society because if we don't follow the promises that we make to each other, right, what's gonna happen? And so these intuitions of what's harmful, really powerful drive, powerfully drive our moral judgments, even if other people disagree. With our perceptions of harm. David Staley: So it's interesting that you said you're having this debate with a philosopher because you began by saying that you're, you're wrestling with issues of morality. The thought in my head is, well, you're talking about philosophy. This is what philosophers do. What is it that, that you do as a social psychologist? What is, how is your approach different than the philosopher? How do you come to different conclusions in the philosopher? Kurt Gray: Yeah, it's a great question and. I as a psychologist, study what people think. Really feel about morality everyday. People, their sense of right or wrong, their moral outrage. And that is really different from what philosophers say we ought to do. So a simple way is that I [00:07:00] study what morality is in the brain, in the mind, and philosophers or theologians or your pastor, right? They study what morality ought to be. They say, here's what we should aspire to be. I don't have such lofty goals. I say, well, here's how people make their moral judgment. Here's how the mind works. David Staley: How did you come to see harm perception as the central engine of outrage? Kurt Gray: Yeah, I should say from the outset that this wasn't like my pet hypothesis that I was hoping to, to show was the master key of morality is what I argue in the book. I was actually doing some other work about how people make sense of the minds of others, you know? Does your dog have a mind? You probably think so, but I think probably not as much as you think so. Right. So we disagree about, you know, the minds that each of us have. In large part our moral disagreements about a lot of things like a fetus or a [00:08:00] dog or a cow hinge on how much mind we perceive, right? Whether those entities can be harmed. If you think a fetus has a mind can feel pain, then it can be harmed, right? So growing out of this understanding of how do we make sense of other minds, this kind of idea of like harm just kind of popped up, right? We want to protect things from harm, like animals, like fetuses, like our children. And so the more research I did, the more I just saw it kind of popping up everywhere. But, but it wasn't popping up in a kind of, you know, let's really rationalize our moral judgment. It was popping up in this powerful way that like, if you saw something as wrong, it's because of this like deep, visceral feeling. Something's harmful. So I'll give you another example. Anita Bryant was... David Staley: In the seventies, I think. Right? That's right. Kurt Gray: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Was a country western singer and the, and the face of Florida orange juice. David Staley: That's what I remember. Kurt Gray: Yes, that's right. A day without orange juice is a day without sunshine. [00:09:00] Yes. Uhhuh. She was also a really aggressive gay rights opponent. David Staley: I remember that as well. Yes. Kurt Gray: And so she. Really sacrificed her entire career. Right. She was blackballed everywhere. David Staley: I'd forgotten that she was a country singer. Kurt Gray: Yeah, that's right. Because she so strongly was opposed to the advance of gay rights and she said, look, if we. I'm not gonna get the quote exactly right, but said something like, well, if nothing's stopping us from saying like, let's have gay rights in the street. What's stopping us from saying, let's support the murderer, let's support, you know, the, the burglar. And so she, she saw a lot of harm in. Allowing gay folks to have rights and marry and, and you know, she told a story in her mind of like, well here's what's gonna happen. You know, gay folks are, are gonna start to kind of like, get together. They're not gonna have kids. Other people will see that their lifestyle's kind of fabulous. They don't have to pay for daycare. Wouldn't that be nice? You know? [00:10:00] And then people won't have kids. The family will fall apart. Nuclear wasteland, you know, and there's a bit of an ellipse between, you know people not having kids in nuclear wasteland David Staley: Logical leap. Kurt Gray: That's right. That's right. But it doesn't mean that people don't perceive it. Right. Right. And so she so strongly perceived it that she sacrificed her career and, and this kind of story came up again and again. It's like really these deep-seated concerns about harm and suffering, even if they're not rational, even if a philosopher might say they're not Right. Right. They're still motivating people's behavior and their outrage. David Staley: Where does that sense come from? I mean, is is that something hardwired in me? The, the, the sense of harm? Where does that, where does that come from? Kurt Gray: It's absolutely hardwired. We evolved as a species, all species evolved. To protect themselves, right? There's not a species out there that thinks it's a great idea to like walk up to a predator and say, eat me, right? Because the genes wouldn't be passed on, right? It would just be, it wouldn't make sense from an evolutionary perspective. And so [00:11:00] humans have evolved for millions of years, really worried about threats, right? If you're in the woods, right, and you hear a tweak, snap. You're gonna wonder what is that, right? You're gonna be worried. And, and I think this evolutionary legacy has not been fully appreciated by science, right? So there's this idea that humans are apex predators, and sure, today we can hunt wolves from helicopters with high powered rifles. It's not how it was. For most of our years of evolution. And so for a large part, you know, in the book, the beginning of it, I argue that the first thing you need to understand is that human nature is more prey than predator. I mean, look at your fingernails. These are not the claws of a predator. When I look at my cat, I think that is a predator. You know... David Staley: I have the scars to prove it. Kurt Gray: Exactly. And so we, you know, we live in groups to protect ourselves. I often encourage people, if you really want to know how it feels like to be prey, take off your clothes and go to a forest at [00:12:00] dusk. Right? You're not gonna be like, oh, I'm an apex predator. I can't wait to eat something. You think something's going to eat me. Right? And so this understanding that we are more prey than predator. Really feeds into our understanding of where a moral outrage comes from. It comes from a sense of threat of being attacked and of, of really understanding that if we don't have a strong group to protect us and we don't follow the rules of the group, then something bad is gonna happen. David Staley: So, harm perception, harm protection. What does, what does this imply for how we approach political debates? Kurt Gray: Political debates are really about competing divisions. Sorry. So political debates are really about competing visions about what harms we should worry about in our country and in our communities. So folks on the left and folks on the right. Are both fixated on [00:13:00] protecting themselves and our country, but the visions that let's say Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris kind of put forth in the last election are very different about what the threats perhaps are and, and even who might be emphasizing more threats than the other. Right? And so. We need to think about political debates as really debates about what threats are out there and how do we best deal with those threats. David Staley: Hmm. In your book you say that facts are the wrong kind of things to change minds in both moral and political disagreements. So what are facts doing in these conversations if they're not persuading? Kurt Gray: Like listeners to maybe think about the last time they had a conversation about morality and politics and either used facts or listened to facts and then thought, you know what, I'm wrong. I guess I'll give up my moral convictions. Or the person they were talking with says, oh my goodness, this factoid you heard on NPR or Fox News. I never [00:14:00] knew that. I guess I'll give up my moral beliefs, right? That never happens. No, and and the reason it never happens is because we are not. Fine tune for facts. Our minds revolve around stories and you know, I've taught statistics before to undergrads. It's a real pain to teach people statistics. It takes a long time to get them to appreciate what statistics even are. I can read my kids a story, you know, as soon as they understand English, they can understand a story. And so our minds are really. Storytelling and story listening machines. And so if you see a news report about this threat is in your basement, or this threat's coming over the border, or this threat, whatever, right? You're gonna think, oh my goodness, it's a threat. And if that corresponds with your political ideology, it's gonna be so powerful that all the facts in the world will not convince you. In fact, those facts will seem fake. Because statistics are squishy, right? But [00:15:00] stories somehow seem powerful in our minds. David Staley: So you're not suggesting that stories are fake or stories are falsehoods or the opposite of facts, or maybe you are, Kurt Gray: No. Stories are not necessarily the opposite of facts, but they are. Certainly when I teach psychology, we argue that stories are not a reasonable basis upon which to make conclusions about how the mind works, how the world is, or the kinds of policies that we should have in the country, right? We want data for that, right? But the problem with data is that. You know, you can see it from different perspectives. The control condition is ambiguous, right? There's always interpretation difficulties with data, and that's why it's so hard. This is why you need PhDs, you know, to like do the science of statistics. You don't need a PhD to understand a story. So if someone tells you, look, immigrants are being detained at the border, kids are suffering, or immigrants are coming up through the border illegally and they're hurting US [00:16:00] citizens, right? You can have a real story that exemplifies real suffering op. Showing completely opposite, you know perspectives. And they will stick more in your mind than some kind of statistic or, or fact. David Staley: So you're not saying that like in university, we shouldn't be trafficking in facts or that we need to give everything over to stories. You're not suggesting that Kurt Gray: Absolutely not. I'm a scientist. Right? Right. Everything I, everything I do is about facts. I mean, everything in the book is a fact, David Staley: right. Kurt Gray: But I don't. Only present facts, right? Because I know how our mind works, and I know that stories are powerful, right? So if you look at a newspaper article, it'll almost always start with a story. David Staley: Yeah, Kurt Gray: it was a windy Tuesday and I walked across campus and I wondered, what would we be talking about today? And then you could go into the facts. It's just hard to, to really talk to someone about anything we [00:17:00] care about without having to resort to stories in some ways. David Staley: So a key part of your book is about finding common ground in a polarized environment. How, how is this accomplished? What, what sort of advice do you give in the book? Kurt Gray: Well, it's not easy. I'll say that. Right up front. David Staley: I was hoping it'd be easy. Kurt Gray: Well, maybe it is. It's an easy solution, but it's hard to implement, let's say. Okay, so I've got some easy tips. Perhaps the first is in conversations, don't try to win. I often say that if you try to win. Than you've already lost. And I think we can all appreciate this from our own perspective. When someone tries to argue with us, you are at Thanksgiving or Christmas, or on the bus, on the phone, you're talking about politics, and you're just exhausted when someone's trying to convince you that your own moral convictions are wrong. [00:18:00] But imagine how it feels from the other person's perspective. Right. If you're not willing to change your beliefs, why are they willing to change their beliefs? And so I think, you know, we should approach these conversations from a truce that really we're just trying to understand each other and kind of foster our relationship and not trying to win. And so with that mindset, I've got three easy tips I think, that are helpful for having better conversations. And these tips come out of. My work in conversations with all sorts of practitioners. So there's an organization called Essential Partners. They're in Boston. They have been around for over four decades and help people have conversations in really divided communities, like after a shooting, after war, we're talking right? Intense things. And so if they can bridge divides in those situations, then you can use their tips for a better [00:19:00] Thanksgiving dinner. Hm. So here they are. An easy framework for thinking of them is CIV, the beginning of civil conversations. So the first one is connect, and what that means is before you launch into a tirade about politics, you want to. Connect with someone as a human being, right? We're so much richer than our politics. You know, we like music or, you know, pets, vacations, whatever. So you can ask about that. And I think the really interesting thing here and this connects to some research done by this professor at University of Chicago named Nick Eppley, is that we. Massively underestimate how much people like to be asked questions. David Staley: Hmm. Kurt Gray: Deep questions. So if I, if I ask you I was wondering if you could tell me how do you think you're gonna die? Or when is the last time you felt real joy in your life? Most people think that no one wants to answer that. People love answering those questions, these [00:20:00] deep questions, like there's only so many times you can ask. How about this weather, right? How about those Buckeyes people are talking about sports and weather, but what they really want to talk about in this kind of fractured era is a, is a chance to connect. So you connect with these deep questions, right? Really get to the heart of who somebody is, and then. After C is the I, you invite them to share their beliefs. Now envi, I doesn't mean inquisition it doesn't mean forcing 'em to talk. You might say, look, I know we may be, you know, voted differently in the last election. Maybe now is not the right time to talk about it. I just love to hear, setting aside all the sound bites and factoids from cable news, kinda your perspective on immigration. Or where you're coming from with abortion. I'd just like to understand where you're coming from. That's an incredible invitation, right? Mm-hmm. People are excited to share, but I got an email from someone in Western Australia who read the book and she said, look, this invitation doesn't, doesn't work. [00:21:00] I tried it, it doesn't work. And I said, well, how'd you invite? And she said, look, my neighbor is, is kind of different, you know, for me politically. And we were talking about Israel and, and Gaza and Palestine. And I said to him, look, I don't know how you can support this. Justify to me how you can support genocide. David Staley: That's the wrong question. Kurt Gray: Yeah, that's right. That's not an invitation, right? That's not an invitation. And so an invitation has to be a sincere attempt to understand. Right, to really open and be open to someone's perspective. So you invite them. Great. And then the V is validation. They tell you what they're thinking and you know, think back to the idea that we're prey if they share their perspective, I. In a kind of, you know fractured intense polarized environment. It's like they're, they're bearing their neck to you in some ways. They're telling you their deepest thoughts and feelings, and now you have a ch chance to kind of attack them, [00:22:00] or I think take the high road and foster understanding and have more civil conversations is to say. Thanks for sharing that. You know, I know it was hard to put into words and I know there's a lot of kind of like talking around both sides, you know, a lot of angry insults, so I just appreciate you, you know, telling me, and I, you know, of course we disagree about a lot of things, but it's helpful for me to kind of see where you're coming from, right? That goes so. Far in having conversations, and none of this means you give your convictions and none of this means you like, don't vote for your candidate, right? Or don't give money to who you want to give to. But it's that you are trying to understand where someone's coming from and that can not only build better conversations, but maybe years later you can end up convincing them about your views because now you actually understand where they're coming from David Staley: as someone who has the opportunity to ask ~deep questions.~ ~I hope my questions are today. I hope they're ~deep questions. I'm wondering about the kinds of settings in which people can ask these sorts of questions. It seems to me [00:23:00] there's very little opportunity, or people very rarely take the opportunity to ask questions. They'd rather make statements. What are the forums or what are the settings in which people people can ask questions? Kurt Gray: Great question. It turns out that you can ask these questions almost anywhere, even if you feel awkward about it. David Staley: So you don't need a microphone, you don't need a, a podcast. Kurt Gray: Well, here's the study. This is why I love this study so much. They got people who are taking the train from the suburbs of Chicago into the city. So these are commuters, and they ask people, do you think you and other people would rather just sit there in silence listening to a podcast like this one, right? Or just. Absentmindedly looking at your phone, or would you rather talk to a stranger about really deep, important things? And they're like, are you insane? Obviously listen to a podcast or just being on my phone, right? In solitude. And so they said, well, [00:24:00] too bad half of you, you need to have a conversation with a stranger. Some of these people see these people every day. You know, you're like, oh, there's the guy with a hat on the train, whatever. And so you're sitting next to him and they turn to this person and says, look, I'm doing this study. Can I ask you a question? Most people say sure. And then they go, you know, when's the last time you felt joy? What's the value you want to pass on to the next generation? You know, these like deep, deep questions and people think that's a little weird, but. I'm actually grateful for the chance to connect. And then when they ask them to complete this survey after the conversation, put it in the mail and send it back. When they collect all those data, they show those data that people had a way better time asking those questions than they thought. And so the answer is you can do it anywhere. You know, like green eggs and ham. You could do it on a boat, in a train in the rain with a mouse and a house, right? You can do it wherever. Just take the leap. [00:25:00] To actually ask a question. David Staley: Hmm. I wonder if people are if they've been educated or trained even to know how to ask questions. Kurt Gray: Yeah. David Staley: It's certainly not part of of schooling. Kurt Gray: That's right. David Staley: Give us answers. We tell kids That's Kurt Gray: right. David Staley: Not formulate questions. Kurt Gray: That's right. Listening is hard. David Staley: Yeah. Kurt Gray: Listening is hard. I, I guess I wanna emphasize that it doesn't have to be this huge, huge bar, right? You can just look online and get some questions. I even asked questions sarcastically. I'm not a sincere person and I still get good answers. So I had a colleague, you know, we were walking to a, a faculty meeting and I said, so, are you feeling incredibly self-actualized today? And obviously the answer is no. You know, I look sleep deprived. But that was enough to break him out of his like thoughts and to talk about why he was not feeling incredibly self-actualized. If you say, how you doing, people say, well, fine. David Staley: Yeah. Kurt Gray: But if you [00:26:00] mix it up a little bit. Right. You know? Have you ever been have you ever been convicted of a crime for which you have not received? A pardon? Which is something I had to answer when I applied for my green card. Right. That's a funny question to ask someone. And so there's all sorts of questions you could ask. I remember going to the bar when I was young, you know, and someone was like, trying out a pickup line and someone says, what would your second wish be if you got a, a magic lamp? That's a weird question. You know, I don't have a, I didn't have a good answer, but it made me think and I was ha and it just kicked off the conversation. So it can be a weird question. You just have to take the leap. David Staley: Well, let me ask you another question. Tell us, tell us about the Deepest Beliefs Lab. I love the title. Kurt Gray: Thank you. It took a while to think about it. And there's so many different things that I study and my students study, and I wanted a kind of all-encompassing all-encompassing title. And I think this does it best because we study. People's deepest beliefs and the [00:27:00] logo of the lab, which I also worked hard on, is this flame at the middle of a maze. And you know, those are our beliefs, kind of animating and fueling who we are and how we act. But it can take a while to get to them, to really figure out how to study them. That's the scientific challenge or puzzle that I engage with every day in my lab. And so we take for granted that, of course I have deep moral convictions or political convictions, but how do we actually study those, figure out what they are and figure out how they connect. That's the work that my lab does. David Staley: Are the students in the lab, are they all psychology majors? Are they philosophers? Kurt Gray: We have a pretty wide net. I mean, obviously the grad students are in psychology because, you know, they're my grad students, but we have folks from philosophy, we have folks from political science, we have folks from marketing. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, because people don't want to buy [00:28:00] products from certain companies. There's a polarized marketplace today. Brands are grappling with these questions. Organizational behavior folks. I, you know, people get divided in work teams and so you know, the study of religion, kind of like have some, a theology and, and religious folks who are connected to the lab. I mean, these things matter to almost everyone. Right. Our deepest, everyone has deepest beliefs and they matter. And so it, it's a very open lab with a lot of collaborators. David Staley: What is the collaboration for the science of polarization and misinformation CS Spam? Kurt Gray: Yeah, so I've only been at Ohio State now for about eight months, and this is one of the things that I was hired to lead, and it was also kind of endowed by GIF Weary, whose name I bear in my in my title. And she was really concerned with a level of polarization and misinformation in America today. Mm-hmm. And thought that science, especially scientists at OSU, could really [00:29:00] contribute to having an understanding of why we're divided, why there's falsehoods around that people propagate, and how we can mitigate those things. And so it's really a kind of like scientific enterprise that's looking to society and hoping. To impact policy and change. David Staley: To end polarization and misinformation? I hope. Kurt Gray: Well, yes, exactly. Well to, to reduce it but certainly not to inflame it. David Staley: Hmm. I wonder why you ended up in psychology or social psychology as opposed to some other discipline. Did you know when you were four years old you were gonna be a psychologist? Kurt Gray: Definitely not. So my dad was in the Canadian Navy. And I thought I wanted to be a fighter pilot. David Staley: Oh, okay. Kurt Gray: I've got pretty good eyes. I've got great reflexes as a kid. I like speed and I thought I could be a pilot. I was actually in the Air Cadets and I thought I was gonna get my pilot's license, and then I [00:30:00] realized that I don't like authority. Took me a year to figure that out in in the Air Cadets. And so I don't like having, you know corporals telling me what to do. And so I thought I would do something different. And I always liked science and so I thought I wanted to be a geophysicist. David Staley: Oh, okay. Kurt Gray: So I grew up in Calgary, which is the Texas of Canada, and there's beef and there's conservatism, at least for Canada. And there's oil. And so I had a, a friend whose dad was a geophysicist and he he had pretty good muscles. He had a pretty beautiful girlfriend. He bow hunted. He had a freezer full of moose meat and he used hair pomade instead of gel which to a 16-year-old I thought, like, this guy's, the man, you know, he is incredibly sophisticated and can also bow hunt. And so I thought I want to be a geophysicist too. You know, we had conversations about general and special relativity. You know, he is a very like, learned person. I got to the University of Waterloo. I did a year of geophysics. I didn't care about rocks, I didn't care about minerals. [00:31:00] And then I did a work term up in Northern Canada looking for natural gas. It was fun. We flew helicopters and drove snowmobiles. But I still didn't want to do that for the rest of my life, so I just switched to psychology. I mean, just kind of on a whim, but just David Staley: like that. Kurt Gray: Just like that because I think I always wanted to study how the mind works. I always wanted to study the things that are really invisible, unlike rocks that people live and die for, but we can't. Really study them directly. Right. We need to design all sorts of elegant studies to kind of figure out what we really believe and why we believe. And so I switched and never looked back. David Staley: Hmm. What are you working on now? What's, what's next for you in your lab? Kurt Gray: So I'm working on a very small problem which is. What is the nature of truth? David Staley: Oh Kurt Gray: yeah. So check in in a week we'll have it solved. You'll David Staley: have that answer in Kurt Gray: a week. David Staley: Yeah. Great. Kurt Gray: Easy peasy. I mean, questions about misinformation. There's a lot of work out there that's pretty [00:32:00] applied, and I think that work is very important. Like can you have nudges on Twitter or X to make people share less misinformation? Those are important, but I think really what gets me going as the deepest beliefs lab is really understanding like, well, what do people think about is really true and what does truth mean to each of us? And we each kind of perceive it in our own ways, kind of like harm. And so there's all sorts of interesting things that we can think about. Truth and even levels of truth. Let's say someone's a flat earth. You know, they're like, look, the earth flat, great. And then I say, I'm gonna give you a $10,000 cruise around the world. All expenses paid. And they think, ah, maybe I'll take the cruise. You know? And so, you know, how much do people really believe what they say? Are people's understandings of truth subject to change? How much are they motivated? Right? How much are they driven by our political ideology or just trying to be like interesting or unique, right? All these things are important for how we make sense of truthiness. [00:33:00] David Staley: Kurt Gray, thank you. Kurt Gray: Thanks so much. Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.