TED, Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised

Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised

It would be nice to be objective in life, in many ways. The problem is that we have these color-tinted glasses as we look at all kinds of situations. For example, think about something as simple as beer. If I gave you a few beers to taste and I asked you to rate them on intensity and bitterness, different beers would occupy different space. But what if we tried to be objective about it? In the case of beer, it would be very simple. What if we did a blind taste? Well, if we did the same thing, you tasted the same beer,now in the blind taste, things would look slightly different. Most of the beers will go into one place. You will basically not be able to distinguish them, and the exception, of course, will be Guinness. (Laughter)

Similarly, we can think about physiology. What happens when people expect something from their physiology? For example, we sold people pain medications. Some people, we told them the medications were expensive. Some people, we told them it was cheap. And the expensive pain medication worked better. It relieved more pain from people, because expectations do change our physiology. And of course, we all know that in sports, if you are a fan of a particular team, you can't help but see the game develop from the perspective of your team.

So all of those are cases in which our preconceived notions and our expectations color our world. But what happened in more important questions? What happened with questions that had to do with social justice? So we wanted to think about what is the blind tasting version for thinking about inequality? So we started looking at inequality, and we did some large-scale surveys around the U.S. and other countries. So we asked two questions: Do people know what kind of level of inequality we have? And then, what level of inequality do we want to have? So let's think about the first question. Imagine I took all the people in the U.S. and I sorted them from the poorest on the right to the richest on the left, and then I divided them into five buckets: the poorest 20 percent, the next 20 percent, the next, the next, and the richest 20 percent. And then I asked you to tell me how much wealth do you think is concentrated in each of those buckets. So to make it simpler, imagine I ask you to tell me, how much wealth do you think is concentrated in the bottom two buckets, the bottom 40 percent? Take a second. Think about it and have a number. Usually we don't think. Think for a second, have a real number in your mind. You have it?

Okay, here's what lots of Americans tell us. They think that the bottom 20 percent has about 2.9 percent of the wealth, the next group has 6.4, so together it's slightly more than nine. The next group, they say, has 12 percent, 20 percent, and the richest 20 percent, people think has 58 percent of the wealth. You can see how this relates to what you thought.

Now, what's reality? Reality is slightly different. The bottom 20 percent has 0.1 percent of the wealth. The next 20 percent has 0.2 percent of the wealth. Together, it's 0.3. The next group has 3.9, 11.3, and the richest group has 84-85 percent of the wealth. So what we actually have and what we think we have are very different.

What about what we want? How do we even figure this out? So to look at this, to look at what we really want, we thought about the philosopher John Rawls. If you remember John Rawls, he had this notion of what's a just society. He said a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you would be willing to enter it in a random place. And it's a beautiful definition, because if you're wealthy, you might want the wealthy to have more money, the poor to have less. If you're poor, you might want more equality. But if you're going to go into that society in every possible situation, and you don't know, you have to consider all the aspects. It's a little bit like blind tasting in which you don't know what the outcome will be when you make a decision, and Rawls called this the "veil of ignorance." So, we took another group, a large group of Americans, and we asked them the question in the veil of ignorance. What are the characteristics of a country that would make you want to join it, knowing that you could end randomly at any place? And here is what we got. What did people want to give to the first group, the bottom 20 percent? They wanted to give them about 10 percent of the wealth. The next group, 14 percent of the wealth, 21, 22 and 32.

We also asked this question about something else. We asked, what about the ratio of CEO pay to unskilled workers? So you can see what people think is the ratio, and then we can ask the question, what do they think should be the ratio? And then we can ask, what is reality? What is reality? And you could say, well, it's not that bad, right? The red and the yellow are not that different. But the fact is, it's because I didn't draw them on the same scale. It's hard to see, there's yellow and blue in there.

So what about other outcomes of wealth? Wealth is not just about wealth. We asked, what about things like health? What about availability of prescription medication? What about life expectancy? What about life expectancy of infants? How do we want this to be distributed? What about education for young people? And for older people? And across all of those things, what we learned was that people don't like inequality of wealth, but there's other things where inequality, which is an outcome of wealth, is even more aversive to them: for example, inequality in health or education. We also learned that people are particularly open to changes in equality when it comes to people who have less agency -- basically, young kids and babies, because we don't think of them as responsible for their situation.

Then we have the desirability gap. How do we get people to think differently about what we really want?You see, the Rawls definition, the Rawls way of looking at the world, the blind tasting approach, takes our selfish motivation out of the picture. How do we implement that to a higher degree on a more extensive scale?

And finally, we also have an action gap. How do we take these things and actually do something about it? I think part of the answer is to think about people like young kids and babies that don't have much agency, because people seem to be more willing to do this.

To summarize, I would say, next time you go to drink beer or wine, first of all, think about, what is it in your experience that is real, and what is it in your experience that is a placebo effect coming from expectations? And then think about what it also means for other decisions in your life, and hopefully also for policy questions that affect all of us.

Thanks a lot.

8:49(Applause)

Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised Dan Ariely: Wie gleichberechtigt wollen wir die Welt haben? Sie werden überrascht sein Dan Ariely: ¿Cuán igualitario queremos que sea el mundo? Le sorprendería Dan Ariely : Jusqu'à quel point voulons-nous que le monde soit égalitaire ? Vous seriez surpris ダン・アリエリー世界はどこまで平等であってほしいか？あなたは驚くだろう Dan Ariely: Quão igualitário queremos que o mundo seja? Ficaria surpreendido Ден Аріелі: Наскільки рівним ми хочемо бачити світ? Ви будете здивовані 丹-艾瑞里我们希望世界有多平等？你会感到惊讶丹艾瑞裡：我們希望世界有多平等？你會感到驚訝的

It would be nice to be objective in life, in many ways. The problem is that we have these color-tinted glasses as we look at all kinds of situations. ||||||||getönten||||||||| ||||||||colored||||||||| ||||||||coloridas||||||||| ||||||||zabarwione kolorowo||||||||| For example, think about something as simple as beer. If I gave you a few beers to taste and I asked you to rate them on intensity and bitterness, different beers would occupy different space. ||||||types of beer||||||||||||||||||| ||||||piw||||||||||||||||||| But what if we tried to be objective about it? In the case of beer, it would be very simple. What if we did a blind taste? Well, if we did the same thing, you tasted the same beer,now in the blind taste, things would look slightly different. Most of the beers will go into one place. You will basically not be able to distinguish them, and the exception, of course, will be Guinness. |||||||||||Ausnahme||||| ||||||||||||||||the beer (Laughter)

Similarly, we can think about physiology. |||||Physiologie |||||the study of life What happens when people expect something from their physiology? ||||erwarten|||| For example, we sold people pain medications. ||||||pain relief drugs Some people, we told them the medications were expensive. Some people, we told them it was cheap. And the expensive pain medication worked better. ||||medikament|| It relieved more pain from people, because expectations do change our physiology. Это уменьшило боль людей, потому что ожидания действительно меняют нашу физиологию. And of course, we all know that in sports, if you are a fan of a particular team, you can’t help but see the game develop from the perspective of your team. Et bien sûr, nous savons tous que dans le sport, si vous êtes fan d'une équipe en particulier, vous ne pouvez pas vous empêcher de voir le jeu se développer du point de vue de votre équipe.

So all of those are cases in which our preconceived notions and our expectations color our world. |||||||||vorgefassten|Vorstellungen|||||| |||||||||z góry ustalone||||||| But what happened in more important questions? What happened with questions that had to do with social justice? ||||||||||Gerechtigkeit Что случилось с вопросами, связанными с социальной справедливостью? So we wanted to think about what is the blind tasting version for thinking about inequality? Итак, мы хотели подумать о том, что такое слепая версия для размышлений о неравенстве? So we started looking at inequality, and we did some large-scale surveys around the U.S. and other countries. So we asked two questions: Do people know what kind of level of inequality we have? And then, what level of inequality do we want to have? So let’s think about the first question. Imagine I took all the people in the U.S. and I sorted them from the poorest on the right to the richest on the left, and then I divided them into five buckets: the poorest 20 percent, the next 20 percent, the next, the next, and the richest 20 percent. 然后，我将它们按照从最贫困的右边到最富裕的左边的顺序分类，然后将它们分为五个桶：最贫困的20％，接下来的20％，接下来的20％，接下来的20％和最富有的20％。 And then I asked you to tell me how much wealth do you think is concentrated in each of those buckets. 然后，我问你认为每个桶中积累了多少财富。 So to make it simpler, imagine I ask you to tell me, how much wealth do you think is concentrated in the bottom two buckets, the bottom 40 percent? 为了简化，想象一下我要求你告诉我，底部两个桶中积累了多少财富，底部40％？ Take a second. Think about it and have a number. Usually we don’t think. Think for a second, have a real number in your mind. You have it?

Okay, here’s what lots of Americans tell us. They think that the bottom 20 percent has about 2.9 percent of the wealth, the next group has 6.4, so together it’s slightly more than nine. The next group, they say, has 12 percent, 20 percent, and the richest 20 percent, people think has 58 percent of the wealth. You can see how this relates to what you thought. Pode ver como isto se relaciona com o que pensou.

Now, what’s reality? Reality is slightly different. The bottom 20 percent has 0.1 percent of the wealth. The next 20 percent has 0.2 percent of the wealth. Together, it’s 0.3. The next group has 3.9, 11.3, and the richest group has 84-85 percent of the wealth. So what we actually have and what we think we have are very different.

What about what we want? How do we even figure this out? So to look at this, to look at what we really want, we thought about the philosopher John Rawls. ||||||||||||||||||John Rawls ||||||||||||||||||Rawls If you remember John Rawls, he had this notion of what’s a just society. ||||||||Vorstellung||||gerechten| He said a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you would be willing to enter it in a random place. Il a dit qu'une société juste est une société que si vous saviez tout à son sujet, vous seriez prêt à y entrer au hasard. Ele disse que uma sociedade justa é uma sociedade que, se soubéssemos tudo sobre ela, estaríamos dispostos a entrar nela num lugar aleatório. Он сказал, что справедливое общество - это общество, которое, если бы вы знали о нем все, вы бы захотели войти в него в случайном месте. And it’s a beautiful definition, because if you’re wealthy, you might want the wealthy to have more money, the poor to have less. Et c'est une belle définition, car si vous êtes riche, vous voudrez peut-être que les riches aient plus d'argent, les pauvres en aient moins. И это красивое определение, потому что, если вы богаты, вы можете захотеть, чтобы у богатых было больше денег, а у бедных - меньше. If you’re poor, you might want more equality. ||||vielleicht||| But if you’re going to go into that society in every possible situation, and you don’t know, you have to consider all the aspects. Mais si vous allez entrer dans cette société dans toutes les situations possibles, et que vous ne savez pas, vous devez considérer tous les aspects. Но если вы собираетесь войти в это общество во всех возможных ситуациях, и вы не знаете, вы должны рассмотреть все аспекты. It’s a little bit like blind tasting in which you don’t know what the outcome will be when you make a decision, and Rawls called this the "veil of ignorance." |||||||||||||||||||||||||||Schleier||Unwissenheit |||||||||||||||||||||||||||veil|| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||niewiedzy Это немного похоже на слепую дегустацию, в которой вы не знаете, каков будет результат, когда вы примете решение, и Ролз назвал это «завесой невежества». So, we took another group, a large group of Americans, and we asked them the question in the veil of ignorance. What are the characteristics of a country that would make you want to join it, knowing that you could end randomly at any place? Какие характеристики страны заставят вас захотеть присоединиться к ней, зная, что вы можете закончить случайным образом в любом месте? And here is what we got. What did people want to give to the first group, the bottom 20 percent? Что люди хотели дать первой группе, нижним 20 процентам? They wanted to give them about 10 percent of the wealth. The next group, 14 percent of the wealth, 21, 22 and 32.

Now, nobody in our sample wanted full equality. Nobody thought that socialism is a fantastic idea in our sample. But what does it mean? It means that we have this knowledge gap between what we have and what we think we have, but we have at least as big a gap between what we think is right to what we think we have. Это означает, что у нас есть пробел в знаниях между тем, что у нас есть, и тем, что мы думаем, но у нас есть по крайней мере такой же большой разрыв между тем, что мы считаем правильным, и тем, что мы думаем, что имеем.

Now, we can ask these questions, by the way, not just about wealth. We can ask it about other things as well. So for example, we asked people from different parts of the world about this question, people who are liberals and conservatives, and they gave us basically the same answer. ||||||||||||||||||liberal individuals|||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||liberais||conservadores|||||||| We asked rich and poor, they gave us the same answer, men and women, NPR listeners and Forbes readers. ||||||||||||||National Public Radio|||| ||||||||||||||słuchacze NPR|||| We asked people in England, Australia, the U.S. -- very similar answers. We even asked different departments of a university.We went to Harvard and we checked almost every department, and in fact, from Harvard Business School, where a few people wanted the wealthy to have more and the rich to have less, the similarity was astonishing. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||einige||||Reichen|||mehr|||reiche|||||||erstaunlich Nous avons même demandé à différents départements d'une université, nous sommes allés à Harvard et nous avons vérifié presque tous les départements, et en fait, à la Harvard Business School, où quelques personnes voulaient que les riches aient plus et les riches en aient moins, la similitude était étonnante. . I know some of you went to Harvard Business School. |||||||Harvard||

We also asked this question about something else. We asked, what about the ratio of CEO pay to unskilled workers? ||||||||||low-skilled| ||||||||||pracowników niewykwalifikowanych| Мы спросили, а как насчет соотношения оплаты труда генерального директора и неквалифицированных рабочих? So you can see what people think is the ratio, and then we can ask the question, what do they think should be the ratio? Итак, вы можете увидеть, что люди думают об этом соотношении, а затем мы можем задать вопрос: каким, по их мнению, должно быть соотношение? And then we can ask, what is reality? What is reality? And you could say, well, it’s not that bad, right? The red and the yellow are not that different. But the fact is, it’s because I didn’t draw them on the same scale. Но дело в том, что я не рисовал их в одном масштабе. It’s hard to see, there’s yellow and blue in there.

So what about other outcomes of wealth? Wealth is not just about wealth. We asked, what about things like health? What about availability of prescription medication? ||||Rezept| ||||prescription medication| ||dostępność||leków na receptę| А как насчет наличия рецептурных лекарств? What about life expectancy? |||Erwartung What about life expectancy of infants? |||||Säuglingen |||||babies |||||niemowląt А как насчет продолжительности жизни младенцев? How do we want this to be distributed? What about education for young people? And for older people? And across all of those things, what we learned was that people don’t like inequality of wealth, but there’s other things where inequality, which is an outcome of wealth, is even more aversive to them: for example, inequality in health or education. ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||abstoßend||||Beispiel||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||unpleasant||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||aversiva||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||odpychająca||||||||| Et à travers toutes ces choses, ce que nous avons appris, c'est que les gens n'aiment pas l'inégalité de la richesse, mais il y a d'autres choses où l'inégalité, qui est le résultat de la richesse, est encore plus aversive pour eux: par exemple, l'inégalité en matière de santé ou d'éducation. . И по всем этим вещам мы узнали, что людям не нравится неравенство в богатстве, но есть другие вещи, в которых неравенство, являющееся результатом богатства, им еще более неприятно: например, неравенство в отношении здоровья или образования. . We also learned that people are particularly open to changes in equality when it comes to people who have less agency -- basically, young kids and babies, because we don’t think of them as responsible for their situation. ||||||||||||||||||||Handlungsfähigkeit|||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||którzy|||sprawczości|||||||||||||||| Nous avons également appris que les gens sont particulièrement ouverts aux changements en matière d'égalité lorsqu'il s'agit de personnes qui ont moins de liberté d'action - essentiellement, les jeunes enfants et les bébés, parce que nous ne les considérons pas comme responsables de leur situation. Мы также узнали, что люди особенно открыты для изменений в равенстве, когда речь идет о людях, у которых меньше свободы воли - в основном, маленьких детях и младенцах, потому что мы не считаем их ответственными за свою ситуацию.

So what are some lessons from this? We have two gaps: We have a knowledge gap and we have a desirability gap And the knowledge gap is something that we think about, how do we educate people?How do we get people to think differently about inequality and the consequences of inequality in terms of health, education, jealousy, crime rate, and so on? ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Eifersucht||||| |||||||||||||appeal gap|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||envy||||| |||||||||||||pożądliwości|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||zazdrość||||| Nous avons deux lacunes: nous avons un manque de connaissances et nous avons un manque de désirabilité Et le manque de connaissances est quelque chose auquel nous pensons, comment éduquer les gens? Comment amener les gens à penser différemment à l'inégalité et aux conséquences de l'inégalité en termes santé, éducation, jalousie, taux de criminalité, etc.? У нас есть два пробела: у нас есть пробел в знаниях и у нас есть пробел в желательности И пробел в знаниях - это то, о чем мы думаем, как нам обучать людей? Как мы можем заставить людей иначе думать о неравенстве и последствиях неравенства с точки зрения здоровья, образования, ревности, уровня преступности и так далее?

Then we have the desirability gap. Тогда у нас есть пробел в желательности. How do we get people to think differently about what we really want?You see, the Rawls definition, the Rawls way of looking at the world, the blind tasting approach, takes our selfish motivation out of the picture. |||||||||||||||||||||||||Welt|||||||||||| Comment amener les gens à penser différemment à ce que nous voulons vraiment? Vous voyez, la définition de Rawls, la manière Rawls de regarder le monde, l'approche de la dégustation à l'aveugle, enlève notre motivation égoïste de l'image. Как мы можем заставить людей иначе думать о том, чего мы действительно хотим? Видите ли, определение Ролза, взгляд Ролза на мир, подход слепой дегустации исключает нашу эгоистичную мотивацию. How do we implement that to a higher degree on a more extensive scale? ||||||||||||szerszą| Comment pouvons-nous mettre cela en œuvre à un degré plus élevé à une échelle plus étendue? Как нам реализовать это в более высокой степени в более широком масштабе?

And finally, we also have an action gap. Et enfin, nous avons également une lacune d'action. How do we take these things and actually do something about it? I think part of the answer is to think about people like young kids and babies that don’t have much agency, because people seem to be more willing to do this. ||||||||||||||||||haben||Handlungsfähigkeit|||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||sprawczość|||||||||| Je pense qu'une partie de la réponse est de penser à des gens comme les jeunes enfants et les bébés qui n'ont pas beaucoup de libre arbitre, parce que les gens semblent plus disposés à faire cela. Я думаю, что отчасти ответ заключается в том, чтобы думать о таких людях, как маленькие дети и младенцы, у которых нет особой свободы воли, потому что люди, кажется, более склонны к этому.

To summarize, I would say, next time you go to drink beer or wine, first of all, think about, what is it in your experience that is real, and what is it in your experience that is a placebo effect coming from expectations? Подводя итог, я бы сказал, что в следующий раз, когда вы пойдете выпить пива или вина, прежде всего подумайте о том, что в вашем опыте является реальным, и что в вашем опыте является эффектом плацебо, исходящим из ожиданий? And then think about what it also means for other decisions in your life, and hopefully also for policy questions that affect all of us. А затем подумайте о том, что это также означает для других решений в вашей жизни, и, надеюсь, также для политических вопросов, которые затрагивают всех нас.

Thanks a lot.

8:49(Applause)