When i first heard about the book when we think of shaming we think about all of these i dont want to say evil distasteful things that you think about the Scarlet Letter and feathering and you think about religious people who are using the model that is pre democratic. Consumers rather than activists and this guilt that is eclipsing what i would see as an older and more effective tool in part because shame can scale to institutional levels. And exams to have an example i gave in the book, says shabbos would not have been satisfied if the solution to that problem was industry saying, lord we are going to certify part of the immigrant migrant fair wages and allow consumers to purchase them, and they have a label this as picked by farmworkers of her in a minimum wage and allow the rest to continue buying the same old thing. He was not would not have been, i dont think, satisfied with Something Like that because his concern was to change the entire industry, not a small portion of it. This is the way that we have come to engage with so many other problems. And so i think that this focus has inherently shifted the burden to the demand side of the equation rather than the supply side and shame is one of those tools that focuses on supply. Let me open that up a little bit. You go to a progressive supermarket and think you are doing the right thing. You know we know a little bit bit more about how that organic label goods taken or used targets in some cases, but. It still seems that although i am doing this thing and it command it is a step in the right direction, a 1st step that is certainly better than buying maybe the dirtiest to produce but you actually flip that around and say that it is really not a great 1st step. I do not i do not argue that it is not better. There is no doubt that it is better than the other thing, but if thing but if you view it as your primary way of engaging with the issue that winds up being detrimental. There are all these issues with that kind of behavior. You do something bad in another domain which has been demonstrated as a psychological phenomenon across the board. Also, what had happened historically was that this concerned minority make trouble and raise the ire of certain people. The majority was to vote the way. What happened is now it concerns minorities. Now just goes to whole foods. That was not sufficient for changing the entire market. Organic food cart people think it is pretty highly visible. Only accounts for 4 percent of the us food market. It is not leading to a significant decrease in pesticide usage. If that is our end goal because of everyone elses eating nonorganic food then i think we have to consider engaging a higher level. I want to come back to that. You are involved in looking into fisheries. These plants. Yes. The household consumer. I got interested in these tools like wallet cards and eco labels for seafood. This led me i pulled on the thread and the whole scene unraveled for it was not just fisheries. You know the works. And they all have similar properties. And that there was a tendency to lower the standards of what things actually meant because that meant more things to be certified because there was more demand than supply could meet. In the case of fisheries the idea of what is sustainable that bar has just lowered and lowered and lowered. Also, i dont see any of these products representing more than 10 percent of the entire marketplace. So in terms of what kind of big pollution they offer, it is really the jury is still very far from an. You studied economics, you said, for six years. As an undergrad and master student and then i decided to come to my senses and did my phd is a biologist. Am amazed is to speak english so well. But but this all really started when you were a girl you saw video. The canada labeling. I saw photograph. I opened the book with the case of me feeling the most my 1st experience was the guilt that was not just about something i had done that effective those around me but actually affecting something had never met before which is the wild dolphin. I had a photograph of the mail. I had i had written to this group called the Earth Island Institute when i i was nine years old and opened up the return letter. It was all about how to the fishing was killing dolphins and there was this very very, i would say now storing image of it often being hoisted and killed. And that was my 1st very profound love feeling of guilt for something that i have done that had affected something i cared about and had never meant. And i was not alone in that at all. There were so many millions of schoolchildren. And that led to the logo which was one of those i was suggesting one of these red flags about how we engage the issue. The logo was reintroduced we began buying to dragon. I i thought the trouble was over. And that so i realize now the fallacy in thinking that way. I was nine. Fair enough. Some of this he came came to unpack a little bit more later. This was maybe to see those planted. What you end up describing early in the book is how that shift happens and puts the onus on consumers rather than on corporations. The 1st eco label of its type. It had been the organic food label. That signal something about the product itself. This said its the same, but it was caught differently. I earmarked this is a big moment. And i think it does for me really characterize from distracting us from focusing on supply to change into focusing on demand. You give other examples one that stuck out was the israeli day care center. A famous example. Can you unpack that for us. A pretty famous study of daycares in israel or parents were coming to often the daycare said, you know what, were tired of the parents coming so late. We will introduce a fine. And they do that the number of late pickups actually increased significantly because parents thought, zero what a relief tomorrow i have to do is pay a fine. When they had had this guilt or even shame prior the replaced it with a marketbased punishment. In the daycare realizes pretty quickly and tried to change the policy back and never could get the number of late pickups is logan. They actually they actually and there has been more research subsequently showing how markets and the willingness to exchange behavior for money can erode the standard. Some of this has to do with just to dive in on this guilt versus shame me describe it as an individual feeling that is tethered to maybe a subjective bar that we all have insiders. I think that is where shame becomes preferable. Its not as individualistic. I described guilt as a tool there is the emotion and the tool. Is the tool to the threat of social exposure for exposure to public programs. Examples think we talked about guilt in these cases are putting it to the consumer pointing to their guilt and keeping the onus on the collective personal. Very scholarly in parts, but just a very fast read. There are so many examples. What are some of your favorites of this tool of shame. Guilt is a great regulator, and we should all hope the society could be dealt with so well because it is the cheapest form. If it if it does not work and you are left wondering why end of the government is failing you in certain ways enforcing rules or failing to pass legislation then you might turn to harsher forms of punishment. A few examples i like other reinforced action of the sierra club with the mountaintop removal in appellation appalachia trying to work with local government to get it stopped , failing that. Instead and they were not able to go after the Coal Companies so that chased the financing. Services now obviously stuffing mountaintop removal entirely, but it is. In 2,009 they launched the campaign. They took out a fullpage ad demonstrations the changes start sewing and sustainable seafood. The trader joe campaign was obvious as a result of Something Like 19 from the list to 4th most. Did that solve the problem of selling and sustainable seafood . No. How we eventually going to be serious legislation in place . Yes. But it can stopgap in a way that i dont see any evidence of guilt working at that scale. I i want to come back to that because it seems like where we have gone will you started with the consumer looking at labels to suppliers. Eventually we need probably to get to government and cant but i want to throw back something that you said guilt is the cheapest form of this. What does that mean in economic lingo . Punishment from an evolutionary perspective. Sometimes they line up. Punishment is costly. Very interesting. This is in technical punishment and reward are different in the sense that reward is me transferring something great a prize to you. Punishment is like me taking a hit of some form some small cost or you can imagine if it was a physical confrontation, potentially a large cost to than deprive you of something. So we both so we both wind up paying a cost. And we can see this. Punishment and society at the individual and government level are all costly. Prison is a costly system. Economic resources, whatever. Imagine the best form of punishment is where you place yourself. Selfregulating. And that is why there is debate on whether or not guilt is even a universal emotion and tool. A lot of eastern cultures dont have a word a word for it. Shakespeare used the word 33 times, they were shame 344 times. Very likely that it is a much more recent western individualistic concept that shame. We are potentially in subjective territory where i could drink when my guilt and go and hide and it might not lead to better behavior from sco a politician. And the same is true of shame. If any of these things were perfectly would not have harsher forms of punishment. That is always fun. Shaming, as i said before something that something that i have negative connotation toward. There are plenty of examples in the book the potentials for use of shame and new media. At its worst, it, too can too, can lead may be to things are going well the behavior of the norm people hiding from shame appearing your book. Talk about the different kind of results. And is not just of the individual level. Corporations and government all display the similar variation the various ways you can escape shaming. The different responses to shame i open i open up that chapter with the case very charming. The owner of the titanic who happens to be on board denied that the titanic went down. And unlike the captain he did manage to escape and survive. He felt a tremendous amount well, whether or not he felt that we cant say because i dont know what you look like and did not measure his hormones. But he exhibited a lot of fines of having been to have a lot of signs of having been changed because one of the 1st things he did is inverted his name. Rather than finding is may you find his name yams he. And Joseph Conrad you attended some of the hearings about the titanic referred to him. And changing your name command he was in hiding hiding, he would not come out and face anyone. These are two signs that the shaming is really powerful and you may or not may or may not be getting the ideal outcome. And literary terms the intense shame that we are talking about is equated with your social persona dying. It is intense. He was removing himself from the things that he loved. He said that he was not going out in public. Changing his identity. You also see Philip Morris preferring to be told all three or bp considering changing his name after the deepwater horizon blackwater you can see the similar tendencies among groups. Government them as much harder to change. It still does happen. Change parties. Or change the name of a technique like, you know, torture becomes enhanced interrogation technique. Right. So online examples appear. I appear. I dont know if you read the knew jon ronson book with the example of jesting but there are a lot of examples of shaming going awry with the media. Maybe it is not always pleasant command you draw the line between the kind of shaming that change is bad behavior without burning life on the other hand which seems to be have is that part of what you describe . Yes. Yes. Very much like antibiotics depending upon the dose and the time command you can overdo it and under do it one of the issues with the internet generally and again this comes back to individuals and individual behavior, but it is right now what we see as disproportionate punishment. Punishment. Individuals saying something glib are being punished in a much harsher much more longlasting form that people commit actual physical crime. And this is a strange moment that i dont think will last much longer. Part of the disproportionate aspect is because there is so much anonymity online and because it has so far been a sort of wild west and were seeing all of that range at the moment. I would be remiss if i did not proudly mention your example of rosa parks. Well, just a great line in the book which i included about how the purpose of the monterey bus boycott was to shame and open up the feeling of shame and the oppressors. I think this is more interesting is a a form of shame. Attacking in individual relentlessly. John stewart and colbert there are hugely popular. I think he has said the idea that stewart was listed as the most popular news anchor. Most trusted. Most trusted. Of course. Oreilly is the most popular. Say what you think. Apologies. Is not as confrontational because of the laughter, is that the idea . It is definitely not as confrontational. You you see this as the 1st form of punishment in hunter gatherer societies, ridicule, just because that is just the lowest cheapest, sort of least harsh form of punishment that there is. And yet in some ways i think he is just so clever. Again not just for the ridicule but for pivoting our attention and refocusing it on bigger systems issues taking the Brian Williams case and pivoting it more about weapons of mass distraction in iraq and the veracity of that argument. Drifting it getting it back up to the government. The government or two if the media is so interested in the truth where were they then . You also talk about gossip and how another cheap form. Another cheap forum, yes. This is related to john stewart and Stephen Colbert air because a lot of gossip is a more primitive way of badmouthing people which is our punishing them for things that we dont like about them which is sort of a roundabout way of showing them. You can have a cynical view of humanity was you look at some of the data and say, well, two thirds of what we do when we talk is gossip about other people. About 90 percent of that is negative at least in certain studies. Studies. I mean, commit would be interesting to look at subcultures. But when you think deeply about that, that, i think that it makes sense in the sense that think about your relationship or think about, you often dont talk about the really great things. You talk talk about the bad things in hopes of improving the and also if you think about society at large people that are doing a good job well we should certainly upon them and not the things that concern us most. Fundamental aspect. Delinquent taxpayers, the 20 states that shame going on taxpayers online. Why do we have to expose the people that dont do it . Should we expose the people that pay their taxes . You know, this is an absurd idea. 90 percent of people do pay taxes. Positive reinforcement. As a parent maybe positive reinforcement is buzz best to be preferable to negative punishment, but in Group Situations it is not fair out in the studies are looking at. It is absolutely true that positive reinforcement is a better tool and certainly for parenting we need a certain amount of people to cooperate not to say who are the people that matter to us most, but the interested people are running for everyone else. Most of us would try to write a a book about shame and look at it through literature and through maybe some books on economics and things. One of the interesting things a lot of experiments on punishment in the lab are used monetary funds of punishment. Lets have it be reputational. Play these games, cooperative games and that students can earn real money we will tell them the two least cooperative out of the six. It creates capitalism, money can order and trade just about reputation committed into something that is fundamentally human. And increasing cooperation. Do you do this at nyu . I was at ubc. You have students. They come to the lab and have the choice to give in to not give over the course of ten rounds. We get 10 at the start of the game. They can give 1 out of each round. And whatever is given to the public it is doubled and redistributed evenly among all players. There is an incentive to a Group Project at school. You need some people doing some work. Some people do give, some people dont. Low levels of cooperation. And this is what we saw. The threat of exposing at the end of the game the two least of the two most did increase. That was the main one. What other types of, if they could know the identity of certain players, who they want to know. Overwhelmingly overwhelmingly people want to know the least cooperative player. Something that i talk about in the book really fascinating in terms of animals that have highly social lives wind up showing a lot of the same behaviors and manipulation. The one that comes to mind of the sparrows. Yes sparrows are you an example. The power of deception but what is interesting i could explain the experiment in full of what it really got at is even sparrows little birds use ostracism. Individuals that they felt were trying to deceive the fly. I do know Something Like that. There was one of the chapters in the book. Its a highly effective shaming. It can be used for anything. This is the whole power that we were talking about but it really could. In other words, shame itself has a Bad Reputation which can be a neutral tool for good or ill. The importance of the habits. The importance of the habits. The audience is so much a part of the tool. Our attention is finite. We are being asked to be a part of the audience for some sort of technique. Where should you focus your shaming or attention on somebody else doing the shaming the 1st is that the audience should be fundamentally concerned with the transgression. Aside nap that is very popular you can expose places for doing the wrong thing. The restaurant is of course. They do respond to these sites. The misuse of the audiences attention for things like this. It only affected this one person. Exactly. Between them in the thai company. We all get Better Service in this regard. We wind up losing the power of shame for another activity that did affect all of us. I get example of attribute one is an app that tells all of your friends. I i just dont, im not convinced thats very effective. Here at the victims of the transgression. Exactly. Somebody who would be. Somebody went straight to your boss. This would be a better tool. But i think that gets exactly to my. Whatever is asking to be a part of the audience they should