- Uh I actually have you guys on opposite teams.
- What the?
- Ah, sports.
Is there anything better than going to a game
with your friends, eating some peanuts and cracker jacks,
and watching those losers on the other team lose?
I submit that there is not
and part of why we feel that way
is because we naturally sort ourselves
and others into groups.
Jay Van Bavel, an NYE psychologist,
has been studying how this group mentality
affects our empathy towards each other for years.
He found that people not only empathizes with others
in their group more, but actively take pleasure
when people in out groups fail.
especially when competition is involved,
But Van Bavel also found something else interesting.
When he had those groups compete,
he could change how empathetic they were
towards each other with one simple trick
and today we're going to try it for ourselves.
We selected participants who were fans
of rival sports teams
and separated them into groups.
And then we riled them up
to get the competitive juices flowing.
After we fanned the fires of competition,
we had them fill out a survey that gauged their feelings
for their fellow fans and rivals.
- [Woman] Are you sizing them up.
- No I'm not going to lie.
- Then we told them they would be competing today.
Hello everyone, welcome to our lab.
Today you're going to be participating
in an experiment with us and that experiment
is which fandom is best at a game
that we call the human knot.
The rules are pretty simple.
You all form into a circle, everybody puts both hands in,
grabs somebody else's hand at random
and now you're in a knot.
Then you just try and untangle yourselves.
But just before we started the game,
we told them we'd made a mistake.
Actually, uh, wait, hold on a second.
- [Man] I can already see this right now.
- Who is Brianne Campbell?
- That is me.
- And who is Frankie Madrill?
- Right here.
- You two are actually on the wrong team.
You're gonna have to switch.
- What?
- No! - No!
- [Host] I'm sorry, it's what we have here
on the clipboard.
I appreciate it.
- Oh no.
- This is MVP right here!
- Yeah, yeah sorry.
- But I was gonna be the team leader!
- [Host] There's been a trade, yeah.
- Wait, what?
- This is what scientists found could totally change
someone's empathy for another group,
becoming a member of that group
and having to work with them.
Let the games begin.
And they're untangling blue, right away having some trouble.
Red immediately swaps over.
- Is this helping us win?
- You need to step over. - Wait, wait, wait.
- Let's step down. - I don't want you to win.
- [Leader] Some spinning motion there
and blue is the first completed!
- Wait I'm not happy.
- You're not the only person on my team.
- Oooh!
- Okay, leave her alone.
- [Leader] There's a lot of arms up in the air,
lot of loop de loops and it looks like
team mostly Kings fans gets the win again .
Two in a row for them and they have taken the lead.
- [Man] Two to one, oh well.
- Okay fine, go down and then step through, come on.
- You can do it man, lift up your leg.
- Onesies, mmhmm
- Don't step on the camera.
- Now where we gotta go, we gotta do it.
- Yeah! - Woohoo!
- That was almost.
- That's okay.
- We totally won!
- Yeah, yeah.
- When everybody was finally out and settled down again,
we had them take a reworded version of the questionnaire
from earlier and the results?
Everybody and I mean everybody's empathy for each other
went up.
Groups that had to accept a new team mate
reported feeling an average of 30.75% more respect
and connection to their rival fans
while individuals who switched saw their empathy
go up an average of 46.88%.
Of course, we had to ask them why.
- I mean, it was really hard at first.
I really didn't want to be a part of their team.
I was like, you know what, a little sabotage,
but then you know, I kinda into like
the competitive sport and just fun
and wanting to win no matter what.
- I definitely didn't want to be the jerk
who was going to be obstructive and not helpful
so I mean, you know, people are people,
even if they have a different alliance.
They're still people.
- I mean, sports aside, you still gotta be civil
and normal to people, but when the game's on,
you can be a complete asshole.
I'm open to that.
- It was rough to lose a member of our tribe here
but, you know, anybody who's gonna play to win,
that's a person I want on my team.
- You start working with these people
and you see that they want to win,
come on let's win, let's win and then you're like,
you know what, just go with the ride.
You gotta let go of the resistance.
- When I was refusing to win and you wanted to win
I was like, am I really gonna send four people home mad
because I wouldn't help or am I just going to give in
and have a good time?
So definitely that empathy weighed on me
to want to help.
- You should be able to work with anyone,
no matter who they are--
- [Man] Exactly.
- [Blue Hat] No matter race, color, sex, religion, anything.
- [Woman] Political beliefs.
- [Blue Hat] You know, people are people.
- Mm hmm.
- And winners are winners, so you know,
if you're gonna win, you can win with anybody.
- You develop an empathy as you're going through.
You'll find that little spot of commonality.
- It's easy to bond as a force, a wall,
and say I am part of this group
and you're part of that group and it's easy
to just dehumanize the other people,
but when you're one on one with somebody,
it's ridiculous to try to say
oh because you're in this group and I'm in this group
we can't get along.
I think that if more people knew each other as people,
it wouldn't be like that, we wouldn't have
to separate ourselves so much.
- We split ourselves up for so many superficial reasons
and when we do, we start shutting out people
who didn't make our cut, so if you're struggling
to connect with someone, try switching to their team
for a bit.
If you can stop thinking with an us versus them mindset
and just understand where another person is coming from,
everybody wins.
♫ Soul pancake