Hey there, ents and the ent-ish.
I'm Trace.
And I have been thinking about trees.
Isn't it nice to be back in this room?
I think so too.
That's right.
I joined Mark Rober and Mr. Beast to talk about #teamtrees
this week.
It's dominating the us tubes right now.
All you gotta do is help us get to a goal
of 20 million trees planted.
Who doesn't want to plant a tree?
Just click the blue button, go to teamtrees.org.
And for every 100 pennies you put in-- just 100 pennies--
we'll plant one tree.
Simple as that.
When I was in third grade, we got
to take a tree home on Earth Day.
It was wrapped in like wet paper towel,
and I planted it in our yard next to a bench.
And honestly, it's still there.
I asked my parents to go film it in our yard.
Hi, Mom.
Hi, Dad.
Hi, tree.
You notice the bench is actually gone, cause the tree got huge.
But, man, who doesn't want to plant a tree?
It's awesome.
More trees in the world is an amazing thing.
And if we're going to hit the ambitious goal of 20
million trees, we need at least 10 thin dimes
from a lot of you.
But that is it.
Come on.
Help make a difference.
Go to teamtrees.org.
Click that little button down below.
Every single, solitary sapling counts.
And make sure you comment if you did.
Now, hopefully, I've influenced you.
So let's talk some science of social movements,
just like this one.
I've got questions.
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Hey, everyone.
Welcome back.
I am, of course, Trace.
This is Uno Dos of Trace.
This is my living room, as you probably know.
Or maybe you don't, because you just started watching.
Hi.
Welcome.
This is my living room.
Those are my bookshelves.
My cat's around somewhere.
OK.
Let's talk about social movements.
As a group, we humans put social pressure on each other
to do things all the time-- to act.
Whether it works or not all the time, I can't say.
Like for example, Team Trees might not work.
I am recording this on a Monday.
I'm pretty confident that it's going to do OK.
We're all trying really hard out here.
There's a lot of creators on this.
And it's huge.
But we don't know if it's going to work.
In the digital era we tend to think of everything
as new and shiny.
But this kind of group social interaction and social pressure
has been influencing people since time immemorial.
Social pressure is a serious thing.
We are social creatures.
We evolved this way, and studies show that social influences are
hardwired to affect us a lot, even more than you might even
think.
This was first shown by psychologist Solomon
Asch in the 1950s.
So he did this.
Look at these two graphics.
Which line from the card on the left
matches the card on the right?
One human by ourselves could definitely
answer that correctly.
And Solomon Asch knew that.
So he did something much more devious
in his actual experiment.
He put the person in the room with seven other people,
and they answered the question first.
And all of them were in on it.
So if you're in a room, and everyone
said that the correct answer is A, by the time
it's your turn-- believe it or not-- many of you
would be very likely to say A as well.
And that's because social pressure works.
In fact, over multiple clinical trials,
one third of people in the experimental group
conformed to the opinion of the majority on average.
Amazing.
Even though it was obviously wrong.
I mean look at this.
The answer is definitely C. Or is it?
I don't know how to wink good.
In the control group where no one
was social pressuring anyone, only 1% of people
were giving the wrong answer when asked.
But in the experimental group, again, remember, like
a third of people did.
Social pressure works.
And it works on us a lot.
Obviously, we can't do the full experiment
here, because we don't have, you know,
six other people in this room with me or with you
who are all in on it.
But this could be cool.
Get a few friends.
Let them in on the secret, and then trick one into conforming.
You know, don't tell one of your friends.
See if you can do this social experiment at home.
Let me know what happens.
And lest you think that the internet connected world is
somehow smarter or more aware of this,
this test was updated in 2005, and it still holds up.
In this experiment, people met and got
to know each other in the waiting room
before the experiment began.
Again, some of the subjects were in on it.
And they went into a room and were
asked to pick the odd one out in a set of three.
40% of the subjects gave the incorrect answer
that conformed with the group.
40%.
We love social pressure, and we evolved to accept it.
And it seems like this is a negative thing.
But honestly, it's not meant to be at all.
Social pressure can be used to like
scare parents who thinks their teens are into butt chugging
or beezing, or something.
You remember those fad things that weren't real?
Yeah.
They weren't real.
But social pressure can also be a very strong force
for good and for positivity and for making everyone better.
And what is more on brand for me than all of those things?
Social pressure keeps us from being selfish all the time.
It keeps us hygienic.
And it helps us work together for social change,
to form governments, and maintain societies.
Here is a lighter, positive example.
People at concerts, watching movies, attending school,
and even in regular everyday conversations
are constantly providing reinforcing positive feedback
to each other.
And we have studied this to see how
it works with social pressure.
Brain scans of people at live concerts
show that our brainwaves when we're at a concert literally
sync up.
Brainwaves are a measure of the activity in our brain.
And during live concerts, with music
that makes you want to tap your feet or get up and dance,
the brainwaves of audiences synchronize with each other
to some degree.
Science!
You've probably felt this power when you're just
dancing at a concert.
You're not thinking.
You're not worrying.
You're just moving with the sea of humanity.
That movement is important too, by the way.
Researchers found it helps people bond.
They want to interact.
And they feel more of a sense of community
that has to do with a hormone, which
I'll talk about in a minute.
And that is all positive social pressure.
But let's not stop there.
Cause social scientists scanned students' brains
during classes too.
And they found the more engaged the student was
with the teacher, the more in sync their brainwaves were.
The closer the relationship with the teacher, the better friends
or mentor the teacher is with the student,
the closer that synchrony would be.
More research is obviously needed
to see if this actually helps us learn anything.
They don't know that yet.
But they're on that now.
Positive social pressure explains
so much of that sense of community
that we feel when you're on a dance team
or at a sporting event, in a great class or work
environment, part of a play, or even just out at the club,
you know, getting your groove on.
I don't go to the club.
I don't know how people dance at the club.
We feel this brain synchrony in conversation with others too.
Even strangers, who we've never spoken to before, will sync up.
Think about it.
Your brain and mind are probably synced up somewhat right now,
because humans are amazing.
Biological sidebar-- humans are not the only amazing things
out there.
Animals, like mice and the Egyptian fruit bat,
have also been known to pick up on social situations and cues
and synchronize their brainsies as well, because life
is cool, not just humans.
End biological sidebar.
Research from 2017 found that people whose brains
get all schwifty in this way are more pro social, i.e. they
want to help each other.
They want to create an interpersonal relationship.
They want to be a good human to each other,
especially in the task-related parts of their brain.
Let me put it as plainly as I can.
If you cooperate and conversate with another human,
your brains are going to sync up,
and you're more likely to get along
and to create a social relationship.
This isn't just with one person.
It also works with groups.
If you ever wondered why some people seem
to be addicted to their social group, this is part of it.
It's because they kind of are.
I mentioned a hormone earlier.
Human interaction and connection releases oxytocin.
Sometimes called the love hormone,
bleh, it's actually a bonding compound, more accurately.
Being pro-social release oxytocin
and promotes social cohesion.
This helps humans work together and get things done.
But it can also help people form strong bonds,
cooperate, and learn and grow together.
And it helps people form trust and want
to spend time together.
Of course, positive social pressure
can also make people feel like there are
in group and out group members.
You know, people who don't belong.
It's not always easy, but I really
think it's important to remember that just because someone
does something differently or isn't part of our group
doesn't mean that they're bad, even though the emotion
center of your brain, the amygdala,
will initially prompt you to think so.
Just fight that little bit of old reptile brain,
and instead see the accepting, possible, pro-social,
cooperative future you have in store.
This social interaction and cohesion
can literally affect your life experience, not just
by helping you make more friends.
You might feel more emotionally connected to others
when you interact.
Sure.
But you can actually experience less physical pain based
on your social connections too.
Studies show literally your tolerance for pain
is positively affected by the pain
tolerance of your social group.
Positive social pressure physically
makes you feel less pain.
I don't know how many other ways I can say it.
This is one reason why social movements work so well.
We feel good when we're part of it, and it helps us be better.
So let's bring the social function back
to the question at hand.
If we started with Team Trees, and it's
going around the internet right now and for the rest of 2019,--
and I know this might seem silly,--
but think about how you could feel if you
could participate with that.
If you help out with this, not only
are you going to go feel connected to the planet, you
know, which is a whole other video that I'm sure we can find
over the next week or month or so,
but you'll also get a great feeling of connection
with the other hundreds and thousands of humans who are
thinking this same thing now.
If you go join a group of people who
are physically planting trees in your area,
that's a step up even.
You're going to brain sync with them
too while you're in the same place.
And at least you're going to have some pro-social cognitive
interactions.
And at most, you could get some real relationships and maybe
long-term lower your pain tolerance,
if that's what you're looking for.
I mean, sex is cool and all.
But you ever tried peer pressure plus inter-brain brainwave
synchronization to promote cognitive connections
through shared social experiences?
Yeah.
It's pretty lit.
Thanks for watching, everyone.
I really hope that you learned something from this video.
I hope our brains synced up, even just for a minute.
Please go to teamtrees.org, or tap that little blue button.
Let's help the planet and help our brains.
I'm Trace, and I will see you humans and the trees
that we plant in the future.
Oh.
It's not over.
I got one last fun fact.
Every human requires about 750 kilograms of oxygen every year.
If you watched my Amazon video from a few weeks back,
then you know that most of our oxygen
actually comes from the sea.
But if we're talking about trees,
then it would be like 7 or 8 mature adult
trees worth every year.
Yeah.
More trees, more better for so many reasons.
OK.
That's it for real this time.
OK.
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