A few years back I made this series called “Bad Behavior” and since then I started
to notice people, but mostly politicians, behaving terribly.
Lying...
Bullying...
Gaslighting...
And I started to wonder, how can this bad behavior on such a public stage affect you
and me?
Could there be an influence where it kind of brings down the level of all of our behavior
in a wider society?
Do visible people acting terribly influence us to do the same?
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You might think that politicians mostly affect your life by raising your taxes or building
new roads but they can influence our lives in more subtle ways too.
And of course, that's nothing new: as long as people have been in positions of power
we tend to emulate them in different ways (whether we do that consciously or unconsciously).
For example Louis XIV, who was the king of France in 1643 was credited for popularizing
wigs because he wore elaborate wigs himself – the original wig influencer?
In the 1960s, women copied the first lady Jackie O's signature style.
And there's a lot of buzz about fashion in the royal family, from Princess Diana to Meghan
Markle.
My personal favorite is how demand for Portuguese Water Dogs increased after the Obamas got
one as the first dog.
But what we don't often talk about is the downside and how politicians and other authority
figures’ behaviors influence all of us in negative ways as well.
For example, in the 10 days following Trump's election win in 2016, there were hundreds
of incidents of attacks and harassment of minorities and women many of which repeated
phrases used by Trump.
But if you asked President Trump about that he would probably say...
“I take absolutely no responsibility, none at all”
Now that has been the pretty standard reply that the US president or the white house has
given when they've been asked about their response to COVID-19.
Instead of admitting even a tiny bit of fault, the president has
blamed China, the World Health Organization, and previous U.S. administrations that weren't
even in power when the pandemic began
This is called blame-shifting, the blame game, or the kick the dog effect, and we see it
all the time in everyone from politicians to CEOs and maybe you've even done it yourself.
And I get it, it doesn't feel good to be held accountable for a mistake, or if those other
people had just done something differently you wouldn't have had to make the mistake
in the first place, but how does blame shifting affect us and the people around us?
I decided to ask an expert.
My name is Nathaniel fast and I'm an associate professor of management at the USC Marshall
school of business.
Fast says that we blame others in order to defend our egos and protect our self-image.
We want to maintain the positive mental image that we have of ourselves.
But blame-shifting can have a lot of negative consequences both for us and for others.
Well, you know, certainly one of the most prominent kind of psychological States that
leads to blame shifting is ego defensiveness.
And so when people are feeling defensive, either in the moment or chronically, they're
much more likely to shift blame and, and have the personality traits associated with ego
defensiveness, you know, narcissism is the one that's really the strongest.
And so people with a strong sense of narcissism tend to have kind of a fragile ego.
And so they're very concerned about making sure that they look good in the eyes of others
and they're taking responsibility for all of the credit, for all the good things.
And then they're blaming others for all the bad things that happen.
so it's hard to learn from a mistake if all you can do is try to, you know, shift the
blame so that you don't get punished for it.
When we shift blame it's bad for our personal growth and, even though you might think that
shifting the blame makes you look better, studies show it actually makes you look worse
In one study, researchers showed that when people in leadership roles blamed external
circumstances for bad things happening people saw them as less powerful and felt more negatively
towards them.
Another study found that when executives blamed external factors for negative things happening
in the company, their stock prices were actually worse one year later.
But even worse, the behavior of shifting blame can actually be contagious.
Back in 2010, Fast did a study on blame contagion.
And in this experiment one group of participants read a statement by a politician–you might
recognize that politician–taking responsibility for a failure, while another group read a
statement where the politician blamed others for the same failure.
Later the participants were asked to write about a personal failure and those who had
read about the politician blaming others were more likely to blame others for their personal
mistakes.
What we have learned from all of this is that blame is contagious.
A lot of bad behaviors are contagious, anger and bullying can be contagious as well.
There is an epidemic of bad behavior.
On the other hand accepting responsibility, even though it might feel weird, can actually
have benefits.
Accepting responsibility can be a positive leadership quality.
Fast says that Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States was a great example of
this type of leadership.
And he kind of popularized that statement or that saying, and, you know, that's powerful
because leaders who are followers who have leaders, who who, who take responsibility
for things, even when they don't go well, they feel secure because they, they feel like
their leader is secure their leaders in charge.
He or she is going to take responsibility for whatever comes their way.
But how can we make it easier to take responsibility and avoid blaming others?
That study that Fast did in 2010, it has a potential solution.
Fast and his colleagues hypothesized that blame-shifting was due to people's desire
to protect their self-image.
Most of us want to think of ourselves as smart, competent people who do the right thing, and
admitting that we messed up can be threatening to that self-image.
They wondered if boosting the participant's self-image would make them feel less threatened
and then more likely to take responsibility.
When participants completed a self-affirmation task which was writing about a core value
that was important to them they were actually immune to blame contagion.
So even when they saw other people shifting blame they weren't any more likely to shift
blame for their own personal failures.
So perhaps spend some time thinking about your own core values whether that be your
relationship with your friends and family, your job or some volunteer work, or perhaps
the pursuit of knowledge.
And how you can enact these values in your own life, it'll probably make you a better
person.
And keep in mind that many positive and helpful behaviors can be contagious too.
Studies show that when people receive help they're more likely to be generous towards
others.
Of course there is one question still remaining: can a politician or a president's bad behaviors
be contagious?
We did a lot of research for this video and there's a surprising lack of data on this.
What we can see is that everyday people who are exposed to politicians blame-shifting
are more likely to blame other people for their personal mistakes.
Leaders behaving terribly can affect our behaviour in ways we might not realise.
And when you blame other people, it doesn’t make you look better – it just makes you
look worse.
So, just like how the behaviors of a CEO can impact the culture of a company, the behaviors
of a president or a prime minister can impact the culture of that country whether you like
that person who is in power or not.
Science is not here to be speculative but people are so, I look forward to joining you
in the comments section.
Doing one act of kindness is a step in the right direction and if you want some more
advice on how to change your behaviour I actually have a new series that is on a new streaming
platform called Nebula.
Nebula is owned by a bunch of YouTube creators and it has a lot of awesome originals like,
Alex Goes Bananas and Working Titles.
From YouTube creators you love like Real Engineering, Legal Eagle, Wendover Productions, and myself.
My show is like a magazine advice column for the internet where other creators write in
with a problem and we figure out how they can change their behaviour.
I'm sitting in the set that I made for the new show which is really just a corner of
my apartment.
My series, Questionable Advice, was made with the support of CuriosityStream, the subscription
streaming service with thousands of documentaries and nonfiction titles.
CuriosityStream loves small independent creators and wants to help Nebula grow, so they’re
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You’ll have access to thousands of big-budget documentaries, and you’ll get to watch Original
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