Repeat A Lie Often Enough

Peter Kinderman If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes encoded in the brain as a truth

Hilary Jeffs So I thought it was a really smart play by the RCEM in terms of making sure that they were setting the agenda, that this was about government cuts first

Peter Kinderman somebody very close to me was talking about Andy Burnham and was talking about number 10 North and was saying that he spent 40,000 pounds on a fake door in order to, he didn't, he spent a thousand pounds on a fake door

Hilary Jeffs Hello and welcome to Experience the Weekly podcast where we get to psychoanalyse the news. If you like us, are news junkies who are also obsessed with why people behave the way that they do. This is the podcast for you. This week we are gonna be discussing the AfD historic win in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. We are gonna be talking about wars in our A&Es, and also we are going to be assessing John Healey circa skills. So that's all coming up along with the concept of the week delivered for us by Professor Peter Kinderman, professor of Psychology. How has your week been? First?

Peter Kinderman Good so far? Yeah, I'm, I'm all right. I'm doing a bit of kind of reading and a bit of physical work with my hands, so yeah, a good balance.

Hilary Jeffs Well, as you know, I get a little bonus bit of benefit by us meeting each week, which is some free therapy. I dunno if you've worked out. That's what I'm trying to do. But I need your advice this week because I went to the rest is Fest on all weekend, all the different goal hanger podcasts. And I chose to go to The Rest Is Politics because that's my other passion is politics. And it was a live show. It was the US and the UK guys up on stage, which was great. So of course I'd booked the tickets. I downloaded the tickets. I'd looked at all goal hangers, you know promotion about the events. I must have looked at these tickets 20 times. So, I booked parking and I parked and Julie walked into the box office only to be told I was at the wrong hall. I'd gone to the Royal Albert Hall, not the Royal Festival Hall, which would make more sense given that the tickets came from the South Bank Centre. And the Royal Albert Hall is most definitely not on the South Bank. So, I did arrive late, but I did get in, they let me in 15 minutes late, but they wanted me to walk to my seat, which was all the way right in the middle of the auditorium. And I've had to,

Peter Kinderman I guess.

Hilary Jeffs I think it was a walk of shame, but I refused to do it. So there was a seat that actually was easier to get into, but it was all good fun. But what's going on? Is it that time of my life, the memory pause, is it indeed early onset dementia or something else? What could be going on that I just misread this again and again and again.

Peter Kinderman Well, my guess would be, and I don't, I, you know, you say therapy, but I'm not gonna give you therapy. I'm gonna give you reassurance, which is, I think it's just perfectly normal. You have a busy life like many people do, and Festival Hall and Albert Hall are very similar phonetically, and it happens all the time. So, as you were talking, I was thinking of instances in my life where A, I've done things like that, which is extremely common, and b, where other people have done similar things. I mean, one of my friends turned up to an academic conference exactly a month early. So flew into Montreal and booked into a hotel and was a month early. And

Hilary Jeffs the best way to attend a conference.

Peter Kinderman One, the other of my friends turned up to a, the University of Suffolk when she should have turned up to the University of Sussex, which is a similar sort of

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, that's a 15 minute taxi ride from one end of London to the other. Is not gonna cut it there, is it? You're definitely not making that. I like

Peter Kinderman the answer is none of the above. It's just normal.

Hilary Jeffs Okay, thank you. You see, this is why it's so reassuring for me. This is why we meet every single week. You've got a concept for us as ever. What is it this week?

Peter Kinderman The concept is the illusory truth. The yeah, illusory truth effect, which is the concept much beloved of politicians or some politicians, which is if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes encoded in the brain as a truth.

Hilary Jeffs The alternative facts.

Peter Kinderman Yeah.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, that's

Peter Kinderman And if, yeah, if you are backed by like media presence, and if you're backed by money, and if you have a plan and a bit of confidence, then you simply say, state a lie. People tell you that it's a lie. You casually brush off that fact and just carry on repeating the lie again and again and again, until people have heard the statement so many times that it's absorbed as being a truth.

Hilary Jeffs So the illusory truth concept, yeah, that is definitely what must be going on. And indeed, I think it's quite pertinent to our first headline this week, which is the AfD, the far right in Germany, getting a historic win in Saxony-Anhalt. Now, they haven't quite done enough to get a majority. There were three seats short of that majority, but they've basically doubled their vote in the last five years. And the CDU, the ruling party has gone down roughly by 50%, but the turnout was huge. It was 78%. Now we would love to get turnouts of 78%, but part of what they were peddling was a nostalgia for the Communist East German regime. And for a time then, and guess what? It worked with virtually all the age groups. About 40% of all age groups voted for them apart from the over seventies. Hmm. Those with long memories, they didn't vote for it.

Peter Kinderman So when I was doing my PhD many, many years ago, I was looking into the explanations that people come up with for things and through kind of, you know, I do real experiments and it looks very much as if one of the things, at least that's going on is that people, when they're confronted with a difficult situation, look for explanations. And then what you do is you cycle through those possible explanations, rejecting the ones that don't work until you find one that does work. And then the second point is, one of the reasons why you reject explanations is because they don't work for you emotionally. Like it was my fault. No, no, no. That can't possibly be the explanation. It must have been some other reason. And on they move. And I, a little while ago, you and I were talking, and I said this idea of inus the, this philosophical concept, and by that point people have already switched off. So the idea of it's quite complicated and it relates to history and it relates to our position in the world, and it relates to the global economy and it relates to the way in which generations cycle through sociological phenomenon, people have switched off. What you want is a simple explanations. So I think that the illusory truth, truth effect yeah. I mean I think it's absolutely present in populist and particularly right wing at the moment, but I think it used to be the case. Yeah. It used to be the case for left-wing parties, I guess, you know, it's all a fault of the capitalists just, you know, vote for me or kind of, I know support me in some way and we'll, we'll deal with it. It's all their fault. We can, we can solve the problems simply through collective farming or whatever. But at the moment, it's the right wing politicians, particularly that are doing it. And I think that, so I heard somebody, you know, somebody very close to me was talking about Andy Burnham and was talking about number 10 North and was saying that he spent 40,000 pounds on a fake door in order to, he didn't, he spent a thousand pounds on a fake door. So it's not that he didn't spend the money, that the 40,000 is the bit that sways people. So I think you,

Hilary Jeffs there to make it work. Is that what you're saying?

Peter Kinderman Yeah. So there's enough truth to make it works. And it is an inauguration. And I think that the illusory truth effect can, can relate to explanations as well as facts. Don't worry about the complicated bit. It's all a fault of the migrants. Don't worry about that. It's just, we'll, we'll make America great again. How will you do that? Look, the economy is stagnant. We'll stimulate it. How will you do that? By stimulating it. It, so I think repeat the illusory explanation and don't worry about the complications appeals to people if they don't want to get into the complicated analysis..

Hilary Jeffs Well, as well as them sort of having this nostalgia for 1970s, 1970s, sorry. Well 1980s was when the wall came down, when there was the reunification, wasn't it, of Germany. They are also really seems to be taking a whole leaf out of the propaganda book. You know, they starting what they want. Part of their manifesto is to change how children are taught, which we've also been seeing in America. And it just smacks to me of like the Hitler youth that you're trying to sort of brainwash kids. What is the psychology of this sort of propaganda?

Peter Kinderman Well, I mean, like I said, I think part of it is what, there are facts that we learn that we use as adults and it's actually quite difficult to pin down the absolute truth of it. One of the things that, again, one of the things that you do in science is it's things like, you know, here's a picture of the earth in a science textbook for 10 year olds and it's [unclear]. You know, it's a sphere with a core and a mantle and volcanoes. And you think, what's the evidence for that? And the reason why we have very expensive universities and long, long, long degree programmes is because the evidence trail is long and complicated. What we often do is absorb facts because we're simply told them by teachers. And I think that what you can do is hijack that by, you can simply tell people that those individuals lead a lifestyle which is less good than mine. Those people are worth less. And you can absorb those sorts of facts as easily as you can absorb facts about the scientific world. So I think the idea that, you know, it's natural to have a man and a woman and children, that being attracted to people of the same gender as yourself is unnatural and wrong. Kids can come back from school going, well, I was told it so it must be true. I was told that volcanoes are the earth's magma bubbling up through the surface of the crust. I was told that it's wrong to have sex with people of the same gender. I was told that masturbation will lead to mental degeneracy. I was told these facts. So I think get 'em young is what the Jesuits did with God. And, you know, get 'em young is what banks do with where they're selling bank accounts to 12 year

Hilary Jeffs just students

Peter Kinderman get ' em young and you've got 'em for life. So, yeah. And

Hilary Jeffs To be fair, it did work with Lloyd's and myself, but there you go.

Peter Kinderman Yeah, and you know, because kids have to learn so many things about the world. Yeah. Traffic always comes from your right. When you are crossing the road until you go to Europe, you know that you just have to learn facts because parents tell you facts because it's important that you understand these things. And then what you can do is the propagandists can work in. One of the things that I thought was interesting about the AfD message was that they were selling a message that I profoundly believe is the thin end of the wedge of their message, which is, you know, the traditional family is one that we should support. Well, that's code for we should undermine other people's lifestyle choices.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, absolutely. But doing what you were suggesting last week, which instead of bashing the other, you actually promote what you want to happen. But it is sort of ridiculous, isn't it? It takes loving people and it takes a village to raise a family, as we all know. And I'm not sure there is evidence to suggest that, especially when you consider how many relationships end in divorce, that actually a man and a woman raising a family is the ideal. Apart from the fact that there's bigotry that stops people being accepted as same sex parents,

Peter Kinderman Well, it, I mean, it's, it's rarely been, it's consistently true throughout human history. It's not true in the animal world. You know, if we thought that what was natural is right then neither you nor me would be wearing spectacles or indeed using the internet. I think we make life better by understanding how the world works and then adjusting to it in order to, you know, achieve what it is that we want. We've always lived with complexity and very, very simple messages are unlikely to be true. I think the other thing is one of the things that I find, I dunno, it's somewhere between utterly terrifying and hilarious, is we have seen the consequences of the rise of ultra right wing politics Germany. We know how this story ends and it's very bad. So we don't really need, we don't really need to think too hard to think. This is a very worrying

Hilary Jeffs the German intelligence services themselves talk about the threat of the AfD as being a far right party. It was the win was retweeted and by, Trump, but also by the Russians. They could not be happier at this kind of result because of course it does lead them to towards destabilising Europe even further. And that's where it actually starts mattering. But what I find quite interesting is that obviously we've had the protests that have happened over the weekend, both at Dover and at Portsmouth over the small boats crossings. And we can see the rise of the populace, right, or the hard right, or the far right, whatever you want to call it, and all the different factions across Europe. But what the AfD vote showed us was that 80% of people in Saxony-Anhalt no longer trusted the government to sort out their problems. And that's actually something that is a real message for our politics back here, isn't it?

Peter Kinderman Well, it is, it's also, so one of the things that I've, I don't want to sound as if I know all the answers for other people. I don't. But I'm trying to work out the answers for myself. And one of the things that I was curious about was why would people associated with the right wing politics actively associated with right wing politics, have the attitude that they had about things like vaccinations and COVID? And there's an element there. I think there are two profound elements. One is, we should not act collectively. We should act selfishly, which is a moral position that I find objectionable. I also find it scientifically objectionable 'cause that's not how social animals work. And it's an absolute fact that human beings are social animals. So the idea that in response to a challenge we should separate out, be competitive with other people, to see other people as less than ourselves, see it as a zero sum game, as Barack Obama said. And compete with people as opposed to cooperate with people strikes me as a really bad message. But it does mean that individual freedom commercial responses to healthcare and rejecting things like collective action, world health organisations and forth fits. The other thing that I thought was kind of interesting is, you know, why is there scepticism about mainstream scientific explanations for things like, well, climate change? And again, it's not collective. We don't need to work together. Individualism works. But

Hilary Jeffs But this is all Darwin's fault, isn't it? Because Darwin came up with the theory of evolution, but it was all about competition

Peter Kinderman It's all Galton's fault. It's not Darwin's fault,

Hilary Jeffs Is that?

Peter Kinderman It's all Edward Galton. It. And he's a psychologist, right? And, you know, terrible, terrible, like eugenics. I mean, I think a lot of things ha went wrong in about 1908 when they started to develop ideas from biology that played into that sort of mindset. And so, again, you're not, but most geneticists and most biologists don't follow a eugenicist path. One of the rea, and this is important, one of the reasons why people on the right knock sides is 'cause science doesn't back right with explanations for things. But again, you've got this idea of very, very powerful people, people politically powerful, especially the established right wing in America and economically powerful people, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and so forth, knocking experts. Because if the answer is it's very complicated and we need to work together to solve this problem, but if we work together, we as a species will benefit massively. That doesn't play into the right-wing agenda. What plays into the right-wing agenda is, oh, yada, yada, yada. It's really complicated. I don't think it's so complicated. Who trusts experts anymore? There's, there's a war going on and I'm on the side of them.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah,

Peter Kinderman It's simple and wrong. Explanations.

Hilary Jeffs Most species work through some form of symbiosis and cooperation, and that's how they thrive, rather than it being the survival of the fittest, haven't they? So, Galton, what was, tell us a bit more about Galton before we move on.

Peter Kinderman So Galton was a sort of mathematician and scientist and kind of a pioneer psychologist. Very excited by the idea of measuring things. So he had various devices, I mean physical devices that, one of the things that he did, apparently, I don't think this is a myth, but he had a device for,

Hilary Jeffs Or you are gonna be wearing a clearly not really T-shirt and you've got one now 'cause I've sent you one. Good. Good.

Peter Kinderman But apparently he walked down the street ticking off women that were attractive and women that were not attractive and making some sort, I can't remember the exact hypothesis he was tested, but calculations he was looking at things like brain size and reaction time. And he developed very, very good, very useful statistical tests for determining whether this group of people's scores, which are plagued by randomness, statistically differ from that group of people's scores. Again, plagued by randomness. But it was mainly motivated by proving that people exactly like him were superior. That's, that's the game.

Hilary Jeffs I'm sure that there was a whole load of confirmation bias going on in that research was So do you think.

Peter Kinderman Well yeah. There's a lovely story in, Stephen Jay Gould's book. I think it's, I can't remember the title of it. Mismeasurement of Race maybe. But he was talking about how there's a, there's a, there's a terrible paper, a terrible, terrible paper about brain volume. And for some reason, this person got the skulls of black people and the skulls of white people, and he put poured ball bearings into the brain cavity in order to measure the brain volume. This is on the logic, having a big, big head is equivalent to intelligence, which I guess it might be on the grounds of pelvic size and all

Hilary Jeffs We note the size of your forehead, by the way.

Peter Kinderman Carefully shaved of course to reveal, not really. And what it, what it says in the paper is that, you know, more ball bearings went into the white skull and into the black skull after you've shaken it a little bit more. So it's a bit like cornflakes, you have to shake it so you have to, it actually, you know, it stated in the paper, you have to shake it in order to get the answer that you want. It's, yeah, it's, it's pseudoscience in the, in the service of eugenics. And so yeah, the misuse of science in order to confirm a bias that makes you feel good because it makes you feel like you are the member of the master race.

Hilary Jeffs Well, and what I find like completely crazy is apparently we've got all the right genes and all the right switches in our body that we could be born black. You know, it's just about which switches get turned on or off. That's the difference. It's not anything else, is it? It's just colour. It's just pigmentation.

Peter Kinderman It is just pigmentation. The, I mean, since we're off on a diversion about race, I mean the con the concept of race doesn't match up to genetics anyway. There's more genetic variation within racial stereotypes than there is between the racial stereotypes because what we conceive of different from us isn't actually supported genetically. So I would have more similarities with somebody who looks very different than with somebody who looks very similar because our genes don't work that way, as you say, the genes that can control pigmentation and indeed things like, you know, facial bone structure and so forth, there was a small number of genes that control those variables. And a large number of genes that control other variables. And the genetic variance between conceptually, socially defined races is much greater than the differences within those groups is much greater than the differences between those groups. So the whole concept of race is a, is a sociological and historical thing rather than a scientific thing.

Hilary Jeffs Which of course could bring us onto gender as well, but we are not, we're moving on to our next headline right now, which is the War Zone. That is our NHS. Now, this is a story that 75% of NHS emergency workers face attack once a week on average. 96% of them, don't always feel safe at work, whereas 4% do, which is a shocking statistic really in and of itself. And obviously the Royal College of Emergency Medicine have come out with this study and explained, you know, that this is the why A&Es are as difficult as they are and we need more resources. But equally crucially, this report came out just ahead of a BBC investigation into the fact that there is a rising amount of negligence claims coming out of A&E as well in a way that it's not happening to other areas of medicine. So I thought it was a really smart play by the RCEM in terms of making sure that they were setting the agenda, that this was about government cuts first. I mean, from my point of view, loads of people find it really hard to actually see a healthcare professional in primary care these days. And I wonder if A&E gets more inundated because there are certain lots of people who just want the reassurance of being seen face to face, and it's the only way that they can get to see a medic.

Peter Kinderman Well, we know that that's true. So again, when I, when I was in paid employment, I was responsible for, responsible for, I was responsible for reporting up the chain of command about primary care primary care research. And yes, we know that people find it difficult to access primary care and often, you need to access effectively primary care out of hours. And the more socially disadvantaged you are, the less able you are to access primary care. But so the pressure is towards going to A&E and the primary care physicians and the academics and the managers that support them are consistently trying to come up with ways of having, you know, effectively GP diversion points at A&E they're using nurse practitioners to do minor interventions. So freeing up, well, not freeing up time, but using the resources of the NHS effectively and absolutely the idea of going to A&E. 'cause you need to see someone, of course. And like I say, the more socially disadvantaged you are, the more the pressure is in that direction. Absolutely. I, and I think also you mentioned government cuts. Yes. So if you are having fewer primary care physicians per head of population year on year, and then that will put pressure towards A&E. And if the funding for the NHS generally is low, which spending on healthcare in the UK is stunningly efficient because we know that we spend relatively little, in America, for instance, they spend an enormous amount enormously higher proportion of their income and GDP on healthcare than here. So it's, it is massively underfunded compared to where it needs to be. So the pressure is all towards that. The other thing you've gotta think of is, why, and yeah, I am cynical in who's who might possibly benefit from an underfunded, nationalised healthcare system. Well, acronyms like Bupa spring to mind. If you are running a non NHS healthcare system, it is to your advantage that people become dissatisfied with the healthcare system. So what you want is two things. First of all, you want the NHS to be relatively underfunded so that it'll push people towards private healthcare. And secondly, you want lots of stories in the news saying A&E departments are, are war zones. Oh, well I better renew my Bupa subscription then, because I want to avoid that.

Hilary Jeffs Well, I think that the NHS though still does have a reputation of doing emergency medicine better than, than the alternatives. And certainly I know that if I had a problem with my heart or I had cancer, you know, touch wood, then I would rather be in the NHS, which may be a controversial statement these days, but I still think that they deliver better care than the alternatives for those kind of crisis points. But that's maybe just my perception of it. But perception is king. And that's what, I found when I was in A&E a couple of times with one of my kids over the last month, that it doesn't feel efficient as a system. It does feel chaotic. And when you are there waiting and waiting, bumped up against people, not getting moved through in what I would consider to be kind of an efficient order people do get cross. How important is the physical environment of A&E and how much, how much difference could they make to the safety of their staff by simply trying to make the optics better and calmer in A&E.

Peter Kinderman I think I'd be mildly concerned about your use of the word simply. I don't think that NHS managers and clinical leaders are going, yeah, I know it's simple, but we won't bother. And I know it'd be cheap, but we won't bother. I think that they are working extremely hard to try to make the changes and put in place the investments and the support that we need or they need in order to achieve efficient healthcare and keep their staff safe. I just don't believe that they're unmotivated by those things. I think that the, you know, it's patching up crumbling damn walls against a buildup of pressure from outside. I think there are weights at A&E because if you've got a minor injury, then you will be triaged away. I think they, having been to A&E a few times over the past few years, and also incidentally, I've, I've had, well, I've been involved in emergency healthcare in, Belgium and China for what it's worth, I think that they are monitoring the safety of the patients waiting. And if you've got a nasty injury that's, that's painful but not life threatening, then you will be lower down the triage list than somebody coming in with a heart attack. I think they're probably trying to manage it very well given the resources that are available to them. One of the things, just to be aware of, which I think that it's not that they need to do more, it's that we need to pay attention more. So the last time I was in a hospital, I was sitting there oddly waiting for the internal length of time that we were waiting to, in order to go through, and there were big signs that said, I thought worded quite well, given that most people are in pain. Most people, don't want to read, et cetera. That, and it said, here are some of the reasons why somebody might be seen before you if you are in a queue. And I thought, that's what you need to do. That's, that's a useful message to have. You come in, somebody else comes in, they get seen before you and you think, well, hang on. What's going on here? I mean, is there a problem? Have I been forgotten? And I think the messaging of how they manage cues, is

Hilary Jeffs There were big signs up as well, which was saying, please do not leave here. If you've got any questions, if you've got any concerns at all, please do make sure you ask them. It was unclear as to who you could. I mean, you could go and had, there was accountability with like the head of nursing and things like that, but actually on the ground it was slightly unclear about how you would make that happen in reality.

Peter Kinderman But hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Right. So this is, this is the thing that, so you go to A&E and somebody triages you, and you sit there and your arm's bleeding. You've got a T detail wrapped around it, and after about an hour and a half, you think I need to speak to someone. Who do I speak to? Where's a nurse? We're all bloody treating people, aren't they? What do you want? Do you want a fully qualified nurse to sit there waiting, going, ask me a question? No. You get him bent into the room, fully scrubbed up, and no, you do not want nurses hanging around looking visible, waiting to be asked questions. You want them to be treating patients. So

Hilary Jeffs Do I still am not convinced that it is efficient enough as a use of time. So as soon as my son got to see a nurse, it was like, this is silly. Why have they not already sent you for an x-ray? It's clear you needed

Peter Kinderman hang on. Hang on. But.

Hilary Jeffs But equally, when I went with my neighbour, they, we were sat there for five hours knowing that they were gonna need to do

Peter Kinderman No. So

Hilary Jeffs so they, she didn't get any sleep all night because she's just

Peter Kinderman Okay, hang on. No, so your neighbour comes around and says, Hillary, I'm thinking of taking a job as an auxiliary nurse in the local A and e department. You are brilliant. We need, and you go, yeah, I'm just, Hillary, what's your opinion on the working conditions? Because what they say is that I would get sacked if I, if I spend more than three minutes in a working shift sitting down that I have to evacuate my bowels and my bladder before starting work. 'cause I'm not allowed any working breaks. I'm not allowed to talk to a member of my professional colleagues unless it's about work. And I'm going to clock in at exactly eight o'clock in the evening and clock out at two o'clock in the morning, and I'm not allowed to use my phone, take a break or do anything other than work for the You go, just don't, don't go there. I mean, it's lovely. Your absolutely efficient use of NHS resources in terms of delivering, you wouldn't last more than a week without killing somebody. PE the employees need to have

Hilary Jeffs I'm not laughing at someone getting killed. By the way, I'm not laughing at someone getting killed, by the way.

Peter Kinderman Is hyperbole for public effect.

Hilary Jeffs Not really.

Peter Kinderman Clearly not really. The NHS needs to employ staff at a decent, humane, reasonable working condition. Yeah, I think, I think A&E staff, yeah. If there's a nurse who's clearly, basically for wonder of other words, taking a piss and being lazy, then they need to be spoken to like in any other walk of life.

Hilary Jeffs Because they're being lazy. I, but I do think it, there is inefficiency built into the system. When I look at it feels frustrating,

Peter Kinderman What it is. I have to say that I am, I'm good at many, many things. I'm not the world's best manager and I'm pretty inefficient in my own personal life, so I'm not, I'm not gonna be anybody to lecture anybody else. No. My point is that when you turn up at work, you've gotta have a reasonable standard of working life. And I think managing staff where they're working at a reasonable level of efficiency for an entire shift means that yeah, people will have a chat to their friends. They will go and make a cup of tea and then they'll see you to stitch up your finger because if they saw you to stitch up your finger and then had a cup of tea, they'd be making the next person wait. I think people needed decent quality of life at work, and I think being chartered at for just looking after themselves a little bit is okay. Well, no, it's not okay. I made the point.

Hilary Jeffs I didn't even feel it was, is that, I felt it was much more systemic than that. But let's go on to that wellbeing of stuff, because that is really important about being able to retain members of staff as well. And what is the impact on these workers about being subject to so much abuse in a week? I mean, if you are in fight, flight, or freeze, which they must be when people start attacking them. 'cause I know what it's like, you know, you are attacked once and then after that you start seeing warning signs, don't you? And you start getting more and more on edge. What does that do to our, our systems and to our wellbeing?

Peter Kinderman Well, I mean, I think being exposed to that level of potential hostility is going to be stressful in the sense of, you will be walking into a situation where you are expecting hostility. You know, for members of staff, they're walking into a working environment where there are signs saying you are about to get abused by members of the public, basically. And I think that that's going to put them in a level of heightened stress. I think the counterpoint to it might be knowing that other people will have your back. So one of the things that happened quite a lot when I was in working in inpatient acute psychiatry is because of my approach to the care of people who've had problems that affect their mental health. I was often, to be honest, I was often disagreeing with my professional colleagues. So we'd sit there and we'd be having a cup of tea and I'll be saying, but your analysis doesn't make sense. And they're not saying, they don't go, Peter, you gotta realise this. And I go, no, no, no, no, I don't. And then there would be an incident and we would all help. And there was an element of knowing that even if you are having quite a passionate disagreement with somebody about things that really matter, if there was something that was threatening your wellbeing, then you were part of a team. And that might be a counterpoint to that threat of knowing that all of your colleagues have got your back no matter what. But it's gonna be extremely stressful. It's also going to affect your view of human nature, because if what you're exposed to all day long is persistent threat and the possibility of abuse, then you may well develop the impression that that's what human beings are like. And of course, most people are nice most of the time.

Hilary Jeffs I agree with you on that, although it's a controversial point of view in my household, I think where people seem to think that the majority of people aren't nice, but the, for me, the facts on the street don't back that up. When you walk down the street, mostly people wanna help you and obviously I live in a really nice area, which makes that much more likely. But wherever I go, I feel that people are trying to help me. Maybe I'm just delusional and just think that, of course they want to help me. I dunno. But if you go in with that kind of attitude that you know someone is gonna help and you're not sort of resistant to it. And I think that does go a long way. But of course, you know, if you live constantly with people like the gangs that are taking over the country, that's a horrific situation to feel that you are held hostage in your

Peter Kinderman But again, hang on, hang on, hang on. The gangs that are taking over the country,

Hilary Jeffs Okay. Yeah, that was hyperbole. Clearly not

Peter Kinderman no, it wasn't. Well, it might have been hyperbole. Well, yes, first of all, it is hyperbole. Gangs are not taking over the country. There were some places some of the time where some people are pursuing criminal activity and are using violence in order to support their criminal activity. Big surprise, that's kind of what people have done since Mesopotamian times. Secondly, I, you know, I live in South Manchester. South Manchester, you know, it is not unusual to be woken up by the cars with little crosses on the back of them. And little crosses on the back of them are the ones which have got firearms in them, the police cars. So, you know, just, you know, so they screech down, up and down our road. 'cause our road is a, near a police station, and b it's quite, you know, a broad road and they wake us up. There's a lot of stuff going on in South Manchester. I'd rather live in South Manchester right now than in the East end when the Krays were wandering around having fights with the

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, I think that like when people get nostalgia, I'm like, it was crazy. There was

Peter Kinderman worse.

Hilary Jeffs Crazy

Peter Kinderman so what I took objection to in your, in your cupboard was gangs taking over has a timeline of it's getting worse. There was actually no evidence that it's getting worse. I would, I think I'm safer now than I would've been in, I don't know, 1940 or whenever it was when people, oh no, 1950s when the craze were hitting people on the head in hammer were hitting people in the head with hammers in crowded pubs, and apparently everybody was looking in the other direction when it happened. You know,

Hilary Jeffs Well, I, and I do feel that, you know, growing up in the seventies and eighties there was, you know, the minor strikes. There was an awful lot of distrust in our services as well, in a way that I don't think is quite at the same level these days. You know, for all the failings, there does seem to be much more transparency

Peter Kinderman And like I say,

Hilary Jeffs perfect by any stretch of the

Peter Kinderman no, and there are extremely rich people who are prepared to spend a lot of their money pointing out to us that things are really bad in order to get us to move in a political direction that suits well, they think suits them, and I think we should be careful about it, which is entirely related to the tip that I'm going to give later.

Hilary Jeffs Right. Well, before that tip, we are gonna discuss Healey's circus skills Chancellor. John Healey gave his speech yesterday and thought he's a fantastic orator. It really did work very nicely, but of course he's got a bit of a tightrope to walk, hasn't he? Between, you know, that whole, let's keep on with the Rachel Reeves. Fiscal stability combined with trying to, you know, let Burnham have all the toys that he needs to try and fix the country. And that is quite a difficult one. I was quite heartened. I hadn't realised that he used to be a disability campaigner. So you'd like to think there isn't going to be the same sort of gaffes as there were when Keir first came in. I mean, it seemed to me that what did he do? He had a war on worse nurses and a war on disabled people seemed to be the first sort of fiscal wars that he had, which didn't go down very well. Did you see the speech or did you think about it?

Peter Kinderman I didn't see the speech, I'm afraid 'cause I was busy laying paving slabs instead. Because that was just a

Hilary Jeffs That's how you rock and roll.

Peter Kinderman And I'm going to be, well maybe, no, I'm not gonna be controversial. Maybe going to be opinionated. So I think that if you are dealing with the sorts of tweaks that chancellors can make with the economy in terms of building the economy, yeah. There are decisions that you can make about benefits, cuts and winter fuel allowances and thresholds for income tax and so forth. And there are choices that you can make that would be the popular or unpopular in terms of those sorts of, I suppose, details almost. But the things that politicians can do to genuinely stimulate the economy, I think they, it is very, very difficult to do that. Again, I think that when people say it's simple, I don't think it is. I think even the things that are quite close to my heart, like, like the idea of public ownership of utilities, I'm aware that, you know, a mass programme of returning key utilities to public ownership will have consequences in the economy that I barely understand. 'cause I didn't study economics at university. I studied something else at university. So I think healing and others have have their hands tied quite a large. But I think that the elephant in the room here is, you know, not long ago we went through a seismic political change fueled mainly by lies that led to exactly what the economists predicted, which is a massive hit on our economic performance. Going through Brexit was predicted to impact on our GDP massively and negatively. It has

Hilary Jeffs didn't want to listen to the

Peter Kinderman didn't want to listen to

Hilary Jeffs No, they

Peter Kinderman it has impacted on our GDP massively and negatively. And now you've got politicians, any politician who's in in chancellorship will find it difficult to make changes in order to build up the economy because it's really difficult to stimulate the economy. And Brexit was a massive negative.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, indeed. He has a degree in social and political science, so, you probably applaud his background there in order to be able to see beyond just the figures and what he wants the figures to achieve for the country.

Peter Kinderman Also not just him. I mean the civil servants in the Treasury Department and external experts, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. You know, there are people who are embedded in the world of economics and finance who study historically and model on computers. You know, it is not just Healy going, oh, I don't think walking sticks need to be that expensive. Let's change that digit. It's, it's massively complicated computer modelings of the economy being presented at what are effectively academic symposia, and then presented to politicians saying, here are the choices available to you, and here is our projection about what the consequences of those choices will be. And again, I think there is an element of, and I think that journalists do it and, you know, I can understand why I think people on both the left and the right politically do it. I think people do it a lot, which is they do the equivalent of sitting down the pub and going, what I would do is, and I do genuinely think that, I mean, sometimes I sit there and I think a, I don't know what you are talking about because I didn't study political, but my answer to it is, you know what, Hillary? That's a very good question. What would I do with income tax thresholds? I'll tell you what I would do with income tax. It's really, really simple. What I'd do is I'd employ about 6,000 professional civil servants, and then I'd ask the, and I'd get the top computer scientists in the country to spend quite a lot of money on modelling systems that would allow us to model the various options. That's what I would do.

Hilary Jeffs Yeah, and you're right that because it is so interlinked, isn't it our systems, that the theory and the reality are quite difficult. And it comes back to our old idea, wasn't it as well, is that forecasts are never meant to come. True forecasts are there as a way of being able to help you steer the ship and let you move away from troubled waters. I thought it was quite interesting though, because he's announced that he wants to stop the amount of judicial reviews when it comes to the critically important national infrastructure projects. Which of course, at the same time, on one hand, they're giving all this power to the people and to the regions. And then this seems like quite a nice little power grab back to the centre.

Peter Kinderman Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you know, there's an element of, I suppose it's the same as popular populism, which is, I would like it EI would like to make it easier for people to do the right thing and more difficult for people to do the wrong thing. Well, of course you would. I mean, of course, but.

Hilary Jeffs I mean, but we know that we have got a problem with the fact that, we haven't been able to build and do the infrastructure that we absolutely need. But of course, there was not that long ago all over the news where the big huge data warehouses and warehouses that have been built not just data warehouses, but equally goods warehouses that have been built right on people's front doorstep, which is so bad, I would think, for their wellbeing. I mean, if you go from looking at a field to suddenly a big box with reversing lorries 24 7, that's not gonna help your wellbeing, is it?

Peter Kinderman One of the thing, no, one of the things that, you and I mentioned a while ago was the idea of, oh, dear God, what do we do in the face of this impossible situation? And the answer is, might include make wise choices. Not all AI systems, clawed, grok chat, GPT, are the same. So one of the

Hilary Jeffs are available.

Peter Kinderman Other ones are available and you can look at the algorithms that they use, and for various reasons, they veer in different directions. This is the idea that, you know, whether they're intelligent or whether they're algorithmic, it doesn't really matter. The point is that they are different in terms of the outputs. They'll, they'll give you. But the other thing is they're different in terms of how much energy they use and how positive or negative they are towards the environment. So there are AI systems out there that are much gentler on the environment, and there is at least one AI system, which I do use, which says that it is carbon positive system. So they say that they are, they are using renewable energies in such a way that the more times you use this system, the lower the carbon

Hilary Jeffs would love to investigate whether they're just buying some of that benefits from other countries and other companies.

Peter Kinderman Well, the truth is I haven't delved into it deeply enough, but what I could say, and this is not a tip, but I think we should do it nevertheless, is investigate who it is that you're getting your services from, even if those services are supposedly free. So some of the AI companies have been criticised for the enormous impact on the climate and on the environment that our searches do. But not all AI systems are the same, and some of them seem to be much more benign than others. So we can choose.

Hilary Jeffs Well, a wonderful place for us to stop this week's exploration of the news headlines and psychological dive into the different things that affect us as we go through our life. A wonderful thing. So before next week, we need this week to get from you a tip so that we can get a little nugget of wellbeing to help and improve our life this week. What have you got for us?

Peter Kinderman Well, this is, this is not necessarily a wellbeing tip as in do this and you'll feel better. But it is do this and you'll be, be better. Which is go and search for evidence. And I think it relates, I can, I can relate it, I could weave it into the story about chatbots, which is, I'm not gonna give you the name of the chat bot that you should use. Go and find the evidence and the response to all of these things, I think is go and look for evidence. I think be more scientific. One of the things that happens, especially in social media is that you're presented with something, engages your attention, and then you wish to elaborate. We all wish to elaborate, so go into more, you know, what are, be the consequences of this, what do you suggest? And I think we need to take a step back and go, what's the evidence for that? One of the things that I've found with Chat GPT, which I do use, is that you go, I'll ask them a question and they'll say, they'll give an answer, and then I say, what's the evidence for that? And he goes, oh yes, you're entirely right. I've got that. I just made it up.

Hilary Jeffs I'm sure they don't say that.

Peter Kinderman No, they absolutely do. I

Hilary Jeffs Oh, hilarious.

Peter Kinderman Was planning to take my family on a, on a, my extended family on a trip around Manchester. And so I went on a, you know, long story went on a walking tour, like the walking tour, thought I could do better myself. Asked chat GPT for some interesting facts about Manchester. And one of the facts it said is that in St. Peter Square, in like 1880 or something, there was a guy selling tickets at a far thing of time to see his fountain made of mercury, liquid mercury fountain illuminated by gas lamps. But it soon closed down because obviously the fumes and it was dangerous. And I went, that's really interesting. Tell me more about it. And then it told me a little bit more about it, and I said, do you have any sources for that? And he went, no, I just made it up.

Hilary Jeffs That's astonishing. Isn't that astonishing? I

Peter Kinderman And when I said, why, he goes and he goes, I had a long conversation with chat GPT about it. And I thought I was quite good. And I said, why? And he goes, well, because you wanted, you wanted those stories. I went, but I wanted factual stories. And he goes, well, yeah, I'm, I'm understanding that now. And I said, from now on, I want an absolute guarantee because I registered with it. I want an absolute guarantee that everything you produce for me is factually correct. And it replied, I can't do that because all I do, this is a check of response from chat GPT. I'll probably find it in my, in my search history for you.

Hilary Jeffs We need a screen grab of that.

Peter Kinderman Yeah. And it goes, all I can do is come up with a probabilistic estimate of what the next

Hilary Jeffs See, this is why I don't go near them. I really don't. And I just feel that it's so lazy to use it. But of course I am a Luddite now. I mean, I will soon become extinct as a result of this. I'll be like the

Peter Kinderman also it's

Hilary Jeffs I'll just spontaneously combust.

Peter Kinderman There's, there's only a certain number of minutes in a day and you know, it's quite useful to go, can you find me some stuff on X? But it doesn't find stuff on X. What it does is it finds the next most likely word to finish the sentence. Sometimes that's a factual response and sometimes is a hallucinatory response, but all it's doing is saying, mm oh, I'll choose, oh, mercury fountain.

Hilary Jeffs So even better than your tip of find the evidence, look for the evidence. Is everyone now who is using Chap GBT or any of these AI systems, get them to just give you facts going forward

Peter Kinderman Only facts.

Hilary Jeffs Just clarify with them, is this a fact

Peter Kinderman I,

Hilary Jeffs astonishing?

Peter Kinderman Chat, GPT once gave me a quote by me given a conference that I had not given because the conference had not existed. So it gave me a quote. It was a lovely quote. It was, it was a well worked version of the sort of thing that I would say, and it was Kinderman 2015. I said, what's the citation for that? And it gave me a citation, but it was a fake citation because it's just working out what it thinks I would like to see in the sentence.

Hilary Jeffs That is absolutely

Peter Kinderman and find the evidence,

Hilary Jeffs Yeah,

Peter Kinderman find out what it.

Hilary Jeffs I tell you what though, it makes you really realise that you've gotta write your own eulogy before you die, because otherwise someone else is gonna go and chat GBT. Mind you'll be ruler of the world then, won't it? It'll be like, Peter, we pay respects to World King.

Peter Kinderman Don't, I don't want to write my own eulogy. I won't be here to read it. I want, I want somebody else to write my eulogy that they should, they should do her chat g pt. They should write the eulogy that they would want to hear at my funeral. I'll be dead. I don't care.

Hilary Jeffs A good point. Yeah. One day it will happen to us all.

Peter Kinderman He was an utter bastard,

Hilary Jeffs No, no one is saying that. No, no one is saying that. Everyone will be crying into their cornflakes. Don't you worry. Right. Thank you very much for a wonderful week we've been talking about. Clearly. Not really. Come on then. Let's have a look at it. Open it

Peter Kinderman I will open it up. I won't put it on 'cause I refuse point

Hilary Jeffs I was just going to say clearly not really. If you spot us saying something that is factually inaccurate, you need to get in touch with us. All the details of how to do that are in the show notes, but, we must make Peter wear the t-shirt of shame. So if you can do some fact checking and digging throughout this episode. Do you ever wear a T-shirt? This is the question.

Peter Kinderman Of course I wear a t-shirt. I wear a t. I should put on a t-shirt in a minute and go and lay paving slabs.

Hilary Jeffs Okay. Oh, so the shirt is for us. You're just making yourself look more presentable. Well, thank you very much. We

Peter Kinderman Yeah. It is basic. It is basically trying to delude people into thinking I'm more intelligent by wearing the sort of shirt that intelligent people wear. It's, it's a, it's a fooling to people think.

Hilary Jeffs Haven't they proven that if you like put on a lab coat before you do a science exam, that actually you perform better? If you dress your role, you psychologically perform

Peter Kinderman they have done that. Also, I was very, I wrote something a few years ago, and so incensed the psychiatrist, psychiatrists never wear clinical coat. They're always in ordinary stuff. They, you know, it is usually the chinos and a, and a and a shirt. That's kind of what psychiatrists, but this guy put on a white coat in order to do to do a video blog pointing out that I was talking nonsense. So I thought just the idea of putting on a white coat and it made him look like, no, I won't finish the sentence, but you can think of many options for what it made him look like, but I thought that's just really funny. But he must have gone and got a white coat in order to put it on, in order to prove that he was a proper medical scientist. Nonsense.

Hilary Jeffs Well, clearly they do have a medical degree though. It's kind of built into the psychiatrist

Peter Kinderman Yeah, they do. I'll, I'll go and get a white coat next week and, or maybe I won't.

Hilary Jeffs Joan, us next week for another deep dive into our psyche, and looking at it from the news headlines point of view, which is always a good, wonderful thing for us to do. Have a lovely week.