 Good evening. My name is Ian Walker. I'm Director of the Research School of Psychology at the Australian National University. It's my very great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight for the research school's annual lecture in 2020 to be delivered by Professor Stephen Riker from the University of St Andrews. We start by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet. We have a pair of respects to elders past and present and acknowledge and pay respects to any and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the audience this evening. Tonight, we're delighted to welcome a distinguished social psychologist, Steve Riker, who will be talking about from individual fragility to collective resilience, the two social psychologists of COVID-19, which is a hugely topical and timely address. To begin with, though, a couple of housekeeping items. First of all, this lecture tonight will be recorded and a link to the event will be sent to everyone registered after the event. All attendees will be automatically muted, audio and visually. At the end of the talk, there's an opportunity for a Q&A session. If you have a question for Steve, please type your question into using the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. It's now my pleasure to introduce Professor Russell Grun, Dean of the College of Health and Medicine at the Australian National University, to say some welcoming words. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to welcome the guests and particularly our special guest lecturer. 2020 is the fifth annual public lecture in psychology, the first to be held virtually. The first in 2015 was with Professor Pat McGarry, who was awarded Australian of the Year in 2010 for a talk entitled Early Intervention and Youth Mental Health Reform, Paradigms for the 21st Century Mental Health. We all know the distinction of Pat McGarry and where that work has gone since 2015. The second was Dr Tim Sopham Hussein, the Race Discrimination Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission for a talk entitled The Challenge of Social Cohesion. The third was Professor Pat Dungeon, who was the first Aboriginal psychologist to graduate in Australia and is the Commissioner of the Australian National Mental Health Commission. Her talk was called Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health Research in Australia. The fourth was Distinguished Professor Elizabeth Loftus, independently rated as the most influential female psychologist in the 21st Century, presenting her groundbreaking work in a talk called The Fiction of Memory. Her work revolutionised scientific understanding of human memory and has had transformative application in how eyewitness memory is collected and considered in the justice system. Professor Loftus' substantial contributions were subsequently recognised by ANU, conferring her with an honorary doctorate. The breadth and diversity of the topics these speakers have talked about highlights how psychological science makes an impact in so many different areas of society. And psychology is one of the most popular areas of study for university students nationally and internationally. Psychology, including mental health and behavioural science more broadly, is integral to understanding and improving Australians' health and wellbeing. For this reason, psychology makes an important and ongoing contribution to the strategic vision of the College of Health and Medicine. The importance of all aspects of psychology is further increased by the current challenges facing our global community. This of course includes contributions from cognitive psychology, such as understanding how people consume information and misinformation, and how we can promote the former rather than the latter. It includes contributions from clinical psychology, such as understanding how to help improve mental health in times of isolation. And it includes contributions from social psychology, such as understanding how the fabric of our social connections can be maintained in these challenging times and how our social identities and groups can impact our thoughts and our actions. It's with great pleasure that I welcome you, the ANU, into this lecture and now hand over to Professor Michael Plato, who is Professor in the Research School of Psychology and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and an ANU Distinguished Educator to introduce our special guest, Professor Stephen Ryker. Thanks Russell. Well, and thank you everyone for coming. Our speaker today, Dr. Steve Reicher, is a professor of psychology at St. Andrews University. And rather than telling you about how many publications he has or how many times his work has been cited, whether which will put us all to shame, I'd rather start with a reflection on our field of social psychology and Steve's role in changing, if not transforming our field. Now many of the psychologists here today may recall a journal that existed some years ago called the Journal of Social and Abnormal Psychology. The journal no longer exists or at least the name was changed back in the 1960s. There's the conflation of social behavior and abnormal processes that I want to highlight. Clearly, there was a point in our field where things social were at least associated with things abnormal. It's the non-social that is somehow normal and the social somehow corrupted. Despite the name change, however, this view about social behavior still permeates our field as people talk about social behavior in terms of biases, errors and irrationality. Somehow being in the real or imagined presence of others makes us odd or irrational. And the prototypical context in which many people point to exemplify this irrationality is the crowd. Here, many of us believe that once immersed in a crowd, we lose sight of reason and rationality and are pushed around by forces that no longer seem under our control. All right, so what does this have to do with tonight's speaker? In short, Steve's entire career, my view, is about critiquing this social irrationality assumption, this social abnormality assumption, challenging it and reframing the analysis. And to take this on, Steve focused a considerable amount of his early work precisely on examining the crowd. To do this, Steve adopted a variety of research methods, including archival analysis, qualitative interviews, laboratory experiments, and surveys with people actually in crowds. Through this, Steve has shown a clear rationality of social behavior and that people are more than isolated individuals and that collectively we can build nations and change the course of history. Other work that Steve has done and his over that some of you may be familiar with is his collaboration with Alex Haslam and the BBC to replicated parts and extend the now infamous Stanford prison study. Unlike the original study of the work of Steve and Alex showed very clearly that people are not held prisoner to their social roles. And that the oppressed can band together to overthrow their oppressors. In their replication, the prisoners revolted and established a commune with the guards. The final theme of Steve's work that I'll mention is that of leadership. Here Steve has worked to debunk the supposed great man views of leadership and then demonstrated quite clearly that good leaders are good group members, they are one of us, not above us, or separate from us. And he's done all of this work and much more by identifying psychological mechanisms and psychological processes ensured he has advanced theory to help clarify our understanding of human social psychology. And it is by demonstrated demonstrating systematically how the social enables and empowers the individual. Steve has debunked myths, lobbied governments and again transform the field. And it is with my great pleasure to introduce Professor Steve Reicher, who will be speaking to us today about from individual frailty to collective resilience, the two psychologies of COVID-19. Hello everyone and first of all, thank you to Russell, Michael and Ian Russell thanks very much for making me feel nervous and small by reminding me of just how eminent your other speakers have been. Michael thanks for giving my talk I can I can stop now. And Ian, when I got the invite. I wasn't quite sure whether to be delighted or furious, delighted because it really is a privilege to be asked to come and speak to you furious because it's on the one year when I can't actually visit. And in many ways, I think of a new is my second spiritual home. I grew up as a psychologist in Bristol with our retouch and John Turner. And then, as you know, John Turner moved to Australia and moved to to a new. And ANU became in many ways the center the global center of work on social identity and self categorization. And I remember coming the first time I came to ANU was in 1996. And I remember it well because in that year it was when they just introduced on planes the moving map. So you could see where you were. I've never been to Australia before and I remember flying along and seeing if you like this curve of cultural difference as we went along, you know, we went through Russia and then over Vietnam and so on. And then we arrived in Australia and I remember that evening, eating in the staff club at ANU surrounded by gentlemen in tweed jackets, eating shepherd's pie under pictures of grenadier guards. It felt as if the curve of cultural difference had become full circle. Clearly things have changed. And I'm delighted to hear things changed. And I was delighted to hear Ian start his introduction by acknowledging the first Australians. So it is good to see how things are developing. And when I first came in 1996, it was a pleasure not just for being at ANU and not just for seeing John but meeting people who have become, I hope, friends for life, like, like Michael, like Kate, seeing Alex Haslam and Craig McGarty were there at the moment. It really was a remarkable intellectual exercise and remarkable intellectual atmosphere, I should say. Now, the social identity tradition I think is much misunderstood. For many people, they think of social identity theory in particular as a theory of group discrimination of hostility between groups. People in textbooks often cite the argument that when we get together in groups, and we think of ourselves in terms of our social identities, our sense of ourselves as a group member, then we seek to make that group membership positive. And we do so comparatively by defining other groups negatively. And so people come to the conclusion that what social identity is telling us is there is something basic about human behavior, some basic tendency to discriminate against other groups. Now, for much of my career, I've tried to debunk what I think is a profound misunderstanding, because what John Turner and Armie Tarsh fell argued always was that there may be a psychological tendency to want to be defined positively. However, the way in which that plays out is always going to be a function of the nature of the social world. And people forget that the second half of social identity theory was saying, well, look, we might want to be defined positively, but we live in a world that is racist and sexist and homophobic. That as a woman, you are defined negatively, whether you like it or not. As a black person, as an Aboriginal person, again, you are defined negatively. Or as a gay person, or a transsexual person, again, negative definitions. So what do you do, given that reality? How do you respond? Do you try and accommodate with the system? Do you try and change the system? And what social identity theory was trying to do was to ask the question of when do we accept and exceed to inequality, and when do we challenge it? And implicit in that model was the argument that challenging it is the same thing as acting collectively. And individually you navigate within the system. It's when we become together collectively as a group, arguing not for me, but for us, arguing not for my personal advancement, but for, say, black lives matter. It's when we act collectively that we have the ability to change the world. And so, in many ways, for me, the core of the social identity approach was a theory not of discrimination, but of social change and social power. The point was that the group is a source of social power. That's why it has been so pathologised through the ages. The negative view of groups comes from the period of industrialisation, the formation of mass society, elite fears about the masses. And those elite fears turned into a sense of the masses, somehow inferior and dangerous. Psychology was a way of warning people off coming together collectively because they did become dangerous to elites at that point in time. So as I say, for me, what the social identity approach was all about was recovering that understanding of groups as a source of social power. Groups through that power being able to achieve change. And so through the 90s, at the period when I first visited ANU, I was particularly interested in understanding the ways in which people could use groups for social change. The argument was very simple. It was saying that if, when people define themselves as a group, they act together in terms of the norms and the values and the interests of that group, then those who are able to define the group identity, define who we are and what we should do, have a tool of world making power in their hands. The group, as I say, is that tool, that tool that can make and remake worlds. My argument was that social identities don't just reflect social reality, they're not just perceptions of what is. Groups and group identities are also aspirations. They're notions of how the world should be and their attempts to mobilize people to act in order to change those social worlds. And in many ways, I had many discussions with John over that time. And although they were robust as they always were with John, John was one to reflect. And I think to take things on board. And it is interesting, I think, that his late work, his last work, his last published paper, 2005 was on power. And the point he makes is that power has generally been conceptualized in groups as power over. In other words, power is the ability to impose upon the group. A leader is somebody who imposes them and tells the group what to do. And John developed the concept of power through. His point was, no, you have real power, not when you impose yourself on group members, not when you try and put your views over their views. It's precisely when you are in a position to shape their views. When you are of the group and in a position to define the group identity, then people will want to act in the terms you enunciate. And therefore you have power through them and real power and effective power is power through people. And that insight, that core insight has been very important to me is at the core of the work on leadership that I have done with Alex Haslam and of course with with Michael Plato as well. And the point I'm going to try and make to you today is that when it comes to the present pandemic, when it comes to COVID-19. In many ways, the core issue is whether in different nations and in the responses, there has been an attempt to impose on people to achieve power over people, which has been ineffective, or whether leaderships, governments have worked with their population and achieved power through the population in order to overcome the pandemic or at least to contain it to some extent. So let me now move from some general reflections on the social identity tradition on these issues of collectivity and power to talking about COVID-19. Now, as is self evident, in many ways, I used to say until we get a vaccine and I'll amend that in a moment, but the core thing we can do to deal with COVID-19 is to change human behavior. This is a disease which thrives precisely because it benefits from human sociality. It's when we are close together, it's when we embrace each other, it's when we touch each other that we transmit the virus and therefore the virus thrives. And that's why it's so difficult to deal with, because we're trying to ask people to be less physically proximate, to be less intimate, to be less social in many ways. That's the real dilemma. And what we need to do, of course, is to ask people to undertake various mitigating behaviors, to ask people to wear masks, and therefore limit our social interactions with each other. It's not pleasant wearing masks. We're asking people to observe hygiene. And most of all, we're asking people to keep physical distance from each other. And if we could do all those things and do them perfectly, then the disease could no longer thrive. It couldn't pass from one person to another. It would quite quickly die out. But of course, these things are almost impossible to do absolutely, and even limiting them is something of immense difficulty. So the question of human behavior and how we can change human behavior is right at the core of this world crisis. And in my life, I have never seen such interest in psychology, never seen such discussion of psychology, never seen psychology on the front pages of the newspapers or in the evening news, absolutely crucial in many ways. I made the point earlier about a vaccine. Well, of course, a vaccine will solve nothing. It's people getting vaccinated that will solve something. So again, it depends upon a human behavior. It depends upon a willingness to be vaccinated. And we know from the polling that many people say that they won't get vaccinated. Why? Because they lack trust in governments and lack trust in the safety of vaccines. So the question of getting people vaccinated is a core psychological question. And when it comes to the psychology of coronavirus, I think we can contrast two different views. The one view is an individualistic view of human frailty. I think in many ways the dominant model of human beings in psychology in the present period takes that form. Human beings are seen as creatures of limited processing capacity. We are seen to be frail in many ways. We can't cope with complexity. We can't cope with uncertainty. We can't cope with probability. We have to make do with simplifications, with biases. And so in many ways the nature of the human creature is destructive, cognitively destructive. We distort and we simplify information. That is at the core of our psychological apparatus. And if that's a generic problem, if we generically in all situations are beset by these limitations and these biases, this is exacerbated in the group. It's not just the cognitive overload of the group. It's also the stressors of the group. When you put people in a group, when you put people in a crisis, then ultimately people will crack and people will panic. And this panic perspective is very much at the core of government understanding of how people behave in a crisis. So for a number of years, I've been involved in doing work on how people behave in an emergency and been involved in a number of government committees. And the question that is always asked is, look, can we give people information? If we give people information about danger, then they might panic and it might make things worse. And so it leads to a paternalistic notion that you need government to shelter people from the brutal truth of what's going on. You need to limit the information you give to people. You need to be relentlessly positive. You can't reason with people. If anything, you have to nudge them towards the right behaviors almost despite themselves. So this fragility perspective and this panic perspective and this notion that in a crisis, people are the problem is very widespread. It's certainly widespread in our culture. You can't get a self-respecting Hollywood disaster film without people running away from danger, waving their hands in the air, plugging up the exits, and so turning the crisis into a tragedy where people can't get away and therefore are killed by whatever danger it is that's lurking, whether it be fire or water or monsters or whatever. But still that perspective, as I say, is really powerful. And we've seen it in this pandemic as well. Notoriously, in the UK, there was in early March talk of fatigue, of behavioral fatigue, the notion that people are psychologically frail, that people can't put up with hardship, that if you impose lockdown measures on people, they won't be able to go along with them. And therefore you have to wait because you've only got a limited amount of time in which you can impose them. And famously, again, in the UK, our government delayed and delayed in a week from the 16th to 23rd of March, in part based on this notion of behavioral fatigue. And the modelers tell us that as a result of that and the increase in the disease, which was then doubling every four or five days, probably tens of thousands of people died. So this notion is not incidental, it's not peripheral, it's an idea, it's an understanding of psychology, which has literally killed tens of thousands of people. So what happened? What did happen when we had lockdown? Well, across the world, but I will apologize for talking mainly about the UK, because the UK is the example I've been most involved in, that my life has become COVID-19 in many ways the last six months. I've become involved in the behavioral science advisory group for the UK government and in advising the Scottish government, and also a group called Independent Sage, which seeks to give independent scientific and policy advice. So these things are very much in my head. But what happened? Well, in many ways, people were surprised by the fact that people didn't panic. They showed remarkable resilience. There was a study done in late April, early May in the UK, which showed that well over 90% of people were adhering to lockdown, almost completely. Of those, 44% were suffering, suffering quite considerably, suffering psychologically, and suffering materially as well. But still, they went along with lockdown despite the difficulties. Now the interesting thing is, because of the predominance of this frailty view and this panic view, people were surprised, and they attributed it to exceptionalism in all sorts of different places they attributed to exceptionalism. And in the UK, we like to think of ourselves as just wonderful, better than anybody else. So British exceptionalism, the blitz spirit, we Brits, we went along with things when others wouldn't in other countries and other places. People invoke their own historical essentialisms in New York, for instance, there was this notion of the New York spirit, 9-11 and all that. But actually, it was a general phenomenon. And if one studies disasters and emergencies, it's not a surprising phenomenon. Because the literature on disasters and emergencies shows that the notion of overreaction, notion that people panic and respond excessively in ways that compounds the danger simply is not true. There are very few examples of it where people die because they don't get out. It's rarely because of panic. It's often for material reasons in various famous studies, for instance, the Beverly supper club fire. It was because the doors and the emergency doors had been locked shut. It had nothing to do with deficient psychology. And when you look in detail at what people do, you find that on the whole they behave in an ordered way. And they behave in a thought out way. And on the whole, they don't just rush for the exits and devil take the hind most, they support each other, they refuse to leave without others. And those others, sometimes a family and sometimes a friends, but sometimes a strangers. So how do you understand this behavioral emergency? How do you understand how it's so different from the image we've given of it? That was a question which I asked myself about 20 years ago and did a lot of work with John Drury who was taking this work far further. And we started off from the presumption that, well, you might have different types of situations. You might have some situations where people are in a social group and some situations in which they are individuals. So we built a virtual reality simulation of King's Cross Underground Station in London. And in some situations we would have people coming back from a football match where they were all wearing their colours and there's a fire. How do they behave? And in other situations we would have individuals just commuting coming back in the evening. How would they behave? And what we found was that in all situations actually people helped each other. It wasn't just that in the group because we had a sense of group membership and concern for other group members we helped each other. It was in all situations people helped each other. And we began to realise that what was going on wasn't that it was necessary a pre-existing social identity that led people to support each other. And rather it was the fact that they were in an emergency and had common fate, a shared experience that brought people together that created a sense of shared identity and which then led to helping. Because if people start thinking in terms of we rather than I and start thinking about the well-being of others then you begin to get those forms of solidarity. There's a lot of research that we've done showing that we help in group members more, we're more concerned for them, we're more empathic for them. Then under those conditions people support each other and people help each other. So actually not only now can we say in emergencies people don't necessarily panic and don't necessarily rush for the exits but indeed do show help and do show solidarity. But indeed we begin to have a process and we begin to have a mechanism which is rooted in the notion of social identity. It is to the extent that people think of themselves in terms of their common membership of a social group that they will support each other and they will help each other. And moreover they will coordinate each other and they as our virtual reality work showed they are faster at exiting a crowded underground station. So social identity begins to be a resource for emergencies. Now that was an argument we made at the beginning of the pandemic. In fact back in early March John and I wrote a piece called Don't Individualise, Collectivise. That the ability to get people to adhere to difficult prescriptions like lockdown depends upon thinking not in terms of what does it mean for me and what does it mean for my individual risk but what does it mean for us. And indeed if you think about it if you are young, reasonably healthy, then on the whole breaking lockdown going out doesn't pose a great risk to you. We're now beginning to learn about long COVID so it might but back then we didn't know about long COVID so the calculation you might have made was that there's limited risk to me. On the other hand if you're young, I have a 16 year old who is still sleeping in the other room, it's 8.30 in the morning here. For him staying at home with his elderly parents is a huge hassle, a huge cost, so the cost benefit analysis would say makes sense to go out. But of course if you think in collective terms, if you think in terms of we, then the cost of going out is potentially infecting somebody else, potentially killing somebody else. And therefore the cost benefit analysis skews the other way against going out to staying in. So the thinking in terms of we rather than I in terms of social identity rather than individual identity is absolutely central to adherence. It was put actually quite beautifully by the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, when he said, look, this isn't about I it's about we get your head around the we concept. And in many ways that, quote, inspired the book which we have written. So, Tegan Chris, hello Tegan, if you're in the audience. You'll add the yet and Alex has them and I wrote a book, which is available as a free download you can buy it as a hard copy if you like as well, but you can get it as a free download, trying to help explain the we concept or to put it more technically in terms of social identity processes. As I say at the beginning of the pandemic. This was a theoretical claim based on previous empirical evidence, but very quickly evidence begin to begin to mount up about the centrality of thinking in we terms. Again, in by May, there was research in the UK showing that the best predictor of adherence was again not your sense of individual risk individual risk actually related not very well to adherence it was much more a sense of being concerned about the community and wanting the community to come out of it well together. A couple of weeks ago a study came out 67 nation study 46,000 participants. So not a small little lab study huge study, showing a clear relationship between attachment to the national community sense of national winners and adherence. There have been other studies showing for instance local identification sense of being connected to and part of the local community was critical. So quite a lot of evidence now mounting up to confirm what we found in emergencies before that shared social identity is absolutely critical to adherence, but not just to adherence. Oh incidentally I see on the chat that Tegan has put up the link to the book so you can all go home and read it tonight over your cups of cocoa or something stronger probably after this. It's not just that social identity and shared social identity that sense of weakness is critical to adherence but to other things as well. What we saw again throughout the world was a remarkable growth of community groups and community support. Again people thought it was just us that sense of exceptionalism in the UK. We thought oh well that's British, you know going around to your neighbor with a cup of tea. That's what we do others don't do it of course it was right it was, as I say that general process, but certainly in the UK we did see that growth of solidarity. We saw over a million people volunteering to help the National Health Service. We saw 4100 mutual aid groups involving over 3 million people supporting each other and that was only the tip of the iceberg because virtually on every street certainly on my street, face group groups grew up, people put notes through each other's doors saying, can we help you are you okay do you need food delivering, and so on we saw a remarkable growth of these community groups and at the moment I'm involved in a project. And one of the strands is looking precisely at social identity processes as critical to the growth of these groups and the other point to be made and I think this is an important point so I'll return to it at the end. When it came to dealing with a pandemic, of course you need the support of the state, but it's not just the state the state doesn't have enough resources to support everybody from the individual level to deliver food to all those we need to deliver food to. In many ways it was the self organization of the community. That was the key resource in getting us through this pandemic. So shared social identity, critical to adherence, critical to mutual support. And the third dimension is linked to the work which again that Tegan has done and which others have done people like calf haslam you landed yet and Alex has them and so on, and what is called the social cure. The fact that group membership doesn't just empower us group membership is remarkably powerful and important to us in terms of maintaining our mental as well as our physical health. I think one of the great tragedies of this pandemic was the early on we started talking about socially distancing. What we needed to do, of course, was to remain physically distant. Because if we were physically close, we catch the infection and we can die. But at the same time we need to be socially together that's why we call our book together apart because if we are socially together and feel supported by others and feel empowered by others and see others not as an impediment to us but a resource who can help us deal with the problems of everyday life. And then that's what keeps our mental health and as I say even physical health together so the group is an asset in terms of well being quite as much as it is an asset in social terms in terms of empowering us to effectively manage our lives. So in many ways, as I say, the notion of an emergent social identity is quite critical and nurturing that social identity and developing that social identity is critical. Because the point is that as all the research on emergencies and disasters shows. Yes, you get a sense of an emergent social identity. But at the same time, it's something fragile. It's something that can be supported but it's something that can be breached if you look at work on, for instance, flood relief and I've just had a Chinese student who did a wonderful study of earthquakes in China. The authorities can blunder into these situations. They can set up forms of aid which privilege some groups over others. They can lead to divisions within the community. They can rupture that sense of shared identity. So what becomes critical is the extent to which governments have either brought us together or moved us apart. Now, sometimes, of course, their actions have been deliberate. Sometimes their actions have deliberately sought to divide and deliberately sought to polarize. We've seen that clearly in the United States where Donald Trump, in order to mobilize his base and try to win the election in three weeks time, very clearly tried to politicize the pandemic and tried to undermine the public health calls for, for instance, wearing masks, trying to turn it into an issue of second amendment rights of your basic freedoms. It's not inevitably seen as such. It wasn't seen as such in many other countries, certainly not in the UK, but in the US, a clear attempt to divide and to polarize. Equally, in some countries, there has been an attempt to blame particular groups for the pandemic in order to gain political capital. We've seen it in the United States again with Trump's talk of the China virus. We've seen it in India where there was an attempt to blame Muslims for the pandemic. And some people, there was talk of what the term that was used was corona jihadism. And so you can deliberately divide and you can deliberately set up particular groups as scapegoats. And if you look at the history of pandemics, very often, they haven't been brought people together. They've led to to pogroms. Certainly during the Black Death, for instance, Jewish people were blamed for the Black Death. On one day, on St. Valentine's Day, 1349 in Strasbourg, 2,000 Jewish people were burnt to death having been blamed for the pandemic. So pandemics don't necessarily bring people together. They can divide and bad leadership can divide people and bad leadership can lead them to intergroup conflict. Sometimes, as I say, it's done deliberately. It's done for political advantage. And I've given some examples. And I think and here I want to come back to this notion of psychological frailty, because I think sometimes that divisive narrative can come about, not in order to gain political capital, but in many ways out of this dominant understanding of human behavior and dominant misunderstanding of how people behave in emergencies. So I spoke a few minutes ago about the way in which that notion of human frailty had been used to talk about behavioral fatigue at the beginning of the pandemic. We're now seeing that notion of human frailty reemerge in blame discourses. So our government in the UK has begun to say, look, if people get infected, it's because they've done something wrong. And the problem lies with the public and with a frail public. And if only the public would do the right thing, if only the public wouldn't have parties, if only the public would keep their distance, all would be okay. So the finger has been pointed saying you are the problem and particular groups of people have been blamed young people, students, house parties, raves, that that's what we've been told is the problem. Now, of course, the point is you get infected because you've been exposed. And on the whole, you get exposed to the extent that you are more vulnerable and more deprived. If you are privileged in middle class and you can work at home, you don't get exposed. If you're working class and you're working in a factory or retail, you have to go to work, you're more exposed. You're more exposed if you have to go on public transport. You're more exposed if you live in multi occupancy houses. In fact, in Britain, the infection has spiked amongst young people, not necessarily because they've done something wrong, but more because that young people are most likely to work in public facing jobs like light retail or in bars and restaurants. Secondly, young people are most likely to use public transport. And thirdly, young people are by far and away more likely to live in multi occupancy flats. But this blame narrative has begun to say, well, the problem is the house party. Now, the problem here, again, actually has to do with the media, I think to a large extent, but yes, house parties have been happening. And yes, they are spectacular. And yes, they'll get a front page headline in a way in which people abiding by the regulations won't people sitting quietly at home is not a front page headline. And so we overestimate the extent to which there is deviation, there's an availability effect, if you like. And the problem with that, of course, is it can be a self fulfilling prophecy. It can create social norms. People can begin to say, well, look, if everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I do it? But I think there's a greater problem than that. And the problem is this, if the government sets the public up as an out group, if the government says, look, it's your fault and wags its finger at them, then setting people up as an out group is a very bad way indeed of achieving social influence. The only tool then is to use coercion. And to say, well, and if you don't do things, then we will punish you. And in the UK, there is talk of 10,000 pound fines, if you break lockdown, if you don't self isolate, when you're told to self isolate. But again, the problem about using coercion is number one, that it's not very effective as a way of achieving compliance. Certainly, you may comply while the threat is immediate, but that might undermine your compliance in other areas where you can't be punished in the same way. So it's highly ineffective. And secondly, it may lead to social unrest at the worst in a number of countries where there's been a sense of illegitimacy of measures that are imposed combined with harsh repression, there's been rioting. All the procedural justice work and plenty of that has gone on at ANU tells us that the best way of getting people to comply with authority is for people to see authority as on their side to treat them with respect, not to blame them, to listen to them, not just to tell them what to do. And for me, the fundamental problem certainly with the UK government response has been that precisely because of its notion of public psychology as a frail psychology as a crisis led psychology, and precisely because they've begun to see the public as the main problem in this pandemic is this led them to treat the public in ways that alienate them and treat them as an outgroup. They have violated virtually every lesson we've learned from procedural justice literature. They treat people without respect. They don't listen to people. They don't go through co-creation when they, when they talk about their measures that they patronize people, they use punishment as their main response. They fundamentally position the public as an outgroup. And if you position the public as an outgroup, the public will see you as an outgroup, and it will undermine your ability to achieve power through the public. You will throw away that key resource. And so let me finish because I'm aware that time is passing and I've spoken for longer than I meant to by drawing these things to a conclusion. To me, what this pandemic tells us in many ways is about this contrast between two psychologies, one a psychology of individual frailty, the second a psychology of collective resilience, that we are powerful, not because of what is within us. But when we come together and what happens between us, we begin to see each other, as I say, as an asset, as a resource. Others are no longer impediment, others no longer stand in our way, others help us to achieve what we want to achieve. And that provides that remarkable resource for dealing with a pandemic in a way that a state can't. So that contrast individual frailty collective resilience. Secondly, how important it is that the government and that the state understands that and doesn't see the problem that the public is a problem but rather sees them as a partner. Thirdly, that partnership perspective is understood and implemented in everything that the government does. So if instead of blaming people for non adherence, the government took its own responsibilities seriously about how it can help people to adhere. For instance, take this issue of self isolation. So it's a huge problem. We have found in the UK that less than 20% of people who are outside self isolate actually self isolate. And the reason why it's obvious it's a practical problem. If you're not paid, then how do you afford to stay at home? If you live in a multi occupancy house, how do you self isolate? If you've got caring responsibilities outside the house, what do you do? How do you get food? What about your emotional needs? So if the state saw its role as a partnership with the public, where the state must take seriously its responsibility to support and help people, not only would it enable them to adhere, they would then come to see the state as on their side, state as part of a common cause and be motivated to do so. As I say, to me, we need to switch away from this patronizing, this paternalistic notion of the public as a problem to a partnership approach in which the public is seen as a key resource. And if anything, and if anything good comes out of this pandemic, I hope that understanding might go further, that in the future we will have a sense whereby government should relate the public, again, not in a paternalistic way, but by scaffolding and supporting and funding the self organization of the public. I think there could be a fundamental shift in our understanding of the relationship between the state and the public if we understand what has actually gone on in this pandemic. And so in concluding, let me just say a couple of things. If I wanted to be bombastic, I might say that in many ways the future of the world, certainly the way in which we get through this pandemic rests upon understanding social identity processes rests upon understanding these core concepts of power through of bringing together in a group of leadership as working not by trying to impose on or be more mighty than the people, but to be of the people and representative of the people and work with the people. Understanding those processes, I think is critical and differentiates between those governments that have done well in this pandemic, and those have done badly. That's probably a little bit overstating it to say the future of the world depends upon understanding social identity processes. So let me finish slightly more modestly. We as social psychologists like to quote a famous quote from Kurt Levine where he said there's nothing as practical as good theory. Well, I think what we've discovered in this pandemic is that there is nothing as practical as social identity research. We discovered it in a way we suspected that we understood theoretically and that theoretical work in large part developed at ANU and still being developed at ANU. We are now seeing it work in the world. So with that I'll finish. Fantastic. That was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much Steve. Absolutely engaging as, as always. Thank you. It'll be my role to moderate some questions. And we have a few that have come in already and the moment I'll just start with the first one in if you're open to answering a few questions. And the first one that came through I'm looking off to the side here because I have another screen. Can the government use social media to create a positive social identity and then follow it up. Is it possible to use fear to urge people to do the right things such as social distance and wearing masks. Okay, so I think the question of social media is of course a critical issue and it changes things fundamentally from the past. I mean messaging becomes much more difficult. I mean in the past, it was possible we have much more unified media audiences whether television, whether print and now they're obviously much more fragmented and clearly social media is completely polarized. And so we see the role of social media, for instance, in in propagating conspiracy theories in propagating, I think, you know, rather dangerous ideas about about the pandemic so certainly, I think, instead of just top down messaging. And that's been again one of the problems that there's been this. The edicts from above telling us what to do and telling us what to understand the principle of co production is one I think of the core messages we need to get out, which is that, however good a policy and however good a message, if you just dump it on people from above. If it's from the out group it will be less effective. At one level, this is hardly surprising and it's something that we all know if we have a child. So, you know, if you tell your child to go to bed, even if the child is desperate to go to bed and really tired. And they do so because they want to assert their autonomy and and and assert their freedom well that happens to the group level as well. If an out group tells us what to do, even if we agree with a message, we might ignore it because we want to assert our autonomy. So I think that that principle of working. First of all, at a local level with messaging, working through local organizations and working through social media is critical. A lot of research shows that fear is ineffective. A lot of research shows that actually if you make people afraid, they will turn off from a message. But I think what we do need to do, however, is to combine risk, a clear and open-eyed understanding of the risks with then an understanding of the mitigations we can put in place. If you just say that there's this thing out there, then it'll kill you. Well, what can you do about it? Okay, it doesn't help you. If you say that there are these dangers, but we can put you in control and you get back control by behaving in these various ways, then I think it's really powerful. Because if you don't communicate risk, then of course, you know, people aren't going to go along with the mitigations. The mitigations are onerous. Of course, they are. Nobody does them because they enjoy them. And there is very clear evidence, say, from the SARS epidemic, that when people saw lower risk because it wasn't clearly communicated to them, they stopped complying. Poor messaging, low understanding of risk. Of course, people don't go along with the mitigations, but it simply, I think, what we've seen in this pandemic is that people are willing to suffer for a common cause. But people won't suffer for its own sake. So of course you need information which shows there's danger. Because I think you've got to be careful to balance that sense of risk with an understanding of what you can do. So you give people a sense of control rather than just a sense of, you know, vague general fear, which I think is counterproductive. Fantastic. Thanks. So I know we're getting very close to 7 o'clock and some people may leave, but we have a few questions still. So I'm going to continue going a few minutes over. If that's all right with Steve, those of you who can stay, please, please do. So at the moment, I've got another four questions at the moment. One is, what do you think are the implications of the idea of a lockdown only for the vulnerable? Well, certainly in the UK, there has been the growth of a rather seductive argument about what's been called a strategy of herd immunity. In other words, you all saw the Great Barrington Declaration, I assume, talking about what they call it, focus protection. And it's had quite a lot of coverage in the UK as well. Now, first of all, let me answer this at two levels. It is very much a fringe point of view. There are a few people who go along with it, but nearly all the major organizations, so the WHO, the CDC, Central Disease Control in the States, the European Center for Disease Control, British Medical Association, I'm sure other medical associations around the world, there is no major organization which supports this point of view. And it is a point of view, which I think, unfortunately, has been used to say there is no scientific consensus and has been used to undermine the science in general. Whereas in fact, I mean, it depends how you define consensus. If you define consensus as 100% of people agreeing, true, there's no consensus. But if you talk about, if you like, hegemony, what is on the whole, accepted, and what's accepted by most organizations, and I don't think there is a split amongst scientists. And we've seen exactly the same happening, say, with climate science, where a few mavericks are promoted, number one, by certain interest groups and organizations, and secondly by the media who like a good argument. And the reason why the Great Barrington Declaration came from Great Barrington is that it is the center of one of the main US right-wing libertarian organizations. This is a very political attempt. I'm not saying the individual scientists are doing it for that reason. They've got every right to question. It's quite right that they should question. However, it's being promoted in particular ways. But why is it a problem? Okay, well, I think virtually every single premise in it is deeply problematic. So the first is shielding the vulnerable. Well, you can't just shield a vulnerable. You've got to shield those who are looking after them because they need somebody to, you know, around them living in the same houses as them, cooking, and so on and so forth. It's probably about 25% of the population. So you're talking about locking away 25% of the population, everybody over 65. That in itself is problematic. Secondly, all the evidence tells us you can't shield people. That it's not going to work. That shielding is going to be ineffective. I'm a keen cyclist and I noticed yesterday that despite attempts to keep the Giro d'Italia with a big stage race in Italy safe, right, through extreme measures of putting them in bubbles. Two teams have got to have to go home because, you know, they've got coronavirus and they might have to end the whole thing if with even all that technical support and that extreme, you know, funding to isolate people, you can't protect them. How are you going to protect 25% of the population? It's a nonsense. The third thing is the notion of just sending out the majority to take their own decisions. Well, there are three problems with that. The first is, of course, remember what it does is it individualizes things. It doesn't say, let's look at what's good for the common good. You make your individual risk assessment. So it personalizes. It doesn't collect device undermines everything I've been saying. Secondly, of course, a lot of people will be harmed. Not only by deaths. So even if you're talking only about a small percentage being killed in the UK, it would mean 25% extra, 25,000 extra deaths, 250,000 hospitalized overwhelming the NHS. And then on top of that, you've got long COVID. So it could be up to 20% of people are harmed. So you're sending people out who are going to be harmed. And of course, who's going to be most harmed? It's going to be those who are most vulnerable. So again, those with resources can stay at home and work at home. It's going to be the deprived, the working class, the poor, the ethnic minorities are going to be more exposed, more damaged. So there's going to be that inequality. And two things on top of that. The first is there is no evidence that we will get herd immunity. There are plenty of these types of diseases where you don't get immunity. You're taking all those risks when you might not achieve anything. And then finally, people contrast this strategy to complete lockdown. But those are false oppositions. In fact, in many ways, and this is what's probably going to happen in the UK, is that the herd immunity position is used to delay sensible and proportionate measures, which leads to a spiking in the way that it gets out of control. And you have to have lockdown. So in many ways, practically, lockdown and missed possession are two sides of the same coin. And the alternative are sensible and proportionate measures which can and have in many countries brought the infection down. So I'm sorry to go on at such length about this position, but I think it's deeply dangerous. And I think it's deeply misconceived and it's really important to challenge it. Fantastic. Thank you. Now there. The next question focuses a bit on people with limited resources and you did touch on that a bit so my apologies to the questioner I'm going to move on to the to the to the next question, because some of what Steve was just I think a response to that. I was surprised that you haven't mentioned trust as the next question or key determinant of whether a state and and its public can work together as mutual trust a mere sense of being in it together isn't going to help much unless those of us in it together trust one another. How does the social side, how does psychology work on trust on psychological work on trust integrate with the social identity perspective. That's a great question. You're completely right. I haven't mentioned trust. The danger is that I take things as implicit and don't make them explicit. I mean from a social identity point of view trust. It's integrally related to the notion of sources as in group or out group. I mean a lot of research to say that in group sources are trusted more so let me give you one example of that many examples and there's plenty of research but let me give you one example of that. I don't know whether the the Cummings affair is familiar to you in Australia. Do people know about Dominic Cummings. So Dominic Cummings is the chief advisor to our Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And in early May, he broke lockdown. He drove 300 miles to his to his parents house. He then drove another 30 miles to a beauty spot. He claimed he was testing his eyesight to see if it worked a strange way of testing your eyesight to drive 30 miles with your child child in the black back of the car. Anyway, he, not only did he flagrantly break the rules, but the Prime Minister defended him and the Prime Minister justified what he did. So what that very clearly said to people is there's one law for them and a different law for us. That was the point at which there began to be a very clear sense of them and us between the British public and the government. In a week, trust in the government fell by 21 points. I mean an incredible polling change that the pulses were shaking their head. So the loss of trust was precisely because there was a sense of that they are no longer of us they no longer for us. And if you think about it. I mean, when you when you're given any information. The question you have to ask yourself is, well, what is the source. And why are they giving that as that information are they giving that as that information to help us, or are they doing it in order to pursue of their own interests so trust is epistemically bound up with an understanding of the source as in group or out group. I didn't explicitly mention trust, but trust for me is one of the critical mediating factors between social identity and adherence and compliance. Now, let me give you one twist to that story. While trust in government went down catastrophically and in England now trusting government is about 30% 25 to 30% interestingly in Scotland where I live, it's around 75% which shows that the Cummings effect was very specific to the UK government. But trust fell adherence didn't necessarily fall. And that's because many people weren't adhering because of the government because they've been told what to do. They were adhering almost despite the government because they thought it was the right thing to do. And many of the people and some of the polling haven't showed this who were most angry at Cummings were the most likely to adhere. However, it doesn't mean that trust is irrelevant to adherence. It means it works out differently in different forms of adherence so I might adhere despite the government. So when it comes to taking a vaccine, then I've got to trust that this is safe. I've got to trust that this has been properly tested, and I've got to trust that this is for my own good. So the issue of trust is going to come home to roost in a big way. I think it's absolutely critical. I'm going to ask a question that came in through the chat. Many thanks Steve, and all a great talk very apt. Interesting to think about the media story, have you got strategies on mitigating the story of fragile and disobedient people. And that was signed by Cindy Galwan. Right. In the UK this notion of behavioral fatigue had huge mileage. And one of the problems was it was seen to come from behavioral scientists, when it didn't actually it was, it was a quotes common sense assumption by the chief medical officer, who was not of course a behavioral So a letter was sent and signed by 700 psychologists and I'm never quite sure what a behavioral scientist is but perhaps behavioral economists but anyway, a letter from 700 people went forward, challenging this notion. I think I think one of the big issues that hasn't been addressed in this pandemic is the issue of media. But I think the media. Let me give you one example. The Guardian newspaper which is seen as a sort of a liberal left newspaper published an article the other day, which was actually it was about universities, and its main point was actually rather good. It's the way in which in Britain we've commodified our universities are in competition with each other. And because universities are in competition to with each other for students they wanted to give what they thought was a good student experience, which meant that they had a lot of in person teaching, which has led to a spike in what was it was going through these things. But the headline was, we only just stopped a barbecue for 100 students implying that this was bad students, having their big parties and causing the problem. Okay, so I got in touch with them because I've done quite a lot of writing for the garden recently and they changed the headline. Okay, but the interesting thing there was, there are two factors I mean one is an ideological factor. I think there is a paternalism to the Conservative Party which leans to this blame culture and it's reflected in some newspapers, but in some cases it's just, what are you taught at journalism school, well a good headline is something that's controversial which suggests that there's a problem or suggests that there's a conflict. And so a lot of media values lead to a distortion of our understanding. For instance, when there was so called panic buying, and I could talk for a long time about panic buying, basically what was going on there was not, it wasn't happening to a large degree, but again, what's going to make a headline, a picture of toilet rolls in the supermarket, or a picture of people fighting over blue rolls in a supermarket is quite clear. Now, in some areas, the media do recognize those responsibilities so in the UK they don't report suicides because they know that reporting of suicides can increase the suicide rate. So I'm not talking about censoring the press or saying you can't say this or that, but I think a discussion with the press and an understanding of the impact of their misrepresentation of the pandemic. I'll give you one final example. I was meeting the other day with the Scottish police and they gave some really interesting data they had in the previous few days visited 440 house gatherings. Okay, 440 of those 13 less than 2% involved 15 or more people. So the problem wasn't large parties, actually the problem was people having one or two more people around them they should. So when the police knocked on their doors and said, what are you doing they'd say why are you around at our houses. We're not having parties we're not doing anything wrong. So the myth that the problem is the large house party is them leads people to be complacent. We're not bad people so we're not violating complacent about their own violations which then undermines the response. I think the issue of a major strategy certainly in the UK is really important and I think government should be just discussing with editors and just making clear what the consequences are because it's not all ill will. Well, I'm going to keep going for a little bit we might just, but maybe just another six to eight minutes if that's all right. There's a couple few more questions if I can ask, at least maybe two, at least. Many non Western countries have dealt with COVID a lot better than First World, in quotes, for example Vietnam has isn't impoverished nation of 95 million people that shares a land border with China. I think they have only 35 total COVID deaths. Do you think countries like Vietnam have got something right about group psychology that Western governments have missed. I think there are many factors involved. And so for instance, I mean preparedness is a huge issue. I mean in the UK, we were almost completely unprepared for this in so many ways. We had a period of austerity, which would cut back our public services in all sorts of ways. We had less emergency beds than before. We have less health and safety inspectors to make sure that spaces are safe when they reopen. But critically, we didn't have a testing infrastructure, and the great tragedy in the UK has been the failure to have a decent test and trace system, mainly because our government put it in private hands. That gave huge contracts to their bodies like Deloitte and Serco and divorced it from local public health. And so that was a huge problem. So I think in countries which have had, you know, more coronaviruses, which would be more exposed to MERS and SARS, there was more of a preparedness on various levels. I think there was, I mean, for instance, because of that more of a, you know, not only state preparedness, but people's willingness to wear masks. For instance, people's willingness to put up with testing and so on were different. So I think part of it may be due to psychological factors and willingness to go along with certain measures. A lot of it, however, was down to, if you like, more structural factors. And the final thing, and this is controversial, and I think it's one of the big questions, is there is, of course, a lot of debate about immunity and about T cell immunity. And it is arguable that people who have been exposed in the past to COVID-like coronaviruses may have a certain degree of T cell immunity, and we need to think about that as well. One thing that John Turner always used to say, and I think it's really important to say, is that, you know, social psychology doesn't explain everything. And that's why I was a bit reluctant to be too bombastic. It's really important to understand that there are other factors there as well. And the one thing that destroys everything in this world, including academic theories, is hubris. If you overextend them, then it becomes self-evident that actually they have limitations. If you overextend and fly too close to the sun, you will crash to the earth. So I should row back probably a bit on my conclusions. There is something practical about social identity theory, but it's critical to understand there are other factors involved. And in fact, this is a really important point, because it comes back to the point of adherence. One of the assumptions in the blame narrative is that adherence is the same as motivation. They don't adhere it because they don't want to, whereas actually adherence depends upon three factors as health psychologists tell us. One is capability, including having the knowledge and information. And the second is opportunity, having the resources. And a lot of the non-compliance was due to resources, not lack of motivation. So early on in lockdown, and this goes back to the question you didn't ask about inequalities. In lockdown, it was found that poor people in ethnic minorities were between three and six times more likely to break lockdown. When you measured motivation, there was no difference at all. No difference at all. They both wanted to stay at home, but if you were poor and deprived, it's harder to stay at home and put food on the table. So we've got to be very careful to say, yes, there's a psychological dimension. Yes, motivation is important. And yes, social identity helps explain that. But let's not underplay the importance of those other factors, including opportunity. And if the government, instead of telling us off, took its own responsibility seriously to help us and therefore proved itself to be on our side, not only would they make it possible for us to adhere, they would also motivate us to adhere. Fantastic. I'll ask one last question because it touches on that last idea. This was written by Kate Reynolds. Steve, very important engaging lecture. Thank you. My question is with two, the two views of people as a problem or positive resource. Have you seen any shift in your government interactions that indicate change in views? Is the view of people a positive resource who can enact change through getting traction? I've seen some change in the civil servants, the government psychologists. And in fact, one of the things we have this project to look at group processes in COVID. And we've engaged within that some of the government psychologists. And one of the things we aim to do is to hold a conference with them. And I think they're quite open because very much the UK government has been dominated by nudge type theories. There is something called the behavioral insights team which is inside number 10 Downing Street. And their position has always been along the lines of, you know, you can't reason with people, you can only get them to change their behavior through the choice architecture. I'm not saying that's irrelevant, but I do think that the larger assumption that, you know, people are unable to reason unable to understand them, their motives unable to be talked to is actually rather pernicious. So within the government's psychological service, I think there is beginning to be a shift. And one of the things I hope that will come out of that is a dialogue showing them the power of social identity points of view. One of the pleasures for me, because I'm involved in Scotland as well as the UK is Scotland being smaller, but also Scotland being politically different. There has been much more willingness to listen and to involve us in practical things like designing the messaging. Like, I mean, there is now a special compliance group of the Scottish government which I've been involved with. And so I'm beginning to see signs of it. I don't overestimate, you know, the ability because I think there is an ideological element to it at a government level. So I was talking to one of the psychologists who works in number 10 Downing Street and she told me this little anecdote of, I don't know whether you've heard of Michael Gove. Michael Gove is one of the senior cabinet ministers who was very prominent in Brexit. He was the one who infamously told people not to believe in experts. And he told me the story of how she was walking along one day and Gove came up to her and said, tell me what is the most interesting psychological bias that you've come across in the last few months. I mean, so completely obsessed with this notion of biases. So I think it's there in government, I think around government and in the psychologists in government. I think there's a real openness to change. And I think that's really exciting. And I think we've got to use that opportunity as much as we can. Well, thank you again, Steve. I'm going to just hand it over now to Ian to to close the evening. Thank you very much, Michael. It's a fascinating talk, Steve, we really enjoyed it, and especially the Q&A, some very insightful responses to some very insightful and challenging questions. So it does feel very odd trying to end a talk like this without calling for a customary round of applause. But please, on behalf of everybody, accept a thunderous round of applause, a virtual round of applause. I need to give some thanks to some people, in particular to Stephanie Goodhew, who's the chair of the research school of psychology as alumni and engagement committee for organizing this talk. And to Amy Seath, the school manager and Michaela Holtz for setting it all up and managing the technology, managing those of us who are not so good at managing the technology. Thank you to everyone there and to Michael for moderating. And finally, of course, to Steve. It's been a wonderful and insightful talk that was really sparked for me anyway and I'm sure for others sparked an awful lot of deeper thinking. Thanks, Steve, by saying you were both delighted and infuriated at the invitation to give this lecture. Be sure that the delight and the fury is experienced mutually. We have of course been delighted to listen to, but in equal measure, frustrated if not infuriated, and not being able to host you in person. I would love that opportunity and I'm sure we would love and will love to host you when international travel is possible again. So on behalf of everybody this evening. Thank you very much. I would like to take you for a drink and a nice meal over at the fellow's bar or restaurant that you mentioned at the start of the talk between jackets are nowhere to be seen. But instead, I think we just have to, we in Australia have to retire now to the cup of cocoa that you mentioned and I'm going to need to leave you to your morning bowl of porridge in in San Andreas. Thank you again very much. It's been a pleasure. Bye everyone and thanks for listening.