reactions. there's a study that came on not so long ago, as bad as racial animosity was in this country for many years, it's now-- people would be more hesitant to have their child marry-- >> we'll leave book tv for a few moments to keep our over 40 year commitment live coverage of congress. the u.s. senate is coming in for what we believe will be a brief session. live coverage on c-span2. ... the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., november 21, 2023. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable timothy m. kaine, a senator from the commonwealth of virginia, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stans adjourned until 11:00 a.m.,

adjourned until 11:00 a.m., >> the u.s. senate remains in recess for the thanksgiving holiday. the next boat in the chamber will be november 27 on the nomination of a u.s. district court judge from minnesota. as always, live gavel to gavel coverage of these u.s. senate on c-span2. we now take you back to booktv. >> it's been a little more time, people talk about positive solutions rather than right away going to that's just religion but that's just -- just not helpful. to do that, i think. >> a million questions. hang on. let's get into the abortion

question. and one thing that was very striking foran me, and one of my favorite things come out of reading the book is just saying that what you have done is sort of crystallized so much research that's out there that most of us don't read, write? there are so many other people have done research and so much that you have done, and you distillate into something that can bed. absorbed, and fantasti. so thank you. but i can't help but notice there's not any research about, there's research about who blames the women seeking an abortion and, therefore,fo what choices should or should not be available to the woman seeking

an abortion based on how she got into this circumstance. are there any about the donator -- [laughing] of, you said it was open to comity. that wasn't actually might get but i'm glad it was funny. [laughing] are there any studies about whether or not when we should hold the other half of the genetic material responsible? >> not at the time that i was doing my studies, surprisingly it's a something people talked about. it is one of those, i think it's similar actually with birth control even though there are measures that can be used by men, the vast majority, there was just an editorial in the "new york times" a couple weeks ago about this, about birth

control being an issue of responsibility, and it was really entirely focus on could become pregnant. so yeah, i mean come i think that's really lacking. i think would be a great study to dobl because i think it is really problematic, but it does tell you a little bit about how we think about the issue, write? that it is a matter of i think some people believe it can't obliterate what is against abortion sees it this way, but for some people think it is holding the one responsible for being reckless. you deserve this, and why would we help you by allowing you to terminate the pregnancy, write? because you got yourself into the situation. and it's an positive. do we need, in order to really move out of this polarization

and come together for solutions, do we have two instruct or assist people in thinking even of blame of who might be responsible more broadly than they are doing so? open up that sort of myopic view that we might be looking at, looking through, looking with. to really figure out what are the societal ills and how do we fix them. >> yeah. there is some limited help in that regard, and these are all very new studies out just in the last few years. there are a few studies that have been published, and this is why i felt particularly pressed to finish this book because there are studies that show you can effect change peoples views of these things, , write?

we know how hard it is to change someone's ideology or religion or any sort of those things, probably not going to happen but there been some studies which the present people with information and actually change the way they see causality. so, for example, a just a couple of quick ones. couple of different studies where they had people who really like ten minute poverty simulations where they have the expensey of what it is like to be poor and they will go through kind of this is what happens in your day, et cetera. even these tiny interventions cause people to make more societal attribution for poverty and your individualistic ones, meaning they are blaming the poor t less. there have been studies, a recent one where they thought part of the problem with poverty is that people really believe an upward mobility. they believe if you try hard enough, the american dream, we can bring yourself up to the top. the evidence suggests that's not at all to correct the evidence

suggests social mobility in this country is incredibly low. your chance of raising your level of social class is extremely slim. when people learn that they didn't make different attributions for why some people are not successful. they have done ones with race even what people are exposed to information about white privilege, and itak causes themo make less individualistic attributions for racial inequality, racial, economic inequality. there was even one study of the rape situation in which they found by focusing more on describing the perpetrator than the victim, people were less victim blaming. so there's lots of hope we can talk about issues anyway that wouldn't draw people to blame so quickly,n and i think you're right education, i mean i don't know who willab do this, it probably won't be me but i think, i think exposing people to information a lot of americans are not very informative. people grossly underestimate things like racial inequality,

for example. so that's not necessarily that everybody has bad intentions but they really don't understand how serious the problem is, or what's causing it. so that's i think some reason for hope. >> before we move to you guys that brings is something i found incredibly interesting that for those in the room with not yet read your book, would you talk for a a moment about the finding about what helps change people's minds, whether it's individual stories like the human interest stories that we see on the news, or what we usually get as the dry social statistics, which works. >> s really. this book been around for a while. it was only published when i was in grad school so that was 30 years ago or so. it was at even for a while before that. it was about the look at how the

media presents issues, and so it's a term they use in the media called framing. you can frame issues in different ways, and what this château in carrion is a person who is a political communication special. i at stanford. she was at ucla when i was there. and he studied the news programs present social issues. what he found was there are two main ways of framing or what is like an individualistic frame, and you've probably seen this where they were like we're talking about t poverty in the united states. let's talk to this one poor person and find out their situation, et cetera. or there is the more societal frame structural frame which is let's look at poverty statistics, , what percentage of the population is poor, et cetera. so the bigger global view versus individual. to the surprise of wasted whenever i talk about this, the individual stories make people blame the individual more, and the statistic, i know, it's very

surprising. we always imagine it's going to make you feel empathy, write? doesn't seem to work that way. actually when you see the bigger picture in society that's when people begin to think a be something is wrong with society. why is this so important? he pointed out the vast majority of news stories on these problems are individualistic. i understand why. i don't think it's the necessarily the news has evil intentions. i think they are not aware of the effects of what they're doing perhaps. maybe not all but many. soti absolutely it's a really fascinating thing and something to become aware of that we are accidentally, we have such proclivity towards blame that it with somebody there, it's just a easy and quick. well, get a job, write? it's that sort of thing where as statistics are harder i think away and say, 30% of our population is lazy, or whatever it is. >> so yeah, very surprising, i agree. >> all right.

so what would you all like to ask? and it which is a read the book, if it's a controversial issue, she goes there. so don't be afraid. that's the fun stuff. >> because we can keep talking. all right. we will keep talking. [inaudible] >> one of the things is you talk about, yes, people need to be held responsible for things that we do a lot of blaming way there's no need to hold people responsible. one of the things that he heard at some point in my life about what makes peopled happy, i head on thehe radio and actually kind of change my life little bit. he said there are two things that happy people have in

common, and what is their wake up in the morning and they say this is going to be a good day. but the other one is that when things go wrong, instead of going around and say who's fault is it? who did what? you say, what do we do now? and it's much more productive to say what do we do now than it's your fault. so why is it we need somebody to blame? >> i think it's -- sorry. i think it is sort of to some degree perhaps a human tendency. i dot' think it's much more western, like countries that are more collectivist do a lot less of it. big industry relationships and the think that's kind of where you're going. using the good of the family come for example,, or the good f the community as opposed to this person needs to be held accountable. but i do think in this culture i think we are sort of socialized that way. we kind of automatically learn. i don't know, i talk about this such a a be better than it but i

do it all the time period i mean driving, driving, i'm a driver that, i'm sort of a aggressive driver have to say. if some information writing really slowly, do i think our person, maybe they're having ath hard day? no, get out of the way. what's wrong? i do think our better angels do what you are saying and i seek -- we do probably for loved ones. your kid that something that you think was a bad idea but you may not really yell at them because you feel likeem we just have to solve this problem, they suffered enough, write? an habit of doing that andnd it takes real fortitude. >> on a personal level, i use this with my daughter who blames herself for everything. and said, it doesn't do you any good to sit around and blame yourself. get on with your life. go do something. can you address that. >> was whether or not that was

the right approach? [inaudible] >> we blame ourselves for things and it doesn't do any good, absolutely. >> one of the things when a teacher the stuff i didn't even talk about self-directed attributions which is what you're talking about. reabsolutely critical. i think you are very right because you can't feel pride, for example, another emotion, a positive emotion, and the shooting personal responsibility for something. so you deprive yourself of that just as you will feel depressed if you hold yourself responsible for every negative thing. so actually attributions have been used inal some depression clinical work where they try to help people make different attributions that are not quite so negative about themselves and not so prominent. so maybe you failed but nixon you can do better, that kind of thing, write? so yeah, very insightful i absolutely agree with you.

>> i was just thinking about the circumstances in which may be, i'm going to change the word from blame to taking responsibility. i think part of the problem and wantkn to know what you think about this, is that when people are blaming others constantly, they really should be blaming themselves a little bit. [laughing] and, and the correlation between a a person who doesn't reallyes se themselves to responsible for much at all and their willingness to blame is a huge problem.m. i'm wondering where you'rett sitting with that in the book? >> sort of what is aligned because i agree with you there is opposite, there's a person who blames himself for everything and the person who takes responsibility fork nothing. i think politicians in particular i'm sure you can think