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The psychology of morality, perversion, and revenge, in 67 minutes | Paul Bloom: Full Interview

Big Think | July 20, 2026



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Psychologist Paul Bloom has spent his career studying the parts of human nature we often feel uncomfortable examining: why loneliness feels like starvation, why people are drawn to behaving poorly, why revenge feels righteous until it destroys everything.

Bloom argues that the US doesn’t actually have a loneliness epidemic, it has a solitude epidemic, one being accelerated by AI companionship.

0:00 Chapter 1: The promise and peril of AI companions
8:29 Two concerns: addiction & yes-men
16:00 The case for AI companions
23:50 The compulsion to behave badly
48:26 Understanding the morality of revenge

Read the video transcript ► [Link to site article]?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description

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About Paul Bloom:

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. An internationally recognized expert on the psychology of child development, social reasoning, and morality, he has won numerous awards for his research, writing, and teaching. Bloom’s previous books include Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil and How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, and he has written for Science, Nature, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.

Written by Big Think

Comments

This post currently has 31 comments.

  1. @laaaliiiluuu

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    If you let people just do what they do, they will only become worse. Revenge is a social balancing act because some people only stop when you make them pay a hefty price for their behavior. Not everybody is as "goodhearted" as you are.

  2. @cassiekay8633

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    So interesting, but he did shock me when he said @19.05 in reference to when televisions used to go off late at night : "What are you going to do? Read a book? That's kind of boring." –a good book is NEVER boring!

  3. @sorayah248

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    I think most people like some level of perversity until it affects them, especially deeply.
    Taking my friend's french fries without asking could be a power play. Keep letting things go, & see how people will push you.

  4. @ikaruga001

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    I'm lonely because I don't want to drink a lot, I mean to the point where you pass out or lose your memory. I have never know anybody who doesn't drink their brains out in every weekend and every instance where drinking is appropriate. I live in Finland. Drunkards are extremely needy, their needs are the most important and they just won't listen if you say no. Many times I wonder how the society can function when people are drunk or in hangover 50% of their free time.

  5. @Dimitrios-j9l

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    The neutral bystander that has power and is indifferent, THAT'S who should get to decide what side of a conflict is wrong and what side is right.
    But in international relations there is no such thing. And unfortunately there will never be such thing.

  6. @triangleking3213

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    This guy is a creep. He has a book with a young black child and juxtaposed with a dog, I think it's called language and concepts. Both the young black child and the dog in the same pose. What is he trying to say?

  7. @triangleking3213

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    This is so short sighted. Saying that people prefer sycophants isn't news. This guy is doing bad research that will set the stage for our future dystopia. We need to address the longstanding problem of what happened to academia. Even the sciences have been turned into an ideological war. There is something so unlikable and smug about this guy. He isn't a professor – He is a social engineer and propagandist.

  8. @autieq

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    My experience: AI do tell: you are stupid, ALL THE TIME, and is the reason it exists, only are doing in a subtil way.

    It would be great if, when you meet a psychopath, you could simply press the "exit" key, and get away.

  9. @lindaMar517

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    1970s & 80s . We had CULTS . human connectednes . yess . BUT
    connected to WHAT . WHOM . WHERE . etc.
    your LONELY is your lonely . it is Not my Lonely . NO IT'S NOT . i find my interactions for my reasons . FU

  10. @romeyorkshire

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    Human to human interaction is inherently a constant search for cues from each other. Eye contact, tone of voice, gestures, sighs, as these signs also produce language. The brain is hardwired to look for them to come up with a response such as those produced by the amygdala. We need human contact. Anything other than that is human interaction abstinence that has severe consequences.

  11. @thomulusmax

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    I'm sorry to say that II was bored with this speaker. I expected to hear the psychology of… as in the title and all the speaker spoke about was AI. So what I was expecting to be a very enthralling and educating turned out to be about a subject that everyone seems to be talking about these days AI, it's just seems like people are only talking about AI. So I'm sure that many people probably enjoyed this speaker. But I am just so tired of hearing about AI!

  12. @Canaryisland1

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    I think humans feel lonely because we all know consciously or unconsciously that we have to say goodbye to everyone when you die. It has nothing to do with how many friends one has. Each of us must overcome the fear somehow unless you put all your money on Bryan Johnson.

  13. @barbarajbrown2758

    July 20, 2026 at 11:42 am

    Interesting video. "Perversity" is a concept that harkens to Freudian times. It seems to me that what is needed now is more cross disciplinary dialogue, say, between social, developmental, clinical and even IO psychologists. The meaning of 1) work (if you want to bring up Freud… at all) coupled with 2) love (another Freudian topic), and lastly, the capacity to 3) enjoy (which was lost in the German translation of Freud into English…don't ever say the Germans' didn't know how to laugh). Why bring up Freud now? Fantasy and reality considerations that create human imagination is a contribution from Object Relations theory. Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. Isn't the human imagination – based in reality considerations – what is relevant right about now? And here we are not understanding what is morally at stake and how a group would sustain healthy decision making. By correcting Freudian theory while integrating updated social science research, this can possibly provide an alternative , or elaboration of human imagination (that would be capable of including adult women as moral agents and even political and business leaders…you know…everything else that isn't masculine, therefore known as threatening … for some reason?) and understanding how unprocessed over "excitement" and greed are part of infantile development (what a cultural dialogue that would be) – We could begin to have a context, theoretically, for concepts that inform decision making in groups, (including overly excited responses to robotics) without losing human individual development which includes an aim toward emotional maturation, with healthy group reality confirmations, including respectful dialogues – you'd think businesses would want that for return customers, and lawyers in democracies. The lack of this integration of theory means we will settle for fragmented concepts that don't cite the relevant research and don't help to inform what is meant by the word "intelligence". Psychology failing to extend measurement theory into current workplace realities – is a shame. Perhaps starting with group outcomes that are found in social psychology meta-analysis that define what healthy group outcomes are based on starting with two dimensions that measure healthy group function (if they manifest/ are allowed to function): 1) explicit group outcomes and 2) socio-emotional needs. Rather than a Cold War – social science could advance symbolic formation, consensual decision making and reality checking; the social sciences then begin to seem relevant to our thinking. Group decision making, rather than authoritarian aims, begins to look "sexy" again – (and for the oblivious, I am being cynical given I am an adult woman living in the US at this time.)

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