Saturday, February 02, 2008
We Remain a Family Blog, Jeremy Freese Edition
by Ken Houghton
Then again, the only videos I've been watching recently are Bruce Cockburn and Brad DeLong, and whatever Rory or Steve embeds at EoB.
UPDATE: I found out what it is. Have no bid to see it.
I can safely state that I have no idea whatsoever what video is being discussed here. And it appears that whatever it is is not something YouTube is ranking (apparently, this will surprise no one).
Then again, the only videos I've been watching recently are Bruce Cockburn and Brad DeLong, and whatever Rory or Steve embeds at EoB.
UPDATE: I found out what it is. Have no bid to see it.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Best If Promulgated By...
by Drek
Part of what is interesting here is that these two factors can vary independently of one another. So, if my Republican father also said that taxes should be raised by 2% I would experience disconfirmation, since this differs from his usual stance, but not discrepancy, since our positions are identical. Likewise, if the aforementioned Republican politician expressed a distaste for abortion rights, equal opportunity, or environmental protection I might experience discrepancy, since I don't agree with his stances, but not disconfirmation, since those are the positions I anticipate he holds. The question then becomes, how do disconfirmation and discrepancy mutually influence opinion change?
Well, as it happens, they both have interesting effects. Discrepancy, it appears, tends to produce opinion change. So, if I am exposed to arguments greatly at variance with my own, the size of the variance appears to have an impact on the size of my opinion change.*** Disconfirmation, likewise, has a substantial impact- a person who takes an opinion contrary to what you would expect has a greater influence on opinion change than one whose opinions fall into line with expectations. Particularly interesting, however, is why this effect appears to occur. To quote Kaplowitz et al:
So, in other words, if my Republican father agrees that a 2% tax hike is necessary, I'm more likely to assume that this is because the severity of the economic situation warrants the change than I am to conclude that he is more impartial than I previously thought. Why is this interesting? Well, for a simple reason: it suggests that the more unexpected a position an authority takes, the more likely individuals are to assume that the authority has a good reason for taking it. It is, effectively, a social psychological explanation for what is commonly known as the big lie doctrine. Domestically we may have seen this play out following September 11th, when the populace reacted to a government that was unexpectedly trampling due process by assuming that there must be a good reason for it. The genesis of Iraq War II may well have been similarly influenced. What we see is an effective reversal of Carl Sagan's argument that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Apparently, to many people, extraordinary and unexpected claims may imply that extraordinary evidence exists, whether they have personally seen it or not.
And all of this, oddly enough, makes me think of Michael Behe and his cohort Wild Bill. They are, respectively, a biochemist and a mathematician**** and both are advocates of Intelligent Design creationism. Consider, for a moment, how their presence at the forefront of the "movement" impacts those who are exposed to them. Most people probably expect those of high education, particularly Ph.D.s and especially Ph.D.s from technical fields like biochemistry and mathematics to be proponents of evolution. It is, after all, the perspective that seems to dominate in the academy***** and academics are often expected to be atheists or atheist sympathizers. If you don't believe me about that, read Conservapedia for a week or two. Yet, suddenly, here come Mickey and Wild Bill- two academics who claim that evolution is a crock and this new "intelligent design," a transparent disguise wrapped around creationism, is the truth. Whether or not there is any discrepancy in this argument, certainly a great amount of disconfirmation results. It is obvious why, therefore, Behe and Dembski have been so popular and effective as messengers for creationism.
Yet, what happens as time goes by? The longer Behe and Dembski keep up their tirades against evolution, the more we learn about their theological commitments, the weaker that disconfirmation becomes. Eventually, we expect what they have to say and are not surprised by it in the least. It appears, strangely enough, that ideologues like Dembski and Behe have a limited period of usefulness, almost as though there is a freshness date stamped upon their rumps. "Lousy arguments best if advanced by..." or something to that effect. In order to maintain its effectiveness, Intelligent Design creationism must therefore continually introduce new scientists and academics who are equally unlikely to support intelligent design and yet do so- something that ID has been manifestly unable to do. And as this failure drags on, we might well expect what little momentum ID has acquired to peter out.
It's all quite speculative but perhaps in this basic research on opinion change what we actually have is a partial explanation for the trajectory of ID, as well as a promise for the future. The next iteration of ID will be back just as soon as they dress it up in new clothes and find another pair of unexpected hacks to advance in into the public eye.
Or, then again, maybe I'm deliberately wasting your time. Your call.
* Kaplowitz, Stan, Edward L. Fink, James Mulcrone, David Atkin, & Saleh Dabil. (1991). "Disentangling the Effects of Discrepant and Disconfirming Information." Social Psychology Quarterly. 54(3). 191-207.
** e.g. Me.
*** Other scholars are invited to correct me if more recent literature suggests otherwise.
**** As well as a sort of amateur theologian, which may explain why his understanding of statistics is so often criticized. Not that theologians can't do math, but rather that Dembski has a lot of motivation to make the math say what he wants it to say.
***** Not to mention in evidence-based institutions everywhere.
During a recent fit of productivity I happened to read an article by Stan Kaplowitz and his colleagues* dealing with opinion change. Specifically, the article reports on a series of experiments that examine the impact of two factors on subject opinions: disconfirmation and discrepancy. For those who don't have a comprehensive library of social psychological terminology filed away in their brains** disconfirmation simply means "the opinion advanced by a second individual differs from what you would expect." So, for example, if a Republican politician advanced strong support of abortion rights, equal opportunity, and environmental protection, we would experience an amount of disconfirmation. Discrepancy, on the other hand, represents the size of the difference between one's own opinion and another person's. So, if I think taxes should be raised by 2% and my Republican father believes that they should be lowered by 2%, we are experiencing discrepancy.
Part of what is interesting here is that these two factors can vary independently of one another. So, if my Republican father also said that taxes should be raised by 2% I would experience disconfirmation, since this differs from his usual stance, but not discrepancy, since our positions are identical. Likewise, if the aforementioned Republican politician expressed a distaste for abortion rights, equal opportunity, or environmental protection I might experience discrepancy, since I don't agree with his stances, but not disconfirmation, since those are the positions I anticipate he holds. The question then becomes, how do disconfirmation and discrepancy mutually influence opinion change?
Well, as it happens, they both have interesting effects. Discrepancy, it appears, tends to produce opinion change. So, if I am exposed to arguments greatly at variance with my own, the size of the variance appears to have an impact on the size of my opinion change.*** Disconfirmation, likewise, has a substantial impact- a person who takes an opinion contrary to what you would expect has a greater influence on opinion change than one whose opinions fall into line with expectations. Particularly interesting, however, is why this effect appears to occur. To quote Kaplowitz et al:
Our results show that when the source takes an unexpected position, this position need not suggest that the source is unbiased. Rather, it may suggest that the case at hand merits a comparative evaluation which is extreme enough to overcome any bias on the part of the source.
So, in other words, if my Republican father agrees that a 2% tax hike is necessary, I'm more likely to assume that this is because the severity of the economic situation warrants the change than I am to conclude that he is more impartial than I previously thought. Why is this interesting? Well, for a simple reason: it suggests that the more unexpected a position an authority takes, the more likely individuals are to assume that the authority has a good reason for taking it. It is, effectively, a social psychological explanation for what is commonly known as the big lie doctrine. Domestically we may have seen this play out following September 11th, when the populace reacted to a government that was unexpectedly trampling due process by assuming that there must be a good reason for it. The genesis of Iraq War II may well have been similarly influenced. What we see is an effective reversal of Carl Sagan's argument that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Apparently, to many people, extraordinary and unexpected claims may imply that extraordinary evidence exists, whether they have personally seen it or not.
And all of this, oddly enough, makes me think of Michael Behe and his cohort Wild Bill. They are, respectively, a biochemist and a mathematician**** and both are advocates of Intelligent Design creationism. Consider, for a moment, how their presence at the forefront of the "movement" impacts those who are exposed to them. Most people probably expect those of high education, particularly Ph.D.s and especially Ph.D.s from technical fields like biochemistry and mathematics to be proponents of evolution. It is, after all, the perspective that seems to dominate in the academy***** and academics are often expected to be atheists or atheist sympathizers. If you don't believe me about that, read Conservapedia for a week or two. Yet, suddenly, here come Mickey and Wild Bill- two academics who claim that evolution is a crock and this new "intelligent design," a transparent disguise wrapped around creationism, is the truth. Whether or not there is any discrepancy in this argument, certainly a great amount of disconfirmation results. It is obvious why, therefore, Behe and Dembski have been so popular and effective as messengers for creationism.
Yet, what happens as time goes by? The longer Behe and Dembski keep up their tirades against evolution, the more we learn about their theological commitments, the weaker that disconfirmation becomes. Eventually, we expect what they have to say and are not surprised by it in the least. It appears, strangely enough, that ideologues like Dembski and Behe have a limited period of usefulness, almost as though there is a freshness date stamped upon their rumps. "Lousy arguments best if advanced by..." or something to that effect. In order to maintain its effectiveness, Intelligent Design creationism must therefore continually introduce new scientists and academics who are equally unlikely to support intelligent design and yet do so- something that ID has been manifestly unable to do. And as this failure drags on, we might well expect what little momentum ID has acquired to peter out.
It's all quite speculative but perhaps in this basic research on opinion change what we actually have is a partial explanation for the trajectory of ID, as well as a promise for the future. The next iteration of ID will be back just as soon as they dress it up in new clothes and find another pair of unexpected hacks to advance in into the public eye.
Or, then again, maybe I'm deliberately wasting your time. Your call.
* Kaplowitz, Stan, Edward L. Fink, James Mulcrone, David Atkin, & Saleh Dabil. (1991). "Disentangling the Effects of Discrepant and Disconfirming Information." Social Psychology Quarterly. 54(3). 191-207.
** e.g. Me.
*** Other scholars are invited to correct me if more recent literature suggests otherwise.
**** As well as a sort of amateur theologian, which may explain why his understanding of statistics is so often criticized. Not that theologians can't do math, but rather that Dembski has a lot of motivation to make the math say what he wants it to say.
***** Not to mention in evidence-based institutions everywhere.
Labels: Evolution, intelligent design, Social Psychology, Social Science, Sociology
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Defeating your own brain.
by Drek
I bring this up because of an excellent article that recently appeared in the Washington Post that deals with a particularly disturbing cognitive bias. This article reports on, among other things, some research performed by the Centers for Disease Control that came to a rather disquieting conclusion: it appears that efforts to contradict false information may actually end up reinforcing it. To quote from the article:
So, not only was the incorrect information retained, and not only was it retained as "accurate" knowledge, but it had somehow acquired the prestige of being supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Given that this was a study dealing with influenza, readers can be pardoned for not being too concerned, but what if this were instead dealing with information about HIV, tuberculosis, or anthrax? Would we feel as sanguine if citizens were coming to believe false information about those much more serious diseases? I suspect not. The unfortunate truth here is that this tendency for contradictions to reinforce that which they seek to discredit is a serious problem for our society. The medical implications are obvious- and may help to account for continued hysteria about vaccines- but the problems do not stop there.
We could talk about the political implications of this research. Indeed, the article itself does so, observing that this tendency to continue to believe discredited information, even to believe it more strongly, may account for a number of persistent myths surrounding the 9/11 attacks. For example:
In more general terms, this research may also help explain why the political right in the U.S. seems to so consistently kick the ass of the political left. With its reliance on soundbites and fireworks from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, the right is ideally structured to keep punching out assertions of often dubious accuracy. And when the left attempts to combat them, it may end up simply strengthening its opponents. Heads I win, tails you lose. Perhaps if you are on the right wing you won't find this idea disturbing but you should, if only because it implies that the only way to carry out politics is to reduce it to the level of a deranged shouting match.
I mean, we're more or less there already, but it would sure be nice if we could at least try to make use of reasoned debate and discussion.**
Finally, this research has some fairly significant implications for those of us who teach, and especially those of us who teach sociology. One of the greatest problems we face in sociology is in leading our students to question their own society. We have to guide students into accepting the idea that their own society is not the only way, and probably not the best way, of living. Often this involves contradicting things our students believe or helping them to see that their own beliefs are, themselves, contradictory.*** Unfortunately, this may not actually be the best way to go about it, and in demonstrating how a previous belief is incorrect, we may do little more than reinforce it in our students' minds. It is, perhaps, no surprise then that many adults look back on their sociology classes as having been silly, obvious, or a waste of time. With the hazy perspective of years, they have forgotten all the things sociology tried to teach them, and perhaps remember only those things we sought to contradict. Only now, they remember them as being true.
I'm not sure what is to be done about this. Remaining silent won't work as silence is often taken as tacit approval. Nevertheless, we can perhaps avoid some of the consequences of this cognitive bias by spending less time contradicting bad ideas, and more time arguing for the good ones. This may, of course, be less satisfying sometimes but in the final analysis, do we want to feel good, or do we want to be effective? I prefer to think we want to be effective. And, if nothing else, we should be sure to talk about these cognitive biases whenever it's appropriate. We're all vulnerable to the mistakes they lead us towards, and our only real defense is being aware that they exist.
It's never easy to defeat your own brain but, from time to time, it's the very best thing you can do.
* I say "pseudo-flaws" because these biases were probably very useful in our evolutionary environment where the idea wasn't to reach the best conclusion, but rather the one that was good enough to keep you alive. So, for example, given a choice between alpha error and beta error, alpha error is the one to make. It's better to think you see a predator that doesn't exist than to miss the one that does. If you want to think more about this, I have pondered the matter at least once before.
** Sorry, folks. Sometimes my zeal for democracy as envisioned by political philosophers leads me to say some pretty naive things.
*** My favorite example being that common sense tells us both that "Birds of a feather flock together" and that "Opposites attract." It's pretty easy for common sense to appear to be correct when it covers all of the bases like that.
In a blog post a while back Brad Wright helpfully posted a list of cognitive biases common to human thought. For those who are not familiar, cognitive biases are shortcuts or pseudo-flaws* in human reasoning that can lead us to incorrect or unsupportable conclusions. Brad raises the question of how these biases affect discussions of religion, but I'm not really interested in that just now. Since all humans that we've checked (and we've checked a lot) appear to be susceptible to these kinds of biases, it's most likely the case that both the theist and the atheist are equally vulnerable. It may be that each group has its own "preferred" kind of bias, but that's not really an improvement.
I bring this up because of an excellent article that recently appeared in the Washington Post that deals with a particularly disturbing cognitive bias. This article reports on, among other things, some research performed by the Centers for Disease Control that came to a rather disquieting conclusion: it appears that efforts to contradict false information may actually end up reinforcing it. To quote from the article:
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."
When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.
Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.
So, not only was the incorrect information retained, and not only was it retained as "accurate" knowledge, but it had somehow acquired the prestige of being supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Given that this was a study dealing with influenza, readers can be pardoned for not being too concerned, but what if this were instead dealing with information about HIV, tuberculosis, or anthrax? Would we feel as sanguine if citizens were coming to believe false information about those much more serious diseases? I suspect not. The unfortunate truth here is that this tendency for contradictions to reinforce that which they seek to discredit is a serious problem for our society. The medical implications are obvious- and may help to account for continued hysteria about vaccines- but the problems do not stop there.
We could talk about the political implications of this research. Indeed, the article itself does so, observing that this tendency to continue to believe discredited information, even to believe it more strongly, may account for a number of persistent myths surrounding the 9/11 attacks. For example:
This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.
Similarly, many in the Arab world are convinced that the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was not the work of Arab terrorists but was a controlled demolition; that 4,000 Jews working there had been warned to stay home that day; and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile rather than a plane.
...
A report last year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, however, found that the number of Muslims worldwide who do not believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks is soaring -- to 59 percent of Turks and Egyptians, 65 percent of Indonesians, 53 percent of Jordanians, 41 percent of Pakistanis and even 56 percent of British Muslims.
In more general terms, this research may also help explain why the political right in the U.S. seems to so consistently kick the ass of the political left. With its reliance on soundbites and fireworks from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, the right is ideally structured to keep punching out assertions of often dubious accuracy. And when the left attempts to combat them, it may end up simply strengthening its opponents. Heads I win, tails you lose. Perhaps if you are on the right wing you won't find this idea disturbing but you should, if only because it implies that the only way to carry out politics is to reduce it to the level of a deranged shouting match.
I mean, we're more or less there already, but it would sure be nice if we could at least try to make use of reasoned debate and discussion.**
Finally, this research has some fairly significant implications for those of us who teach, and especially those of us who teach sociology. One of the greatest problems we face in sociology is in leading our students to question their own society. We have to guide students into accepting the idea that their own society is not the only way, and probably not the best way, of living. Often this involves contradicting things our students believe or helping them to see that their own beliefs are, themselves, contradictory.*** Unfortunately, this may not actually be the best way to go about it, and in demonstrating how a previous belief is incorrect, we may do little more than reinforce it in our students' minds. It is, perhaps, no surprise then that many adults look back on their sociology classes as having been silly, obvious, or a waste of time. With the hazy perspective of years, they have forgotten all the things sociology tried to teach them, and perhaps remember only those things we sought to contradict. Only now, they remember them as being true.
I'm not sure what is to be done about this. Remaining silent won't work as silence is often taken as tacit approval. Nevertheless, we can perhaps avoid some of the consequences of this cognitive bias by spending less time contradicting bad ideas, and more time arguing for the good ones. This may, of course, be less satisfying sometimes but in the final analysis, do we want to feel good, or do we want to be effective? I prefer to think we want to be effective. And, if nothing else, we should be sure to talk about these cognitive biases whenever it's appropriate. We're all vulnerable to the mistakes they lead us towards, and our only real defense is being aware that they exist.
It's never easy to defeat your own brain but, from time to time, it's the very best thing you can do.
* I say "pseudo-flaws" because these biases were probably very useful in our evolutionary environment where the idea wasn't to reach the best conclusion, but rather the one that was good enough to keep you alive. So, for example, given a choice between alpha error and beta error, alpha error is the one to make. It's better to think you see a predator that doesn't exist than to miss the one that does. If you want to think more about this, I have pondered the matter at least once before.
** Sorry, folks. Sometimes my zeal for democracy as envisioned by political philosophers leads me to say some pretty naive things.
*** My favorite example being that common sense tells us both that "Birds of a feather flock together" and that "Opposites attract." It's pretty easy for common sense to appear to be correct when it covers all of the bases like that.
Labels: cognitive biases, Health Care, Politics, Science, Social Science, Sociology, teaching
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Program Note: Elsewhere in teh Intertubes
by Tom Bozzo
Warren Ellis's dispatches from SL for Reuters (yes, a First Life news agency covers virtual goings-on) really make me wonder whether corporations know what they're getting into in the Metaverse.
Total Drek co-blogger Slag and I talk about aspects of Second Life chez Drek.
Warren Ellis's dispatches from SL for Reuters (yes, a First Life news agency covers virtual goings-on) really make me wonder whether corporations know what they're getting into in the Metaverse.
Labels: Economics, Realities Virtual and Otherwise, Sociology, technology
Monday, April 16, 2007
Note to Sociology Pals
by Tom Bozzo
I would imagine few sociologists would find this shocking. Critique of Economics Methodology 101 is that economists love themselves their H. economicus beyond reason (often true). An advanced (and also largely true) version is that some economics — especially microfoundations-based macro — doesn't so much describe how the economy works but rather how hypothetical economies comprised of fully rational actors work, and at least some economists fail to notice the difference. See, e.g., Wisconsin's Daniel Hausman for additional details.
Part of the problem is with the mathematical methods that are the bread-and-butter of "neoclassical" economics. The "classic" microfoundations-of-macro models were cleverly set up so that equilibria existed and could be characterized with the use of math that may look easy or difficult depending on your frame of reference. That gives way to extremely difficult or impossible math if, say, consumption is subject to social externalities — e.g., Jane Mangement Consultant drives a BMW in part because Bob Management Consultant drives a Mercedes. (This also has implications that right-leaning economists find politically unpalatable). There's a tendency to push off really problematic stuff (in the sense of not being susceptible to proving "theorems") to the "fuzzier" social sciences.
Update 4/18/07: Brayden King picks up the gauntlet here, at Orgtheory.net, showing why Orgtheory got its 'thinking blogger' award; see also the contributions from Brayden's co-bloggers in the comments thread.
(*) I.e., behavior of the economy as a whole derived from models of optimizing or rational agents' behavior.
George Akerlof invokes your discipline a few times in "The Missing Motivation in Macroeconomics", in the AER deposited in my mailbox today (contents page with viewing options), but adapted from the Presidential Address at this past January's AEA meetings. Based on joint work with Maryland's Rachel Kranton (who taught me some I-O back in the day), "norms" are the "missing motivation" in microfoundations-based macroeconomics (*).
I would imagine few sociologists would find this shocking. Critique of Economics Methodology 101 is that economists love themselves their H. economicus beyond reason (often true). An advanced (and also largely true) version is that some economics — especially microfoundations-based macro — doesn't so much describe how the economy works but rather how hypothetical economies comprised of fully rational actors work, and at least some economists fail to notice the difference. See, e.g., Wisconsin's Daniel Hausman for additional details.
Part of the problem is with the mathematical methods that are the bread-and-butter of "neoclassical" economics. The "classic" microfoundations-of-macro models were cleverly set up so that equilibria existed and could be characterized with the use of math that may look easy or difficult depending on your frame of reference. That gives way to extremely difficult or impossible math if, say, consumption is subject to social externalities — e.g., Jane Mangement Consultant drives a BMW in part because Bob Management Consultant drives a Mercedes. (This also has implications that right-leaning economists find politically unpalatable). There's a tendency to push off really problematic stuff (in the sense of not being susceptible to proving "theorems") to the "fuzzier" social sciences.
Update 4/18/07: Brayden King picks up the gauntlet here, at Orgtheory.net, showing why Orgtheory got its 'thinking blogger' award; see also the contributions from Brayden's co-bloggers in the comments thread.
(*) I.e., behavior of the economy as a whole derived from models of optimizing or rational agents' behavior.
Labels: Economics, Philosophy, Sociology
