The rationally irrational citizen

In his book, The Myth Of The Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, economist Bryan Caplan posits that most people operate in economic and other areas largely on the basis of rational irrationality. Caplan observes that although the private cost of an irrational personal action can be negligible, the social cost can be very high and vice versa. Like economic models for most any product, forces at play in shaping personal rational irrationality include preferences (personal demand) for an irrational behavior and the price the irrational actor pays for acting irrationally.

The implication is that as the personal price for an irrational act increases, the person is increasingly incentivized to consume less irrationality, i.e., they tend to act more rationally. All other things being equal, a high personal preference for a given irrational act tends to lead to more irrational behavior. When viewed like this, there is logic in irrationality, hence the label rational irrationality. And, it becomes clear that rational irrationality is not quite the same as rational ignorance, where voters stop searching for truth when the cost in effort to find truth is too high. By contrast, rational irrationality posits that people actively, but mostly unconsciously, avoid the truth.

This line of thinking gets even stranger when it’s applied to politics. It is well-known to social and political science that people’s beliefs and behaviors are often contradictory under varying circumstances. For example, people who assert strong protectionist beliefs about trade policy, usually don’t give much weight to a product’s national origin relative to the more important factors of the product’s price and quality.

That’s an example of people responding to fluctuating incentives, which unconsciously causes consumers to change viewpoints depending on the circumstances. One can stand back and level an accusation of hypocrisy, but this kind of behavior reflects a natural working of the human mind. So, if a politically protectionist consumer has a choice of buying a pair of jeans made in China for $40.00 or an equivalent pair made in the US for $60.00, it’s not unusual for the consumer to pick the imported product. In this example, the high cost of being politically rational or ideologically consistent is $20.00 per pair of jeans. That’s enough of an incentive to increase the politically irrational act of buying the import from the buyer’s point of view (but it’s a rational choice from the buyer’s economic point of view). If the price differential was lower, say only $8.00 per pair of jeans, maybe most protectionists would opt for the US product over the import to vindicate their ideological belief.

The point is that fluctuating incentives lead to different behaviors.

Caplan goes on to point out the psychological plausibility of rational irrationality, which he asserts “appears to map an odd route to delusion” in three steps. First, a person tries to find the truth (real or imagined), second they weigh the psychological cost of rejecting truth vs. the material (real world) costs, and third, if the psychological benefits of being wrong outweigh the material costs, the person will often “purge the truth from their mind and embrace error.” That self-delusion process may sound implausible, but it’s not. The mental process is mostly tacit or unconscious.

Looked at another way, people psychologically can afford to be irrational on topics where they have little or no emotional or psychological attachment to a given choice or answer, e.g., buying the cheap jeans from China for people who aren’t politically protectionist imposes no psychological cost. However, when there is an emotional or psychological attachment to a given choice or answer, but there’s little or no material cost of error, people will tend to believe whatever makes them feel best, even if they are wrong. On the other hand if there’s a significant material cost of error, people will tend to become more objective and they more critically and consciously weigh the psychological cost of breaking “comforting illusions” against the material cost of error.

Caplan takes care to point out that rational irrationality does not mean that all political views are always senseless or in error. Instead, it casts doubt on everyone’s political beliefs. The problem with rational irrationality is that it fosters both mistaken beliefs about how the world works and support for counterproductive political policies. Unlike shoppers for consumer goods, voters do not have clear incentives to be rational. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. However, there are major psychological incentives for voters to set objectivity aside and be irrational.

As Caplan puts it: “Political behavior seems weird because the incentives that voters face are weird.” Maybe weird political behavior isn't weird. Weird politics is normal from the point of view of human cognitive biology.

B&B orig: 10/6/16

Church-state separation

Donald Trump recently promised anti-abortion groups that he would nominate anti-abortion judges to the supreme court. Although past republican candidates likely would have done so without saying it in public, this may be the first time a presidential candidate has publicly promised to do this.

Other Trump promises include a vow to made the Hyde Amendment permanent law and to eliminate the Johnson Amendment and funding for Planned Parenthood. The former amendment blocks use of tax dollars for abortions and the latter keeps religious organization from openly endorsing or opposing political candidates if they want to retain their tax exempt status. Anti-abortion and evangelical groups are ecstatic.

Based on his current rhetoric, one can argue that Trump advocates breaking down the church-state barrier at least as much as any major party nominee since the end of the second world war. Given the circumstances, Trump could get his way if he is elected in November. Although liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83 years old) apparently has no intention of retiring any time soon, her public appearances clearly show she is very frail. How much longer she remains on the bench is not necessarily up to her formidable willpower. It is reasonable to believe that it is more likely than not that Justice Ginsberg's health will not allow her to remain on the bench until the end of the next president's term.

If Trump winds up with two of his picks on the supreme court, the door opens to remove much of what's left of the barrier between church and state. A second Trump term would no doubt give him one or two more slots to fill. That would ensure the end of any meaningful protection of the state (and taxpayers) from the church. Theocracy, first soft and quiet, then later harder, louder and more demanding, just might be in America's near future.

Every candidate for president always claims that their election is critical because the country is at a critical time in history. For this election, that just might be more true than spin for a change. Church-state separation is just one aspect of what would make it true.

Update: As of August 2019, the argument that the 2016 election was exceptionally important has turned out to be true.

B&B orig: 10/3/16

Unconscious bias in preschool

Navy Blue Angels at Miramar airshow 2012

(view from my office window)

A recent two-part study of 135 preschool teachers revealed a pervasive bias toward the children they teach. Teacher bias was reflected by their unconscious eye movements. Specifically, teachers unconsciously spent more time looking at black male children for signs of disruptive behavior than at children of other races.

Study part 1:To examine this unconscious behavior, lead researcher Walter Gilliam conducted an experiment that deceived the teachers about the study's purpose. The teachers were told "We are interested in learning about how teachers detect challenging behavior in the classroom. Sometimes this involves seeing behavior before it becomes problematic. The video segments you are about to view are of preschoolers engaging in various activities. Some clips may or may not contain challenging behaviors. Your job is to press the enter key on the external keypad every time you see a behavior that could become a potential challenge."

The real purpose of the study was to measure the teacher's eye movements as they watched the videos to see if there were any biases in how they watched children. Each video showed a black boy and girl and a white boy and girl, none of whom were engaging in any challenging behavior.

When teachers expected bad behavior, who did they watch? According to Gilliam, "what we found was exactly what we expected based on the rates at which children are expelled from preschool programs. Teachers looked more at the black children than the white children, and they looked specifically more at the African-American boy."

Statistics show that black children are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended from preschool than white children. Black children account for about 19 percent of all preschoolers, but nearly half of preschoolers who get suspended. Part of the reason for that could be that teachers spend more time focused on their black students, expecting bad behavior. According to Gilliam, "if you look for something in one place, that's the only place you can typically find it."

Asked to identify the child they believed needed the most attention, 42% of teachers identified the black boy, 34% identified the white boy, while 13% and 10% identified the white and black girls respectively.

Study part 2:Despite the bias reflected in the eye movement data, a second part of the study generated a counter intuitive result. The teachers were given a one-paragraph vignette to read, describing a child disrupting a class, including hitting, scratching, and toy-throwing. The child in the vignette was randomly assigned what researchers considered a stereotypical name (DeShawn, Latoya, Jake, Emily), and subjects were asked to rate the severity of the behavior on a scale of one to five.

White teachers consistently held black students to a lower standard, rating their behavior as less severe than the same behavior of white students. That data accords with research about how people can apply different standards and expectations of others based on stereotypes and implicit bias. If white teachers believe that black boys are more likely to behave badly, they may be less surprised by that behavior and rate it less severely. On the other hand, black teachers did the opposite and held black students to a higher standard, i.e., they rated black student behavior as consistently more severe than that of white students.

Some of the teachers were given information about the disruptive child's home life, to see if it generated empathy in the teachers. Teachers who received the background information reacted with more empathy and lowered their assessment of bad behavior's severity, but only if the teacher and student were of the same race.

According to Gilliam, "if the race of the teacher and the child were different and [the teacher] received this background information, severity rates skyrocketed. . . . [those] teachers ended up feeling that the behavioral problems were hopeless and that very little could be done to actually improve the situation."

That result is consistent with research on empathy. "When people feel some kind of shared connection to folks, when they hear more about their misfortunes, they feel more empathic to them. But if they feel that they are different from each other . . . . it may actually cause them to perceive that person in a more negative light."

Routine unconscious bias: This study is just another routine demonstration of how unconscious biases distort reality to generate false realities, false beliefs and behaviors that the misinformation inspires. Unconscious biases distort (i) what we think we see, (ii) and how we think about what we think we saw. The human mind is a two-layered distortion machine. The first layer of distortion arises in our unconscious minds and the second arises in how we apply conscious reason or common sense to the false realities we believe in.

Questions: Does the data described in this study have any real world relevance to outcomes for school children? Do unconscious biases distort reality or facts and how we think about it?

The NPR broadcast of this story is here:

B&B orig: 9/28/16

Moral courage in politics

Most core concepts in politics are defined mostly by how people view them. Definitions may exist in dictionaries, but politically different people looking at the same thing often see different or even opposite things. Most (>95% ?) liberals and conservatives who are active in and/or ideological about their politics firmly believe that they stand on great or even sacred political principles or morals. They know that their ideological beliefs have survived the test of time and delivered great benefits to humanity. They know that their politics is firmly grounded in both unbiased truth and clear-headed reason. That mind set tends to see itself as standing in a valiant, patriotic defense of true reason and truth against an onslaught of evil, tyranny, self-deluded stupidity, cynical self-interest or things about like that. That mind set generally sees the political opposition as practicing politics firmly grounded in heavily biased truth and lies, rigid partisan ideology and addle-brained reason that borders on, or is, sheer nonsense.

It’s fair to say that most politically engaged people would sincerely characterize themselves and their efforts as being driven by true moral courage. A Wikipedia discussion about moral courage says this about the concept: Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought. Reflex action or dogmatic fanaticism do not involve moral courage because such impulsive actions are not based upon moral reasoning.

Given the common, opposing views that the left and the right have of each other as people mostly unable to deal honestly with truth, both sides would no doubt consider their own side to employ moral courage in their own politics. Many people on one side may see most people on the other side as having only some or no moral courage at all.

Does that thinking and belief by either side stand up to scrutiny? Not according to cognitive and social science. And not according to simple logic.

The science disconnect: Science finds that most or all people see political issues and think about them through a lens of intolerant, self-righteous personal morals or ideology. Facts and logic that undermines or contradicts those moral beliefs are usually either flatly rejected or rationalized away. One scientist put it this way: “We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment. . . . . The rider (conscious reason) is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant (unconscious moralistic thinking) has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next. . . . . We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.”

The logic disconnect: If it is true, as partisans on the left and right argue, that the opposition’s thinking and perceptions of reality is heavily distorted by a reality- and reason-distorting ideology or mind set (or other things such as self-interest), then neither side practices moral courage in politics. That’s an example of impulse actions that are not based upon moral reasoning. No authority says that both the left and right cannot be mostly correct in arguing that the other side acts on ideological impulse instead of deliberation or careful thought, i.e., not morally courageous.

The interesting thing about the pure logic argument is that it is supported by science. In that regard, the logic argument isn’t just a thought disconnected from everything else. It’s a hypothesis (theory?) supported by a great deal of research and evidence.

Is moral courage possible at all?: Practicing perfect moral courage is impossible if it requires perfect knowledge. Perfection in anything is impossible, as argued here before. Nonetheless, it is possible to practice an imperfect but recognizable form of moral courage if one acknowledges one’s own cognitive nature and honestly tries to deal with it. How can that be done? Since existing political ideologies are known fact- and reason-distorters, adopting a political ideology that fosters reductions in ideologically-inspired distortions is a real step toward moral courage. One example of such an ideology has been described here. Obviously, other variants or articulations of that ideology are possible, but the point is to reduce unrestrained fact and reason distortion that underpins standard that underpins standard subjective politics.

Of course, accepting that requires the intestinal fortitude to try to see unbiased reality and unbiased, reasoned argument for what they are instead of accepting the false realities and reason that create the liberal and conservative worlds that most partisans now view the world through.

B&B orig: 9/22/16; DP 8/13/19; DP repost 5/31/20

Are honest politicians electable?

One rather persuasive, reasonably rational person argued that, in general, politicians who try to be honest about their campaign rhetoric are often or usually more likely to lose than win. Lies appear to be more powerful than honesty and that seems to accord with science.

The argument for more lies: People aren't rational about politics and their opinions are mostly based on things that aren't true. When a politician is honest and candid, it gives the opponent a chance to distort what the politician says, use it to attack the speaker and that rallies the attacker's supporters and casts doubt among undecided voters. Hillary Clinton is under constant attack as being an incessant liar. Attempts to explain matters can make the situation worse.

Lies often don't faze most supporters of a given politician but they do cast doubt on the opponent's reputation with most everyone else. In view of that, candidates should be aggressive and persistent about lying and denying the truth the upsides outweigh the downsides. Neither candidate has more to lose than to gain. Being honest is an impediment to any candidate being elected. Hard core supporters generally believe what they want whether it's true or not and their job is to win, not to make the world a better place by fostering honesty.

The reality and logic in the argument: That argument is fairly grounded in both reality (fact) and logic. Available evidence from social science is that most people are irrational about politics and most hold beliefs that are significantly grounded in false facts and flawed common sense. The rationale is that there's more to be gained by lying than by honesty.

That argument seems reasonable. It's well-known that misinformation including lies is sticky for many people. Once we get a false idea into our minds, correcting can be difficult or impossible, especially when the correct information contradicts beliefs or values that people hold. Trying to change false beliefs by presenting true but psychologically unpleasant information often elicits a backfire effect that actually reinforces belief in the false information.

In one paper, two misinformation researchers observed: “But many citizens may base their policy preferences on false, misleading, or unsubstantiated information that they believe to be true. . . . . authoritative statements of fact (such as those provided by a survey interviewer to a subject) are not reflective of how citizens typically receive information. Instead, people typically receive corrective information within “objective” news reports pitting two sides of an argument against each other, which is significantly more ambiguous than receiving a correct answer from an omniscient source. In such cases, citizens are likely to resist or reject arguments and evidence contradicting their opinions.”

If it is true that we are entering or in a post-truth world of politics, the argument that honest politicians may generally have disadvantages relative to less honest politicians makes sense from a cognitive science POV. Getting a feel for the veracity of the pro-liar politician hypothesis would probably take at least another 1 or 2 presidential elections and thus not be clear until 2016 or 2020.

B&B orig: 9/17/16

The new war: Post-truth politics

An aide to President George W. Bush speaking to New York Times reporter Ron Suskind in 2004: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’”

“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” Alex Hybel quoting Ronald Reagan’s 1986 comments in his 1993 book Power Over Rationality: The Bush Administration and the Gulf Crisis.

“The age of neutral journalism has passed. It is impossible because what you select from the huge sea of information is already subjective.” Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian propagandist, quoted in a September 2016 article, “Yes, I’d lie to you,” in The Economist magazine.

“‘I think it’s going to get stranger and stranger’ for people to listen to the advice of experts whose views are informed only by their subjective judgment. . . . ‘So what I want is that human expert paired with a computer to overcome the human cognitive limitations and biases.” IBM computer engineer David Ferrucci quoted in Philip Tetlock’s 2015 book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction.

The new war: There’s a new war going on in politics and societies in the US and everywhere else. The stakes in this new war are just as high as they were in World War II or the current war against terrorism. It is more important than the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. The war is on truth and it is fought online and in the media. In a recent article, “Yes, I’d lie to you”, The Economist magazine argues that we live in a “post-truth world.” The introductory quotes point to the reality of the new war and some hint of the underlying human cognitive traits that make this kind of war both possible and important.

The Economist argues that the assaults on truth we face now in politics is fundamentally different than what we have experienced in the recent past. Governments that include China, Russia and Turkey now routinely flood social media with misinformation to confuse and distract from reality and then to reshape it. Reality and truth are diluted to the point that they have become weak and ineffective in shaping public understanding of the world and opinions. Reality and truth have become secondary to plays on human instinct and intuition and people’s thinking about national policy.

One can argue that reality and truth are now more subservient to ideological or other agendas, usually hidden, than it ever has been in all of human history. What’s different now that supports this argument are two recent developments. First, widespread access to social media and mass communications (cell phones, etc) has never existed in all of human history. Second, mankind’s social and cognitive science knowledge of just how easy it is to manipulate and distort perceptions of reality and facts on a mass scale has exploded in recent decades. The toxic fruits of social and cognitive science advances are becoming painfully apparent.

That brave new world of political thinking applies to the US. That is reflected in the 2004 comment by the Bush aide to the New York Times: “That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” There is real truth in what that mind set is saying. Once one acts, it really does create a new reality, e.g., an invasion of Iraq created the reality. “Studying that reality -- judiciously” were unimportant, i.e., considering the facts that prevailed before that war, the very real possibility of no WMD, didn’t matter.** Instincts, intuitions, emotions and morals, not cold hard facts, underpin the post-truth mind set. Reality has a role that ranges from secondary to no role. If one know how to play the mind game, human cognition and personal morals and beliefs trump everything else, including facts, reality and common sense.

** The NYT article included this on Bush’s thinking before invading Iraq: “Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, “Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.”

The Economist article makes points that flesh out the concept and reality of the post-truth world and the new war that rages right now.

1. The “backfire effect”, a cognitive bias that makes many people (~30-70% ?) reject truth that corrects falsity is in full-blown effect right now in the Clinton vs. Trump war for hearts and minds. The Economist observes: “Given such biases, it is somewhat surprising that people can ever agree on facts, particularly in politics.” (one can ask if “people” (e.g., >75% ?) ever agree on facts in US politics)

2. The loss of trust in political and social institutions makes the post-truth world (and war) possible because people are free to accept or reject whatever they want. There’s a widespread public sentiment that “people in this country have had enough of experts” and there’s a yearning for politicians who are “authentic” and willing to “tell it how it is.” The loss of trust in politics and the press-media are real and relevant. There’s no gatekeeper for truth that people can agree on.

3. Regarding social media and content that is either true or false, research shows that “there is no advantage to being correct.” People who see false information tend to give it credibility and spread it. The backfire effect prevents subsequent correcting truth from changing the minds of many people. (in other words, it’s better to lie and defend the lie than to try to be honest; that assumes that lies can and do shape “better” realities than honesty)

4. Quoting an observer of events in Turkey: “Information glut is the new censorship. Even I can no longer really tell what is happening in parts of Turkey.” Governments can flood social media with propaganda to dilute real information to the point that it is impossible to determine truth from lies, even for determined fact checkers.

B&B orig: 9/16/16