Psychology – Page 22 – a sibilant intake of breath

Inequality, entitlement, and the breakdown of social cohesion

For the upper echelons in society inequality often morphs into a feeling of entitlement, which can then translate into actions that further undermine social trust and common purpose. Over the past decade, groundbreaking research by behavioural psychologists illustrates how inequality shifts states of mind. In other words, there is a certain psychology to wealth and privilege.

While we all struggle in our lives with competing motivations — for example, whether to take time to help others or to focus on pursuing our own goals — professor of psychology Paul Piff and his team at the University of California have shown that the wealthier people are, the more likely they are to pursue self-interest to the detriment of others. Through dozens of experimental studies with thousands of human participants, researchers consistently found that as levels of wealth increase, feelings of entitlement also rise and levels of empathy and obligation toward others decline. Although there are always notable exceptions to this trend — we can all point to billionaire philanthropists — Piff argues that, statistically speaking, the tendency to “look out for number one” increases as a person rises to the top of the income and status hierarchy. In his experiments, this phenomenon translates into a greater propensity to engage in self-regarding and unethical behaviour — including cheating to increase one’s chances of winning a prize, endorsing unethical behaviours at work, or breaking the law while driving.

Consider two experiments. In the first, drivers of different types of cars are observed at a pedestrian crosswalk. In 90 percent of cases, drivers stop when they see a pedestrian nearing the intersection — except for those driving luxury cars. Piff’s study found that the latter are almost as likely to run the intersection as they are to wait for the person to cross the street (46 percent did not stop). In a second experiment, researchers created a rigged game of Monopoly — in which one player is given more money (resources) and more dice (opportunity) — and watch how his behaviour changes relative to the other player. In game after game, Piff and his team observe that the better-off player develops a strong sense of self — he becomes louder, ruder, and less sensitive toward the other player. He also feels more entitled than his opponent to take from a plate of pretzels that is placed next to the board.

Although greed affects all people, these studies indicate that it is not present equally across all social strata. The greater resources and independence available to those at the top of the economic hierarchy have a distinct effect on their behaviour. Those with greater wealth can deal more effectively with the “downstream costs” of acting unethically, while reduced dependency makes them less concerned with others’ evaluation. This combination can give rise to the positive values of greed and self-focused behaviour. Indeed, this sense of autonomy can manifest itself even in ordinary human interactions: experiments have shown that those in the high economic echelons are more disengaged in social settings — frequently doodling or checking their cellphones — and are worse at identifying and responding to the emotions of others.

…

Those at the top feel more deserving than those at the bottom; having more means you can rely less on others, leading to a reduced feeling that you owe anyone anything. This might help to explain why the wealthy tend to be more economically conservative and object to increased taxation or public spending.

Welsh, Jennifer. The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century. 2016. p. 289-90, 91. Italics in original.

While the Occupy Wall Street movement stole headlines for the latter months of 2011, it ultimately fizzled given a lack of agreement among its members on a concrete agenda and its unwillingness to engage — even minimally — with existing political institutions. Twenty-first-century Americans — and the same might be said for citizens of other liberal democracies — have by and large submitted to a system whose permanence is assumed; they focus their energies on the private pleasures of consumerism rather than on cultivating the public good or the political or economic interests they share with others. Fukuyama’s fear that the end of history would foster a consumerist culture, and expose an “emptiness at the core of liberalism,” seems to have been fulfilled.

Welsh, Jennifer. The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century. 2016. p. 276

Concluding 2016 Massey Lecture

Dr. Jennifer Welsh’s lecture tonight about the challenges faced by liberal democracies — including the psychological, political, and social stresses arising from extreme wealth and income inequality — was highly interesting and I took detailed notes, both for a forthcoming response here on my blog and for incorporation into my PhD research project.

I was happy to get some photos at the lecture, which was expertly MCed by CBC Radio’s Anna Maria Tremonti.

The garbage can model – pertinent to activist organizations?

[James] March and his colleagues, Michael Cohen and Johan Olsen, developed an extremely important perspective on organizational behaviour, with the infelicitous title of the “garbage can model,” which seeks to explain how complex organizations make decisions under conditions that differ radically from those that reign under rational models. According to the model, such “organized anarchies” exhibit three general properties. First, instead of having clear and consistent objectives, “the organization operates on the basis of a variety of inconsistent and ill-defined preferences.” Different individuals at different levels of the organization may hold conflicting goals; the same individuals may hold different and incompatible goals at different times; organizations may not even know their preferences until after choices are made. Second, such organizations use extremely “unclear technology” in their operations: “Although the organization manages to survive and even product, its own processes are not understood by its members.” The organization’s left hand does not know what the right hand is doing; what happened in the past and why it happened is not clear; and the connections between the organization’s actions and the consequences of its actions are obscure. Third, there is extremely “fluid participation” in the organization’s decision-making process. Participants come and go; some pay attention, while others do not; key meetings may be dominated by biased, uninformed, or even uninterested personnel.

Sagan, Scott D. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Princeton University Press. 1993. p. 29

Sacks on Auden

Staying at Oxford after my degree and often revisiting it in the late 1950s, I occasionally glimpsed W.H. Auden around town… He invited me to visit, and I would sometimes go to his apartment on St. Mark’s Place for tea. This was a very good time to see him, because by four o’clock he had finished the day’s work but had not yet started the evening’s drinking. He was a very heavy drinker, although he was at pains to say that he was not an alcoholic but a drunk. I once asked him what the difference was, and he said, “An alcoholic has a personality change after a drink or two, but a drunk can drink as much as he wants. I’m a drunk.” He certainly drank a great deal; at dinner, either at his place or someone else’s, he would leave the meal at 9:30pm, taking all the bottles on the table with him. But however much he drank, he was up and at work by six the next morning. (Orlan Fox, the friend who introduced us, called him the least lazy man he ever met.)

Sacks, Oliver. On the Move: A Life. 2015. p. 196 (hardcover)

Confronting ineffectiveness as an activist

Conversing with my friend Nada about in-group dynamics, the psychological property of agreeableness, and group cohesion, she raised the matter of the difficult psychological disjoint between the change which activists desperately desire in the world and the practical realization that they generally aren’t achieving it. There have been moments of triumph for some social justice campaigns (enfranchisement of women, gay marriage, banning leaded gasoline) but most activists at most times have not experienced major policy change of the sort they are seeking.

When confronted with this ineffectiveness, people are provoked to respond emotionally and also (somewhat separately) to consider their situation analytically. Emotionally, frustration, anger, and self-righteousness may be the inputs from which defence mechanisms emerge or are maintained. Analytically, an activist in an ineffective campaign may be driven to consider how their movement or situation differs from others that seem more capable of affecting policy outcomes. Activist organizations tend to be informal, volunteer driven, with high turnover in people involved, few accountability mechanisms, and with modes of democratic decision-making which may seem to both produce poor decisions and leave people feeling unhappy. They are often up against status quo opponents with paid professional staffs, more formal decision-making structures which are more often seen as legitimate by insiders, money, and privileged contact with policy makers. The contrast can leave activists both dispirited and despairing about their odds of success.

These unpleasant feelings arguably flow from a faulty assumption which is nonetheless tied to the very idea of being an activist: the belief, or at least the hope, that you can actually make a difference. For a problem as massive as climate change, there is no necessary reason to think that non-violent grassroots organizing can change enough behaviour globally to avoid the outcomes which we most fear. Similarly, there is no reason to think that a hierarchy-based or violent approach would necessarily be effective.

Psychologically, this also seems tied to cognitive dissonance, which I think is most meaningfully defined as a situation in which a person’s beliefs and behaviours are contradictory, and where the tendency is most often for them to adjust their beliefs to match their behaviours than to do the converse. If the behaviour is ‘doing activism’ and the belief is that this will change the world, at least a little bit, we can ponder the psychological response to being shown that your belief isn’t presently well supported. It may be rational to try something else (go and join the civil service, run for political office, try to influence people through your writing, become a charismatic leader in a new organization), and at least some of the time people do these things. More often, perhaps, the response is to find a way to believe that you are making a difference, perhaps by ‘raising awareness’ or something equally woolly and intractable. Another option is either a secular or theological faith that somehow in the long term the success you seek will be achieved (“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”). It’s clear why this works as a psychological defence mechanism, since it mitigates the despair of seeing the threat that motivates you alongside little or even negative progress away from disaster. What’s less clear is whether such psychological defence mechanisms are effective in terms of maximizing the odds that your campaign actually succeeds by encouraging smart choices, effective teamwork, and other practical inputs to success.

I don’t think the question of how activists should confront ineffectiveness has a clear answer. Personally, I think ‘the power of positive thinking’ is dangerous nonsense that probably reduces most people’s odds of success in most situations (though it is likely better than utter despair, if that’s your only other option). Perhaps something like an emotionally-aware version of the rational ideal is possible: a hybrid mode of self-consideration in which you both recognize the psychological bases which are necessary to keep going as an activist, while also remaining capable of dispassionate consideration of which options for behaviour are actually open to you and whether any of them can advance your cause. As mentioned already, it’s totally logically possible that no political movement can prevent absolute climate change catastrophe at this point. Whether or not that’s true, however, for those who are determined to fight on, some sort of psychologically-aware strategic planning seems like a not-entirely-impossible objective.

A further challenge is applying any such model of personal reflection in the social context of an activist organization. For example, presenting totally valid and well-justified points made about strategy may undermine social cohesion to the extent that the group becomes ineffective or falls apart. At the root, activists collectively involved in a campaign are allies rather than friends and must somehow maintain healthy relations as a route to collective effectiveness. Pulling this off while everyone is erecting and reinforcing personal defence mechanisms, and while huge uncertainties about which courses of action offer the best chances of success, is a challenge of such a magnitude that it may itself contribute to how rarely activists achieve meaningful and durable progress.

Doldrums of August

Life has suddenly become exceptionally lonely. August is always a trying time in a PhD program. The lack of any real income since spring is naturally biting, and I have always had trouble dealing with the heat. There’s a breakdown of social structure and support, with no classes to teach or take, and friends and colleagues absent or unavailable. Early in the summer, the absence of termtime obligations can feel like an empowering opportunity to make progress on research but, by these late summer days, enthusiasm and intellectual focus have faded.

It’s especially exacerbated for me right now, with close friends on the far side of the country, or newly and permanently outside the city, or otherwise distant. I have no way to use my Hive tiles. On the climate activism front, not only has there been a major personal setback, but the precise nature of it remains unresolved and unknown. This has been a very bad week.

I spent most of today reading. First, Oliver Sacks’ excellent memoir On the Move, which was given to me by a generous friend. I haven’t previously read any of his work, but having devoured half the longish book today I feel like it’s one of the most accessible and interesting autobiographies I have read. Sacks is a great narrator, and has a thoroughly colourful and conceptually provocative life to relate, from thoughts about medicine and drug addiction to motorcycle adventures; the complexities of sex, psychology, and family; sudden death; and the science of the thinking brain. Sacks has an impressive vocabulary, and I have marked down 50+ words to look up in the OED. Charmingly, the hardcover set of the same was how Sacks chose to spend most of the money from a prestigious exam contest which he won at Oxford, half-drunk and only choosing to answer one of the seven questions posed.

In a pile of unwanted goods on the sidewalk of Markham Street, I found Peter Singer’s The President of Good & Evil: Questioning the Ethics of George W. Bush, which I also half-read. I enjoy the argumentative style of philosophers discussing matters of ethics and much of the book is convincing. At the same time, it seems a bit of a strange undertaking. For one thing, it probably attributes more policy-making power to Bush than he really possessed as president, ignoring forces that were pressuring him to make one decision or another. In the broadest sense, there are broad ideological boundaries which all politically sensitive people perceive; accepting the political program of your supporters and colleagues is driven more by social pressure than logic. Singer’s discussion about whether Bush’s statements were honest also doesn’t account for how U.S. presidents can generally only get things done in cooperation with other American politicians. In the main area where they can act alone – military conflict – Singer is convincingly excoriating.

Reading Sacks has given me a strong desire to write a book (much less plausibly, also to tour North America by motorcycle). Conveniently, that is the purpose and major task remaining in my PhD. The spiritless and solitary days of final August should permit continuing incremental progress, and I am hopeful about a burst of discussion and decision in September. I’m also looking forward hugely to meeting the incoming crop of Massey junior fellows.

Ethics and discount rates

The discount rate is a basic tool of accounting and economics: people and institutions often need to deal with costs and benefits which will arise in the future, and it doesn’t usually make sense to simply value them as if they were happening today. A person expecting pension payments of $1,000 per month in thirty years probably shouldn’t value them as though they had the money in hand today, and neither should the organization that will be making the payouts.

To adjust for the time difference, people doing accounting choose an annual discount rate by which to reduce the value of things expected in the future.

Problematically, however, the compounding effects of this across long periods of time can make the specific rate you choose into the most important feature of the calculation. This has an extreme effect in climate change economics.

In the context of pensions, a recent Economist article explained:

The higher the discount rate, the less money has to be put aside now; American public plans tend to use a discount rate of around 7.5%, based on the investment return they expect to achieve…

A promise to pay a stream of pension payments in the future resembles a commitment to make interest payments on a bond. A bond yield is thus the most appropriate discount rate. But given how low bond yields are, pension deficits would look larger (and required contributions would be much higher) if such a discount rate were used. A discount rate of 4%, for example, would mean the average public pension plan would have a funding ratio of only 45%, not 72%, according to the CRR.

That last bit means that American institutions which owe pensions to employees in the future may have only 45% of the money which is necessary for that purpose, rather than the 72% which they currently believe themselves to possess.

While there is an intellectual and even a moral case for discounting the future, it seems clear that it’s a practice with considerable moral risks associated. We are in a situation where simply by making optimistic assumptions we can reduce the burden which we owe to future generations. If we get things wrong, especially in the multi-century case of climate change, they will have no way to hold us to account.

Psychologically, this may also lead to us ‘discounting the future’ in other ways. If people expect corporate and government pension plans to be broke by the time they retire, it may inspire a super-cautious response of independent personal pension saving, or it may lead to people writing off any hope of financial stability in old age and simply ignoring the risk. Such temptations may be even greater for those who see the massively inadequate response the world is undertaking in relation to climate change and ask whether – even if governments, firms, and individuals did set aside adequate retirement savings in the near future – the world will still be intact enough in the second half of the 21st century for those funds to be meaningful.

Orange goggles to combat insomnia

In an effort to control my insomnia, I bought some protective goggles which exclude blue light.

On the first night, when I put them on at 9pm, the psychological effect is profound. Suddenly, it seems obvious everywhere that I should be asleep or preparing for sleep.

I will try putting them on sometime between 9pm and midnight for a month or so and report back on the results.

The danger of reading the news too often

I have been listening to an audiobook of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. It’s full of interesting concepts and engaging writing.

In one passage, Taleb describes the anxiety of the investor who feels the need to constantly check on how well an investment is doing. Has the value risen or fallen over the last month? Day? Minute? Second?

He describes a number of statistical and psychological features of such situations, but one seems possible to apply to estimating the ideal frequency of news-checking.

Taleb argues that with the investment, we generally see smaller jitters in value when we choose to look up the current value more often. Furthermore, and critically, we are likely to suffer more every time we see a drop in value than we are to celebrate when we see a gain — one of the ways in which people are demonstrably not ‘rational’ in the sense of valuing mathematically identical outcomes differently for emotional reasons.

Something similar may accompany the temptation to open a browser window to check Google News, open Twitter on your phone, glance at Facebook, or otherwise deliberately seek a new set of general updates about the broader state of the world. Given additional biases in the media, the odds are probably under 50% that any news story you have not seen before will be ‘positive’, at least for people who prefer a minimum amount of violence and suffering in the world. In particular, because violence is so emotionally salient to us, it tends to both dominate media coverage and draw the most attention when mixed in with other types of news stories.

If we feel the ‘losses’ in human welfare more acutely than the gains, checking for updates too frequently may lead us to develop and maintain an overly discouraged perspective on the world. This becomes even more likely when we take into account the seemingly irrational way in which our brains excessively prioritize what seems to be happening right now. Reading about the ongoing active shooter situation, with new updates coming in all the time, may be fundamentally more traumatizing than reading about the whole incident once it has been resolved (or at least moved to the next stage — the arrest, the trial, the post-massacre political analysis).

Perhaps it makes sense to intentionally curtail time spent following current news in favour (at least) of waiting for the summary (if any) in a weekly news magazine or, even better, working through the pages of a dusty book that has influenced the thinking of many people.

Category: Psychology