Friday, March 12, 2010

The Oddly Strong Opposition to Obama

Obama: Uniquely Polarizing

Mr. Conason helpfully points readers to the Newsmax poll, but his summary leaves out the most telling results.

1. While it would certainly be a relief to the White House to know Obama is still preferred to the unpopular Bush II, to be cheered they would have to look a little further, to Obama's performance when pitted against all other living presidents: Obama tops both Bill Clinton (29 to 19) and Bush II. Given that Bill Clinton is the most popular (living) former president by a wide margin, Obama's victory over Bill Clinton would seem to very salient indeed.

2. Likewise for the results from another question asked in the poll: “If an election for president were held today between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for whom would you vote?” Here, 38 percent chose Obama, to Hillary Clinton's 30 percent. Certainly counts as another victory for the White House, and counts against the notion that Obama was the wrong candidate for the job.

3. Most interesting of all - and more troubling for the White House - is the fact that Obama, despite winning comfortably over Hillary Clinton among Democrats (67-23), is far less attractive among Republicans: 33 percent would vote for Hillary, and only 6 percent for Obama. What does this mean?

Short Answer: Obama is uniquely polarizing. There would be no ‘Tea Parties’ if Hillary or Bill Clinton (or even Al Gore) had become president in 2009. The uniquely inspiring hope/change candidate is (ipso facto) uniquely able to inspire fears of radicalism/socialism among conservatives, especially if he happens to be African-American. (See psychologist Jonathan Haidt on ‘Ingroup/Loyalty’ among conservatives.)

Long Answer: The results of the poll reflect the widespread perception among conservatives that Obama is a far-left radical. Such a perception has no basis in fact. Conservatives don’t trust Obama, and actively distrust him, despite the many concessions he has made to conservative principles. (Krugman/Stiglitz wanted the Stimulus to be much bigger. Expanded war in Afghanistan. No single-payer. No public option.) From a policy perspective, there is no reason for conservatives to prefer Hillary Clinton over Obama, yet her personality makes her far more reassuring to them. By a wide margin.

What made Obama uniquely credible as a genuinely different candidate now makes him appear to conservatives – despite all the evidence to the contrary – a uniquely credible ‘threat’ of socialism and disaster. Conservative politicians and media figures have recognized this. They too ignore the evidence and sound the alarm, reinforcing the disproportionate, rather incongruous vehemence of ‘Tea Party’ opposition to the current administration. As Obama has said again and again, there can be legitimate disagreements, but the extreme characterizations of him as a radical and a socialist have no basis in fact.

Further Discussion:

As I wrote in response to his Salon.com article, Mr. Conason seems to leave out some of the most telling results from his summary:

1) Obama not only tops Bush II in a head-to-head match-up, he tops Bill Clinton (29 to 19) in a match-up with all living former presidents. Given that Bill Clinton is the most popular (living) former president by a wide margin, this result would seem to be very salient indeed.

2) Also left out from the Salon.com article (but highlighted in the post here) are the results from the head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton: 38 percent would still chose Obama over Hillary, while only 30 percent would now choose Hillary over Obama. This certainly counts as another victory for the White House, and counts against the notion that, given the overwhelming opposition to Health Care, Obama was the wrong candidate for the job.

3) Even more telling - and potentially more troubling for the White House - is the fact that Obama, despite winning comfortably over Hillary Clinton among Democrats (67-23. Relative Appeal: +44), is far less attractive among Republicans: 33 percent would vote for Hillary, and only 6 percent for Obama (Relative Appeal: -27). A disparity of 71 percentage points exists in Obama's Relative (to Hillary) Appeal, between Democrats and Republicans. What can account for such a huge disparity?

Short Answer: Obama is uniquely polarizing. There would be no ‘Tea Parties’ if Hillary or Bill Clinton (or even Al Gore) had become president in 2009. The uniquely inspiring hope/change candidate is (ipso facto) uniquely able to inspire fears of radicalism/socialism among conservatives, especially if he happens to be African-American. (On this note, see psychologist Jonathan Haidt on ‘Ingroup/Loyalty’ among conservatives. See also Shankar Vedantam's 10-13-2008 article in the Washington Post: "Even more remarkably, the psychologists found that the volunteers were quicker to associate former British prime minister Tony Blair with being American than Obama. Blair is white... On a conscious level, volunteers said that both Obama and McCain were American, but on a subconscious level, volunteers were quicker to associate McCain with being American than Obama -- and the strength of these subconscious associations predicted people's voting intentions... The provocative research also may help explain why Obama has proved vulnerable to negative messages that question his identity and his loyalty to America. From the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim and that he refuses to salute the American flag, to the repeated reminders at Republican rallies that Obama's middle name is Hussein and recent concerns that voters just don't know enough about him...")

Long Answer: The results of the Newsmax poll (in particular the results of the Obama-Hillary match-up) reflect the widespread perception among conservatives that Obama is a far-left radical. Such a perception has no basis in fact. Conservatives don’t trust Obama, and actively distrust him, despite the many concessions he has made to conservative principles. (Krugman/Stiglitz wanted the Stimulus to be much bigger, wanted more comprehensive financial regulation. War in Afghanistan was expanded. No single-payer. No public option.) From a policy perspective, there is no reason for conservatives to prefer Hillary Clinton over Obama, yet something about her personality makes her far more reassuring to conservatives. By a wide margin. And we would likely see the same phenomenon - conservative distrust of Obama - if other prominent Democrats (Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Biden) were matched up with Obama in a poll.

Many of the things that made Obama uniquely credible and inspiring as a genuinely different candidate now make him appear to conservatives – despite all evidence of his policy centrism to the contrary – a uniquely credible ‘threat’ of socialism and disaster. Conservative politicians and media figures have recognized this. They too ignore the evidence and sound the alarm, reinforcing the disproportionate, rather incongruous vehemence of ‘Tea Party’ opposition to the current administration. As Obama has said again and again, there can be legitimate disagreements, but the extreme characterizations of him as a radical and a socialist have no basis in fact. And while there was some discussion of this issue in the press following Joe Wilson's outburst, people seem to have allowed this issue to drop, even as the distortions of the current administration policies have continued.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Art, Empathy and Values

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14175229
A couple of years ago, British author Ian McEwan conducted an admittedly unscientific experiment. He and his son waded into the lunch-time crowds at a London park and began handing out free books. Within a few minutes, they had given away 30 novels.

Nearly all of the takers were women, who were "eager and grateful" for the freebies while the men "frowned in suspicion, or distaste." The inevitable conclusion, wrote McEwan in The Guardian newspaper: "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/19/women.bikinis.objects/index.html
New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis... The participants, 21 heterosexual male undergraduates at Princeton, took questionnaires to determine whether they harbor "benevolent" sexism, which includes the belief that a woman's place is in the home, or hostile sexism, a more adversarial viewpoint which includes the belief that women attempt to dominate men...

In the men who scored highest on hostile sexism, the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person's thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women, Fiske said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?emc=eta1

"The horrible reality of psychological research," Chivers said, "is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men... She sees herself, she explained, as part of an emerging "critical mass" of female sexologists starting to make their way into those woods...

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/people-of-the-screen

Parini's and Gee's statements suffer from a profound misunderstanding of the novel-reading experience and evince an astonishing level of hubris. The reason you can't "screw up" a Dostoevsky novel is that you must first submit yourself to the process of reading it—which means accepting, at some level, the author's authority to tell you the story. You enter the author's world on his terms, and in so doing get away from yourself. Yes, you are powerless to change the narrative or the characters, but you become more open to the experiences of others and, importantly, open to the notion that you are not always in control. In the process, you might even become more attuned to the complexities of family life, the vicissitudes of social institutions, and the lasting truths of human nature. The screen, by contrast, tends in the opposite direction. Instead of a reader, you become a user; instead of submitting to an author, you become the master. The screen promotes invulnerability. Whatever setbacks occur (as in a video game) are temporary, fixable, and ultimately overcome. We expect to master the game and move on to the next challenge. This is a lesson in trial and error, and often an entertaining one at that, but it is not a lesson in richer human understanding.

From: SG
S
Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:45 PM

...focus too much on mathematical tractability rather than reliability of results and accuracy - when we have computers that can simulate models we stick to simplified mathematically convenient assumptions- example the IES RA mixup - economists assumed a certain utility or production function (Cobb Douglas) and kept using it for decades despite its demonstrable flaws and readily replacable computer simulations of more complex mathematically intractable models...

I took this thought chain further in my own head and thought about why our brains evolved the way did - how society affects the brain and human brains (collectively) form society - why we have right and left wing urges (Hamilton at work?) - how can this be changed - is changing it a worthy goal - what is a worthy goal - is that a meaningful question - assume it is a worthy goal! how can we improve the human condition - policy - education policy...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Their years of research - summed up in the current issue of New Scientist magazine - has shown readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read non-fiction texts. And follow-up research showed that reading fiction may help fine-tune these skills: People assigned to read a New Yorker short story did better on social reasoning tests than those who read an essay from the same magazine...

The research, published in various peer-reviewed journals over the past few years, is founded on ideas held by everyone from Aristotle to Charles Dickens, Dr. Oatley said. Throughout history, fiction has long been lauded for its benefits to the reader as a source of entertainment, understanding of the world and as a way to improve one's character... But now researchers are using empirical methods to see whether those suspected psychological benefits are real...

"Fiction doesn't get a lot of respect," he said. "It has always been viewed as false and as a frivolous thing that had no bearing on real life. But the fact of the matter is, there are effects that continue on after we close the book."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406u/int2004-06-29

I guess first of all, without being pedantic, we should examine the word "success." ...the question of who gets high status, and for doing what, is actually a flexible, political, historical point that keeps on changing... I think that many works of art are subversive of the status system that existed in the societies in which they were produced... So many works of art are correctives to the snobbish value system [adversarial viewpoint] that reigns outside of them... This is the modern United States: a society that tells everyone they can be extraordinary. That creates feelings of shame among those who don't feel extraordinary. I think it's interesting that in England three-hundred years ago, people at the bottom of society were called "unfortunates." Interesting word, "unfortunates." Nowadays they're called "losers." That tells us a lot about how things have changed.

From: SGS
Date: Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:45 PM

...if you want to know the future talk to experienced elementary school teachers - there are other good ideas I've thought of - but what to do - work work work.... life has to go on and a living has to be made (line from Ruskin Bond - my fave author) and the definition of decent living depends on my past levels of consumption and the consumption levels of my peer group...

From: S
P
Subject: Re: NYTimes.com: What Do Women Want?


SR,
Very interesting. Reading it, one of the things that came to mind was a scene from Being John Malkovich, where Maxine (Catherine Keener) is with John Malkovich, completely bored, looking at her watch, intently counting the minutes until she can be sure that Lotte (Cameron Diaz) will be looking out at her from within Malkovich's mind... at which point her level of interest takes an absurdly dramatic, undisguised shift into the stratosphere. Charlie Kaufman is a very thoughtful writer, as Ebert says in his review of Kaufman's most recent work:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com
Charlie Kaufman is one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium. David Mamet is another. That is not the same as a great writer (Faulkner, Pinter, Cocteau) who writes screenplays. Kaufman is writing in the upper reaches with Bergman. Now for the first time he directs. It is obvious that he has only one subject, the mind, and only one plot, how the mind negotiates with reality, fantasy, hallucination, desire and dreams. "Being John Malkovich." "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." "Adaptation." "Human Nature." "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." What else are they about? He is working in plain view. In one film, people go inside the head of John Malkovich. In another, a writer has a twin who does what he cannot do. In another, a game show host is, or thinks he is, an international spy. In "Human Nature," a man whose childhood was shaped by domineering parents trains white mice to sit down at a tiny table and always employ the right silverware. Is behavior learned or enforced?
"The horrible reality of psychological research," Chivers said, "is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Literacy & Morality

Given "expert" advice...
A brain-scanning study of people making financial choices suggests that when given expert advice, the decision-making parts of our brains often shut down.

The problem with this, of course, is that the advice may not be good.

"When the expert's advice made the least sense, that's where we could see the behavioral effect," said study co-author Greg Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist. "It's as if people weren't using their own internal value mechanisms."

Berns' specialty is neuroeconomics, a once-obscure field of research that's received heightened attention since the global economic slowdown left people at a loss to explain how the market's invisible hand picked their pockets.

But within Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” this is not the case. You can very well commit a culpable deed without having a streak of wickedness. Hannah Arendt argues, “It is, I think, a simple fact that people are at least as often tempted to do good and need an effort to do evil as vice versa.”

...To Hannah Arendt, it was more a case of thoughtlessness than a “monstrosity”, an incapacity to “think from the point of view of others"... And in such a system, one confronts two kinds of people, intellectuals who have the conviction and the mind to rebel, and the others who consider themselves as “normal” and value conformism and obedience to the rules of the state...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/
Joseph Stiglitz: "...It’s not the conspiracies that wreck the world but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilizations require to prosper and flourish. Klein ends on a hopeful note, describing nongovernmental organizations and activists around the world who are trying to make a difference. After 500 pages of “The Shock Doctrine,” it’s clear they have their work cut out for them."

Dr. Fox Effect
Certainly these days, its easy to point fingers at mistakes made by financial experts, but in Nicholas Kristof's Learning How to Think article, he reminds us of the "Dr. Fox effect" to which it seems all sorts of educated groups (college students, medical professionals, academics) are susceptible (..but one wonders whether less educated groups are less susceptible?)...

With access to the Internet, "experts" are even more accessible than ever before - so it is wise for students to develop a regular habit of thinking critically and analyzing what they see or read. UCLA professor Patricia Greenfield goes as far as to suggest that technology is producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/people-of-the-screen
We have already taken the first steps on our journey to a new form of literacy—“digital literacy.” The fact that we must now distinguish among different types of literacy hints at how far we have moved away from traditional notions of reading...

If you think you may be immune to the Fox effect, you are probably not. Experts come in all different varieties - including mentors, peers, and social networks. From famous experiments in the 1950s, Dr. Solomon Asch showed that, if surrounded by people (7 in this case) who come to an apparently incorrect conclusion, only 1 in 4 resist the incorrect conclusion - and still this person is likely to conform 50% of the time.

Beware of Pity: Hannah Arendt and the power of the impersonal

None of Drakulić’s experience in creating fictional characters could help her understand such a mind, which remained all the more unfathomable because of Jelisić’s apparent normality, even gentleness. “The more you realize that war criminals might be ordinary people, the more afraid you become,” she wrote. What Drakulić discovered, in other words, is what Hannah Arendt, at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem, some forty years earlier, called “the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”

Zimbardo: A Ten-Step Program to Build Resistance and Resilience
Here is my 10-step program toward resisting the impact of undesirable social influences, and at the same time promoting personal resilience and civic virtue. It uses ideas that cut across various influence strategies and provides simple, effective modes of dealing with them...

Examined Lives & Economics

...Behavioral science — especially the burgeoning field of behavioral economics that has been popularized by Freakonomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, Predictably Irrational, Nudge and Animal Spirits, which is the new must-read in Obamaworld — is already shaping dozens of Administration policies. "It really applies to all the big areas where we need change," says Obama budget director Peter Orszag...

Irrationality versus Naivete

Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance is probably one of the best and most important works of the past quarter-century -- in economics or in any other field. In contrast I found his new book Animal Spirits (written with George Akelrof) to be somewhat hastily put-together and certainly less persuasive. Nevertheless, Richard Posner's critique of the latter work -- and by extension, the discipline of behavioral economics -- strikes me as rather shallow...

P/E ratios... market... housing bubble... price-to-rent ratios... Shiller, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, just to cite a few -- were calling the housing bubble well in advance... why the optimistic experts tended to be listened to by the markets while the pessimistic ones weren't. And here, I think behavioral and institutional explanations must play a role, including things like optimism bias and status quo bias...

The fantasy... of the artist anonymously intervening in public life like a benign terrorist, unsettling collective complacency and inspiring new, critically perceptive thoughts about how the world works... prompting epiphanies about possible alternative social realities.. incite criticism of, and resistance to, the so-called dominant culture... Every day we are swamped with images and ideas that pretend to confound conventional thinking. That’s popular culture...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/
Joseph Stiglitz: "...It’s not the conspiracies that wreck the world but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilizations require to prosper and flourish. Klein ends on a hopeful note, describing nongovernmental organizations and activists around the world who are trying to make a difference. After 500 pages of “The Shock Doctrine,” it’s clear they have their work cut out for them."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684853779/theatlanticmonthA/ref=nosim/

[David] Brooks' concept of Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians) is fascinating and at times his observations sparkle, but he is utterly unconvincing when he argues that Bohemian values "rule" in America today. Clearly, Brooks is aware of the view that Bohemian values have been coopted by the corporate establishment and used as a marketing vehicle; but he makes little effort to explain why he rejects this view for one that exalts the supposed power of people who are too easily stereotyped for eating granola and wearing Birkenstocks...

Irrationality versus Naivete

Richard Posner's critique of the latter work -- and by extension, the discipline of behavioral economics -- strikes me as rather shallow... Where Posner's critique is more successful is in questioning what specific policy prescriptions should follow if Shiller's thesis are correct; this too was something that I found somewhat wanting in Animal Spirits. Ultimately, the implications may be more pedagogical than political: we need to encourage individuals to engage in a certain amount of de-programming, and to question the world around them at every stage of their lives, including both the judgment of experts and their own assumptions and thought processes. But this conclusion may be uncomfortable for a lot of people, possibly including Posner.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/examinedlife_video
Examined Life opens February 25... the film's official website. Filmmaker Astra Taylor explores Cornel West and Peter Singer's thoughts on the importance of an "examined life" at this particular historic moment. West explains that the "Socratic imperative of questioning yourself requires courage... It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield." Singer connects this idea to America's consumer culture, questioning the moral implications of spending when so many are in need.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i27/27b00601.htm

Singer: "...I draw a parallel with a situation in which you come across a small child who has fallen into a pond and is in danger of drowning... I do not think we can justify our sharply differing moral judgments... If I am correct, the vast majority of us who live in developed nations are not living an even minimally decent ethical life..."

http://timidscholar.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/peter-singer-rational-irrationality/

Disinclined to 'De-Program': "The push is on. Peter Singer’s new book on how selfish you are has hit the shelves..."