The problem, of course, is that these people are also affecting, and in some cases controlling, the levers of government. And this, Kahan says, is where identity-protective cognition gets dangerous. What’s sensible for individuals can be deadly for groups. "Although it is effectively costless for any individual to form a perception of climate-change risk that is wrong but culturally congenial, it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way," Kahan writes. The ice caps don’t care if it’s rational for us to worry about our friendships. If the world keeps warming, they’re going to melt regardless of how good our individual reasons for doing nothing are."
To spend much time with Kahan’s research is to stare into a kind of intellectual abyss. If the work of gathering evidence and reasoning through thorny, polarizing political questions is actually the process by which we trick ourselves into finding the answers we want, then what’s the right way to search for answers? How can we know the answers we come up with, no matter how well-intentioned, aren’t just more motivated cognition? How can we know the experts we’re relying on haven’t subtly biased their answers, too? How can I know that this article isn’t a form of identity protection? Kahan’s research tells us we can’t trust our own reason. How do we reason our way out of that?
http://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid
Monday, April 7, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
The Entrepreneurial State
http://nyti.ms/1ggtR0u
THE OPINION PAGES
America’s Underappreciated Entrepreneur: The Federal Government
MARCH 23, 2014
Editorial Observer
By TERESA TRITCH
Imagine a world in which the United States government — not the private sector — is the economy’s indispensable entrepreneur, innovating at the frontiers of science and technology, able and willing to take risks and to persevere through uncertainty.
That is the world depicted in “The Entrepreneurial State,” a recent book by Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at the University of Sussex who specializes in innovation. And it is, in fact, the way the United States has operated since World War II. Through the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other agencies and departments, the government has for decades gone beyond financing research and creating the conditions for innovation to occur; it has also envisioned the future, engaged in the riskiest experimentation and overseen the commercialization process.
Professor Mazzucato documents the leading role of the government in, for example, “all the technologies which make the iPhone smart,” including the Internet, wireless systems, global positioning, voice activation and touch-screen displays. That is not to detract from Apple’s role, but to put it into context. Without government, the technological revolution that has allowed iProducts to exist would not have happened.
Ditto the leading role of government in aviation and space technologies, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and more recently, in nanotechnology, which could be the next “general purpose” breakthrough, akin to electricity or computers.
The private sector never has been and never will be up to tasks like that. Even in the bygone heyday of Bell Labs, corporate investment was alongside, not in place of, government investment. Today, the scope, duration and cost of breakthrough
America’s Underappreciated Entrepreneur: The Federal Government
MARCH 23, 2014
Editorial Observer
By TERESA TRITCH
Imagine a world in which the United States government — not the private sector — is the economy’s indispensable entrepreneur, innovating at the frontiers of science and technology, able and willing to take risks and to persevere through uncertainty.
That is the world depicted in “The Entrepreneurial State,” a recent book by Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at the University of Sussex who specializes in innovation. And it is, in fact, the way the United States has operated since World War II. Through the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other agencies and departments, the government has for decades gone beyond financing research and creating the conditions for innovation to occur; it has also envisioned the future, engaged in the riskiest experimentation and overseen the commercialization process.
Professor Mazzucato documents the leading role of the government in, for example, “all the technologies which make the iPhone smart,” including the Internet, wireless systems, global positioning, voice activation and touch-screen displays. That is not to detract from Apple’s role, but to put it into context. Without government, the technological revolution that has allowed iProducts to exist would not have happened.
Ditto the leading role of government in aviation and space technologies, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and more recently, in nanotechnology, which could be the next “general purpose” breakthrough, akin to electricity or computers.
The private sector never has been and never will be up to tasks like that. Even in the bygone heyday of Bell Labs, corporate investment was alongside, not in place of, government investment. Today, the scope, duration and cost of breakthrough
research is either beyond the private sector’s corporate and philanthropic resources
or outside its profit model. A salient point in “The Entrepreneurial State,” amplified
in a review by Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of The Financial
Times, is that corporations today often spend surplus cash on share buybacks
rather than on fundamental innovation.
In brief then, it is an essential role of the federal government — in the interest of tomorrow’s prosperity — to invest and engage in scientific and technological discovery. And it is a role the government has played well, until now. After rising steadily for decades, federal financing for research and development peaked in 2009, at $165.5 billion, bolstered by that year’s stimulus spending. It has since sunk to levels last seen almost a decade ago, falling to $133.7 billion this fiscal year.
That roughly $32 billion drop is even greater when adjusted for inflation, and it encompasses both defense- and nondefense fields, including health, energy, the environment, climate, technology and electronics. One key area, basic science, received about $40 billion in the peak year 2009. Since then, it has fallen, to $30 billion last year, one of the sharpest declines ever. The future does not look much brighter. Constrained by austerity-induced budget caps, the research and development budget recently proposed by President Obama for fiscal year 2015 was only $135.4 billion, the lowest request of his presidency. Chances for more money on top of the budget caps, as Mr. Obama has called for, are virtually nil. And given that Congress invariably enacts less than the president asks for, the trend is all downhill.
Worse, the direction is unlikely to reverse as long as prevailing rhetoric reinforces the notion of an inefficient government sector versus a dynamic private sector. To win budget battles going forward, Democratic policy makers and administration officials must also win the debate in favor of entrepreneurial government. The fact that they have not successfully made that case in recent years is a result of both implacable Republican opposition and their own tendencies to exalt the private sector while ignoring its many roots in public spending.
Correcting that misimpression is crucial to building and sustaining support for public involvement in science and technology. Equally important is developing ways to ensure that taxpayers share in private-sector profits that ensue from government efforts. Fair and adequate corporate taxation is the obvious way, but that is currently a political non-starter. Non-tax models also need to be considered — for instance, requiring recipients of federal grants to pay a portion of subsequent profits to the government or establishing a federally backed innovation fund that lets the government retain an equity stake in companies that use the fund.
In brief then, it is an essential role of the federal government — in the interest of tomorrow’s prosperity — to invest and engage in scientific and technological discovery. And it is a role the government has played well, until now. After rising steadily for decades, federal financing for research and development peaked in 2009, at $165.5 billion, bolstered by that year’s stimulus spending. It has since sunk to levels last seen almost a decade ago, falling to $133.7 billion this fiscal year.
That roughly $32 billion drop is even greater when adjusted for inflation, and it encompasses both defense- and nondefense fields, including health, energy, the environment, climate, technology and electronics. One key area, basic science, received about $40 billion in the peak year 2009. Since then, it has fallen, to $30 billion last year, one of the sharpest declines ever. The future does not look much brighter. Constrained by austerity-induced budget caps, the research and development budget recently proposed by President Obama for fiscal year 2015 was only $135.4 billion, the lowest request of his presidency. Chances for more money on top of the budget caps, as Mr. Obama has called for, are virtually nil. And given that Congress invariably enacts less than the president asks for, the trend is all downhill.
Worse, the direction is unlikely to reverse as long as prevailing rhetoric reinforces the notion of an inefficient government sector versus a dynamic private sector. To win budget battles going forward, Democratic policy makers and administration officials must also win the debate in favor of entrepreneurial government. The fact that they have not successfully made that case in recent years is a result of both implacable Republican opposition and their own tendencies to exalt the private sector while ignoring its many roots in public spending.
Correcting that misimpression is crucial to building and sustaining support for public involvement in science and technology. Equally important is developing ways to ensure that taxpayers share in private-sector profits that ensue from government efforts. Fair and adequate corporate taxation is the obvious way, but that is currently a political non-starter. Non-tax models also need to be considered — for instance, requiring recipients of federal grants to pay a portion of subsequent profits to the government or establishing a federally backed innovation fund that lets the government retain an equity stake in companies that use the fund.
The goal, as expressed by Professor Mazzucato, is not for taxpayer-provided
research to spare the private sector from risks, but for government and the private
sector to take risks together and enjoy the rewards as one.
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
A version of this editorial appears in print on March 24, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the
headline: America’s Underappreciated Entrepreneur: The Federal Government.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
A version of this editorial appears in print on March 24, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the
headline: America’s Underappreciated Entrepreneur: The Federal Government.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
emerson
Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
college cost
http://nyti.ms/1oBPI4p
THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Quick Way to Cut College Costs
By STEVE COHEN MARCH 20, 2014
COLLEGE admission notifications have begun to arrive. With every thrilling acceptance comes something far less welcome: the heart-stopping reality of what it all costs.
Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000. Even at state universities, the average four-year cost for residents is more than $80,000 for tuition, room, board and expenses. But every college offers need- based financial aid, right? Well, sort of.
A college aid package can be made up of three elements: grants (sometimes called scholarships), loans and work-study programs. The biggest single source of aid is the federal government — but in the form of loans ($68 billion, 37 percent of all aid, in 2013). About 5 percent of aid comes from states and a large part from the college’s own resources. Much of the college’s contribution comes in the form of a discount from the school’s already inflated tuition, which, with a straight face, administrators call a grant.
When colleges compute their aid packages, they start with a student’s expected family contribution — that is, what the government expects a family to be able to contribute, not what the family expects. The E.F.C. is calculated by the federal government based on data submitted by the family on the Fafsa form (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which is mandatory if the student wants any sort of financial aid, even work-study jobs in the school cafeteria). The Fafsa’s complexity rivals that of a tax return, but it is less user friendly.
Weeks after submitting their Fafsa to the federal Department of Education, families are told what their expected contribution is. The formula itself is set by Congress. For most middle-class families, the number is shocking because it has little basis in real-life economics.
A Quick Way to Cut College Costs
By STEVE COHEN MARCH 20, 2014
COLLEGE admission notifications have begun to arrive. With every thrilling acceptance comes something far less welcome: the heart-stopping reality of what it all costs.
Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000. Even at state universities, the average four-year cost for residents is more than $80,000 for tuition, room, board and expenses. But every college offers need- based financial aid, right? Well, sort of.
A college aid package can be made up of three elements: grants (sometimes called scholarships), loans and work-study programs. The biggest single source of aid is the federal government — but in the form of loans ($68 billion, 37 percent of all aid, in 2013). About 5 percent of aid comes from states and a large part from the college’s own resources. Much of the college’s contribution comes in the form of a discount from the school’s already inflated tuition, which, with a straight face, administrators call a grant.
When colleges compute their aid packages, they start with a student’s expected family contribution — that is, what the government expects a family to be able to contribute, not what the family expects. The E.F.C. is calculated by the federal government based on data submitted by the family on the Fafsa form (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which is mandatory if the student wants any sort of financial aid, even work-study jobs in the school cafeteria). The Fafsa’s complexity rivals that of a tax return, but it is less user friendly.
Weeks after submitting their Fafsa to the federal Department of Education, families are told what their expected contribution is. The formula itself is set by Congress. For most middle-class families, the number is shocking because it has little basis in real-life economics.
Consider a family of four, earning $100,000 in income and having $50,000 in
savings. The E.F.C. says that this family will contribute $17,375 each year to a
child’s college expenses. A $100,000 income translates into take-home pay of about
$6,311 monthly. An E.F.C. of $17,375 means the family must contribute about
$1,500 a month — every month for four years. But cutting family expenses by 25
percent every month is unrealistic.
Alternatively, the family could use its savings. But that would deplete their $50,000 before the start of the child’s senior year, leaving nothing for the proverbial rainy day, or for the second child’s education.
Financial advisers familiar with the peculiarities of the college aid world say there isn’t much they can do to help once families receive their E.F.C. As Ian Welham, the founder of Complete College Planning Solutions, told me, “When families see their E.F.C. number for the first time, most parents ask, ‘Is this for four years?’ I have to tell them, ‘No, that’s just for one year.’ I also have to explain that the E.F.C. is the minimum a family is going to pay. In many cases, they’re asked to pay considerably more.”
When colleges craft a student’s financial aid package, the school deducts the E.F.C. from the sticker-price tuition, room, board and expenses to establish a family’s need. It then allocates federal money the child is eligible for, and only last does it dip into its own resources, if the school has money available.
Private colleges have more flexibility. Because some of the wealthiest schools, like Princeton, have basically eliminated loans entirely from their packages for middle-class families, it can be less costly to attend a private college with a higher sticker price than a state university with lower tuition. State schools have smaller endowments and less money for financial aid.
But what about the huge federal scholarship programs Congress regularly trumpets? Most are not available to middle-class families; only federally subsidized loans are. And at 3.86 percent subsidized interest rates — plus loan origination fees — federal education loans are available on less attractive terms than car loans.
The largest and best-known scholarship program is the $34 billion Pell Grant. But 95 percent of all Pell Grants go to families earning under $58,875 annually. For the 5 percent of middle-class families who do get Pell grants, the average award is $2,500.
Congress has done little to help middle-class families. Seventy-one percent of college students graduated last year with an average of $29,400 in debt. Estimates suggest that parents have taken on almost as much.
Meanwhile, lobbying expenditures by colleges, universities and higher- education organizations have totaled more than a half-billion dollars over the past
Alternatively, the family could use its savings. But that would deplete their $50,000 before the start of the child’s senior year, leaving nothing for the proverbial rainy day, or for the second child’s education.
Financial advisers familiar with the peculiarities of the college aid world say there isn’t much they can do to help once families receive their E.F.C. As Ian Welham, the founder of Complete College Planning Solutions, told me, “When families see their E.F.C. number for the first time, most parents ask, ‘Is this for four years?’ I have to tell them, ‘No, that’s just for one year.’ I also have to explain that the E.F.C. is the minimum a family is going to pay. In many cases, they’re asked to pay considerably more.”
When colleges craft a student’s financial aid package, the school deducts the E.F.C. from the sticker-price tuition, room, board and expenses to establish a family’s need. It then allocates federal money the child is eligible for, and only last does it dip into its own resources, if the school has money available.
Private colleges have more flexibility. Because some of the wealthiest schools, like Princeton, have basically eliminated loans entirely from their packages for middle-class families, it can be less costly to attend a private college with a higher sticker price than a state university with lower tuition. State schools have smaller endowments and less money for financial aid.
But what about the huge federal scholarship programs Congress regularly trumpets? Most are not available to middle-class families; only federally subsidized loans are. And at 3.86 percent subsidized interest rates — plus loan origination fees — federal education loans are available on less attractive terms than car loans.
The largest and best-known scholarship program is the $34 billion Pell Grant. But 95 percent of all Pell Grants go to families earning under $58,875 annually. For the 5 percent of middle-class families who do get Pell grants, the average award is $2,500.
Congress has done little to help middle-class families. Seventy-one percent of college students graduated last year with an average of $29,400 in debt. Estimates suggest that parents have taken on almost as much.
Meanwhile, lobbying expenditures by colleges, universities and higher- education organizations have totaled more than a half-billion dollars over the past
five years — the eighth highest special-interest category attempting to influence
Congress.
I’m not suggesting that students and their parents shouldn’t contribute. But burdening students with huge loans and parents with depleted savings is a bad policy that is driven, in part, by unrealistic E.F.C.s.
“The E.F.C. gives colleges ‘plausible deniability,’ ” said Scott Farber, president of A-List Education, a tutoring and education consulting company. “It allows them to say, ‘We didn’t set these family contribution figures; the government did.’ That artificially high E.F.C. is essentially creating an artificial price support for colleges.”
Since Congress controls the E.F.C. formula, it makes sense for political leaders who are serious about controlling college costs and student debt to start by making the E.F.C. more realistic. But tinkering with the E.F.C. formula won’t be sufficient because there are so many problems with it. For example, it doesn’t take into consideration geographic differences in cost-of-living, or the lack of liquidity in one’s home.
So let’s get serious instead. Congress and the president should drastically cut the E.F.C. — by around 75 percent, to reflect the fact that since 1980 tuition has risen at nearly five times the rate of the Consumer Price Index. Doing so would force colleges to construct financial aid packages without the artificial price supports of inflated contribution numbers — and make paying for college less agonizing.
Steve Cohen is a lawyer at Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore in New York and a co-author of “Getting In.” A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 21, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the
headline: A Quick Way to Cut College Costs.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
I’m not suggesting that students and their parents shouldn’t contribute. But burdening students with huge loans and parents with depleted savings is a bad policy that is driven, in part, by unrealistic E.F.C.s.
“The E.F.C. gives colleges ‘plausible deniability,’ ” said Scott Farber, president of A-List Education, a tutoring and education consulting company. “It allows them to say, ‘We didn’t set these family contribution figures; the government did.’ That artificially high E.F.C. is essentially creating an artificial price support for colleges.”
Since Congress controls the E.F.C. formula, it makes sense for political leaders who are serious about controlling college costs and student debt to start by making the E.F.C. more realistic. But tinkering with the E.F.C. formula won’t be sufficient because there are so many problems with it. For example, it doesn’t take into consideration geographic differences in cost-of-living, or the lack of liquidity in one’s home.
So let’s get serious instead. Congress and the president should drastically cut the E.F.C. — by around 75 percent, to reflect the fact that since 1980 tuition has risen at nearly five times the rate of the Consumer Price Index. Doing so would force colleges to construct financial aid packages without the artificial price supports of inflated contribution numbers — and make paying for college less agonizing.
Steve Cohen is a lawyer at Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore in New York and a co-author of “Getting In.” A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 21, 2014, on page A29 of the New York edition with the
headline: A Quick Way to Cut College Costs.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Ideology in america
olitical“liberals”alsoknowthis.Liberalsattackconservativepoliticians,butusuallynottheirconservatism.Theywillcalltheiropponents foolsorextremistsandgoaftertheirstandsonspecificissues.Butthey willnotsay“myopponentisaconservative”asameansofdisparagement.Conservativesplayupthepositiveimplicationsofa“conservative” approachtopolitics,but“liberals”donotdothesame.Theresult,ifthe mainstreammediaaretransmittingtheseconflictedcues,isthatcitizens whogettheirnewsfromthemainstreampresswillbeexposedtotheterm “conservative”moreoftenthantheterm“liberal”andwillheartheterm inamorepositivelightwhentheydohearit
eterm“conservative”isheldinfargreateresteemthanthe term“liberal”(Jennings1992,Schiffer2000).Thisispartlyaresultof thenow-pejorativeconnotationoftheword“liberal”inpolitics,aswe describedinChapter4.If“liberal”istomeansupportfortheundeserving poor,thecounterculture,andthosewhoseektoattackmainstreamsocial institutionsandvalues,thenpoliticalliberalswanttostayfarawayfrom thelabel.Andtheydo. Butitismorethanjustthetarringoftheliberallabel.Conservatism, asageneralvalueandasawordtodescribeacourseofaction,ispopular.Wehavealreadyseenitspopularityinreligionanditsapproaches tofamilylifeandbehavior.Butitgoeswellbeyondthat:“Conservative”intheAmericanpublicconnotespositivevaluesandapproachesno matterwhatthetopic.Weapproveconservativehypotheses,approveof banksthattakeaconservativeapproachtohandlingourmoney,andlike ourcontractorstogiveusconservativeestimates.Evenwelloutsidethe realmofpolitics,“conservative”hascometomeanconventional,safe, mainstream,comfortable. Politicalconservativesrecognizethis.Asaresult,whenframingtheir worldviewtothemasspublic,conservativestalkagreatdealaboutideologicalandpoliticalsymbols,thevalueofideologicalconservatism,and thewayinwhichthisgeneralvaluewillbeappliedtotacklingpolitical problems,doinglittletoexplaintheimplicationsofthisconservatism
forpracticalpolitics(Zaller&Feldman1992,Jacoby2000).Conservativesboastabouttheirconservatism,treatingitasabadgeofhonor. Onewaytoboastaboutconservatism,ofcourse,istotalkinnegative termsaboutthe“liberal”label,andinsymbolictermsaboutwhata “liberal”approachtogovernmentwillimply(biggovernment,bureaucraticcontrol,privilegingtheundeservingandunconventionaloverthe hardworkingandmainstream),andthelike. Political“liberals”alsoknowthis.Liberalsattackconservativepoliticians,butusuallynottheirconservatism.Theywillcalltheiropponents foolsorextremistsandgoaftertheirstandsonspecificissues.Butthey willnotsay“myopponentisaconservative”asameansofdisparagement.Conservativesplayupthepositiveim
plicationsofa“conservative” approachtopolitics,but“liberals”donotdothesame.Theresult,ifthe mainstreammediaaretransmittingtheseconflictedcues,isthatcitizens whogettheirnewsfromthemainstreampresswillbeexposedtotheterm “conservative”moreoftenthantheterm“liberal”andwillheartheterm inamorepositivelightwhentheydohearit. P. 157
deologicalself-identificationis usuallyformedasareactiontobroad,generalmessagesandconcepts (Conover&Feldman1981),notasumofpolicypreferences.Exceptfor thepoliticallysophisticated,opinionsonspecificissuesareoftenformed inresponsetofeelingsabouttheworthofthespecificsocialgoalin question,notasafunctionofabroaderworldview(Jacoby1995) p.160
eterm“conservative”isheldinfargreateresteemthanthe term“liberal”(Jennings1992,Schiffer2000).Thisispartlyaresultof thenow-pejorativeconnotationoftheword“liberal”inpolitics,aswe describedinChapter4.If“liberal”istomeansupportfortheundeserving poor,thecounterculture,andthosewhoseektoattackmainstreamsocial institutionsandvalues,thenpoliticalliberalswanttostayfarawayfrom thelabel.Andtheydo. Butitismorethanjustthetarringoftheliberallabel.Conservatism, asageneralvalueandasawordtodescribeacourseofaction,ispopular.Wehavealreadyseenitspopularityinreligionanditsapproaches tofamilylifeandbehavior.Butitgoeswellbeyondthat:“Conservative”intheAmericanpublicconnotespositivevaluesandapproachesno matterwhatthetopic.Weapproveconservativehypotheses,approveof banksthattakeaconservativeapproachtohandlingourmoney,andlike ourcontractorstogiveusconservativeestimates.Evenwelloutsidethe realmofpolitics,“conservative”hascometomeanconventional,safe, mainstream,comfortable. Politicalconservativesrecognizethis.Asaresult,whenframingtheir worldviewtothemasspublic,conservativestalkagreatdealaboutideologicalandpoliticalsymbols,thevalueofideologicalconservatism,and thewayinwhichthisgeneralvaluewillbeappliedtotacklingpolitical problems,doinglittletoexplaintheimplicationsofthisconservatism
forpracticalpolitics(Zaller&Feldman1992,Jacoby2000).Conservativesboastabouttheirconservatism,treatingitasabadgeofhonor. Onewaytoboastaboutconservatism,ofcourse,istotalkinnegative termsaboutthe“liberal”label,andinsymbolictermsaboutwhata “liberal”approachtogovernmentwillimply(biggovernment,bureaucraticcontrol,privilegingtheundeservingandunconventionaloverthe hardworkingandmainstream),andthelike. Political“liberals”alsoknowthis.Liberalsattackconservativepoliticians,butusuallynottheirconservatism.Theywillcalltheiropponents foolsorextremistsandgoaftertheirstandsonspecificissues.Butthey willnotsay“myopponentisaconservative”asameansofdisparagement.Conservativesplayupthepositiveim
plicationsofa“conservative” approachtopolitics,but“liberals”donotdothesame.Theresult,ifthe mainstreammediaaretransmittingtheseconflictedcues,isthatcitizens whogettheirnewsfromthemainstreampresswillbeexposedtotheterm “conservative”moreoftenthantheterm“liberal”andwillheartheterm inamorepositivelightwhentheydohearit. P. 157
deologicalself-identificationis usuallyformedasareactiontobroad,generalmessagesandconcepts (Conover&Feldman1981),notasumofpolicypreferences.Exceptfor thepoliticallysophisticated,opinionsonspecificissuesareoftenformed inresponsetofeelingsabouttheworthofthespecificsocialgoalin question,notasafunctionofabroaderworldview(Jacoby1995) p.160
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Mooney: the backfire effect and motivated learning
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/03/brendan-nyhan-backfire-effects-facts
Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber
The notorious "backfire effect" has now been captured in multiple studies.
| Wed Mar. 5, 2014 3:00 AM GMT
On Monday, I reported on [1] the latest study to take a bite out of the idea of human rationality. In a paper[2] just published in Pediatrics, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and his colleagues showed that presenting people with information confirming the safety of vaccines triggered a "backfire effect," in which people who already distrusted vaccines actually became less likely to say they would vaccinate their kids.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his co-author Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples:
1. Tax Cuts Increase Revenue? In a 2010 study [3], Nyhan and Reifler asked people to read a fake newspaper article containing a real quotation of George W. Bush, in which the former president asserted that his tax cuts "helped increase revenues to the Treasury." In some versions of the article, this false claim[4] was then debunked by economic evidence: A correction appended to the end of the article stated that in fact, the Bush tax cuts "were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003." The study found that conservatives who read the correction were twice as likely to believe Bush's claim was true as were conservatives who did not read the correction.
2. Death Panels! Another notorious political falsehood is Sarah Palin's claim that Obamacare would create "death panels." To test whether they could undo the damage caused by this highly influential morsel of misinformation, Nyhan and his colleagues had study subjects read an article about the "death panels" claim, which in some cases ended with a factual correction [5] explaining that "nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong." Among survey respondents who were very pro-Palin and who had a high level of political knowledge, the correction actually made them more likely to wrongly embrace the false "death panels" theory.
3. Obama is a Muslim! And if that's still not enough, yet another Nyhan and Reifler study [6] examined the persistence of the "President Obama is a Muslim" myth. In this case, respondents watched a video of President Obama denying that he is a Muslim or even stating affirmatively, "I am a Christian." Once again, the correction—uttered in this case by the president himself—often backfired in the study, making belief in the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim worse among certain study participants. What's more, the backfire effect was particularly notable when the researchers administering the study were white. When they were non-white, subjects were more willing to change their minds, an effect the researchers explained by noting that "social desirability concerns may affect how respondents behave when asked about sensitive topics." In other words, in the company of someone from a different race than their own, people tend to shift their responses based upon what they think that person's worldview might be.
4. The Alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda Link. In a 2009 study [7], Monica Prasad of Northwestern University and her colleagues directly challenged Republican partisans about their false belief that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated in the 9/11 attacks, a common charge during the Bush years. The so-called challenge interviews included citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and even a statement by George W. Bush[8], asserting that his administration had "never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda." Despite these facts, only one out of 49 partisans changed his or her mind after the factual correction. Forty-one of the partisans "deflected" the information in a variety of ways, and 7 actually denied holding the belief in the first place (although they clearly had).
5. Global Warming. On the climate issue, there does not appear to be any study that clearly documents a backfire effect. However, in a 2011 study [9], researchers at American University and Ohio State found a closely related "boomerang effect." In the experiment, research subjects from upstate New York read news articles about how climate change might increase the spread of West Nile Virus, which were accompanied by the pictures of the faces of farmers who might be affected. But in one case, the people were said to be farmers in upstate New York (in other words, victims who were quite socially similar to the research subjects); in the other, they were described as farmers from either Georgia or from France (much more distant victims). The intent of the article was to raise concern about the health consequences of climate change, but when Republicans read the article about the more distant farmers, their support for action on climate change decreased, a pattern that was stronger as their Republican partisanship increased. (When Republicans read about the proximate, New York farmers, there was no boomerang effect, but they did not become more supportive of climate action either.)
Together, all of these studies support the theory of "motivated reasoning" [10]: The idea that our prior beliefs, commitments, and emotions drive our responses to new information, such that when we are faced with facts that deeply challenge these commitments, we fight back against them to defend our identities. So next time you feel the urge to argue back against some idiot on the Internet...pause, take a deep breath, and realize not only that arguing might not do any good, but that in fact, it might very well backfire.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his co-author Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples:
1. Tax Cuts Increase Revenue? In a 2010 study [3], Nyhan and Reifler asked people to read a fake newspaper article containing a real quotation of George W. Bush, in which the former president asserted that his tax cuts "helped increase revenues to the Treasury." In some versions of the article, this false claim[4] was then debunked by economic evidence: A correction appended to the end of the article stated that in fact, the Bush tax cuts "were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003." The study found that conservatives who read the correction were twice as likely to believe Bush's claim was true as were conservatives who did not read the correction.
2. Death Panels! Another notorious political falsehood is Sarah Palin's claim that Obamacare would create "death panels." To test whether they could undo the damage caused by this highly influential morsel of misinformation, Nyhan and his colleagues had study subjects read an article about the "death panels" claim, which in some cases ended with a factual correction [5] explaining that "nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong." Among survey respondents who were very pro-Palin and who had a high level of political knowledge, the correction actually made them more likely to wrongly embrace the false "death panels" theory.
3. Obama is a Muslim! And if that's still not enough, yet another Nyhan and Reifler study [6] examined the persistence of the "President Obama is a Muslim" myth. In this case, respondents watched a video of President Obama denying that he is a Muslim or even stating affirmatively, "I am a Christian." Once again, the correction—uttered in this case by the president himself—often backfired in the study, making belief in the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim worse among certain study participants. What's more, the backfire effect was particularly notable when the researchers administering the study were white. When they were non-white, subjects were more willing to change their minds, an effect the researchers explained by noting that "social desirability concerns may affect how respondents behave when asked about sensitive topics." In other words, in the company of someone from a different race than their own, people tend to shift their responses based upon what they think that person's worldview might be.
4. The Alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda Link. In a 2009 study [7], Monica Prasad of Northwestern University and her colleagues directly challenged Republican partisans about their false belief that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated in the 9/11 attacks, a common charge during the Bush years. The so-called challenge interviews included citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and even a statement by George W. Bush[8], asserting that his administration had "never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda." Despite these facts, only one out of 49 partisans changed his or her mind after the factual correction. Forty-one of the partisans "deflected" the information in a variety of ways, and 7 actually denied holding the belief in the first place (although they clearly had).
5. Global Warming. On the climate issue, there does not appear to be any study that clearly documents a backfire effect. However, in a 2011 study [9], researchers at American University and Ohio State found a closely related "boomerang effect." In the experiment, research subjects from upstate New York read news articles about how climate change might increase the spread of West Nile Virus, which were accompanied by the pictures of the faces of farmers who might be affected. But in one case, the people were said to be farmers in upstate New York (in other words, victims who were quite socially similar to the research subjects); in the other, they were described as farmers from either Georgia or from France (much more distant victims). The intent of the article was to raise concern about the health consequences of climate change, but when Republicans read the article about the more distant farmers, their support for action on climate change decreased, a pattern that was stronger as their Republican partisanship increased. (When Republicans read about the proximate, New York farmers, there was no boomerang effect, but they did not become more supportive of climate action either.)
Together, all of these studies support the theory of "motivated reasoning" [10]: The idea that our prior beliefs, commitments, and emotions drive our responses to new information, such that when we are faced with facts that deeply challenge these commitments, we fight back against them to defend our identities. So next time you feel the urge to argue back against some idiot on the Internet...pause, take a deep breath, and realize not only that arguing might not do any good, but that in fact, it might very well backfire.
Links:
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-denial-psychology-backfire-effect
[2] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/02/25/peds.2013-2365
[3] http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf
[4] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=507
[5] http://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/Abstract/2013/02000/The_Hazards_of_Correcting_Myths_About_Health_Care.2.aspx\" target=
[6] http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/obama-muslim.pdf
[7] http://sociology.buffalo.edu/documents/hoffmansocinquiryarticle_000.pdf
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48970-2004Jun17.html
[9] http://climateshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HartNisbet2011_BoomerangeEffectsClimate_CommunicationResearch.pdf
[10] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-denial-psychology-backfire-effect
[2] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/02/25/peds.2013-2365
[3] http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf
[4] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=507
[5] http://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/Abstract/2013/02000/The_Hazards_of_Correcting_Myths_About_Health_Care.2.aspx\" target=
[6] http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/obama-muslim.pdf
[7] http://sociology.buffalo.edu/documents/hoffmansocinquiryarticle_000.pdf
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48970-2004Jun17.html
[9] http://climateshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HartNisbet2011_BoomerangeEffectsClimate_CommunicationResearch.pdf
[10] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)