Views from Crestmont Drive

The second half of Thomas Gilovich’s and Lee Ross’ new book THE WISEST ONE IN THE ROOM: How You Can Benefit From Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights is four chapters under the heading “Wisdom Applied.”

Chapter 6, “The Happiest One in the Room”, begins with an anecdote about an athlete surviving an accident that crippled him, which he nevertheless came to regard as the *best thing* that ever happened to him, and goes on to discuss how, for example, people raising children are aware of the day to day toil of doing so, yet nevertheless consider it a worthy effort. Drawing on the earlier chapters, the authors point out that people who are happier don’t dwell on the past; they don’t denigrate rejected choices. And they’re less concerned about social comparison, i.e. worried about keeping up with the Joneses (so to speak; not their phrase).

So lessons to being happy: first, act like a happy person (see Ch4, “The Primacy of Behavior”). And more specifically,

1. Apply the peak-end rule: take a shorter, more memorable (i.e. more expensive) vacation, rather than a longer, thriftier one. This is because our later memory of such events tends to highlight just two parts: the ‘peak’ best experience of the trip, and the ‘end’ event of that trip. Some principle applies to chores: don’t leave the worst chore until last.
2. Experiences are better than material possessions; we talk about the former with others, but rarely about the latter. Valuing possessions speaks to the ‘hedonic treadmill’ of history, how despite the obvious advances in quality of life over the centuries, people today aren’t necessarily ‘happier’ than their ancestors were.
3. Get up and go; avoid regrets; just get started. Find a ‘flow-state’, the condition of being deeply immersed in an activity that provides a deep sense of well-being. Being active is a buffer against low self-esteem.

And: pay attention to the young; spend money on others, not yourself. People are happier in nations with smaller gaps in wealth distribution.

Chapter 7, “Why We Don’t ‘Just Get Along'”, begins by considering the Middle East, and how to be a sophisticated consumer of news reports about such conflicts. There are psychological barriers to resolving conflicts, including considerations of ‘fairness’, the cognitive dissonance that results from compromise, and how some proposals of compromise became subject to ‘reactive devaluation’, p207, just because they’re proposed by the other side. [This is the state of American politics, since Obama, is my thought.]

Lessons: manage attributes: create a situation where a resolution *must* succeed. Offer a vision of a shared future resulting from a conflict resolution. Each side must control spoilers. Don’t bother with people who are invested in the status quo of the conflict and who can’t ‘afford’ to change. And realize that a slight shift, from 49% to 51%, can radically alter behavior.

Chapters 8 and 9 consider specific problems. Chapter 8 is about academic performance in public school, from racial differences among athletics to stereotypes in classrooms. It’s largely about self-fulfilling expectations by teachers, but students also suffer from ‘stereotype threat’, that notion that since their type doesn’t usually do well, it instills self-doubt that they themselves can do well.

Lessons: it’s about being ‘psych-wise’, and the authors point out ideas that don’t involve liberal notions of addressing root causes (poverty) or conservative criticism of ‘throwing money’ at the problem.

1. Self-affirmation: have students periodically write an essay about some aspect of their lives that’s meaningful to them, something that affirms their life – just doing that, keeping it in mind, will bolster academic performance;
2. Wise feedback from mentors, i.e. don’t patronize poor performance, but give honest, constructive feedback;
3. Reassurance about belonging, having students understand that abilities grow with effort; it’s not just a matter of having an ability or not.

Chapter 9 is about “An Even Tougher Problem for the World”, climate change, why people don’t seem to take it seriously, and what can be done.

The good news is that some techniques have been discovered to encourage positive behavior, e.g. ‘social proof’, the idea that reminding people that their *neighbors* are doing certain things, like saving energy, by displaying this information on their monthly bills.

The global issue is more difficult. People are given to short term priorities, swayed by special interest groups, which in turn are driven by money in politics from those who stand to lose; and in the same way, the myth that there is some controversy about the evidence of human-caused climate change.

We can understand why people have difficulty addressing the problem, if not so much about how to overcome their resistance. The time frame of the effects of climate change is too vast; most people don’t worry much about the future beyond perhaps the future of their grandchildren p252t. Changes to address it would need to be permanent. Worry about free-riders; the drop-in-the-bucket problem; the ‘noisy signal’ problem, i.e. that the consequences of the problem are not easy to notice.

Addressing it, short of some magical technical solution, will likely require a change of social norms:

1. Celebrate heroes; shame offenders; publicize the words of deniers;
2. Realize that some social changes can occur relatively quickly — consider the social changes of only the past generation or two: how European wars have ended; how an African American has become president; how same-sex rights have expanded to marriage.
3. And (again), realize that younger people affect olders.

What may ultimately be necessary is the creation of a social movement of the sort that has on past occasions transformed the world—a movement like the ones that launched both Christianity and Islam, or the one that transformed monarchies to democracies, or the one that ended slavery, or the one that is now empowering women across the globe….

[[ I.e., I would say, another phase of moral progress ]]

Finally, the authors’ epilogue tells a moving story about how Nelson Mandela united South Africa through a rugby match – told in the film Invictus – by using all the 5 elements discussed in this book.

The new book by Thomas Gilovich (author of the 1991 volume HOW WE KNOW WHAT ISN’T SO: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, just discussed here) and coauthor Lee Ross is THE WISEST ONE IN THE ROOM: How You Can Benefit From Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights.

As in the earlier book, some 2/3 or more consists of discussion of various psychological discoveries about how people perceive things, with the balance about how these understandings can be applied to personal and social issues. (In a loose sense, then, this is a ‘self-help’ book.)

The early chapters echo subjects from the earlier book, but are more broadly applied.

Chapter 1, “The Objectivity Illusion” concerns how people aren’t so much objective observers of the world as they are subject to “naive realism”, the idea that what we experience is what is real, and somehow assume that others perceive the same ‘reality’ that we do. Whereas in fact, our perception of events (example: driving past a political protest) depends on our own prior beliefs. Interesting point I had not realized: the idea that people are subject to the ‘Lake Wobegon effect’ (everyone thinks they’re an above-average driver) is to some extent valid — because people use differing standards for what constitutes, e.g., a good driver (edit: mentioned later, p88). Example of people defending tastes in 60s vs. 80s music; their defenses use very different examples of each!

Great quote from British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, p31t — it’s the first para under the digit 1 on this page.

The general principle of perceiving bias in others, but not ourselves, affects how people regard sports announcers and debate moderators, who can never please everybody. p34b:

If you are like most people, you probably think the media generally are overly critical of the party and candidates you favor, and insufficiently critical of the party and candidates you oppose. You find media coverage of political and social issues frustrating because those on your side seem to be “telling it like it is,” while the other side’s contributions consist of little more than a series of lies, distortions, and half-truths.

And thus about the media, 35b

Because people tend to think of their own take on events not as a “take” but as a veridical assessment of what is taking place, anyone who tries to offer an even-handed account of events will tend to be seen as biased and hostile to the perceiver’s interests. This is one reason that the fourth estate is held in such low regard by the public. Right wingers in the United States curse the “lamestream” media, while those on the left complain that the major news outlets maintain a mindless neutrality by giving extreme right-wing perspectives the same coverage and treatment as much more centrist positions offered by those on their side of the political spectrum. And both groups regard the networks’ “pandering” to the other side as blatantly dishonest, whereas they see the network that shares their perspective as a source of refreshingly clear thinking.

(Well, yes, I do find Rachel Maddow, for example, a source of refreshingly clear thinking, so am I really subject to my own bias in the same a Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck fan is about those guys’ conspiracy theories? I’d like to not think so… especially since conspiracy theories can be understood via the same suite of psychological insights that are discussed in books like this.)

Chapter 2, “The Push and Pull of Situations”, discusses what in other books is called “priming” — we respond to situations quite differently depending on how they are presented. Examples: how war bonds were promoted and sold; how participation rates for savings plans or organ donations depend on whether they are presented as Opt-in vs. Opt-out. Eliminate obstacles: recycling is promoted by cities providing colored recycling bins.

There’s insight here into slippery-slope situations, including the famous Milgram experiment. In that case subjects were trapped in a situation with no clear way to stop. Many things happen in series of small steps; another example, how gay rights expanded to include social acceptance of same-sex marriage.

And the fundamental attribution error, FAE, whereby we attribute one’s situation to their essence; we confuse the person with the role. Leonard Nimoy was not really Spock. New Orleans residents who didn’t flee Katrina didn’t ‘choose’ not to leave (and were thereby irresponsible); they had no way to leave. Slave owners, even Thomas Jefferson, perceived slaves as unable to manage their own lives.

Lesson for the wisest one in the room: don’t rush to judgment until you appreciate situations and constraints in which people actied.

Chapter 3, “The Name of the Game”, is about how people *understand* the situation they’re in. How Social Security, signed in 1935, was framed as a type of savings plan, not a transfer of wealth; how issues like abortion are framed differently by rival sides; how organ donations and college tuitions depend on what people perceive as the meaning of their actions. Even smart people, like surgeons, choose differently depending on an option is framed. Framing can depend on how rates are expressed, the choice of denominator. Lesson: if your preference is risky, frame the issue as about which to select; if less risky, about which to reject.

Chapter 4, “The Primacy of Behavior”, is about how *acting* as if you are winning can promote the confidence in yourself and *in others*. Discussion of William James about how emotion follows the body’s response to events (cf Haidt), and how in evolution reflective thought is a later development than instinctive action (again). Self-perception theory vs. cognitive dissonance (Festinger). Lesson: just get the ball rolling; but bribes can backfire. At the same time, we’re all subject to rationalizations. Lesson: consider if someone else offered the same rationalization. Discussion of how this applies to the idea of evil, and the “banality of evil” p125-126.

This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions. Hollywood films notwithstanding, villains who proudly embrace evil are virtually nonexistent in real life. The problem is that people are extraordinarily adept at rationalizing. …

[[ Listening to political news just now puts this entire topic in a larger context, that is, that the ideas in books like these are subtle, and would almost certainly be dismissed by the many in the population of who perceive only simple black and white truths, about, in this example, ‘evil’. Any subtle introspection on this matter, or many another, would be dismissed by the typical conservative base as elitist university thinking, a threat to religious faith, and a liberal conspiracy. It will always be this way. ]]

Final passage in this chapter is about a book by a Holocaust survivor who tried to identify common traits of the various ‘heroes’ who helped Jews escape. There were no common traits. Heroic efforts more typically begin in a series of small steps.

Chapter 5, “Keyholes, Lenses, and Filters”, evokes some of the more specific mental biases and logical errors people are prone to, as discussed in the earlier book. Cherry-picking data (Iraq). How our range of vision is limited; how we can hold only 5 to 9 ideas in our head at any one time; how we have ideological lenses; how information is restricted by circumstances of the world. Two types of thinking: intuitive and rational. Confirmation bias, “the mother of all biases” — beware want we *want* to believe. People shown counter-evidence double-down, because we regard counter-evidence with more scrutiny than we do confirming evidence, and finds ways to dismiss the former.

Consider if the opposite might be true. Alas, the Catholic Church abandoned the idea of a “devil’s advocate”, and as a consequence the rate of confirming saints has soared in recent decades.

And so on: hidden information; self-fulfilling prophecies; pluralistic ignorance; groupthink.

Will do one more post about this book, to cover the second section, “Wisdom Applied”.

I just finished a new book co-written by Thomas Gilovich, author of the 1991 volume HOW WE KNOW WHAT ISN’T SO: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, the earliest volume in my library on the theme of that subtitle, which, from my perspective as a casual reader, seems to have matured substantially over the past two decades, judging from the increasing frequency of books such as those I’ve read in the last couple years by David McRaney, Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Bering, and Chris Mooney (all of which liberally cite many more recent specific psychological studies performed over those past couple decades).

The new book, cowritten with Lee Ross, is THE WISEST ONE IN THE ROOM: How You Can Benenfit From Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights. This is the second recent book — the other is Matthew Hutson’s THE 7 LAWS OF MAGICAL THINKING: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane (2012) — that take the lessons of all these psychological insights and present them to the reader as ideas to *use* to one’s advantage. This parallels one of the key themes of this blog: the way in which these discoveries, and other discoveries in the past couple centuries about the extent in time and space of the natural world, and in a different sense the ideas of science fiction, can be used to suggest that one’s personal experiences and social circumstances are only the tiniest sliver of reality, that reality is in fact deeply weird and unintuitive, but by using these tools, and heuristics, it’s possible to *think around the problem* and, at least intellectually, perceive a larger truth.

But first a summary of Gilovich’s 1991 book. Compared to more recent books on its general theme, Gilovich focuses not so much on human mental biases, as on real world considerations for how people do not experience balanced, objective data. Thus early chapters consider how people draw conclusions from what is actually random data, incomplete or unrepresentative data, ambiguous or inconsistent data, and so on. (Some of his examples overlap with those of mathematician Jordan Ellenberg.) He then moves on to psychological issues, ideas currently described as various biases (confirmation bias, self-enhancement bias, and so on), without those exact labels. He does mention the “Lake Wobegon effect”, the notion of reacting to confirming or challenging evidence as being about “can I believe” vs “must I believe”, and the idea of second-hand information, how a famous psychological case about “Little Albert” (from 1920) got recounted in many psychological textbooks, but with details omitted or exaggerated…to make it a better ‘story’.

This book had some ideas I had not heard about before, including considerations of what makes a ‘good story’, in the sense of a story being told by one person to another. Such accounts are subject to ‘sharpening’ and ‘leveling’, i.e. highlighting key points and leaving out extraneous points. Informative stories often omit qualifications, especially in service of promoting an agenda, e.g. in service of a ‘greater truth’. [[ Which I suppose must explain the many examples of conservative politicians and evangelical historians who seem to have no trouble bearing false witness on matters of fact. ]] And the book discusses the ‘imagined agreement of others’, how people project their own ideas and values to others, especially these days via filters of news sources.

Finally, as in the current book, the 1991 book ends with several examples of “Questionable and Erroneous Beliefs” that were current in back then: “alternative” health practices, interpersonal strategies (why people boast or name-drop or self-handicap), and especially ESP, with emphases on how news coverage claims sell, while rebuttals of claims do not, and the ‘will to believe’ in some kind of ‘transcendental temptation’.

Concluding chapters suggest that we can at least compensate what we can’t cure, p186t:

The underlying causes of faulty reasoning and erroneous beliefs will never be eliminated. People will always prefer black-and-white over shades of grey, and so there will always be the temptation to hold overly-simplified beliefs and to hold them with excessive confidence. People will always be tempted by the idea that everything that happens to them is controllable. Likewise, the tendency to impute structure and coherence to purely random patterns is wired deep into our cognitive machinery, and it is unlikely to ever be completely eliminated. …

And so we should develop habits of mind:

1. First, be aware of trying to draw conclusions based on incomplete and unrepresentative evidence;
2. Second, be aware of how often our role, status, or position in society can cut us off from certain classes of informative data.
3. Third, be aware of how we are inclined to interpret data to conform to our pre-existing beliefs. E.g., consider how you would react if the opposite happened—would that also support your beliefs?
4. Finally, — and this is my most important take-away from this book — the value of a science education, the concepts of control groups, regression, doubt, and uncertainty. For these reasons it may be more useful for students to be exposed to the ‘probabilistic’ sciences, psychology, economics, even medicine. Social scientists may have ‘physics envy’, but the social sciences have developed methodological innovations to deal with messy, real world situations – and have an obligation to pass on these lessons to students.

What social sciences might best offer both their students and the general public is their methodological sophistication, their way of looking at the world, the habits of mind that they promote—process more than content. … An awareness of how and when to question and a recognition of what it takes to truly know something are among the most important elements of what constitutes an educated person. Social scientists, I believe, may be in the best position to instill them.

P193b

In short: require every college student to take a course in a social (or medical) science, so they understand the ideas of messy data, control groups, and uncertainty. I would endorse that.

Notes and comments about the new Gilovich and Ross book in next post.