a democratic paradox

Just a quick observation that leads to a bunch of questions:

We, as citizens, trust our elected officials less than we trust, well, pretty much anyone else - appointed judges, the military, even the media.

There's a fundamental paradox there; the people we choose ourselves (and presumable have the most control over) are the people we trust least. Is that because we feel betrayed when they don't act the way we'd like them to? Is there a pragmatic instinct inside of us that makes us content with things we can't control and frustrated with what we can? Or is it simply that we see and hear a lot more from our politicians - and getting to know anyone in power, particularly those cow-towing to us, means getting to dislike them.

Are citizen participation and deliberative democracy at odds?

I never thought I'd ask the question. Indeed, I never thought the question existed. But are citizen participation and deliberative democracy at odds?

The two, in my mind at least, seemed to go hand in hand; with greater citizen involvement in the democratic process, the more discussion and deliberation would be need to make decisions.

But a (fantastic) article I'm in the middle of reading (pdf), suggests the opposite: that the more you cushion decisions from the democratic process, the more potential there is to demand deliberative decisions. Huh.

I'm not sure, but I think the logic is thus: democratically made decisions risk happening at the whim of an impassioned electorate or wily politicians (not necessarily working in the best interest of the nation, but decisions made by institutions a step away from politics - courts, the Federal Reserve, etc - can have the space to dis-impassionedly think through the complexities of an issue.

The key here is who gets to be deliberative. In this view, citizens are out of the process - and the wonks in the institutions are in. I'm assuming that two caveats are implied. One, that the semi-independent agencies have to be public with their thinking process and that, by extension, if they're really unconvincing that that a public backlash could get them to backtrack.

Yesterday I spouted off loosely about some behavioral economic (a mix of economics and psych) ideas, but I didn't mention where I'm picking them up. They are being gleaned from a course I'm auditing at Harvard, taught by Sendhil Mullainathan, who would probably cringe to know how I'm bastardizing (aka dumbing down) the theories of minds miles greater and more subtly nuanced than mine. Let's just hope he's not reading.

The particular concept I was writing about - that we tend to stick to our beliefs by spinning new information in a way that reinforces those beliefs - is related to a very cool concept that Sendhil was talking about a couple weeks ago. It's so cool, it's worth mucking up again from my memory.

Turns out our propensity to stick to our guns may not just be a self-serving, ego-stroking mechanism to make us feel good. It could be that it's just a by-product of a couple of logical flaws - or "biases," as the behavioral economist term them - that we humans have.

Here's the bias in question: we like to see patterns. Or to be more precise, we like to see information we know about the big picture show up in the little picture.

Here's an example: If you were asked - out of all the families that had five kids in the US, what percentage had them in this pattern - BGGBG - vs - GGGGG - you'd probably say the first pattern was more frequent than the second (as does almost everyone who's asked this question). A professional statistician, however, would tell you that both patterns are equally probable - and they'd be right. The reason you (and I) would guess the BGGBG pattern is because, well, we know that there are about 50/50 girls to boys and so it's just really, really weird to see 100% girls in one family. That's because you and I make the error of thinking just because the odds of something happening in an entire population are 50/50, those same odds should exist in a small sample (they don't). If you really wanted to test this theory out, you could flip a coin a few thousand times and see that any string of five flips (say, HTTHT) is no more likely than another (like HHHHH).

One place this bias shows up is in something called "the gambler's fallacy." If I ask you to bet on the flip of coin, it's 50/50 whether you'd bet heads or tails, right? But if we do a few rounds of coin tosses, and heads came up three times in a row, what would you be would be the next toss? Tails, right? (Be honest.) You, like 99% of humanity, think "Well, I know that half of all coin tosses turn up heads and half tails, if I've seen a lot of heads, a tails has to turn up soon, right?" Wrong. It's the same bias as above - we think the fact of 50% heads showing up should be seen in small samples as well as large samples. Again, it ain't the way it happens.

But there's another bias gamblers have which seems to be the opposite of the gambler's fallacy. This theory has it's own special name too: the "hot hand." Like it's name suggests, the "hot hand" says that gamblers will often get under the illusion that they are on a roll, having a lucky streak. If we were still playing our coin toss game and you kept seeing heads, you might begin to think - "okay, let's keep putting our money on heads." How can this be so? How can a gambler go from having a bias of thinking that the winds have got to shift to thinking their wave is going to ride out forever?

The two biases aren't as contradictory as they seem. In fact, they could different manifestations of the same bias. The difference is only in the pattern that the gambler expects to see. If he's looking for the pattern of HTHTHT, he'll have the gambler's fallacy. If thinking he's on a roll of HHHH... he'll get a hot hand. The interesting question is when and how he'll make the switch from one to the other? Behavioral economists seem to believe that we'll stick with our expectations for one pattern a long time, long past evidence shows up our expectations are way off. When the evidence builds up to a breaking point, though, we'll finally give up on our bias. Sadly, though, as the gambler suggests, we just jump to another set of expectations that are likely to be equally false.

That brings us back to yesterday's post. It's not just at the roulette table that we are this irrational. It's probably the case in our everyday beliefs. If we know something to be "true," we'll keep expecting (and looking for) evidence that supports our belief. It'll take a large heap of contradictory evidence (hurled at us successfully at high speeds) in order to unhook us from our beliefs. And when we finally snap out of it? Well, we just find a new belief - and pattern - to look for and, of course, continue to see.

A loooong time in posting. So long, in fact, I am surprised that I managed to find my way back to this blog (thank you blogger.com for remembering me).

Kool-Aid Konfidential thoughts have been swilling in my head since last post eight months ago, but job searching, grad school applying and and other lame excusing has kept me from putting thoughts to text box. Instead, I've fulfilled my proselytizing urges with overly-eager responses to friends' emails and, worse, Facebook status updates. I return here to relieve my friends of future unsolicitated spoutings.

Today, I am desisting from responding to one such FB thread. Friend Andrew posted a clever image (above) from my new favorite blog simplecomplexity.com, and people got thinking: is this really how information and confusion dance together.

At first glance, it looks about right. Take health care spending. With no information about how our health care system works (or fails to work), one would be expected to be completely at a loss on how bring down runaway spending. Then you get some information: your friend gives you a convincing explanation of, say, defensive medicine and you say, aha! I know how to fix health care: cap medical malpractice suits. Great, no confusion. But then another friend tells you, no, no, no, medical malpractice suits aren't the problem, it's the fact that doctors are incentivized to do more procedures, not necessarily just cure illness. Sounds good, but so now who is right? We are back to confusion. Finally, consider you have a lot of other clever friends who have other likely explanations; that just means you'll get more and more confused.

Of course, Andrew's curve suggests a macro view of this micro example. Considering we aren't just concerned with one question (like health care policy) but have other concerns (the right diet, where to send our kids to kindergarten, what's the meaning of life) we can see there are lots of opportunities to get bewildered.

But, yet, we don't all walk around in a daze of confusion. Is that because we all stopped at "a little learning" and are not taking in new information?

The work of behavioral economists suggests so. It's not exactly the case that we stop taking information in, though; rather we are selective about the information we absorb and how we absorb it. We all have self-serving biases that either make us hear only what we want to hear -or, when a bit of unappealing information slaps us in the face, spinning it to our good fortune.

There comes a time, however, when we get hit with so much information that contradicts our view that we break out of our certainty. What happens then? Do we become open minded? Do we live in uncertainty and confusion, now having learned that hard-held views can be wrong? Unfortunately (or fortunately) no; instead of hanging out in the unknown, we wend our way back to certainty - but this time with our new viewpoint. This can go on for a while, getting us - what I think is - our real confusion curve:

The Upside of Human Nature

When asking the question "are humans cracked up for democracy?" at least part of the answer has to be, well, yes. After all, we invented the stuff and - for the most part over the past century - democracies have done better for themselves than their totalitarian counterparts.*

With all of our anti-democratic tendencies (to be discussed later in this blog, I promise), humans also have our fair share of innate behaviors that lend themselves to democratic behavior.

Altruism. Like almost every other non-bacterial species on earth, humans are by nature altruistic. We are neither rocks nor islands. We frequently give to others when there is no direct benefit for us - and we enjoy the sensation of giving. What's up with that? There are a couple of levels at which humans are naturally nice to others, at the most basic level - "kin altruism," at least as behavioral biologists understand it - there is a clear evolutionary reason.

The idea behind kin altruism is simple: when I sacrifice something to help my sister, son, niece or cousin it actually helps me - or, at least my genes.

To understand, we have to take a step back to get a handle on evolutionary theory. You've heard of "survival of the fittest," the idea that evolution works by winnowing out those of us not really good at surviving life's rat race and leaving behind those who win the survival game. But to really grasp evolution, it's important to understand what "survival" means. Whether or not you survive until a ripe old age of 100 is irrelevant; what matters is whether you - or, to be specific - your genes survive, in the form of children, grandchildren, etc.

You are probably familiar with the idea of the "selfish gene" - the concept that evolution is really just a way for genes to get themselves replicated. This theory has been largely maligned - often with good cause - because it's been distorted in understanding human evolution, but the core concept is apt. Genes that are good at increasing your "reproductive success" will tend to proliferate in a population. Genes that cut off your chance of having lots of kids and grandkids will tend to disappear.

(By the way, evolutionary theory sometimes gets a bad rap because there's an idea that genes "strategize" on how to proliferate. Obviously, that's not what happens; there's no thinking in evolution, instead every once in a while genes accidentally "mutate." If you're a cavelady and you get a mutation that gives you super-strengthening breast milk, that mutation might spread after a few generations; if, however, you get a mutation that dries up your breast milk, chances are that mutation will die out pretty fast.)

You don't have to be a parent to know that moms and dads have some pretty strong instincts to sacrifice for their children (or, in some of my friends' cases, have the lifeblood sucked out of them). But we also make sacrifices for our siblings, nieces, nephews, parents and cousins; that's because just as our genes are in our children, they also are in our blood relatives.

I'm a single gal, but - in an evolutionary context - I actually have the equivalent of 2.75 children in the form of my nine "blood" nieces and nephews; that is, those nine nieces and nephews have the same amount of my DNA as would almost three of my own children (imaginary, for now). It's not surprising that I have maternal feelings towards them, particularly the two daughters of my one full brother. That makes sense - if I put the same energy into insuring that my two nieces grow up into healthy women, my genes get as much benefit as if I had raised a daughter of my own. (For those curious about my math: if I had a child, she would share 50% of my DNA. My brother also has 50% of my DNA, so his daughters each have 25% of my genes. 25% + 25% = 50%.

More on our democratic instincts in later posts...

*This statement is generally more true for wealthy democracies. As Fareed Zakaria, among others, has pointed out - democracies tend to work when there is a foundation of civil society and individual liberty that often comes with a strong middle class and wealth. In poorer countries, democracy can often lead to instability and, paradoxically, repression.

The Invisible Lens

The last post left off declaring that - as in AA - the first step toward curing our irrationalities is to admit we have them.

That's the tricky part. The thing about being irrational is that you think you're being completely rational at the same moment that your mind is messing with you. How can you see it?

Enter behavioral psychologists and all their gadgets - controlled experiments, MRIs, heart monitors, etc.

Daniel Ariely, a professor at MIT, gets a particular kick out of running experiments on his students - who always seem to be ready guinea pigs for games and surveys that involve chocolate, beer, computer simulations - even Playboy.

The men's magazine provided a particularly titillating example of both how much our emotions hold sway over our reason and how little we are aware of the power of our emotions.

For $10 each, a set of impoverished - or just horny - male students at Berkeley, where Ariely was teaching at the time, volunteered to participate in an experiment that studied the effect of arousal on common sense and morality. Suspects were asked a series of questions about their willingness to participate - or forgo - certain activities when in a state of arousal, for example telling a woman you loved her to increase your chances of getting some, or passing on getting a condom, lest a girl change her mind in the meantime. The trick was asking the same set of questions while they were not aroused and then later while jerking off with a centerfold in hand (a saran-wrapped computer was doing the actual asking). In all questions, the young males underestimated the power of their endorphins. While only 30% of un-aroused guys thought they'd fib about love while on the make, with hormones rushing 51% said they might let slip the "love" word. Similarly, 86% of sexually sober college men thought they'd go for a condom no matter what, but 60% of turned on dudes would let a condom slide if not directly at hand.

But at least in the case of sex, young men have a clue that they may not be so rational in flagrante delicto - even though they underestimate how much so. Are there cases where we're not even aware of how much our subconscious is playing with us?

Indeed there are. Kool-Aid Konfidential's intent is to look at all the places we think we, as citizens, are being rational but are in fact are being duped by our brains. But we don't have to start with politics to see how clever our minds are at deceiving us.

Ariely talks about a few concepts in behavioral economics to show how our choices, opinions and actions are determined by hidden forces.

One of those forces is "anchoring." Humans, it turns out, are really keen on comparing things - finding the relative value of, say, a cell-phone or a potential boyfriend - but aren't so good at judging their real value. We instinctively compare choices to an "anchor," which can be the first price we consider paying for a cell-phone or the handsomeness of our last boyfriend. If the first cell-phone the TMobile associate tries to foist on you is $50, you will end up paying a different price than if they tried to start you off with a $200 job. That's because you have to compare your ultimate selection to some price "anchor" and - unbeknownst to you (but perhaps known to your savvy sales agent) - that anchor is set subconsiously simply by the first price to consider.

Let's say you end up with a sportin' $150 razor phone with video capacity. Now another force is working on you. Because you've made your choice to shell out for the snazzy cell, you will begin to value your selection even more - convincing yourself that you made the right choice. Anyone who tries to tell you you were swindled, will hear from you how superior your phone is to any $50 lemon. This is the power of "ownership" - once we've committed to something, whether a phone, a relationship or a political cause, we automatically begin to overvalue it.

What's particularly cagey about our brain is that it not only distorts how we think about something - it also has a way of playing with our perceptions. We all know we walk around with stereotypes (bad and good), but we may not realize how much those stereotypes influence our perceptions. If you tend to think men with British accents and tweed jackets are cleverer than the average bloke, when you come across one you'll not only be ready to hear witticisms, but you'll likely also imagine the dullest drivel that might come out to be terribly charming. Ariely, again, tested the power of expectations on MIT's collegians' taste buds and found exactly that - that expectation of positive or negative sensations will produce those positive or negative sensations.

So it goes from bad to worse: we're not only not aware of the irrational forces at work on our minds, those irrational forces also distort the perceptions that come into our minds in the first place.

More on their tricks in future posts.

Nudging our Way to Good Citizens?

The premise of the Kool-Aid Kondifidential is that we, as Americans, have high aspirations for democracy and our citizenly participation in it, but that we, as humans, have a hefty bag of foibles, weaknesses and irrationalities that get in the way of those aspirations. So, while we all think the media should be giving us more factual, relevant information about the issues that matter to us, we'd really rather watch a Friends rerun than the Newshour with Jim Lehrer at the end of a stressful day.

But just because we're weak, we don't need to be hopeless. Curing - our counter-acting - our weaknesses doesn't even have to be painful.

A new branch of social science - a mash-up of economics, policy analysis and psychology - is telling us that small tweaks and tricks can actually have us live up to our better selves.

Thaler and Sunstein's "Nudge" and Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" are two popular proponents of the idea that we can nudge ourselves into doing the things we tell ourselves we want to do.

Ariely describes the predicament we all live with. I want to be more productive so I set work schedule that has me diligently working on certain tasks through the day. Half an hour into work I think "let me just check my email to see if anything important came in." After responding to a couple of non-urgent frivolous emails, I'm back to work, but another 45 minutes passes and I say to myself "let me just check to see how much a sink at Pottery Barn would cost." After checking Home Depot and Crate & Barrel's selection, it's back to work, but pretty soon I've got to check in on Facebook, for no reason other than because that's what I do a few times a day. The morning passes and, yes, some work has been achieved, but at least an hour got frittered away. Not a crime - but also not what I told myself what I would do when I got up this morning.

Why does this happen? Why do we set expectations and goals for ourselves (eat less, save more) that we can't seem to keep.

Behavioral economists or psychologists will tell us it's because our "cool" rational self, which looks our for our long-term interest, is no match for our "hot" emotional self which is an ever ready sucker for distraction, chocolate brownies and a fabulous pair of shoes. We can plan with the best of intentions, but when a momentary impulse arises, cool reason flies out the window.

The answer doesn't have to be "give up hope" and give in to whimsical abandon, however. While our immediate gratification selves are brawny, they can be outwitted by our cool planner's brains, which have a few ploys to pick from.

First off, there is knowing oneself; you can't fight your procrastinator side without knowing you have one.

Once your failing is identified, your rational you can plot incentives and disincentives ahead of time to keep you to your word. Disincentives work well since, according to behavioral economists, we are far more loss-averse than win-attracted (so losing $100 is far worse than not getting $100, even though the cost is the same). Knowing this, websites have popped up helping smokers, dieters and the like achieve their seemingly unattainable goals of quitting and losing weight. The sites work by giving quitters a way to penalize themselves if they don't follow their own rules. So, for example, if you don't lose five pounds in a month, like you told yourself you would, the site would automatically give $100 of your money to a cause that makes your skin crawl. (Presumably you'd have to recruit a friend to be there for the monthly weigh-ins in case you think you might lie to the website.) Supposedly those sites work, the idea being that we won't lay off the Doritos just because we told ourselves we would - but we will put down the bag of chips to avoid losing $100.

There is another, less whip-cracking, strategy. Quite simply, that's to make it simple and easy to do what we know is good for us. This is where the government can help out. So if I know I need to eat fewer trans-fats, but I also like to eat out at restaurants, it'll be easier for me to stick to my non-trans-fat goals if restaurants are required to list the trans-fat content of its dishes on their menus.

You get the idea.

The question the Kool-Aid Konfidential will eventually want to answer is: what "nudges" can we put in place to give our "cool" heads an edge over our "hot" impulses. The first step will be, again, to identify when the two diverge. The next step is to figure out how to - painlessly - outsmart our irrational selves.

One simple example comes to mind: voting. Most of us want to be good citizens and vote in our local and national elections, but sometimes when election day rolls around we find ourselves behind on that paper assignment or exhausted at the end of a long day at work and figure, aw heck, how much does my vote count anyway? The government could give us a little incentive/disincentive that would do wonders. They could offer us a deal - if we voluntary sign up, we can be in for $20 if we go to vote or, conversely, be out of $50 if we don't. The $20 - and our sense of civic duty - might just get a lot of us to sign up. But it will be the potential loss of $50 that'll get us to the polls that day, for sure.