beauty contests and citizen legislatures

What if we got rid of our 538 congress members and 100 senators - and instead let 638 randomly picked Americans decide how to run the country?

At first glance, it seems a terrifying prospect. What, you might ask, would a 1st grade teacher, a Starbucks barrista or a marketing director (as equally plausible to get picked as anyone else) know about deciding budget matters, immigration policy, national security - or any other matter our lawmakers muddle over in a given year? (That is, if you're not cynical enough to ask the same question about politicians.)

But citizen legislatures were, after all, how democracy got started. And today there's a growing movement demonstrating that, when properly briefed, a roomful of random Joes and Jills can be remarkably sensible - even more sensible than a chamber of elected leaders.

Joe Klein gives a snapshot of one of those successful demonstrations in, of all places, China. Led by James Fishkin, the granddaddy of "deliberative democracy," 175 participants representing a city of 120,000 (60% of whom are farmers) decide which projects should get precedence and how to allocate the budget. Over three days they go through three rounds of being briefed by experts (with different views) and deliberating. In the end, according to Fishkin, "the public is quite smart if you give it a chance."

Politicians might be that smart if given a chance as well. Many of the obstacles to true deliberation among elected lawmakers have been mentioned before in this blog. When politicians are beholden to interest groups to finance their next campaign - and when ever vote and floor speech is open for scrutiny - they are left with little room for open, frank discussion or compromise.

But even if politicians didn't have to raise a dime for reelection and they shuttered the press out of Capitol Hill, elected lawmakers might still fall short of our random 635 deliberators.

Politicians' problem is a variation of Keynes' beauty contest problem. In the market, Keynes said, prices aren't set by how much people think a stock is valued; rather, prices depend upon how much people think other people think a stock is valued. It's as if you were asked to put money on which leggy lady would win a beauty contest; you wouldn't bet on who you thought was the most lovely, but rather who you thought everyone else would vote for.

In Keynes' beauty contest, as in the market, contestants and stocks end up with distorted valuations. Similarly, in elected legislatures, policy preferences also get distorted. Politicians don't necessarily (or ever) vote for the laws they think wisest; they vote for the laws they think their constituents will think are wisest. It's guesswork at best. But even if they could get a precise poll, since their constituents aren't sitting down looking at expert information and the trade-offs each bill has, that poll won't represent what voters would prefer if they had time and access to full information.

Our hypothetical congress of citizens - who don't care about getting elected - doesn't need to do any guesswork. Instead of asking "which policy will others like" they can go directly to "what policy do I think is best?" As on the stock market, they'll be less apt to inflate some policies while discounting others.

... or a large social network?

Then you may have a bulging amygdala.

Got ADHD?

You might be more likely to believe in UFOs.

the party of inflammatory rhetoric

There's a good chance that, if you're liberal, you looked at the title of this post and assumed it refers to the Republican party. Same goes if you lean conservative; you probably guessed you were about to read about Democrats. That is, if you're like the people on my Facebook feed.

After the Giffords shooting in Phoenix last month, I posted a status update about "inflammatory rhetoric" that sparked a lively discussion among my friends that included quite a bit of inflammatory rhetoric itself. My mostly liberal friends were in agreement about one thing; the GOP and Tea Party were the main purveyors violently charged language in our national discourse. My minority of conservative friends had a very different view of reality. They saw the left as equally - or more - guilty of upping the ante on combative political dialogue.

None of these people were kooks. They all sincerely believed that their party was just as civil - or more so - than the other, and that the other party shouldered the blame for making our politics as hyper-partisan and vitriolic as it is today.

How, one has to wonder, could reasonable people see the world so radically differently?

There are at least two explanations for why we see the other party as more rhetorically irresponsible than ours.

For one, it is more likely that we are not coming across the nasty rhetoric from our own side - or at least as much as we're seeing the bombast from the other political party. In the diversified media world of today, more than ever we pick our information streams - watching the network, reading the blog and hanging with the people who share our political viewpoint. And, in a phenomenon Eli Pariser calls the Filter Bubble, more and more the information that filters up to us - from our Facebook feed or through personalization algorithms online - also conforms to our perspective. In that self-filtered and algorithm-filtered world, it comes as no surprise that you are more likely to see all the examples of the other party behaving badly. You are less likely to be served up naughty examples from your side of the political spectrum.

But even if we do come across examples of our political compadres getting incendiary we may not see those examples.

Last year I attended a left-leaning graduate program in public policy which, like many programs, had a student list-serve to announce events, group meetings, etc. One day I was taken aback by an invitation to a pro-immigration rally that suggested that "real" Americans would not support strict immigration policies. Given how many years liberals griped about suggestions they were not "real Americans" for opposing Bush policies, I would have thought there'd be an uproar to the offensive email. But not a peep. None of my liberal friends noticed its offensiveness until I pointed it out to them. My conservative classmates, however, did notice. But by that time they were used to being dissed by the culture of the school.

Both my liberal and my conservative classmates were falling victim to confirmation bias. Like its name suggests, confirmation bias says we tend to believe information that confirms our pre-existing view of the world. Information that does not fit that world view either gets molded to fit, is rejected or is just edited out. When that email came across my Democrat friends' inboxes and they saw that it was about a pro-immigration event, they would be disposed to think the opinions of the author were correct and that she would be speaking civilly. Any comment offensive to conservatives would go unnoticed. Republican students, however, would be prepped to see opinions that they would disagree with and, also likely, a dismissive attitude toward conservatives. The uncivil comment would jump out at them.

Each saw what they expected to see.

Of course, it's not just isolated incidents where confirmation bias and "filter bubbles" come to bear. Everyday we are seeing the transgressions of our enemies and missing the slips of our friends. Added up over the years, its no longer a surprise Democrats think Republicans are rude thugs and Republicans find Democrats to be patronizing prigs. That is, indeed, the picture each sees.

Which image is correct? Unfortunately that's not question that can be answered. The best one could saw is both, and neither.

fabulous confabulation

I've written this before - and will likely write it many times again - but by far the strongest factor in determining what you believe is the beliefs of the people around you. You are who you hang out with.

"Social proof," as social psychologists call the phenomenon, happens for many reasons. It's easier to do what your friends do because it saves you the time and mental energy of trying to figure out on your own what's "right" to do. It also keeps you from getting flack from those friends if you happen to disagree with them. But regardless of why we are so impressionable, about 90%-99% of our beliefs, preferences and values come by virtue of who are families are, where we went to school, the city we live in etc. (and that's being generous).

That may seem like obvious to some. But for most of us the idea that 99% of our beliefs and preferences aren't the product of independent thought may rankle. It feels like I'm doing my own thinking, but you're telling me I'm merely parroting my peers? Yup.

The reason it rankles is because our brain doesn't tell us we're just following the crowd; it makes us believe we've arrived at our own conclusions as the result of reasoned thought. That is, we confabulate.

A 2003 study from Geoffrey Cohen shows a stark example of social proof and confabulation at work. He gave a group of liberal and conservative participants two proposals for a welfare policy, one that gave generous welfare benefits and one with strict benefits. As expected, liberal participants liked the generous policy while the conservative subjects tended to prefer the stringent version. But then Cohen switched things up; he presented the generous policy as a Republican-supported initiative and the strict one as a Democrat plan, with arguments from either side tossed in. When this happened, as social proof would predict, liberals were more likely to back the strict benefits plan with conservatives preferring the generous plan.

Even though the participants were obviously swayed by which party supported the plans, that's not what they said happened. Instead subjects all reported that their preference was based upon the details of the proposal, their personal beliefs about government and their experiences with welfare.

Were they lying? Did they know their views were swayed by social proof, but were ashamed to admit it? Anything's possible, but more likely confabulation happened under the radar. Without missing a beat, their brains made up a rationale that suits their views of themselves as rational, independently thinking beings. Little did they - or any of us - know that we should never trusts what our brains tell us.

a sweet strategy for liberals?

One wing of political psychology aims to ferret out any root differences between liberals and conservatives. Even though I'm not a big fan of this school of research (I find it more interesting to look for the behaviors we all share), a popular - and persuasive - theory is that liberals and conservatives differ on how they prioritize five core values.

Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory says we all make moral judgments using some combination of the values: caring for others; fairness; loyalty; respect for authority; and purity. Liberals, however, tend to place "caring for others" and "fairness" at the forefront of their moral decisions, while conservatives give more weight to loyalty, respect and purity.

A forthcoming study suggests that at least one of those values can be tinkered with - by adding a little sweetness.

As with moral preferences, moral values combine a little rational thought with a lot of emotion. But when it comes to "purity", the emotional factor takes on a visceral bent. The opposite of sensing purity is feeling disgust - and it turns out that people who are apt to "feel disgust" also tend to identify conservative.

The physiological connection is not just coincidental; it is real. So much so that researchers can manipulate one's "disgustometer" by feeding you bitter or sweet foods. Serve us broccoli rabe and we're likely to judge our fellow humans more harshly. Make that a Krispy Kreme donut and we feel more kindly towards each other.

So, Madame President - maybe you want to reconsider your campaign to get Americans eating less sugar. Or, at least maybe while you're at it, encourage us to substitute high fructose corn syrup with some Splenda.

when the subconscious slips out

A great compilation of crossed-wires hijacking the brain:

Best News Fails Compilation