Foxes, hedgehogs, and extreme politics

As if we needed anything to make us less confident about what goes on inside our skulls, an article in e! Science News appeared on Monday, entitled, "Extreme Political Attitudes May Stem From an Illusion of Understanding."

The study's principle author, Philip Fernbach of the University of Colorado, explained that the study came out of an observation that people who loudly expressed views on politics often seemed not to have much in the way of factual knowledge about the topic upon which they were expounding.

"We wanted to know how it's possible that people can maintain such strong positions on issues that are so complex -- such as macroeconomics, health care, foreign relations -- and yet seem to be so ill-informed about those issues,"  Fernbach said.

What the study did was to ask a group of test subjects to rate how well they understood six different political issues, including instituting merit pay for teachers, raising the age on Social Security, and enacting a flat tax.  The subjects then were asked to explain two of the policies, including their own position and why they held it, and were questioned on their understanding of facts of the policy by the researchers.  Afterwards, they were asked to re-rate their level of comprehension.

Across the board, self-assessment scores went down on the subjects they were asked to explain.  More importantly, their positions shifted -- there was a distinct movement toward the center that occurred regardless of the political affiliation of the participant.  Further, the worse the person's explanation had been -- i.e., the more their ignorance of the facts had been uncovered -- the further toward the center they shifted.

This seems to be further evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect -- a bias in which people nearly always tend to overestimate their own knowledge and skill.  (It also brings to mind Dave Barry's comment, "Everyone thinks they're an above-average driver.")

I'm also reminded of Philip Tetlock's brilliant work Expert Political Judgment, which is summarized here but which anyone who is a student of politics or sociology should read in its entirety.  In the research for his book, he analyzed the political pronouncements of hundreds of individuals, evaluating the predictions of experts in a variety of fields to the actual outcome in the real world, and uses this information to draw some fascinating conclusions about human social behavior.  The relevant part of his argument, for our purposes here, is that humans exhibit two basic "cognitive styles," which he calls "the fox and the hedgehog" (the symbols come from a European folk tale).

Foxes, Tetlock says, tend to be able to see multiple viewpoints, and have a high tolerance for ambiguity (in the interest of conciseness, quotes are taken from the summary, not from the original book):

Experts who think in the 'Fox' cognitive style are suspicious of a commitment to any one way of seeing the issue, and prefer a loose insight that is nonetheless calibrated from many different perspectives.  They use quantification of uncertain events more as calibration, as a metaphor, than as a prediction.  They are tolerant of dissonance within a model - for example, that an 'enemy' regime might have redeeming qualities - and relatively ready to recalibrate their view when unexpected events cast doubt on what they had previously believed to be true.

Hedgehogs, on the other hand, like certainty, closure, and definite answers:

In contrast to this, Hedgehogs work hard to exclude dissonance from their models. They prefer to treat events which contradict their expectations as exceptions, and to re-interpret events in such a way as to allocate exceptions to external events. For example, positive aspects of an enemy regime may be assigned to propaganda, either on the part of the regime or through its sympathizers...  Hedgehogs tend to flourish and excel in environments in which uncertainty and ambiguity have been excluded, either by actual or artificial means. The mantra of "targets and accountability" was made by and for Hedgehogs.

The differences, Tetlock said, are irrespective of political leaning; there are conservative and liberal foxes, and conservative and liberal hedgehogs.  But, most importantly, the foxes' tolerance of many viewpoints, and awareness of their own ignorance, gives them the appearance of knowing less than they actually do, and lessens their influence on policy and society; and the hedgehogs' certainty, and clear, concise answers to complex problems, gives them the appearance of knowing more than they actually do, and increases their influence.

Hedgehogs, Tetlock found, were more often wrong in their assessment of political situations, but their views achieved wide impact.  Foxes were more often right -- but no one listened.

So, anyway, I read all of this with a vague sense of unease.  Having a blog, after all, implies some level of arrogance -- that you believe your views to be important, intelligent, and interesting enough that people, many of them total strangers, will want to read what you have to say.  Given Fernbach's study, not to mention the Dunning-Kruger effect and the conclusion of Tetlock's research, it does leave me with a bit of a chill.  Would my views on topics become less extreme if I were forced to reconsider the facts of the situation?  Do I really think I'm more knowledgeable than I actually am?  Worst of all (for a blogger), am I a simplistic thinker that is often wrong but whose views have wide social impact, or a complex thinker that no one pays attention to?

Oy.  I'm not sure I, um, want to reevaluate all this.  I think I'll just go have breakfast.  That sounds like a definitive solution to the problem, right?

Of course right.

Psychics and the right to comforting self-delusion

Today's post is a question with no answer provided: If an alleged psychic, or medium, or someone of that ilk brings healing and closure to a person who is grief-stricken from the loss of a loved one, has the psychic done good or harm?

I ask this because of a story called "I Only Want to Help: Psychic to Sceptics," that appeared in the New Zealand-based media outlet Stuff.  The article describes a visit to New Zealand by Australian psychic Deb Webber, where she will hold a free "private reading" this week for people who lost family members and friends in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and another next month for those who lost loved ones in the Pike River mining disaster in November 2010.

Skeptics, of course, are disdainful of the whole thing.  New Zealand Skeptics spokeperson Vicki Hyde said that Webber's "readings" were "another sick example" of exploitation by the psychic industry, using vulnerable, grieving families as "a marketing drive" for free publicity.  "It's as bad as any of those shonky finance companies putting up free investment evenings - and it's about as useful," she said.  "No doubt at some point she will also be selling her services, which are very highly priced."

Webber, of course, defends herself, saying that she can't understand why she and her practice are being criticized.  "People need healing," she said.  "I never want to cause anyone more grief."

As far as the money end goes, Webber will be doing a public show in Christchurch, at a venue that seats 150, for $70 a person.  She denies, however, that she's living high from what she makes.  Anyone who thinks she's rich, she says, should look at her bank account.  "I'm actually skint," she said.

 Okay.  We've considered in this blog before the question of whether or not psychics actually believe that they're doing something real, or if they're just hucksters who are well aware that they can't do what they claim.  So for now, let's assume that Webber is acting from all good intentions, and really thinks she's contacting people's dead relatives.  My question is: does it really matter if what she's doing is real, as long as it makes her clients feel good?

The people who come to her, who lost family members and friends in dreadful natural disasters, want only one thing; to have comfort for their grief.  They want to believe that the people they loved are in a better place, and are happily past all suffering and pain.  They want to be given closure.

Webber gives them that.  She assures her clients that their loved ones are still there, smiling down from the afterlife, watching over those they left behind.  And I've no doubt that the majority of the people who attend her readings leave feeling better.

So if I, in my hard-headed rationalism, tell her customers that they're being deluded, that Webber didn't really speak to Grandma Betty and Uncle Frank, that the whole thing is a scam, who is doing more harm -- Webber or me?

It's a hard question to answer.  I once had a student tell me, in some distress, that he was finding himself unable to believe what his minister was saying in church on Sunday, but he was resistant to leaving the faith.  "I just don't know if I can do it," he said.  "Religion tells me that there's a reason that everything happens, and that if I just believe, everything will turn out okay in the end.  I don't know how I can trade that for a belief in nothing, that tells me that bad things just happen because they do, and that when I die, I'm just... gone."

It's strange, isn't it?  We are (obviously) drawn to what gives us comfort -- but will even stay with that source of comfort when the rational parts of our brains are certain that what is comforting us isn't true.  But the dilemma really falls on the shoulders of those of us who have already chosen the rather bleak road of accepting that the rationalist view is correct.  What should we do when we see others falling for -- perhaps even paying good money for -- a comfort that we believe to be based in a falsehood?

I can't bring myself to do it.  Even being a fervent, at times rather militant, atheist, I couldn't bring myself to tell my student, "Be brave and face up to it.  You know you're right, now act on it."  I just told him to keep thinking, reading, and talking to people he trusted, and eventually he'd find an answer he could accept.  As far as the New Zealanders who are planning on attending Deb Webber's talks -- it wouldn't work for me, but if it helps them to move past their grief and loss, I can't argue with the outcome.  I guess there's times that my compassion for humanity's inevitable sorrows trumps my determination to broadcast the cause of rationality.

On the other hand, there's a niggling part of my brain that keeps quoting Carl Sagan:  "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."  And I can say that for myself, that is what I want -- but I would hesitate to make that decision for anyone else.