debitage

16.2.08

Constructed Preferences For Creationism

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading about the idea of constructed preferences, and a recent poll of Floridians' views of evolution give me a good opportunity to say something about it in this blog.

My starting point is a debate between P.Z. Myers and Wesley Elsberry about the phrasing of the questions. Elsberry points out that the depressingly low support for evolution (specifically, for the teaching of evolution as opposed to creationism or intelligent design in schools) shown in the poll contrasts with other polls, and he attributes the discrepancy to the polls' wording -- the question in the recent poll was framed in such a way as to make evolution less appealing as an answer. Myers agrees, but disputes that this shows that "framing works." If by "framing works" they mean "re-framing our message would be an effective political strategy," I don't think this poll discrepancy shows a whole lot. But if they mean "framing is a valid scientific theory," then the poll discrepancy is a good illustration of a phenomenon that, on the basis of a great deal of other research, is indisputably true.

Framing effects fall under the larger umbrella of the idea of constructed preferences. There is a temptation, in looking at such poll discrepancies, to try to figure out what question wording would be unbiased and thus reveal the true views of the people of Florida. This assumes that there is such a thing as "the true views of the people of Florida" prior to asking the question.

Rationalist theories, of the type that underlie traditional utilitarianism, neoclassical economics, traditional political science, and common sense, hold that people have preexisting preferences that are called up and expressed in response to a relevant question or choice situation. Such settled preferences would not be vulnerable to any framing effects short of outright trickery. Myers, for example, notes that he would have no problem picking the pro-evolution answer to even the slanted-against-evolution poll. This should come as no surprise, since if anyone should have a settled preference for teaching evolution in schools, it's an evolutionary biology professor who runs a popular blog largely dedicated to defending the theory of evolution.

But psychologists have found repeatedly that question framing makes a difference. People choose a low-risk, low-payoff gamble over a high-risk, high-payoff one, but rate the latter as more attractive. People are more willing to go a medical procedure that 9 in 10 people survive than a procedure that kills 1 in 10 people. People are willing to pay the same amount to clean up one polluted lake in Ontario as they are to clean up all of the polluted lakes in Ontario. People's preferred price for a bottle of wine can be doubled or halved by asking them whether they'd pay more or less than the last two digits of their Social Security Number, prior to asking them to name their price.

What has become clear is that this is not a case of "rhetorical tricks" fooling people into misstating their true preferences. Rather, on non-core questions -- questions to which your answer isn't central to how you see yourself and live your life -- people don't have preexisting preferences. Their preferences are constructed on the fly. Once presented with a question, they try to figure out what preference to have. In such a situation, they take cues from how the question is presented. Since different questions give different cues, they come up with different, yet still genuine, preferences in different situations.

It's quite likely that a large number of Floridians simply don't have settled preferences about which theory of human origins should be taught in schools. Instead, they wait until it becomes necessary to take a stand (e.g. when a pollster calls, or a referendum appears on their ballot), then figure out which position seems best in the context of the moment.

Myers is on the right track when he says that he prefers the slanted-against-evolution poll because it pushes people's "religion button" in the same way that the actual public debate over Florida's science education policy does. Insofar as the poll's framing matches the framing to be found in a particular real-world situation, the poll will lead people to construct their preferences for curriculum content in the same way and thus provide an accurate prediction. Pointing to the different results obtained by a differently-framed poll is not, however, a "blindfold" or "framing the problem away." The two polls in conjunction reveal important information about the prevalence of constructed versus settled preferences among the anti-evolution respondents to Myers' preferred poll. And it gives us a prediction of what the outcome would be if the influences on preference construction in the real world were somehow -- neither poll tells us how -- altered to match it.

Labels: psychology

Stentor Danielson, 22:55, |

14.2.08

Does Vegetarianism Make A Difference?

In addition to the substantive arguments against vegetarianism (i.e., arguments that conclude "therefore animals don't have (enough) rights or interests to outweigh my desire to kill them for food"), I sometimes encounter a strategic argument from the left. The strategic argument, which is also made against other forms of "ethical consumerism" like buying free-trade coffee or boycotting Wal-Mart, goes something like this: ethical consumerism is about changing your personal choices, but what is needed to truly address injustice is activism directed toward collective action to change social structures.

With respect to this strategic argument, we can set out a continuum, on which both of the extreme ends are obviously false. One extreme -- often endorsed, for the sake of hyperbolic impact, by critics of ethical consumerism -- says that personal choices in the market make no difference at all. If that were true, we'd all be drinking New Coke. On the other hand, only someone in the grip of extreme free market mythology would believe that personal choices in the market are entirely sufficient to bring about any desired social change. Given that the world is not made up of fully-informed rational egoists experiencing no transaction costs, collective action aimed at structural change is a critical part of any social movement.

The question, then, is: how much of a difference does (a particular instance of) ethical consumerism make? Does it make enough difference that it should be pursued at some cost (in, at the very least, foregone convenience and time spent thinking about it)? I think the left strategic criticism of ethical consumerism tends to undercount the amount of difference it can make by being misled by the term "ethical consumerism" into imagining that whatever impact it has is going to fall within the parameters suggested by the free market mythology. Within those parameters, the impact of ethical consumerism qua reduction in demand/profit is often quite small (though as mentioned above, not non-zero). But it also has other forms of impact. And vegetarianism in particular, I think, carries the potental for these other forms of impact farther than most ethical consumerism.

What would be the end result of the collective action proposed as a replacement for, or at least supplement to, ethical consumerism in the case of vegetarianism? It would be the elimination of the practice of raising and slaughtering animals for food. Were this to be achieved, we would all then have to be vegetarians. This would be a significant shift in how we organize our way of life. Food is such an intimate part of life that major changes in it necessitate major changes -- at the most basic level, acquiring new understandings of how to plan and cook healthy and tasty meals. Present-day ethical consumerist vegetarianism serves an important role in working through those issues of how to have a meatless life, and inducts people into what has been learned.

The change that vegetarianism requires also creates an inevitable sort of witnessing for the cause. Because food is central not just to how we live our individual lives, but to how we socially engage with others, it's hard to be unobtrusively a vegetarian (and even more so a vegan). Having people around modeling the end-product of a social change draws attention to the issue and accustoms others to see the animal rights position as at least reasonable and worth treating respectfully -- widening the Overton window -- aside from any explicit debates or conversions.

Contrast what I've said about vegetarianism with another example of ethical consumerism -- boycotting Wal-Mart. The end product of that struggle is to either drive Wal-Mart out of town or get it to reform its business practices. These things surely make a big difference to the intended beneficiaries, e.g. workers farther back in the production chain. But it doesn't make a huge qualitative difference in one's life whether you got your laundry detergent and jeans from Wal-Mart or you had to go all the way to K-Mart or Spag's* for them. Thus, the impact of this type of ethical consumerism is mostly limited to the market principles suggested by the word "consumerism."

So even if vegetarianism's direct impact on the size of the meat industry is negligible (which I don't think it is, but for the sake of argument), it is valuable in laying the groundwork both for starting the necessary collective action, and realizing the gains that that collective action would ultimately win. The left strategic argument is a useful corrective to people who -- seduced by the free market mythology -- imagine that their personal food choices constitute the be-all of activism. But by it does not rebut the idea of vegetarianism as one significant part of an animal rights agenda.

*I went to Wikipedia to get a link explaining Spag's, only to find that it apparently closed shortly after I left Worcester. This makes me sad, not because I thought the store itself was so great, but because it was symbolic of the spirit of being a real, loyal native of Worcester.

Labels: animals

Stentor Danielson, 22:49, |

13.2.08

The Ridiculousness of the Coalition

My mind boggles at the ridiculousness of the Coalition in Australia. The new Labor government has now apologized to the Aborigines, in particular the Stolen Generations. While I can't see into Kevin Rudd's heart, the apology's text certainly has the form of a genuine apology that recognizes and repudiates the real wrong that's being apologized for. We'll have to see how things work out -- it's disturbing that Labor has been so fixed against any sort of material compensation, but the symbolism of the apology's words appears to have been well-recieved by the apologize-ees.

The Coalition, on the other hand ... their leader, Brendan Nelson, offered his own speech that for some reason was also labeled an "apology." Nelson used his time, not to recognize the wrongness of the policies behind the Stolen Generations, but to defend them. He referred repeatedly to the good intentions of the generation stealers, and blamed the harms on unintended consequences (i.e., he's sorry that the generation-stealing was not successful). Where Rudd's words were a small step toward healing the wounds, Nelson's were a small step toward finishing the job.

Then on top of that, Tony Abbott claimed that John Howard -- whose administration ended with a disgraceful set of coercive, victim-blaming, and overtly colonialist interventions in Aboriginal communities, and who pointedly refused to even show up to the apology ceremony -- was the the best Prime Minister for Aborigines Australia's ever had. I understand that it's the shadow cabinet's job to promote their party as better than the current government. But there are some times you need to keep your mouth shut, because the arguments you could make for your party's superiority on some count are so transparently laughable that the blow to your dignity of making them isn't worth it.

Given the kind of self-parody that Nelson, Abbott, and Howard have engaged in on this issue, it was rather surreal to hear Rudd proclaim that progress on improving race relations in Australia would just require Parliament to "move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics." That might work if the Coalition leader was Barack Obama, but in reality he's going to have to deal with a group of lawmakers who have a sincerely insane viewpoint about Australia's indigenous people.

Labels: Australia, race

Stentor Danielson, 22:52, |