Why do such things happen?

By Gary Berg-Cross

An NBC headline reads, “Massacre leaves America shocked and grieving ... again.”

Further below House Speaker John Boehner is quoted appealing to Americans to come together to seek solace.  How?   

“In religion….The horror of this day seems so unbearable, but we will lock arms and unite as citizens, for that is how Americans rise above unspeakable evil. Let us all come together in God's grace to pray for the families of the victims, that they may find some comfort and peace amid such suffering,” 

Psychological studies ( see Chris Mooney's reporting On The Republican Brain and Understanding Confirmatory Bias and Dead End Arguments) of Conservative Republicans,  like  Boehner, tells us that they tend to ignore evidence contrary to their initial position, and they tend to reinforce their previous commitments.  And they value group unity. .As a result.they are quick to close on an issue without studying all sides of it  So Boehner was probably more comfortable talking about some vague notion of evil and the comfort of prayer that fit his group thinking than of taking on the very American, National Rifle Association to give us more security from guns.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had similar words of some narrow idea of unity with a look towards more peaceful days:

“I invite everyone to lift their hearts in prayer for the victims and their families and to unite around the hope that there will soon come a day when parents no longer fear this kind of violence in our nation again,”

And such appeals to come together in ritual are understandable, although some of us would rather it not be around an assumed religious ideas of prayer and evil.Critical thinking using science based evidence is probably a better way to go in the long run.

Religion isn’t unique in providing comfort, which is easier if we accept the irrational in our thinking and in the world, but it is convenient security blanket and indeed there is some thinking that this is one of the main reasons for Religion:

According to the security blanket concept of religion, supernatural belief systems provide peace of mind and help believers to cope with the more stressful events in their lives. This is a valuable service because chronic stress increases blood pressure leading to heart disease, clinical depression, and contributing to a number of other health problems ranging from obesity to cancers.

OK, so maybe it  provides an easy comfort for people. It has a simple explanation for everything even for people who ask, “Why do such things happen?” It’s part of God’s plan…don’t ask more, it’s beyond us. Broad appeals to prayer and religion provide comfort rather than answers to such things. And we prefer real attempts at understanding rather than religion driven thinking. According to the Huffington Post, Republican Mike Huckabee said the crime should be no surprise because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools.
In his own words, delivered on Fox News:

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

Yuk and hogwash! Systematically eliminating open inquiry and humanist values, lack of support for counseling, addressing the causes of poverty, stress and mental illnsess and  the like are all things discuss as an alternative criticism.

Some of us want more than that type of blaming or that God is punishing us or, "God has a plan,"  That’s a more difficult take on reality which quickly leads into more divisive topics of policy, politics and interest groups. And we need more understanding to yield us answers that will work. We might prefer the role of secular counselors and Psychologists to handle grief and real problem solvers with political skills and wisdom to deal with the issues.

Image Credits

Brad on religion: http://cafewitteveen.wordpress.com/tag/pope/

Leading the children to safety: http://perezhilton.com/tag/sandy_hook_elementary

Evolutionary Psychology of religion:http://www.fairobserver.com/article/evolutionary-psychology-religion-part-1

Determined, Partially Determined: Understanding Networks of Influence in the Nature vs Nature argument

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By Gary Berg-Cross

One of the discussion topics after Chis Mooney’s presentation on The Republican Brain  concerned determinism.  One questioner framed a question about genetics “partially determining” ones personality, ideological stance etc. This was a gestured to by Simone Amselli in her blog on Mooney’ presentations:

“Mooney’s theory is somewhat deterministic: ‘our political inclination is dictated by the configuration of our brain’. This seems to be the conclusion Mooney is aiming at.

However determinism is a huge subject… and a lot can be said about it. Even the cultural context can be deterministic.”

Both Chris and I were more than a little uncomfortable with a verbal concept like “partially determined.”  This seems counter to the very idea of determinism which argues that for any happening there are conditions such that, given those conditions (say a set of genes), nothing else could happen. 

What people who propose “partially determinism might mean is that events are affected by a factor or as Chris said “influenced.”  Genetics and environment are huge factors involved in driving human behavior.  They certainly interact and they have many components that interact over time. An interactionist model, contrasted to pure genetic or environmental ones is shown in the 3 part graphic below.

 

As developmentalist  Jerome Kagan put it to broaden the nature vs nature issue:

Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

That’s a much better model for what is going on than determinism by either single factor approach.

So part of what the research that Chris reports on is saying is that from things like twin studies we understand the 2 sides and their interactions better.

“Nature, we are starting to realize, is every bit as important as nurture. Genetic influences, brain chemistry, and neurological de velopment contribute strongly to who we are as children and what we become as adults. For example, tendencies to excessive worrying or timidity, leadership qualities, risk taking, obedience to authority, all appear to have a constitutional aspect.” Stanley Turecki

This general idea of interaction is an important way of understanding complex phenomena (like obesity).  Take climate change.  In a November 01, 2012 article in Business Week  Paul M. Barrett declared after Hurricane Sandy - It's Global Warming, Stupid.  The article  quotes Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota explaining how to understand the influence of climate change on a storm like Sandy:

“Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.”

Eric Pooley, senior VP of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), explained it using a baseball analogy that we all might understand:

“We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

And we can go way beyond that frame to understand some of the factors that influence something like a storm. Mark Fischetti of Scientific American summarized the broadening consensus about the mechanistic factors:

“Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.

Do sure climate scientists agreed that it's difficult to link a single weather event to global warming but many agree that the damage caused by Sandy was worse because of rising sea levels.

Climate change itself is multi-determined and involves factors combine to produce climate change and global warming, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide. And the model isn’t as simple as a one directional factor influence. It is more like a network of factors with some factors feeding back to affect other factors. So while climate is always changing, understanding recent changes starts with human generated increases of greenhouse gases.  These hold in heat which in turn warms the atmosphere and oceans.  But there is feedback, since as temperatures warm, the area of the Earth covered by light reflecting ice shrinks.  With less ice in polar regions, more of the sun's energy is absorbed by Earth, further warming the climate, which leads to still more ice melt.
It’s a network of influence.  And so is the gene-environment situation.  We shouldn’t think of it as 2 modular, isolated items. When we step closer we see a biological-development network. And there are structures and mechanism at work. Cells for example. In bio-organisms, most cellular components exert a  functional influnce through interactions with other cellular components. And in complex organisms we have complex organs. We humans have a complex brain. We know a bit about the neural interconnections there, but there are also interconnections at brain component such as the amygdale and neo-cortex.

All of this is not well covered by simple terms like “determined.”  We need to slowly develop a vocabulary to understand these better and not force arguments into Procrustean beds that lop off part of real understanding to fit binary views of reality. Opposing ideas are easy parts of a debate, and can start understanding but often evolve into larger understanding.
All part of open inquiry and a life of learning.

The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world—the hardware—plays the role of a gigantic computer.  — P.C.W. Davies

'Laying Down the Laws', New Scientist. In Clifford A. Pickover, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them (2008)

Images

Gene-environment interaction: http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/2250_Genetic_Environmental_interaction.html
Twins: http://bestphotosaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/08/nature-vs-nurture-are-we-shaped-by-one.html
Tangle of nature vs nurture: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/the_tangle_of_the_naturenurture

Some thoughts on Chris Mooney's Republican Brain

by Simone Amselli (posted with her permission by Gary Berg-Cross

The following were some thoughts Simone had about Chris Mooney's presentation at WASH MDC on The Republican Brain. Simone is a teacher of French & Spanish.
others who attended or have read the book will be interested in these and in commenting.:

1-First, Mooney based his studies on only two elements of the political spectrum: the Liberals and the Conservatives. This is what I call a “black and white” outlook on the subject. There are so many nuances of grey that can be addressed.

2- The topic is presented as scientific (which would mean that the theory could be applied universally), but it contemplates only the American perspective.

3-My opinion is that in what determines our personality, the cultural element is much more important than our genetic disposition. Mooney said rightly, that the choices we make in politics can be compared to those we make in religion. However, most of the time people don’t “choose” their religion; they were raised in it. This can apply to politics. I see my students just repeating the political arguments their parents are using; this was quite obvious at the time of the last election. I wonder if a study has been made, or could me made to see if the children of the so called “liberal parents” feel more free not to stand by their parents ‘political affiliation than the Conservative’s. Of course, in that topic, like in many others that pertain to human sciences, there are a lot of gray areas.

4- Regarding the definitions Mooney give of each group: the Liberals being more open-minded, and the Conservatives liking structures, they can be applied to the individual members of each party: There are among the “Liberals” people who like structure (and are not "messy") and are used for their sense of duty and organization. There are among the “Conservative” people who like to discover, learn new things. All parties need people who reach out, and others that are duty oriented. All spectrums of personalities can find their niche in any party.


5-and last: I agree with the comment of the gentleman who said that Mooney’s theory is somewhat deterministic: "our political inclination is dictated by the configuration of our brain". This seems to be the conclusion Mooney is aiming at. However determinism is a huge subject… and a lot can be said about it. Even the cultural context can be deterministic.

A Glimpse of the Conservative Vision out of Texas?

By Gary Berg-Cross
The Texas Republicans have been meeting in convention at Fort Worth. They are approving their 2012 platform which has some strong conservative notes.  They are sour ones to me. One Texas commentator (Richard Whittaker,in the Austin Chronicle) bulleted them as follow:
-Abstinence-only sex ed (yeah, because that's worked so well so far.)
– Trying juveniles as adults
– Faith-based drug rehab should be emphasized (Scientology front operation NarcAnon should be rubbing its hands at that one)
– Oppose the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Yeah! Who's the UN to tell us we should ban child slavery?)
– Flat rate income tax (go Team 1%!)
– Repealing the minimum wage (suck it, wage slaves!)
– Opposing homosexuality in the military (don't ask, don't tell, and don't do that!)
– Opposition to red light cameras (because if you run a red, kill someone, and there's no witnesses, was the light ever really red?)
– Oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, because firms should be able to fire people for what they consider "sinful and sexually immoral behavior." Like, say, growing a beard?
– Continued opposition to ACORN (even though it has not existed since 2010)
– Opposing statehood or even Congressional voting rights for the citizens of the District of Columbia (who writes this crap, Rand Paul?)
– And no-questions-asked support for Israel because, and this is another direct quote:

   "Our policy is based on God’s biblical promise to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel and we further invite other nations and organizations to enjoy the benefits of that promise." 

I noted that they insist that school principles need to be citizens but the item that is getting national attention such as at HuffPo is in the section titled "Educating Our Children," . Include in here the statement that that "corporal punishment is effective" and recommends teachers be given "more authority" to deal with disciplinary problems. It goes on to opposes mandatory pre-school and kindergarten, saying tht parents are "best suited to train their children in their early development."

But the position that has stirred the most controversy is the one stating that:

“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

What the argument? It’s straight out Chris Mooney’s Republican Brain and Lakoff’s writings on Moral Authority. They worry that it might challenge "student's fixed beliefs. " Fixed by group decision and closed minds with no discussion allowed.
The language of undermining "parental authority" can be understood from Lakoff's discussion of the Strict Father model:

This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules. The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father's authority. Children must respect and obey their parents; by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance. Love and nurturance are, of course, a vital part of family life but can never outweigh parental authority, which is itself an expression of love and nurturance—tough love. Self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn.

I imagine it is sad for quite a few Texas parents critically contemplating the long-tern implications.

Understanding Confirmatory Bias and Dead End Arguments

By Gary Berg-Cross

In her popular blog “General Myers and His Endless War on Error”, Sarah Hippolitus took on PZ Myers essay, Sunday Sacrilege: Sacking the City of God, for its deliberate and provocative vitriol. The argument is simple, telling people they are wrong in this way just doesn’t work and is perhaps counterproductive. Sarah cited Chris Mooney's essay, The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, in which Mooney explains why berating people, such as religious conservatives who are emotionally committed to an idea, can make them defensively cling harder to their beliefs and biases. An in-your-face criticism raises emotions and people respond defensively overwhelming any chance at reason. Over the last 50 years of social and cognitive research we have learned a considerable amount of the general type of phenomena of how people frame and defend biases (bracketology being one area where “experts” are visibly wrong) and unsupported beliefs and how we rationalization our beliefs rather than use reason to arrive at opinions. I’ve written on this topic earlier in such blogs as “Rationalizing Irrational Choices: That $45 entree and presidential choices” and Boxing Ourselves In with Category Errors. We have come to a sad, but scientific understanding from a coordinated system of studies that we humans are imperfect reasoners. The fact is that the emphasis on rationality encouraged by Enlightenment thinkers is a noble effort, but difficult, and does not come easily in many circumstances. The modern parlance covering this is to talk about gut feeling that overwhelm and, in effect, reverse engineer our opinions. More recently the studies have focused on group differences in cognitive styles and the role of emotions, like fear, in these differences.

The scientific study of general phenomena of changing the minds of people with convictions, especially faith-based ones,  goes back a long way, but progress was made starting in the 50s. Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger summarized it succinctly based on a study of a UFO cult that was convinced the world would end on December 20^th 1954 (see“When Prophecy Fails”):

"A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."

And it wasn’t just odd folks that show biases responses. Experimental studies of experts, such as Physicians, show they are often biased in clinical judgments. Their expertise could be improved upon by simple statistical rules, a discovery that prompted some hope for things like artificial, expert systems to aid human judgment.But this human tendency gets enhanced when it interacts with factors like ideology,  frightening circumstances and cultural framing.

The more recent studies on differences of reasoning style, which I touched on in Epistemological Styles. There I contrasted scientific with theist styles. Scientific styles are cognitively taxing and require considerable cultural support for chained combinations of postulates that get tested by experiment. These may confirm a belief but also disconfirm it. It’s all part of a humbling style that values exploration of ideas with controlled observation and measurement, analogical models and statistical analysis of regularities of populations.Such methods have been applied to self-study processes by which small groups have moved the country  away from intellectual  processes to more of a conservative agenda in this  country (see for example Hacker and Pierson's work Off Center). Such conservative, social-political engineering reflect reaching people who prefer far simpler style . It is to be an idea advocate and largely focus on evidence to justify existing belief and gut feelings.Taken as a whole this tends to appeal to conservative minds more than liberal ones.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, discusses such things in his recent book The Republican Brain The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality. His finding is simply states: conservatives and liberals don’t just have different ideologies; they have different psychologies (aka epistemological styles) that help explain their fact and expert denying positions on such things as climate change and evolution. It’s not just that they don’t know facts it is that they have a tendency towards a confirmatory bias that reflects a preference to focus on evidence that supports existing belief. Another part of who conservatives are is their preference for ideas that bind groups together rather than “truth” in an objective sense. And one of the big factors driving conservative beliefs is their tendency to emotional, fight or flight responses. Eye tracking studies, for example, show that people who score high on conservative positions tend to track “threat” objects in an environment (a knife or gun – maybe a stranger). There’s survival value in such a tendency so one may imagine how such a tendency was selected in populations and later frozen into cultural values. Conservatives tend to be ready to be afraid and this can turn off the reasoning side of the brain.
You can see a good discussion of all of this on the recent Up With Chris Hayes, where Mooney and Jonathan Haidt, UVA moral psychologist & author of The Righteous Mind, discussed group differences. They agreed that liberals tend to be more open to new experiences, new data and convincing finds. As a consequence they tend to be more sympathetic to scientific process, and take their scientific findings more seriously. This is a tendency/predisposition and not a hard and fast thing in all circumstances.  The socially generated tendency of Conservatives, meanwhile, is that they just do it differently. Haidt explained:

“I want to fully agree with Chris that the psychology does predispose liberals more to be receptive to science; my own research has found that conservatives are better at group-binding, at loyalty, and so if you put them in a group-versus-group conflict, yes, the right is more prone, psychologically, to band around and sort of, circle the wagons.”

This is consistent with Sarah’s earlier argument about the reaction of believers to strong, mocking arguments. In conversations with conservative thinkers (as opposed to  liberal styles) we should be aware that they may not have the same regard for the Enlightenment’s style of rational argument. We are either fooling ourselves or just being a bit too rigid in our style. But we need not be quiet or withdrawn certainly in our own communuty, and we can use the new understandings that come from cognitive and social science to guide us. The value of framing (see my Framing Arguments: You say Flaming Atheists and I Say Non-Confrontational Humanist) 
is one tool we can use. Another is to recognize that individual reasoning is biased. We are often battling a strong confirmatory bias that repels facts and strict logic. What we need instead is get into a dialog to challenge our biases as well as others. Socrates was on to this a long time ago and its time to update that technique drawing lessons from the relevant science. Overcoming a reflexive conservative denial of the science of denial would be a big step. We need to get the word out on that.