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- Ray Jay
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05 Mar 2012, 12:17 pm
I came across this on NPR today. Very interesting no matter what your perspective
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03 ... -hobgoblinConsider the work of Jamie Barden, a psychology professor a Howard University in Washington.
Barden found a clever way to look at how people make judgments about inconsistent behavior in politics.
In one study, Barden gathered a group of students, both Democrats and Republicans, and told them that their job was to evaluate the behavior of a political fundraiser named Mike.
The first piece of information the students got about Mike was that after a long night of drinking at a fundraiser he'd organized, Mike drove home and wrapped his car around a telephone pole.
Then they found out that about a month after the crash, Mike had gone on the radio and delivered a screed about the dangers of drunken driving. Mike had driven while drunk, then Mike had preached against drunken driving.
The students were then provided with a blank space and the opportunity to weigh in on Mike's behavior.
Now obviously there are two possible interpretations of Mike's actions. The first interpretation is that Mike is a hypocrite. Privately he's driving into poles. Publicly he's making proclamations. He's a person whose public and private behavior is inconsistent.
The other interpretation is that Mike is a changed man. Mike had a hard experience. Mike learned. Mike grew.
So when do we see hypocrisy and when do we see growth?
What Barden found is that this decision is based much less on the facts of what happened, than on tribe.
Half the time the hypothetical Mike was described to the students in the study as a Republican, and half the time he was described as a Democrat.
When participants were making judgments of a Mike who was in their own party, only 16 percent found him to be a hypocrite. When participants were making judgments about a Mike from the opposing party, 40 percent found him to be a hypocrite.
In other words our judgments about what is inconsistent and what isn't are clouded by our social allegiances. In fact, the research makes it clear it is hopelessly clouded.
Further, there's a whole other school of research that shows that though we can often see this bias in our opponents, we are blind to the behavior in ourselves. We believe that we are earnestly making judgements based on facts, on reality.
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- Sassenach
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05 Mar 2012, 1:12 pm
I'm, sure there's an element of truth to this. The problem here is that the test was deliberately designed to give incomplete information in order to form a judgment. It's also a slightly odd choice of issue in the forst place since drink driving is pretty much universally looked down upon. The very fact that he felt the need to speak out vehemently against it implies that it was because of his own recent experiece, which in turn implies the 'changed man' hypothesis. I suspect this explains why a clear majority favoured that explanation even when they thought they were talking about a political opponent.
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- Ray Jay
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05 Mar 2012, 1:38 pm
I suspect they wanted to choose an issue that didn't easily identify as either R or D; drunk driving is one of the few such issues, I guess. It would be interesting for them to run it across a range of issues.
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- bbauska
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05 Mar 2012, 1:50 pm
What example would you suggest, Sass?
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- Sassenach
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05 Mar 2012, 2:27 pm
Tbh I'm not sure. But let's say for example that they said he'd recently been guilty of tax evasion and then made a speech against it. I'm willing to bet that almost everybody would go for hypocrite in this scenario, regardless of the party affiliations. Or what about adultery ? It probably wouldn;t be quite so clear-cut as my previous example but I suspect you'd still see a clear majority in favour of hypocrite, and I don't think it would matter too much what the party affiliation was, although you probably would see some evidence of bias.
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- Ray Jay
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05 Mar 2012, 2:31 pm
how about using birth control pills paid for by insurance? (just joking)
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- danivon
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05 Mar 2012, 2:35 pm
How many students were in the study? I'm just wondering how significant the differences recorded were in statistical terms, and the link doesn't give the figures.
It's not surprising to see a tribal trend, a difference between in-group and out-group. But the results don't give the 'hopelessly' clouded conclusion much credence - most people either way went for the optimistic option.
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- bbauska
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05 Mar 2012, 2:55 pm
Tax evasion would have rich v poor bias.
I could agree that adultery would be similar.
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- danivon
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05 Mar 2012, 3:02 pm
Brad, there are rich and poor on both sides of the political divide. But it would be interesting to see a whole range of questions so we can see if you are right, or are just assuming.
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- Sassenach
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05 Mar 2012, 4:23 pm
I'm not so sure the rich v poor divide would make much difference. I find it difficult to believe that many people could genuinely think that somebody who had recently dodged paying their taxes could suddenly have had a damascene conversion on the subject afterwards.Also, tax evasion is something that takes place at every level of the income scale. The rich might do it on a bigger scale, but anybody who's ever bought smuggled cigarettes or paid cash in hand to a builder knows full well why they're doing it.
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- bbauska
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05 Mar 2012, 4:31 pm
How many poor people do you see tax evading? It is hard to evade what you do not pay...
To me it sounds similar to a person who is on welfare berating others for welfare fraud being caught themselves. I am sure there are more wealthy people on welfare, so the argument is non-bias, of course.
No, there is an image of a tax cheat being wealthy.
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- Sassenach
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05 Mar 2012, 4:47 pm
Sure, but my point was that most people would instinctively assume that somebody who cheated on their taxes was unlikely to be feeling sufficiently guilty about the fact to suddenly go out and start berating others for doing the same. I don't think it really matters whether you're rich or poor , either way you're going to see that as hypocrisy. You're right that tax evasion is more usually seen as a rich man's crime but the poor understand it too. Like I said, anybody who works in the construction business will know more about avoiding taxes than your typical employee of Goldman Sachs.
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- Magister Equitum
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05 Mar 2012, 8:10 pm
Interesting article. Do you know the title of the paper published by Barden or the journal in which it was released?
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- danivon
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06 Mar 2012, 12:55 am
bbauska wrote:How many poor people do you see tax evading? It is hard to evade what you do not pay...
taking a cash in hand job or a sale without declaring it for tax is tax fraud, and is quite common at low income levels. And of course, there are all kinds of taxes that can be evaded.
To me it sounds similar to a person who is on welfare berating others for welfare fraud being caught themselves.
being on welfare is not itself fraudulent, so why would it be hypocritical for a person on welfare to criticise welfare fraud?
I am sure there are more wealthy people on welfare, so the argument is non-bias, of course
Like I said, it would be interesting to see several questions, so that the assumptions can be tested.
No, there is an image of a tax cheat being wealthy.
So? The test is not whether people would in general see them as more or less hypocritical, it's whether there was much of an effect from ingroup bias. Even if one group were more sympathetic to fraud (which I hope is not the case), that would come out in the results but not necessarily alter the impact of the partisan/opponent test.
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- Ray Jay
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06 Mar 2012, 5:24 am
Magister Equitum wrote:Interesting article. Do you know the title of the paper published by Barden or the journal in which it was released?
I don't ... and I could not find with a Google search ... if you follow the link, you can get to the guy's home page at Howard ... I bet if you asked him he would answer ... you can even link him to our discussion.
Regarding tax cheats, about a year ago I had lunch with a colleague who is a heavily partisan and active Democrat ... he was adamant that racism was behind Charlie Rangel being prosecuted as a tax cheat, even though the evidence is overwhelming. I think the appropriate lesson here is that people who are heavily partisan can be blind to the facts in a particular case, and not just that Democrats can be that way. ;)
