When Prophecy's Faked

January 26, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

It turns out that the only scientific evidence linking autism to childhood vaccinations was a fraud. The doctor who reported it, Andrew Wakefield, faked the data, most likely because he was in cahoots with lawyers who were suing vaccine makers. (The story is here and many other places.)

What does that mean for autism-vaccine believers like Jenny McCarthy, who has been one of the more noticeable vaccine skeptics and one of Dr. Wakefield’s strongest supporters?

Jonah Lehrer writing in Wired draws a parallel (which I’m embarrassed not to have noticed) between this turn of events and the origins of “cognitive dissonance,” particularly When Prophecy Fails.

Much of the early research on cognitive dissonance, a term coined by Leon Festinger, came out of the social psych. lab – all those contrived experiments by Festinger and others. But the idea had its origin in a real-world study. In 1954, Festinger noticed a newspaper article about a small group of believers who were predicting that the world would be destroyed on Dec. 20 of that year.

Festinger and two colleagues joined the group, pretending to be believers (no IRBs in those days) and regularly attended its meetings. They were especially interested in how the group would react when, come Dec. 21, they were all still on this planet. The group had gathered on the fated night and waited for the spaceships to rescue them from the great destruction. But nothing happened. How would they resolve the dissonance between their belief (about the end of the world and its causes) and the evidence?

It should be no surprise that they held to their basic ideas. Instead, their leader (a Mrs. Keech*) relayed the latest message from the space aliens: the heroic efforts of this little group had created such a powerful force for good that God had chosen to spare the world. Both the world and their belief system were saved.

The other, possibly surprising, outcome was what happened next. You might think that the group members would lose their enthusiasm and that the group would gradually dissipate. Instead, they vowed to redouble their efforts and turn outward. Before, they had been content to save themselves. Now they set out to proselytize.

The same thing apparently is happening on the autism-vaccine front. Lehrer quotes Jenny McCarthy

This debate won’t end because of one dubious reporter’s allegations. I have never met stronger women than the moms of children with autism. Last week, this hoopla made us a little stronger, and even more determined to fight for the truth about what’s happening to our kids. [Lehrer’s emphasis]

He adds, “That’s right: the demonstration of fraud has made McCarthy even more convinced that vaccines cause autism.”

After prophecy fails, it’s only logical (well, psycho-logical) to claim that your beliefs are even stronger and to go out and proselytize. In the face of disconfirming evidence, you have to work even harder to convince yourself. And, as we teachers well know, one of the best ways to clarify and strengthen your own ideas is to go out and teach them to others.

* Not her real name.

BLEG: I dimly recall hearing somewhere that Robert Coover took the inspiration for his first novel, Origin of the Brunists (1966), from When Prophecy Fails. But my Internet searches have turned up no confirmation of this. Does anyone have any information about this? If you know Coover, call him up and ask.

Hard Work and Its Rewards

January 24, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

The Protestant ethic had a pretty good run in America, where it was also known sometimes as “the work ethic.” But the huge reaction to Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal essay is a sign that “hard work” has become a matter of considerable ambivalence. Some of Chua’s critics were sure that her all-work-and-no-playdates regime would render children socially inept. Her supporters saw her article as a reminder of how far American parents have strayed from their proper roles. (My recent post on the article is here.)

The idea that hard work is in itself a good thing has been in decline in the US for at least a half century. At the same time, a new value has been rising – the value on self-fulfillment. That shift in values drives conservatives up the wall, and they see a clear connection between the waning of the value on work for its own sake and the waxing of the value on self-fulfillment. Our tolerance and respect for drudgery has fallen, they say, because of the sixties-liberal-hippie idea that work should be intrinsically rewarding.

But it’s not just self-fulfillment that’s causing problems for the old value. Hard work for hard work’s sake also conflicts with other long-standing American values: rationality, utilitarianism, pragmatism, self-interest – the idea that behavior is all about attaining specific goals. If hard work doesn’t seem to be achieving the goals, sinking ever more effort into it just isn’t very practical.

Chua’s article, with its anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of hard work, offers some comfort for traditional American beliefs and values. More so than most advanced countries, we believe that work pays off.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

In the Brookings international survey, the US was nearly at the top in agreeing that “People get rewarded for their effort.” Over 60% agreed, compared with a median of about 35% for the 27 countries in the sample.

The belief also gets a push from Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule.” Outliers like the Beatles and Bill Gates weren’t just talented. They, and others who eventually wound up at the top of their fields, all spent thousands of hours working to develop their craft. We are familiar with the fictional version of this scenario – the hero who, at all costs, pursues his dream. Others scoff and try to discourage him, but he perseveres, often at great sacrifice. He remains true to his vision, and in the end, he triumphs.

The trouble is that we don’t know about all the similarly single-minded dream-pursuers who didn’t make it. How many other bands and other programmers put in their 10,000 hours and wound up where they started, in obscurity?

The radio show “This American Life” often gives the other side of our most beloved stories. Last month, it aired the story of Duke Fightmaster, a one-time mortgage broker who decided that he was going to be the replacement for Conan O’Brien when Conan replaced Jay Leno (NBC’s plan at the time).

I had this idea that if I just follow my passion or find something that I'm passionate about, something that uses my creativity, and if I just am able to find that and throw myself into it I’ll be successful.

He started doing his own talk show from his own bedroom. Eventually, he quit his day job in order to pursue his dream of replacing Conan. He moved the show out of his house first to a VA hall, then a small nightclub. He maxed out his credit cards, went bankrupt, lost a house, lost a car, and had a sort of breakdown. Still, he didn’t give up on his dream. He stopped after three years, but only when he could no longer find a place to do the show.

Here is what he says in response to NPR producer Sarah Koenig’s what-have-you-learned-Dorothy question.*

Going out and saying I’m going to be the replacement for Conan O’Brien, it turns out that that’s a lot easier said than done. It’s not as easy to start a talk show and replace Conan O’Brien as I thought it might have been.

Koenig laughs and says,

I could have told you that three years ago. I mean, nobody gets to be Conan O’Brien. Only Conan O’Brien gets to be Conan O’Brien; that’s why it’s so hard to be Conan O’Brien.

* A podcast of the show is here. The above segment begins at about 34:30. A transcript is here.

Grade Inflation

January 19, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

John Sides at The Monkey Cage posted ths final gradesheet from a Goverment course that John F. Kennedy took in 1939-40.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

JFK’s B- isn’t bad. Although that was the modal grade, the class mean and median were a C+. I haven’t seen any gradesheets from current Government courses at Harvard, but I would expect that a B- would fall pretty far down the curve. And just for the record, it was Kennedy’s lowest grade that term. In his other courses, he got two Bs and a B+.

UPDATE. Jan. 25. Lisa Wade at Sociological Images has more on this topic-- a graph of grades in US colleges going back as far as 1920 -- and a link to the source, gradeinflation.com, which has much, much more.

Speak Roughly To Your Little Boy

January 18, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Amy Chua says that her recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is about her personal “journey” of change away from the “very strict Chinese parenting model.” But the Wall Street Journal op-ed page edit of her memoir reduces Chua’s journey to a one-dimensional promo for that extreme Chinese model. The WSJ selected those elements of Chua’s story that embody the current conservative world-view in the US. For example, the chief family virtues in this conservative model – for the children and the parents as well – are hard work and perseverance. The model also emphasizes goals rather than process; the “journey” is less important.  Still less relevant is the way the child feels about any of it. Finally, the tiger mom method places all responsibility on the individual and rejects the influence of external, situational forces.

The appeal of the Chinese model stems in part from our fear that America has become, in Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s phrase, “a nation of wusses.” Rendell was referring to the NFL’s decision to reschedule a football game in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when heavy snow made travel to the stadium dangerous and nearly impossible.

The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.

Rendell was joking, but the joke reflected our anxieties about ourselves vis-à-vis China.

The remedy for this wussiness, at least in the ideal WSJ family, is basically the parent-as-marine-drill-sergeant. The drill sergeant doesn’t “journey.” He barks that he wants results not excuses, my way or the highway, and similar bons mots. This model of child-rearing combines several elements of the conservative mentality: authoritarianism, intolerance of ambiguity, cognitive simplicity, and certainty.* Parents are always right, their rules are clear and absolute, and children should unquestioningly do what parents say.** Therefore, whatever parents do to enforce rules is legitimate and beneficial since it leads to the desired results. (Some of Chua’s methods will strike many readers as psychological cruelty if not abuse.)

Another virtue in the war on wussiness is Toughness. This means the rejection of emotions, especially “feminine” emotions like sympathy, as irrelevant or even detrimental to the task at hand. (Remember the right-wing reaction to “empathy”?) “Masculine” emotions that can be used for goal attainment are O.K. These include pride and anger, and perhaps even envy and greed (hey, four out of seven ain’t bad.)

This tension between toughness and kindness towards children is nothing new. The Lewis Carroll poem from Alice in Wonderland (1865) alluded to in the title of this post was itself a parody reaction to a popular poem of the time, “Speak Gently”

Speak gently to the little child!
Its love be sure to gain . . . .

And

Speak gently to the young, for they
Will have enough to bear;
Pass through this life as best they may,
’Tis full of anxious care!

The conflict is also reflected in the bimodal reaction over at Amazon, where Chua’s book is #6 on the bestseller list. In the end, I doubt that the book will have much lasting influence on child rearing here, though some parents will use it to justify what they were already inclined to do.

The stronger influence will run the other way; American culture will change Asian-American parenting. As Chua says, she was “humbled” (and presumably changed) by her 13-year-old. The Asian kids at my son’s high school (where they were about half the population) would often say, “Asian parents are crazy.” When these kids and Amy Chua’s kids become parents, they will probably not be quite so “crazy.”
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* For a somewhat controversial review of the literature on the conservative mentality, see this Psychological Bulletin article, which includes studies from other countries.

**This upends the usual American formulation, at least in movies and other fictions, where children are typically wiser than parents. (See my earlier post contrasting this configuration with the British version of childhood as seen in “Atonement.” Or this post on the non-authoritarian sitcom family.)