Deep Change in the Deep South?

March 12, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

The polling news today is that very few Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi (14% and 12%, respectively) think that President Obama is a Christian.  Three times as many think he’s a Muslim. (A pdf of the entire survey is here.)

The poll also finds that only about one in four Republicans in those states believe in evolution.  Five times that many flatly reject evolution, with about 10% “not sure.” 

The results I found most curious were the opinions on interracial marriage.  Alabama 21% thought it should be illegal, 67% thought it should be legal; in Mississippi,  29% illegal, 54% legal.  None of the news stories I looked on this noted that when the same pollsters (Public Policy Polling) asked the same question of Mississippi Republicans less than a year ago, the results were very different.  A plurality thought it should be illegal.  (My post on that poll is here.)

The margin of error is 4% (N = 600), so the 15-point swing supposedly reflects a real change.  But I’m skeptical.  What could account for such a large change if not sampling variation?  Did the GOP organize mass screenings of “The Help” and shame some of their number into allowing that maybe Loving v. Virginia wasn’t a mistake after all? Did the Heidi Klum - Seal breakup make it OK?   I can’t come up with even a dubiously speculative explanation.

The Wisdom of Crowds - Jersey Cow Edition

March 11, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

James Surowiecki begins The Wisdom of Crowds* with the true fable of Francis Galton and the ox.  Galton was at a country fair where an ox was on display, and the locals could submit guesses as to what the weight of the ox would be when it was slaughtered and dressed.  Galton, a statistician and a bit of a eugenics fan, figured that the guesses of the less savvy would dilute the accuracy of the smart money guesses.  So he kept track of the roughly 800 entries. 

No individual guess had the exact weight – 1198 pounds.  But when Galton caculated the mean of all guesses, it turned out to be 1197 pounds, much closer than the best individual guess.  That was in 1906, and while Surowiecki presents other examples of successful crowd-sourcing, I’m not sure if there has been an exact repeat of the Galton-ox scenario. 
We’re many months away from county fair season in New Jersey, so we have no oxen to be weight-guessed.   But The New Republic has come close to replication: crowd sourcing the weight of the governor.**

(The ox is on the left.  For a larger view, click on the image.)

Unfortunately, TNR closed the contest with only 19 entries, a far cry from Galton’s 800.  But for what it’s worth, the mean was 334 pounds. 

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* The SocioBlog has had several posts on this topic. See this one for an example and for links to others.

** I didn’t know whether I should  put the photo of the Governor behind an NSFW gate.  I even hesitated to use it, but then, Galton’s fairgoers too had to guess the weight of the ox before it was dressed.  (I found the photo here.  That site credits Wonkette.)

Freud Is Dead (Long Live Freud)

March 9, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

I had thought that Freud had pretty much disappeared into the fading intellectual mists of the twentieth century. 

But on “Live With Kelly”* this is “Spring Cleaning Week.”  Viewers send in their tips.  Some of these make for good on-air demonstrations – like using Tang to clean your toilet bowl or vodka in a spray bottle to wash windows. Others can only be read. This morning, guest host Martin Short read this one. 

Marry someone who’s very anal about housecleaning.

I remember a time when you would never hear the word anal on morning network TV.  I also remember a time when college students might have been taught the theoretical reason for linking anality and neatness.  They would have known about the anal stage in childhood psycho-sexual development à la Freud, with its attendant concerns of order and neatness. It’s spring break, so I can’t ask my students,** but if I could, I doubt that even the psych majors would know.
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* Did you really think I watched only “Downton Abbey”?

** I probably wouldn’t ask anyway, for fear of getting the obvious response, “Because housecleaning is for assholes.”

The Kindness of Strangers

March 8, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

A philosophy professor at Brown, Felicia Nimue Ackerman,  has come out against random acts of kindness. Her op-ed, originally in the Providence  Journal, appeared in a New Jersey paper today (here). No Blanche du Bois she, Prof. Ackerman begins:

Suppose you stop for coffee on your way to work. When you try to pay, the cashier smilingly informs you this won't be necessary. “Someone has paid for 20 coffees and you are number 8,” she says.
How would you feel?

If you said you'd feel a bit more cheerful and that you might be inspired to do something similar, not so fast. Prof. Ackerman has a better idea.

If you want to make your thought count, why not direct it at a loved one? The money that you spend on 20 cups of coffee could buy a gift for your friend, spouse, parent or child, who would cherish it as a symbol of personal affection that — let’s face it — means a lot more than a cup of coffee from a stranger.

That’s the great thing about being a philosopher rather than a social scientist, I guess. You can make statements about what people would do or how they would feel and not have to worry about evidence. Me, I’m not so sure.  Assume a cup of coffee costs $1.50, so we’re talking about $30.  Also, economists tell us that it’s better to give cash rather than a gift.  It avoids “deadweight loss.”

Imagine a friend handing you $30?  “Here take it.”

“What’s that for?”

"‘Because I want you to have it. I want to give it to you.”

“Really?  But why?” And so on. 

None of this questioning of motives occurs with the explanation for the anonymous gift of a $1.50 cup of coffee. 

Which does more to increase the total amount of happiness in the world  – the 20 cups of coffee to 20 strangers or the single gift of  $30 in cash or merchandise to one friend? That is an empirical question, and not an easy one to settle. The two relationships (stranger vs. friend) are different.  More important, so are the outcomes Ackerman mentions (cheerfulness vs. strengthening of the relationship).  If I give my $30 to Dunkin’ Donuts, the last thing I’m looking for is to strengthen my relationship to the next twenty people who walk in.

Surely there must be some empirical evidence on both these kinds of gift.  For example, is there a variation of the Ultimatum game where the subject of the experiment is offered more than half and in the next round becomes the one who makes the offer?