Watching for Birds . . . and for Attribution Errors

May 27, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston

By now you’ve probably seen the cellphone video that Christian Cooper made during his unpleasant encounter with Amy Cooper when he was bird-watching in the Central Park Ramble and she was letting her dog run loose. He asked to leash the dog, just as the sign nearby indicated. She apparently disagreed.  The confrontation escalated.

The video shows the her calling the cops. “I’m in the Ramble, there is a man, African-American, he has a bicycle helmet and he is recording me and threatening me and my dog.” And “I am being threatened by a man in the Ramble, please send the cops immediately!”

Through it all, Mr. Cooper remains admirably calm, given what might happen if the cops do show up, and not in the last threatening,

Yes, it’s about race. It’s also about norms and norm enforcement, it’s about formal social control (the cops) and informal social control, it’s about birders and dog owners, it’s about the use of urban spaces. But for me, it was about the Fundamental Attribution Error — our tendency to explain people’s behavior as arising from internal factors like personality and to ignore the situational factors. (That’s when we’re explaining the behavior of others. When it comes to explaining our own behavior, the balance of internal and external explanations is pretty much the opposite.)

All over Twitter, people are condemning Amy Cooper. Understandable. But they are also attributing to her all sorts of ideas, knowledge, feelings, life history, and past behaviors that they cannot possibly know about. Here’s one example:

I’ve worked for people like this - it’s rage (that he was disobeying her), not fear, that made her call. And of course, racism, because she knew just what danger she was putting him in by making that call.

 Mr. Cooper, by contrast, refuses to leap to these global characterizations, especially on the central question of whether Amy Cooper is a racist.

NPR: She said that she is not a racist. How do you respond to her? C. COOPER: I can't tell you whether or not she’s a racist. I can tell you what she did in that moment, and it was a moment of, you know, stress and of confrontation and of, you know, probably spectacularly poor judgment. But in that moment, what she did was definitely racist. Now, should she be defined by that couple-of-seconds moment? I can’t answer that.

I had already admired Cooper for his calm and obviously non-threatening behavior displayed in the video, especially given what might happen if the cops actually arrive. But his interview raised that admiration higher. First, he realizes that Amy Cooper’s behavior was, at least in part, a reaction to the situation. And second, he refuses to make those attributions about what is in her head.

Jay Smooth makes the same point in this video, which I cited in a 2011 post “Constructing Character” l: Too often “what started out as a what-you-said [or did] conversation turns into a what-you-are conversation.”

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Jay Smooth says that in these conversations, the “who you are” assumption leads to “mutual frustration.” On the Internet, it leads to self-righteous moral condemnation and to death threats and other calls for punishment. Cooper is quite sensible about that as well. “I am told there has been death threats, and that is wholly inappropriate and abhorrent and should stop immediately.”

Island of the Press Secretaries

May 5, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston

At her first press briefing, Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s new press secretary, was asked by an AP reporter, “Will you pledge not to lie to us?”

“I will never lie to you. You have my word on that,” said McEnany

Remember the language-logic problem about the tribes on an island?

One tribe always lies, the other always tells the truth. The problem is this: you are at a fork in the road, and you need to know which road leads to the castle. (The other one leads to a fire-breathing dragon and sure death.) Two native islanders, one from each tribe, are standing nearby. You need to ask one of them which path leads to the castle. But first you must determine whether he is a liar or a truth teller. What question can you ask in order to make that determination?

I don’t remember the answer, and maybe I haven’t remembered the problem with perfect accuracy. But I do know the question which will not help you at all: “Will you pledge never to lie to us?” The truth teller will of course say “yes.” But so will the liar.

After her pledge, McEnany went on to say several things that were not true. (See the Vox write-up here. )

The question the reporter should have asked is not “Will you pledge never to lie to us?” It’s “Do you work for Donald Trump?”

Patriotism à la Sondheim

April 29, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston

As many people have noted (including me here), one of the things that Stephen Sondheim brought to Broadways was ambivalence. It pervaded several of the songs in Sondheim 90th birthday tribute Monday night.  Some songs declare their ambivalence right off the bat (“I’ve got those God-why-don't-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I'll-see-you-later Blues.”) or in their titles (“Marry Me a Little”).  But ambivalence is a subtext in “Send in the Clowns” and “Anyone Can Whistle.” 
   
Baritone Brian Stokes Mitchell*, for his part in the tribute, chose “Flag Song.”  It's a patriotic song, written for a parade. It was going to be the opening for “Assassins” (“An imaginary parade with a crowd of bystanders watching, some of whom turn out to be assassins we get to know later,” says Sondheim)  but it was cut from the show.

Even in a song of patriotism, Sondheim gives us ambivalence.

You can gripe All you like, You can sneer, “Where are the heroes?” You can shout about How everything’s a lie. Then that flag goes by… You can snipe At the greed At the need To be a winner At the hype You keep hearing From on high.

For a minute you’re aware Of being proud. And then suddenly you’re staring At the crowd And you’re thinking. “They’re as different from me As they possibly could be— “ Then that flag goes by, And no matter how you sigh, “It’s the bright blue sky. It’s just Mom and apple pie.” There’s this thing you can’t deny. This idea.

George M. Cohan it ain’t.

To hear it, go here**  and push the slider to about 1:20. Mitchell introduces the song this way.

If somebody asked Steve Sondheim to write a patriotic song for our country right now with everything that is going on, I think this is the song that he would write. It’s pretty amazing that he already wrote it. Thirty years ago.

Here he his performing it at the Kennedy Center a year pre-Covid-19.

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* Mitchell fell ill with Covid-19, recovered, and now regularly leans out his fifith-floor window — still on Broadway, but two miles north of the theater district — and, as people on the sidewalk below listen, booms out “The Impossible Dream.” (A video is here.)

**  After you hear “Flag Song,” push the slider to 1:58 to see “Ladies Who Lunch.” You’ve probably heard about this performance already if you’re at all interested in musical theater, but if not, don’t miss it.

The Worst: Agamemnon . . . and Maybe Some Other Leader

April 26, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston

“I’m not stating parallels,” says Madeline Miller, who writes novels using characters from Greek myth, “but the ancients had a saying, ‘Nothing new under the sun.” She was being interviewed by Ezra Klein in his podcast. This comes at about the one hour mark.



Here’s a slightly edited transcript.

If I were to name the worst person in the Iliad, Agamemnon wins, hands down. And speaking of our current situation, the Iliad begins with a plague, because Agamemnon has taken as a war prize a daughter of a priest of Apollo. The priest of Apollo shows up to take his daughter back, and he offers Agamemnon fair ransom. When someone offers you fair ransom in the ancient world, you’re supposed to give back whatever the thing is. Agamemnon not only does not give the girl back, he insults the priest and sends him away with harsh words and threats. So the priest of course — this is not very smart on Agamemnon’s part — goes to the god Apollo and says, “Punish the Greeks.” So Apollo sends down a plague. For nine days, people die all across the Greek army. The fires burning the bodies are burning constantly. And Agamemnon says nothing and does nothing. Even though everyone knows whose fault it is, he does nothing. Finally, Achilles says, “OK, we’ve gotta get everybody together. If Agamemnon won’t act, I will act.” And he gets everybody together, and he asks the priests, “Hey priests, what do you think’s going on. Do you think someone offended a god?” And the priest says, “Yes, of course. It’s Agamemnon.” And Agamemnon blows up at Achilles for embarrassing him even though it was completely his fault.

After Miller’s disclaimer that she’s not stating parallels, Ezra Klein adds, “Yes, there’s a Greek dimension to some of the national figures on the stage right now.” He and Miller are talking about him whose name, apparently, must not be spoken. A man who manages a plague poorly, thereby costing many lives; who refuses to acknowledge his error or do anything to correct it; and who lashes out angrily at those who do say clearly that he is at fault.

We all recognize Trump’s narcissism. And Agamemnon’s. But what about Achilles, who Madeline Miller seems quite fond of? He is the hero of her first novel, The Song of Achilles. In the interview she notes that Achilles, unlike the other fighters in the Trojan war, “is their voluntarily. Everyone else is bound by this oath . .  But he’s just there for the kleos, for the glory. . .  He’s given a choice: you can live a long and happy life, and no one will ever remember your name. Or you can die young and be famous forever.”

Miller finds Achilles’ choice “extremely compelling.” But it proceeds from the same narcissistic rewards that motivate Agamemnon and Trump – glory, reputation, and the defeat of enemies rather than the satisfactions that come from living with others.

The interview with Miller brought to mind sociologist Philip Slater’s book on ancient Greece, The Glory of Hera (1968)*. Slater draws a portrait of Greek males —  gods, leaders, and even less celebrated men — as mostly examples of what we would today call Narcissistic Personality Disorder. “Quarrelsome as friends, treacherous as neighbors, brutal as masters, faithless as servants, shallow as lovers.. . He [the narcissist] will feel that if he is not a great hero he is nothing, and pride and prestige become more important than love.” For Achilles, these were more important than life. “Nothing seemed to have meaning to the Greek unless it included the defeat of another.”

So much winning.

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* Slater’s book received mixed reviews, especially in the provinces ruled by traditional classicists — what Slater called “the Un-Hellenic Activities Committee.” That was partly because of his Freudian take on Greek narcissism emphasizing mother-son relations. But listen to Madeline Miller talk about youthful Achilles, petulant and angry at Agamemnon. “He gets his mom to talk to Zeus so that the Trojans start winning and the Greeks all start dying.” Ezra Klein interrupts to point out that “the greatest warrior in Greek history gets mad and calls his mom.” Maybe Slater was on to something.