Society

Scientific Belief vs. Scientific Literacy

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Back in November, Nathaniel had a Times & Seasons post based on a survey from Pew Research. The survey looked at beliefs regarding evolution across various religious denominations. Yet, Nathaniel pointed out that the survey isn’t really about evolution. “It’s basically a roll call to see where  people stand on the perceived cultural war between religion and science”:

Folks who embrace strong, anti-scientific rhetoric are flaunting their disregard for the world’s estimation of their IQ and burnishing their loyalty for all to see. They are signalling to their fellows, yes, but it’s more than that. They are enacting a narrative of persecution and using the scorn that comes their way to validate their sense of importance and role in a larger narrative. The folks on the other side of the fence, those who mock the anti-science crowd, are displaying their sophistication and cosmopolitan nature. Once again, they are signalling to their fellows and strengthening social bonds, but they are also paying the cover charge to see themselves as participants in some grand endeavor. Instead of taking the role of a stalwart band of besieged disciples, however, they are playing the part of foot soldier in the ongoing march of progress. Mocking those who seem ignorant is a cheap price to pay for feeling like you’re part of the rising tide of enlightened reason. (Especially if you bear the burden of a near total lack of relevant scientific expertise.)

This astute observation from Nathaniel has some backing from the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law & Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School, has a couple posts demonstrating that “”believing in evolution” is not the same as “understanding” or even having the most rudimentary knowledge of science knows about the career of life on our planet. Believing and understanding are in fact wholly uncorrelated.”

Turns out the scientific beliefs of the public actually end up being cultural beliefs; markers along political divisions with no basis in scientific literacy. Eye-opening stuff. Give it a read.

3 Factors of Economic Mobility

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Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia has an excellent piece in The Atlantic, which analyzes data from the Equality of Opportunity Project on what factors contribute to economic mobility. Wilcox finds three main factors: (1) Per-capita income growth, (2) Prevalence of single mothers (negative), (3) Per-capita local government spending (likely a proxy for education spending or public transportation).

 

 

Wilcox concludes,

As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty this week, it’s worth considering that our attention to income inequality, although well-meaning, is distracting us from the most important pieces in the poverty puzzle. Growth, marriages, and local governments are three issues deserving more attention in our efforts to renew the American Dream for the nation’s poorest citizens.

The Dark Side of EI

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Wheaton professor Adam Grant has an interesting article in The Atlantic on “The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence.” Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman has popularized the term since the 1990s (along with social intelligence). Goleman’s research helped establish that traits other than IQ can lead to success in organizations and individual lives. But just as impressive cognitive abilities can be used for immoral purposes, so can a strong handle on emotions. Grant points to emerging research that found “when a leader gave an inspiring speech filled with emotion, the audience was less likely to scrutinize the message and remembered less of the content. Ironically, audience members were so moved by the speech that they claimed to recall more of it.” Futhermore, “when people have self-serving motives, emotional intelligence becomes a weapon for manipulating others.” Other experts found “emotional intelligence helps people disguise one set of emotions while expressing another for personal gain.” While these findings may not be surprising, a comprehensive analysis of emotional intelligence literature revealed something that might be:

In jobs that required extensive attention to emotions, higher emotional intelligence translated into better performance…However, in jobs that involved fewer emotional demands, the results reversed. The more emotionally intelligent employees were, the lower their job performance. For mechanics, scientists, and accountants, emotional intelligence was a liability rather than an asset. Although more research is needed to unpack these results, one promising explanation is that these employees were paying attention to emotions when they should have been focusing on their tasks.

Grant concludes, “Thanks to more rigorous research methods, there is growing recognition that emotional intelligence—like any skill—can be used for good or evil. So if we’re going to teach emotional intelligence in schools and develop it at work, we need to consider the values that go along with it and where it’s actually useful.”

Doesn’t Tiger Mom Know You Can’t Say That?

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Amy Chua is the infamous author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which is one of those books I suspect everyone hates but no one has actually read.  I’m a little guilty of that, in that I haven’t read the book but–based on articles by Chua and her daughter–I’m deeply suspicious of the basic premise. Which is that Asian-style parenting (i.e. remote and harsh) makes for better kids. Some of Chua’s stories about her domineering and cruel parenting techniques were downright alarming.

Now Chua is back with a new book, cowritten with her husband, about cultural superiority. As the New York Post covers it, the new book (The Triple Package) outlines 8 enviable cultures who get it right and contrasts them with basically everyone else. (If you’re curious, and I was, the list includes: Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Iranian, Lebanese-Americans, Nigerians, Cuban exiles, and Mormons.) As with Battle Hymn, I haven’t read this one yet. But the vociferous and angry reaction is making me curious.

A friend happened to send me an old essay (from 2004) about What You Can’t Say the other day. It’s all about techniques for finding our own unquestioned assumptions and taboos (because, like fashion, culture is invisible when you’re in the thick of it). Well, no one doubts that Chua has put her finger right on a raw American nerve and, like What You Can’t Say argues, I can’t help but believe part of the reason the nerve is so raw is that her argument isn’t as ridiculous as everyone wants to believe.

Consider Maureen Callahan’s takedown in the New York Post. She claims that Chua leaves Muslims alone because they are “too controversial to warrant a mention.” Whenever you see a combination of high vitriol and low common sense, you should be suspicious. Chua doesn’t address Muslims because “Muslim” is not a cultural group, just as “Christian” is not a cultural group. The criticism makes no sense, especially when you observe that Iranians (one of the 8 elite cultures) are predominantly Muslim.

In the United States we a have a deep and abiding fear of anything that looks like racism, but we’re not always really clear about what exactly “racism” entails, or why it’s wrong. Our paranoid avoidance of the topic doesn’t actually promote tolerance. Just silence. Ever since my sophomore English teacher had the class read and analyze an article defending The Bell Curve, I’ve believed that the best way to handle sensitive topics like this is openly and honestly. But everyone I see rushing to condemn Chua seems to be interested in shouting her down as opposed to countering her ideas, which is why you get arguments as bad as Callahan’s. (Did she even read the book? I suspect not.)

The problem with Battle Hymn, for me, is not that it in asserting Asian superiority it violates a taboo, but rather that I’m skeptical of the evidence. I’ve read a little bit about Asian success in the United States, and one of the observations is that while Asians as a group tend to stand out academically they are curiously absent from the top (like CEOs). Some have attributed this to a culture that emphasizes conformity and obedience over leadership qualities. Maybe Chua’s parenting style is great for raising engineers who can spend their time working for WASP CEOs? Similarly, I’ve read many critiques of Triple Package that question the validity of using immigrants because of selection problems, and that’s a great response, but are we so afraid of the mere idea that some cultures may be better at certain things than others that we’re not actually willing to even have the conversation?

Ultimately it doesn’t make sense to ask if culture A is better than culture B in general because “in general” is too broad a category. But if you identify specific variables (say, college graduation or median income) and are careful with the statistical analysis there’s no reason, in principle, that you wouldn’t be able to identify cultures that stood out and even try to learn what allowed for their success. I’ve got no idea if Chua is just pushing buttons for fun and profit or if she has a legitimate case to be made (no reason it couldn’t be both), but I do think that the rapidity with which her book has been trashed because it violates our current social taboos is both sad and silly.

Family Structure & The Great Gatsby Curve

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Scott Winship and Donald Schneider have a recent piece at the Manhattan Institute’s e21 on the widely-cited Great Gatsby Curve. Their detailed analysis demonstrates that income inequality (of various sorts) has little statistical relation to economic mobility. What does, however, is single motherhood.

Each dot represents a "commuting zone," i.e. "metropolitan areas or county groupings in rural parts of the country—think of them as local job markets." Inequality increasing from left to right; Immobility (not mobility) rising as from bottom to top.
Each dot represents a “commuting zone,” i.e. “metropolitan areas or county groupings in rural parts of the country—think of them as local job markets.” Inequality increasing from left to right; immobility (not mobility) rising from bottom to top.

As Nathaniel wrote elsewhere, “This strongly correlates with the idea (discussed here previously) that…the ultra-wealthy are not (intrinsically) the problem. The problem is a fracturing of society that is evident not at the extremes, but closer to the middle, where the functional and dysfunctional sides of America are slowly pulling apart.”

2013: The Best Year in Human History (w/ Graphs)

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Over at Think Progress, five major reasons are provided as to why “2013 was, in fact, the best year on the planet for humankind”:

1. Fewer people are dying young, and more are living longer

2. Fewer people suffer from extreme poverty, and the world is getting happier

3. War is becoming rarer and less deadly

4. Rates of murder and other violent crimes are in free-fall

5. There’s less racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the world

There is more that could be said (and I’m not sure that the final graph really captures the full impact of its headline, though it does demonstrate a major softening in the public’s view on homosexuals). I’m not entirely surprised that globalization and the spread of capitalism were barely mentioned as major reasons for these trends (yes, even same-sex marriage). Nonetheless, just another example of how the world is largely getting better. I could almost title this “Good News, Pope Francis: Part II.”

Pantene Tackles the Labels Women Face

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2013-12-11 Unfair Expectations

 A lot of research has shown that men and women are judged by different standards. One example is that behavior seen as “assertive” in men is seen as “hostile” in women. Recently, this phenomena has been extended from the world of business (where it was first identified) to the academic sciences.

So, with that in mind, I found this ad to be provocative in the best way possible.

One of the things I like about it is that it explains the problem clearly without making political assumptions about blame or solutions. That’s important, because I think some of the standard assumptions (e.g. “the patriarchy did it!”) might be wrong:

Females tend to threaten each other with social isolation rather than violence. Among social animals, being cast out of the group can mean death, or very few chances to mate. Among humans, perhaps the most social animals we know, the “mean girls” phenomenon is a perfect example of low energy competition. Nobody is beaten, but we know for sure who has lost the battle.

It’s possible that it’s maladaptive female behavior as opposed to misogynistic male behavior that creates these and impossible painful social expectations. After all, it isn’t as though the male/female double standards are held and enforced by men: they are held and enforced by women too. (Perhaps more?)

The important thing is that we don’t really know. And if we can get more people talking about the problem in apolitical ways, perhaps we can make progress towards finding new solutions. (It is a bit weird, though, to have a corporation leading the charge, but on the other hand their motives are easy to identify and account for.)

Teen Abortion & Pregnancy Rates

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Alex Berezow, scientist and founding editor of RealClearScience, provided the chart above representing teenagers aged 15-19. The following are the teenage pregnancy rates: (1) White – less than 1 in 20, (2) Blacks – more than 1 in 9, and (3) Hispanics – almost exactly 1 in 10. “In other words,” writes Berezow, “both black and Hispanic teens are more than twice as likely to become pregnant as their white cohorts. Strikingly, the abortion rate among black teens (41.1 per 1,000) is almost equal to the pregnancy rate among white teens.” Research shows again and again how detrimental broken families (including single motherhood) are to economic vitality and social mobility. “Therefore,” concludes Berezow, “any discussion about how to close the enormous racial wealth gap in America must address the large discrepancy in teenage pregnancy rates between the races.”

This reminds me of something economist Jennifer Roback Morse wrote about “social justice”:

Young people are often the most idealistic and zealous proponents of new social movements. So, I offer this challenge especially to the young: if you want to do something to help the poor, quit idealizing unmarried sexual activity. Some sexual lifestyle decisions you can get away with. But those very same choices would be a disaster for the poor.

So I challenge college students and young adults to ask yourself this question when you are making your decisions about sex: If a high-school drop-out did this, would it be good for her or not?

If the answer is no, don’t do it! Or at least, have the decency to keep your mouth shut about social justice.

Native American Genetics

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A newly sequenced genome demonstrates that nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought. National Geographic has the story.

Inequality and Demographics

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The above chart (as its title says) provides the details of U.S. households by income quintile. Economist Mark Perry summarizes some of the key differences between households (as of 2012):

1. On average, there are more income earners per household in the top quintile than in the lowest-income households.

2. Over 60% of the lowest-income households have no income earners, whereas the top quintile households have only 3% with no earners.

3. Over 75% of top quintile households are married couples, while this applies to only 17% of the lowest quintile households.

4. Nearly 80% of top quintile households fall within the prime earning ages of 35-64. Those in the bottom quintile are 1.6x more likely to be under 35 years of age and more than 5x more likely to be over 65 years old.

5. Nearly 80% of top quintile households include at least one adult working full-time compared to only 18.2% of those in lowest-income households.

6. Over 75% of those in the top quintile households have college degrees, while only about 13% of the lowest-income households.

As Perry summarizes,

Specifically, high-income households have a greater average number of income-earners than households in lower-income quintiles, and individuals in high income households are far more likely than individuals in low-income households to be well-educated, married, working full-time, and in their prime earning years. In contrast, individuals in lower-income households are far more likely than their counterparts in higher-income households to be less-educated, working part-time, either very young (under 35 years) or very old (over 65 years), and living in single-parent households.

The good news is that the key demographic factors that explain differences in household income are not fixed over our lifetimes and are largely under our control (e.g. staying in school, getting and staying married,etc.), which means that individuals and households are not destined to remain in a single income quintile forever.