All posts by Brian Martin

Brian Martin is professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and vice president of Whistleblowers Australia. He is the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles on dissent, nonviolence, scientific controversies, democracy, information issues, education and other topics.
education, self-development

A title for your article

The title of an article, book or thesis can make a big difference, so it’s worth spending time and effort to find a good one.

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When someone reads your article, what’s the first thing they read? The title of course. In fact, it may be the only thing they read. If it’s boring or off topic, they may not bother looking further. If it sounds intriguing, they may proceed even if it’s not their main area of interest.

In 1973, E. F. Schumacher authored a book presenting ideas about economics, for example concerning production, land, resources, ownership and technology. It became well known in part due to its inspired title: Small is Beautiful.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring was a best seller and helped launch the modern environmental movement. Carson was a skilled science writer, but even so the title of her book helped make it an icon. Imagine that it had been called instead Pesticides and Living Landscape, the title of a book by Robert L. Rudd that came out a couple of years later and covered much of the same ground. (The publication of Rudd’s book was delayed by opposition from pesticide supporters.)

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I’m focusing here on non-fiction. Titles for novels, short stories, plays, poems and musical compositions are also important. However, titles alone aren’t enough: the content is crucial. Furthermore, good work can succeed despite an ordinary title. Some of Beethoven’s compositions have special titles, for the example the Pastoral and the Choral symphonies. However, Symphony #5 is well known without having a descriptive word attached to it. Imagine, though, Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries being titled Detective Novel #1 through to Detective Novel #66.

agatha-christie
Agatha Christie

My experience

Somewhere along the line, early in my writing career, I started paying attention to titles. In 1979, I wrote a booklet with the provisional title Activists and the Politics of Technology. Seeking something catchier, I asked some of my environmentalist friends and one said, “Ask David Allworth. He’s good at titles.” So I approached David and gave him some information about my booklet. Before long, he came up with a list of excellent possibilities, and one I loved: Changing the Cogs.

A year later, I had another booklet ready for publication. A descriptive title would have been “A critical analysis of the pro-nuclear views of Sir Ernest Titterton and Sir Philip Baxter.” I forget how, but the title became Nuclear Knights: Titterton and Baxter had been knighted. Alliteration is valuable in a title. The publisher was Rupert Public Interest Movement, at the time campaigning for freedom-of-information legislation. John Wood, a key figure in Rupert, drew a memorable cover graphic showing Baxter and Titterson as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tilting at windmills. Covers can be as important as titles, but that is another topic.

nuclear-knights-cover

A few years later, I wrote a book tentatively titled Grassroots Action for Peace. I wracked my mind for something catchier and came up with Uprooting War. Again, my publisher provided an inspired graphic.

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On another occasion, I made the mistake of making a title more academic. The title I chose was Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate. It’s descriptive but not easy to remember. In retrospect, I should have stuck with my original idea, Fluoridation and Power.

For academic works, a common practice is to provide a short attractive main title and a more descriptive subtitle, but if the main title is too general, it can be misleading. For example, the title Power Politics could refer to lots of things, including electricity politics or any number of politicians or political events. You see the title and then discover the subtitle, such as Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles.

I wrote the title of this post as “A title for your article,” but so far I’ve written about books, not articles. Most people write far more articles than books. I could have more accurately titled the post “How to find a good title for your article, book or thesis.” There’s often a trade-off between brevity and descriptiveness. A short title is bound to leave something out. It’s useful to think of a title as a handle, as something that makes it convenient to use. Though brevity is often better, lengthy titles can sometimes be effective. One of my favourites is Barrington Moore Jr’s book Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them.

I’ve written several articles about the debate over the origin of AIDS, looking at the treatment of the theory that the disease entered humans via contaminated polio vaccines used in Africa in the 1950s. One of my articles was about my own involvement in the debate as a social researcher, and I came up with the title “Sticking a needle into science: the case of polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS.” The main title, “Sticking a needle into science,” draws on the imagery of vaccination involving an injection using a needle. Actually, the polio vaccines in question were administered orally, with the vaccine squirted into recipients’ mouths.

polio-vaccine

Brainstorming titles

At a meeting some years ago with a group of my PhD students, we helped Patrick decide on a title for his thesis, which was nearly ready for submission. Patrick briefly explained that his thesis dealt with methods used by key groups in the debate over climate change. I knew more detail, of course, but most of the others didn’t. I asked everyone to write down at least ten possible titles for Patrick’s thesis as quickly as possible, saying there was a prize for the best title and another for the funniest.

Individual brainstorming can be more productive than the collective form. The point of quickly writing numerous possible titles is to move thinking from the logically oriented left hemisphere of the brain to the more creative right hemisphere. Most scholars need to loosen up to be more creative. Offering a prize for the funniest title helps.

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After a while, I called a halt, and everyone gave their lists of titles to Patrick. Not everyone had produced ten possible titles, but some had produced more. Then Patrick read them all out loud, starting with #1 from each list, then #2 from each list, and so on. The best title was judged by Patrick and the funniest title was judged by the most laughter – and there was plenty. The prizes were trinkets or chocolates, more symbolic than substantial.

Patrick ended up titling his thesis using a combination of a couple of the suggestions. It was “Climate conflict: players and tactics in the greenhouse game.”

This technique of generating title ideas has worked well every time I’ve tried it with a group. Sometimes none of the suggested titles is ideal, but the process helps the author to think up something better. Those suggesting titles don’t need to be knowledgeable about the topic. In fact, it can be better if they know only a little, so they are less inhibited by expectations.

There are many considerations to take into account in deciding on a title, including key words for web searches, relevance to readers in the field and beyond, acceptability to editors, and conventions in the genre. The thing I’ve learned is that it’s worthwhile spending a fair bit of time and effort choosing a title, and also worthwhile enlisting others in the task. People read your titles more than anything else you write, so why not make them as good as you can?

Brian Martin

bmartin@uow.edu.au

health, social dynamics

The rise and decline of Illawarra Citizen Advocacy

Illawarra Citizen Advocacy was a world leader in recruiting and supporting citizens to advocate on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities. The decline of the programme provides some cautionary lessons.

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Ken and Joanne, Illawarra Citizen Advocacy

Imagine someone arranges a meeting with you and says, “There’s a young man named Fred who lives in your neighbourhood. He has a serious intellectual disability and he is vulnerable to abuse. He needs someone who will ensure that he is safe — someone who will protect him as much as a relative or close friend. And he needs this person to stand by him for the indefinite future, maybe the rest of his life. I think you’re ideal to fill this role. Would you agree to be this person — to be Fred’s advocate?”

This is a very big request. It’s a huge request. Who would possibly agree?

I learned the answer to this question in 1996. The coordinators of Illawarra Citizen Advocacy, Julie Clarke and Joanne North, talked to me about their work and then asked whether I would be an advocate. For my own reasons, I declined. But I did agree to join the board of the programme, and then a year later became chair of the board for the next decade.

In the 1980s, in the Illawarra — the region including the city of Wollongong — a number of parents and others supporting people with intellectual disabilities had a dream. They shared stories, held meetings and lobbied to obtain funding for a programme practising citizen advocacy.

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Jo and Kirsten, Illawarra Citizen Advocacy

Advocacy

To understand citizen advocacy, it’s first useful to describe advocacy, which can come in various types. A lawyer is an advocate for clients and environmentalists are advocates for nature. People with skills and connections can advocate on their own behalf, called self-advocacy. For example, people who cannot see can speak, write and campaign for better services and facilities to cater for the sight-impaired.

However, some people have little or no capacity to advocate, and this includes many with intellectual disabilities, sometimes combined with physical, mental health or other disabilities. The advocacy of concern here is on behalf of people with disabilities who have significant unmet needs. They might be neglected, at risk of abuse, friendless, homeless or not being given opportunities.

Several of the Illawarra residents who met in the 1980s were parents of children with intellectual disabilities. These parents were worried what would happen to their children after they, the parents, died or became incapacitated. Other parents needed help to be able to cope with the needs of their children.

One type of advocacy is called systems advocacy. This involves paid advocates — who might better be called organisers — helping to change systems that prevent full development. Education systems or transport systems may need different policies or technologies or understandings so they can cater for people with disabilities. Systems advocates often work with others to foster change, for example working with parents to open up education systems to serve their children. Systems advocacy has a multiplier effect, because a change in a system today benefits some individuals immediately and many more later on.

Another type of advocacy is called individual advocacy. A paid staff member advocates on behalf of various individuals, taking on clients one after the other, sometimes just for a single item of need, sometimes for repeated expression of voice for the same person.

Then there is citizen advocacy. The paid staff members, called coordinators, do not do advocacy themselves. Instead, they search for people with disabilities with significant unmet needs who might benefit from advocacy. When someone suitable is found, this person is recruited into the programme and called a protégé. Then the coordinator searches for a member of the community — an ordinary citizen like you or me — who would be willing to be an advocate for this protégé, usually for the indefinite future. It is an extraordinary thing to ask. I said no myself, but as a member of the board of Illawarra Citizen Advocacy, I discovered there are many who say yes.

Citizen advocacy relies on people — the advocates — who have no special training. The advocates can obtain advice and encouragement from the coordinator, but need to do the advocacy themselves. What they lack in training they make up for in learning about their protégé. Over the course of weeks and months, the advocate learns about the protégé’s life and needs and discovers what can be done to protect and enhance the protégé. In a sense, a citizen advocate is like a family member, developing the same sorts of insight and commitment that parents, siblings or children can develop about others in their families.

Sometimes the most important contribution of a citizen advocate is simply to be there. Some protégés are so isolated that there is no single person who stays in their life. Various service workers — some of them highly caring and skilled — may help the protégé, but often the workers come and go, not maintaining an ongoing relationship. The advocate comes into the protégé’s life and is there because they want to be there, not because of being paid to be there.

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Peter and Rae, Citizen Advocacy South Australia, http://www.citizenadvocacysa.com.au/success_stories/peter-and-rae

Activities in Illawarra Citizen Advocacy

I attended monthly board meetings of Illawarra Citizen Advocacy. At each meeting Julie, the coordinator, told about what she and Joanne had been doing.

One key activity was recruiting protégés according to an agreed recruitment plan for the year. Julie and Joanne searched for people with intellectual disabilities, visiting schools, homeless shelters, homes for the aged and a range of other places and networks, looking especially for people in need who might not be known to or well served by welfare or other agencies. The stories of their searches, and of the individuals they recruited, showed the importance to seeking to find those who are most disadvantaged and in need of advocacy.

Another key activity was recruiting advocates. After a protégé had been recruited into the programme, Julie and Joanne assessed the protégé’s needs and built up a profile of the sort of person who would be most suited to be an advocate for this particular protégé. Then they started asking, via their networks and through cold calling. They took into account age, sex, location of residence and especially the sort of advocacy needed. Some protégés needed, most of all, a friend. Others needed a door-opener, who would expose them to new experiences. Others needed a protector, against abuse or destitution. Julie and Joanne were matchmakers, putting together two people who would be suited for each other.

Recruiting advocates was often very difficult. After all, not that many people are willing to make a strong commitment to protect and defend someone they have not even met. Julie would sometimes find an advocate on her first try, but more commonly she talked to a dozen people, or even several dozen, before finding the right person who was willing to be an advocate.

Next, the protégé and advocate were each prepared for their roles, and then the first meeting was arranged. A match was made. Every new match was a cause for celebration. On the board, we were buoyed by these heart-warming stories.

At the board meetings, Julie told about recruiting protégés and advocates and about making matches. She also told about ongoing relationships between protégés and advocates. Each month she or Joanne tried to contact each advocate, a process called follow-along, to see how the relationship was going, sometimes giving advice concerning challenges and sometimes encouraging advocates to be more vigorous in their efforts. The stories Julie told were both tragic and inspiring. They were tragic in revealing the despair and difficulties in the lives of many protégés and inspiring in telling of the efforts of the advocates. Sometimes advocates made a tremendous difference.

As I spent more time on the board, and took on some new roles, I learned more about citizen advocacy in Australia and elsewhere. There were perhaps a dozen active citizen advocacy programmes in Australia, most of them funded by the federal government via the Department of Family and Community Services (now the Department of Social Services). The programmes supported each other in various ways, and banded together in an association. I became the Illawarra programme’s representative on the Citizen Advocacy Association.

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Michelle and Winnie, Citizen Advocacy Perth West, http://www.capw.org.au/stories/michelle-winnie/

Achievements of the programme

Gradually I came to realise that Illawarra Citizen Advocacy (ICA) was an outstanding programme. Julie and Joanne’s passion for helping those in need, and their description of how the programme operated, had been enough to get me to join the board. I soon discovered that their passion and commitment were having impressive results. ICA was creating matches at an impressive rate, more than a dozen each year. Some relationships didn’t last all that long, but others continued for years or even decades. Julie and Joanne were supporting more than 70 relationships, requiring a huge amount of follow-along and support in addition to their challenges in finding new protégés and advocates.

Not only did ICA support a large number of relationships, but many of these were ones that involved vigorous advocacy, in which advocates had to challenge services to act. Before I joined the board, three advocates, whose protégés resided in Cram House, a facility for severely disabled children, made a complaint to the relevant government department, leading to a major investigation that led to Cram House being closed down. Vigorous advocacy can be needed when problems are serious, and citizen advocates are well placed to undertake it, because they are independent citizens who are not paid or receiving benefits from their roles as advocates. Paid advocates, on the other hand, have to be careful because their jobs might be in jeopardy if they offend powerful service providers.

Every year, the ICA coordinators would plan their activities for the year. I joined some of these all-day meetings, which were carried out following a careful protocol. One of the priorities was seeking protégés who were either quite young or quite old. These age groups are often overlooked because the individuals lack the capacity to seek assistance themselves and they are less likely to be seen as an advocate’s friend. It is a useful reminder that the roles advocates are supposed to play depend on the needs of the protégé, not the expectations of the advocates.

A certain proportion of protégés were sought who were unable to communicate. Such individuals are often highly vulnerable because they cannot tell anyone about their needs. When communication is difficult or impossible, the relationship is even less likely to be one of friendship, which normally involves mutual interaction.

This brings up another distinction, between expressive and instrumental relationships. Expressive relationships involve emotional needs of the protégé, for example for companionship, advice and role modelling. Instrumental relationships, on the other hand, involve ensuring things are done for protégés, such as finding a suitable home, avoiding prison or being protected from abuse or neglect. No personal connection is needed, yet the advocacy is vitally important.

I discovered that ICA was doing outstanding work in some of the toughest challenges: recruiting protégés who were especially vulnerable, especially in the young and old age groups; recruiting protégés who were unable to reciprocate in a relationship; and, related to this, recruiting protégés who needed only instrumental advocacy. Julie and Joanne were being successful in finding such protégés and in finding individuals who could take on the incredible challenges of being their advocates.

In 2002, I embarked on a little research project, with Julie’s assistance. In her regular follow-along discussions with advocates, she asked how many hours they had spent during the previous month on behalf of their protégés. With this information, I was able to compare citizen advocacy and paid advocacy. A paid advocate, doing what is called individual advocacy, has only a limited number of hours per week to take actions on behalf of various clients. A citizen advocacy programme, by recruiting advocates, gradually creates a network of ongoing advocacy in the community, with the different citizen advocates spending far more hours in total than any individual could do.

There are other differences too. Paid advocates are trained and often quite skilled due to their ongoing work for different clients. Citizen advocates, in contrast, develop a deep understanding of their protégés over a period of months and years, and thus, despite lack of formal training, may be able to respond to their needs in a way impossible by any paid worker.

My conclusion in the small study was that a well-functioning citizen advocacy programme can compare favourably to paid advocacy in cost effectiveness as well as the quality of advocacy.

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Heather and Lyn, Citizen Advocacy Sunbury & Districts, http://casunbury.net

Decline

My study was part of our efforts to defend citizen advocacy from hostile attitudes among some of the staff in funding bodies, who looked at just the number of advocacy actions by paid staff. So they looked at paid staff doing individual advocacy and saw figures of maybe three to five actions per working day: the paid advocate was seeing several clients daily, perhaps going to a meeting with them or visiting to ensure they are being looked after. The funders then looked at citizen advocacy programmes and said, well, you made twelve matches last year. That’s not very many actions. The funders did not take into account all the actions by the citizen advocates, who are unpaid.

This sort of bias in measurement seemed ridiculous to me, and I suspected there was something deeper, namely that funding bodies want to maintain control through close monitoring of the operations they fund. When they fund paid advocates, the monitoring is easier than with systems advocacy or citizen advocacy, in which members of the public are empowered. Who knows what they might do?

The Department of Family and Community Services organised a review of advocacy across Australia. The department’s lack of understanding of advocacy was apparent in the very title of the review, which referred to advocacy “services.” Advocacy is not a service like housing or education, but rather a voice on behalf of vulnerable people with unmet needs.

The review provided the pretext for the department’s agenda, which turned out to put the squeeze on systems advocacy and citizen advocacy, applying pressure on programmes to convert to paid advocacy. Some citizen advocacy programmes closed rather than switch. Illawarra Citizen Advocacy changed its name to Illawarra Advocacy and diverted one quarter of its funding to maintaining its citizen advocacy operations.

This was a hard choice. The alternative might have been to cease funding of citizen advocacy altogether. On the other hand, an effort might have been made to find an alternative way of maintaining support for the dozens of relationships that still existed.

Over the following few years, the parlous state of citizen advocacy in the Illawarra continued. The crunch came in 2014, when a decision was made in Illawarra Advocacy to remove the one quarter of its funding directed to citizen advocacy and use it instead for paid advocacy. A letter went out to advocates informing them of this development. The letter displayed a lack of understanding and respect for citizen advocacy in saying that protégés could seek help from the paid staff. This failed to grasp that the relationships between protégés and advocates are freely given and not an arrangement that can be transferred at someone else’s invitation. It would be like writing to family members who had stood by their children or siblings with disabilities and saying that now they could turn instead to paid staff.

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Michelle and Zak, Citizen Advocacy of Atlanta and DeKalb, USA, http://www.citizenadvocacyatlantadekalb.org/relationship-stories/michelle-zak/

Conclusion

Illawarra Citizen Advocacy, when it was most active, was one of the world’s leading programmes, creating and supporting many dozens of relationships, including ones with vigorous advocacy on behalf of highly vulnerable people. Yet in the space of a few years, the understandings and commitment that had made this success possible dissipated. A combination of resistance to citizen advocacy by government bureaucrats and lack of understanding by newer staff and board members led to the drastic actions that undermined the programme.

The options for the future are not promising. Wolf Wolfensberger, whose ideas led to the initial setting up of citizen advocacy programmes in the US in the 1970s, recognised the way human services — hospitals, prisons, welfare — started out as idealistic attempts to improve people’s lives but then degenerated into operations to control people and serve the interests of the staff in the services.

Wolfensberger’s model for citizen advocacy was built on the insight that advocacy needed to be freely given: it was not paid or given course credit. This meant the advocates had the independence to speak out and challenge services that were failing to do the right thing. The advocates did not need to worry about losing jobs or connections: they were concerned only about the protégés.

Wolfensberger thought that finding protégés and advocates and making relationships between them needed to be done by paid staff, in order to attract and maintain people with suitable skills. But obtaining the money to support programmes was a challenge. Wolfensberger saw that funding needed to be diversified, so that if an advocate challenged a funding body, and the body withdrew funding in reprisal, the programme could continue. In the US, where citizen advocacy began, obtaining funding from several different sources has always been a challenging task, and citizen advocacy has never expanded to meet the huge level of unmet needs.

In Australia, obtaining funding from several different bodies turned out to be almost impossible: private funding is far less common than in the US. Australian citizen advocacy programmes were able to obtain government funding, and for a time there was a golden age of citizen advocacy (though it seemed difficult enough at the time). When attitudes within government departments hardened against systems and citizen advocacy, the programmes were highly vulnerable, and many of them made the switch to paid advocacy at the government’s behest.

Wolfensberger recognised that advocates needed to be unpaid, but did not foresee that having paid coordinates introduced a serious weakness in the model, one that would limit the expansion of citizen advocacy and eventually undermine most citizen advocacy in Australia. Perhaps it is time to consider a modification of the model, running all the operations of citizen advocacy on an unpaid basis. Not easy, but neither are the alternatives.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Acknowledgements I thank numerous individuals involved with Illawarra Citizen Advocacy for valuable comments and inspiration,.

democracy, politics

If not elections, what else?

“Our democracy is being wrecked by being limited to elections, even though elections weren’t invented as a democratic instrument.” — David Van Reybrouck

In Europe, voters are discontented. Some are deserting their party loyalties, erratically. Some are attracted to populists railing against the system but without an alternative to it. Unstable governments are becoming more common, and in Belgium the country went for over a year without a government. Then there are non-voters, those who have opted out of the electoral circus.

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“Anyone who puts together low voter turnout, high voter turnover, declining party membership, governmental impotence, political paralysis, electoral fear of failure, lack of recruitment, compulsive self-promotion, chronic electoral fever, exhausting media stress, distrust, indifference and other persistent paroxysms see the outlines of a syndrome emerging. Democratic Fatigue Syndrome is a disorder that has not yet been fully described but from which countless Western societies are nonetheless unmistakably suffering.” (p. 16)

This is the diagnosis of David Van Reybrouck in his book Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, just published in English. The title of the book is challenging: isn’t democracy all about having elections? What about all those people in countries without elections, or with massive voter fraud, agitating against dictatorial governments and demanding fair elections?

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David Van Reybrouck

Sortition versus elections

Van Reybrouck, to present another view, goes back into the history of democracy, which etymologically means rule by the people, the demos. In ancient Athens, the members of most of the important decision-making bodies, such as the Council of 500, the People’s Court and the magistracies, were chosen randomly, a system called the lot or sortition.

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The kleroterion, used in ancient Athens for randomly selecting public officials

Athenian citizens comprised only perhaps one-sixth of the adult population, the others being women, slaves and foreigners. Although it was a flawed form of democracy, it was an extraordinary innovation for its time, a dramatic departure from arbitrary rule.

Sortition is Van Reybrouck’s special interest. He traces its use from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages in Europe. In Florence, Venice and other cities in several parts of Europe, sortition was used in combination with elections in intricate ways to choose leaders. However, only aristocrats were involved, with no popular participation.

Through the 1700s, popular participation in decision-making was only an idea, not a practical reality. People were ruled by hereditary aristocracies. Then came the American and French revolutions, resisting and overthrowing monarchies. What system of decision-making should they use?

According to Van Reybrouck, there were two options on the table, elections and sortition. The general view by key writers at the time was that elections were an aristocratic mechanism and sortition a democratic one. As we know, the revolutionaries adopted elections. According to their writings, they opposed democracy, being afraid of the lower classes having power. So they wrote constitutions that ensured continuing power for elites through elections, with only a limited number of landowners entitled to vote.

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In the following decades, the franchise gradually expanded but the system worked largely the same way, ensuring that people were not directly involved in governance, having only the occasional and limited role of helping to choose their rulers. Along the way, the previous idea that elections were an aristocratic mechanism was reversed to the current belief that elections are democracy. This idea became so dominant that elections were written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Representative government is now called “democracy,” so other possibilities for citizen participation have to make do with adjectival forms such as “participatory democracy” or “direct democracy” or “deliberative democracy.”

“Electoral fundamentalists, we have for decades clung to the ballot box as if it were the Holy Grail of democracy, only to discover that we have been clinging not to a Holy Grail but to a poisoned chalice that was deliberately set up as an anti-democratic instrument.” (pp. 92-93)

The jury system

The best analogy to sortition is the jury system used in courts. Twelve or so citizens are selected at random to serve for a limited period, hearing from lawyers and witnesses and then reaching a verdict. Although jurors are far less experienced than judges, the jury system has several advantages. First, the jurors, because they are chosen by lot, are more representative of the citizenry in terms of age, occupation, education, gender and ethnicity. Second, the jurors have no stake in the outcome: because their time as jurors is limited, and they have no reputation to defend, they are less subject to influence or self-interest. Third, the jurors are able to deliberate, namely to discuss evidence and views with each other, each bringing to the discussion their own backgrounds and understanding. Fourth, serving on a jury provides a powerful education in citizen participation. Fifth, the jury system gives greater credibility to decisions: jury members are peers of the accused, not overseers.

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Scene from 12 Angry Men, a classic film about a jury

Sortition involves random selection of citizens to serve limited terms in decision-making roles. The terms in office are limited because being chosen by lot provides no mandate. Those chosen are demographically representative of the community, and this representativeness can be enhanced by stratified sampling: for example, if women and men each constitute half the population, then half of the citizen jurors can be chosen from women and half from men, thus overcoming biases due to some of those selected declining or being unable to serve. Decision-makers serving for short periods are less susceptible to bribery and other influences from vested interests; furthermore, vested interests cannot groom individuals for office because there is no way to increase the odds of being selected.

Since the 1970s, there have been experiments with sortition, most commonly in what are called policy juries or citizens juries. Twelve to 25 or more citizens are chosen randomly from a specified population and brought together for several days to make a decision about a policy issue involving, for example, energy, genetic engineering or education. Neutral facilitators provide the jurors with written materials and arrange for experts, representing different positions, to give presentations and answer questions. The facilitators encourage a balanced and respectful discussion. The jury members then explore common ground and develop a set of mutually agreed recommendations, always allowing for a minority report. The experience from hundreds of such juries is that so-called ordinary citizens take the responsibility given to them very seriously, come up with sensible recommendations, and find the experience illuminating and empowering.

Van Reybrouck gives most attention to large-scale experiments: the Canadian and Dutch governments commissioned citizens panels to offer recommendations for electoral reform. Although none of their recommendations were implemented (being rejected by referendum or government decision), the experiments show the potential of sortition as an antidote for voter dissatisfaction and disengagement.

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Van Reybrouck thinks the best hope for reform is to replace one of the two parliamentary houses – the house of representatives or the senate – with a chamber of randomly selected citizens. He provides tables showing the various options proposed by writers and political theorists, with special attention to a complex yet flexible model involving six different bodies, some randomly selected and some elected, each providing checks to the power of the others.

Van Reybrouck’s book Against Elections is one of a growing number of treatments of sortition. It is undoubtedly one of the most engaging. Van Reybrouck musters facts and figures and historical examples in a style that makes for compelling reading. There are plenty of references; Van Reybrouck has an impressive grasp of the topic. In the English translation (Bodley Head edition), the physical book is attractive in layout, slim and elegant. It deserves to be widely read.

against-elections

Sortition from the bottom up

In plumping for a randomly selected parliamentary chamber, Van Reybrouck endorses reform, but a particularly difficult type of reform, because it needs to be instituted from the top. Yet the obstacles to this sort of reform are enormous. In Against Elections, Van Reybrouck notes the hostility of both politicians and the mass media to the idea of sortition.

An alternative road to sortition is to begin at smaller scales, in organisations and local communities. Rather than choose citizens to make decisions for a country with a population of millions, random selection could be used for groups of hundreds to tens of thousands, much closer to the original Athenian model. The newDemocracy Foundation in Australia follows this sort of road.

There is another sense in which Van Reybrouck looks only to reform: he assumes the continuing existence of the state apparatus: all those government departments and parliamentary staffers who, arguably, make most of the real decisions. As he notes, elected politicians can’t actually learn all that much about all of the hundreds of topics on which they are asked to vote, so they rely on party positions or assistants.

yes-minister

Returning to court juries and citizens jury experiments, one key feature is that citizens are asked to address only a single issue: a single court case or a particular policy issue. There is an opportunity for learning quite a lot about specifics, of hearing from a range of experts and for engaging in lengthy deliberations. This would be hard to achieve in a large legislative chamber dealing with dozens of different policy issues.

In 1985, philosopher John Burnheim in his book Is Democracy Possible? proposed an alternative to representative government that he called demarchy. It relies on randomly selected groups of decision-makers – namely, sortition – with one additional and crucial feature. Each group addresses only a single function in a local community, for example education, land use or transport. Burnheim calls them functional groups.

Burnheim modelled his concept of demarchy on ancient Greek democracies, not even being aware that when he wrote, pioneering work using policy juries was underway in Germany and the US. Demarchy can be considered the natural extension of policy juries.

Random selection is definitely an idea on the rise, in a variety of contexts, for example admission to university. Yet most of this is happening under the radar, from a very low base. Politicians, as might be expected, are resistant to random selection, even those politicians such as The Greens that officially support participatory democracy. So there is a very long way to go before sortition starts being treated as a serious alternative, as a way of invigorating systems of rule. Van Reybrouck’s Against Elections is a valuable contribution to the journey.

tencrosses

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Lyn Carson for valuable comments on a draft.

military, politics

Was 9/11 really so special?

For many people, the attacks launched on 11 September 2001 were transformative, seen as an exceptional event in historical terms. Certainly they were seared on people’s consciousness through saturation media coverage and used as the rationale for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In this Friday, Oct. 16, 2015 photo, the charred remains of the Doctors Without Borders hospital is seen after being hit by a U.S. airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French abbreviation MSF, whose hospital in northern Afghanistan was destroyed in a U.S. airstrike, says the “extensive, quite precise destruction” of the bombing raid casts doubt on American military assertions that it was a mistake. (Najim Rahim via AP)Afghan hospital after US airstrike

But is it possible that 9/11 was not all that special, but actually reflected a long-running pattern? Mark Cronlund Anderson answers “yes” in his new book Holy War: Cowboys, Indians, and 9/11s. Anderson is an historian and he sees 9/11 as just one more example of a pattern in US history of self-righteous imperial aggression.

To make his argument, he draws on a number of historical events. One of them is the Mexican war of 1846–1848, in which the US military defeated Mexico and confiscated half of its territory. At the time, the US had a reputation, especially among its own population, as being anti-imperialistic. It had fought a war of independence against Great Britain, after all. But how could this image be squared with a land-grab against a weaker, disorganised neighbouring government?

Anderson explains the ideology of US aggression using several factors. A key factor was the belief in what was later called “manifest destiny,” namely that the US had a God-given expectation to fill the continent. James Polk, elected president in 1844, had run on a platform of expansionism, and he delivered.

mexicanwarresults

            Another factor was racism. The Mexicans were seen as inferior, as “greasers” or “half-breeds.”

Prior to the Mexican war, there were prominent voices in US politics and the media condemning imperial adventures. Another source of resistance stemmed from the likelihood that Texas, then independent, would become a slave state, unsettling the balance between free and slave states.

To launch the war, what was needed was a pretext, and there was one at hand. Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande. It didn’t seem to matter that the US and Mexican governments had earlier agreed the border was the Nueces River. US leaders declared that the Mexican action was aggression and launched a war that won a huge swathe of North American territory.

siege_of_veracruz
US troops during the Mexican war

            The Mexican war was a fairly short episode compared to a slow-burning war that lasted for centuries: the war waged by white settlers in North America on the indigenous inhabitants. Today in the US they are referred to as Native Americans, but Anderson calls them Indians, as they were referred to in the US until a few decades ago.

As is well known to scholars of colonialism, white settlement was a disaster for indigenous people, causing disease, dispossession and cultural devastation. Anderson’s interest is in the symbolic dimensions of the war against the Indians, and for this he looks at General George Custer. For Custer and many others, the Indians were savages to be subordinated and exterminated. When Custer and his troops were wiped out in 1876, this was another trigger event for US imperialists: the Indians were to be conquered. It didn’t matter, apparently, that Custer was a ruthless killer, including of women and children.

general-custer-550
George Armstrong Custer

            Anderson analyses several further imperialistic episodes in US history: interventions in the Mexican revolution (1916), Nicaragua (both the 1920s and 1980s) and Vietnam. Always there were pretexts for attack: the US government saw itself as the victim and hence fully justified in its aggression. The 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, in which North Vietnamese PT boats supposedly fired on US vessels in international waters – though this probably never happened – was the pretext for a Congressional resolution allowing massive expansion of US military involvement in the Vietnam war (called in Vietnam the American war).

Anderson, in seeking to understand the mindset of US imperialism – an imperialism that cannot name itself – probes historical episodes less through recounting events and more through expressions of ideas through media and popular culture. Newspaper stories at the time of the Mexican war and the Mexican revolution provide ample evidence of racism and belief in manifest destiny. For the Vietnam war, Anderson examines the Rambo films for the same themes.

Anderson seems to find the evidence he exhumes at times excruciating in its self-righteousness. US imperialists have believed that God is on their side, that their enemies are lesser humans and that the United States is a special nation bringing enlightenment to the world. Anderson summarises his argument:

First, there exists the never-ending pattern of war since 1776, suggesting a deep psychological need to fight. Second, the patterning — portraying battles as defensive maneuvers against the savage Other, as noted — repeats itself without reference to temporal concerns, and the gambit is always some variety of how the savage Other attacked without provocation. Myth is eternal: it seduces and elides linear time. One result is that the Alamo or Pearl Harbor or 9/11 maintains cultural currency and emotional resonance, just so long as we choose to remember. Third, I have borrowed and applied two ideas from psychohistory: nation-states have explicable psychological makeups, and trauma demands repetition. We tend to know this anecdotally, that abused children are more likely to abuse others. Or that a nation born in violence becomes imprinted with a need to relive the trauma, which, for America, has been life-affirming. (pp. 202-3)

Mark Anderson
Mark Anderson

Other commonalities

Anderson sees 9/11 as being in a long tradition of episodes in US history in which the characteristic features of US imperialistic psychology are manifest. Taking a cue from Anderson, it is worth thinking of other ways in which 9/11 is not as special as it is often seen.

In the context of terrorism, 9/11 was dramatic but hardly unusual. Since the 1980s, thousands of people have been killed every year in non-state terrorist attacks. What is special about 9/11 is how much attention it garnered. Deaths of civilians in terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka or Nigeria gain little attention by comparison. Similarly, most of the world’s deadliest wars since 1990 have received little Western media attention.

9/11 is typical in that nearly all attention is focused on attacks by non-government groups. A different brand of terrorism is called state terrorism. This is when governments use their militaries to assault populations. The US-government-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 killed far more civilians than 9/11 but are not usually called terrorism, though the terror for those targeted is just as great. State terrorism is usually invisible so far as the media and home population are concerned. Anderson does not refer to the scholarship on state terrorism, but his analysis is quite relevant.

augusto-csar-sandino-4
Augusto Sandino:
seen as a dangerous threat to the US occupation of Nicaragua

            9/11 illustrates how valuable it is for aggressors to see themselves as victims. After 9/11, there was a massive expansion in the military-security complex in the US and elsewhere. During the cold war, the Soviet Union was the enemy and the justification for militarisation. After the cold war, the peace dividend — the anticipated winding back of military establishments — did not occur. Leaders of the military-industrial complex searched for a pretext to justify their existence, and anti-terrorism has served this function well, although non-state terrorism is not a serious threat to states and in human lives is far less devastating than nuclear war.

Anderson’s book Holy War is a valuable reminder of the commonalities in history and the importance of belief systems. Rather than reacting to the latest events in lock-step with the agenda of governments, it is worthwhile stepping back and seeing continuities, and noticing how often the same patterns keep recurring.

Holy Wars

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

politics, self-development

Are you lucky?

Luck plays a greater role in success than usually recognised.

 luck-skill

I’ve been lucky in my life. I was lucky to be born in an affluent society of loving and supportive parents. They were well off yet thrifty, and encouraged me in valuable habits. They started me on the clarinet, drove me to weekly private lessons and pushed me to practise daily for several years until I learned to love playing and was self-motivated. They encouraged me in reading and learning, but did not push me to get good grades in school.

I was even lucky when I was called up for military service and decided to leave the US for Australia. It was disruptive at the time, but caused me to rethink my views and led me to a lifetime of activism and research.

draft lottery

In my career I was lucky in getting some jobs and not getting others. Just after finishing my PhD, I applied for a lectureship at a new university and just missed out on what I thought would be an exciting opportunity. Decades later, I happened to talk to the physicist who got the job. He told me, “Brian, you’re so lucky you didn’t end up here!”

Most people’s lives are affected by chance events in many ways, large and small. Yet seldom is this factored into thinking about success and failure because, in meritocratic societies, the assumption is that success is due to talent and hard work and therefore justified.

These thoughts are stimulated by a new book by Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. Frank is a prominent economist who has studied the implications of psychology for economics. His earlier books, such as Luxury Fever and The Winner-Take-All Society, are readable and insightful analyses of economic inefficiency caused by wasteful competition.

Success and Luck is part analysis and part personal testament. Frank describes playing tennis and experiencing an episode of sudden cardiac death, which has a 2% survival rate. Frank fully recovered, very much against the odds, because an ambulance happened to be nearby. That he was alive to write his latest book might be said to be a miracle, except that for a mathematically minded economist it was like winning a lottery in survival.

 Robert-H-Frank
Robert H Frank

The role of luck in success

Many successful people would rather not acknowledge the role of luck in what they have achieved in life. If what they have and do is due to their talent, drive and hard work, they can feel assured they deserve everything they have. If chance events were important, then perhaps other people, just as talented and hard working but less fortunate, deserve as much.

In academia, luck is involved in obtaining research grants. Much depends on the choice of assessors and on the individuals sitting on granting boards. When success rates are low, there are many good applications near the cut-off: those above the cut-off receive grants and those below do not.

research-grant-good-luck

            However, as a recipient of a major grant, it is natural to feel the grant is deserved – after all, a lot of work went into the application as well as into all the prior research – and to discount the role of luck. Losers might complain but winners are more likely to feel their award was justified. A grant success then leads to more opportunities to do research, and grants are treated by granting bodies as evidence of high performance, so a single award can lead to a cascade of further grants and research outcomes. Just a tiny bit of luck can make the difference between a stellar research trajectory and a solid but much lower profile career, or even a failure to make the grade as an academic. I’ve known quite a few brilliant scholars who, due to hostile supervisors, biased appointment committees or unsympathetic editors, never had a break and languished their entire careers without even obtaining a permanent position.

Winner-take-all

Frank’s previous studies of winner-take-all markets are relevant here. In the men’s 100-meter final in the 2016 Olympics, the difference between the first and the fourth-place finishers was  0.12 seconds, yet the rewards for the gold medallist, in terms of recognition and endorsements, are far greater than for finishers without medals. You could be fourth best in the world yet receive only a small fraction of the rewards for the first place finisher. Furthermore, you might have had a slower-than-usual start, and the gold-medallist a faster-than-usual start, that made all the difference. That is the potential role of luck.

Olympics 100m final 2016

            It used to be that most competitions for career success were localised. If you’re the best lawyer in town, you’ll get many more of the most lucrative cases. However, cheaper travel and communication mean you may now lose out to even better lawyers across the country. The market has expanded: you’re competing against a bigger field, and even a slight advantage can make a huge difference in outcomes.

Let’s say you’re a specialist in corporate mergers. A company worth billions of dollars wants to have the very best lawyers. Because of the huge sums at stake, even a slight advantage is worth paying for. So the salaries of the very best corporate-merger lawyers shoot through the roof.

merger-and-acquisitions

            This winner-take-all process, resulting from the breakdown of previous market barriers, is a prime driver of economic inequality. Frank has written previously of how this happens, and has recommended ways to counter it. In Success and Luck, he draws on this research to make the point that the larger the number of competitors, the more likely it is that luck will play a significant role in determining the winners.

To be clear: every one of the winners in these markets is talented and hard-working. The point is that others are just as talented and hard-working and only lose out due to bad luck. Frank provides tables showing that if outcomes are determined mainly by talent and hard work, with luck contributing only 2%, then when there are many competitors it becomes almost certain that the winner is very lucky and that there are others who are more talented and hard working but less lucky.

Motivation and luck

Frank points out that there can be advantages in discounting the role of luck: it can cause you to try harder. If you believe outcomes are due to hard work, you might be more willing to keep putting in the effort. On the other hand, if hard work isn’t enough and good luck is needed too, is it really worthwhile working quite as hard?

motivation

            A more important point made by Frank is that if the role of luck is recognised, it becomes more difficult to justify huge differentials in outcomes. If becoming a CEO is partly due to luck – in having the right parents, upbringing, education and opportunities – then why should a CEO have a salary dozens or hundreds of times greater than workers? Some rank-and-file workers, with the same opportunities, might have had what it takes to become a CEO.

Frank thinks that greater awareness of the role of luck may have a beneficial effect in moderating inequality. But there’s a problem. Winners benefit from the belief that their success is due to being superior and so will use their power and influence to help maintain this belief. I would like to believe in Frank’s view but I will wait to hear any leaders give a proper recognition of the role of luck and then try to justify huge levels of inequality.

Frank writes mainly of the US, where economic inequality is extreme, social mobility is limited and yet the belief that commitment and hard work can triumph over adversity remains almost sacred. In many other countries, for example in Western Europe, more generous welfare systems might be seen as recognition that those who are less well off deserve support.

It seems to me there is something different or deeper in the way US policies for disadvantaged people are so much harsher than in most other rich countries, something beyond a lack of recognition of the role of luck. Consider for example someone born with a serious intellectual disability. No one could imagine that such a person’s failure to advance in the meritocracy is anything other than bad luck. So how can a successful entrepreneur justify receiving more than the person with a disability? How does a belief in meritocracy address the issue of people with profound disabilities? This should be the source of cognitive dissonance, so the issue is hardly ever addressed.

meme-male-white-privilege

            Furthermore, anyone could, on any day, become seriously brain-damaged through an accident or stroke, largely as a matter of bad luck. This should be the basis for compassion and support for others, because it could just as easily be yourself.

Frank is tackling the issue of luck at the other end of the spectrum of capabilities, among those who are high achieving. But given that the impact of genetic luck is not seen as an issue for those with serious disabilities, Frank’s hope for change might seem forlorn. However, he found that after conversations about the role of luck, both liberals and conservatives could change their minds. Would they have changed their minds just as readily by raising the issue of serious disabilities?

The progressive consumption tax

In Success and Luck, Frank makes the case for a progressive consumption tax, an alternative to the usual income, goods and other taxes. He and others have been advocating this tax for years. Frank argues that it can painlessly provide the government with revenue to restore US infrastructure and enable people to have the resources to pursue their dreams.

Without going into the details of the tax, suffice to say that its apparent magic is based on addressing status races. As Frank explains, if every rich person has a car, house and wedding worth half as much, they will be just as happy because, in comparison to others, they are just as far ahead. Furthermore, for those who are well off, research shows that extra possessions give little or no extra happiness.

12_porsche911turbo2016

            Frank repeatedly uses a revealing example. Which would you rather have: a $150,000 Porsche 911 Turbo and well maintained roads to drive it on, or a $333,000 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta to be driven on roads with potholes? The point is that when public expenditure – on roads, education, health and much else – declines, private wealth cannot compensate.

Ferrari-F12-Berlinettapotholes

            Frank’s arguments are very good. The question is whether good arguments are enough to bring about a policy change, no matter how rational and socially beneficial for everyone. Frank says that public opinion can shift rapidly, as it has for example on same-sex marriage. As much as I would like to see a policy change that reverses the trend towards greater economic inequality, it seems to me that good ideas need to be taken up by social movements. At the moment the movements for equality need all the help they can get. So if you’ve had a fair bit of success in your life and are willing to accept that you had lucky breaks along the way, then perhaps one way of saying thanks is to join campaigns for greater equality.

A more radical position is the socialist principle of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” Given that research on altruism shows that helping others can bring great personal satisfaction, often far more than personal achievement, it is possible to develop a rational argument for applying this principle. Wouldn’t the world be different if rational argument – and compassion – were the primary factors in decision-making?

Success-and-luck

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

mobbing, nonviolent action

Online harassment

Harassment online is a big problem. Legal remedies have limitations. It’s worth gaining ideas from nonviolent action.

stalking

One of my friends told me about a time, years ago, when she was stalked by a former student who threatened to kill her. The police could only recommend driving home using a different route and being cautious. She is pretty tough and is a politically aware feminist, yet she worried about what he might do to her or, if he turned his attention elsewhere, to someone else.

One of the difficulties in dealing with stalking is that, to outsiders, it doesn’t seem so bad. So what if someone comes by your neighbourhood and watches from a distance or shows up when you’re shopping? If he hasn’t physically touched you, what’s the problem? Until you’ve been stalked yourself, or talked to friends who have been, it’s hard to appreciate the terror it can cause.

These days, physical stalking has been overshadowed by an online version of the same problem. Stalking is just one version of a wider set of abuses that can be called harassment, bullying or mobbing. As with old-fashioned physical stalking, the online versions are often not treated as seriously as they deserve.

The most comprehensive and authoritative treatment of this problem is Hate Crimes in Cyberspace by Danielle Keats Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland. Based on years of study and interviews with dozens of victims, Citron’s book is a call to arms.

 Hate crimes in cyberspace cover

The experience

To give a sense of the patterns and impact of cyber harassment, Citron uses three case studies. One involves a female law student who, for no apparent reason, started becoming a target of abusive, threatening commentary on blog sites, including lies about her test scores, sexual behaviour and mental problems. What happens in cases like this is that after a public attack begins, lots of people join in, turning individual bullying into collective mobbing.

Her employment prospects were diminished because many potential employers look online to check out job applicants; when they see derogatory material, they seldom seek to verify it, instead just passing over the applicant in favour of someone about which there is no adverse material.

The attackers went beyond abuse, seeking to wreck the student’s life and career. They wrote to her employers making all sorts of false, damaging claims, and also made false claims about her husband.

feminism-online-abuse-misogyny

            Another one of Citron’s case studies involves a woman who became prominent as a blogger, discussing software design. Simply by being a woman commenting in a male-dominated technological field, she became a target of massive abuse, including death threats, rape fantasies and the like.

The third case study is of a victim of revenge porn. This woman’s ex-partner posted nude photos of her on various websites, plus her contact details. An online profile falsely stated she wanted sex for money. This and other posts led to a barrage of unwelcome attention. Her boss and colleagues received photos by emails that seemed to come from her.

These three case studies, with many details (but not names), provide powerful testimony of the damage that can be caused by online abuse. Citron supplements these with a range of additional examples.

stalking-online

            Several factors contribute to the prevalence of cyberharassment. One is the online disinhibition effect: when people are anonymous, or just feel anonymous and separated from their target, they are less inhibited in what they say. The tech blogger received mountains of online abuse but none face-to-face. Another factor contributing to cyberharassment is that many people, including attackers, police and judges, do not think it’s a big deal. Attackers often say, “It goes with the territory” and police may recommend avoiding it: “Just don’t go online.” This is like telling a victim of street assault not to go outside.

Precedents

Citron offers two revealing comparisons, with sexual harassment and domestic violence. Decades ago, these were not seen as issues of importance. Sexual harassment was seen as something women at work just had to accept, and likewise domestic violence was invisible as a social issue. Then along came the feminist movement. Sexual harassment and domestic violence were given names, stigmatised as wrong and even contemptible and criminalised by the passing of laws.

Citron says cyberharassment should be treated the same way. In all three forms of abuse, women and men can be victims, but women are much more likely to be targeted.

In Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, Citron gives most attention to legal remedies. She examines existing US laws for prospects of using them against cyberharassment – mostly the experience has been that they are useless – and recommends law reform and education of police and judges. She also recognises the importance of cultural change, including via interventions with Internet firms and in families.

 Danielle Keats Citron
Danielle Citron

Options in Australia

Citron’s focus is on the situation in the US, and she closely examines US court decisions and legal doctrine, especially concerning the protection of free speech in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Online harassers often defend their actions as exercising their own free speech. Citron shows, through a careful analysis, that it is possible to legislate against cyberharassment in ways compatible with the First Amendment. Her discussion is a fascinating tour of US free-speech law, much of it showing the sophistication of court judgements.

first amendment

            In Australia, however, this analysis is largely irrelevant, because there is no explicit constitutional protection of free speech, only an inferred and quite limited area of protection. In Australia, then, there is no constitutional barrier to passing laws against online harassment. Paradoxically, though, far less has been done in the legal domain than in the US. This may be because legal remedies are more a consequence of cultural change than a driver of it. Furthermore, laws sometimes give only an appearance of protection.

I remember when, decades ago, the issue of sexual harassment came onto the agenda for Australian universities. At the Australian National University in the mid-1980s, two groups were set up, one to address complaints, the other to raise awareness. I was in the awareness-promoting group: we wrote and distributed leaflets, wrote articles and gave talks. Then, in 1986, I obtained a lectureship at the University of Wollongong and joined the sexual harassment committee when it was formed that year; the same differences in function were apparent. Over the next decade there was considerable effort to raise concerns about sexual harassment and a related issue, abuse of trust and conflict of interest when academics had sexual relationships with students.

In those years, there was considerable attention to sexual harassment. But then the issues dropped from the main agenda. At Wollongong, the sexual harassment committee was abolished in 1998. The formal procedures remained, but efforts to generate awareness declined. Sexual harassment continued, but less was done to alert new cohorts of students and staff about the problem.

My experiences with sexual harassment committees made me sceptical of formal procedures as the primary tool for addressing problems. In many cases, official processes served to keep problems from being publicised. My special interest remains in helping people acquire knowledge and skills to deter and resist abuse.

Nonviolent action and cyberharassment

Citron, although emphasising legal remedies, also canvasses other options. One of them is individual resistance by exposing attacks. Some targets have courageously made public statements describing abuse and denouncing it. This is a potentially a powerful response, generating awareness and stimulating support, but sometimes it leads to the abuse becoming even more intense. Harassers are outraged when victims refuse to acquiesce, and are especially angry when their aggression, and sometimes their identity, is exposed.

In Australia, Emma Jane has undertaken in-depth research into what she calls “e-bile,” which incorporates various forms of online abuse and harassment. Her special interest is online misogyny, and the increasing prevalence of threats to women of rape, torture and murder. Like Citron, Jane is disappointed with institutional responses, and as well decries academic studies that minimise or ignore the serious impacts. She acknowledges that direct action by targets, called vigilantism, sometimes can be worthwhile, but argues that collective responses to change policies and cultural attitudes are necessary too.

To help judge when open resistance is likely to be effective, it is useful to turn to experience with nonviolent action against injustice, using methods such as rallies, strikes, boycotts and sit-ins. One option is using some of these techniques against groups that enable or tolerate cyberharassment. A possibility would be organising protests or boycotts of companies that advertise on sites refusing to restrain attacks. However, obtaining sufficient leverage to promote change might be difficult.

Another option is to apply the general approach of nonviolent action to a different domain, cyberharassment, where there is seldom any physical violence by harassers (though the threat of violence is routine). Naming and shaming harassment and harassers can be considered analogous to nonviolent action against a violent opponent.

Gene Sharp is widely considered a pioneer thinker about nonviolent action. His 1973 book The Politics of Nonviolent Action describes 198 methods of nonviolent action. It also presents a set of stages or elements of nonviolent campaigns. The first stage he calls “laying the groundwork”, which means building awareness, organisations and skills, all before taking action. The next stage Sharp calls “challenge brings repression”: campaigners take (nonviolent) action against the opponent, knowing that their open resistance may trigger a repressive response. The third element in Sharp’s framework is “maintaining nonviolent discipline”: if activists use violence, this helps to justify their opponent’s use of superior violence. By refusing to use violence, campaigners build greater support. Sometimes the opponent’s violence can trigger a huge increase in popular support, a process Sharp calls political jiu-jitsu.

Sharpeville-massacre
The 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa triggered international condemnation: it backfired on the government.

            This framework can be applied to responding to cyberharassment. An individual who is being harassed might be courageous to go public about it, but to be effective it may be better to lay the groundwork first, by collecting more evidence, building ties with other targets and with opponents of harassment, and preparing a strategy. Only when fully ready psychologically and organisationally is it time to openly resist, in what Sharp calls “challenge brings repression”. An increase in attacks should be expected. The challenge then is for everyone involved to remain composed and not respond in kind. At this point, anything that seems like a counter-attack, for example a legal action or exposing private details about harassers, should be avoided so it is completely clear to neutral observers who are the aggressors. The possibility then is that further harassment, if exposed, might lead to a huge increase in support.

Students-are-taking-a-sta-011

            For an individual, this may involve considerable sacrifice: standing up to abuse remains risky. Therefore, it is wise to act as part of a supportive group, with links to a wider movement.

For those willing to take the risk, it’s possible to learn from research on nonviolent action about how to increase the effectiveness of resistance. Activism against cyberharassment is vital in changing cultural attitudes. Future generations may be the primary beneficiaries of efforts today to openly resist abuse.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks for Sharon Callaghan for valuable comments.

health

The surgical sugar pill

You have an accident and fracture your collarbone, so you go to a surgeon who operates to fix the fracture. After you recover from the surgery, you feel better. So you and the surgeon think the operation was a success. What could be more straightforward?

Fractured-clavicle1

            But wait a minute. Perhaps you would have recovered just as well without surgery. You went to the surgeon just after the accident, when the pain was at its worst. What would it have been like if you had let the fracture heal on its own? Perhaps the surgery was unnecessary.

Some medical researchers have carried out studies to determine whether particular surgical procedures have any benefit. A comparison between surgery and no surgery can be revealing, but still it doesn’t capture the possibility that having surgery makes you think you feel better, even though it didn’t do anything.

One study randomly assigned patients with pain from osteoarthritis in the knee into two groups. In group 1, patients had arthroscopic surgery, a minimally invasive technique, to remove arthritic spurs from the knee. In group 2, patients had arthroscopic surgery without removing spurs: the surgeons made the incisions in just the same way as for group 1, but didn’t do anything else. Guess what? Patients in both groups improved, by about the same amount. The study showed that this particular surgical procedure had no therapeutic benefit over a fake or sham surgery.

Arthroscope1

            A placebo is a treatment that has no therapeutic effect. Instead of taking a pill containing a drug, instead you take a pill that you think contains the drug, but actually it just contains sugar or some inert substance. If you get better from the sugar pill, this is called a placebo effect.

In the study of arthroscopic surgery for arthritic pain in the knee, patients who received the sham surgery got better: this was a placebo effect of surgery. The study showed that the only benefit of the real surgery was a placebo effect too.

If you want to learn about this topic, read Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo by Ian Harris. It is clear and often engaging treatment by an experienced surgeon who has done research on the effectiveness of surgery. Harris thus is ideally placed to address the placebo effect in surgery. Indeed, he admits to having carried out many of the surgeries he now believes are no better than placebo.

Ian Harris
Ian Harris

            The first part of his book is a careful explanation of the placebo effect, and why it is so powerful in surgery. The placebo effect is often thought of as purely psychological: people think the treatment will make them better, and this actually makes them better. But the effect is more complicated than this. One key factor is that most people get better anyway, without any medical or other intervention. They go to a surgeon when they’re feeling worst; after surgery, they gradually feel better, but that might have happened anyway.

Harris makes a strong plea for carrying out research that compares surgery with alternatives, including no treatment, physiotherapy or some other therapy. Furthermore, the research has to be rigorous, because if patients, doctors or researchers know who is getting the “real” treatment, for example the arthroscopy that removes bone spurs, this will taint the results through various forms of cognitive bias.

Because of various forms of placebo effect, there is a long list of treatments used by surgeons that provide little or no benefit while causing serious harm. The problem is just as great in other medical specialties. Harris addresses surgery more than others because he knows it best.

placebo pill

            For thousands of years, doctors treated all manner of illnesses by bloodletting. They mistakenly believed disease was due to problems in the blood, so getting rid of it was the solution. Most patients recovered despite this harmful practice, so bloodletting continued. There were no double-blind trials in those centuries.

However, bloodletting is only an anomaly in that it persisted so long. Since then, there have been dozens of therapies that became standard, yet there was no good evidence that they worked better than placebo. Harris provides an illuminating survey of such useless or harmful medical treatments, and then examines many currently popular surgeries, casting a sceptical eye over ones for which the evidence is thin or non-existent. Among them are back fusion surgery, surgery for multiple sclerosis, hysterectomy and caesarean section.

Harris provides descriptions of the rationales for such surgeries, including biological plausibility and trials (without comparison with placebo), as well as reasons why the evidence is inadequate. His discussions are readable; references are given in a bibliography.

Then Harris tackles the reasons why ineffective surgeries continue to be done. This is a social analysis, and includes factors such as self-fulfilling prophecies, the pressure on surgeons from patients to act rather than do nothing, and financial incentives. Most disturbing is that most surgeons do not want to subject their operations to experimental comparison with placebo surgery.

Harris says that many surgical treatments become standard practice before they have ever been rigorously tested for effectiveness. Then, when researchers propose a comparison with placebo surgery, surgeons claim that this would be unethical, because there can be no benefit to the patients randomly assigned to the placebo operation. Harris spends considerable effort countering this objection, arguing that actually it is more unethical to continue with thousands of operations for which there is no good evidence of effectiveness.

achilles_rupture1
Achilles tendon rupture: surgery?

            Part of the problem is a double standard in relation to research and clinical practice. Researchers, to undertake a study, have to submit their proposals to review boards that examine the ethics involved. However, surgeons can initiate a new approach to a condition without any scrutiny. As Harris notes, asking patients how they feel after an operation requires ethics approval but undertaking the operation does not. The result is that many new surgical treatments become common practice without any good research to back them up, and rigorous studies are deterred by the ethics approval process.

“There is no restriction on what surgical approach a surgeon uses to do an operation, so what we have is a situation where it is deemed unethical to find out the results of a new procedure and publish them (without prior approval), but it is deemed ethical to do the procedure and not publish the results.” (p. 228)

Harris has been presenting his views to surgeons for some time, and many of them are resistant. They present all sorts of arguments to continue their usual surgical practice. One of them is that if there’s a placebo effect benefit from surgery, well that’s fine. “Believe it or not, this is a commonly used argument: if people are getting better after surgery anyway, that’s great – the fact that the placebo group also got better is no reason to stop doing the surgery.” (p. 235) Harris subjects this view to withering criticism, saying that performing ineffective operations is deceptive, costly and harmful.

da Vinci surgical system
Robotic surgery: better?

            Then there is the question of what to do about ineffective surgery. Harris has advice for patients, doctors, researchers, funders and society at large, all sensible. But change will be difficult due to patient expectations, the self-interest of surgeons, and entrenched double standards concerning clinical practice and research.

Ultimately, Harris is committed to a scientific approach, and wants it applied to surgery just like it is applied to alternative therapies, about which he is dismissive. “I applaud the work of sceptical societies, but they have one flaw: they rarely (if ever) turn their scepticism towards mainstream medicine. I guess it would muddy their attacks on alternative medicine and their position that mainstream medicine is science-based” (pp. 270-271).

Harris has rare courage: he is someone on the inside willing to cast a critical spotlight on professional business as usual. In writing Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo, he is taking his criticisms, usually presented in scientific forums, to a general audience. It will be interesting to see whether this succeeds, as he hopes, in speeding the uptake of scientific findings in surgery. In the meantime, anyone contemplating surgery can benefit from this readable and informative analysis.

Surgery, the ultimate placebo

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

self-development

Stick with it

Willingness to keep trying is crucial to success, even more than talent.

 stick with it

When you decide to do something, do you persist even when it seems hopeless? Or do you shift to something else that seems more doable? Here’s a simple set of ten questions: http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/

This little questionnaire has remarkable predictive value. For example, in studies of US high school students, scores on this questionnaire can better predict success in college than scores on standardised tests like the SAT. In studies of which military recruits complete West Point’s extremely challenging Beast Barracks, answers to this questionnaire are more predictive than any other measure, including high school grades, test scores and leadership experience.

The researcher who came up with this questionnaire is Angela Duckworth, and she calls what is measured “grit”. It is a combination of two attributes, passion and perseverance. “Passion” may not be quite the right word, because it suggests emotionality. What’s involved is consistency: sticking with the same challenge over time.

 Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth

Duckworth has been researching this area for years, with a number of collaborators, and her papers are regularly cited in commentary about achievement. Now she has written an accessible book explaining her research and findings, titled Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. It is engaging, informative and inspiring.

“In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction.” (p. 8)

As Duckworth’s work became better known, for example through her talks, she was contacted by all sorts of people interested in pursuing excellence, for example the coach of the Seattle Seahawks professional gridiron team. In this way she learned even more about grit and how to develop it.

grit hand

            Grit, to a large degree, is learned. Parents can encourage their children to persist, and Duckworth devotes a chapter to grit and parenting. Another way to develop grit is through observing role models. I was greatly influenced by my initial PhD supervisor, Bob May. I helped him with calculations for a model of how interactions between voters influence outcomes and he generously made me a co-author. But getting the paper published was a challenge. Bob sent it to a top political science journal where it was roundly rejected by several referees, but Bob was not deterred, writing to the editor challenging the referees and demanding a new round of refereeing. When this led to another rejection, he tried another journal with the same results. When he left Sydney University for Princeton, I took over the submissions and the paper was finally published. The lesson for me was never to give up on a paper, at least not on one saying something worthwhile. My record is having a paper published after rejections by 14 journals.

One of the lessons from grit research is that, in the long run, it is not beneficial to be protected from failure. Individuals who seem to have a charmed life, always succeeding at whatever they do, may come unstuck when eventually they run into serious obstacles.

success

            Duckworth’s research ties in with that from related areas. Carol Dweck looked at people’s “mindsets.” People with a fixed mindset believe performance is determined by innate talent and will be discouraged by failure because it implies they lack talent. In some cases they will not attempt a task, or drop out of a competition, because they fear failure. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe performance depends on effort. When they fail, they try to figure what to do to improve in future. People high in grit usually have a growth mindset.

Anders Ericsson has studied what it takes to become an expert performer, arguing that world-class performers inevitably have to spend thousands of hours in a special type of practice called deliberate practice. He is yet to find anyone who can play chess, do mathematics, play the violin, do the high jump or undertake any other highly skilled activity at elite levels without years of dedicated practice. To persist in the required effort and overcome obstacles and plateaus in performance requires grit.

Young female rock climber at sunset, Kalymnos Island, Greece

One way to develop more grit is to develop a new skill and stick with it for a couple of years. Duckworth undertook studies of US high-school students and how well they performed at university, looking in particular at extracurricular activities such as sport or music. Students who spent at least two years in such an activity later showed more grit, even when it was in a different area. In comparison, students who tried out a whole range of activities but didn’t stick long with any of them had no advantage. The implication is that persisting with a new activity for at least a couple of years is useful training in grit that can provide benefits later on in a different area.

“Teachers who, in college, had demonstrated productive follow-through in a few extracurricular commitments were more likely to stay in teaching and, furthermore, were more effective in producing academic gains in their students. In contrast, persistence and effectiveness in teaching had absolutely no measurable relationship with teachers’ SAT scores, their college GPAs, or interviewer ratings of their leadership potential.” (p. 232)

Luckily, it’s not necessary to pick a challenge at age 5 or 15 or 25 and persist against obstacles ever after. Having grit doesn’t mean always striving in the same area. If you spend years training to be a skier but sustain a permanent injury, then it makes sense to switch to a different goal. Having grit doesn’t mean persisting against insurmountable obstacles. In fact, part of being successful in achieving a goal is to rethink strategies when necessary. After multiple rejections of my article, I might well have chosen another option such as publishing it on my website or turning it into a chapter in a book.

grit-over-gift

What’s wrong with grit

Grit sounds great, but it does not automatically lead to positive outcomes because not all goals are worthwhile. Becoming a successful criminal certainly requires persistence in the face of obstacles, but this is a case of grit for a harmful goal, at least harmful for the criminal’s victims. Furthermore, just because some achievements are socially valued does not mean they are unquestionable. Duckworth gives the example of grit as a key to success in military training, but anti-war activists would argue that grit would better be turned to campaigning against military methods. Duckworth also gives the example of grit in rising to the top of corporate hierarchies. Advocates of workers’ self-management would prefer to see grit deployed to promote greater worker participation and flatter organisational structures.

Unfortunately, those with the most money and power are in the best position to take advantage of grit research. Duckworth, to her credit, wants everyone to know what’s involved. Although she has consulted with top executives and sports coaches, she also has tried to help disadvantaged children and she has written the readable book Grit. If you care about injustice, you can learn from Grit how to be more effective.

Grit-cover

 Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

emotions, personality

Subtle prejudice

Many people sincerely believe they are not prejudiced. Research shows, though, that subtle prejudice is quite common. Furthermore, getting rid of it is very difficult.

Unconscious-Bias-Part-5

There are all sorts of prejudice, on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexuality, age, occupation and various other characteristics. Some people are overtly prejudiced, for example expressing antagonism towards gays or refusing to say hello to neighbours of another nationality. However, many types of prejudice are less acceptable than before. In some circles, racist language will alienate listeners.

But can you be prejudiced even if you think you’re not? There’s a way to find out whether you have this sort of subtle, unconscious prejudice. Take the Implicit Association Test (IAT). But let me warn you. If you like to think of yourself as unbiased, be prepared for a possible shock when you take the IAT.

Implicit_association_test

Actually, there are many versions of the IAT, covering race, gender, age and other dimensions. Let’s say you take the age IAT. You look at faces of people and, as quickly as possible, classify them as young or old. You look at words and, as quickly as possible, classify them as good or bad. Then you look at interwoven sequences of faces and words, and classify them the same way. The online IAT calculates how long it takes you to do these tasks. If it takes you longer to respond to certain sequences, the implication is that you have an implicit bias against old people. It’s very common, and worldwide.

If you want to learn more about subtle prejudice, read the book Blindspot by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. It’s about the IAT and much more. Greenwald developed the IAT; Banaji was his student and has collaborated with him for many years.

Blindspot

The disturbing finding is that most people who believe they are unprejudiced are actually biased, unconsciously. Greenwald and Banaji admit they are too, even though they wish they weren’t.

Banaji is from India and was dismayed to discover, via the IAT, that she had an unconscious bias against non-whites. The IAT reveals that many women hold, unconsciously, the gender stereotype of male = work, female = family. Many US blacks have an unconscious bias against blacks, and so forth.

Mahzarin Banaji
Mahzarin Banaji

How could this be? The two-minds model of human mental functioning  helps explain. According to a standard view in psychology, humans have two minds, in other words two independent mental systems. One is the rational mind, used for much conscious thinking. It is slow, careful and requires effort. The other system is the intuitive mind, which operates rapidly, automatically and usually out of consciousness.

When you meet someone new, your intuitive mind rapidly classifies the person in terms of categories, including sex, ethnicity, age and social status. This happens out of conscious awareness. This automatic classification process can also result in judgements and changes in behaviour.

The IAT, by requiring rapid responses, taps into the intuitive mind and its biases. Conscious effort by the rational mind is required to overcome automatic responses, and the more effort that is required, the slower your response. The slower response is detectable and used to assess your level of bias, perhaps none but perhaps more than you expect.

As Blindspot‘s subtitle – Hidden Biases of Good People – suggests, Banaji and Greenwald are concerned about people who want to be unbiased, and who usually believe they are unbiased, but who actually have subtle prejudices.

You might want to dismiss your results on the IAT as not reflecting anything serious. Countering this, Banaji and Greenwald report on a large amount of psychological research showing that IAT scores correlate with prejudicial behaviours. But the bias in behaviour is subtle, so people – “good people” in Banaji and Greenwald’s terms – do not realise it is occurring.

Some experiments involved white students being approached by an interviewer, either a black or a white woman, on a neutral topic. A videocamera covertly recorded each interaction. Nonverbal indicators of the subject’s friendliness or discomfort were judged by independent assessors. A typical finding is that most white US subjects respond more positively to white interviewers.

African American woman taking an interview of a woman
African American woman taking an interview of a woman

Another experiment involved leaving a stamped, addressed and unsealed envelope in an airport phone box. On looking inside at the contents, a photo of the writer is hard to miss. White subjects are more likely to seal and post the envelope if the writer is white rather than black. The differences in response are not all that great, but enough to show a correlation between IAT scores and behaviour.

Dozens of clever studies of this sort show that subtle bias is common and that it affects behaviour, often with drastic effects. Banaji and Greenwald say that today subtle, unconscious bias may be the prime source of unfair discrimination in the US, overshadowing overt prejudice in its effects. Subtle bias is all the more potent because it is unconscious and hence unrecognised.

One of the issues addressed by Banaji and Greenwald is support in the US for measures to make up for historical disadvantage. Although a majority of whites disavow racial prejudice, a majority also thinks the playing field is now level, so extra support for disadvantaged groups is not needed. This can be interpreted as the expression of unconscious prejudice.

Because of the attention to the rights of minorities in recent decades, many US whites now believe they are suffering from adverse discrimination. Because their own prejudice is unconscious, their views about social injustice are opposite to what is shown by the evidence. Banaji and Greenwald provide a detailed appendix about black disadvantage in the US, giving ample evidence that it is real and significant.

Anthony Greenwald
Anthony Greenwald

Why unconscious prejudice exists

You might imagine that good intentions, or personal experience, would be enough to overcome unconscious bias. How could a career woman like Banaji hold an unconscious stereotype of female being associated with family rather than career? Why would a capable older person unconsciously accept negative stereotyping about old people? The answer is in cultural stereotypes that we imbibe from many sources.

In studying history, we read a lot about leaders, especially heads of state. Most of them are men, and a large proportion are white, at least for US people studying US history.

Mount Rushmore
No black or female faces on Mount Rushmore

In US television news, most reporting is about the US, and hardly any is about sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, it is easy for the intuitive mind to become attuned to white faces and not easily differentiate black ones.

In Hollywood productions, there are embedded assumptions about gender, age, social class, crime and a host of other social dimensions. Though not all shows have the same implicit message, the overall effect of watching thousands of hours of Hollywood entertainment is to implant associations and assumptions into many viewers’ minds.

The result is that stereotypes become deeply embedded. Think “surgeon” or “soldier” and the mental image of a white man may be automatic.

The messages of culture, including media, buildings, textbooks, ceremonies and much else, shape the unconscious, intuitive mind. The IAT probes the prejudices of this mind.

What to do

In Blindspot, Banaji and Greenwald devote considerable attention to the challenge of overcoming unconscious prejudice. They assume that “good people” would prefer to be unbiased and, if they knew about their unconscious prejudices, would like to change them.

However, changing the intuitive mind is not easy, especially when culture is continually fostering and reinforcing unconscious stereotypes. Banaji and Greenwald are not optimistic about trying to change intuitive responses. So they pursue a different approach: avoiding or sidestepping unconscious prejudice.

A good example is marking essays without knowing the identities of the students. In this way, unconscious biases about gender, ethnicity, appearance and personality are avoided. The same approach is used by editors of some scholarly journals when soliciting peer reviews: the author’s name and other identifying information are removed from the paper. Though reviewers sometimes can figure out the identity of the writer, the intention is to reduce the influence of conscious or unconscious bias.

peer-review-clipart-1

However, this sort of blinding has limited applicability. In the workplace, a person’s gender and ethnicity cannot easily be disguised.

An initial step is for more people to become aware of their own unconscious biases. It can be disconcerting, even distressing, for a consciously fair-minded person to discover prejudice lurking in their intuitive mind, shaping their behaviour without revealing any trace to consciousness. Accepting that this can occur, though, can unleash creativity and energy in redressing culturally induced blindspots.

Recognising that it is difficult for individuals to overcome their own unconscious biases, there may be better prospects for groups of concerned individuals working together with a shared intent of developing ways of reducing prejudice.

A radical alternative

Prejudice is damaging psychologically, and also when it affects people’s job opportunities, promotions, housing options and other material aspects of life. It seems difficult to deal with hidden prejudice because judgements by others are so central to success in life.

This can be seen as a flaw in the connected systems of meritocracy and inequality. The usual idea of meritocracy is that people rise or fall in their station in life depending on their capacities and achievements: those who do better on tests get better grades and advance further through formal education; those who are more qualified and experienced get better jobs; those who do better work are promoted; those who generate new ideas receive recognition. Inequality in society is justified by belief in the merit principle: those who earn more money or become famous deserve their privileges because of what they’ve done.

The problem is that meritocracy is a myth. People often get ahead because of having wealthy parents, good luck, social advantage such as knowing the right people – and prejudice. Inequality due to birth, luck, connections or prejudice is simply unfair, and not justified by merit.

take-the-same-test

One way to nullify the impact of prejudice (and the role of birth, luck and connections) is to move to a more egalitarian society. At the workplace, instead of having huge pay differentials, most workers could receive the same pay. Or, more generally, everyone in society could be guaranteed the same basic income. With such a system, the impact of prejudice on income would be greatly reduced.

The existence of subtle prejudice can be used to motivate thought experiments. If we imagine that unconscious bias is widespread and virtually impossible to overcome at the psychological level, then the question becomes, how should society be organised so this unconscious bias has minimal consequences? There are some radical possibilities. For example, instead of electing politicians, members of decision-making groups could be chosen randomly.

Banaji and Greenwald say that figuring out how to overcome unconscious bias “may require some thought.” That thought needs to include radical alternatives.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Emma Barkus, Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford, Trent Brown, Rae Campbell, Kathy Flynn, Xiaoping Gao and Alfie Herrero de Haro for useful comments on drafts.

self-development

Practise, and keep practising

Do you want to become really good at a skill? The world’s greatest authority on expert performance, Anders Ericsson, tells how.

anders-ericsson
Anders Ericsson

Pick a skill you’d like to improve, say chess, golf, piano, writing, Mandarin or mathematics. You need to find a good teacher, someone who understands the skill and will assign you tasks just beyond your current ability. You start practising, putting your full concentration into doing the tasks and overcoming shortcomings. And you keep practising, with your teacher’s guidance, tackling ever harder challenges.

For decades, Ericsson has been studying what it takes to become a top performer. Here’s the surprise. Natural talent doesn’t seem to make much difference. Think of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein. Natural talent for music or physics? No. Their supreme achievements can be explained by intensive practice from a young age. Ericsson has now written a popular account of his research, titled Peak, co-authored by science writer Robert Pool. It is clearly written, filled with examples and addresses the most common criticisms.

peak

            Ericsson is often credited with the so-called 10,000-hour rule, which loosely stated says that 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to become a world-class performer. The rule was popularised by science writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, but Gladwell got lots of things wrong. There’s no magic number for the number of hours of practice, nor does any old practice suffice. Gladwell said the Beatles obtained 10,000 hours of practice performing in Hamburg from 1960 to 1964. Ericsson cites a Beatles biography saying the figure was probably closer to 1000, and anyway the Beatles weren’t practising to play other groups’ songs to a high standard. Their fame rests on original compositions by Lennon and McCartney, so the key to the Beatles’ success is the time these two spent practising composition.

The one thing Gladwell got right was that becoming a great performer requires a lot of practice, usually thousands of hours.

“By now it is safe to conclude from many studies on a wide variety of disciplines that nobody develops extraordinary abilities without putting in tremendous amounts of practice.” (p. 96)

There’s also hope for those of us with lesser ambitions, who just want to become a lot better than we are. The key is the right sort of practice.

dilbert_rev1

            Most people, when learning a new skill like driving a car, practise enough to acquire a basic competence. After that, deploying the skill becomes automatic, and there’s little further improvement. We are using the skill, not practising to improve. If you want to improve as a driver, you need new challenges, such as racing.

The same pattern holds for most people in most fields. After obtaining their medical degrees and beginning their regular work, doctors acquire some new skills through exposure to patients and procedures, but then level off. Ericsson cites evidence suggesting that for many purposes, doctors with decades of experience are no better than those who graduated a few years ago. Indeed, recent graduates might be better because they have learned the latest techniques.

In fields such as teaching, business and law, practitioners may be skilled, but few keep improving. Just doing the job won’t make you better. You need to practise.

To learn how to keep improving, it’s valuable to look at areas where excellence can be judged with little ambiguity, for example chess (where rankings reflect tournament success), sport (especially individual sports like tennis), and performing arts like ballet and classical music (where judges of performance generally agree). In all these areas, there has been a lot of research into the sort of practice that enables ongoing improvement.

Deliberate practice

Only a particular sort of practice will make much difference. Ericsson calls it “deliberate practice.” It requires intense concentration on attempting to improve at the limits of your capacity. Consider reading, a skill that nearly everyone develops at a basic level and some take to advanced levels. Children can find learning to read both fun and challenging; by trying to read gradually more difficult writing, reading skills are developed.

Most adult readers stop pushing themselves and settle into a steady diet at the same level, reading novels, newspapers or text messages, or perhaps poetry or scientific papers. If you want to continue to improve as a reader, you need to find pieces of writing that challenge you, and you need to concentrate intently on understanding them. If you’ve read lots of crime novels, reading another one won’t be deliberate practice, but picking one that is especially difficult could be.

In classical music, good teachers know what it takes to become an outstanding performer: using the right technique and practising intently on ever more difficult music. But in most fields, practitioners stop improving because they seldom engage in deliberate practice.

piano teacher

            To improve requires lots of deliberate practice, usually under the guidance of a good teacher, using the most advanced methods, and in situations where there is prompt feedback. Few people have the advantage of a personal teacher or trainer who can give immediate feedback throughout practice every day. (Wolfgang Mozart’s father Leopold provided this sort of personal guidance.) In music, the next best option is having weekly private lessons, in which the teacher assigns music to be practised, monitors improvement and assigns new music of ever increasing difficulty. For this sort of teaching to work, the music student has to practise. To the chagrin of many a music teacher, quite a few young pupils don’t improve, and invariably it’s because they don’t practise. So having or developing the self-discipline to practise is crucial. Supportive parents often make the difference, providing encouragement and structure for practising in early years, until the child becomes self-motivated.

According to Ericsson, hardly anyone finds this sort of practising fun. Deliberate practice is hard work. Elite professional musicians may practise several hours per day throughout their careers, but never find it relaxing.

 benedetti-violin-large

Implications

Not everyone aspires to become a chess grandmaster or a violin virtuoso. Even for lesser achievements, though, the methods of developing expert performance can be applied, sometimes with dramatic effect. Ericsson reports on an application of expert performance principles to the teaching of physics — students in groups engaged with the material and received rapid feedback — that gave an astounding improvement. The promise is that applying the principles to a range of areas can speed learning.

For those who want to improve their swimming, application of the principles can accelerate learning and gains, even if world-beating performance is not a goal. High levels of fitness can become more achievable with less effort.

Ericsson says deliberate practice can revolutionise the way we think about human potential. Rather than being limited by innate talent, the implication is that nearly everyone can become really good in any of a wide range of skills. When people say “I’m no good at maths,” they assume some sort of genetic limitation. Instead, the assumption should be that anyone, with the right sort of training and motivation, can become good at maths, and about anything else you can name. In some fields, early training is essential for world-class achievements, but even that can be factored into education in the future. There are potential applications in education, business, health, science and other fields, as described in Peak and previous books presenting research findings in the field for a general audience.

Obstacles

For the revolution of improvement to occur, much more investigation is needed. Ericsson notes that in lots of fields, little is known about how to measure expert performance or about the mental representations used by top performers.

There will also be another obstacle: many top figures in a range of fields have a stake in the present system. Consider education. A transformation could occur, and it involves changing from a priority on learning knowledge to a priority on learning skills. The problem is that this would shake up educational hierarchies, in which teachers are in charge of dispensing knowledge, administrators run the systems and there is little scope for individualised training programmes. Perhaps the most promising area for uptake is in home schooling, with informed parents applying the principles and recruiting specialist teachers as appropriate. Just as private tutoring is the basis for expert performance in music, so it may become more common in a range of learning areas.

education

            The long-term implication might be that educational bureaucracies will become obsolete, replaced by networks of individualised learning embedded in the community. This is reminiscent of the ideas of Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society. It would be wishful thinking to imagine that this will happen quickly, if at all.

The idea that anyone, with the right sort of teaching and support and lots of deliberate practice, can become very good at something is potentially threatening to power-holders in all sorts of areas, including corporate management and politics. Governments and corporations operate on the principle that their leaders know best, either individually or via experts on tap. If anyone can develop high-level expertise, present power systems may be threatened. Deliberate practice promises to democratise human capacities. The implications are potentially profound, so those with the most power will use it to keep changes under control.

Reservations

Expert performance: who could be against it? Everyone wants surgeons to be highly skilled when undertaking operations. But there is a wider set of considerations: expertise needs to be deployed for worthy causes. For surgeons to be more highly skilled is fine, but the wider question is the level of effort put into preventive health measures, now minimal compared to medical interventions against ill health. What is also needed is expertise in promoting exercise, good diet, a clean environment and mental calm, and these areas are poorly funded and less well developed than medical specialities such as surgery.

shooter

            Then there are areas where expert performance is undesirable. Torture is an example: militaries experiment with torture techniques, and some practitioners become very good at them. It might also be argued that improvements in military performance are undesirable, and that efforts should instead be put into improving performance in conflict resolution, nonviolent action, and promotion of social justice. Initiatives to improve human performance need to be linked to worthwhile social goals. So it should be a priority to learn about expertise in promoting freedom and equality, so more people can apply deliberate practice to methods for making the world a better place.

If you want to become a lot better at some skill, Peak should be on your reading list. It is systematic yet accessible, with lots of examples. On its own, reading it won’t make you better, but deliberate practice will.

“Deliberate practice can open the door to a world of possibilities that you may have been convinced were out of reach. Open that door.” (p. 179)

Robert Pool
Robert Pool, co-author of Peak

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au