Category Archives: personality

nonviolent action, personality, whistleblowing

The story-editing solution

August 10, 2015 Brian Martin

The way people think about their lives can have profound effects on the way they behave. Timothy Wilson explains how to reap the benefits of story-editing.

Two groups of US students sit down to take a maths test. The groups are similar and the questions they are asked are identical, but there is one difference between the groups. At the top of the test, students in one group are asked to indicate their sex, male or female; the students in the other group are not.

It seems like a trivial difference, but it’s not. Boys aren’t affected, but girls are: the girls who are asked to indicate their sex before the test do worse. This is an example of a stereotype threat: bringing to consciousness a stereotype, in this case that girls aren’t good at maths, harms their performance.

What is going on? Being reminded of being female stimulates mental effort to deal with the stereotype, and this is mental energy that can’t be used to focus on the maths problems.

This is one of numerous examples of how beliefs about ourselves can affect how we behave and perform. There’s a large amount of social and psychological research about this phenomenon. A really valuable overview of the research and its implications for policy and practice is Timothy D. Wilson’s book Redirect.

Wilson makes two main points. The first is that social interventions need to be carefully tested, preferably with a design in which individuals are randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group. It is not good enough to undertake interventions that seem like they should work because they are obvious and sensible.

Wilson’s second main point is that the story-editing approach, namely getting people to change the narratives they use to understand themselves, can be far more powerful than other methods.

Scaring kids

There is a popular programme in the US to discourage teenage delinquency. At-risk youngsters are brought together to hear lectures from prisoners, who tell them about what is in store for them should they make the wrong decisions about their lives. This programme is well-meaning and seems plausible: scare these kids with warnings about their possible fate and they’ll be more likely to go straight. There’s one major problem: it doesn’t work.

Wilson uses this example as one of many in which a well-meaning intervention was rolled out across the US before it had been adequately tested. When controlled trials were finally undertaken, it turned out that the lectures intended to scare the kids out of trouble were actually making things worse. These kids were more likely to drop out of school, be arrested and go to prison. Wilson provides example after example of plausible interventions that have no benefit or even make things worse. He assigns the “bloodletting” award to counterproductive interventions: doctors used to treat many illnesses by drawing blood, thereby making the patient more likely to die.

What was wrong with the scaring-kids intervention? Thinking in terms of stories people tell about themselves, an explanation goes like this. Some supposedly at-risk kids previously thought of themselves as regular, honest and well-intentioned. They did the right thing because that is how they thought of themselves. But then they were put into a group labelled “at risk” and given lectures about the dangers of crime. Some of them started thinking their reason for avoiding crime was to avoid the consequences: their motivation, previously internal, became external, and this is not as effective a deterrent when the circumstances are less favourable. Furthermore, these kids were put in a group of others considered at risk, and this is truly a risk, because they are influenced by peers setting a bad example.

Timothy D Wilson

Wilson’s main attention is on interventions to address social problems in the US including poverty, low education, crime, sexism and racism. The bottom line is that all interventions should be tested before being used on a wide scale, and that story-editing approaches are often extremely effective.

It’s possible to use the insights from the story-editing approach to look at some other sorts of issues, including ones where interventions cannot be readily tested.

Whistleblowing

When a worker speaks out about a problem in their workplace, such as corruption or hazards to the public, they often suffer reprisals such as ostracism, petty harassment, reprimands, referral to psychiatrists, demotion and dismissal. This seems a harsh response to someone who is concerned about problems. What are the stories told about this common scenario?

From the employer’s point of view, the worker is out of line, challenging management and threatening the viability of the enterprise (not to mention seeking to expose management involvement in unethical and criminal activities). The worker is labelled a traitor, malcontent, snitch or dobber. The story provided is that the worker is in the wrong, due to personal failings. Rumours may be spread that the worker is a poor performer, has a mental illness or is involved in unsavoury sexual practices. Quite separately from the labels applied, the actions taken against the worker suggest their own meanings. Being referred to a psychiatrist is demeaning and signals to others that the worker is mentally unstable.

In some cases, the worker starts believing what is said about them, thinking “There must be something wrong with me.” The late Jean Lennane, former president of Whistleblowers Australia, worked as a psychiatrist, and treated quite a few such workers. After hearing their stories, she would say, “You’re not insane. You’re a whistleblower.” This is a story-editing intervention. Jean changed her patient’s script from “There’s something wrong with me” to “There’s something wrong with the organisation.” She changed the label from “dobber” to “whistleblower.”

Edward Snowden: hero or traitor?

Back in the 1990s, the NSW branch of Whistleblowers Australia held weekly meetings. Some people who attended for the first time said, “I’m not a whistleblower, but …” and went on to describe experiences that perfectly fitted the usual idea of a whistleblower. At that time, the term “whistleblower” had a negative connotation and many workers were reluctant to accept the label.

In the following years, the label “whistleblower” gained in status in Australia, in part through media stories that used the term in stories portraying gallant individuals challenging abuses of power. Workers were less likely to acquiesce in labels applied by bosses and more likely to take pride in calling themselves whistleblowers. Employers are more often losing the story-editing struggle, though reprisals against whistleblowers remain all too common.

War

Another arena for story-editing struggles is war. A familiar example is what to call a fighter challenging a repressive government: a terrorist or a freedom fighter. Governments have far more power to label than do their opponents, as shown by the ubiquity of the label “terrorism” applied solely to challengers, not to governments themselves, even though many government actions fit standard definitions of terrorism.

By labelling opponents as terrorists, governments might in some cases actually be assisting their enemies in recruitment, especially when entire groups are stigmatised. It is useful to remember that the South African apartheid government called its armed opponents “terrorists,” that the US government, during the Vietnam war, called the National Liberation Front “terrorists,” and the Philippines government calls armed opponents “terrorists.” Commentators in the US have called some environmentalists “eco-terrorists.” The aim in such labelling is to stigmatise, but is this effective? It is possible that it may cause some activists — even ones who had not considered the use of violence in resistance — to identify with the government’s opponents.

A related story-editing struggle concerns what to call those who refuse to fight, by refusing conscription or by deserting from the army. Military leaders typically call them “traitors” or “cowards.” Within the peace movement, they might be called conscientious objectors or war resisters and be seen courageous or even as true patriots.

Vaccination

What should a parent be called who has reservations about vaccination, or who declines some or all vaccinations for their children? They can be called conscientious objectors or, more pejoratively, vaccination refusers or deniers. Some campaigners who raise concerns about vaccination are called baby-killers.

Does this sort of labelling help promote vaccination? From a story-editing perspective, derogatory labelling of people with concerns about vaccination could be ineffective or even counterproductive, by alienating some parents who had cautiously expressed concerns and found themselves grouped with more vociferous critics. In addition, hostile labelling may drive some parents towards vaccine-critical groups as a source of identity.

A different approach to vaccination critics is to label them concerned parents and to provide information about how their concerns relate to vaccination. The story promoted with this sort of intervention is that it is legitimate for parents to have concerns about their children’s health and that choosing to vaccinate is one possible resolution for their concerns.

In this case, the story-editing struggle occurs mainly between advocates of vaccination, namely between those who stigmatise parents reluctant to vaccinate and those who respond to their concerns with sensitivity and sympathy. From a story-editing perspective, the latter approach is more likely to be effective, though designing a way to rigorously compare the two approaches would be extremely difficult.

Conclusion

Redirect provides a powerful summary of a body of research showing that the way people think about themselves makes an enormous difference to their behaviour. Seemingly trivial interventions that change self-perspectives can have long-lasting impacts.

Wilson has two main aims in Redirect. The first is to show the power of story-editing and the second is to emphasise the importance of careful studies of social interventions. Research shows that all too many well-intentioned interventions appear to be ineffective or, even worse, counterproductive.

Yet in some areas it can be difficult or almost impossible to carry out controlled tests. I’ve outlined three areas where story-editing struggles take place: whistleblowing, war and vaccination. Based on the evidence provided in Redirect, the preliminary hypothesis in each case is that a key in such struggles is changing the way people think about themselves. It might even be possible that derogatory labelling is ineffective or counterproductive. Read Redirect and decide for yourself.

***

Timothy D. Wilson, Redirect: changing the stories we live by (Penguin, 2013)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Jørgen Johansen and Cynthia Kardell for useful comments on a draft.

emotions, media, personality

We’re being analysed

July 12, 2015 Brian Martin

A new era of data analysis is dawning, and it’s because people are sharing so much information about themselves.

Christian Rudder is one of the founders of the popular online dating site OkCupid. People under 50 can go to the site, enter information about themselves and then make contact with prospective dates and mates according to suggestions made by the site’s algorithms. Rudder realised he was sitting on a mine of data that can reveal new insights about the human condition. He’s written a book about it, titled Dataclysm (London: Fourth Estate, 2014).

At OkCupid, users make judgements about various things, including the looks of other people. Examining only the judgements of self-declared heterosexuals, Rudder plots the age of the member of the opposite sex who is rated most attractive. For women up to the age of 30, the most attractive man is slightly older; thereafter, the most attractive man is slightly younger than they are. Rudder shows this on this graph.

Then he does the same thing with men, and comes up with a very different sort of graph.

The men, overwhelmingly, see 20 to 23-year old women as most attractive. Not too surprising, perhaps, but here is the bonus. This sort of data enables research that overcomes many of the shortcomings of conventional psychological research, for which the experimental subjects are mostly university undergraduates in artificial conditions. On OkCupid, a broader cross-section of the population is included, and the conditions are real-life.

There are methodological obstacles to be sure. One of them is that people lie, for example about their own attributes. But there’s something more in the data that people are unlikely to lie about: their behaviour. Subscribers at OkCupid, after obtaining the address of a possible match, can choose to contact the person, or not, and the recipient of a message can choose to respond, or not. Given the information collected by OkCupid, it is possible to look for correlations between this behaviour and any number of attributes, for example age, looks, ethnicity and sexuality.

There is yet another source of information: the words people use to describe themselves. Rudder provides some useful tables of words characteristically used by particular groups on OkCupid, for example white men. He tabulates the words used by white men that most distinguish them from black men, Latinos and Asian men: these include “my blue eyes,” “blonde hair” and “ween.” In contrast, words most distinctively used by black men include “dreads,” “jill scott” and “haitian.” And so on with many more words for each group, and for various other groups, such as Asian women. Then there are the antithetical words, namely the words a group is least likely to use compared to other groups. For Latinos, these include “southern accent,” “from the midwest” and “ann arbor.”

Rudder uses data from OkCupid because he knows it best, but he also draws on data from Facebook, Google, Twitter and other sites that have far larger user numbers. He provides fascinating insights by looking at people’s locations, political views, sexuality and much else. Who would have thought, for example, that data can be used to show that two people meeting through an online dating site, with no prior information about appearance, would be equally satisfied with the date independently of the difference between their attractiveness ratings. As Rudder notes, “people appear to be heavily preselecting online for something [attractiveness] that, once they sit down in person, doesn’t seem important to them” (p. 90).

Christian Rudder

Rudder confirms the widely noted bias in favour of good looking women. He goes beyond this to comment on a perverse result:

Think about how the Shiftgig data changes our understanding of women’s perceived workplace performance. They are evidently being sought out (and exponentially so) for a trait [beauty] that has nothing to do with their ability to do a job well. Meanwhile, men have no such selection imposed. It is therefore simple probability that women’s failure rate, as a whole, will be higher. And, crucially, the criteria are to blame, not the people. Imagine if men, no matter the job, were hired for their physical strength. You would, by design, end up with strong men facing challenges that strength has nothing to do with. In the same way, to hire women based on their looks is to (statistically) guarantee poor performance. It’s either that or you limit their opportunities. Thus Ms. Wolf [Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth]: “The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance.” She was speaking primarily in a sexual context, but here, we see how it plays out, with mathematical equivalence, in the workplace. (p. 121)

One of Rudder’s key topics is racism. One way to detect racist views using Internet data is by looking at the terms people put into search engines. Using Google data (in particular, the Google Trends tool), Rudder plots the number of searches for the word “nigger” against the months before and after Barack Obama’s election victory in November 2008. Several spikes in the graph connect to significant events in the campaign. As Rudder puts it, the graph enables you to “watch the country come to grips with the prospect of a black president” (p. 129). Rudder also uses online data to show that racism in the US is pervasive; biases are widespread rather than restricted to a few open racists. On the other hand, racial biases shown by US data are nearly absent in comparable data about people in Britain and Japan.

Then there is online mobbing, when people gang up against a target. Rudder uses the example of Justine Sacco, who tweeted a poor attempt at humour. She was condemned by thousands for racism, received death threats and lost her job. The hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet was followed by tens of millions of people. Rudder tells about his own effort to inject some sense into the conversation about Sacco, only to be countered by a damaging claim about Sacco — a claim that turned out to be false.

Rudder reviews what researchers say about rumours, gossip and human sacrifice, as social phenomena in history and in the Internet age.

So much of what makes the Internet useful for communication — asynchrony, anonymity, escapism, a lack of central authority — also makes it frightening. People can act however they want (and say whatever they want) without consequences, a phenomenon first studied by John Suler, a professor of psychology at Rider University. His name for it is the “online disinhibition effect.” The webcomic Penny Arcade puts it a little better:
Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
normal person + anonymity + audience = total fuckwad (p. 145)

Reading Dataclysm

Rudder comments that it is strange to be writing a book, in old fashioned hard copy, in the digital age. But what a book it is! It is stylishly laid out, with an elegant font and beautifully crafted diagrams. It is not quite a coffee table book — there are no colour photos — but for an intellectual work it is exceptionally attractive.

Rudder’s writing style is equally striking, with a mixture of colloquial language, wide-ranging cultural references, scholarly citations and astute observations. Referring to the Twitterstorm against Justine Sacco, Rudder muses:

… this, to me, is why the data generated from outrage could ultimately be so important. It embodies (and therefore lets us study) the contradictions inherent in us all. It shows we fight hardest against those who can least fight back. And, above all, it runs to ground our age-old desire to raise ourselves up by putting other people down. Scientists have established that the drive is as old as time, but this doesn’t mean they understand it yet. As Gandhi put it, “It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”

I invite you to imagine when it will be a mystery no more. That will be the real transformation — to know not just that people are cruel, and in what amounts, and when, but why. Why we search for “nigger jokes” when a black man wins; why inspiration is hollow-eyed, stripped, and above all, #thin; why people scream at each other about the true age of the earth. And why we seem to define ourselves as much by what we hate as by what we love. (pp. 148–149)

Implications

Rudder suggests that a new approach to studying human behaviour is emerging. Rather than relying on studies of undergraduate students in experimental (artificial) conditions, data will become available for examining human behaviour in “natural” conditions, namely when people think no one is looking at them. This is the idea underlying the subtitle of Dataclysm: Who We Are* — with the footnote *When We Think No One’s Looking.

Rudder is quite aware that online data are incomplete. Those who use OkCupid are not a perfect cross-section of the population between 18 and 50. Even Facebook, with its billions of users, does not incorporate everyone. But there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative jump in what it is possible to analyse: the behaviour of millions of people in natural conditions. This requires access to the data and knowledge of quantitative methodologies.

Rudder comments on the disappearance of privacy, and the fact that most people seem not to care too much: they willingly share all sorts of intimate data, for example on Facebook. It is now possible for marketers to predict fairly accurately, on the basis of automated analysis of data and words, whether you are gay, straight, unemployed or pregnant, among other information relevant for marketing. Analysts are working on how to assess a person’s intelligence from their online presence. Few people realise the potential implications for their careers of their casual interactions on social media.

Conclusion

Masses of data about individuals now available can be mined for insights about human behaviour, and many of these insights are fascinating, sometimes confirming conventional ideas and sometimes challenging them. Readers of Dataclysm can obtain a good sense of a future, part of which is already here, in which data obtained about seemingly innocent activities — such as your Facebook likes, the words you use on Twitter or the terms you enter into search engines — can be used to draw inferences about your prejudices, activities and capabilities. Perhaps, like Rudder, you may decide to become a bit more cautious about your online activities.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

personality

Narcissism on the rise

March 24, 2015 Brian Martin

Is society becoming dominated by narcissistic traits?

Fred thinks he is one of the greatest leaders in his workplace, though few of his co-workers think so. Fred is always claiming credit for group achievements. He has charisma, and has a small fan club, including a couple of his bosses, who are taken in by his confident self-assertions.

When one of Fred’s co-workers does good work, and seems to Fred to be a competitor, Fred will ignore the achievement, denigrate the co-worker, or sometimes try to take credit for it. When others question Fred’s competence, he flies into a rage. Most co-workers fear his anger and placate him, enabling his delusions of greatness to persist.

Fred fits the profile of a narcissist, a personality type whose basic characteristic is being self-centred. In the pathological version it is called narcissistic personality disorder, characterised by grandiose self-conceptions and a lack of empathy for others.

Narcissism seems to be on the rise in western societies, along with the increase in individualism. Fewer people look to their family, neighbourhood or class solidarity for their sense of identity. More now think that it is everyone for themselves.

There is an increasing amount of research into narcissism, and some excellent popular treatments. If this topic interests you, I recommend Anne Manne’s new book The Life of I as both engaging to read and thought-provoking. It is highly informed and pushes into new territories.

Manne cites research showing increases in narcissism in western countries. For example, surveys of US university students reveal that a much larger percentage see fame and fortune as their primary goals in life rather than, as in previous generations, good character and serving others. Self-centredness is being mainstreamed.

Personality has long been the province of psychiatrists and psychologists, and narcissism has been one of their interests. Manne examines the ideas of leading figures in the field, from Freud onwards, and probes the role of upbringing. The most common idea is that narcissism is stimulated by indulgent parents who set no limits and enable an exaggerated sense of entitlement. There are now US 16-year-olds who whine because the car they’ve been given by their parents is not a BMW.

Manne also cites studies suggesting a different rearing pattern in narcissists: emotional deprivation, with a parent who is distant and harsh. She thinks that the combination of indulgence and coldness may be a potent brew for cultivating narcissistic personality disorder.

Manne examines the dangerous and damaging aspects of narcissism:

private fantasies of, and a constant hunger for, being admired; a sense of entitlement; a sense of superiority; a willingness to exploit; impulsiveness and a lack of empathy; and, perhaps most importantly of all, a retaliatory aggression when the inflated ego is threatened. (p. 127)

To make these ideas vivid, Manne uses extended case studies, including Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik and US cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Lance Armstrong

Her ideas about two models of upbringing operating together are exemplified in Armstrong’s case, who

would have had two competing internal working models of self and other. One came from his mother, of himself as special, entitled, able to do no wrong and hence be exploitative, with grandiose visions of a world without limits. The other working model came from his two fathers, a profoundly insecure attachment, as a boy not worth loving, not worth hanging around for, not worth caring for or, in the case of his stepfather, so unworthy as to be worthy of a beating (p. 155)

Some narcissists are sexual predators – or perhaps it’s better to say that many sexual predators have narcissistic traits. Certainly they show a sense of entitlement and little empathy for their victims. Manne uses the example of prominent male sports figures who have been exposed for their sexual abuse of women. Such men are vulnerable to exaggerated ideas about their privileges and self-importance, given the adulation they are given by fans, including female groupies. Narcissism fuels striving for fame, and fame in turn fosters some of the worst characteristics of narcissism.

Manne next addresses neoliberalism, the economic beliefs and practices built around idolisation of markets and, as a key aspect, glorification of greed. From the 1980s onwards, especially in English-speaking countries, self-interest was unleashed from many previous restraints.

To highlight the narcissistic dimensions of neoliberalism, Manne uses the case of Ayn Rand, an influential advocate of individualism. Rand raised self-interest to a high-order principle, and denigrated concern for others as weakness. Rand was initially seen as so extreme as to be marginal intellectually, but with the rise of neoliberalism her doctrines obtained a much wider following. One of her acolytes was Alan Greenspan, who later became head of the US Federal Reserve. He dismantled long-standing restraints on financial transactions and helped lay the foundation for the global financial crisis.

Ayn Rand

Manne tells about the beliefs and behaviours of Rand and Greenspan, showing how they fit a narcissistic profile. She also shows how their views clashed with reality. When Rand contracted lung cancer and could not afford private medical care, she accepted the government financial support she had fulminated against all her life.

Neoliberalism may be enabling an increase of narcissism, but it is only a trend, not destiny: there are countervailing pressures. Although individuals are primed by advertisements to think of their own needs, people can also be primed to be concerned about others. Narcissism, in its extreme forms, is not attractive to others, especially those who are exploited or who are attacked in retaliatory rages. Because people benefit from living collectively, and receive satisfaction from helping others, there is bound to be a limit to the expansion of narcissism.

Manne’s final case study is climate change. She sees resistance to the implications of climate science for action against global warming as a symptom of rising narcissism. She notes, for example, that conservative older men are most likely to be climate sceptics, reflecting a reluctance to make personal change for the greater good. Some prominent climate sceptics fit this profile.

However, there are other explanations for resistance to measures to restrain global warming, including the vested interests of fossil fuel industries and the apparent lack of immediate consequences of inaction. Indeed, if compared to other environmental issues, such as nuclear power or pesticides, for which the dangers are more immediate and vivid, there has been a remarkable level of global activism on climate change. Narcissism might be playing a role in the debate, but the power of altruism remains strong: activists put huge efforts into campaigning, even though the immediate benefits are few, with the main beneficiaries being future generations.

Manne provides a compelling account of the importance of narcissism in contemporary societies, both at the individual and social level. What can be done to counter the rise of narcissism? At the individual level, there are various advice books – ones for dealing with difficult personalities – that can be used to obtain ideas about handling the narcissists you encounter at work or in your family. Parents, to prevent their children becoming narcissists, can provide a secure environment in which children are praised for effort, not for their innate brilliance.

At the level of society, though, the challenge is deeper, being nothing less than challenging neoliberalism and the associated rise of individualism. Manne has done a service in diagnosing the culture of narcissism. Perhaps what is needed to challenge this culture is a parallel study of great strategists for altruism and the commons.

Anne Manne

Anne Manne, The Life of I: The New Culture of Narcissism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2014)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

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Category Archives: personality

The story-editing solution

We’re being analysed

Narcissism on the rise

Dissent, nonviolence and other topics