Science Of Small Talk

Fort Hood Fallout

Sam Sommers — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:32:47 +0000

Psychologists call it illusory correlation. The idea is that when we think about others, we tend to overestimate the association between groups and actions that are distinctive. It's one of the ways in which societal stereotypes are perpetuated and endure over time. And it's exactly what has many an American Muslim concerned in the wake of this week's tragic shooting spree at the Fort Hood Army base.

Consider the following research study: you're shown flash cards with information about individuals from two different groups, X and Y. For both groups of people, 75% of the individuals are described as having engaged in some sort of positive, expected behavior. Like tipping their waiter, holding the door for someone else, or helping a fellow shopper load groceries into her car.

The other 25% of these fictional individuals are described as having engaged in negative, deviant behavior. Skipping out on their restaurant bill. Letting the door close on someone behind them with hands full. Trying to sneak more than a dozen grocery items through the express checkout. Etc.

When you're then asked to estimate what percentage of Group X and Y individuals exhibited deviant behavior, your answer will typically depend on relative proportions of these groups in the population at large. The more distinctive a group is, the more likely you are to associate its members with distinctive, deviant behavior.

So when there are 100 Group X individuals in your flash card population, but only 20 Group Y people, it seems like more of the Group Y folks are doing negative, distinctive things. Even though the rate is the same 25% in both Groups X and Y, we tend to inflate the number for the minority group, Group Y.

That's the behavioral science underlying the concerns of many Muslims in the wake of Fort Hood. Sure, the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, is Muslim. And though we're still in the early stages of reporting and investigating on the crime (it's worth noting that preliminary reports apparently haven't been all that accurate, including several stating that the shooter had been killed at the scene), yes, by many accounts it seems that Hasan's religious beliefs and experiences may be relevant to what precipitated these killings. But the concern of many Muslims is that people's reactions will be to paint their entire group with broad brushstrokes as potential killers.

It seems a legitimate worry in light of all we know about illusory correlation. Not only do we tend to overestimate the association between distinctive behaviors and distinctive groups, but this tendency is also exacerbated when we have pre-existing expectations that the variables in question go together. And the stereotype of American Muslims as violent extremists was clearly a salient one in post-9/11 America long before this week's tragedy at Fort Hood.

Again, I don't mean to suggest that Hasan's religious beliefs are irrelevant when examining his terrible actions. Time will tell, but many indications suggest that they are related. And by no means do I seek to minimize the horror of what he appears to have done. But it seems a legitimate question to ponder how his actions may impact the way Americans see his group more generally.

Timothy McVeigh was a libertarian and NRA-loyalist; Eric Rudolph cited his religious beliefs to explain his violent opposition to abortion. But as White, Christian Americans, their social category membership wasn't particularly distinctive. Thus, it's not surprising that their abhorrently deviant acts didn't have much lasting impact on the perception of their groups at-large. Research on the illusory correlation suggests that the fallout to the Fort Hood shooting could be different in that respect.

At least, that's the fear of many Muslims today, as demonstrated by the following quote in the New York Times from an ex-soldier who attends the same mosque as Hasan: "When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal, but when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad."

This isn't the first time the stress of deployment and other untold factors have driven someone to open fire on fellow soldiers. It isn't the first time a disgruntled employee has turned a weapon on co-workers–in fact, it wasn't even the only such incident of workplace violence this week. And unfortunately, it won't be the last time either. We shall see whether the tendency towards illusory correlations plays any role in how this particular tragedy is reported and responded to.

Searching for the Perfect Victim

Sam Sommers — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:36:16 +0000

In its most recent issue, Newsweek has a story on an ongoing string of unsolved murders in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The victims in these cases have been poor, Black, and–in some instances at least–have had criminal records. I spoke with Krista Gesaman, the reporter who wrote the piece, and though my quotations in it are among the most obvious and least interesting aspects of the story, it's worth a read.

The thrust of Gesaman's article is that various characteristics of the victims may help explain why the story has received far less attention than other, seemingly less serious (or, at least, less widespread) crimes of recent memory. Unlike the stories of missing women like Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway, and Annie Le, these North Carolina cases have flown under the radar for the most part. The Rocky Mount women don't seem to fit the mainstream media model of sympathetic victim–they aren't educated, upper-middle class, attractive young women.

The story explores the same issues of race, class, and media coverage that I blogged about a few months ago. Here's a brief excerpt from the Newsweek piece:

The victims in Rocky Mount–which residents describe as a "typical Southern town," and is about 40 percent white and more than 50 percent black–were different [than Peterson, Levy, Holloway, et al.]. They were all African-American, many were poor, and some had criminal histories including drug abuse and prostitution.
"If it was someone of a different race, things would have been dealt with the first time around; it wouldn't have taken the fifth or sixth person to be murdered," says Andre Knight, a city-council member and president of the local NAACP chapter. "All these women knew each other and lived in the same neighborhood; this is the sign of a potential serial killer. When it didn't get the kind of attention it needed, it made the African-American community frustrated."

The article doesn't focus exclusively on race, and it's worth checking out in its entirety. If you ask me, the moral of the Rocky Mount case is that when it comes to media focus, surprise and relatability count for a lot. It's a surprise when a boy supposedly flies off on a weather balloon; it's a surprise when a suburban private school has a student shooting. We're less surprised by the shooting in an urban school or neighborhood that we really don't expect to be that safe in the first place. And, accordingly, we get less worked up by violent incidents in such locales, numbed a bit by low expectation to begin with.

And relatability counts too. When the victim of an apparent crime seems like she could be someone we know from school, work, or the house next door, that story hits home harder. Most of the mainstream media is targeted towards the same "mainstream" audience, and so certain victims become more newsworthy than others. For instance, it's no coincidence that American news outlets always go out of their way to tell us the number of American casualties in a foreign disaster, in addition to the total numbers involved–the story grabs our attention more when it involves people just like us.

Sure, there are exceptions to these tendencies, as I'm sure many readers will be quick to note. But overall, some victims get more coverage than others. And as a general rule, race, class, and even attractiveness seem to factor into these decisions of media focus, even if those who write the stories and produce the segments assert otherwise.

In the end, media representations shape but also reflect how the populace at large sees the world. So this is more than just a media-related issue. After all, in many cases they're simply giving us the news they know we'll tune in to.

I'll Have What He's Having

Sam Sommers — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:54:06 +0000

The scene: New Orleans, the French Quarter. I'm out with college friends to celebrate the wedding weekend of a fellow buddy. It sounds like the set-up for a Vince Vaughn or Seth Rogen movie– with a lead-in like that, I'm sure you can envision any number of intriguing outcomes to the tale.

Alas, you don't know me very well.

Those who do would be quick to assure you that this story is less likely to end in Judd Apatow-inspired, plastic-bead-related debauchery, and more likely to segue into an admittedly overwrought psychological analysis of mundane daily life.

So we're sitting around the table at an ornate, well-known, French-Creole restaurant and the time comes to place our order. Our waiter, clearly a local, reviews our lunch options. Because we're part of a group, we have but two choices available to us. The first is the trout. The second is a menu offering I've never heard of before–something that sounds like FEE-lay.

I gaze around the room to see what my lunch companions are making of all this. Many look as puzzled as I am. Grasping for clues, I desperately hope the waiter starts taking orders at the other side of the table. Otherwise I'm going to be stuck ordering the trout, and I don't even eat fish. That, or I'm going to have to suck it up and ask what the feelay is.

After a few orders of trout, the bride's brother takes the plunge and goes for the feelay. The waiter says something else I have a hard time deciphering, to which my friend's future brother-in-law replies, "medium rare."

A-ha. Feelay sounds like some sort of beef.

A second later, a second revelation: He's saying, "filet," but with a Creole accent.

So around the table we go, the waiter walking counter-clockwise and asking each of my friends, "trout or feelay." Now my anxiety has shifted from wondering what this exotic dish might be to pondering the appropriate way to say it. Do I pronounce the word the way I usually would, asking for a "full-AY," done medium? Or do I follow the old adage about when in Rome and say the word with an accent that in any other circumstance would make me look ridiculous, like June Cleaver speaking fluent jive in the original Airplane! movie?

We're faced with quandaries like this all the time. Stick to your guns or go with the flow? Raise your hand in the large lecture hall and admit that you don't understand the previous example or stay quiet with the rest of your nearly comatose classmates? Sit in your seat and clap politely for the performance that you thought was merely pedestrian, or submit to the ongoing standing ovation so as not to stand out or offend? Remain true to your principled stand on appropriate footwear or give in and join the majority of society that has decided it's OK for adults to wear in broad daylight plastic clogs with swiss cheese holes? The pressure to conform is even powerful enough to prompt us to give responses we know to be incorrect.

To be fair, conformity is a lubricant that keeps society running smoothly. Complicated social movements become easier when we conform; we like other people who act like us. There's something to be said for toeing the line and not ruffling feathers. And in some circumstances, we need the people around us to find out not just the expected way to behave, but also the right answer to important questions. Like, is it safe to cross against the lights at this intersection I've never been to before?

But especially in an individualistic culture like ours, it sometimes seems distasteful, all this going along with the majority, especially when we do it just to fit in. These are competing forces, the pressure to conform and our drive for independence. It's the yin and yang of life in the presence of others. Or the feelay and filet, if you will.

This battle of pronunciation is one that I've wrestled with on other occasions since that wedding weekend. I now live in Boston, where "Worcester" is actually "Woostah," "Billerica" is actually "Billrickah," and Derek Jeter is actually, "Jetah, you suck." The fight to pronounce my "r"s as I was taught to do growing up just isn't worth the effort in most of my interactions with Boston natives.

And so it went in New Orleans. The wave of conformity rushed around the table until it landed on me. Resigned to my fate as just another brick in the wall, I went along with the rest of the group. Head hung, I muttered in a barely audible whisper, "I guess I'll have the feelay."

Ultimately, I took the path of least resistance. I decided to save my anti-conformity bullets for other, more important fights on other days. Like refusing to give in when Microsoft Word tries to tell me I have to spell "advisor" as "adviser." Some causes are just too important to abandon, regardless of how all the Romans are acting.

Obama’s Pyrrhic Prize

Sam Sommers — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:30:06 +0000

If my morning radio talk shows, workplace chatter, and Facebook news feed are to be trusted, the big topic of discussion this weekend is going to be Barack Obama's surprising win of the Nobel Peace Prize. Specifically, the first question most people are turning to–that is, after, wait, are you serious?–is whether this honor will help or hurt Obama politically.

It's a social psychological question to be sure, especially since the awards committee seems to be using this selection as an attempt to encourage and bolster Obama's international agenda. And as with any effort at persuasion, you have to examine the issue of source credibility.

This will hardly come as an earthshattering revelation, but the more credible a source is, the more successful its effort at persuasion is likely to be. Sometimes the audience isn't that motivated to think too hard about credibility–that's where celebrity endorsements come in. But credibility matters.

How credible is the Nobel Committee? On the one hand, they bestow a prestigious award with tremendous name recognition. One the other, it's a committee that honored Henry Kissenger for his work in Southeast Asia and Yassir Arafat for his endeavors in the Middle East.

So you might suggest that this most recent news will serve as a Rorschach Test of sorts, with people's reaction to the inkblot revealing their political leanings. The Disciples of Hannity (perhaps Apostles of Beck?) will inevitably see the news as confirming that Obama is all style and no substance and has been anointed by a left-leaning, politically-correct conspiracy that now seems to span an entire globe. And the bleeding-heart, socialist crowd will view this as confirmation that Obama is, as advertised, the second coming.

But the most interesting aspect of all of this is that I don't think the latter of those two reactions is materializing right now. Most of the pro-Obama crowd I've read, heard from, and talked to is surprised as well. And nervous to boot. Because even the most ardent Obama supporter has to admit that he's still shorter on accomplishment than on promise, and they're worried that this award will only fuel the fire of the style-over-substance critique.

If you ask me, this is the issue that should concern the Nobel Committee, given their apparent goals for today's announcement. Because, yes, source credibility matters. But so does your audience. And when your preaching surprises and even distresses the choir, you may have a backlash problem on your hands. Not to mention the risk that all your future selections will be dismissed out of hand as well in some quarters, based on the precedent of this year's choice.

It's the very same principle that has shaped my decision to wait until at least next year before nominating the Beyonce-dancing baby from youtube for an MTV video award. Too much, too soon, amazing dancing baby. Too much, too soon.

Thou Shalt Not... Copulate?

Sam Sommers — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Publicity is a funny thing. Any press is good press, right? So I suppose I should be happy that my current place of employ is being covered by US News & World Report, The New York Times, and Huffington Post among other outlets. Why is Tufts in the news? Well, if you haven't yet heard, it's because our Office of Residential Life just instituted a formal policy prohibiting students from engaging in sexual activity while their roommate is present in the room.

If nothing else, the rule certainly has inspired conversation and a number of questions. Like should a university be legislating private behavior in the privacy of dorm rooms? And how, exactly, will such a rule be enforced? If thou shall not be fruitful and multiply in the presence of witnesses is the newest sexual commandment, what are the other 9? And what do I do when my advisees come to office hours to ask whether this means that sex with their roommates is now against the rules as well?

It's amazing how much attention this is getting–I imagine we're only days (or hours?) away from some tongue-in-cheek PR at the hands of Letterman, Conan, Jon Stewart, and colleagues. To me, perhaps the most interesting reactions are those that focus on the question of Why Bother? As in, what's the point of formalizing such a rule and how on earth would anyone ever enforce it?

But I don't think enforcement is the objective here. Why was the Office of ResLife moved to introduce the rule? According to our campus paper, because there were apparently a "significant number of complaints last year from residents bothered by their roommates' sexual behavior... [it] was one of the most commonly cited sources of conflict between roommates."

One would think that not having sex in a room simultaneously occupied by a third party would be an unwritten rule with enough cache to prevent problems. Indeed, some would argue that our new rule is unnecessary because it should already be covered by a general sense of public decency. But it would seem that decency alone wasn't getting the job done!

As psychologists have demonstrated time and again, on a regular basis our actions are shaped by social norms–the unwritten rules that govern appropriate behavior in different situations. Norms are what tell us not to kick off our shoes and put our feet on the desk during a job interview. Norms dictate how much personal space you keep between yourself and a conversation partner–details that vary when you visit another country or an ATM at night. Norms are what prevent us from yelling out accusations during a formal, nationally televised speech to Congress... or, at least, what are supposed to prevent such outbursts.

But what Joe Wilson and... shall we say, overzealous Tufts students teach us is that as powerful as norms are, some rules aren't strong enough when they remain unwritten. I agree with the critics–I never would have imagined that a formal rule like this was necessary. But apparently it is. And apparently I'm lucky that the worst thing my freshman roommate did was hit the snooze button on his alarm clock four times each morning before his early math class.

Why is the rule now on the books? Though I don't profess to have played any role in its creation, I imagine that it has little to do with actual enforcement and everything to do with making clear what should have been self-evident to obliviously inconsiderate roommates. Hopefully, having the rule in effect will serve as a reminder that this type of behavior is unacceptable. And the next person to run afoul of it will have lost the ability to argue that he was trying to be discreet or that she didn't know she was doing anything wrong.

In other words, Tufts has now effectively rendered moot the notorious Costanza Defense (because, let's face it, no discussion of norms is complete without at least a brief tip of the cap to Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who have built entertainment dynasties by exploring on their shows the power of norms and the consequences of violating them).

Of course, I refer to the infamous response of Seinfeld's George Costanza as he learns from his boss that his after-hours fling with the office cleaning woman was not as discreet as he thought it was: "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon..."

I'm proud to report that Tufts now stands alone as the only institution of higher learning at which this type of argument no longer holds water. Somewhere, I'm sure Elaine Benes, fictitious Tufts alumna that she is, beams with pride.

Hey, good for us, I say. There are plenty of other norms people don't follow these days that merit similar legislative action on a wider scale. Maybe some system of fines would deter the cretins who barge into elevators or subway cars without first letting out the exiting passengers. Or those who talk so loud on their cell phones that they leave you no choice but to listen to the conversation. And adults who use vulgarities within earshot of little kids, and parents who let their tantrum-throwing toddlers cry it out even when in the public space of an adult restaurant.

Hell, I'd support jail time for drivers who don't give the thank-you wave after you've let them go in front of you.

Feel free to add your own commandments in need of enactment–I'm sure I've only scratched the surface. Unwritten rules and norms have a powerful guiding influence on how we act. But as we learn from the apparently irresistible urge to copulate while cohabitating, sometimes that just isn't deterrent enough.

The Toolbox of Self-Deception, Part III

Sam Sommers — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:27:57 +0000

Below, the third of three parts on the ubiquitous nature of self-deception in daily life; click here for Part I and here for Part II.

When you stop to think about it (and that's what we psychologists are trained to do), we enlist an impressive array of cognitive tactics and behavioral gambits in the daily effort to feel good about ourselves. We carry around a veritable toolbox of self-deception, including well more individual tools than I can catalog here. What follows is but a sampling of the more common strategies we employ in the daily pursuit of positive self-regard...

5. Downward Social Comparison

So, associating ourselves with successful and accomplished others is always the way to go, right? Not so fast. What if those others are thriving in the very areas where we're faltering? The novelist may revel in the feats of her neighbor the musician, but the best-selling book of her cousin may bring on crippling envy. And what if we can't even use the better-than-average effect? What if we run up against irrefutable evidence that we're actually not better than average? In such cases, we often resort to downward social comparison, viewing our attainments alongside those of the least successful individuals we know.

Think about the last time you were handed back an exam, whether days or decades ago. If you're like most of the test takers I know, one of your first reactions was to wonder what the average score was. Or to ask your friend how she did. Or maybe even to sneak a peek at the score of the guy sitting down the row from you.

A study by Joanne Wood and colleagues at the University of Waterloo shows downward social comparison in action. Participants were given a series of tests, and then some, chosen at random, were told they had succeeded, while others, also chosen at random, were told they had failed. The participants' next task was to select a test for their unseen partner in a separate room–a test that they would score for the partner. Those who thought they themselves had done poorly assigned their partner the most challenging test to muddle through.

Though this tendency doesn't paint the prettiest picture of human nature, sometimes there's nothing like other people's struggles to make us feel better about our own plight. Research on breast cancer reveals that one coping strategy for women who need a lumpectomy is to compare themselves with those undergoing mastectomy. Our own financial woes don't seem so bad when we think about families in foreclosure. And your 75 on the biology exam isn't as problematic when you consider the even lower score of that guy who sleeps through class.

Not to mention that the test was unfair, you were nursing a head cold, and you stayed out too late the night before. Speaking of which...

6. Self-Handicapping

Sometimes we actually undermine our own performance to ward off threats to the ego. Psychologists refer to this as self-handicapping. To illustrate, let's say you do stay out late the night before a big test. If you don't perform well, you can tell yourself that it wasn't because of any intellectual shortcoming. If you pull off a good grade anyway, then wow–you did it without even studying.

For me, the king of self-handicapping will always be my best friend from college. He had an uncanny knack for placing himself in no-lose situations. In Wiffle ball, he'd inevitably start swinging left-handed halfway through. If he lost, well, hey, he was swinging left-handed; if he won, we'd never hear the end of it. The honors thesis that I sweated over for months during my senior year? He wrote his the night before. Literally all of it. That we earned the same grade chafed a bit, I'll admit. But it made his day.

Some people are more prone to self-handicapping than others, of course. Several studies indicate that men are more susceptible than women. And according to Robert Arkin of Ohio State University, self-handicapping is especially common among the chronically self-conscious.

In one of Arkin's studies, students were given a choice of music to listen to while completing a test of spatial skill. Some musical options, they were told, might enhance their concentration, while others could prove distracting. When the test was framed as a powerful predictor of future college and career success, more participants went for the supposedly distracting music, giving themselves a ready-made excuse for poor performance. This tendency was pronounced among men and among students of either sex who reported feeling self-conscious in public.

Do you recognize any of these six self-deceiving strategies in your family? Your friends? Your colleagues? I know better than to ask if you engage in any of them. I mean, of course you don't.

But even if we are momentarily candid with ourselves, the question remains: What should we do about this blindness to reality, this resistance to the awful truth? Quite possibly, nothing.

In an influential article published in 1988, Shelley Taylor of UCLA and Jonathon Brown of the University of Washington suggested that distortions of reality are essential to our mental well-being.
This idea was illustrated in a study by Lauren Alloy of Temple University and Lyn Abramson of the University of Wisconsin. Study participants–some of them depressed and some of them not–sat in front of a light bulb with a button that they could either push or not, as they chose. Sometimes when the button was pushed, the light went on; other times it didn't.

In reality, the button wasn't connected to the light at all–the bulb simply flashed on and off at random. Later, when asked how much control they thought they had over the light, participants who were depressed accurately reported that they had none. But those who weren't saw things differently. These "normal" people had an exaggerated sense of control, the same type of illusion harbored by the overconfident lotto player or the superstitious sports fan.

Our real task, psychologically, may not be to banish self-deception, but to make it work for us: to enlist it when we feel threatened and let go of it when we're ready to face facts. Should we always evaluate ourselves in relation to those of inferior aptitude? No. We'll grow complacent and develop an exaggerated sense of competence.

But sometimes a dash of downward social comparison is just what we need to bounce back from failure. Or maybe the better-than-average effect will do the trick. Or a little rationalization.
My health screening was a case in point. Denial, with a dollop of rationalization, helped get me through the day. I taught, got some writing done, and went about business as usual. Then a few days later, when I had come to grips with reality, I made an appointment to see my doctor. Now the offending number is back to normal, and I have a new morning routine before I teach: running at the gym. Consider it a public service: my 10-minute miles are perfect fodder for your next downward social comparison.

And when I finally cash in my gift card, I'll order a salad, dressing on the side. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Tufts Magazine

The Toolbox of Self-Deception, Part II

Sam Sommers — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:53:11 +0000

Below, the second of three parts on the ubiquitous nature of self-deception in daily life; click here for Part I.

3. Illusions of Control

Ever play the lottery? I'll admit that I buy tickets when the jackpot gets to nine figures, an interesting phenomenon in and of itself: as if $100 million would be life-altering, but $75 million isn't worth my effort.

Rationally speaking, it's hard to explain why anyone ever buys lottery tickets. But buy them we do, and part of the reason lies with another of our feel-good strategies: illusions of control. We convince ourselves that the randomness of life doesn't apply to us. Others may be unable to manage their own destinies, but somehow we think we can.

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer ran a study in which she either gave people a raffle ticket or let them choose one. When she then tried to buy the tickets back, those who had been allowed to select their own held out for four times as much money as those who were simply handed a ticket.

Just putting thought into, for example, which lotto numbers to play is enough to make us more optimistic–as if our intellect were so profound that it somehow gives us better odds than all those idiots with lousy numbers.

Illusions of control also explain why, even after being reminded that divorce rates hover at 50 percent, respondents in one study by the late Ziva Kunda, a psychologist at Canada's University of Waterloo, estimated that their own marriage had only a 20 percent probability of dissolving. Or why, in a recent survey on the real estate website Zillow.com, half of homeowners said their house had held its value or even appreciated during a year when nationwide sale prices dropped 9 percent. Or why we're able to assure ourselves that we will escape the documented side effects of a given medical treatment–you know, the ones that are muttered in hurried tones at the end of pharmaceutical commercials.

4. Basking in Reflected Glory

People are social animals. We spend much of our lives seeking out and managing bonds with others. It should come as no surprise, then, that when we're trying to feel good about ourselves, we frequently call to mind our more illustrious associations, basking in their reflected glory. If you don't believe me, Google "claim to fame." You'll find a variety of websites on which posters can tout their great-great-grandmother's affair with General Custer or celebrate a chance golf outing with Alice Cooper.

Sports fans are awash in reflected glory. A study by Robert Cialdini, a psychologist at Arizona State University, has found that college students are more likely to wear their school insignia to class on a Monday following a football victory than they are following a loss. In a second study, Cialdini and colleagues reported that while 32 percent of students use the pronoun "we" in talking about a victory by their school's team, only 18 percent use "we" in talking about a loss.

The "we effect" is most pronounced when people need an ego boost. In yet another Cialdini study, respondents were asked to complete a survey about the student body on their campus. Half of the participants, selected at random, were given positive feedback ("you did really well compared to the average student"). The other half received negative feedback ("you did really poorly"). In subsequent discussions about their school's victorious football team, the tendency to use "we" was higher among the students who presumably needed pumping up: 40 percent for those who believed they had failed the survey, compared with 24 percent for those who believed they had aced it.

There's a reason why those big foam fingers sold at football stadiums never say "They're #1."

TO BE CONTINUED...

This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Tufts Magazine.

The Toolbox of Self-Deception, Part I

Sam Sommers — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:49:58 +0000

Below, the first of three parts on the ubiquitous nature of self-deception in daily life:

It was a Wednesday in late October, and I had to teach at 10:30. Usually, this meant a morning behind a closed office door, but this was the day of my university's health fair. Apparently, I could get a $40 gift card just for getting my vital signs checked. Between learning how to lower my cholesterol and scoring a free bloomin' onion, I figured I would just about break even. But I was in for a rude surprise: one of my test results was borderline "abnormal."

There had to be some innocent explanation, I told myself. The room where the screening took place was hot and crowded. Things were busy enough that someone could've transposed digits or confused samples. The presidential election was approaching, and I had stayed up too late the night before, reading online polls.

I even cajoled the nurse into taking another measurement, despite the look she gave me that said, Buddy, everybody thinks the numbers are wrong, but they never are. The second measurement wasn't much better.

Still, I didn't buy it. I went straight from the health fair to my research methods class, where–as any of the students who took notes can attest–I spent the first 10 minutes using my experience to illustrate the concept of measurement error. That'll teach them to mess with me, I figured.

Why did I go to such lengths to refute objective information–information that was intended solely for my benefit? Because it was threatening. People do this all the time. We bend the facts to fit our self-image, perpetuating a view of ourselves that is often more positive than accurate.

Thirty years ago, Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist now at the University of Washington, went so far as to compare the ego to a totalitarian dictator. Just like Stalin, who had a habit of airbrushing ex-comrades out of old photos after they were sent off to the gulag, we regularly write revisionist histories and paint unrealistically glossy portraits of ourselves.

When you stop to think about it (and that's what we psychologists are trained to do), we enlist an impressive array of cognitive tactics and behavioral gambits in the daily effort to feel good about ourselves. We carry around a veritable toolbox of self-deception. The main tool I pulled out at the health fair was good old-fashioned denial. But there are many other options as well–more than I can catalog here. What follows is but a sampling of the more common strategies we employ in the pursuit of positive self-regard.

1. Rationalization

Rationalization is a core component of self-deception. In my health-screening example, it accompanied my denial, as I simultaneously refused to believe the measurement and wracked my brain for reasons why it had to be erroneous. But rationalization can take other forms. As Jeff Goldblum's character says in the movie The Big Chill, "I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex."

It's through rationalization that the smoker convinces herself that her habit isn't that unhealthy. After all, she still exercises, unlike some people she knows. It's rationalization when a customer keeps the extra change the cashier mistakenly hands back and justifies his decision by reflecting that the store is marking up prices to begin with. Or when a relative of mine–who shall remain nameless–refers to the banana he picks up and eats while grocery shopping as "the price of doing business" with him.

In a now-famous experiment, Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith of Stanford University had participants complete an excruciatingly boring series of peg-turning tasks for a full hour. The researchers then asked them to help create a positive expectation for the next participant–by telling that person the experiment would actually be fun. Participants complied, agreeing to lie in the name of science, and were each promised either $20 or $1 for their efforts.

How did they live with themselves afterwards? For the participants who had been paid less, rationalization was the key. When asked later by a departmental representative ostensibly unaffiliated with the study how much fun the peg turning had really been, those who received $20 reported that the experience was mind-numbing. Those paid a mere dollar assessed the task much more favorably. Without a compelling financial justification for their deceit, the $1-participants convinced themselves that they really hadn't lied at all.

2. The Better-Than-Average Effect

How strong are your social skills? Seriously, think for a second and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. (A rating of 1 means you're the most socially inept person on the planet, a 10 that you're the best.) Then keep reading.

When I ask my students this question in class, the average response is usually 8 or 9. Even when I tell them to limit the comparison group to fellow students, far more than half tell me that their social skills are better than average. Impressive, no? Either I am the luckiest professor at the university or a large percentage of those students are kidding themselves.

This inclination–what Cornell psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning call the better-than-average effect–isn't limited to my students. In one survey, 86 percent of business managers said they were more ethical than their peers. In another, 94 percent of professors said they were better teachers than the average faculty member on campus.

Ironically, the better-than-average effect is most exaggerated among the least competent. The worse we are at something, the better we often think we are, as fans of American Idol can attest. Of course, such distortions are most prevalent in domains that have a low threshold for competence. Almost anyone can drive a car or exhibit decent social skills, and amusingly high numbers of people believe that they're great at these things. But in domains where general levels of societal proficiency are lower–let's say, juggling or public speaking–the bias isn't nearly as prevalent.

So how strong are your social skills? I don't profess to know. But I'm not sure you know, either.

TO BE CONTINUED...

This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Tufts Magazine.

Erasing Race

Sam Sommers — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:29:33 +0000

A White woman, an Asian guy, and a Black guy are seated around a table. No, it's not the lead-in to a joke of questionable appropriateness. Rather, it's the source of the latest on-line controversy about race.

Welcome to the tale of the competing Microsoft ads. As the story goes, there's a photo on the American version of the microsoft.com website depicting the three individuals I described above. Sounds innocent enough, right? Problem is, intrepid bloggers found a doctored version of the same photo on the Polish version of the site, except in this one, the Black man in the middle has been digitally replaced by a White man.

Microsoft has already admitted that the photo was doctored and has issued an apology. Now I'm often accused of seeing racial controversy where others see none (see here, here, here, or here, just for starters), but I have to admit, I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this one.

So the marketing folks at Microsoft think the racial composition of an ad might make a difference? And they're willing to pull a few strings to put that strategy into play? How does this make them any different than any other company that looks more diverse in advertisements than in reality? Or the colleges and universities that inevitably wind up with a diverse group of students on the cover of their admissions guide or webpage, even if such heterogeneity is elusive on their actual campus?

What makes the Microsoft case different (and interesting), of course, is that they weren't airbrushing diversity into their picture but rather out of it. Presumably the marketing department figured that Poland has a more homogeneous society than the U.S., so they modified the conference table trio accordingly. In a photo I often show to academic audiences when giving presentations about my own research, a few years ago the University of Wisconsin sparked the opposite controversy when they altered a shot of an all-White stadium crowd to include a Black student who wasn't really there (see the seemingly disembodied head hovering on the left margin of the photo).

But, still, I'm having a hard time seeing the Microsoft example as all that controversial. It just seems like business as usual. When it comes to advertising, I know that most products won't make me as attractive as the models who wear them in ads; I realize that most celebrity endorsers don't really drive those cars or drink those drinks; I recognize that most corporations and campuses aren't as diverse as they make themselves out to be in glossy brochures.

I mean, it's not as if Microsoft is airbrushing their actual employees out of an ad for the purpose of appealing to a particularly closed-minded customer. That would be a problem. This is just a staged photo to begin with of individuals who don't really work together and probably have no corporate background at all. Rather than underhandedly trying to come off as more diverse than they really are (like Wisconsin did), Microsoft altered this photo to make it seem more realistic/accessible to their target audience.

Now, I'm not implying that photos like these don't have an impact. They do. Dr. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns from Columbia University has found in her research that how a company depicts itself visually can have profound effects on people's attitudes. Specifically, Black professionals shown brochures for a fictitious company felt more trust towards it when the workforce was depicted as diverse versus non-diverse. Whites, too, are influenced by the diversity they see around them, as in some of my research we've found that the mere expectation of being part of a diverse group is sufficient to change people's attitudes and thought processes. And one can only imagine that false images of diversity can come back to haunt the company or college whose paying patrons eventually find out that all is not as it was made to seem.

Microsoft may have apologized for their digital racial engineering, but their manipulation of an already staged photo doesn't strike me as the sign of the apocalypse that others seem to think it is. If anything, to me the real moral of this story would be that if you're going to change the complexion of the head of one of the actors in your photo, probably a good idea to change the hand as well to match it (see below).

But, hey, they're the marketing gurus, not me. Maybe that's what executives look like in Poland.

Microsoft photos:

Da Meaninglessness of Denials

Sam Sommers — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:07:25 +0000

Not long ago, a baseball tradition was continued. No, not the All-Star Game or any other midsummer classic to which the old-school baseball fan has grown accustomed. I'm talking about that newest of annual rites, the anonymous leaking of additional players who failed drug tests in 2003. The latest names were of the two offensive stars of the mid-decade Boston Red Sox, Manny Ramirez (who was suspended for a subsequent drug violation this year in Los Angeles) and every Sox fan's favorite teddy bear/designated hitter, David Ortiz (left).

Now, in the often-agitated responses to my previous posts on the Henry Gates affair (here and here), I was called many things, including a partisan hack. I beg to differ, as there was nothing inherently political about either post. But in the interest of full disclosure, I will come right out and let you know the following in case it colors your reaction to all that follows in this entry: I am, indeed, a die-hard Yankees fan.

But I actually have no interest in disparaging Ortiz, the Red Sox, or their fans. At least, not today.

No, I'd rather look at the current state of baseball from a psychological perspective. And there's a lot that's interesting regarding the psychology of the contemporary baseball fan. First, there's the question of how fans react to each drip in the leaky faucet that is the steroids story. Nothing demonstrates the power of affiliation better than the fact that the team name on the front of a jersey can determine whether you react to each latest revelation with moral indignation or a willingness to extend the benefit of the doubt.

Because by this point, any rational assessment of baseball over the past two decades has to arrive at the conclusion that every team had a substantial number of users of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). To hold out hope that your team was somehow the exception defies all logic and is just another example of the romantic delusion often associated with baseball (think mystical cornfields and magical hand-carved bats).

But what really jumps out at me in the wake of the Ortiz revelations is how modern-day baseball fans find themselves playing part social psychologist, part investigative journalist just to keep up with the game. I, like many of my fellow fans, have had many a bar conversation/argument about which players we think were and weren't using PEDs. Often, such conversations include speculation as to a player's true disposition based on how he has, in the past, publicly reacted to allegations or to the steroid issue more generally. As in, he couldn't have been on steroids; remember when he publicly called for anyone flunking a drug test to be suspended for a year?

That was Ortiz, who made his plea for harsher sanctions this very pre-season.

Then there was Yankee Alex Rodriguez looking Katie Couric in the eye (sort of) and categorically denying steroid use a few years ago.

And Rafael Palmeiro, who wagged his finger in front of Congress as he issued a similar denial under oath several years ago.

In all three cases, it turns out that the strong denial or call for harsher punishment came from men with positive tests on their resumes. To those who support and root for them, this surprise was a cruel one. But it seems to me that you're just asking for trouble when you start to read anything at all into how strong someone's denial is in situations like these.

Psychologists have long known that in our pursuit to better understand those individuals around us, we learn much less from behavior that is expected under the circumstances than we do from unexpected actions. When one of my students tells me how much he is enjoying my class, that's nice to hear, but I don't learn much about this person other than that he wants to stay on my good side. When I run into a student and she tells me how disappointed she is in my class so far, now, that's an unexpected response given that I'm the one who determines final grades. There's someone who isn't afraid to speak her mind would be a reasonable inference to draw.

Applied to the steroids context, the principle that expected behavior teaches us little about the actor in question suggests that denials of PED use don't tell us very much. They're expected. Trying to read into how vociferously someone speaks out against steroids is a fool's errand, as Ortiz, Rodriguez, Palmeiro, and others have demonstrated. Am I glad, as a baseball fan, that Albert Pujols was on the cover of Sports Illustrated this year proclaiming his performance as clean and inviting the drug tests to prove it? Sure. But I've learned not to let this rule out the possibility that he, like anyone else in today's game, could have failed tests in his future (or in a supposedly under-Grand-Jury-seal past).

In general, when you think about the situations in which they emerge, denials–and the ways in which they're issued–don't tell us much at all. When is the last time that someone accused of racism didn't respond with a quick and forceful denial, sometimes even with the icing on the cake of and I even have Black friends! Remember how resolutely Bill Clinton asserted that he did not "have sexual relations with that woman"? Or, for that matter, the strong public condemnations of the immorality of Clinton's behavior from senators who later had their own sexual indiscretions, like John Ensign and Larry Craig?

Think about situations like these. When accused of wrongdoing, almost everyone will deny it. When an opponent is accused of wrongdoing, many will pile on. So we don't learn anything regarding the actual moral fiber of these people based on how strongly they deny wrongdoing or condemn others for their sins. We just learn that they have relatively normal, expected reactions to their circumstances. Unexpected behavior would tell us something more.

Unfortunately, we've reached the point when baseball players' denials have become essentially meaningless. Actually, it's worse than that. The end result for many a clean baseball player is a Catch 22: deny steroid use too vociferously, and we think you doth protest too much; stay silent and the specter of "no comment" looms ominously. But baseball fans have most certainly moved beyond the era of naivete that would allow us to think we'd hear anything meaningful in response to allegations of steroid use. When you think about the current state of the game, "Say it ain't so, Joe" just doesn't cut it anymore.