The God Squad, Part 3: Projection

When I took General Psychology many years ago, I memorized the definitions of the Freudian defense mechanisms—repression, regression, reaction formation, etc. One of them was projection, usually defined as attributing one's negative qualities to other people. For example, a person who is tempted to cheat on his or her spouse may be suspicious that the partner is fooling around. It isn't clear, however, that projection should be limited to negative attributes.

A more general principle that encompasses Freudian projection is the false consensus effect—a cognitive bias in which we overestimate the percentage of people who share our attitudes and behaviors. Social psychologists usually explain false consensus at least in part by a need for social validation. If other people share our attitudes, presumably those attitudes are more likely to be “correct.” (The fact that we selectively associate with people similar to ourselves is another explanation for false consensus.)

The YouGov poll cited in Part 1 asked participants whether they thought Jesus would support or oppose each of the seven social policies included in the survey. In general, participants thought Jesus was more conservative than they were, and Protestants thought he was further to the right than Catholics did. However, there were large differences between what Republicans, Independents and Democrats thought Jesus's opinions were.

Do you think Jesus would support . . .?	Republican	Independent	Democrat
Gay marriage	9%	32%	48%
Legal abortion	6%	19%	29%
Death penalty for murderers	43%	35%	27%
Stricter gun laws	28%	40%	68%
High taxes on the wealthy	18%	43%	63%
Universal healthcare	23%	52%	80%
Reducing carbon emissions	31%	51%	68%

© www.equinoxpub.com

Decades of social psychological research show that one of the best predictors of friendship is attitude similarity. We like people who agree with us. It follows that if you are going to spend time conversing with an imaginary friend, you would want to create one who shares your attitudes. Thus, Republicans see Jesus as a Republican and Democrats see him as a Democrat. As sociologist Phil Zuckerman noted:

[R]eligion is one big Rorschach test. People look at the content of their religious tradition . . . and they basically pick and choose what suits their own secular outlook.

This is most consistent with a false consensus interpretation of projection. What better way to increase your confidence in your own political attitudes than to believe they are shared by the gods?

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 1:  Religion as Selfish Individualism

The God Squad, Part 2:  The "Greening" of Christianity

The God Squad, Part 2: The "Greening" of Christianity

In Part 1, it was noted that religious people are less supportive of reducing carbon emissions than non-religious people. In the last couple of decades, several surveys have shown a negative relationship between religiosity and environmental concern. One commentator sees Christian disregard for the environment as rooted in the Old Testament claim that God gave Man dominion over the Earth, and the New Testament promise of the imminent return of Jesus, which implies to some that they might as well trash the place.

A new study by John Clements and others analyzes data from the 2010 General Social Survey, with a sample size of 1430. Environmental concern is divided into three components: perceived dangerousness of environmental problems, willingness to pay or sacrifice to protect the environment, and self-reported environmentally-conscious behaviors. Here are the results by religious identification. Christians are less environmentally concerned than non-religious people or members of other religious groups.

Perceived Environmental Dangerousness

% choosing “dangerous” or “extremely dangerous”. . .	Christian	Non-Christian	Non-religious
Air pollution caused by cars	44.4%	57.8%	50.0%
Pesticides and chemicals used in farming	51.7%	71.8%	56.4%
Air pollution caused by industry	64.5%	69.4%	72.4%
Pollution of rivers, lakes and streams	68.4%	75.3%	75.6%

Willingness to Pay or Sacrifice

% choosing “willing” or “very willing”. . .	Christian	Non-Christian	Non-religious
Pay much higher prices	43.8%	59.4%	55.2%
Accept cuts in standard of living	32.6%	45.7%	43.7%
Pay much higher taxes	28.5%	52.2%	43.7%

Private Environmental Behaviors

% choosing “sometimes” or “always”. . .	Christian	Non-Christian	Non-religious
Sort glass, cans or plastic for recycling	61.5%	75.7%	62.9%
Buy fruits and vegetables grown without pesticides or chemicals	33.5%	50.7%	35.0%
Cut back on driving a car	16.1%	31.2%	23.8%

Christians have also been slower to accept the evidence that the Earth is warming. Here are the results of a 2009 survey (n = 1502) by the Pew Research Center.

Since the mid-1990s, the mass media have been publicizing a reform movement within Christianity that claims Christians have a duty to protect the environment. Even Pope Francis has argued for “wise stewardship” of the environment. Has this movement had any impact on Christians' attitudes and behavior?

The same measures of environmental concern were used in the 1993 General Social Survey. Clements and his colleagues found no evidence of the “greening” of Christianity. Self-identified Christians reported less environmental concern than non-Christians and non-religious people in both 1993 and 2010, and there was no significant change in Christian environmental concern. The only exception was a slight moderation of environmental attitudes among evangelical Protestants, which still left them far behind other denominations.

The good news for the environment is that the number of non-religious Americans is increasing, especially among young adults. However, the change is probably too gradual to save the planet.

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 1:  Religion as Selfish Individualism

The God Squad, Part 3:  Projection

The God Squad, Part 1: Religion as Selfish Individualism

YouGov.com, a polling organization used by many social scientists, recently released the results of a survey on religion and political attitudes. The data were collected on July 1 and 2 from a representative sample of 1000 Americans who are registered as volunteers with the organization. People who identified themselves as either Protestants, Catholics, of some other religion, or as athiests or agnostics were asked whether they supported or opposed seven social policies.

Do you support . . .?	Protestant	Catholic	Other religion	Agnostic or atheist
Gay marriage	31%	44%	59%	89%
Legal abortion	31%	41%	62%	90%
Death penalty for murderers	59%	66%	54%	48%
Stricter gun laws	44%	55%	54%	65%
High taxes on the wealthy	49%	57%	61%	74%
Universal healthcare	46%	55%	57%	81%
Reducing carbon emissions	55%	63%	70%	85%

Similar results are obtained when religiosity is defined by self-reported frequency of prayer, or by claiming to have been “born again.” This supports other research showing that religious people are more conservative than non-religious people, and that Protestants are more conservative than other religious groups. As you would expect, the differences are greatest on support for gay marriage and abortion, but differences of opinion on health care and taxes are also quite substantial.

Although YouGov did not cross-tabulate the relationship between religion and political affiliation, the differences in attitudes between Republicans, Independents and Democrats closely parallel the differences between religious groups. Exit poll data from the 2012 election also support the connection between religion and political preference.

Do you support . . .?	Republican	Independent	Democrat
Gay marriage	17%	49%	65%
Legal abortion	24%	48%	65%
Death penalty for murderers	68%	60%	50%
Stricter gun laws	19%	44%	82%
High taxes on the wealthy	28%	52%	81%
Universal healthcare	14%	51%	85%
Reducing carbon emissions	40%	64%	78%

These results might give pause to people who claim to be religious liberals. For example, if you believe that religious people have a duty to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or behave nonaggressively, how have you arrived at an interpretation of Christianity that is so sharply at odds with most of your fellow Christians? If you are contributing to religious organizations, is your money used to support policies with which you personally disagree, and to persuade vulnerable people to adopt the world view represented by these poll results?

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 2:  The "Greening" of Christianity

The God Squad, Part 3:  Projection

The Matthew Effect

The Matthew effect is a term introduced by sociologist Robert Merton in 1968. It takes its name from Matthew 25:29, the parable of the talents:

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.

In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Merton suggested that the positive behaviors of high status people are more likely to be recognized and rewarded than those of low status individuals, while high status people's mistakes are more likely to be overlooked. This creates a positive feedback loop in which increased confidence causes their performance to improve and their reputation to increase over time. The opposite happens to low status individuals. Their mistakes are more apparent, leading to negative feedback, stress and disruption of performance.

Merton also coined the term self-fulfilling prophecy, in which predictions result in behaviors that cause the predicted outcome to occur.  The Matthew effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy in which the observer's positive (or negative) expectations cause more (or less) successful behavior in the target over time. This has broad implications for people's self-esteem and the inequality of their social and economic outcomes.

Two business school professors, Jerry Kim and Brayden King, looked for evidence of the Matthew effect in major league baseball. They predicted that a pitcher's status would influence calls by the home plate umpire. Pitcher status was defined as the number of times he had previously been chosen to the All-Star team. It was predicted that, as the number of All-Star appearances by a pitcher increased, more of their balls would be called strikes (over-recognition) and fewer of their strikes would be called balls (under-recognition). The study was made possible by the Pitch f/x system, in place in all major league ballparks, in which cameras objectively measure whether each pitch is in the strike zone.

© www.sportvision.com

The data base was all the pitches taken (not swung at) by the batter during every game of the 2008 and 2009 seasons. These pitches must then be called either a ball or a strike by the umpire, and each call was evaluated for correctness. These data were related to over two dozen pitcher, batter, catcher, umpire and situational characteristics. Some of these variables are of real importance to baseball fans, but they could all be statistically controlled in order to evaluate the status hypothesis.

Baseball fans may be interested in the big picture—the distribution of correct and incorrect calls among the almost 800,000 calls the researchers measured.

	Called Ball	Called Strike
Actual Ball	87.10%	12.90%
Actual Strike	18.80%	81.20%

The umpires were correct about 85% of the time. (There were more actual balls than actual strikes.) Umpire bias favored the batter, since more strikes were called balls than balls were called strikes. The count (the number of balls and strikes to that point) had a big effect. For example, the likelihood that the umpire mistakenly called a strike was 62% lower when the count was 0-2 and 49% higher when the count was 3-0. Apparently, umpires don't like their call to end an at-bat. Umpire calls also tended to favor the home team. Errors of both over- and under-recognition increased with the situational importance of the at-bat.

The hypothesis was strongly confirmed. Look first at over-recognition: Holding all other variables constant, the more trips a pitcher had made to the All-Star game, the more likely a ball was to be called a strike. The probability of a mistaken strike call increased from 12.8% among pitchers who had no All-Star appearances to 14.9% among pitchers with five or more appearances. Each additional trip to the All-Star game increased the likelihood of over-recognition by 4.9%.

The situation was reversed for under-recognition, also confirming the hypothesis. A strike thrown by a pitcher with no All-Star appearances was mistakenly called a ball 18.9% of the time, but only 17.2% of the time if the pitcher had five or more appearances. Each trip to the All-Star game decreased the likelihood of under-recognition by 2.7%.

In further analyses, the authors were able to show that, with this large data set, pitcher status also had statistically significant effects on the outcome of the at-bat (the total bases reached by the batter) and the game (whether the pitcher's team won). In an analysis that made some admittedly questionable assumptions, they calculated that umpire errors alone were worth approximately $575,000 in salary to a high status pitcher over the course of his career.

© totallycoolpix.com

Of course, Matthew effects can occur any time one person evaluates another—a teacher grading a student, a boss rating a worker, a reviewer reading a manuscript, etc. As a demonstration of how quickly performance expectations can occur, consider a study by Ned Jones and others. Participants watched a videotape of a college student answering 30 difficult questions, with feedback after each item indicating he had answered 15 of them correctly. In the ascending condition, the student gradually improved. He got three of the first ten right, five of the second ten, and seven of the last ten. In the descending condition, the pattern was reversed. (The difficulty of the questions was held constant by asking exactly the same questions in the opposite order.) First impressions mattered a great deal. The student was rated as more intelligent in the descending than in the ascending condition. The authors had hoped the ascending student would get some credit for improvement, but it didn't happen.

In this experiment, as in baseball, the expectations were based on the target's actual past performance. However, expectations can be based on gender, race, class or other social categories. In other words, stereotypes based on group membership can create self-fulfilling prophecies leading to discrimination.

There is no reason to think that umpires and ballplayers are consciously aware of the systematic nature of these errors. A New York Times article about the Kim and King study included the usual quotes from baseball people expressing their surprise at or disbelief in the results. Most teachers, bosses and reviewers probably think they're being objective, too.

In major league baseball, the technology is already in place to have balls and strikes called automatically using the Pitch f/x system. Why would anyone (except maybe Clayton Kershaw) not think that's a good idea?

You may also be interested in reading:

Is Democracy Possible? Part 1 (see also Parts 2 and 3)

Deja Vu

Does Money Make You Mean?

Headline News

Although newspapers get most of their national and international news from larger newspapers or wire services, headlines are written locally either by editors or headline-writing specialists. Friday's (June 6) front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette contains two headlines I consider misleading.

The lead story was about General Motors' internal investigation of why it failed to recall cars with faulty ignition switches for over a decade, which caused several deaths. The investigation led to the firing of 15 GM employees. The headline reads, “GM Places Blame in Recall Mix-up.” One would expect GM's explanation of its own behavior to be self-serving, but the headline, by referring to the scandal as a “mix-up,” gives it an even more benign interpretation than GM's own corporate spin doctors, who, according to the article, cited “a pattern of 'incompetence and neglect.'”

A second article concerns long waiting times for medical care at the Veterans Administration. The headline states, “18 More Deaths Tied to VA Wait List.” The problem with this headline is the words “tied to.” As the article explains, it is not yet known whether longer waiting times contributed to these newly discovered deaths. This headline commits the opposite error of the GM headline by making the scandal appear worse than it is presently known to be.

These two cases are consistent with the possibility that, when wrongdoing is suspected, newspapers give corporations the benefit of the doubt, but are willing to believe the worst about government agencies. Of course, the VA doesn't advertise in the Post-Gazette the way Chevy dealers do.

The worst headlines are those that imply the exact opposite of the article. On May 16, we read, “FCC Pushes Net Neutrality Proposal.” This is technically correct, since the FCC's proposal deals with the issue of net neutrality, but I suspect most readers would infer from this headline that the FCC was proposing a policy of net neutrality. Only by reading the article do we find that they are actually proposing an end to net neutrality by allowing internet service providers to charge companies such as Netflix higher prices for faster data transmission, leaving the rest of us with slower service and potentially higher prices as these companies pass on their costs to the consumer.

© guide.cred.columbia.edu

Headlines are important.  Not only do people use them to decide whether to read the article, but they create a first impression that can influence the reader's interpretation of the article. Psychologists call this the prior entry effect. Early information about an object or event has a greater effect on our final impression than later information. Media theorists call it a framing effect. A headline frames a news story by creating an expectation about what information is to follow. Expectations can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies when we see what we expected to see. The word "mix-up" implies that the actions of GM employees were unintentional, even though no event described in the article conforms to the everyday meaning of a "mix-up," in which one object or piece of information is mistaken for another.

How do misleading headlines get written? My guess is that, under time pressure, newspaper employees don't always read the articles carefully, but write headlines based on their own expectations of what will be in them. These examples imply that more time and thought should be given to headline-writing.

You may also be interested in reading:

In Denial

Motivated Reasoning

The Media Select Their Candidate

Social Psychologists Set an Example

Sandra Bem, a feminist social psychologist and the author of gender schema theory, died May 20 at her home in Ithaca, NY, at age 69. Her husband, Daryl Bem, is also a prominent social psychologist. The following is the relevant section of her obituary.

The cause of death was suicide.

When she was diagnosed four years ago with Alzheimer's, she said she would end her life while she still could when the disease became too debilitating to continue.

After years of expensive medical treatments, she stopped all care six months ago and decided it was time to die.

She bought a copy of “The Peaceful Pill Handbook” and chose to take her life with pentobarbital.

The family held a service for her two days before her death.

“Instead of a funeral service, the family met with her last Sunday, a group gathering where we all shared our memories of her and our thoughts and feelings,” said her husband, Darly Bem, 75, also a nationally recognized psychologist. “Everyone was aware that Tuesday was the deadline.”

After spending her last day with Daryl, during which the couple went for a long walk, watched a movie and had dinner, Sandra took the drug at about 7 p.m. Tuesday and died in her sleep.

Thanks are due to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for having the courage to publish this information. I suspect some readers were not pleased.

Health Insurance and Mortality, Part 2

Please read Part 1 of this post before continuing.

Not surprisingly, there have been several criticisms of the Sommers, Long and Baicker study. Here are the main ones I've been able to identify so far, and my comments on each.

• It's too good to be true. The New York Times reports that experts are “skeptical of the magnitude and suddenness of the decline” in mortality. According to Dr. Joseph Antos, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, “Health care is a much more involved process—you don't just sign up and suddenly get well.” This objection, of course, does not explain the results. These researchers may be overlooking the fact that being without health insurance is a psychological stressor, the removal of which may have immediate health benefits.

• The results contradict those of the Oregon Medicaid study. A 2013 study by Baicker, et al., examined the effects of Medicaid expansion in Oregon using a randomized control group design. (The opportunity to sign up for Medicaid was determined by lottery.) Although this study found economic and psychological benefits of Medicaid, its effects on objective measures of health were disappointing. Blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels were all lower in the Medicaid group, but the differences were not statistically significant. However, the Oregon study's sample size was too small to detect medically important health benefits. The Massachusetts study has many more particpants. If the same percentage decline in mortality observed in the Massachusetts study had been seen in Oregon, it too would not have been statistically significant. The two studies are not inconsistent. An important strength of the Massachusetts study is its larger sample size. Furthermore, it measured the effects of the entire health reform package, not just Medicaid expansion.

• It costs too much. Using the Sommers, et al., data, Cannon calculated that it cost Massachusetts $4 million per life saved. He argues that this is not cost effective. However, this assumes that the only benefit people received from Romneycare was when it saved their lives. It ignores the many health and quality of life benefits people receive from medical treatments for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries. What is the value of a knee or hip replacement that allows a person to walk free of pain for 20 years? How do you measure the benefits to a family of avoiding bankruptcy and the loss of their home?

• Massachusetts is different from other states. Massachusetts is “whiter and more affluent” than most other states, but the matched comparison groups control for race and income. It could be argued that Massachusetts has a more effective health care system (more doctors, better-equipped hospitals) than other states. However, a convincing alternative explanation must explain not just lower mortality in Massachusetts, but all the results. Why did the mortality rate change from 2001-2005 to 2007-2010? Wouldn't a better health care system be expected to help people over 65 as well? As Sommers, et al., state in their conclusion:

Although we cannot rule out unmeasured confounders, it is challenging to identify factors other than health care reform that might have produced this pattern of results: a declining mortality rate in Massachusetts since 2007 not present in similar counties elsewhere in the country, primarily for health care-amenable causes of death in adults aged 20 to 64 years (but not elderly adults), concentrated among poor and uninsured areas and not explained by changes in poverty or unemployment rates.

Of course, health insurance is useless if there are no doctors or hospitals in your area. The quality of the health system may have interacted with health care reform to produce a better result in Massachusetts than would be expected in other states. This does not explain away the results, but it may limit our ability to generalize from them.

• More research is needed. This cliché is, of course, trivially true. However, it is unrealistic to expect definitive studies of effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), since it is being implemented simultaneously in all 50 states. There are no experimental and control groups, only before and after comparisons, the results of which can easily be dismissed as caused by other changes taking place in society at the same time. About the best we can expect will be comparisons between states that do or do not expand Medicaid. (Pennsylvanians will be happy to know that, thanks to Governor Tom Corbett and our legislature, future researchers will be counting the number of excess deaths in our state.) However, states that are not expanding Medicaid are already known to differ both economically and politically from other states. And while Medicaid expansion is an important provision of the ACA, it is only a part of it.

In short, the Sommers, et al., study may be the best that is available for the foreseeable future. Even conservative critics of health care reform are granting it grudging respect.  Megan McArdle stated, "(A)fter yesterday's report, I've revised the probability of 'huge benefits' [from health care reform] upward, and you should do the same."

You may also be interested in reading:

Health Insurance and Mortality, Part 1

Big News From Oregon:  Not All of It Good

The Coverage Gap:  The Real Failure of Obamacare

Romneycare:  The Bottom Line