Marty Kaplan

September 19, 2011

Opinion: Letting animals vote

By Marty Kaplan

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You look terrific.  Have you lost weight?  Are you working out?  You’ve got this glow about you.  I bet you’re in love.  Wait—you were promoted.  That’s it, isn’t it?  They finally recognized how talented you are.  By the way, did you know that the average global surface temperature has gone up one degree over the last three decades?  It’s true.  Here, have a look at this chart.

That approach, or something like it, is how you might get climate change deniers to change their minds, according to a new study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, the social scientists whose previous study dropped this downer bomb: When people are misinformed, giving them just facts to correct the errors only makes them cling to them more tenaciously.  Apparently there’s something in our brains that resists contradiction.  It hurts our heads to change our minds.

The earlier, depressing study by Nyhan and Reifler was called “When Corrections Fail.”  But their new manuscript, “Opening the Political Mind?,” despite the question mark in its title, is more hopeful.  Here’s one of the experiments they report on.

Let’s say you think that the economy is the country’s most important issue, and that you disapprove of Obama’s record on the economy.

You’re randomly assigned to one of two groups we’ll call A and B.

If you’re in A, you’re told this: 

Please pick the characteristic or value from this list that is most important to you: Being smart or getting good grades.  Creativity.  Relationships with friends or family.  Social skills.  Business skills.  Sense of humor.  Living in the moment.  Physical attractiveness.  Athletic ability.  (There are more, but you get the idea.)

Now in a few sentences, please describe a personal experience when the value you picked was especially important to you and made you feel good about yourself.  Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or how well written it is; just focus on your thoughts and feelings.

Next you’re shown a graph of the total number of nonfarm jobs in the U.S. from January 2010 to January 2011 (around when the study was done).  The line rises.  At the start of 2010, there were about 129.3 million on payrolls; a year later, the number had gone up by about a million.  (Today, it’s 131.1 million).

Then you’re asked this: Would you say that, compared to the beginning of last year, the number of people in the country with jobs has gone up, gone down or stayed about the same?

I’ll tell you how A answered, but first here’s what happened if you were in B, the control group.  Before you were shown the same graph, you were not invited to think about an experience that made you feel good about yourself.  Instead, you were asked to list everything you had to eat or drink in the last 24 hours.

Here’s what Nyhan and Reifler found: A significant number of people in B, despite seeing the graph, said that employment had gone down, while a significant number of people in A changed their minds.  “Amazingly,” they say, “the act of writing an essay about a time in which they upheld an important value substantially reduces these respondents’ reported misperceptions about job growth…. Affirmation appears to make it easier to hold a factual belief that would otherwise impose a significant psychic cost.” In other words, if you bolster people’s self-worth, they’re more likely to be open-minded.

I’m definitely encouraged by something else they found: people are more likely to accept facts when they’re conveyed by graphics.  That’s good news for journalists whose stories are illustrated with charts.  A picture – a graph – actually does turn out to be worth a thousand words.

But I’m ambivalent about the news about affirmation.

Sure, if boosting someone’s self-esteem is the route to convincing them that tax rates are at a historic low, and that the Bush tax cuts are the cause of most of the looming deficit, then I’d be delighted to laugh at their jokes, praise their buns, admire their swing – whatever it takes. 

But if pumping up someone’s sense of self-worth can get them to accept an uncomfortable fact, maybe the opposite is also true: Running someone down makes them more resistant to reality.  Isn’t that what demagogues do when they tell people they’re victims?  Elites think you’re inferior; secular humanists think you’re deluded; tree huggers think you’re gullible; illegals think you’re chumps; China thinks you’re toast.  There’s nothing like inducing a siege mentality to make people impervious to evidence that contradicts them. 

The link between feeling good and facing facts is a reminder that reason doesn’t rule us.  It’s uncomfortable to admit it, but we’re animals.  We eat too much fat and salt not just because of advertising, but because of chemistry; it’s an addiction in our genes.  In the workplace, pretty people and tall people have an edge.  That’s not the prejudice of our minds; it’s the wiring of our brains.  Fear, sex and gossip get high ratings not because we’re morally weak, but because paying attention to them turned out to be evolutionarily adaptive. 

For every Jefferson who praises the power of education to enlighten us, there is a Madison to remind us how far from angels we are, and how dangerous it is to put too much power in too few hands, no matter how cultivated the owners of those hands are.  We love to talk about campaigns being great national conversations, and about elections being wonderful opportunities to discuss the issues, but when we pick leaders, it‘s our gut that does the choosing.  We Homo sapiens respond more to stories than to statistics, more to feelings than to facts, more to images than to issues, more to drums than to debates, more to intuition than to information.  This is not a failing of our character.  It is a characteristic of our species.  And in America, we bipeds get to vote. 

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.  Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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Love this man and his words of wisdom

Comment by Guy on 9/19/11 at 4:14 pm

To work that magic, first one needs an audience. The technique works, and everybody reading this has used it to butter up someone, before getting to the point. For those of us, like me, who really have a project that’s worth millions, but lack the initial funds, is there a way to reach the VIPs of gummint upon whom that magic can be wroght?

Comment by Harry on 9/19/11 at 7:56 pm

Never understood why some people are so close-minded and if it was possible to reach them. This explains a lot. Maybe there is hope.

Comment by Andi on 9/19/11 at 8:52 pm

So THAT explains why Marty has been so obtuse to the facts about arab terrorists. Marty you are Sooooo smart and handsome, You are the greastest prof. in the whole world. Now do you understand that Obama loves Arabs first and that is NOT good for the Jews?  There’s Alabama and Obama, but the best bama is NOBAMA.

Comment by abbushuki on 9/20/11 at 12:00 am

MK at it again. Posiiting that due all homo sapiens animals,  all behave identically. Nuance escapes him.

He posits if more employed in 2011 than 2010 employment has increased. Arithmetically perhaps,  but not statistically. Due population aging, immigration etc. unemployment has actually risen. The saw, figures don’t lie but liars can figure in play here.

Marty, muddled in the mundane, again exposes his underbelly. Yes, we are animals, but thank God all individually distinctive. Some of us even capable of reason. Aunty Mame

Comment by Mr. Againster on 9/20/11 at 9:10 am

Hello? Is this a Jewish Journal? Jewish, like in J-E-W-I-S-H?

Comment by Mini on 9/20/11 at 11:00 am

No,Mini it is not, its the Farm and Ranch Journel.

Comment by Honey Bee on 9/20/11 at 3:50 pm

Kaplan does what most liberals do.  He gives and twists too many facts to come up with he wants you to believe.  And it is seldom wisdom, common sense, true facts, and anything really wothwhile.

Comment by Earl on 9/21/11 at 11:08 am

it’s interesting that only the liberal commenters actually address the topic—the others offer just insults, displaying the same negative qualities they ascribe to others.

Comment by Andi on 9/21/11 at 11:51 am

Hi Andi,

Perhaps in your infinite liberalness you’d take the time to define exactly what Mr. Kaplans topic IS;  in 700 characters or less please. Aunty Mame

Comment by Mr. Againster on 9/21/11 at 1:19 pm

Kaplan, being a typical liberal-leftist doesn’t see a difference between Animals and Humans. Ever hear of an animal Vetinarian.  Who built the building on Ventura Blvd.? Pretty impressive huh?  And Kaplan always believes statistics are more important than anything else. Only his leftist statistics he states.(Which are bogus). How about honest statistics for a change.  Most Americans are more conservative than liberal, believe almost unanimously in G-D, etc.

Comment by Earl on 9/26/11 at 11:47 am

P.S. Wonder what Kaplan thinks of the hikers just released from Iran who blame America equally with Iran.(Debra Saunders excellent piece in Sun. Daily News). Saunders: It is my wish that Bauer, Fattal, and Stroud should realize what a great Country the US is. Iran framed them, arrested them, and jailed them for hiking. In contrast, America gave them a Univ.education that trained them to hate America first.(UC Berkeley)or afterserving time in prison for(hiking) coequally with Iran.

Comment by Earl on 9/26/11 at 11:52 am

Brilliant, she gushes.

I don’t quite grasp the clarity, until it is framed by someone like you.

Why aren’t you writing books?  I’m also shocked with the comments I’ve read so far (first time on this site).  It seems when someone can’t properly analyze an issue respectfully, they resort to visceral bludgeoning by name calling as though that provides some kind of a definition.  (However, in reacting so, they DO prove Mr. Kaplan’s point

You’re courageous to write.  It’s like a mine field.

Comment by Hana on 9/28/11 at 8:32 pm

“Sticks and stones” Hana. Mr. Kaplan not “courageous to write”; our defenders courageous to fight! Sad, that you can’t see that not-so-subtle distinction.

Marty loves to write, but he’s most-often wrong. That’s why in a readership where “progressives” the majority; most responders to Mr. Kaplan’s point of view-disagree.
The goal is to disagree without being disagreeable.

Looking for a forum where all participants agree Hana?  You’ll not find it here. Aunty Mame

Comment by stuart Weiss on 10/01/11 at 9:49 am

Please visit these intelligent websites: WWW.DENNISPRAGER.COM and WWW.PRAGERU.COM. And please do not be offended or take anything seriously that leftist college Professor Marty Kaplan writes.  The man knows not what he is writing.

Comment by Nickie on 10/01/11 at 3:25 pm

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