[Winstonm]

https://www.theguard...-how-you-say-it

Quote

Research in framing was spearheaded by classic experiments by Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator Amos Tversky in the 1980s. Their research upended the assumption that humans behave rationally – an assumption that a number of economic models previously rested on. They instead showed that we are often consistently irrational, relying on a number of mental shortcuts to speed up our reasoning, which can make us remarkably sensitive to how things are framed.

[FelicityR]

The stock market is controlled by mathematicians, not economists, and politics is controlled by psychologists, not politicians. (This sentence just came to me as I prepared to write a reply here.) I wonder how true this is myself?

The term 'spin doctor' is familiar in the UK. Just another name for psychological reasoning under the pretext of public relations. 'Framing' is just another spin, excuse the pun, on manipulating a situation to present a positive or negative viewpoint.

Once upon a time politicians told the truth and honoured, or at least tried to honour their commitments. These days, I'll be quite happy if a fair number of them would drop dead tomorrow! (I realise that is perhaps excessive but my faith in politics has been severely shattered over the last few decades.)

Psychological manipulation by politicians? Whatever next...

[kenberg]

"Their research upended the assumption that humans behave rationally "
There are people who actually believed that???

An interesting example of framing: Becky and I watch old movies and recently The Long Goodbye was on. We watched about fifteen minutes of it, decided it was seriously stupid, and watched something else. [Namely Les Ronde-Vous d"Anna, which I recommend]. On a whim I looked up the movie we skipped on the Wikipedia, since it had a Rotten Tomatoes rating of ninety some percent, about 60 percent more than I would have given it.


The Wik quotes a number of reviews of the initial; release, such as "quite sleek, marvelously and inventively photographed ... The problem is that the Altman-Brackett Marlowe, played by Elliott Gould, is an untidy, unshaven, semiliterate, dim-wit slob who could not locate a missing skyscraper and would be refused service at a hot dog stand. He is not Chandler's Marlowe, or mine, and I can't find him interesting, sympathetic or amusing, and I can't be sure who will." So the studio re-thought it. As near as I can tell, they did not change anything except the way the film was presented. Then they got their 90 whatever percent ratings. I think that the first reviews had it right.


Anyway, back to the article. Anyone who uses psychological research to conclude that other people are irrational but does not apply that research to themselves is making a pretty obvious error. We all often make decisions that we would find very difficult to claim are fully rational. Does anyone really think otherwise?

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-01, 06:23, said:

"Their research upended the assumption that humans behave rationally "
There are people who actually believed that???

An interesting example of framing: Becky and I watch old movies and recently The Long Goodbye was on. We watched about fifteen minutes of it, decided it was seriously stupid, and watched something else. [Namely Les Ronde-Vous d"Anna, which I recommend]. On a whim I looked up the movie we skipped on the Wikipedia, since it had a Rotten Tomatoes rating of ninety some percent, about 60 percent more than I would have given it.


The Wik quotes a number of reviews of the initial; release, such as "quite sleek, marvelously and inventively photographed ... The problem is that the Altman-Brackett Marlowe, played by Elliott Gould, is an untidy, unshaven, semiliterate, dim-wit slob who could not locate a missing skyscraper and would be refused service at a hot dog stand. He is not Chandler's Marlowe, or mine, and I can't find him interesting, sympathetic or amusing, and I can't be sure who will." So the studio re-thought it. As near as I can tell, they did not change anything except the way the film was presented. Then they got their 90 whatever percent ratings. I think that the first reviews had it right.


Anyway, back to the article. Anyone who uses psychological research to conclude that other people are irrational but does not apply that research to themselves is making a pretty obvious error. We all often make decisions that we would find very difficult to claim are fully rational. Does anyone really think otherwise?

Although I am no expert in the matter, my interest has led me to informed reading that tells me a tremendous amount of economic theory - especially that embraced politically since 1980 or so - has been based on the assumption of "rational actors".

However, I thought the most interesting points of this article were in learning to analyze our own foibles in rational thinking and in how to frame talks to someone who is of another persuasion. I think it is critical to somehow get back to the point where both sides have respect for their differences and seek middle ground rather than a scorched earth policy.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2019-October-01, 06:23, said:

Anyway, back to the article. Anyone who uses psychological research to conclude that other people are irrational but does not apply that research to themselves is making a pretty obvious error. We all often make decisions that we would find very difficult to claim are fully rational. Does anyone really think otherwise?

What the research shows is that these irrational decisions have consistent patterns. There are common mental shortcuts that lead us in specific irrational directions. The advertising and sales industry has been preying on these behaviors for generations.

Read Daniel Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" book, for example. Or Kahneman's own "Thinking Fast and Slow".

Last week's "Hidden Brain" NPR show contained interviews with researchers who studied how fear of death affects behavior. One experiment they ran was to compare sentencing decisions between judges who were subtly reminded of their mortality and those who weren't -- sentences from the ones who were reminded about death averaged 3 times longer. This is not a small effect, yet the judges generally claimed that they didn't think they were behaving differently from normal. They performed a number of different experiments like this, and consistently found that reminders of death cause people to become more conservative, religious, and embrace community values. The rise of populism is one effect of this, it has been stoked by politicians raising fear of immigrants ("they're sending rapists and murderers").

It's really hard to be introspective enough to recognize when it's happening to you.

[Winstonm]

The differences between right and left are structural as well, which has been shown. A knowledgeable reader of a simple MRI scan can determine by brain construction alone and with about 65% accuracy a person's political views. Those differences also affect how we process information. That makes it really difficult to frame outside of your reference because you have to think like someone else, which, to me. also helps explain the correlation between tribalism and the proliferation of social media - the instantaneous nature of social media does not lend itself to careful and thoughtful framing based on someone else's nature.

A viewpoint framed and expressed outside our own instinctual processing comes across as either senselessly naive or as an attack.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-01, 10:00, said:

Although I am no expert in the matter, my interest has led me to informed reading that tells me a tremendous amount of economic theory - especially that embraced politically since 1980 or so - has been based on the assumption of "rational actors".

However, I thought the most interesting points of this article were in learning to analyze our own foibles in rational thinking and in how to frame talks to someone who is of another persuasion. I think it is critical to somehow get back to the point where both sides have respect for their differences and seek middle ground rather than a scorched earth policy.

Yes, but the article addressed politics. If the point was that the typical investment adviser is not someone who inspires trust, sure, I agree. If they want to say that rational economic theory is based on a false assumption, I might well agree with that also, but I would hope the economists would have noticed that their theory wasn't working all that well long before some psychologists did some experiments.

But, as noted above the article pays attention to the 2016 election. Are they really claiming that we need to read papers in Psy research to understand that a typical voter is not prepared to fully defend his views on rational grounds? There is a continuum form "fully ratioins" to "bats... nuts" and most of us lie somewhere between the extremes. But I am not well-prepared to debate most major topics, I do the best I can to understand them but I know I have gaps and I know I have thoughts that are more from experience and inclination rather than rational analysis. Surely that describes most people and surely everyone realized this before any psychologist wrote a paper on it.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2019-October-01, 10:03, said:

What the research shows is that these irrational decisions have consistent patterns. There are common mental shortcuts that lead us in specific irrational directions. The advertising and sales industry has been preying on these behaviors for generations.

Read Daniel Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" book, for example. Or Kahneman's own "Thinking Fast and Slow".

Last week's "Hidden Brain" NPR show contained interviews with researchers who studied how fear of death affects behavior. One experiment they ran was to compare sentencing decisions between judges who were subtly reminded of their mortality and those who weren't -- sentences from the ones who were reminded about death averaged 3 times longer. This is not a small effect, yet the judges generally claimed that they didn't think they were behaving differently from normal. They performed a number of different experiments like this, and consistently found that reminders of death cause people to become more conservative, religious, and embrace community values. The rise of populism is one effect of this, it has been stoked by politicians raising fear of immigrants ("they're sending rapists and murderers").

It's really hard to be introspective enough to recognize when it's happening to you.

I am unsuccessfully trying to imagine this experiment with judges. Some randomly selected judges were reminded by some experimenter of their own mortality and as a result some guys are serving 30 years instead of 10 years? If that's not what is meant, what is it that actually happened? Sounds as if some guys with long sentences have a rather unusual basis for appeal.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-01, 15:27, said:

Yes, but the article addressed politics. If the point was that the typical investment adviser is not someone who inspires trust, sure, I agree. If they want to say that rational economic theory is based on a false assumption, I might well agree with that also, but I would hope the economists would have noticed that their theory wasn't working all that well long before some psychologists did some experiments.

But, as noted above the article pays attention to the 2016 election. Are they really claiming that we need to read papers in Psy research to understand that a typical voter is not prepared to fully defend his views on rational grounds? There is a continuum form "fully ratioins" to "bats... nuts" and most of us lie somewhere between the extremes. But I am not well-prepared to debate most major topics, I do the best I can to understand them but I know I have gaps and I know I have thoughts that are more from experience and inclination rather than rational analysis. Surely that describes most people and surely everyone realized this before any psychologist wrote a paper on it.

The article I thought was about framing and how critical it is to all of our thought processes - the rest of the article (politics and such) was used as examples to show that.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-01, 15:51, said:

The article I thought was about framing and how critical it is to all of our thought processes - the rest of the article (politics and such) was used as examples to show that.

Perhaps so .
Beneath the headline it starts "The 2016 election ..."
The first paragraph begins "In March 2016, before Trump was selected..." and then talks later about Clinton. The second paragraph speaks of Democrats, the third of Trump, the fourth of Clinton and Trump and the election.

All in all, I took it as an article that referred to psychology to make a point about politics and elections, but I agree it might well have been that the author really wanted to write an article about psychology and just thought that politics was a good way of illustrating a psychological point. No political point was intended. It could be. I don't really think that this is the case, but I agree that it could be.

If he really was interested solely in psychology I think my movie example is a good choice. It illustrates the point about framing and it doesn't have all of the emotional side issues connected with the political drama so the focus wouldn't stray from the strictly psychological point. I do honestly think he intended a political point. I cannot rationally prove that this is so, so this could be another illustration of framing. Looked political to me.

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2019-October-01, 06:23, said:

"Their research upended the assumption that humans behave rationally "
There are people who actually believed that???

Much of Game Theory, which I studied at uni, rests upon this basic premise Ken. You can essentially control how averse people are to taking risks but the concepts essentially collapse if you remove rationality completely.

[kenberg]

Zelandakh, on 2019-October-02, 02:33, said:

Much of Game Theory, which I studied at uni, rests upon this basic premise Ken. You can essentially control how averse people are to taking risks but the concepts essentially collapse if you remove rationality completely.

Yes, game theory is based on rational behavior. But do people, or did people, really believe that a typical person acts rationally? That's my point. Most of us try to think things through, but that's different. And I think the difference is important.


Some thoughts:


The posted article, and Winston's posting of it, is political. It discusses, and references a book that discusses, political strategy with an emphasis on how Democrats should approach the election in 2020. The article is not just some neutral reporting on some psychological research.


So what should Dems make of "upended the assumption that humans behave rationally"? For me, this means "Don't expect people to go into total research mode, to read several long and technical papers and then, after long discussion and considerable thought, come to a rational conclusion." But I also would caution against treating people as if they are totally incapable of handing rational thought. Firstly I do not believe that is correct, and secondly, which maybe should be firstly, people notice this and are insulted by it.

On another thread I said the Dems need to think through whether the 2016 voters did not like Clinton or did not like the general approach of the Democratic party. No doubt they also need to look at messaging. Hillary Clinton was very poor at messaging, Bill Clinton was very good at it.

Here is a framing way of explaining my thinking: When things go wrong, I very strongly believe the first thing to look for is things that I might have done differently. And the answer should not be "I didn't realize how stupid other people are" No, I need to look at my own errors. The Dems need to look at why they are not winning the vote of those whose vote they might usually expect. And they must find a better answer than "People are just too stupid".

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-02, 07:57, said:

Some thoughts:
The posted article, and Winston's posting of it, is political. It discusses, and references a book that discusses, political strategy with an emphasis on how Democrats should approach the election in 2020. The article is not just some neutral reporting on some psychological research.

Ken,

You are most likely correct. My interest in framing, though, was developed from a moderator on another website who castigated a poster for repeating a dishonest framing and referenced this article and the associated book.

However, my reason for opening the thread was to open a discussion on a subject about which I have limited knowledge, and I suspect that limited knowledge is widespread. My intrigue came from attempting to understand how really smart people like Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo can be such ardent Trump supporters (yes, political), but the answer (at least, according to the author), turned on an idea that is non-political, i.e., the formation of our brains.

If you are interested in more, the author is George Lakoff and an earlier article that is politically-based is here:

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2019-October-01, 15:31, said:

I am unsuccessfully trying to imagine this experiment with judges. Some randomly selected judges were reminded by some experimenter of their own mortality and as a result some guys are serving 30 years instead of 10 years? If that's not what is meant, what is it that actually happened? Sounds as if some guys with long sentences have a rather unusual basis for appeal.

The description of the experiment starts at 7:00 in the program, which you can listen to at the website I linked to.

They didn't actually do it in live court cases. They had the judges fill out a questionnaire, and in some of the versions of the questionnaire there were questions asking them to write their thoughts and feelings about their own mortality. Then they were shown a video of a court case about an alleged prostitute, and asked how much bail they would set. The judges who did not receive the mortality reminder set bail at an average of $50, the ones who did averaged $455.

So I was misremembering when I said that it involved sentencing decisions, it was just bail. But the difference is huge, and the judges vociferously denied that the death questions influenced them.

Other researchers have done analyses of actual judge decisions. For example To Get Parole, Have Your Case Heard Right After Lunch

Quote

The authors examined more than 1,000 parole decisions made by eight judges in Israel over a 10-month period. In each parole request, a prisoner appeared in front of a judge, and the judge could either accept or deny the request. The judges heard between 14 and 35 of these cases per day, separated into three distinct sessions. The first session ran from the beginning of the day until a mid-morning snack break, the second lasted from the snack break until a late lunch, and the third lasted from lunch until the end of the day.

Overall, judges were much more likely to accept prisoners' requests for parole at the beginning of the day than the at end. Moreover, a prisoner's chances of receiving parole more than doubled if his case was heard at the beginning of one of the three sessions, rather than later on in the session. More specifically, it was the number of rulings that a judge made, rather than the time elapsed in a session, that significantly affected later decisions. Every single judge in the sample followed this pattern.

As a case study, one of the judges started in the morning by granting parole to about 65 percent of the prisoners; that percentage dropped to near zero by the end of the first session, then rebounded to about 65 percent after the snack break. The same pattern repeated in the second and third sessions.

The researchers suggest that as the number of rulings in a session increase, the judges become mentally fatigued. Once their mental resources are depleted, the judges are more likely to simplify their decisions. Ruling in favor of the status quo – denying parole – is the "easier" decision, the authors argue, since these rulings take generally take less time and require shorter written verdicts. After taking a break, their faculties are restored, and they are more likely to make "harder" decisions and grant parole requests again.

[kenberg]

I'll try more to get to the program, for whatever the reason it is not being easy. The thing about parole was interesting. I am typically cautious. For example " Moreover, a prisoner's chances of receiving parole more than doubled if his case was heard at the beginning of one of the three sessions, rather than later on in the session." It would not surprise me if in scheduling hearings, the easier cases are scheduled for earlier in the session. I don't know if this is so, but I don't know if it is not so either. Surely if a clear case can be made that a judge's ruling depends on the time of day, more than doubling at a favorable time, a judge should be held accountable for that. He needs to clean up his act or he needs to find a new job. The case would have to be made carefully, but if it stands up and he just says "So what?" then he should go.

But my main point is that rationality sounds more binary than it is. Mathematical proofs are either right or wrong, although even that statement does not entirely hold up if we get into philosophical foundations. Most of life is not that way. Game theory , based on mathematics and rationality, is very useful but it is based on assumptions and those assumptions are closer to the truth in some settings than in others. When it comes to politics, looking for the vote of the average Joe or Josephine, rationality has a role. Not the only role. When we say that Joe's choices do not make sense when held to a clearly rational standard, that's probably the case, both for Ken and for Joe. This does not mean that we should abandon any attempt at reasoned argument.


In theory, I think everyone agrees with what I have just said. But there is a tempting trap. Dems lose an election, there is always plenty of evidence to support the idea that people are less than fully rational, and so, the trap, the conclusion is that this irrationality was the cause of the loss. We are all somewhat irrational, all of us, but that does not mean that rational discussion is totally pointless.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2019-October-03, 08:13, said:

I'll try more to get to the program, for whatever the reason it is not being easy. The thing about parole was interesting. I am typically cautious. For example " Moreover, a prisoner's chances of receiving parole more than doubled if his case was heard at the beginning of one of the three sessions, rather than later on in the session." It would not surprise me if in scheduling hearings, the easier cases are scheduled for earlier in the session. I don't know if this is so, but I don't know if it is not so either. Surely if a clear case can be made that a judge's ruling depends on the time of day, more than doubling at a favorable time, a judge should be held accountable for that. He needs to clean up his act or he needs to find a new job. The case would have to be made carefully, but if it stands up and he just says "So what?" then he should go.

But my main point is that rationality sounds more binary than it is. Mathematical proofs are either right or wrong, although even that statement does not entirely hold up if we get into philosophical foundations. Most of life is not that way. Game theory , based on mathematics and rationality, is very useful but it is based on assumptions and those assumptions are closer to the truth in some settings than in others. When it comes to politics, looking for the vote of the average Joe or Josephine, rationality has a role. Not the only role. When we say that Joe's choices do not make sense when held to a clearly rational standard, that's probably the case, both for Ken and for Joe. This does not mean that we should abandon any attempt at reasoned argument.


In theory, I think everyone agrees with what I have just said. But there is a tempting trap. Dems lose an election, there is always plenty of evidence to support the idea that people are less than fully rational, and so, the trap, the conclusion is that this irrationality was the cause of the loss. We are all somewhat irrational, all of us, but that does not mean that rational discussion is totally pointless.

I can understand how someone who has spent a lifetime working with proofs and falsifications would not get excited about the idea that what is true of a group is not necessarily true for an individual in that group. I would guess in your eyes, that seems awfully messy.

From my perspective (as someone who always struggled with math), it seems simply quite human.

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2019-October-02, 07:57, said:

Yes, game theory is based on rational behavior. But do people, or did people, really believe that a typical person acts rationally?

The posted article, and Winston's posting of it, is political. It discusses, and references a book that discusses, political strategy with an emphasis on how Democrats should approach the election in 2020. The article is not just some neutral reporting on some psychological research.

I think game theory is more about how individuals, businesses and organisations should make decisions than how it is actually done in reality.

Interestingly politicians understood that voters make their decisions based on emotion ahead of substance and policy long before the academic research came along to show how the two primary decision-making mechanisms actually function. This is the fundamental issue with your preference for politicians to make their cases logically around what they will do. Yes that is important but far more important is to inspire voters with some kind of vision or a feeling that the candidate will somehow provide some sort of positive transformation. This is something that Trump excels at and where, for example, Kamala Harris in particular is very weak despite her being otherwise highly competent and impressive. For me the question at the end of the day for Democrats is who can live with Trump in this side of campaigning. This is going far more important than any academic paper or theory.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2019-October-03, 08:13, said:

It would not surprise me if in scheduling hearings, the easier cases are scheduled for earlier in the session. I don't know if this is so, but I don't know if it is not so either.

The article says: "Since the order of cases is random and the judge decides when to take breaks, it seems reasonable that some type of fatigue is the best explanation for this pattern."

So it's not so.

[Winstonm]

If you accept that George Lakoff is at least partially correct (and, to me, it helps that Ta-Nihisi Coates's article The First White President in The Atlantic supports Lakoff's ideas and coclusions), then it is understandable why the Trump base is so adamantly entrenched. For (extreme) brevity, the Lakoff take is that there are tens of millions of white men whose brain configurations tends toward the conservative viewpoints and thus a worldview based on The Strict Father model and its associated Moral Code that emphasizes a hierarchy based on historical norms - thus God above man, man above nature, whites above others, men above women, etc.

This worldview is ingrained - a part of the person himself and thus to abandon it is to abandon oneself - almost impossible to do.

Now, reverse this with the Nurturing Parent model and you have what we call progressives. To many progressive minds, the moral code is bigotry in action; to many conservative minds, it is natural and right, ordained by higher powers.

When a progressive challenges those types of conservatives with charges of racism or bigotry, it is a not a challenge to his ideas but to the very ego or self of that person. No wonder there is such animosity in those situations.

This is where framing comes in. To get through to each other, both progressives and conservatives have to learn to speak the others' language. When we discuss Affirmative Action it helps to understand that the conservative sees this as a breach of the natural moral hierarchy and thus they are against it on moral grounds. Fairness is not part of the Strict Father model, either, so no appeal to fairness works. The appeal must be made within the structure of their worldview and moral hierarchy somehow.

Just as the conservative would do better to talk to progressive about fairness of Affirmative Action on whites to express their concerns. so, too, would the progressive be better served to perhaps frame the discussion as a reward for minority patriotism and religious respect.

These are just ideas. I am finding them helpful to my own understanding.