Two counterpoints - happy people are "nice" -- maybe not so much. Hermits are "happy" when left alone and grumpy when disturbed when they don't want to be. Too, a person who is "happy" in a marriage may find themselves blindsided when dumped by their partner, more common than not, because the "happy" partner is oblivious to their spouse's needs.
Second, there is some evidence that groups self select into the political parties in the US. Our right wingers are more likely to want an authoritarian system. Those same studies (you make this point convincingly) may be designed to make the left wingers feel good, but there seem to be persistent, epigenetic or genetic links to the group self selection.
Good counterpoints. Thanks for reading. You're right that the happiness-niceness link is complicated and poorly understood, but there is empirical evidence that people do try to signal their niceness by signaling their happiness (i.e., by adopting "feel-good" beliefs). Check out the study I linked to for more info. Agreed there's more work to be done here, but it is at least plausible that something similar is going on with the positive psychologists.
As for the self-selection into political groups, I agree that happens, but I disagree it's based on any kind of abstract authoritarianism (or indeed, any kind of abstract moral value). That's the position I argue for in my recent academic paper on political beliefs. Check out the section "Authoritarianism Theory" for info on your authoritarianism hypothesis in particular. https://psyarxiv.com/scmhe/
Thank you for sharing your preprint, it was quite helpful to understand your points. So, yes, we ally ourselves. I'll use the word. And it's a great point, how we ally ourselves is up for grabs. There are still clearly differences in the groups. How is it that we are unable to parse the groups cleanly? I would contend that language itself is a limitation. Then again, is there a difference between groups in the sense that Roy Moore stayed on the ballot in Alabama and Al Frankin resigned? The cases had similarities. We can discuss it any way we want, but in our guts we know there is a difference. The fact that we see alliances, politics if you will, in other species is an indication that social species have ways to signal each other and show allegiance. Or, maybe we're just anthropomorphizing. Is there a socio-biological, underpinning, maybe? Love to see what is coming up on that front.
To circle back, if we look at clusters of behaviors, does that make parsing possible? An analogy is the differences between dark triad personality disorders. There are groups of symptoms that distinguish NPD from ASPD, there are overlaps as well. I'm wondering if we could find our political affiliations to be diagnosable? Again, thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks, Ken. Lots to chew on here. You might be glad to know that the paper is of the format where a bunch of other academics write commentaries and we write a response to them. I'll be posting our response to commentaries shortly and it will cover some of the ideas you raised here. Not sure if I'll blog about it but I will tweet about it, and you can always email me for a copy. Cheers.
"That’s why we need to study our deceptive brains: to prevent them from tricking us into thinking we’re awesome when we’re actually crappy."
Is this actually possible? Have people as a whole become smarter and more thoughtful about their cognitive biases and distortions as we've uncovered them? It's definitely nice to believe that uncovering these things will make us smarter as a species but is there any actual evidence for it?
We've arguably known about our biases and misapplications of thinking since ancient times - buddhism, stoicism, etc. - but it doesn't seem like there's any real progress made other than when ideologies overwhelm societies and dramatically change norms and behavior but not because any of us is self-aware of it. Maybe it's just the case that a couple of self-aware individuals will stumble into acting in a more thoughtful manner whether they come to it through reading William James or Buddha or modern social science pop books, but most of us are just doomed to be bullshitters
Yes, I think you may well have out-cynicaled me. I'm not optimistic that we can transcend our biases by learning about them, because basically all we do when we learn about them is call them out in other people. Maybe some devoted zen buddhists can become bias-free, but it's not a realistic path for most of us. That said, I think there is hope that, by learning about our biases, we can design institutions that more effectively incentivize truth/fairness over bias. Science is one such institution. Impartial juries may be another. Perhaps markets are another (deluded businesses tend to go out of business). It's generally better not to frame these ideas in terms of individual self-help, which is mostly bullshit, but in terms of better institutional design. I plan to write about institutions and incentives in a future post. Stay tuned.
But yeah the institution design thing is interesting. Religions have been very good at coming up with institutions that push us towards our better angels (at least some of the time) and it'd be interesting to contrast their success with governmental/secular institutions. Looking forward to that post!
You're right. It's probably not desirable at the individual-level, which is the whole reason why we're biased. But I think it's desirable at the collective level: we can create social norms that nudge us in a more bullshit-free direction, making us all better off. Maybe. See my comment below. But yes, humans suck, solving our problems is going to be really really hard, and I certainly don't have all the answers, because I am merely another flawed human. But thanks for reading in any case.
Vanity. Most it just comes down to vanity. The extreme vanity of the elites was clearly exposed in the responses to the pandemic. Experts from all fields revealed they are more susceptible to their vanities than maintaining any actual intellectual integrity. So psychology is not alone.
I’m curious to know if psychologists ever ask if they are causing more harm than good. Curious correlation: the number of psychological services have increased manifold in the last 20-30 years. At the same time, the level of victimhood as well as narcissism has also gone through the roof. Are psychological services contributing to the high level of victimhood?
Psychologists could have a very beneficial impact on humanity if instead of pandering and coddling, which they do to make themselves feel better, they confronted the many claims of oppression and victimhood and told people to get a back bone, they are not oppressed and not victims. Indeed, there seems to be more and more mental health problems towards which we send in more psychological counselors to no apparent benefit.
I’m not sure if psychology has been a net positive for humanity.
Thanks, Tim. I agree there's a lot of vanity, and I am equally unsure about whether psychology has been a net positive for humanity. But the point isn't so much to bring psychologists down below us as to bring them down to the same level as us. We're all flawed, we're all vain in our own way, and we're all troublingly incurious about whether our efforts to make the world better are actually effective. I think we have to recognize our common flawed humanity here, not just point the finger at the psychologists, the elites, or whomever we think of as the bad guys. We're all the bad guys. The badness is a part of human nature. That's the tragedy. The sooner we realize this--and I think there are some good parts of psychology that can help us realize this--the better off we'll be. Or maybe I'm full of shit too. In any case, thanks for reading.
Starting first with pointing fingers. The self promoting experts are those who worked to gain the attention. They point their own fingers at themselves loudly saying they are the experts, listen to them, abide by what they say. As you mentioned in your article, they are above entertaining a notion of the possibility of their own biases. It would be interesting to ask within your group if they examine whether they are doing more harm than good. I suspect most of your colleagues would scoff at the question and some even expressing agitation that anyone would even raise such a question. I think this question gets closer to the problem among professionals than the efforts to help them acknowledge their biases.
Self-flagellation, and especially public displays thereof. Or. Humility vs. False modesty. It can be of great value to the individual to recognize his/her limitations. (I would not call these flaws because of the implications of being negative and/or fixable. Christianity, for instance, teaches us of our original sin, how we are tainted and flawed. I don’t see much value in that either. And now the post-modern religions are doing the same. Recent example: The DEI acolytes ostensibly professing their sin of being white.). This gets us back to vanity. When does recognition of our flaws become more another means to show people how humble we are.
But limitations. Yes. And the reason why we do need each other. You have likely heard the story of the blind men standing around an elephant not knowing what it is but conjecturing about what the thing is by what they feel. Is their lack of eyesight a flaw or a limitation. Are they better off being rigid in their opinion or open to listening to what the others say and be willing to accept it? Of course one of the blind men might be feeling the wall or the cage and we can’t know so we always need to be skeptical.
We are extremely limited in our abilities to know. Another approach might be to start with (and retain) that everyone is mostly wrong about everything, always. From such a position I recognize my limitations and my need to learn from others and to use methods to glean more durable knowledge. And of course the methods too need to be refined through argument.
The physical science have advanced tremendously because of this approach, though not without their own hubristic barriers. It appears to me that the social science fields have moved not so much with intellectual rigor but more by fashion and cults of personality. This gets us back to your position for the need for theoretical grounding.
you are so cool and I love your thinking
Two counterpoints - happy people are "nice" -- maybe not so much. Hermits are "happy" when left alone and grumpy when disturbed when they don't want to be. Too, a person who is "happy" in a marriage may find themselves blindsided when dumped by their partner, more common than not, because the "happy" partner is oblivious to their spouse's needs.
Second, there is some evidence that groups self select into the political parties in the US. Our right wingers are more likely to want an authoritarian system. Those same studies (you make this point convincingly) may be designed to make the left wingers feel good, but there seem to be persistent, epigenetic or genetic links to the group self selection.
Good counterpoints. Thanks for reading. You're right that the happiness-niceness link is complicated and poorly understood, but there is empirical evidence that people do try to signal their niceness by signaling their happiness (i.e., by adopting "feel-good" beliefs). Check out the study I linked to for more info. Agreed there's more work to be done here, but it is at least plausible that something similar is going on with the positive psychologists.
As for the self-selection into political groups, I agree that happens, but I disagree it's based on any kind of abstract authoritarianism (or indeed, any kind of abstract moral value). That's the position I argue for in my recent academic paper on political beliefs. Check out the section "Authoritarianism Theory" for info on your authoritarianism hypothesis in particular. https://psyarxiv.com/scmhe/
Thank you for sharing your preprint, it was quite helpful to understand your points. So, yes, we ally ourselves. I'll use the word. And it's a great point, how we ally ourselves is up for grabs. There are still clearly differences in the groups. How is it that we are unable to parse the groups cleanly? I would contend that language itself is a limitation. Then again, is there a difference between groups in the sense that Roy Moore stayed on the ballot in Alabama and Al Frankin resigned? The cases had similarities. We can discuss it any way we want, but in our guts we know there is a difference. The fact that we see alliances, politics if you will, in other species is an indication that social species have ways to signal each other and show allegiance. Or, maybe we're just anthropomorphizing. Is there a socio-biological, underpinning, maybe? Love to see what is coming up on that front.
To circle back, if we look at clusters of behaviors, does that make parsing possible? An analogy is the differences between dark triad personality disorders. There are groups of symptoms that distinguish NPD from ASPD, there are overlaps as well. I'm wondering if we could find our political affiliations to be diagnosable? Again, thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks, Ken. Lots to chew on here. You might be glad to know that the paper is of the format where a bunch of other academics write commentaries and we write a response to them. I'll be posting our response to commentaries shortly and it will cover some of the ideas you raised here. Not sure if I'll blog about it but I will tweet about it, and you can always email me for a copy. Cheers.
"That’s why we need to study our deceptive brains: to prevent them from tricking us into thinking we’re awesome when we’re actually crappy."
Is this actually possible? Have people as a whole become smarter and more thoughtful about their cognitive biases and distortions as we've uncovered them? It's definitely nice to believe that uncovering these things will make us smarter as a species but is there any actual evidence for it?
We've arguably known about our biases and misapplications of thinking since ancient times - buddhism, stoicism, etc. - but it doesn't seem like there's any real progress made other than when ideologies overwhelm societies and dramatically change norms and behavior but not because any of us is self-aware of it. Maybe it's just the case that a couple of self-aware individuals will stumble into acting in a more thoughtful manner whether they come to it through reading William James or Buddha or modern social science pop books, but most of us are just doomed to be bullshitters
Yes, I think you may well have out-cynicaled me. I'm not optimistic that we can transcend our biases by learning about them, because basically all we do when we learn about them is call them out in other people. Maybe some devoted zen buddhists can become bias-free, but it's not a realistic path for most of us. That said, I think there is hope that, by learning about our biases, we can design institutions that more effectively incentivize truth/fairness over bias. Science is one such institution. Impartial juries may be another. Perhaps markets are another (deluded businesses tend to go out of business). It's generally better not to frame these ideas in terms of individual self-help, which is mostly bullshit, but in terms of better institutional design. I plan to write about institutions and incentives in a future post. Stay tuned.
I wear my cynicism badge with pride...
But yeah the institution design thing is interesting. Religions have been very good at coming up with institutions that push us towards our better angels (at least some of the time) and it'd be interesting to contrast their success with governmental/secular institutions. Looking forward to that post!
Is it actually desirable? If I want to be awesome, and not crappy, does it matter if I'm awesome or I tricked myself into thinking so?
You're right. It's probably not desirable at the individual-level, which is the whole reason why we're biased. But I think it's desirable at the collective level: we can create social norms that nudge us in a more bullshit-free direction, making us all better off. Maybe. See my comment below. But yes, humans suck, solving our problems is going to be really really hard, and I certainly don't have all the answers, because I am merely another flawed human. But thanks for reading in any case.
Great read! Entertaining and blunt!
Vanity. Most it just comes down to vanity. The extreme vanity of the elites was clearly exposed in the responses to the pandemic. Experts from all fields revealed they are more susceptible to their vanities than maintaining any actual intellectual integrity. So psychology is not alone.
I’m curious to know if psychologists ever ask if they are causing more harm than good. Curious correlation: the number of psychological services have increased manifold in the last 20-30 years. At the same time, the level of victimhood as well as narcissism has also gone through the roof. Are psychological services contributing to the high level of victimhood?
Psychologists could have a very beneficial impact on humanity if instead of pandering and coddling, which they do to make themselves feel better, they confronted the many claims of oppression and victimhood and told people to get a back bone, they are not oppressed and not victims. Indeed, there seems to be more and more mental health problems towards which we send in more psychological counselors to no apparent benefit.
I’m not sure if psychology has been a net positive for humanity.
Thanks, Tim. I agree there's a lot of vanity, and I am equally unsure about whether psychology has been a net positive for humanity. But the point isn't so much to bring psychologists down below us as to bring them down to the same level as us. We're all flawed, we're all vain in our own way, and we're all troublingly incurious about whether our efforts to make the world better are actually effective. I think we have to recognize our common flawed humanity here, not just point the finger at the psychologists, the elites, or whomever we think of as the bad guys. We're all the bad guys. The badness is a part of human nature. That's the tragedy. The sooner we realize this--and I think there are some good parts of psychology that can help us realize this--the better off we'll be. Or maybe I'm full of shit too. In any case, thanks for reading.
Starting first with pointing fingers. The self promoting experts are those who worked to gain the attention. They point their own fingers at themselves loudly saying they are the experts, listen to them, abide by what they say. As you mentioned in your article, they are above entertaining a notion of the possibility of their own biases. It would be interesting to ask within your group if they examine whether they are doing more harm than good. I suspect most of your colleagues would scoff at the question and some even expressing agitation that anyone would even raise such a question. I think this question gets closer to the problem among professionals than the efforts to help them acknowledge their biases.
Self-flagellation, and especially public displays thereof. Or. Humility vs. False modesty. It can be of great value to the individual to recognize his/her limitations. (I would not call these flaws because of the implications of being negative and/or fixable. Christianity, for instance, teaches us of our original sin, how we are tainted and flawed. I don’t see much value in that either. And now the post-modern religions are doing the same. Recent example: The DEI acolytes ostensibly professing their sin of being white.). This gets us back to vanity. When does recognition of our flaws become more another means to show people how humble we are.
But limitations. Yes. And the reason why we do need each other. You have likely heard the story of the blind men standing around an elephant not knowing what it is but conjecturing about what the thing is by what they feel. Is their lack of eyesight a flaw or a limitation. Are they better off being rigid in their opinion or open to listening to what the others say and be willing to accept it? Of course one of the blind men might be feeling the wall or the cage and we can’t know so we always need to be skeptical.
We are extremely limited in our abilities to know. Another approach might be to start with (and retain) that everyone is mostly wrong about everything, always. From such a position I recognize my limitations and my need to learn from others and to use methods to glean more durable knowledge. And of course the methods too need to be refined through argument.
The physical science have advanced tremendously because of this approach, though not without their own hubristic barriers. It appears to me that the social science fields have moved not so much with intellectual rigor but more by fashion and cults of personality. This gets us back to your position for the need for theoretical grounding.
I agree. Best to you.
You're one of the better humans, Josie.