Flashback – Does Luck Have a Half-life?

This takes us back almost seven years to the minimum wage protests at fast food restaurants. The question is whether people learn to change behavior when they are bailed out from predictable consequences. I have long argued that the reason you can’t raise a family on the minimum wage is that no one should start a family if they can only get a minimum wage job. Bad luck is not forever.

 

People who caught a bad break certainly should be helped, but behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. Irresponsibility rewarded breeds more. Over the past seven years a lot of irresponsibility has been rewarded. Here are my 2013 comments:

[More protests are breaking out around the plight of fast food workers unable to survive on the minimum wage. They are demanding a wage increase to $15 an hour. The news has presented the arguments pro and con, but have usually given more time to the protesters, sometimes, as in this CBS piece, picking out one as a kind of “poster child” for the cause. The hidden problem is that minimum wage, unemployment extensions, food stamps and other proposed government solutions ignore behavioral factors.

A primary argument in favor of this issue tells us that all these people are less fortunate, that they need a helping hand to get back on their feet, that "there, but for the grace of God,” go we. They completely ignore well-known wisdom that behavior has consequences. We are presented with the argument that every one of these fast food workers is merely down on his luck or a victim of a bad economy, and that the situation has nothing to do with consequences of behavior. This unbelievable scenario is widely accepted by otherwise rational people. The media and many politicians never challenge it.

This leads to an interesting comparison: In other circumstances, how do caring people really act? If your teenage son sits on the sofa all day playing videogames, ignoring homework and refusing to do his chores, do good parents excuse the behavior and cover for him? Do they pass it off with, “That’s OK; he’s going through a tough time”? Even non-parents know the answer. Good parents will institute consequences for this poor behavior, knowing that if they don’t, life and reality will later institute much harsher consequences. Teenage sons can be very difficult, but good parents anticipate with a pattern of similar, consistent reactions to deal with natural childhood resistance and laxness. That’s how caring people act. They don’t always come to the rescue – behavior that makes the rescuer feel powerful, but often causes long-term harm to the one rescued. When the bad situation is a bad break, sympathy and a leg up are appropriate. If the son is mugged and loses money, parents may reimburse him for the loss. If he loses it gambling, that’s the consequence of bad behavior. Bailing him out is inappropriate, dulls the impact of the consequence and no learning occurs. (For an extreme example see the recent case of "affluenza" in Texas.)

Returning to the case of minimum wage employees, especially those presented by the media and never challenged, we must ask if it was bad luck or consequences that contributed to the situation. If it’s luck, then some temporary help is appropriate, because bad luck does have a kind of half-life or statute of limitations. A little help can turn things around, but caring people do not bail out from consequences. That only fosters more problematic behavior.

Even in these seemingly innocent human-interest stories the determination requires only a few simple questions. Where did those two or three children come from? Where is the father (or fathers)? What contribution is he making? If none, why not? Did the workers finish high school; were drugs ever involved; are they applying for better jobs, are they looking for ways to increase skills, etc., etc.? What is the long-term plan, if any? (CBS later reported that their "poster-child" example turned down promotions more than once because it didn’t fit her preferred personal schedule. Another news story told of a kind social worker repairing at minimum cost the car of a woman who hasn't been able to work in 5 years due to a neck injury. She can't work, but she can drive?!)  

Looking at the situation through the behavioral lens would probably determine that many of these people are not victims. Many are living with the consequences of earlier choices. Should caring people run to bail them out, labeling them all as “less fortunate,” as the compassionistas would have us believe? Not only do they not learn and grow, but the next generation, poised to make the same mistakes, sees no example to discourage them from following the same path. So, the current, non-behavioral approaches, which lump them all into the same category, lead not to solutions but to perpetual problems.]

Bambi and The Unintended Consequences

NPR reported recently that the interest in the sport of hunting has been steadily declining.  The share of hunters in the adult population in the US dropped from 7.3% to 4.4% over the last 25 years and has been cut in half over the last fifty.

It’s just not as popular as it used to be.  Reasons likely include the amount of investment for a week or two of activity a year, the physical hardship of walking through the woods or sitting in a tree stand in all kinds of weather and the general reduction in interest in all outdoor activities.  NPR also points to a change in the culture.  Attitudes towards wildlife are changing, making other outdoor activities like bird watching, and hiking more popular.  Some people prefer to do their shooting with a camera instead of a gun.  (And more people can see and admire a photographic trophy on social media than a physical trophy mounted on the wall.)

“The shift is being welcomed by some who morally oppose the sport, but it's also leading to a crisis.”  It leads us to question whether those morally-opposed people are more interested in the positive feedback they get internally and from others for their compassionate, caring stance and perceived moral superiority than in the actual welfare of our “furry friends.”

The wildlife conservation systems in the US depend on “license fees and excise taxes on guns, ammunition and angling equipment [to] provide about 60 percent of the funding.”  State wildlife agencies are responsible for “restoring the populations of North American game animals, some of which were once hunted nearly to extinction.”  The American system that allowed this incredible conservation and restoration has been so effective that it is widely imitated in other parts of the world.

Today the reduction of funding from hunting is causing states like Colorado, Wisconsin and Vermont to cut back on staffing and programs that protect the animals as they search for other sources of revenue.  People hiking through the woods with their cameras generally expect to be able to do so for free or for a modest park entry fee.  They also don’t expect to pay excise taxes on cameras, compasses, binoculars or sleeping bags to supplement those losses from hunting.  But as funding levels decline one fear is that the number of species on the threatened or endangered list could nearly double.

Although the NPR article focuses on funding aspects of the hunting decline, the loss of many other benefits of hunting are concerning.  The annual harvest of millions of deer is a good example.  Hunting actually benefits the deer population.

A joint  study by Alabama A&M and the University of Auburn Extension points out that “hunting helps maintain a healthy deer population. If the population were to go unmonitored, deer would be facing severe overpopulation, resulting in significant damage to the ecosystem, over-browsing of plants, malnutrition and an overall decline in the health and well-being of the animals.”

Do we care about the deer when we would rather have them starve to death or die of disease than be shot? Are we willing to absorb the financial burden of added crop damage – remembering that the farmers’ increased cost or the price effects of a decrease in supply are passed on to the consumer at the grocery store.  Deer are also not a friend to gardeners.  And deer collisions kill over 200 motorists a year and cost a total of around 10 billion dollars.

These are all things to consider before we brand hunters as heartless and pretend to care so much about deer (or other critters) based on incomplete or inaccurate information.

Note:  I’m not a hunter and have none in my family, but I did once hit deer with my car and have met many others who have had the same misfortune.

Compassion and Tolerance

One of the purposes (or maybe just a side effect) of my writing is to inspire readers to investigate or to think about the world in a slightly different way.  The entry last week about mindfulness and focus seems to have done the trick in at least one case.

I received an email with several embedded links and the conclusion:  “It is interesting that longer and deeper thinking tends to lead people to more compassionate and tolerant approaches.”  I dug deeper and began to think that ideas like this that we take for granted are not so simple.

The words compassion and tolerance have become very popular.  At least a couple research organizations are on a campaign to convince as many as possible that these two mental attitudes will combine to yield a more successful future for the world.  We need more, and mindfulness training for adults and children may be the key.

I am inclined to ask:  How do we measure compassion and tolerance, and more important, what are they?

Whenever I see words like more or better, I believe some measurement must be involved.  Finding metrics for mental activity can be deceptive.  Self-reporting is always suspect.  One way to identify compassion is to observe some behavior and label it compassionate, but such classification is impossible without a clear definition.  Someone must define what behaviors demonstrate compassion.  How do we know it when we see it?  As researchers report more positive brain scans on compassionate people, they still must have a definition that distinguishes compassion from other traits.  The same goes for tolerance.

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education operating at Stanford says, “Compassion unfolds in response to suffering,” recognizing it, feeling empathy and concern, which “motivates us to take action, and help relieve that suffering.”  They promote compassion by saying, “With compassion, our empathy for the suffering of others can give rise to altruism – bringing immediate and long-term happiness and tranquillity [sic] to our lives.”  (But technically, if we are motivated to do it by the good feelings it gives us, that’s hardly altruism.)  A simple dictionary definition of compassion is concern for the suffering of others.  But, since no one can go into people’s head and actually see it, they must infer this concern from observing behavior – she did or said this or that, therefore, she is compassionate.  Then they can observe and classify the brain scans.

But here’s where it gets tricky.  When others are suffering, is it always wise or proper to step in and “take action, and help relieve that suffering”?  Is that always the best solution?  Sometimes suffering is the result of bad luck or natural disaster or birth defect, but sometimes suffering is the direct result of the action or inaction of the individual.

Behavior has consequences.  The purpose of those consequences is to encourage or discourage similar behavior.  In bowling, the feedback comes from the number of pins knocked down.  If you get a strike, try to do the same thing again.  If you get a gutter ball, make a change.  A coach can work with the bowler on technique and equipment as long as the bowler is dedicated to improving.  If the bowler is not interested and expects the coach to do the bowling for him, the consequences have failed; any lesson is lost.  If the bowler decides on a course of action that results in him being unable to roll the ball, no coaching will help.

Likewise in life, immoderate compassion, the taking action to relieve the suffering when the suffering is self-inflicted, crosses the line from aiding to enabling.  Yet so many people are motivated by that “happiness and tranquility” that it brings to our lives and fail to see the long term damage it does to others and to society.

Parents who give in to a child’s every desire or step in to solve every problem are not being compassionate, even as they believe they are recognizing suffering and taking action to relieve it.  They are robbing the child of valuable lessons on how to survive as an unselfish, responsible grownup.  Likewise a society that steps in to assist all adults who appear to be suffering regardless of the source of the suffering are, in some cases, negating the consequences (lessons) of poor decisions, encouraging a continuation of that behavior and possibly contaminating others.

Bad things happen when we get carried away by our emotions and our caring but are still rewarded by those feelings of happiness and tranquility.  It’s called unintended consequences. Compassion requires care as well as caring.

And what of tolerance:  The willingness to tolerate opinions or behaviors one does not necessarily agree with?  This too is difficult and will be taken up next time.

What's a Parent To Do?

At first many people thought this was so unbelievable that it must be fake news, but I found it in the Chicago Tribune, and other reputable sources.  “Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants Chicago public high school students to show they have a plan for what's next before they can get a diploma.”  This adds a requirement for graduation, to become effective for the class of 2020 if approved by the school board.

His justification is to set expectations that the kids actually have a plan.  The article quoted Mayor Emanuel, "Just like you do with your children, college, post-high school, that is what's expected. If you change expectations, it's not hard for kids to adapt."  So apparently the city is taking over the job of the parents whose kids attend Chicago public schools (CPS).

If it is approved, Chicago will be the “first large urban school district to require students to develop a plan for their lives after high school.”  I guess there will be no more backpacking around Europe looking for your head that was popular among some in the generation of these kids’ grandparents.

But the idea of the city and the schools taking over parental responsibility is not new to Chicago.  An earlier article from the Tribune explains, “Starting this fall [2014], all Chicago Public Schools students will be able to get free breakfast and lunch at school.”  They had so much trouble with fraud in their reduced and free lunch programs that it became easier just to feed everyone.  For the past three years the parents need only provide one meal a day for their own children.

But it doesn’t stop there.  From the CPS website:  “Since 1998, Chicago Public Schools has required students to complete 40 service-learning hours in order to graduate.”  Since then parents don’t have to worry about instilling compassionate values or setting an example.  (In this case, the question always is whether required service makes people more generous.  We don’t celebrate those doing court-ordered community service as selfless volunteering.)

How are all these initiatives working out for the city?  From a report in September 2016 – “The latest five-year graduation rate is 73.5 percent, CPS said. The rate has been rising steadily over the past five years, according to district figures, and in 2014-15 was 69.9 percent.”  Note that even with an extra year to graduate more than one-quarter fail to do so.  Compare that to the national high school graduation rate in four years of 83.2 percent.

So it’s not fake news, just sad news.  And they are working on the wrong things.  In their book The Why Axis, authors Gneezy and List, who were working at the University of Chicago, report on various studies of motivation and incentives.  One was to try different incentive programs with students, parents and teachers in Chicago Heights public schools.  (It is not a pure comparison.  They wanted to study the CPS, but the teachers' union would not approve.)  They found that when the incentives were properly designed, minority students in this system performed just as well as their suburban counterparts in "rich, white neighborhoods."

Maybe with all that extra time on their hands the parents should take the school system to task, demand more and better education with less city and school board interference in their responsibilities.  Of course, giving up responsibilities to someone else is the easy way out – until we discover that it also means giving up control or freedom to choose.

Luck or Hard Work?

As I was doing research for another entry, I ran across an interesting Quote of the Day on the Forbes website.  “People that work hard and legitimately do everything they can, tend to be luckier” – Julian Edelman.  For those who are not sports fans or happened to miss it, Julian Edelman is the receiver on the New England Patriots who made the spectacular, shoestring catch near the end of regulation time that allowed the Patriots to win the Super Bowl.  It looked like luck was involved as he sprawled between two defenders to keep a deflected ball from barely touching the ground, but a great deal of skill and excellent reflexes were evident in the many replays.  (Google Super Bowl highlights.)

It struck me as a very good thought, along the lines of people making their own luck, the saying popular among motivational speakers.  But do most people really believe this?  And if so, does our behavior reflect it?

My first stop took me to this headline from 2006, again from Forbes:  “Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work.”  Worldwide research, including many studies over the prior decade usually in sports, music and chess where performance is easier to observe and assess, but also in other areas like business, have supported a few surprising conclusions.  The first is that “nobody is great without work…  There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.”  Second, there is a difference between deliberate practice and mere repetition.  “Consistency is crucial.”

Though there are some skeptics, experts pretty much agree that success depends on hard work.  But do ordinary Americans believe hard work is superior to luck in most cases?  I searched for likely poll questions for a clue.

This source shows results from a Pew Research worldwide questionnaire.  In less developed countries citizens believed luck or political connections were more of a factor, but the US led the pack with the opposite stance.  When asked, “Which forces affect your success?” 79% listed hard work and only 19% mentioned being lucky.  (More than two answers were possible with the sum being more than 100%, so some may have answered both.  It wasn’t a pure either/or question.)

A Reason-Rupe Poll from the fall of 2011 asks a similar question but sorts the responses by political affiliation.  They asked which was more important, either hard work or luck and help from others.  Overall, 81% voted for hard work over the luck and help, which got 15%.  The range was surprisingly close. Tea Partiers were at 89%, Democrats at 74%, with Republicans and Independents in the middle.  In a separate analysis by race, findings were similar with the lowest agreement by African-Americans, who still favored hard work by about three out of four, a sizable majority.

More recently, a 2013 Rasmussen Reports of American attitudes found “86% Believe Individuals Make Their Own Success” by hard work and good decisions.

It appears that the sentiment expressed after the Super Bowl is widespread in America and not divided across political, racial or any other lines.  Most Americans think you get ahead through hard work.  It is difficult then to explain how politicians can get any support for notions like the one-percent haven’t worked hard for their wealth and don’t deserve it.  Conversely, why are we expected to assume that everyone who is not making it in America is a victim?  The behavior factor in most cases is totally ignored.  The news media always portray the homeless and others in difficult situations as being “down on their luck,” downplaying at best any poor decisions that may have led to their predicament.  Hence young people today who could benefit by learning from the mistakes of others see only victims of circumstance rather than behavior to avoid.  Great learning is lost by our need to be compassionate in all cases and a failure to be intellectually consistent.

Changing the Mythology

Over the last two weeks I have made the case that everyone has a personal mythology.  People run stories in their heads about the what and why of everything happening around them.  To be heroes of their stories depends on following an underlying mythology that sets the rules for judging noble, moral behavior.  It is this underlying mythology that drives actions and decisions, not whether people are inherently evil, greedy or stupid.  Calling them names or shouting them down has no effect, except possibly minor, temporary victories and new enemies.

We look at ISIS or white supremacists and easily recognize their mythology.  Most Americans agree that those mythologies – one about building a caliphate to wipe out infidels as they usher in the end of the world and the other about racial superiority – are just plain wrong.  But many mythologies of our friends and neighbors are not so clear-cut in terms of morality.  There are gray areas with strong arguments on both sides, and some people don’t remain our friends long if their mythologies are too much at odds with ours as each side refuses to budge.

One problem is that some of the tenets of these modern mythologies lead individuals in the wrong direction.  They waste time and money.  They lead people to support political solutions that waste everyone’s time and money.  When confronted, they cling to their core beliefs and coalesce into camps or tribes to help them support and justify their position.

A second problem comes from the speed and reach of modern communications.  Ideas are flying everywhere and people are more interested in clinging to ideas of their liking than taking time to find out if what they are hearing is true.  Just as in casual conversation, it’s cooler to come up with a witty retort or story of your own experience than to check the facts.

The result is what we have today:  a deeply divided populace, short on meaningful debate, throwing slogans, insults and accusations back and forth, and then retreating to their own corners for support and reinforcement.

Many people use kind words about understanding, tolerance and compassion, but it doesn’t play out that way.  Even those who claim to be most tolerant and compassionate are often the first and the loudest to call someone with different ideas an idiot or a hater.  They ask everyone to be open-minded, that is, to accept their point of view; but open-minded means listening to and considering another point of view, not accepting every crazy idea that comes along.  Our politicians lead by example in an increasingly divisive and unproductive use of accusations and labels.  There must be an end to this!

Our objective should be to unify Americans around the idea of putting an end to the waste in society and to reduce the number and intensity of behavioral errors in the key dimensions.  This will get the country moving in the right direction.  Doing it through behavior is the solution and is a viable alternative to gathering into tribes and fighting.

But this will be an uphill battle.  The wasteful and dangerous behavior is so often initiated and reinforced by deep-seated modern myths.  It must be an evolution, rather than a revolution, improving choices and decisions by chipping away at the underlying myths.  These myths include:  that it’s uncool to be conscientious; that being complacent about and tolerant of bad habits is appropriate; that there really is some magic cure to all our ills but doctors and others are hiding it to protect their own interests; that "natural" or "ancient" is equivalent to good because modern science can’t be trusted; that a growing economy only benefits a few; that wanting it all and wanting it now without concern for the future is the way to live; that the government has unlimited funds to bail everyone out; and all the rest.  Take for example the housing boom/bust.  The crisis sprang from the wrong belief that everyone has a “right” to the American Dream instead of the healthy belief that success requires hard work and sacrifice.

All these faulty myths are constantly reinforced: by the media to attract an audience, by advertisers to make sales and by politicians to get re-elected.  Only a few years ago no one, except a small percentage with a specific medical condition, worried about gluten-free diets.  Now almost 20% of Americans look for it on packaging, while manufacturers are all too happy to accommodate the fad by plastering it on more and more labels, even in products where the prospect of finding any gluten is zero.  And that’s just one example.  Thanks to the rapid and widespread reach of social media, more faulty myths are being created and reinforced daily.

To change people’s minds we must somehow get them to modify their mythology, not just assume that everyone else is stupid and evil. The only hope is for a significant group of Americans to become more aware of the behavior-consequences link in their lives and the lives of those close to them.  We must begin resisting impulses, thinking more carefully, understanding the economy better, taking responsibility, improving education for all, working for results instead of demanding them as rights, and being more selective.  We must begin challenging advertisers, politicians and the news media to give us straight information, instead of playing to our fears, insecurities and social fads.  Some myths are just plain wrong leading people in the wrong direction with potentially harmful results.  It is right to be intolerant of behaviors that show a lack of responsibility or make matters worse.  Tough love is still a valid response to those making bad decisions. 

Use behavior and consequences to point out problems.  Calling people stupid gets us nowhere and is probably incorrect.  They merely have a different mythology that they turn to first for direction.  Treating essential oils like a miracle drug is no crazier or stupider than thinking the sun is pulled around the sky by a god in a chariot.  It’s just a different mythology.

Behavior is in a sense infectious.  We read headlines about how your friends can make you fat and such - because we share their habits and tastes (and mythologies).  By being sensitive to the behavior-consequences link and changing our own behavior accordingly, it may be possible to "infect" others.  And as we get more Americans on board with these ideas, advertisers, politicians and the media may respond by giving us better information and joining the fight against erroneous, wasteful and harmful behavior.   One can only hope.