Bias Profile: The Just-World Fallacy

Do you believe in karma?

That what goes around comes around? That you reap what you sow?

If you believe any of these holds true as a rule, you may be a victim of the just-world fallacy (sometimes referred to more charitably as a "hypothesis").

Even other species of primates hold a sense of fairness as part of their core identity. In a 2010 study, chimpanzees were trained to exchange tokens for a food reward—either a piece of carrot (low reward) or a grape (high reward). When one chimp was given a grape and the other a carrot, the latter was more likely than in the "fair" control group to refuse the reward after seeing what the other received. Interesting, but maybe not too surprising. But here's what's really fascinating: In this highly competitive species, even the chimp that received the grape was significantly more likely to refuse their reward.

If such a powerful sense of justice exists in chimps, it's no wonder that this concept is integral to human society. The problem comes in when our sense of justice collides with our tendency to ascribe agency where it doesn't belong. What happens when tragedy strikes but there's no one to blame? Or when the bad guy gets away, figuratively or literally, with murder? That's when the just-world fallacy kicks in.

If a natural disaster strikes a major city, fundamentalists are prone to interpreting it as divine punishment after the fact. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example. No less than five different motivations were offered for God's wrath: sexual immorality, abortion, racism, failure to support Israel, and (from al-Qaeda) America's attacks on al-Qaeda.

When human justice fails to punish evil deeds, religion offers a comfortable alternative: divine retribution in this life or the next. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism each have their own concept of karma and reincarnation, which, while not always directly caused by God, generally involve the accumulation of positive or negative consequences depending on one's actions. And contrary to what some Christians believe, the Bible repeatedly states that believers will be judged according to their works.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the just-world fallacy can cause people to blame the victim of a crime rather than the perpetrator, believing that they must have deserved it in some way since no visible justice was served. If a woman is raped, maybe she was "asking for it" by her choice of dress. In cases of spousal abuse, maybe she had done something wrong to warrant that treatment. It's a terrifying rationale, and one that we should be doing our best to eradicate.

Religion is far from the sole factor here, but it certainly plays a role. When one believes that a god or other mystical force maintains perfect moral order in the universe, one has to explain injustices somehow. But by rationalizing horrible crimes and misfortunes, just-worlders throw a wrench into the already chaotic workings of human justice. Only when we realize that humanity alone is burdened with the task of punishing criminals and aiding victims can we hope to achieve a truly fair and equitable society.

2012 in Review

Okay, so 2012 wasn't exactly a banner year for Other Side Reflections in terms of activity—at least compared to the previous year, which is when I began blogging. 2011 had 170 posts while 2012 had only 39, and just eight of those came from the latter six months.

There are a number of reasons for that, including writing fatigue, lack of necessity, and moving on to other interests. Still, I do plan to update here now and then, and hopefully to at least match the level of activity I managed last year.

In the meantime, here's an index of the posts I made in the last nine months of 2012, much as I've done in the past. Here are my posts from April:

• January–March in Review: An index of the 20 posts from the year's first quarter
• Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 5: More skeptical quotes from great thinkers
• Born at the Wrong Time: Why is this the only time that God's not talking to us?
• The Uncertainty of Intuition: This useful mental tool can also lead you astray
• My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes: Culled from my Powerful Thoughts series
• On Ultimate Significance: Does life still mean something if it will ultimately end?
• The Purpose of Hell: It fails to fulfill any of the various theories of justice

From May through July:

• Fun With Memes: They're silly, but can make their point in a concise, funny way
• The Televangelist's Con: Analyzing a scammer I found while channel surfing
• The Key to Science: How a few simple steps can put the world at our fingertips
• No Religious Test: 8 state constitutions discriminate against atheists holding office
• Shifting Focus: Why I've been less active on the blog
• Political Sites for Skeptics (1/2): Fact-checkers, statisticians and other resources
• But It's Not Hurting Anyone!: 5 ways that snake oil harms our society

And from the remainder of the year:

• Political Sites for Skeptics (2/2): Informative voting databases, Snopes and more
• While We're Young: How Christianity is packaged into a slick production for kids
• Electoral Prediction and Cognitive Bias: Beware the rationalizations of politics
• San Diego New Atheists & Agnostics Meetups: Summary of two great events
• Problems of Implementing Rationality: Not Respecting Superstitions: A guest post from Michael Caton of The Lucky Atheist

It's not much, but what I did put out, I'm happy with.

Problems of Implementing Rationality: Not Respecting Superstitions

In my last post I mentioned that we might see a guest appearance from Mike of The Lucky Atheist, so without further ado, here it is. He expands on the ideas presented here in this post on his own blog.

Thanks to Tim for letting me guest post. Here I'm posting about a particular problem of actually implementing rationality in your life. If this particular thought has crossed your mind before, I discuss a few others at my own blog, The Lucky Atheist.

Atheism is one outcome of applying more rational thinking to everything in our lives. But humans are not pure rational creatures, and even though some of us see the practical, real benefits of applying good rationality habits to our own thinking, and trying to help others see those same benefits, there are coordination problems. We're not lone hunter-gatherers in the savannah, problem-solving our way to evading big cats or treating infections. Quite the contrary, the vast majority of your happiness and material well-being depends on other human beings, many of whom are irrational as all get-out! So the problem is how does an erstwhile rationalist optimize outcomes for her or himself, without being out of sync with the irrational human beings around them? (I call optimizing for the near-term for purposes of coordinating with irrational people "sub-rationality".)

Maybe the best example is how to handle particular superstitions. What if people that you depend on for a paycheck (or something) believe, or claim to believe, in God, or fan death, or the evils of vaccinations? What do you do?

1. Tell/show them why they're wrong.
2. Keep your mouth shut.
3. Say or do something to show loyalty to the idea even though you know it's BS.

To optimize your own outcome in the near term, it seems #2 or #3 should be the way to go; pay lip service to it or at least don't object, while not actually making decisions based on the belief. #1's risk ostracism, and even if convincing people of their folly is the goal, they may not even accomplish this. Granted, this may be a slippery slope, but it doesn't make the problems of implementing rationality disappear, and I'm posting these to look for solutions.

One problem is that if you do #1, and the superstition involves bad fortune, and something does happen to you, you know that superstitious people will all point to the superstition. "He walked under a ladder and got really sick that week. Well of course!" More generally though, it occurs in situations like these: you're hiking, and you knew damn well doesn't matter which trail you take, or you're working on some project and you know it doesn't matter which tool you use, which way you cook something, etc. But someone who thought s/he knew better (boss, friend, teacher, etc.) insisted that one of the two ways was superior. And you thought to yourself, "I have equal chances of success at this task with either method. And if I choose the method that the other person claims is inferior, and I fail, I will never ever hear the end of it. Since it doesn't matter, I'll just choose the method they prefer and be done with it." Rational in the near-term, but you just reinforced someone else's irrational belief about the task at hand.

Another point here is that of the three courses of action in the face of others' collective irrational beliefs, it seems that many or most of the #2's and 3's, i.e. people who don't object or even appear to go along with Superstition X, actually don't endorse it with their behavior, and in fact this often appears to be exactly the case. Do supposedly creationist Christians expect their insurance companies to give them a discount because more people are praying for them? Do they refuse to go to doctors trained in evolution? Do they refuse to invest their retirement money with mutual funds that buy shares of oil companies that operate based on secular old-Earth assumptions? (No doubt many of them do think they believe what they say they believe, but I'm sure there are plenty professing creationists who know it's nonsense and just like the benefits afforded by their church membership.)

The problem is that while you're optimizing for yourself in the near-term – and you really are – you're reinforcing the nonsense. Someone else who sees you mouthing the superstition in question thinks to him or herself, "Well, I better go along with it, because she just did too – and who am I to say it's not actually true?" Case in point: just last week I mentioned the difficulty with treating a patient who was ardently pro-homeopathy. The nurse sternly told me that so was she. (This, at UCSD!!!) Do you think I took this opportunity to lecture her on her irrationality? No. I'm a medical student, so I'm the lowest in the hierarchy anywhere I go. Not only would my #1 have not been received, I would have decreased my own utility in the process. So I did #2. Justification for my sub-rationality? So I can do a #1 when I'm an attending physician.

San Diego New Atheists & Agnostics Meetups

Over the past few weeks I've been to a couple of events hosted by the Meetup.com group San Diego New Atheists and Agnostics. One was earlier this evening: an informal five-on-five soccer match for which I was tragically unprepared. My lack of endurance running ability aside, though, I had a great time.

Nonbelievers of all stripes showed up, but what struck me about the meetup was how little about nonbelief it was. We had a short chat, warmed up a bit, and got right down to playing. In other contexts it might have been nice to talk at length about our common views on religion and theism. But in a way it was refreshing to see us come together, get some exercise and have some fun without having to frame it in terms of belief or lack thereof.

You can read a summary of the other event, a presentation by Secular Coalition for America's executive director Edwina Rogers, in my guest post over at The Lucky Atheist. I've written a bit about this blog before, but to summarize, Mike Caton runs the only other active San Diego-based atheist/skeptic blog that I'm aware of, and he puts out good stuff. Hopefully we'll see a guest post from Mike over here at some point in the near future.

Electoral Prediction and Cognitive Bias

Over the past couple of weeks, a startling number of pundits and commentators have been relentlessly attacking political statistician Nate Silver and his blog FiveThirtyEight. Why? Because his electoral prediction model, which uses a mix of national polls, state polls, demographic information and economic data, calculates that Obama's chances of winning the election are slightly better than the convention wisdom suggests. At present, they're hovering at a little below 75 percent.

Nate has a great track record when it comes to predictions: In 2008, he called all 35 Senate races right, as well as 49 of 50 states for president. In 2010, he correctly called 34 of 37 Senate races and 36 of 37 governors' races. When he was wrong, the outcome was usually decided by a razor-thin margin. And his reasoning for this year's prediction is simple: Obama holds small leads in enough crucial swing states (e.g. Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa) to get him to the needed 270 electoral votes.

But the critics dismiss all that, declaring in a textbook case of 20–20 hindsight that those other predictions were a cakewalk, and this time is different. They whine that Nate's biased because he's rooting for Obama (which never shows in his incredibly calm and even-handed commentary). They complain that his poll weighting system is subjective and introduces bias (even though it's actually based on objective measurements of poll recency, methodology and track record). And when all else fails, they mock him as puny and effeminate.

It would be one thing if Nate was alone in making the forecast that he does... but he's not. The various prediction markets, which despite their flaws are usually pretty accurate, tend to mirror his probability estimate very closely. And it turns out that his model is actually quite generous to Romney compared to other competing models of the same type.

So why have Nate's projections been subjected to such merciless criticism? For several reasons, none of which have anything to do with the merits of his model.

One is that the media has an incentive to portray elections as close—in this case, a virtual dead heat—so that people get excited and tune in for more coverage. So when someone comes along claiming that one candidate actually has a small but substantial lead, the public and the less-savvy pundits are naturally skeptical.

Another reason comes down to the fact that people do a very poor job of grasping probabilities. Commentators hear Nate estimate a 75% chance of Obama winning and think, "Wow, he must be really sure of himself." That's certainly the impression Joe Scarborough gave when he insisted that Obama's chances were at 50.1%. But Nate's prediction isn't all that dramatic. What many fail to understand is that if you assign Event X a 75% probability of occurring, it means you expect it to not happen 25% of the time. In fact, if such events occur more often than three out of four times in the long run, you've made a very real error.

The third and most glaring reason is a combination of wishful thinking and confirmation bias. Conservatives want very badly for Romney to win this election (or more to the point, for Obama to lose), so some will do anything to interpret the data as favorably as possible. Their most common defense is an allegation that the pollsters are (intentionally or not) oversampling Democrats—a claim based on the faulty assumption that party identification is static, rather than fluid and subject to change in response to current events. Another is to hold polls favoring Obama to a higher methodological standard, while clinging uncritically to those favoring Romney, such as the overly volatile Gallup tracking poll. Still another is to ignore polls altogether and point to less direct indicators, like an alleged closing of the gap between male and female voters or the candidates' favorability ratings. Yet one more is to claim, baselessly, that undecided voters break dramatically against the incumbent. Anything to keep the dream alive.

Meet the man who thought Bush's response to Katrina
would be his crowning achievement.

Finally, the more cynical conservative pundits may be consciously biasing their predictions. They have an incentive to tell their audience what they want to hear—Republicans who want to be reassured will look to them for certainty. Dick Morris, for instance, has such a catastrophic track record of predicting GOP victories that it's hard to imagine he's anything but an opportunist looking to get more attention and sell more books.

Now, before any staunch liberals out there get too cocky about the follies of their counterparts across the aisle, I should point out that this mindset is by no means limited to one party or ideology. In 2004, Democrats were guilty of groundlessly criticizing poll oversampling just as Republicans are today. And a quick perusal of the comments on Nate's blog posts will reveal many left-leaning readers expressing far more confidence in Obama's chances than is warranted by the data. Many of his acolytes also seem to follow the blog just to pacify their anxieties rather than to follow the data wherever it leads. So no matter what your politics, beware of how your biases influence your views and expectations.

Now I leave you with one final prediction. If Romney wins, you can bet that all the critics will be crowing with triumph and declaring the demise of FiveThirtyEight. But if Nate turns out to be right, you can bet those same critics will brush it off as a fluke, blaming voter fraud or Hurricane Sandy or anything else they can think of to resolve their cognitive dissonance, in much the same way that a cult will rationalize its failed doomsday predictions.

While We're Young

I was going through all the ancient stuff I had buried at the bottom of my desk drawers and came across this:

It's a letter from my former church congratulating me on becoming a Christian, from way back in July of '96. I was seven at the time.

Seems so innocuous, doesn't it? They were so glad to welcome me into the fold. They assured me I had made the right choice, a vital choice, renewing the sense of relief I had from avoiding damnation. They invited me to the Clubhouse—the name has that enticing air of exclusiveness about it. Actually, they didn't invite me: the subtle use of "when" made it a foregone conclusion that I would attend. Tell your parents what time you want to come, they suggested. Have fun, watch puppet shows, sing songs. And oh, by the way, bring your friends!

It really was fun. They put on an engaging production in the church auditorium, surprisingly polished for a kid's program. There were engrossing quiz games, props and puppets flying everywhere, funny voiceovers over the loudspeaker—more like watching an interactive play than attending a sermon. The stuff for older kids was considerably more dry and dull, but they really knew how to reel in the six-to-ten crowd. They understood the importance of grabbing our attention from a young age.

I'm probably making all this sound too sinister. I can only assume that these were genuinely nice people with pure intentions. The goal was not to snare hapless children in some nefarious trap. But when good people are misguided, when they're incredibly motivated, when they have years and decades and centuries to hone their sales pitch, when their target audience still believes in the tooth fairy... well, it's not exactly a fair fight.

Political Sites for Skeptics, Part 2

I forgot a few key resources in my previous post about neutral and/or skeptical political sites. So, without further ado...

Two of these sites are On The Issues and ProCon.org. These resources list the political stances of politicians and commentators in a simple and straightforward way. To do so, they use their legislative voting record as well as direct quotations from speeches and books. Here are On The Issues' pages for Obama, Biden, Romney, his newly-selected VP candidate Paul Ryan, and the main third-party candidate, libertarian Gary Johnson. ProCon compares six presidential candidates' answers to 61 questions in this handy chart. (They also have some good, even-handed information on other controversial issues at their main page.)

Then there are the "transparency" sources. Most people lump politicians in with the likes of lawyers and used car salesmen in terms of honesty and integrity, but it's often hard to know exactly where their loyalties lie. OpenSecrets goes a long way toward solving that problem by posting detailed information about what special interest groups are donating to whom—for example, SOPA author Lamar Smith's media-based donors. Their side-by-side comparison of the two presidential candidates is also quite nice. GovTrack is useful for keeping track of the voting records of various legislators—Paul Ryan's, for instance. MapLight is another potentially useful site that combines the latter two.

Finally—and I have no idea how I could forget this one—there's Snopes. Sure, they tackle every subject under the sun, but they have a specific page dedicated to politics, and even separate subsections for Obama and Romney. There are a ton of rumors about Obama that have bubbled up over the past five or so years, and the vast majority of the ones tackled here are exposed for the sensationalist nonsense they are. Barbara and David Mikkelson do a great job researching and running the site, and their work in these areas mainly serve to highlight how immensely unreliable political chain emails tend to be.

Politics today is so vicious and partisan that finding reliable, neutral information is nearly impossible. It's hard for me to form opinions when so many sources present their information through the lens of their personal worldviews. With the help of the sites I've covered here, though, I feel like I have a fighting chance of distinguishing vested narrative from objective truth.