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<title>The Situation of Fear</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/the-situation-of-fear-2/</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 08 Oct 2016 13:52:36 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20699</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Here is the introduction of a current Rolling Stone article by Neill Strauss reviewing the situation of fear, including work by Situationist Contributor, John Jost: From Jen Senko believes that her father was brainwashed. As Senko, a New York filmmaker, tells it, her father was a “nonpolitical Democrat.” But then he transferred to a new […]]]></description>
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Here is the introduction of a <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-living-in-the-age-of-fear-w443554">current Rolling Stone article</a> by Neill Strauss reviewing the situation of fear, including work by Situationist Contributor, John Jost:
From Jen Senko believes that her father was brainwashed. As Senko, a New York filmmaker, tells it, her father was a “nonpolitical Democrat.” But then he transferred to a new job that required a long commute and began listening to conservative radio host Bob Grant during the drive. Eventually, he was holing himself up for three hours every day in the family kitchen, mainlining Rush Limbaugh and, during commercials, Fox News.
“It reminded me of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Senko says. “He used to love talking to different people to try to learn their language, but then he became angry about illegal immigrants coming to the country, that they were taking jobs from Americans, and that English was becoming the secondary language.”
Senko is not alone. A California schoolteacher says her marriage fell apart after her husband started watching Fox News and yelling about government plots to take away his guns and freedom. On the left, my friend Phoebe has had to physically remove her mom, who she describes as a “Sam Seder news junkie,” from family functions for raging against relatives about the “dark place” this country is going to.
“All of these emotions, especially fear, whip people up into a state of alarm and they become angry and almost evangelical about what they believe,” says Senko. “It’s like a disease infecting millions of people around the country.”
If this election cycle is a mirror, then it is reflecting a society choked with fear. It’s not just threats of terrorism, economic collapse, cyberwarfare and government corruption – each of which some 70 percent of our citizenry is afraid of, according to the Chapman University Survey on American Fears. It’s the stakes of the election itself, with Hillary Clinton at last month’s debate conjuring images of an angry Donald Trump with his finger on the nuclear codes, while Trump warned “we’re not going to have a country” if things don’t change.
Meanwhile, the electorate is commensurately terrified of its potential leaders. According to a September Associated Press poll, 56 percent of Americans said they’d be afraid if Trump won the election, while 43 percent said they’d be afraid if Clinton won – with 18 percent of respondents saying they’re afraid of either candidate winning.
Trump’s rhetoric has only served to fan the flames: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” “It’s only getting worse.” “You walk down the street, you get shot.” Build a wall. Ban the Muslims. Obama founded ISIS. Hillary is the devil. Death, destruction, violence, poverty, weakness. And I alone can make America safe again.
But just how unsafe is America today?
According to Lewis & Clark College president Barry Glassner, one of the country’s leading sociologists and author of The Culture of Fear, “Most Americans are living in the safest place at the safest time in human history.”
Around the globe, household wealth, longevity and education are on the rise, while violent crime and extreme poverty are down. In the U.S., life expectancy is higher than ever, our air is the cleanest it’s been in a decade, and despite a slight uptick last year, violent crime has been trending down since 1991. As reported in The Atlantic, 2015 was “the best year in history for the average human being.”
So how is it possible to be living in the safest time in human history, yet at the exact same time to be so scared?
Because, according to Glassner, “we are living in the most fearmongering time in human history. And the main reason for this is that there’s a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears.”
For mass media, insurance companies, Big Pharma, advocacy groups, lawyers, politicians and so many more, your fear is worth billions. And fortunately for them, your fear is also very easy to manipulate. We’re wired to respond to it above everything else. If we miss an opportunity for abundance, life goes on; if we miss an important fear cue, it doesn’t.
“The more we learn about the brain, the more we learn it’s not something that’s supposed to make you happy all the time,” says Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neurobiology professor who runs a lab studying fear. “It’s mostly a stress-reactive machine. Its primary job is to keep us alive, which is why it’s so easy to flip people into fear all the time.”
In other words, our biology and psychology are as flawed and susceptible to corruption as the systems and politicians we’re so afraid of. In particular, when it comes to assessing future risks, there is a litany of cognitive distortions and emotional overreactions that we fall prey to.
Many believe the amygdala, a tiny, almond-shaped region deep in each hemisphere of the brain, is the home of our emotional responses, specifically fear. The author Daniel Goleman has coined the term “amygdala hijacking” to describe what inflammatory rhetoric and imagery are designed to do: trigger the emotional brain before the logical brain has a chance to stop it. This is what both the right and the left believe their opponent’s media are doing to people.
So in order to resist being manipulated by those who spread fear for personal, political and corporate gain, it’s necessary to understand it. And the first thing to understand is that although the emotion may look like fear, sound like fear and smell like fear, neuroscientists argue that it is actually something quite different. . . .
Read the entire article <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-living-in-the-age-of-fear-w443554">here.</a>
Related Situationist posts:
<ul>
<li id="post-14978"><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/fear-and-threat-in-the-media/" rel="bookmark">Fear and Threat in the Media</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Situation of Hygiene-Related Sales and Swine Flu" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/the-situation-of-hygiene-related-sales-and-swine-flu/" rel="bookmark">The Situation of Hygiene-Related Sales and Swine Flu</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Warming World or Just World?" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/warming-world-or-just-world/" rel="bookmark">Warming World or Just World?</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to John Jost on Political Psychology" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/john-jost-on-political-psychology/" rel="bookmark">John Jost on Political Psychology</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Situation of Terror Babies" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/the-situation-of-terrorist-babies/" rel="bookmark">The Situation of Terror Babies </a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Situation of Fear" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/2008/07/10/the-situation-of-fear/" rel="bookmark">The Situation of Fear</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The “Turban Effect”" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/2008/07/02/the-turban-effect/" rel="bookmark">The ‘Turban Effect’</a> </li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Bush Frame: Us vs. Them; Good vs. Evil; Intentions vs. Consequences" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/2009/01/16/the-bush-frame-us-vs-them-good-vs-evil-intentions-vs-consequences/" rel="bookmark">The Bush Frame: Us vs. Them; Good vs. Evil; Intentions vs. Consequences</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/homophobia-self-phobia/">Homophobia = Self-Phobia?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/fear-of-flying-and-nba-players/" rel="bookmark">Fear of Flying and NBA Players</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/sidney-sheldon-on-ernest-becker-and-terror-management/" rel="bookmark">Sheldon Solomon on Ernest Becker and Terror Management</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/sidney-sheldon-on-ernest-becker-and-terror-management/" rel="bookmark">Joseph LeDoux on the Neural Situation of Emotion and Memory</a></li>
</ul>
<div><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/the-situation-of-fear-2/"><img alt="the-age-of-fear" src="https://videos.files.wordpress.com/rJdtUKh5/the-age-of-fear_std.original.jpg" width="160" height="120" /></a></div>]]></content:encoded>
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<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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<title>Jon Hanson & Jacob Lipton Respond To Randall Kennedy’s “Black Tape” Op-ed</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-respond-to-randall-kennedys-black-tape-op-ed/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-respond-to-randall-kennedys-black-tape-op-ed/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2015 22:23:31 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ideology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Implicit Associations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Legal Theory]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Situationist Contributors]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20689</guid>
<description><![CDATA[From the Justice Blog: In the spirit of fostering a community-wide conversation, we wanted to respond to Randall Kennedy’s provocative op-ed. Although Randy is unperturbed by the black tape recently placed over his photograph, he is quite concerned about something else: the potentially destructive effects of taking the outrage and demands of some students at […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-respond-to-randall-kennedys-black-tape-op-ed/randall/" rel=" rel="attachment wp-att-20690""><img data-attachment-id="20690" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-respond-to-randall-kennedys-black-tape-op-ed/randall/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg" data-orig-size="480,640" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"2.2","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 6s","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1447954011","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.15","iso":"200","shutter_speed":"0.041666666666667","title":"","orientation":"1","latitude":"42.379561111111","longitude":"-71.119583333333"}" data-image-title="Randall Kennedy" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=225" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=480" class=" wp-image-20690 alignright" src="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=236&h=314" alt="Randall Kennedy" width="236" height="314" srcset="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=236&h=314 236w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=472&h=628 472w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=113&h=150 113w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/randall.jpg?w=225&h=300 225w" sizes="(max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px" /></a>From the <a href="https://systemicjusticeblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/a-response-to-randall-kennedy/">Justice Blog</a>:
<div id="stcpDiv">
In the spirit of fostering a community-wide conversation, we wanted to respond to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/opinion/black-tape-at-harvard-law.html?_r=1">Randall Kennedy’s provocative op-ed</a>.
Although Randy is unperturbed by the black tape recently placed over his photograph, he is quite concerned about something else: the potentially destructive effects of taking the outrage and demands of some students at Harvard Law School – and at universities around the country – too seriously.
These students perceive racism not only on the walls of Harvard Law School but also in its history, culture, curriculum, and personnel. Having asked some of those students to explain “with as much particularity as possible” the sources of their discontent, Randy is largely unconvinced. Some of their “complaints” may have “a ring of validity,” but others “are dubious.” True, their “accusations warrant close examination and may well justify further reforms,” but his primary concern is with the intensity and unintended consequences of their grievances. On the pages of The New York Times, he cautions those youngsters to avoid “exaggerat[ing] the scope of the racism” or “minimizing their own strength and the victories that they and their forebears have already achieved.”
Read their full essay <a href="https://systemicjusticeblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/a-response-to-randall-kennedy/">here</a>.
Related Situationist posts:
</div>
<ul>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Implicit Gender Bias in Legal Profession" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/implicit-gender-bias-in-legal-profession/" rel="bookmark">Implicit Gender Bias in Legal Profession</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/8/law-school-gender-classroom/?page=single#">The Gendered Situation at Harvard Law School – Part II</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/the-gendered-situation-at-harvard-law-school-part-iii/" rel="bookmark">The Gendered Situation at Harvard Law School – Part III</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/the-gendered-situation-at-harvard-law-school-part-i/">The Gendered Situation at Harvard Law School – Part I</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Examining the Gendered Situation of Harvard Business School" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/2011/03/07/2010/05/05/examining-the-gendered-situation-of-harvard-business-school/" rel="bookmark">Examining the Gendered Situation of Harvard Business School</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/the-situation-of-the-law-school-classroom-abstract/" rel="bookmark">The Situation of the Law School Classroom – Abstract</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/systemic-justice-project-in-the-globe/" rel="bookmark">Systemic Justice Project in The Globe</a></li>
</ul>
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-respond-to-randall-kennedys-black-tape-op-ed/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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<title>‘Experimenter’ Star Peter Sarsgaard On Stanley Milgram</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/experimenter-star-peter-sarsgaard-on-stanley-milgram/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/experimenter-star-peter-sarsgaard-on-stanley-milgram/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2015 20:27:04 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Classic Experiments]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Entertainment]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20682</guid>
<description><![CDATA[  From NPR: The Milgram experiments showed that humans will do bad things under the right circumstances. NPR’s Rachel Martin interviews the star of the film “Experimenter” that explores Stanley Milgram’s life. Related Situationist posts: The Milgram Experiment Yet Again (Again!) Milgram Experiment at 50 Years Shocking for Money The Power of the Situation Video on the Original Milgram Experiment […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png"><img data-attachment-id="15054" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/milgram-experiment-at-50-years/milgrams-shock-box/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png" data-orig-size="1215,410" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}" data-image-title="Milgram’s Shock Box" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=300" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=1024" class="wp-image-15054 aligncenter" src="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=813&h=274" alt="Milgram's Shock Box" width="813" height="274" srcset="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=813&h=274 813w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=150&h=51 150w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=300&h=101 300w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=768&h=259 768w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png?w=1024&h=346 1024w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/milgrams-shock-box-e1445199872151.png 1215w" sizes="(max-width: 813px) 100vw, 813px" /></a>
 
From<a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/10/18/449662993/-experimenter-star-peter-sarsgaard-on-stanley-milgrim-s-radical-work?sc=17&f=10&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app"> NPR:</a>
The Milgram experiments showed that humans will do bad things under the right circumstances. NPR’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/10/18/449662993/-experimenter-star-peter-sarsgaard-on-stanley-milgrim-s-radical-work?sc=17&f=10&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app">Rachel Martin interviews the star of the film “Experimenter” that explores Stanley Milgram’s life.</a>
Related Situationist posts:
<ul>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Milgram Experiment Yet Again (Again!)" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/the-milgram-experiment-yet-again-again/" rel="bookmark">The Milgram Experiment Yet Again (Again!)</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Milgram Experiment at 50 Years" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/2011/10/04/milgram-experiment-at-50-years/" rel="bookmark">Milgram Experiment at 50 Years</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Shocking for Money" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/2011/10/04/2011/04/08/shocking-for-money/" rel="bookmark">Shocking for Money</a></li>
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</ul>
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<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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<title>Trent Smith on Deep Capture and Obesity – The Video</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/trent-smith-on-deep-capture-and-obesity-the-video/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/trent-smith-on-deep-capture-and-obesity-the-video/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2015 04:16:28 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Behavioral Economics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Choice Myth]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Deep Capture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Legal Theory]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20677</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In the fall of 2014, Trent Smith delivered a talk titled “The Economics of Information, Deep Capture, and the Obesity Debate.” Here’s the abstract and, below that, the video of his talk. Are consumers susceptible to manipulation by large corporations? Or are consumers basically rational, able to decide for themselves what to buy and how […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png"><img data-attachment-id="20678" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/trent-smith-on-deep-capture-and-obesity-the-video/trent-smith-poster/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png" data-orig-size="900,970" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Trent Smith Poster" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=278" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=900" class="aligncenter wp-image-20678" src="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=611&h=659" alt="Trent Smith Poster" width="611" height="659" srcset="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=611&h=659 611w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=139&h=150 139w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=278&h=300 278w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png?w=768&h=828 768w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/trent-smith-poster.png 900w" sizes="(max-width: 611px) 100vw, 611px" /></a>
In the fall of 2014, <a href="http://www.otago.ac.nz/economics/staff/otago078069.html">Trent Smith</a> delivered a talk titled “The Economics of Information, Deep Capture, and the Obesity Debate.” Here’s the abstract and, below that, the video of his talk.
Are consumers susceptible to manipulation by large corporations? Or are consumers basically rational, able to decide for themselves what to buy and how to live? This lecture will argue that these seemingly contradictory views of the American consumer are not mutually exclusive, and in fact follow directly from economic models of imperfect information. Examples of U.S. food industry practices, both historical and in the ongoing public debate over the causes of the obesity epidemic, serve to illustrate a broader phenomenon: when large industrial producers take steps to limit the information available to consumers, a market breakdown can occur in which low-quality products dominate the market. As a result, consumer welfare and–in the case of food–public health suffers. This would seem to represent a clear instance of the phenomenon known as “deep capture,” in which powerful commercial interests attempt to influence conventional wisdoms that might affect industry profits.
<iframe class="youtube-player" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9pW4gntKbMU?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
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<title>Elizabeth Loftus on “The Memory Factory”</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/elizabeth-loftus-on-the-memory-factory/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/elizabeth-loftus-on-the-memory-factory/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:24:00 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Illusions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Social Psychology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20672</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A lecture by Elizabeth F. Loftus, Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology and Professor of Law and Cognitive Science at University of California, Irvine. In this lecture, Loftus shows us that people can be led to develop rich false memories for events that never happened. False memories look very much like true ones: they can be […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<iframe class="youtube-player" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KC9CRBvIAsQ?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&start=12&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
A lecture by Elizabeth F. Loftus, Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology and Professor of Law and Cognitive Science at University of California, Irvine.
In this lecture, Loftus shows us that people can be led to develop rich false memories for events that never happened. False memories look very much like true ones: they can be confidently told, detailed, and expressed with emotion.
From <a href="http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news/radcliffe-magazine/investigating-false-memories?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=08.20.2015%20%281%29">Radcliffe Magazine</a>, an excerpt from an article by Susan Seligson:
Elizabeth Loftus can make people “remember” that eggs once made them sick or that as children they were briefly lost in a mall, though both “memories” are false.
A high-profile forensic psychologist and memory researcher, Loftus does this not as a parlor trick, although she’s witty and entertaining—and clearly savors toppling the assumptions of TED audiences and, once, 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl. For decades, Loftus has led one of the sides in what has been dubbed “the memory wars.”
“I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives,” says the Los Angeles native, now a distinguished professor of social ecology and a professor of law and cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Her UC website playfully describes Loftus as “an expert on nothing.” That’s because her groundbreaking studies of false memories, involving thousands of subjects, drive home the point that human memory is unreliable at best, and malleable enough to wreck the lives of the unjustly accused.
Loftus <a href="http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/video/elizabeth-loftus-memory-factory">visited the Radcliffe Institute</a> at the end of April to speak about her 40 years of work in the memory field, which have won her the 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. Loftus, who has a PhD from Stanford, has testified in more than 250 legal cases and consulted on many others, including those of Michael Jackson, Oliver North, O.J. Simpson, and Martha Stewart. Despite often unsparing attacks from the defense (“I often joke that I deserve combat pay,” she says), Loftus can shatter, with sound science, the record/playback notion of how we remember and how memories become narratives. “Memory actually works more like a Wikipedia page,” says Loftus. “You can go into your page and change things. But so can other people.”
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<title>Supreme Court Acknowledges “Unconscious Prejudice.”</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/supreme-court-acknowledges-unconscious-prejudice/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/supreme-court-acknowledges-unconscious-prejudice/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2015 17:03:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Implicit Associations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Situationist Contributors]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Social Psychology]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20666</guid>
<description><![CDATA[From Slate, by Kenji Yoshino: Thursday’s blockbuster opinion in the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project case will be primarily and justly remembered for interpreting the Fair Housing Act to include a disparate-impact cause of action. In anti-discrimination law, “disparate treatment” requires an intent to discriminate, while “disparate impact” can allow a […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="text text-1 parbase section">
From <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2015/scotus_roundup/supreme_court_2015_the_court_acknowledges_unconscious_prejudice.html">Slate</a>, by <a href="http://www.slate.com/authors.kenji_yoshino.html">Kenji Yoshino</a>:
<blockquote>Thursday’s blockbuster opinion in the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project case will be primarily and justly remembered for interpreting the Fair Housing Act to include a disparate-impact cause of action. In anti-discrimination law, “disparate treatment” requires an intent to discriminate, while “disparate impact” can allow a plaintiff to win even in the absence of discriminatory intent. For instance, if an entity has a policy that disproportionately affects a protected group, it has to justify that disparity even in the absence of any allegation of discriminatory intent. If it cannot produce such a justification, it will lose. As many progressives have already noted, this interpretation of the FHA is a big win, as discriminatory intent is often difficult to prove.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<div class="text-2 text parbase section">
While less obvious, however, there is a passage in the FHA case that can also be counted as a potential win for progressives. On Page 17 of the slip opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy writes, “Recognition of disparate-impact liability under the FHA also plays a role in uncovering discriminatory intent: It permits plaintiffs to counteract the unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment.” (Emphasis mine.) Disparate impact has long been seen as a way of proving “disguised animus”—so that is nothing new. However, the idea that disparate impact can be used to get at “unconscious prejudices” is, to my knowledge, an idea new to a Supreme Court majority opinion.
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<div class="text-3 text parbase section">
<blockquote>The idea of “unconscious prejudice” is that one can have prejudices of which one is unaware that nonetheless drive one’s actions. It has been kicking around in academia for years. As Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald discuss in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553804642/?tag=slatmaga-20" target="_blank">Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People</a>, Greenwald created the test to assess such unconscious biases in 1994. This test can now be found at <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/" target="_blank">implicit.harvard.edu</a>. Since taking academia by storm, it has migrated over to industry—companies ranging from Google to Pfizer have laudably adopted it to assist in making their workplaces more inclusive.</blockquote>
</div>
Read the entire article, including portion where Professor Yoshino discusses potential implications of the Kennedy’s acknowledgment, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2015/scotus_roundup/supreme_court_2015_the_court_acknowledges_unconscious_prejudice.html">here</a>.
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<title>Systemic Justice Conference – Today!</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/20658/</link>
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<pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2015 04:01:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<description><![CDATA[For more information, see the conference website or the facebook page or download the program (pdf).]]></description>
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For more information, see the <a href="https://systemicjusticeconference.wordpress.com/">conference website</a> or the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/346009268936458/">facebook page</a> or download the <a href="https://systemicjusticeconference.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/conference-brochure.pdf">program (pdf)</a>.
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<title>Erin Hennes at Harvard Law School – Discussing “A Convenient Untruth”</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/erin-hennes-at-harvard-law-school-discussing-a-convenient-untruth/</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2015 01:57:07 +0000</pubDate>
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<description><![CDATA[Tomorrow (Thursday) at noon join the HLS Student Association for Law & Mind Sciences and JUSTICE FOR bALL for a lunch talk with Erin Hennes, PhD to discuss the psychological processes underlying the acceptance of the existence of climate change, and the implications these biases have for our legal system. Non-pizza lunch provided. Where: WCC […]]]></description>
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Tomorrow (Thursday) at noon join the HLS Student Association for Law & Mind Sciences and JUSTICE FOR bALL for a lunch talk with Erin Hennes, PhD to discuss the psychological processes underlying the acceptance of the existence of climate change, and the implications these biases have for our legal system. Non-pizza lunch provided.
Where: WCC 2009 
When: 3/12/15 at noon 
————————————————————————- 
A Convenient Untruth: System Justification and the Processing of Climate Change Information 
Erin P. Hennes, PhD (University of California, Los Angeles & Harvard University)
The contemporary political and legal landscape is characterized by numerous divisive issues. Unlike many other legal issues, however, much of the disagreement about human-caused climate change centers not on how best to take action to address the problem, but on whether the problem exists at all.
Recent findings indicate that, to the extent that sustainability initiatives are seen as threatening to the socioeconomic system, individuals may be motivated to deny environmental problems in order to maintain the societal status quo. Across three lines of research using experimental laboratory studies, field work, and content analysis of focus group interviews, we find that economic system justification (a) distorts recall of scientific information about climate change and leads such evidence to be evaluated as weaker, (b) leads individuals to perceptually judge the ambient temperature to be cooler, and (c) is associated with spontaneous retrieval of misinformation about climate change.
These findings suggest that, because system justification can distort the ways in which information is processed, simply providing the public with scientific evidence may be insufficient to inspire action to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change.
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<title>Morality and Politics: A System Justification Perspective</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/morality-and-politics-a-system-justification-perspective/</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[The Situationist Staff]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2015 02:49:26 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Ideology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Morality]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[An Interview with John Jost by Paul Rosenberg Note: This interview was originally published on Salon.com with an outrageously incendiary title that entirely misrepresented its content. Introduction by Paul Rosenberg: In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a wide range of thinkers, both secular and religious, struggled to make sense of the profound evil […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png"><img loading="lazy" data-attachment-id="20635" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/morality-and-politics-a-system-justification-perspective/capital-building/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png" data-orig-size="600,797" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="capital building" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=226" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=600" class=" wp-image-20635 alignright" src="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=321&h=426" alt="capital building" width="321" height="426" srcset="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=321&h=426 321w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=113&h=150 113w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png?w=226&h=300 226w, https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/capital-building.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px" /></a>An Interview with John Jost by Paul Rosenberg
Note: This interview was originally published on Salon.com with an outrageously incendiary title that entirely misrepresented its content.
Introduction by Paul Rosenberg:
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a wide range of thinkers, both secular and religious, struggled to make sense of the profound evil of war, particularly Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. One such effort, “The Authoritarian Personality” by Theodore Adorno and three co-authors, opened up a whole new field of political psychology—initially a small niche within the broader field of social psychology—which developed fitfully over the years, but became an increasingly robust subject area in 1980s and 90s, fleshing out a number of distinct areas of cognitive processing in which liberals and conservatives differed from one another. Liberal/conservative differences were not the sole concern of this field, but they did appear repeatedly across a growing range of different sorts of measures, including the inclination to justify the existing social order, whatever it might be, an insight developed by John Jost, starting in the 1990s, under the rubric of “system justification theory.”
The field of political psychology gained increased visibility in the 2000s as conservative Republicans controlled the White House and Congress simultaneously for the first time since the Great Depression, and took the nation in an increasingly divisive direction. Most notably, John Dean’s 2006 bestseller, “Conservatives Without Conscience,” popularized two of the more striking developments of the 1980s and 90s, the constructs of rightwing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. A few years before that, a purely academic paper, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” by Jost and three other prominent researchers in the field, caused a brief spasm of political reaction which led some in Congress to talk of defunding the entire field.
But as the Bush era ended, and Barack Obama’s rhetoric of transcending right/left differences captured the national imagination, an echo of sentiment appeared in the field of political psychology as well. Known as “moral foundations theory,” and most closely associated with psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and popularized in his book “The Righteous Mind,” it argued that a too-narrow focus on concerns of fairness and care/harm avoidance had diminished researchers’ appreciation for the full range of moral concerns, especially a particular subset of distinct concerns which conservatives appear to value more than liberals do. In order to restore balance to the field, researchers must broaden their horizons—and even, Haidt argued, engage in affirmative action to recruit conservatives into the field of political psychology. This was, in effect, an argument invoking liberal values—fairness, inclusion, openness to new ideas, etc.—and using them to criticize or even attack what was characterized as a liberal orthodoxy, or even a church-like, close-minded tribal moral community.
Yet, to some, these arguments seemed to gloss over, or even just outright dismiss a wide body of data, not dogma, from decades of previous research. While people were willing to consider new information, and new perspectives, there was a reluctance to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were. In the most nitty-gritty sense, the question came down to this: Was the rhetorical framing of the moral foundations argument actually congruent with the detailed empirical findings in the field? Or did it serve more to blur important distinctions that were solidly grounded in rigorous observation?
Recently, a number of studies have raised questions about moral foundations theory in precisely these terms—are the moral foundations more congenial to conservatives actually reflective of non-moral or even immoral tendencies which have already been extensively studied? Late last year, a paper co-authored by Jost—“Another Look At Moral Foundations Theory”—built on these earlier studies to make the strongest case yet along these lines. To gain a better understanding of the field as a whole, moral foundations theory as a challenge within it, the problems that theory is now confronting, and what sort of resolution—and new frontiers—may lie ahead for the field, Paul Rosenberg spoke with John Jost. In the end, he suggested, moral foundations theory and system justification theory may end up looking surprisingly similar to one another, rather than being radically at odds.
PR: You’re most known for your work developing system justification theory, followed by your broader work on developing an integrated account of political ideology. You recently co-authored a paper “Another Look at Moral Foundations Theory,” which I want to focus on, but in order to do so coherently, I thought it best to begin by first asking you about your own work, and that of others you’ve helped integrate, before turning to moral foundations theory generally, and this critical paper in particular.
So, with that in mind as a game plan, could you briefly explain what system justification theory is all about, how it was that you became interested in the subject matter, and why others should be interested in it as well?
JJ: When I was a graduate student in social psychology at Yale back in the 1990’s I began to wonder about a set of seemingly unrelated phenomena that were all counterintuitive in some way and in need of explanation. So I asked: Why do people stay in abusive relationships, why do women feel that they are entitled to lower salaries than men, and why do African American children come to think that white dolls are more attractive and desirable? Why do people blame victims of injustice and why do victims of injustice sometimes blame themselves? Why is it so difficult for unions and other organizations to get people to stand up for themselves, and why do we find personal and social change to be so difficult, even painful? Of course, not everyone exhibits these patterns of behavior at all times, but many people do, and it seemed to me that these phenomena were not well explained by existing theories in social science.
And so it occurred to me that there might be a common denominator—at the level of social psychology—in these seemingly disparate situations. Perhaps human beings are in some fairly subtle way prone to accept, defend, justify, and rationalize existing social arrangements and to resist attempts to change the status quo, however well-meaning those attempts may be. In other words, we may be motivated, to varying degrees, to justify the social systems on which we depend, to see them as relatively good, fair, legitimate, desirable, and so on.
This did not strike me as implausible, given that social psychologists had already demonstrated that we are often motivated to defend and justify ourselves and the social groups to which we belong. Most of us believe that we are better drivers than the average person and more fair, too, and many of us believe that our schools or sports teams or companies are better than their rivals and competitors. Why should we not also want to believe that the social, economic, and political institutions that are familiar to us are, all things considered, better than the alternatives? To believe otherwise is at least somewhat painful, insofar it would force us to confront the possibility that our lives and those of others around us may be subject to capriciousness, exploitation, discrimination, injustice, and that things could be different, better—but they are not.
In 2003, a paper you co-authored, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition” caused quite a stir politically—there were even brief rumblings in Congress to cut off all research funding, not just for you, but for an entire broad field of research, though you managed to quell those rumblings in a subsequent Washington Post op-ed. That paper might well be called the tip of the iceberg of a whole body of work you’ve helped draw together, and continued to work on since then. So, first of all, what was that paper about?
We wanted to understand the relationship, if any, between psychological conservatism—the mental forces that contribute to resistance to change—and political conservatism as an ideology or a social movement. My colleagues and I conducted a quantitative, meta-analytic review of nearly fifty years of research conducted in 12 different countries and involving over 22,000 research participants or individual cases. We found 88 studies that had investigated correlations between personality characteristics and various psychological needs, motives, and tendencies, on one hand, and political attitudes and opinions, on the other.
And what did it show?
We found pretty clear and consistent correlations between psychological motives to reduce and manage uncertainty and threat—as measured with standard psychometric scales used to gauge personal needs for order, structure, and closure, intolerance of ambiguity, cognitive simplicity vs. complexity, death anxiety, perceptions of a dangerous world, etc.—and identification with and endorsement of politically conservative (vs. liberal) opinions, leaders, parties, and policies.
How did politicians misunderstand the paper, and how did you respond?
I suspect that there were some honest misunderstandings as well as some other kinds. One issue is that many people seem to assume that whatever psychologists are studying must be considered (by the researchers, at least) as abnormal or pathological. But that is simply untrue. Social, cognitive, developmental, personality, and political psychologists are all far more likely to study attitudes and behaviors that are normal, ordinary, and mundane. We are primarily interested in understanding the dynamics of everyday life. In any case, none of the variables that my colleagues and I investigated had anything to do with psychopathology; we were looking at variability in normal ranges within the population and whether specific psychological characteristics were correlated with political opinions. We tried to point some of these things out, encouraging people to read beyond the title, and emphasizing that there are advantages as well as disadvantages to being high vs. low on the need for cognitive closure, cognitive complexity, sensitivity to threat, and so on.
How has that paper been built on since?
I am gratified and amazed at how many research teams all over the world have taken our ideas and refined, extended, and otherwise built upon them over the last decade. To begin with, a number of studies have confirmed that political conservatism and right-wing orientation are associated with various measures of system justification. And public opinion research involving nationally representative samples from all over the world establishes that the two core value dimensions that we proposed to separate the right from the left—traditionalism (or resistance to change) and acceptance of inequality—are indeed correlated with one another, and they are generally (but not always) associated with system justification, conservatism, and right-wing orientation.
Since 2003, numerous studies have replicated the correlations we observed between epistemic motives, including personal needs for order, structure, and closure and resistance to change, acceptance of inequality, system justification, conservatism, and right-wing orientation. Several find that liberals score higher than conservatives on the need for cognition, which captures the individual’s chronic tendency to enjoy effortful forms of thinking. This finding is potentially important because individuals who score lower on the need for cognition favor quick, intuitive, heuristic processing of new information, whereas those who score higher are more likely to engage in more elaborate, systematic processing (what Daniel Kahneman refers to as System 1 and System 2 thinking, respectively). The relationship between epistemic motivation and political orientation has also been explored in research on nonverbal behavior and neurocognitive structure and functioning.
Various labs have also replicated the correlations we observed between existential motives, including attention and sensitivity to dangerous and threatening stimuli, and resistance to change, acceptance of inequality, and conservatism. Ingenious experiments have demonstrated that temporary activation of epistemic needs to reduce uncertainty or to attain a sense of control or closure increases the appeal of system justification, conservatism, and right-wing orientation. Experiments have demonstrated that temporary activation of existential needs to manage threat and anxiety likewise increases the appeal of system justification, conservatism, and right-wing orientation, all other things being equal. These experiments are especially valuable because they identify causal relationships between psychological motives and political orientation.
Progress has also been made in understanding connections between personality characteristics and political orientation. In terms of “Big Five” personality traits, studies involving students and nationally representative samples of adults tell exactly the same story: Openness to new experiences is positively associated with a liberal orientation, whereas Conscientiousness (especially the need for order) is positively associated with conservative orientation. In a few longitudinal studies, childhood measures of intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity as well as sensitivity to fear, threat, and danger have been found to predict conservative orientation later in life. Finally, we have observed that throughout North America and Western Europe, conservatives report being happier and more satisfied than liberals, and this difference is partially (but not completely) explained by system justification and the acceptance of inequality as legitimate. As we suspected many years ago, there appears to be an emotional or hedonic cost to seeing the system as unjust and in need of significant change.
“Moral foundations theory” has gotten a lot of popular press, as well as serious attention in the research community, but for those not familiar with it, could you give us a brief description, and then say something about why it is problematic on its face (particularly in light of the research discussed above)?
The basic idea is that there are five or six innate (evolutionarily prepared) bases for human “moral” judgment and behavior, namely fairness (which moral foundations theorists understand largely in terms of reciprocity), avoidance of harm, ingroup loyalty, obedience to authority, and the enforcement of purity standards. My main problem is that sometimes moral foundations theorists write descriptively as if these are purely subjective considerations—that people think and act as if morality requires us to obey authority, be loyal to the group, and so on. I have no problem with that descriptive claim—although this is surely only a small subset of the things that people might think are morally relevant—as long as we acknowledge that people could be wrong when they think and act as if these are inherently moral considerations.
At other times, however, moral foundations theorists write prescriptively, as if these “foundations” should be given equal weight, objectively speaking, that all of them should be considered virtues, and that anyone who rejects any of them is ignoring an important part of what it means to be a moral human being. I and others have pointed out that many of the worst atrocities in human history have been committed not merely in the name of group loyalty, obedience to authority, and the enforcement of purity standards, but because of a faithful application of these principles. For 24 centuries, Western philosophers have concluded that treating people fairly and minimizing harm should, when it comes to morality, trump group loyalty, deference to authority, and purification. In many cases, behaving ethically requires impartiality and disobedience and the overcoming of gut-level reactions that may lead us toward nepotism, deference, and acting on the basis of disgust and other emotional intuitions. It may be difficult to overcome these things, but isn’t this what morality requires of us?
There have been a number of initial critical studies published, which you cite in this new paper. What have they shown?
Part of the problem is that moral foundations theorists framed their work, for rhetorical purposes, in strong contrast to other research in social and political psychology, including work that I’ve been associated with. But this was unnecessary from the start and, in retrospect, entirely misleading. They basically said: “Past work suggests that conservatism is motivated by psychological needs to reduce uncertainty and threat and that it is associated with authoritarianism and social dominance, but we say that it is motivated by genuinely moral—not immoral or amoral—concerns for group loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity.” This has turned out to be a false juxtaposition on many levels.
First researchers in England and the Netherlands demonstrated that threat sensitivity is in fact associated with group loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity. For instance, perceptions of a dangerous world predict the endorsement of these three values, but not the endorsement of fairness or harm avoidance. Second, a few research teams in the U.S. and New Zealand discovered that authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were positively associated with the moral valuation of ingroup, authority, and purity but not with the valuation of fairness and avoidance of harm. Psychologically speaking, the three so-called “binding foundations” look quite different from the two more humanistic ones.
What haven’t these earlier studies tackled that you wanted to address? And why was this important?
These other studies suggested that there was a reasonably close connection between authoritarianism and the endorsement of ingroup, authority, and purity concerns, but they did not investigate the possibility that individual differences in authoritarianism and social dominance orientation could explain, in a statistical sense, why conservatives value ingroup, authority, and purity significantly more than liberals do and—just as important, but often glossed over in the literature on moral foundations theory—why liberals value fairness and the avoidance of harm significantly more than conservatives do.
How did you go about tackling these unanswered questions? What did you find and how did it compare with what you might have expected?
There was a graduate student named Matthew Kugler (who was then studying at Princeton) who attended a friendly debate about moral foundations theory that I participated in and, after hearing my remarks, decided to see whether the differences between liberals and conservatives in terms of moral intuitions would disappear after statistically adjusting for authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. He conducted a few studies and found that it did, and then he contacted me, and we ended up collaborating on this research, collecting additional data using newer measures developed by moral foundations theorists as well as measures of outgroup hostility.
What does it mean for moral foundations theory?
To me, it means that scholars may need to clean up some of the conceptual confusion in this area of moral psychology, and researchers need to face up to the fact that some moral intuitions (things that people may think are morally relevant and may use as a basis for judging others) may lead people to behave in an unethical, discriminatory manner. But we need behavioral research, such as studies of actual discrimination, to see if this is actually the case. So far the evidence is mainly circumstantial.
And what future research is to come along these lines from you?
One of my students decided to investigate the relationship between system justification and its motivational antecedents, on one hand, and the endorsement of moral foundations, on the other. This work also suggests that the rhetorical contrast between moral foundations theory and other research in social psychology was exaggerated. We are finding that, of the variables we have included, empathy is the best psychological predictor of endorsing fairness and the avoidance of harm as moral concerns, whereas the endorsement of group loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity concerns is indeed linked to epistemic motives to reduce uncertainty (such as the need for cognitive closure) and existential motives to reduce threat (such as death anxiety) and to system justification in the economic domain. So, at a descriptive level, moral foundations theory is entirely consistent with system justification theory.
Finally, I’ve only asked some selective questions, and I’d like to conclude by asking what I always ask in interviews like this—What’s the most important question that I didn’t ask? And what’s the answer to it?
Do I think that social science can help to address some of the problems we face as a society? Yes, I am holding out hope that it can, at least in the long run, and hoping that our leaders will come to realize this eventually.
Our conversation leads me to want to add one more question. Haidt’s basic argument could be characterized as a combination of anthropology–look at all the “moral principles” different cultures have advanced—and the broad equation of morality with the restraint of individual self-interest and/or desire. Your paper, bringing to attention the roles of SDO and RWA, throws into sharp relief a key problem with such a formulation—one that Southern elites have understood for centuries: wholly legitimate individual self-interest (and even morality—adequately feeding & providing a decent future for one’s children, for example) can be easily over-ridden by appeals to heinous “moral concerns,” such as “racial purity,” or more broadly, upholding the “God-given racial order.”
Yet, Haidt does seem to have an important point that individualist moral concern leave something unsaid about the value of the social dimension of human experience, which earlier moral traditions have addressed. Do you see any way forward toward developing a more nuanced account of morality that benefits from the criticism that harm-avoidance and fairness may be too narrow a foundation without embracing the sorts of problematic alternatives put forward so far?
Yes, and there is long tradition of theory and research on social justice—going all the way back to Aristotle—that involves a rich, complex, nuanced analysis of ethical dilemmas that goes well beyond the assumption that fairness is simply about positive and negative reciprocity.
Without question, we are a social species with relational needs and dependencies, and how we treat other people is fundamental to human life, especially when it comes to our capacity for cooperation and social organization. When we are not engaging in some form of rationalization, there are clearly recognizable standards of procedural justice, distributive justice, interactional justice, and so on. Even within the domain of distributive justice—which has to do with the allocation of benefits and burdens in society—there are distinct principles of equity, equality, and need, and in some situations these principles may be in conflict or contradiction.
How to reconcile or integrate these various principles in theory and practice is no simple matter, and this, it seems to me, is what we should focus on working out. We should also focus on solving other dilemmas, such as how to integrate utilitarian, deontological, virtue-theoretical, and social contractualist forms of moral reasoning, because each of these—in my view—has some legitimate claim on our attention as moral agents.
Related Situationist posts:
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<li id="post-20604"><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/thanksgiving-as-system-justification-7/" rel="bookmark">Thanksgiving as “System Justification”</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to System Justification Theory and Law" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/sjt/" rel="bookmark">System Justification Theory and Law</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to A System-Justification Primer" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/a-system-justification-primer/" rel="bookmark">A System-Justification Primer</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Rationalize or Rebel?" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/rationalize-or-rebel/" rel="bookmark">Rationalize or Rebel?</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to Barbara Ehrenreich on the Sources of and Problems with Dispositionism" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/10/barbara-ehrenreich-on-the-sources-of-and-problems-with-dispositionism/" rel="bookmark">Barbara Ehrenreich on the Sources of and Problems with Dispositionism</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to The Motivated Situation of Inequality and Discrimination" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/2009/11/10/2009/09/23/the-motivated-situation-of-inequality-and-discrimination/" rel="bookmark">The Motivated Situation of Inequality and Discrimination</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to John Jost on System Justification Theory" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/2009/07/19/bloggingheads-tv-percontations-system-justification-theory/" rel="bookmark">John Jost on System Justification Theory</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to John Jost’s “System Justification and the Law” – Video" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/2009/07/19/2009/03/05/john-josts-system-justification-and-the-law-video/" rel="bookmark">John Jost’s “System Justification and the Law” – Video</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to Independence Day: Celebrating Courage to Challenge the Situation" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/2009/07/19/2009/07/04/independence-day-celebrating-courage-to-challenge-the-situation/" rel="bookmark">Independence Day: Celebrating Courage to Challenge the Situation</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to Cheering for the Underdog" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/19/2009/09/23/2007/12/31/cheering-for-the-underdog/" rel="bookmark">Cheering for the Underdog</a> </li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to Patriots Lose: Justice Restored!" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/2009/07/19/2009/07/04/2008/02/05/patriots-lose-justice-restored/" rel="bookmark">Patriots Lose: Justice Restored!</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Psychology of Inequality" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/03/25/psychology-of-inequality/" rel="bookmark">Psychology of Inequality</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Self-Fulfilling Doomsday Prophecies" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/05/13/self-fulfilling-doomsday-prophecies/" rel="bookmark">Self-Fulfilling Doomsday Prophecies</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Cause of Rioting? That’s Easy: Rioters!" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/08/16/the-cause-of-rioting-thats-easy-rioters/" rel="bookmark">The Cause of Rioting? That’s Easy: Rioters!</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to If It’s Evitable, I Don’t Like It!" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/05/13/2011/03/24/if-its-evitable-i-dont-like-it/" rel="bookmark">If It’s Evitable, I Don’t Like It!</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Aaron Kay, “The Psychological Power of the Status Quo”" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/03/24/2009/11/19/aaron-kay-%e2%80%9cthe-psychological-power-of-the-status-quo%e2%80%9d/" rel="bookmark">Aaron Kay, “The Psychological Power of the Status Quo</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to System Justification Theory and Law" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2011/11/19/2011/03/24/2011/02/08/2011/02/05/sjt/" rel="bookmark">System Justification Theory and Law</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent Link to Jonathan Haidt on the Situation of Moral Reasoning" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/2008/06/17/jonathan-haidt-on-the-situation-of-moral-reasoning/" rel="bookmark">Jonathan Haidt on the Situation of Moral Reasoning</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Jonathan Haidt Changes His Situation" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/jonathan-haidt-changes-his-situation/" rel="bookmark">Jonathan Haidt Changes His Situation</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to The Situation of Morality" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/the-situation-of-morality/" rel="bookmark">The Situation of Morality</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Jonathan Haidt – 5 Moral Values Behind Political Choices" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/jonathan-haidt-5-moral-values-behind-political-choices/" rel="bookmark">Jonathan Haidt – 5 Moral Values Behind Political Choices</a></li>
<li><a title="Permanent link to Haidt on “The Righteous Mind”" href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/haidt-on-the-righteous-mind/" rel="bookmark">Haidt on “The Righteous Mind”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/jonathan-haidt-on-the-situation-of-religious-beliefs/" rel="bookmark">Jonathan Haidt on the Situation of Religious Beliefs</a></li>
</ul>
To review the full collection of Situationist posts related to system justification, click <a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/2009/11/14/category/system-legitimacy/" target="_blank">here</a>.
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<title>Systemic Justice Project in The Globe</title>
<link>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/systemic-justice-project-in-the-globe/</link>
<comments>https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/systemic-justice-project-in-the-globe/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[J]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Feb 2015 16:42:13 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Legal Theory]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Public Policy]]></category>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=20625</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Below are excerpts from Courtney Humphries’s superb Boston Globe article about the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School (cartoon by Sam Washburn and photo by Justin Saglio, both for the Globe): From the first day, it’s clear that law professor Jon Hanson’s new Systemic Justice class at Harvard Law School is going to be […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://systemicjusticeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/systemic-justice.jpg"><img loading="lazy" data-attachment-id="268" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/situational-sources-of-evil-part-iii/from-httpwwwsaloncommediacolshal19990927persuaders-2/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg" data-orig-size="229,268" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="[]" data-image-title="from http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/09/27/persuaders/" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg?w=229" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg?w=229" class=" wp-image-268 alignleft" src="https://systemicjusticeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/systemic-justice.jpg?w=456&h=420" alt="Jon Hanson Jacob Lipton Systemic Justice Project" width="456" height="420" /></a> Below are excerpts from Courtney Humphries’s superb <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/02/06/new-harvard-law-school-program-aims-for-systemic-justice/PeGBqIenWhqqCuJ37Y20kJ/story.html">Boston Globe</a> article about <a href="https://systemicjustice.wordpress.com/">the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School </a>(cartoon by Sam Washburn and photo by Justin Saglio, both for the Globe):
From the first day, it’s clear that law professor Jon Hanson’s new <a href="https://systemicjustice.wordpress.com/courses/systemic-justice/">Systemic Justice class</a> at Harvard Law School is going to be different from most classes at the school. Hanson, lanky, bespectacled, and affable, cracks jokes as he paces the room. He refers to the class of 50-odd students as a community; he even asks students to brainstorm a name for the group. But behind the informality is a serious purpose: Hanson is out to change the way law is taught.
“None of us really knows what ‘systemic justice’ is—yet you’re all here,” he points out. The new elective class, which is being taught for the first time in this spring term, will ask students to examine common causes of injustice in history and ways to use law and activism to even the field.
Traditionally, students come to law school to master existing laws and how to apply them. But surveys given to the students in this class beforehand show that most are worried about big unsolved social problems—income inequality, climate change, racial bias in policing—and believe that law is part of the problem. The goal of Hanson’s class is to introduce a new approach.
The class is part of a new Systemic Justice Project at Harvard, led by Hanson and recent law school graduate Jacob Lipton. They’re also leading a course called <a href="https://systemicjustice.wordpress.com/courses/the-justice-lab/">the Justice Lab</a>, a kind of think tank that will ask students to analyze systemic problems in society and propose legal solutions. Both classes go beyond legal doctrine to show how history, psychology, and economics explain the causes of injustice. A conference in April will bring students and experts together to discuss their findings.
Harvard’s project is an unusual one, but it arises out of a growing recognition that law students need to be trained to be problem-solvers and policy makers. As Hanson tells his students that first day, “If you’re thinking about systemic justice, you need to be thinking about legal education.” He believes that this education should be less about learning the status quo and more about how the next generation of lawyers can change it.
There’s widespread acknowledgment that justice is often meted out unfairly; decades of scholarship have shown how social biases based on race, gender, corporate interests, or ideology find their way into written laws. Nevertheless, Hanson says, law school classes don’t always give students the tools to counteract injustices. “My students have expressed increasing amounts of frustration with the fact that many of our biggest problems are not being addressed by the legal system,” he says. Lipton was one of those students. After graduating in 2014, he turned down a fellowship in Washington, D.C., to stay at Harvard and help Hanson see the new project through.
One of their targets is the case method of legal education, which has been the dominant form of teaching law in America since it was introduced at Harvard Law School by Christopher Columbus Langdell after he became its dean in 1870. Rather than lecturing his students, Langdell asked them to examine judicial cases of the past. Then, through a process of Socratic questioning, he would challenge students to explain their knowledge and interpretation of a case, allowing them to glean the deeper principles of the law, much like a scientist would examine evidence.
Though the case method has evolved since the 19th century, the primary text of most classes is still the casebook—a set of legal decisions chosen for their ability to illustrate legal principles. Professors who embrace it say this approach forces students—particularly first-year students with little legal training—to think like lawyers. “Within a few weeks, I have reprogrammed their brains,” says Bruce Mann, a law professor at Harvard who’s known for his rapid-fire questions in class. “That doesn’t mean that it is backward-looking. I’m really teaching them how to think.” Mann, like many professors these days, tries to put cases in a larger historical and social context.
<a href="https://systemicjusticeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-globe-photo-2015.jpg"><img loading="lazy" data-attachment-id="269" data-permalink="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/situational-sources-of-evil-part-iii/from-httpwwwsaloncommediacolshal19990927persuaders/" data-orig-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg" data-orig-size="229,268" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="[]" data-image-title="from http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/09/27/persuaders/" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg?w=229" data-large-file="https://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/persuaders-image-from-salon.jpg?w=229" class="alignnone wp-image-269 size-full" src="https://systemicjusticeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/jon-hanson-jacob-lipton-globe-photo-2015.jpg?w=460&h=307" alt="Jon Hanson Jacob Lipton" width="460" height="307" /></a>
But Hanson and Lipton believe that the case method, while helpful in the hands of skilled teachers, puts too much emphasis on what the law already is, rather than what it should be. It tends to assume that decisions of the past are fair and appropriate. Instead, says Lipton, “we think that legal education should start with what the problems are in the world.”
They also take issue with the way that law gets divided into categories—tax law, criminal law, property law, torts, contracts—each with different professors and different casebooks. Douglas Kysar, a law professor at Yale Law School and former student of Hanson’s who has embraced his interdisciplinary approach to the law, says that these divisions can hinder tackling issues that existing laws don’t address, and permits problems that run across disciplines to go unaddressed. “In each one of those fields, we often try to present the cases and materials as if they’re an efficient and fair whole,” he says. When something arises to challenge that picture, professors can pass the buck. For instance, in environmental law, one of Kysar’s specialties, it’s not always clear where the responsibility to fix a problem like pollution lies. “Everyone’s pointing their fingers at other systems that are supposed to address a harm,” he says. “There’s no place where you’re looking at the systems in a cross section.”
Hanson and Lipton also argue that the law focuses too much on the actions and disputes of individuals—and not even on an accurate vision of how individuals behave. “In many cases, the focus on the individual obscures what the actual problem is or what the solutions are,” Lipton says. Hanson, meanwhile, has long argued that the vision of the individual that exists in law isn’t well backed up by research. He directs the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard, which brings findings from social psychology and social cognition to bear on the law. The law generally treats people as rational actors making decisions based on their own knowledge and beliefs. In fact, Hanson says, research has shown that people are easily swayed by their circumstances. Through their academic writing and on a blog called <a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/">The Situationist</a>, Hanson and a growing group of like-minded scholars have argued that solving systemic problems means focusing more on forces that act on us, rather than assigning blame and punishment to individual actors.
A systemic approach to racial bias in policing, for instance, might look at psychological research on unconscious racial bias, police training techniques, and law enforcement policies in order to create a more just system, rather than on the actions of a specific officer. For the problem of rising student debt, another complex issue that students in the Justice Lab think tank are likely to tackle, it might look at federal loan systems that allow for-profit colleges to put students in debt without providing enough value in return. Another example is obesity and the food system; a systemic approach would look at ways that advertising, agricultural subsidies, supermarket zoning, and food service practices create an unhealthy system for consumers. “We want to examine the role that large commercial interests play in shaping laws,” Hanson says. Solutions might involve class actions, new regulations, or institutional changes.
. . . .Hanson thinks that the idea of systemic justice resonates now in a way that it hasn’t always in the past. “I think that is a reflection of the change in the mood in the country and in this generation of law students,” he says.
* * *
The Systemic Justice Project, though unique in some ways, is part of a larger effort introduce a policy focus into law school—Stanford Law School, for instance, recently launched a Law and Policy Lab that asks students to find policy solutions to real-world problems. “Traditionally, law school education has been doctrinal,” says Sergio Campos, a law professor at the University of Miami and visiting professor at Harvard. “You teach students what the law is and how to apply it.” . . . . “When you get to a position where you can change the law, you don’t have a background on policy and what it should be,” Campos says.
* * *
. . . Harvard law professor David Rosenberg . . . . believes law schools often leave students unprepared to think broadly. “Over and over again in my many decades at Harvard, students have told me that my advice contradicts their instruction in other courses that making social policy arguments is a confession of weakness in your legal position, and should be done, if ever, only as a last resort,” he says. “We’re de-training them.”
Rena Karefa-Johnson, a second-year student who’s signed up for both the Systemic Justice class and the Justice Lab, admits that some students simply want to learn existing law and don’t appreciate Hanson’s approach. But it’s been popular with students like her who are already active in fighting for social causes. “The law is inherently political,” she says. “He does not allow his students to learn the law outside of its context.”
Read entire article <a href="https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/">here</a>.
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