A few months ago, I blogged about the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance in politics, where individuals may makes changes in their attitudes or actions in order to make the two consistent. The driving force behind this is that individuals do not be inconsistent. Santosh over at Brown Man's Burden talks about cognitive dissonance in the context of basketball.
I had my own experience with cognitive dissonance a few days back. Several weeks ago, I made my first ever campaign contribution, throwing a token or two over to the "Straight Talk Express." A few days back, I watched the Republican Debate. Intellectually, it was quite clear to me that Gov. Romney won the day, with Senator McCain sounding a bit confused, even defensive, on several policy issues.
However, when I spoke to a friend of mine afterwards who made this point, I debated him vociferously, offering excuses for McCain's tactics and performance. I obviously knew my friend was right, but I didn't want to believe it because I wanted my mouth to be where my money was (or vice versa).
Campaign contributions are salient very early in political contests: funds are important both in getting campaigns started and sustaining them through the grueling primary and general election season. Given this, I wonder how much "stickiness" there is in political support among those who donate money to political campaigns. Obviously, if you are willing to part with money, you are likely more invested in your candidate than others are. However, controlling for intensity of support, I wonder if those who donate to a candidate are more likely to stick with that candidate even when less than flattering information is revealed about him/her during the course of the campaign. This question is similar in spirit to, but ultimately distinct from, that explored in the Mullainathan and Washington paper linked in my previous post.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query cognitive dissonance. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query cognitive dissonance. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
A Prospectus for the Rest of Us!
In a few weeks, I will have officially completed my third year as a PhD student (or my fifth year of my MD/PhD quest, which sounds a lot sadder). Part and parcel with this achievement comes a fairly major institutional requirement: I have to submit my 20 page research prospectus by mid June. Completion of the prospectus promotes me to "candidacy." (I only recently realized the significance of this term. My e-mail footer for the last three years had ended with "PhD Candidate." Apparently, by doing so, I've "lied to thousands of people" since coming to Yale).
Like most things I do, I've approached the whole prospectus writing process in a seriously manic, yet somehow careless, fashion. The way this is supposed to work is that you first come up with a question, then talk to your committee (or those who you intend to con into being on your committee), then write the prospectus based on those ideas, and then carry out the research. My process has been almost opposite: do the research, form the committee, get confused between several ideas, talk to the committee, toss around two more large ideas, and, ultimately, set off on writing the prospectus. In some sense, I've treated the prospectus as something that comes into place once I've generated enough data. The problem with doing this is that your ideas might be so disparate that they do not naturally fit together into a thematic dissertation (though you can make the theme as vague as you want, perhaps, to get around this) or you explore so many things that you are confused between different directions you could pursue. This is my problem now. I am fairly confident about two of my papers, but the lead paper - well, that remains something to be decided!
That being said, for the purposes of the prospectus, none of this actually matters! The point is to have something coherent down that the graduate committee thinks is interesting, doable and illustrative of your knowledge of the field. Not everything you write in the prospectus has to work out. Given this, perhaps the best thing to do is to find something you are broadly interested in, figure out some specific questions and data sources you could use, get the prospectus done early and then go to town. This is what I would advocate to other grad students in the pipeline and I am certainly in position to do this right now.
But, for whatever reason, I don't want to submit my prospectus until I am confident that all three papers I propose will materialize in the final dissertation. Given what I just said, this is irrational: I think this is a pretty good example of cognitive dissonance or, more precisely, some kind of pre-emptive action to avoid cognitive dissonance. I don't want to hand in something other than what I said I would hand in - I don't want to appear inconsistent over time.
Well, it's time to bite the bullet. I am currently working on finishing up this prospectus. I plan on studying the astonishingly quick transition of low and middle income countries from malnutrition to obesity, particularly focusing on the intersection between biology and economic factors that may drive such changes (paper 1), as well as intergenerational transfers of health status. (papers 2 and 3).
Hopefully, whatever I produce and hand in will follow this script. And if it doesn't...well, I guess thats OK, too.
Like most things I do, I've approached the whole prospectus writing process in a seriously manic, yet somehow careless, fashion. The way this is supposed to work is that you first come up with a question, then talk to your committee (or those who you intend to con into being on your committee), then write the prospectus based on those ideas, and then carry out the research. My process has been almost opposite: do the research, form the committee, get confused between several ideas, talk to the committee, toss around two more large ideas, and, ultimately, set off on writing the prospectus. In some sense, I've treated the prospectus as something that comes into place once I've generated enough data. The problem with doing this is that your ideas might be so disparate that they do not naturally fit together into a thematic dissertation (though you can make the theme as vague as you want, perhaps, to get around this) or you explore so many things that you are confused between different directions you could pursue. This is my problem now. I am fairly confident about two of my papers, but the lead paper - well, that remains something to be decided!
That being said, for the purposes of the prospectus, none of this actually matters! The point is to have something coherent down that the graduate committee thinks is interesting, doable and illustrative of your knowledge of the field. Not everything you write in the prospectus has to work out. Given this, perhaps the best thing to do is to find something you are broadly interested in, figure out some specific questions and data sources you could use, get the prospectus done early and then go to town. This is what I would advocate to other grad students in the pipeline and I am certainly in position to do this right now.
But, for whatever reason, I don't want to submit my prospectus until I am confident that all three papers I propose will materialize in the final dissertation. Given what I just said, this is irrational: I think this is a pretty good example of cognitive dissonance or, more precisely, some kind of pre-emptive action to avoid cognitive dissonance. I don't want to hand in something other than what I said I would hand in - I don't want to appear inconsistent over time.
Well, it's time to bite the bullet. I am currently working on finishing up this prospectus. I plan on studying the astonishingly quick transition of low and middle income countries from malnutrition to obesity, particularly focusing on the intersection between biology and economic factors that may drive such changes (paper 1), as well as intergenerational transfers of health status. (papers 2 and 3).
Hopefully, whatever I produce and hand in will follow this script. And if it doesn't...well, I guess thats OK, too.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Irrational Voters
It's safe to say that these aren't the best of times for President Bush supporters. Depending on your point of view, every month seems to bring a new problem, a new screw-up, or a new impeachable offense. What is interesting is that, despite talk of him being the worst president ever, some 30% of the public still approves of Bush's job performance. "How is this even possible?" asked one of my relatives in India.
Perhaps part of the answer can be found in this very interesting paper by economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Ebonya Washington. Standard economic models of voting posit that individuals express their preferences through their vote. The authors suggest, however, that it is possible for the act of voting to influence beliefs and preferences. How does this occur? As the authors note:
One explanation for the impact of behaviors on beliefs is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) which refers to one’s internal need for consistency. If an individual performs an activity that is antithetical to his beliefs, the individual may unconsciously change his beliefs to alleviate the discomfort of having inconsistent attitudes and actions.
In order to test for behavioral effects of voting, the authors use an ingenious "natural experiment." First off, note that if we were to take the general population and run a regression of beliefs on voting, the results would be difficult to interpret: does the causality run from voting to beliefs or beliefs to voting? To get around that problem, Mullainathan and Washington exploit the age discontinuity in voting eligibility (i.e. 17 years olds can't vote, but 19 years olds can) and check the beliefs of these individuals two years later. They find that those who voted (the then 19 now 21 year olds) show more polarizing opinions than comparable individuals who did not (then 17, now 19 year olds). Note that, for this to work, those who voted and those who did not due to age restrictions should look the same as far as their traits and such. The authors go to some difficulty to establish this.
I buy it. In 2000, I put my support behind then Governor G. W. Bush. For the next few years, I felt myself supporting the Bush administration's policies less and less (and less and less), but, at least for a few months, I viscerally experienced some weird feeling (shame?) from having acted in one way and, subsequently, believing another. I'm happy to report that I am no longer upset about this and at peace with my anti-neocon stance, but the experience of being dissonant really did resonate with me.
More on voting: I'm really interested in reading this new book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan. Supposedly the book is about why voters act stupidly with respect to their best interests.
Perhaps part of the answer can be found in this very interesting paper by economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Ebonya Washington. Standard economic models of voting posit that individuals express their preferences through their vote. The authors suggest, however, that it is possible for the act of voting to influence beliefs and preferences. How does this occur? As the authors note:
One explanation for the impact of behaviors on beliefs is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) which refers to one’s internal need for consistency. If an individual performs an activity that is antithetical to his beliefs, the individual may unconsciously change his beliefs to alleviate the discomfort of having inconsistent attitudes and actions.
In order to test for behavioral effects of voting, the authors use an ingenious "natural experiment." First off, note that if we were to take the general population and run a regression of beliefs on voting, the results would be difficult to interpret: does the causality run from voting to beliefs or beliefs to voting? To get around that problem, Mullainathan and Washington exploit the age discontinuity in voting eligibility (i.e. 17 years olds can't vote, but 19 years olds can) and check the beliefs of these individuals two years later. They find that those who voted (the then 19 now 21 year olds) show more polarizing opinions than comparable individuals who did not (then 17, now 19 year olds). Note that, for this to work, those who voted and those who did not due to age restrictions should look the same as far as their traits and such. The authors go to some difficulty to establish this.
I buy it. In 2000, I put my support behind then Governor G. W. Bush. For the next few years, I felt myself supporting the Bush administration's policies less and less (and less and less), but, at least for a few months, I viscerally experienced some weird feeling (shame?) from having acted in one way and, subsequently, believing another. I'm happy to report that I am no longer upset about this and at peace with my anti-neocon stance, but the experience of being dissonant really did resonate with me.
More on voting: I'm really interested in reading this new book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan. Supposedly the book is about why voters act stupidly with respect to their best interests.
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