Wine, Wars (and Rumors of Wars), and Why (Unlike Indiana Jones) We Often Choose Unwisely

Cognitive psychologists and behavioral economists have found that behind every choice, there are a set of heuristics (i.e., rules of thumb, strategies) that guide our decisions. One, for example, is priming, which is where our subsequent actions are affected by prior cues. For example, test subjects were asked to read a series of words that were associated either with being elderly (e.g., “forgetful,” “Florida,” “wrinkle”), and when they were then asked to walk to a room down the hall, those who read the "elderly" words walked more slowly than those who had not.

Another is anchoring. It turns we make our judgments in comparison to alternatives. For example, a $25 bottle of wine seems expensive next to $5 bottles but relatively cheap next to $150 bottles. There's a story told about a pool-table store that one week began showing customers the cheapest tables first before then moving on to the more expensive ones and the next week began with the most expensive tables before working on to the cheaper ones. In the week that the store began by showing the expensive tables first, the average sale was almost twice as much!

Then there is the availability heuristic. This is the tendency to make judgements about the frequency of an event based on how easy it is to recall similar instances. In other words, how easily something can be called to mind is related to perceptions about how often this event occurs. As Steven Pinker notes people overestimate the probability of the types of accidents that typically garner headlines, such as plane crashes, shark attacks, and terrorist bombings but underestimate the likelihood of events that don't such as drownings, falls, and electrocutions (Pinker, "The Better Angels Of Our Nature," p. 193).

In a survey of historical memory, I asked a hundred Internet users to write down as many wars as they could remember in five minutes. The responses were heavily weighted toward the world wars fought by the United States, and wars closest to the present. Though the earlier centuries, as we shall see, had far more wars, people remembered more wars from recent centuries (Pinker, p. 194).

This helps explain why most people think that Roman Catholic priests are far more likely to sexually abuse minors than Protestant pastors, but as I've pointed out several times in this blog ("Celibacy and the Pastoral Abuse of Minors," "Not to Beat a Dead Horse, But," "USA Swimming Child-Abuse Scandal"), that simply isn't so. The percentage of Roman Catholic priests that abuse minors (4%) is no higher than the male population at large, but because reports about abuse by Catholic priests have tended to attract headlines, while those of male teachers, coaches, and Protestant pastors typically have not (this, thankfully, has begun to change), people overestimate the rate of abuse Catholic priests relative to others. This is not to excuse away Church officials who attempted to cover up the abuse and/or didn't defrock the guilty priests (or at least place them in settings where they could do no more harm), but it does help explain why the public's perception is so skewed.

Priming, anchoring, and the availability heuristic are not the only rules of thumb that we use to make decisions. Excellent discussions about these and other heuristics can be found in Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow," David Brooks's "The Social Animal," and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's "Nudge." The bottom line: We don't think through a lot of the choices we make as thoroughly as we should.

P.S. If you're like most people, you think that you're the exception, that heuristics don't guide your decisions. You are, of course, wrong because, well, you're like most people.

It's Official: A Girl Will Win American Idol

It's official. I female female will win American Idol this year. The first time a girl has won since Jordin Sparks won in 2007. In fact, for the first time in Idol history, the final five are all women ("'American Idol': Lazaro Arbos sent home, making 'Idol' history"). I'm unsure if its a testimony to how good the girls are this year or how bad the guys were (although I'm leaning to the latter). Moreover, Kree Harrison has emerged as a front runner, followed by Candice Glover and Angie Miller. Here are the latest prices (i.e., probabilities of winning) from PredictWise:

Name	Probability
Kree Harrison	42.6 %
Candice Glover	27.8 %
Angie Miller	14.8 %
Amber Holcomb	9.3 %
Janelle Arthur	3.9 %

P.S. As an aside, I confess that I haven't watched a lot of "Idol" this year. Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Keith Urban are fine, but Nicki Minaj is hard to watch. I've heard that the ratings are significantly down this year; if that's true, I'm willing to bet that Minaj won't be back.

Waiting on Godot (Doctors, Actually)

Do you ever wonder why hospitals and doctors insist that we cannot be late, but then often make us wait forever to call us? I took my Dad to the VA in Palo Alto today for an MRI, and when we booked the appointment, the scheduler was quite insistent (rude, actually) that we better not be late. In fact, we should be a 1/2 hour early. So, my Dad and I dutifully arrived a half hour early (well, actually 26 minutes early because it took us close to 10 minutes to find a parking spot) and then waited two hours (I'm not kidding) before he was called in for his MRI (and then another 50 for him to finish). It's as if they think that our lives revolve around theirs. That unlike them, we aren't busy with our days chock full of appointments and responsibilities. I suspect we wouldn't put up with such treatment if we had more leverage, but because we're so dependent on the services they offer, they can basically treat us any way they want.

Belief in the Resurrection? Sure, Why Not? (A Re-Post of Sorts)

The early twentieth-century sociologist William Thomas once wrote that "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences," by which he meant that if people believe that something is true, they will act as if it is true. One could also argue the reverse: If people are acting as if something is true, then there's a high probability they believe it to be true.

The "Thomas Theorem" comes to mind this Easter season. If the Gospel accounts are even remotely reliable, it is safe to conclude that not only did the early Christians behave as if the Resurrection happened, they actually believed it happened. Of course, what actually happened is a matter of debate among scholars. As New Testament scholar (and thoroughgoing skeptic) Bart Ehrman puts it ("Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium," pp. 227-228):

Even if a miracle did happen, there is no way we can demonstrate it, by the very nature of the case...  Historians try to determine what happened in the past. Since they can't prove the past, they can only establish what probably happened. But by their very nature, miracles are highly improbable occurrences. That is to say, the chances of a miracle happening are infinitesimally remote, as opposed to other weird things that happen in our world that are not in anode themselves so highly improbable that we'd call them 'impossible.' The, even if Jesus was raised from the dead--as many Christian historians personally believe he was, just as most other historians think he wasn't--there is no way we can demonstrate it using historical methods.

Nevertheless, historians can't (or at least shouldn't) dismiss the resurrection too quickly. As Catherine Murphy, who is NOT a theological conservative, notes ("The Historical Jesus for Dummies," p. 240) there is "no feature of the Jesus story that satisfies so many of the criteria of historicity" (see "The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Part V: Criteria"). As she notes:

• It's traced to many eyewitnesses. Paul, for example, claims more than 515 eyewitnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
• It's embarrassing (consider the divergent stories and women as witnesses, for example).
• It's an early tradition on which all the other traditions in the gospels are predicated (no one would have bothered to write gospels if the resurrection hadn't occurred).
• It's reported in multiple, independent sources (Paul, Mark, John and possibly Q 11:29-30, 32).
• It's discontinuous with Jewish beliefs about resurrection because, as far as we know, no one had ever claimed that someone had actually risen, that this proved the person's unique status, and that this resurrection had something to offer everyone (namely, that if they believed in it, they too would rise). Early Christians had to pour tremendous energy into understanding it themselves.
• It's coherent not so much with the historical details of Jesus's life, but with the rise of early Christianity.

This is why a number of mainline scholars (i.e., those who don't read the Bible literally) have concluded that something must have happened. What happened exactly, most aren't willing to say, but they do believe that something did (see e.g., Catherine Murphy, "The Historical Jesus for Dummies," p. 240, James Alison, "Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination," pp. 28-30, and David Buttrick, "Preaching Jesus Christ," pp. 57-58). Then, of course, there are folks such as Dr. Francis Collins, who was head of the Human Genome Project when it sequenced the human genome, and the Anglican priest and theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne, who is a member of the Royal Society of London (probably the oldest and most prestigious scientific study in the world), who believe in the Resurrection. I think one would be hard pressed to call either of them intellectual midgets. However, as Polkinghorne puts it:

An inquiry into the evidence can carry us only so far. It can demonstrate (as I believe it does) that the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus is not without substantial motivation, so that it is far from being an ungrounded speculation. However, at best such an inquiry can point only to a balance of probability... Ultimately one's attitude to the resurrection will depend on the degree to which it does or does not cohere with one's general understanding of the way the world is. If the Christian understanding is true, that in Jesus the divine and human so mingled that a new regime was present in the world, then the unique occurrence of the resurrection is conceivable... If a humanist understanding is true, that Jesus was a remarkable and inspiring man but no more, then it is to be expected that death had the degree of finality for him that it will have for us" ("The Way the World Is: The Christian Perspective of a Scientist," p.79).

In short, belief in the resurrection follows from a priori assumptions about the nature of the world, which can neither be substantiated nor refuted through scientific inquiry. However, in discussions with mainline Protestant ministers, I get the sense that many, if not most, are embarrassed by the resurrection, seeing belief in it as being somehow scientifically irresponsible. Consequently, many are inclined to understand (and preach about) it metaphorically rather than literally, as an experience that the early Christians shared when they broke bread together, rather than as an historical event that profoundly altered their hearts, minds, and subsequent behavior. 

More importantly, I also get the sense that many of these mainline Protestant ministers assume that the majority of their congregations' members hold similar beliefs. This would be a colossal mistake, however; most Christians, including mainline Protestants, believe in Jesus' bodily resurrection. To wit:

• In the 2008-2009 wave of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, 94 percent of evangelicals, 91 percent of Catholics, and 78 percent of mainline Protestants said Jesus was raised bodily from the dead after his crucifixion.
• 75% of the more than 25,000 respondents to congregational surveys offered by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research from 2004 to 2010, most of whom were mainline Protestants, said that they believed that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was an actual event.
• According to the Portraits of American Life study more than 2/3 of Christian respondents, including 84% of black and evangelical respondents and 67% of mainline Protestants and Catholics, strongly agreed with the statement, “Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead” (15.4% of mainline Protestants and 13.4% of Catholics "somewhat" agreed with the statement).

Of course, just because a majority of Christians believe that something is true, doesn't mean that it is true (any more than a majority vote by the Jesus Seminar on a saying of Jesus is the final word on whether it is authentic or not). Nevertheless, I daresay that most Christians, including most mainline Protestants, need more to hang their hat on than a notion that the hearts of the first Christians were strangely warmed when they broke bread together.

Does this mean that it is intellectually irresponsible not to believe in the resurrection? Of course not. As Ehrman points out, most non-Christian historians don't believe in it because, despite protestations of Josh McDowell, there is no incontrovertible evidence that demands a verdict. Nevertheless, as Murphy and Polkinghorne suggest, there is enough evidence, at least for Christians, on which they can hang their hat.

Note: Although this post contains some new material, it's essentially a combination of my two previous "Easter" posts: "Resurrection? Really? Yes, Really" (April 22, 2011) and "Belief in a Bodily Resurrection?" (April 9, 2012)

Will a Girl Finally Win American Idol?

It's been a while since a female won American Idol (Jordin Sparks in 2007 was the last), probably because over time the show's fan base has become dominated by young girls who are more likely to vote for good looking guys, regardless of whether they can sing or not (Phillip Phillips being the latest example). However, this year things are looking up for the girls. Guys keep getting voted off, and in the latest prediction markets ("PredictWise"), of the top five front-runners, four are women:

Name	Probability
Angie Miller	14.9%
Candice Glover	14.5%
Kree Harrison	13.9%
Janelle Arthur	6.3%
Curtis Finch	3.3%

Of course, it's still early so things can change, and none of the female candidates are overwhelming favorites (e.g., currently Angie Miller leads all of the contestants, but there's still only a 14.9% chance that she will win). That said, the probability that one of the top four female candidates will win is close to 50%, which means there's hope that things will be a bit different this year. We will see what we will see.

P.S.: As of March 30th, the probabilities have shifted somewhat. The women still dominate, but Candice Glover is now the front runner:

Name	Probability
Candice Glover	25.6 %
Kree Harrison	24.5 %
Angie Miller	22.6 %
Janelle Arthur	16.6 %
Amber Holcomb	4.7 %
Burnell Taylor	2.3 %
Lazaro Arbos	1.5 %

Pope Francis

After Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to be the 266th Roman Catholic Pope (and took the name Francis I), a San Jose Mercury News reader complained in a letter to the editor that the new Pope was an ultra conservative. While he's certainly conservative on some issues (e.g., abortion, women's ordination), he isn't on others; for instance, shortly after being elected he reminded the Church of its obligation to the poor and lamented what he called the "tyranny of the market." Hardly something a ultraconservative would say.

(In general, I think it's a good idea to recognize that just because someone is more conservative (or liberal) than you, doesn't mean that they're necessarily a conservative (or a liberal).)

Although there's a lot we don't know about Pope Francis, two recent "Research on Religion" podcasts are helpful in teasing out the recent changes in the Catholic Church. The first, featuring Jeremy Lott, who is a "news aggregator" (i.e., someone who surfs the web and identifies and provides links for the best news stories) for Real Clear Religion, explores how the media covered Pope Benedict's resignation and Francis's election ("Jeremy Lott on the Media's Pope-O-Rama"). Here's the description from the Research on Religion website:

How well did the popular media do in covering the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the Conclave of Cardinals, and the election of Francis I? We talk with RealClearReligion editor Jeremy Lott who has a unique vantage point when it comes to answering this question. As a Catholic, a writer, and a news aggregator, Jeremy provides some very interesting insights into what he calls “pope-o-rama,” the media frenzy surrounding events at the Vatican over the past six months. He offers up a very prescient observation about a bear and a backpack, plus he reminds us of a few other stories that flew under the radar when all eyes were fixed on Rome.

In this discussion Lott, who is a Catholic also discusses a recent article of his, concerning what he saw as Benedict's reluctance to be Pope ("The Man Who Didn't Want to Be Pope").

The second podcast, which features University of Washing historian, James Felak, explores the nature of the papacy, Felaks thoughts on Benedict's resignation, and what Francis's election might mean for the Catholic Church ("James Felak on Picking Pontiffs and Pope Francis I"). Here's the description from the Research on Religion website:

With all eyes trained on the Vatican over the past two months, we turn to one of our most popular guests — Prof. James Felak (University of Washington) — to help us understand what popes do and how they are chosen. Prof. Felak then walks us through the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the Conclave of Cardinals, and the “surprise” election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who took the name Francis I. He offers up some reflections on the potential direction of the Roman Catholic Church and reveals what name he would have chosen for himself had he been tapped to sit on the throne of St. Peter. One of our most lively discussions ever!

As always, you can download the podcasts from iTunes or listen to them at the Research on Religion website.

Why Your Local Public High School's Probably Better Than You Think

Status reproduction is a term coined (or at least popularized) by the French sociologist and philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu; it refers to the process by which the status of a person, group, institution, etc. is reproduced simply by virtue of its status. That is, it's high status helps it retain its high status.

Consider college football programs, for instance. The best high school players generally want to play for the top programs, such as Alabama, LSU, Texas, Ohio State, USC, and Notre Dame ("2013 Team Rankings"), which makes it easier for them to recruit and get more of the best players, which is why they tend to remain top programs. This is true even if they don't have great coaching. Because of the talent they attract, the win in spite of themselves. Their status, in other words, helps them reproduce their own success.

A similar process occurs in most industries. Take the venture capital (VC) industry, for instance. Most entrepreneurs hope to receive funding from top VC firms, such as Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, not just because these VC firms are seen as being more "wise," but also because their ties with the top lawyers, accountants, and investment bankers raise the probability the entrepreneurial companies will succeed. What this means for VC firms is that the top (i.e., the high status) VC firms will have their "pick" of the entrepreneurial company litter, while lower status VC firms will not. Moreover, top VC firms will generally be able to command better terms with their investments, such as getting a larger stake in the start-up's equity (Note: VCs don't make loans; they invest in companies hoping they'll cash in on their investment if and when the company goes public or is acquired by another firm). In other words, if you have two VC firms, X and Y, with X being a high status firm and Y being a low status one, if both invest $1 million dollars in entrepreneurial company Z, all else being equal, X will get a greater share of the company Z's equity than will Y.

What does this have to do with high schools? Well, imagine two high schools, School A and School B. Available teachers have been randomly assigned to both schools so that the overall quality of teaching at both schools will be the same. The schools differ, however, in that most of the best students attend School A and most of the worst students attend School B. So, which school do you think will score better in various standardized tests? Which school do you think will enjoy a higher graduating rate? Which school do you think will send more students to college? School A, of course. But note that it will score higher, have a higher graduation rate, and send more students to college, not because of its teaching, but because it attracts more of the best students.

Now consider a slightly different scenario. Imagine the same two schools, but this time let's say that their average performance on standardized scores is a combination of innate student ability and teaching quality. More precisely, imagine that on their own (i.e., without teaching) students can score between 0 and 50 (out of 100) and that teaching can raise their scores from 0 to 50 points. So, for instance, a student with an innate ability of 50 who receives the best possible teaching (50) will score 100 out of 100, and a student with no innate ability who receives the worst possible teaching will score of 0. Now, imagine that the average student ability at School A is 45, while the average student ability at School B is 30. This means that in order for School B to score as high (or higher) than School A, the quality of teaching at School B has to 15 points better than School A. Put differently, School B could have the best teachers in the state (i.e., 50), but that will only raise the school's average standardized score to 80, while School A could have teachers who are 20% worse (i.e., 40), but their school's average standardized score will still be higher (85) than B's.

Granted, these two examples are stylized, but they illustrate an important point. School performance is not necessarily an indicator of teacher quality. To be sure, at one time School A may have had some of the best teachers in the district, and that's why it initially attracted better students, but that doesn't mean that it still has the best teachers. Unfortunately, a lot of parents interpret scores and graduation rates in just that way, and consequently (if they possess the requisite resources) they send their kids to schools they think are better but actually might not be. In Silicon Valley, the divide between School A and School B type schools tends to lie between private and public schools, and among public schools, between those in wealthier and poorer neighborhoods. I suspect, however, that if parents paid less attention to test scores and more to teacher quality, they'd realized that their local public high school is probably better than they initially thought it was.