Tragedy In Norway

Tragedy: a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster.
Evil: morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked, harmful; injurious.
Shameful: disgraceful; vile behavior; lacking any sense.
Shock: a sudden or violent disturbance of the emotions or sensibilities.
Sadness: affected by grief; sorrowful or mournful.
Sorrow: distress caused by loss, grief.

There is nothing that can be said at a time such as this.  I am shocked and sadden by such horrific news from peaceful Norway.  I am sorry.  So very sorry for your sorrow and loss. 

Greek debt crisis solved! For now.

The markets had to get real ugly for France's Sarkozy and Germany's Chancellor Merkel to come to a compromise to stop the debt crisis in the EU from spreading.  The solution was to create a new rescue fund called the EFSF which Sarkozy compared to the creation of a European Monetary Fund, somewhat like the IMF, only for European Union Members Only club.  Well, members and wanta be's.  The fund will also be available for troubled banks (that sounds familiar).  The rescue for Greece is $229 billion (or $159 billion Euro's) and the new EFSF will have $440 billion Euro's. The exciting part for Greece is that they will get the bailout whether they default or not...only they will call it a selective default.  The question is will this save Italy and Belguim, as well?  Most likely. 

Libertarian Paternalism

Libertarian paternalism seems a contradiction of terms.  I have just started to read Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.  I am still in the introduction but I have come across two terms that caught my attention as they so closely coincide with my blogs on applied social psychology.  Then I did a brief search on the authors and found a few significant similarities.
The first term that caught my attention was choice architect.  A choice architect is one that focuses attention of people in a particular direction.  In my blogs I have often mentioned influence and change agents which do the same thing.  A choice architect is one that chooses a particular option and influences others to it by nudging.
The second term of note is libertarian paternalism which the authors say is a new movement.  It involves being free to choose.  Yet, they describe paternalism as the legitimation for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior. Choice architects are both private and public people that "attempt to move people in directions that will make their lives better.  A nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way."  This is exactly what I have been blogging about.  If you are new to this blog, it would be informative to scroll down and read past posts.
Now for a brief look at the authors.  Both of whom are to be considered choice architects, as well as, influence and change agents.
Richard Thaler is a professor of behavioral finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.  He teaches behavioral science and economics. 
Cass Sunstein is a professor of law and behavioral economics at the University of Chicago Law School. He is on leave at this time as he is currently an administrator for the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration.  Take a second to think about this and the potential for choice architects to influence and change our behavior in a direction of predictability from the White House.  The potential seems almost limitless.  Also, remember the role that professors play in directing their students understanding and knowledge base.  Now think about that influence in law and economics.  Now you have it.

Big Five Personality Factors

Political psychologists use the 'Big Five' personality traits to study political leaders.  This theory is used the most and widely accepted.  Although, it is customary to study personality through a questionnaire most presidents are not going to do such a thing.  After all they really don't want to be read like a book, or seem so predictable.  Part of their power is the mystery of who they really are.  Nevertheless, political psychologists want to figure them out.  So the next best thing to understanding them on an individual basis is to study their speeches, interviews, and biographers.  It is not an exact science that is for sure, but it may shed some light on their personalities and help with predicting their behavior. 

'Big Five'
1. Openness (curious and searching vs. consistent and cautious).  Open to new ideas and experiences.
2. Conscientiousness (efficient and organized vs. easy-going and free spirited).  Taking extreme care and thought in decision-making. 
3. Extrovert (outgoing vs. solitary and reserved).  Full of energy.  Somewhat egotistical. People pleaser but not always in an honest way.
4. Agreeable (ccompassionate and understanding) Listens to others.  Truly caring about others opinions.
5. Neuroticism (ssuspicious) Has odd relations with others.  Suffers from delusions and misunderstandings.

The trait scores of the presidents showed that the strongest personality trait found in the living and dead presidents was openness.  A study done by Rubenzer showed that Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln scored high on openness and greatness.  In addition, it was decided that left and center left scored high on measures of openness.  While those on the right scored high on conscientiousness.  Does all this help us to know our presidents better and help us or the 'experts' to predict their behavior in certain situations?  Maybe in a general way.  But, probably not enough to know for sure. 

Although, we can surmise from this study that since Obama is left on his political leanings that he would be open to new ideas and ways of doing business in and out of the White House.  And he is.  He certainly is inventive and has extremely unusual (non-conservative) ideas.  Just look at the many changes he has made since becoming president.  He is certainly open with our pocket books.  

Conservative Social Psychologists? I think not.....

There is an enlightening video-presentation given by a social psychologist to a group of social psychologists that addresses the lack of diversity related to conservatives in the field.  Dr. Haidt argues that the group is a "tribal-moral community" that has many taboos and danger zones.  As such, they don't speak of "race differences, sex differences", they don't blame the victim, they watch for stereotyping  and nativism."  In this tribal group he tries to discover how many conservative social psychologist there are.  He could only find 3 conservative social psychologists.  He gives that a percentage of 0.03%.  He admits that there are a few "closet conservatives" but they refuse to come out because they will not be allowed to publish their findings or do the studies they would like to do.  He states that for claiming to be "super tolerant, free thinkers" that the group is very closed to conservatives and their ideas.  He argues that in reality there are "taboos which constrain thinking, they won't allow for moral and political diversity and they create a hostile climate for non-liberal students."  He believes that the field should set a goal for 10% conservatives by 2020.  He argues that for social psychologists to have true diversity that they must be open to other perspectives that will "challenge their dormant ideas and be bold enough to let the conservatives pull them out of their ideological ruts!"  Bravo to Dr. Haidt for his courage to tell the truth about his closed society that applauds their openness.  His 25 minute presentation is called The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology.  And thanks to my professor Dr. Ridge for making this perspective known.

Operational Code Theory

With political psychology, the study of the personalities of world political leaders is important to understanding how leaders will react to certain world events.  The operational code is a cognitive approach that goes beyond the personalities of world leaders to their belief systems.  Basically, it is narrowed down to their worldview of either harmony or conflict.  It is through understanding the belief systems of the leaders that analysis can diagnose what decisions they will make in certain situations. "This theory complex specifies belief-based solutions to the puzzles posed by diagnostic, decision making, and learning processes in world politics" (Walker 2002).  Most studies by political psychologists have focused on the national level of understanding.  But this study was developed in 1953 during the Cold War to help understanding the antecedents of behavior of the Soviets to predict how they would react to certain events.  It was believed that with this understanding of pre-behavior, or intentions through belief systems that political action could become predictable.  This is just fascinating to say the least and it goes links into game theory. 

Pro-Social Behavior and the Environment

Social psychologists and environmental psychologists team up to try to understand how to get people to be more conscious of their environment.  It use to be that environmental psychologists focused on how the physical surroundings affected the people.  But now it is how we affect the environment.  Thus, applied social psychological theories are useful to understand the perceptions, feelings, and behaviour of people towards the environment and how to change the behavior to be more pro-social.  This is done by first understanding what causes the behavior and what policies can be designed to promote and target the prior behavior for change.  And, they want to see how effective the different interventions work.

There are many things that factor into being pro-social, pro-environmental.  But I will mention values and how they relate to environmental concerns.  First, there is NEP (no, this is not the Russians "New Economic Program" of the 1930's that confiscated all land & property also called NEP) it is the measurement of the fundamental beliefs and intentions that cause behavior called the new environmental paradigm (NEP).

Basically there are three value orientations.
1. Egoistic value orientation: which is that people try to get the best outcome for themselves like power, material wealth and ambition.
2.  Altruistic value orientation: which is concern for the welfare of other people by caring about equality, social justice and helpfulness.
3.  Biospheric or ecocentric value orientation: which reflects concern for non-human species and the earth and unity with nature.
Then policy makers use different theories of social controls to motivate people with rewards and/or punishments to encourage more pro-social/pro-environmental behavior.  They use many of the techniques that I have mentioned in previous blogs.  This is done through promoting pro-environmental behavior by first, interventions that target a person's perceptions, cognitions, motivations and norms.  And second, they will use interventions that aim at changing the consequence.