Author Archives: legallysociable

Leading the story with appearances of politicians

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One frustrating aspect of political coverage is the common emphasis on the appearance of politicians. This is particularly common in stories about female politicians: the story often has to start with a quick summary of how (appropriate or fashionable) they look. Perhaps this is to be expected in a culture that prizes attractiveness and youth. But this emphasis can cross gender lines. Just consider this summary of Mitch Daniels found in the third paragraph of a story in a recent edition of Newsweek:

If you’ve heard anything about Indiana’s very slight, very balding, very unimposing governor—and that’s a big if—it’s probably just the opposite: that he couldn’t possibly win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and that even if he did, his chances of defeating Obama in the general election would be close to nil. The reasons, they say, are many. At 5 feet 7 (in boots), Daniels is shorter than Obama’s 12-year-old daughter, Malia. His rather uninspiring demeanor—reticent, stiff, and slightly skittish, with darting eyes and long blanks between words—better suits a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which he happens to be, than a leader of the free world. And his comb-over is borderline delusional. As conservative journalist Andrew Ferguson recently put it, “I see [Daniels] as he strides toward the middle of the stage to shake hands with Obama before the first debate and comes up to the president’s navel. Election over.”

There are lots of reasons you could disagree with Mitch Daniels – the story goes on to discuss some of these points. But what do his height, “uninspiring demeanor,” and hair have to do with his ability to govern?

The trolley problem, race, and making decisions

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The trolley problem  is a classic vignette used in research studies and it asks under what conditions is it permissible to sacrifice one life for the lives of others (see an explanation here). Psychologist David Pizarro tweaked the trolley problem to include racial dimensions by using characters named Chip and Tyrone. Pizarro found that people’s opinions about race influenced which character they were more willing to sacrifice:

What did this say about people’s morals? Not that they don’t have any. It suggests that they had more than one set of morals, one more consequentialist than another, and choose to fit the situation…

Or as Pizarro told me on the phone, “The idea is not that people are or are not utilitarian; it’s that they will cite being utilitarian when it behooves them. People are aren’t using these principles and then applying them. They arrive at a judgment and seek a principle.”

So we’ll tell a child on one day, as Pizarro’s parents told him, that ends should never justify means, then explain the next day that while it was horrible to bomb Hiroshima, it was morally acceptable because it shortened the war. We act — and then cite whichever moral system fits best, the relative or the absolute.

Some interesting findings from a different take on a classic research tool. This is always an interesting question to ask regarding many social issues: when does the end justify the means and when does it not?

Reinterpreting the actions of emerging adults: searching for discipleship?

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At her.meneutics, Kristen Scharold argues that some Christian emerging adults aren’t just wasting time. Instead, they may be figuring out what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus:

Admittedly, some of us are resistant to settling into the “traditional cycle” of adulthood, but is this because we are sloughing off responsibilities, or because we are waking up to a new set of responsibilities? For 20-somethings who are committed to Jesus, it could be the latter.

We are becoming increasingly ill-fitted categorical adults, but only within the narrow definition that adulthood means settling down — that is, tethering ourselves to romantic partners or to permanent homes. But if adulthood means accepting responsibility — regardless of whether we stay in one place, with the same career, or with the same people — then some of my peers aren’t emerging but have already arrived. They are taking Jesus’ call to discipleship seriously. They are embracing an expansive vision of adulthood, one that doesn’t necessarily involve getting a spouse and a mortgage, but more importantly means following Jesus, a call that sometimes requires reckless abandon (“and immediately they left their nets and followed him”), singleness (“there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”), and financial insecurities (“sell all you have . . . and come follow me”).

Some Christian 20-somethings might look like their fellow emerging adults, but by remaining single, serving overseas, working for justice, creating cultural goods, and pursuing other unprecedented opportunities for gospel advancement and renewal, they may be responding most responsibly to the call of discipleship.

Scharold may be right: they likely are some Christians who are pursuing this. It would be frustrating to be someone who is trying to live a Godly life and instead is simply lumped in with supposedly lazy, shiftless emerging adults.

However, we don’t know how right she is – she cites no data. If this is based on anecdotal evidence (this is also the basis of many arguments against the behaviors of emerging adults), we have no idea how many Christian emerging adults are actually engaging in this behavior.

Of course, there is data to appeal to when exploring these questions. In the area of emerging adults and faith, check out Soul Searching and Souls in Transition. These books suggest while there are some emerging adults who can be classified as devoted to their faith, there are many others who are somewhere between no faith and devoted faith as they try to figure out how to make their lives their own.

The majors of college football players; sociology 2nd

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The Wall Street Journal decided to examine the majors of “major-college” college football players (though the same story says the sample is “BCS week-one football starters”). The top two majors are business and sociology:

Only six of the 1,104 players whose majors we found were interested in art, music or film, but sociology-related topics (134 majors) and business (155) piqued their interest. An additional 108 students are majoring in a communications-related field, while only two apiece are studying architecture and mathematics. English, one of the more common majors among all college students, drew only four football players—two more than the number of players majoring in zoology. And only one player, Oregon’s Mark Asper, is studying Spanish, the lone foreign language major we found.

Some results were expected—79 players are majoring in athletics and health-related fields—but there were some rarities like fisheries and wildlife (Curtis Hughes, Minnesota) and recreation and leisure studies (Luke Stocker, Tennessee). Some majors seemed extra popular at specific schools, like the 16 starters at Georgia Tech who are majoring in management. (A team spokesman says it’s not easier than other majors, it’s just “really popular.”)

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this count is somewhat representative of college football players. Three questions come to mind:

1. So are the top majors on this list considered easier by many players? I wonder what the colleges would say about this.

2. How many players end up in a career (after they stop playing football) related to/close to their major?

3. Considering some of the concerns about graduation rates at BCS schools, I want to know whether certain majors of football players have a higher proportion of players who don’t complete their degree.

The “friendship paradox” and the spread of disease

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The social dimensions of diseases and medical conditions continue to draw research attention, particularly for those interested in mapping and understanding fast-spreading illnesses. A recent study, undertaken by a sociologist and medical geneticist/political scientist, explores how the flu spreads:

The persons at the center of a social network are exposed to diseases earlier than those at the margins states the paradox. Again, your friends are probably more popular than you are, and this “friendship paradox” may help predict the spread of infectious disease. However, Christakis and Fowler found that analyzing a social network and monitoring the health of members is an optimal way to predict a wave of influenza, detailed information simply doesn’t exist for most social groups, and producing it is time-consuming and expensive…

[Sociologist Nicholas] Christakis states: We think this may have significant implications for public health. Public health officials often track epidemics by following random samples of people or monitoring people after they get sick. But that approach only provides a snapshot of what’s currently happening. By simply asking members of the random group to name friends, and then tracking and comparing both groups, we can predict epidemics before they strike the population at large. This would allow an earlier, more vigorous, and more effective response.

This sounds like it has more promise than recently proposed techniques like monitoring Google searches or Twitter feeds.

Additionally, more and more research suggests that monitoring and analyzing social networks is critical for understanding the complex world. Rather than simply examining individuals, we now have some tools to map and model more complex social relationships.

A sizable but smaller gap in happiness between blacks and whites

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The Freakonomics blog reports on a new study showing that there is a narrowing gap in happiness between black and whites. The reason for this may be the lessening of “day-to-day racism” – but there needs to be more research so that scholars can figure out “How best to get a handle on the evolution of day-to-day racism.”

Ranking universities around the world

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Ranking American colleges and universities has become a lucrative industry with a number of publications developing rankings. This quest has been extended to ranking universities around the world but there is tension between two of the important rankings and their methodologies:

Times Higher Education produced rankings for the first time this year without the collaboration of Quacquarelli Symonds Limited. Along with the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, the World University Rankings that Times Higher Education and QS published together from 2004 until last year have become the most closely watched and influential university rankings in the world.

Quacquarelli Symonds has continued to produce those rankings, now called the QS World University Rankings, and is partnering with U.S. News and World Report for their publication in the United States.

The relationship between the former collaborators has deteriorated into barely veiled animosity.

While there may be some issues between those who produce the two sets of rankings, the Times Higher Education claims it has an improved methodology which emphasizes different features of a school:

Foremost among the criticisms of the previous compilation was that it relied too heavily on a reputational survey of academics, based on fewer than 4,000 responses in 2009. THE’s new methodology is based on 13 indicators in five broad performance categories—teaching (weighted 30 percent); research influence as measured in citations (32.5 percent); research, based on volume, income, and reputation (30 percent); internationalization, based on student and staff ratios (5 percent); and knowledge transfer and innovation based on industry income (2.5 percent).

Times Higher Education said that the new system was the only global ranking to devote a section to teaching. The new methodology is much more evidence-based and relies far less on subjective criteria than the old tables, said Mr. Baty. But whereas teaching was previously measured based solely on student-staff ratio, the new rankings incorporate a reputational survey.

Which rankings system is “better” will be decided by a variety of actors. Of course, the rankings will likely differ because of the different weights placed on different university traits. The newest rankings from Times Higher Education are favorable toward American schools and UC-Berkeley made quite a jump up.

Overall, these rankings can be very powerful, not just for prestige purposes but also for helping to determining the global flow of students and money. Additionally, the companies producing and publishing the rankings have a financial stake in how the rankings are perceived both by schools and the public.

From controversial opinion piece to full length book

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I was unaware that this was a common phenomenon: write a controversial op-ed in a major newspaper, receive a book deal, and then produce a book that is much too long and that doesn’t argue much. David Bell describes this process:

The syndrome has become all too common. A provocative op-ed piece appears in a major newspaper (for preference, The New York Times). Its logic is fragile and its evidence is thin, but the writing is crisp and the examples are pungent, and the assault on sacred cows arouses a storm of discussion (much of it sharply critical, but no matter). It goes viral. And almost immediately, publishers comes calling. “This should be a book,” they coo, and the author, entranced by a bit of sudden fame (not to mention, perhaps, a decent advance), eagerly agrees. He or she sets to work, and soon enough the original 800 words expand to 50,000. But far from reinforcing the original logic and evidence, the new accretions of text only strain them further, while smothering the original provocations under thick layers of padded anecdote, pop sociology and oracular pronouncement. Call the syndrome Friedmanitis, after a prominent early victim, the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

I wonder if I have been a victim of this process. I have read a number of non-fiction books where I thought the argument was thin and the argument could have been effectively made in just a few pages. One problem may be a lack of data – opinion books are difficult to sustain as they often jump from one opinion to another without providing sufficient evidence for the claims being made.

From the book publishers perspective, this process makes some sense. Perhaps the hope is that the op-ed author has more to offer; that if given more space, they can develop a much more substantive argument. Since it is difficult to predict which books will succeed once published, an op-ed that generates attention may look like a sure thing.

At the same time, these op-eds can quickly invoke many criticisms within hours of being published online. By the time a book is released that is built around the same topic, it may be too late to make the argument again (particularly if it is badly argued in the book).

Quick Review: Stat-Spotting

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Sociologist Joel Best has recently done well for himself by publishing several books about the misuse of statistics. This is an important topic: many people are not used to thinking statistically and have difficulty correctly interpreting statistics even though they are commonly used in media stories. Best’s most recent book on this subject, published in 2008, is Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data. A few thoughts on this text:

1. One of Best’s strong points is that his recommendations are often based in common-sense. If a figure strikes you as strange, it probably is. He has tips about keeping common statistical figures in your mind to help keep sense of certain statistics. Overall, he suggests a healthy skepticism towards statistics: think about how the statistic was developed and who is saying it.

2. When the subtitle of the book says “field guide,” it means a shorter text that is to the point. Best quickly moves through different problems with statistical data. If you are looking for more thorough explanations, you should read Best’s 2001 book Damned Lies and Statistics. (A cynical reader might suggest this book was simply a way to make more money of topics Best has already explored elsewhere.)

3. I think this text is most useful for finding brief examples of how to analyze and interpret data. There are numerous examples in here that could start off a statistics lesson or could further illustrate a point. The examples cover a variety of topics and sources.

This is a quick read that could be very useful as a simple guide to combating innumeracy.

Climate change beliefs and gender

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One thing I enjoy about academic research is that I often find people are asking questions I never would have thought of. An example: what is the relationship between gender and beliefs regarding climate change? A sociologist has some answers:

“Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women’s beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus…”

McCright analyzed eight years of data from Gallup’s annual environment poll that asked fairly basic questions about climate change knowledge and concern. He said the gender divide on concern about climate change was not explained by the roles that men and women perform such as whether they were homemakers, parents or employed full time.

Instead, he said the gender divide likely is explained by “gender socialization.” According to this theory, boys in the United States learn that masculinity emphasizes detachment, control and mastery. A feminine identity, on the other hand, stresses attachment, empathy and care – traits that may make it easier to feel concern about the potential dire consequences of global warming, McCright said.

Interesting ideas. If this does occur through the socialization process, at what age do boys and girls begin to differ in their views?