For a subject rating a single sound, on an unbounded scale, without a fixed standard of comparison, nearly all the variance is due to the arbitrary choice of modulus, rather than the sound itself.
“Hm,” you think to yourself, “this sounds an awful lot like juries deliberating on punitive damages. No wonder there’s so much variance!” An interesting analogy, but how would you go about demonstrating it experimentally?
Kahneman et al. presented 867 jury-eligible subjects with descriptions of legal cases (e.g., a child whose clothes caught on fire) and asked them to either
Rate the outrageousness of the defendant’s actions, on a bounded scale,
Rate the degree to which the defendant should be punished, on a bounded scale, or
Assign a dollar value to punitive damages.1
And, lo and behold, while subjects correlated very well with each other in their outrage ratings and their punishment ratings, their punitive damages were all over the map. Yet subjects’ rank-ordering of the punitive damages—their ordering from lowest award to highest award—correlated well across subjects.
If you asked how much of the variance in the “punishment” scale could be explained by the specific scenario—the particular legal case, as presented to multiple subjects—then the answer, even for the raw scores, was 0.49. For the rank orders of the dollar responses, the amount of variance predicted was 0.51. For the raw dollar amounts, the variance explained was 0.06!
Which is to say: if you knew the scenario presented—the aforementioned child whose clothes caught on fire—you could take a good guess at the punishment rating, and a good guess at the rank-ordering of the dollar award relative to other cases, but the dollar award itself would be completely unpredictable.
Taking the median of twelve randomly selected responses didn’t help much either.
So a jury award for punitive damages isn’t so much an economic valuation as an attitude expression—a psychophysical measure of outrage, expressed on an unbounded scale with no standard modulus.
I observe that many futuristic predictions are, likewise, best considered as attitude expressions. Take the question, “How long will it be until we have human-level AI?” The responses I’ve seen to this are all over the map. On one memorable occasion, a mainstream AI guy said to me, “Five hundred years.” (!!)
Now the reason why time-to-AI is just not very predictable, is a long discussion in its own right. But it’s not as if the guy who said “Five hundred years” was looking into the future to find out. And he can’t have gotten the number using the standard bogus method with Moore’s Law. So what did the number 500 mean?
As far as I can guess, it’s as if I’d asked, “On a scale where zero is ‘not difficult at all,’ how difficult does the AI problem feel to you?” If this were a bounded scale, every sane respondent would mark “extremely hard” at the right-hand end. Everything feels extremely hard when you don’t know how to do it. But instead there’s an unbounded scale with no standard modulus. So people just make up a number to represent “extremely difficult,” which may come out as 50, 100, or even 500. Then they tack “years” on the end, and that’s their futuristic prediction.
“How hard does the AI problem feel?” isn’t the only substitutable question. Others respond as if I’d asked “How positive do you feel about AI?,” except lower numbers mean more positive feelings, and then they also tack “years” on the end. But if these “time estimates” represent anything other than attitude expressions on an unbounded scale with no modulus, I have been unable to determine it.
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1. Daniel Kahneman, David A. Schkade, and Cass R. Sunstein, “Shared Outrage and Erratic Awards: The Psychology of Punitive Damages,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 16 (1 1998): 48–86, doi:10.1023/A:1007710408413; Daniel Kahneman, Ilana Ritov, and David Schkade, “Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions?: An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 19, nos. 1–3 (1999): 203–235, doi:10.1023/A:1007835629236.
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The Halo Effect
The affect heuristic is how an overall feeling of goodness or badness contributes to many other judgments, whether it’s logical or not, whether you’re aware of it or not. Subjects told about the benefits of nuclear power are likely to rate it as having fewer risks; stock analysts rating unfamiliar stocks judge them as generally good or generally bad—low risk and high returns, or high risk and low returns—in defiance of ordinary economic theory, which says that risk and return should correlate positively.
The halo effect is the manifestation of the affect heuristic in social psychology. Robert Cialdini, in Influence: Science and Practice,1 summarizes:
Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence (for a review of this evidence, see Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, and Longo, 1991).2 Furthermore, we make these judgments without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process. Some consequences of this unconscious assumption that “good-looking equals good” scare me. For example, a study of the 1974 Canadian federal elections found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as unattractive candidates (Efran and Patterson, 1976).3 Despite such evidence of favoritism toward handsome politicians, follow-up research demonstrated that voters did not realize their bias. In fact, 73 percent of Canadian voters surveyed denied in the strongest possible terms that their votes had been influenced by physical appearance; only 14 percent even allowed for the possibility of such influence (Efran and Patterson, 1976).4 Voters can deny the impact of attractiveness on electability all they want, but evidence has continued to confirm its troubling presence (Budesheim and DePaola, 1994).5
A similar effect has been found in hiring situations. In one study, good grooming of applicants in a simulated employment interview accounted for more favorable hiring decisions than did job qualifications—this, even though the interviewers claimed that appearance played a small role in their choices (Mack and Rainey, 1990).6 The advantage given to attractive workers extends past hiring day to payday. Economists examining US and Canadian samples have found that attractive individuals get paid an average of 12–14 percent more than their unattractive coworkers (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994).7
Equally unsettling research indicates that our judicial process is similarly susceptible to the influences of body dimensions and bone structure. It now appears that good-looking people are likely to receive highly favorable treatment in the legal system (see Castellow, Wuensch, and Moore, 1991; and Downs and Lyons, 1990, for reviews).8 For example, in a Pennsylvania study (Stewart, 1980),9 researchers rated the physical attractiveness of 74 separate male defendants at the start of their criminal trials. When, much later, the researchers checked court records for the results of these cases, they found that the handsome men had received significantly lighter sentences. In fact, attractive defendants were twice as likely to avoid jail as unattractive defendants. In another study—this one on the damages awarded in a staged negligence trial—a defendant who was better looking than his victim was assessed an average amount of $5,623; but when the victim was the more attractive of the two, the average compensation was $10,051. What’s more, both male and female jurors exhibited the attractiveness-based favoritism (Kulka and Kessler, 1978).10
Other experiments have demonstrated that attractive people are more likely to obtain help when in need (Benson, Karabenic, and Lerner, 1976)11 and are more persuasive in changing the opinions of an audience (Chaiken, 1979) . . .12
The influence of attractiveness on ratings of intelligence, honesty, or kindness is a clear example of bias—especially when you judge these other qualities based on fixed text—because we wouldn’t expect judgments of honesty and attractiveness to conflate for any legitimate reason. On the other hand, how much of my perceived intelligence is due to my honesty? How much of my perceived honesty is due to my intelligence? Finding the truth,
and saying the truth, are not as widely separated in nature as looking pretty and looking smart . . .
But these studies on the halo effect of attractiveness should make us suspicious that there may be a similar halo effect for kindness, or intelligence. Let’s say that you know someone who not only seems very intelligent, but also honest, altruistic, kindly, and serene. You should be suspicious that some of these perceived characteristics are influencing your perception of the others. Maybe the person is genuinely intelligent, honest, and altruistic, but not all that kindly or serene. You should be suspicious if the people you know seem to separate too cleanly into devils and angels.
And—I know you don’t think you have to do it, but maybe you should—be just a little more skeptical of the more attractive political candidates.
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1. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2001).
2. Alice H. Eagly et al., “What Is Beautiful Is Good, But . . . A Meta-analytic Review of Research on the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype,” Psychological Bulletin 110 (1 1991): 109–128, doi:10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.109.
3. M. G. Efran and E. W. J. Patterson, “The Politics of Appearance” (Unpublished PhD thesis, 1976).
4. Ibid.
5. Thomas Lee Budesheim and Stephen DePaola, “Beauty or the Beast?: The Effects of Appearance, Personality, and Issue Information on Evaluations of Political Candidates,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20 (4 1994): 339–348, doi:10.1177/0146167294204001.
6. Denise Mack and David Rainey, “Female Applicants’ Grooming and Personnel Selection,” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 5 (5 1990): 399–407.
7. Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle, “Beauty and the Labor Market,” The American Economic Review 84 (5 1994): 1174–1194.
8. Wilbur A. Castellow, Karl L. Wuensch, and Charles H. Moore, “Effects of Physical Attractiveness of the Plaintiff and Defendant in Sexual Harassment Judgments,” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 5 (6 1990): 547–562; A. Chris Downs and Phillip M. Lyons, “Natural Observations of the Links Between Attractiveness and Initial Legal Judgments,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17 (5 1991): 541–547, doi:10.1177/0146167291175009.
9. John E. Stewart, “Defendants’ Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Trials: An Observational Study,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 10 (4 1980): 348–361, doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1980.tb00715.x.
10. Richard A. Kulka and Joan B. Kessler, “Is Justice Really Blind?: The Effect of Litigant Physical Attractiveness on Judicial Judgment,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 8 (4 1978): 366–381, doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1978.tb00790.x.
11. Peter L. Benson, Stuart A. Karabenick, and Richard M. Lerner, “Pretty Pleases: The Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Race, and Sex on Receiving Help,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 12 (5 1976): 409–415, doi:10.1016/0022-1031(76)90073-1.
12. Shelly Chaiken, “Communicator Physical Attractiveness and Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (8 1979): 1387–1397, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.8.1387.
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Superhero Bias
Suppose there’s a heavily armed sociopath, a kidnapper with hostages, who has just rejected all requests for negotiation and announced his intent to start killing. In real life, the good guys don’t usually kick down the door when the bad guy has hostages. But sometimes—very rarely, but sometimes—life imitates Hollywood to the extent of genuine good guys needing to smash through a door.
Imagine, in two widely separated realities, two heroes who charge into the room, first to confront the villain.
In one reality, the hero is strong enough to throw cars, can fire power blasts out of his nostrils, has X-ray hearing, and his skin doesn’t just deflect bullets but annihilates them on contact. The villain has ensconced himself in an elementary school and taken over two hundred children hostage; their parents are waiting outside, weeping.
In another reality, the hero is a New York police officer, and the hostages are three prostitutes the villain collected off the street.
Consider this question very carefully: Who is the greater hero? And who is more likely to get their own comic book?
The halo effect is that perceptions of all positive traits are correlated. Profiles rated higher on scales of attractiveness are also rated higher on scales of talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence.
And so comic-book characters who seem strong and invulnerable, both positive traits, also seem to possess more of the heroic traits of courage and heroism. And yet:
How tough can it be to act all brave and courageous when you’re pretty much invulnerable?
—Adam Warren, Empowered, Vol. 11
I can’t remember if I read the following point somewhere, or hypothesized it myself: Fame, in particular, seems to combine additively with all other personality characteristics. Consider Gandhi. Was Gandhi the most altruistic person of the twentieth century, or just the most famous altruist? Gandhi faced police with riot sticks and soldiers with guns. But Gandhi was a celebrity, and he was protected by his celebrity. What about the others in the march, the people who faced riot sticks and guns even though there wouldn’t be international headlines if they were put in the hospital or gunned down?
What did Gandhi think of getting the headlines, the celebrity, the fame, the place in history, becoming the archetype for non-violent resistance, when he took less risk than any of the people marching with him? How did he feel when one of those anonymous heroes came up to him, eyes shining, and told Gandhi how wonderful he was? Did Gandhi ever visualize his world in those terms? I don’t know; I’m not Gandhi.
This is not in any sense a criticism of Gandhi. The point of non-violent resistance is not to show off your courage. That can be done much more easily by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Gandhi couldn’t help being somewhat-but-not-entirely protected by his celebrity. And Gandhi’s actions did take courage—not as much courage as marching anonymously, but still a great deal of courage.
The bias I wish to point out is that Gandhi’s fame score seems to get perceptually added to his justly accumulated altruism score. When you think about nonviolence, you think of Gandhi—not an anonymous protestor in one of Gandhi’s marches who faced down riot clubs and guns, and got beaten, and had to be taken to the hospital, and walked with a limp for the rest of her life, and no one ever remembered her name.
Similarly, which is greater—to risk your life to save two hundred children, or to risk your life to save three adults?
The answer depends on what one means by greater. If you ever have to choose between saving two hundred children and saving three adults, then choose the former. “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he had saved the whole world” may be a fine applause light, but it’s terrible moral advice if you’ve got to pick one or the other. So if you mean “greater” in the sense of “Which is more important?” or “Which is the preferred outcome?” or “Which should I choose if I have to do one or the other?” then it is greater to save two hundred than three.
But if you ask about greatness in the sense of revealed virtue, then someone who would risk their life to save only three lives reveals more courage than someone who would risk their life to save two hundred but not three.
This doesn’t mean that you can deliberately choose to risk your life to save three adults, and let the two hundred schoolchildren go hang, because you want to reveal more virtue. Someone who risks their life because they want to be virtuous has revealed far less virtue than someone who risks their life because they want to save others. Someone who chooses to save three lives rather than two hundred lives, because they think it reveals greater virtue, is so selfishly fascinated with their own “greatness” as to have committed the moral equivalent of manslaughter.
It’s one of those wu wei scenarios: You cannot reveal virtue by trying to reveal virtue. Given a choice between a safe method to save the world which involves no personal sacrifi
ce or discomfort, and a method that risks your life and requires you to endure great privation, you cannot become a hero by deliberately choosing the second path. There is nothing heroic about wanting to look like a hero. It would be a lost purpose.
Truly virtuous people who are genuinely trying to save lives, rather than trying to reveal virtue, will constantly seek to save more lives with less effort, which means that less of their virtue will be revealed. It may be confusing, but it’s not contradictory.
But we cannot always choose to be invulnerable to bullets. After we’ve done our best to reduce risk and increase scope, any remaining heroism is well and truly revealed.
The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman—who is a mere superhero.
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1. Adam Warren, Empowered, vol. 1 (Dark Horse Books, 2007).
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Mere Messiahs
I discussed how the halo effect, which causes people to see all positive characteristics as correlated—for example, more attractive individuals are also perceived as more kindly, honest, and intelligent—causes us to admire heroes more if they’re super-strong and immune to bullets. Even though, logically, it takes much more courage to be a hero if you’re not immune to bullets. Furthermore, it reveals more virtue to act courageously to save one life than to save the world. (Although if you have to do one or the other, of course you should save the world.)
Rationality- From AI to Zombies Page 38
