Poster in San Diego
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In mid-2021, concern about “Critical Race Theory (CRT)” and school curricula exploded. Many parents turned out at school board meetings claiming schools were indoctrinating students in the notion that systemic racism existed in America, pitting white students and students of color against each other and tarnishing our founding story. Teachers and administrators denied these charges, insisting they were only trying to build mutual respect among students and eliminate racial and gender stereotyping and bullying. Some teachers and administrators quit. Florida passed a law prohibiting the teaching of CRT in schools and some other states enacted similar measures.
As a public issue, understanding CRT, its implications for education and the appropriate way for schools to deal with the topic of racism requires careful attention. Pausing to understand the issue before taking a position (see Question #5) and drawing upon expertise (see Question #6) are important parts of exploring any issue. Whether it’s CRT, climate change, debt/taxes, the minimum wage, job creation or something else, careful study before acting is an obligation of citizenship. Every question in Of the People is aimed at helping to do that. Here we’ll focus on four barriers that stand in the way and how to avoid them.
Fact Finder
According to public opinion polls, what are the most important issues that concern Americans today?
Beware of the Salience Effect
"They wanna teach that America is bad and they wanna indoctrinate our kids and I do not want that," Jan Throndson, a Rochester, Minnesota resident said about the issue of CRT at a July 2021 school board meeting. "Now you're flying a pride flag? There's only one flag and it's the American flag," another resident said. The story on KAAL.TV, the local ABC News affiliate, included angry, sometimes shouting citizens. Board members tried to point out that CRT wasn’t even being discussed in the district and the new School Superintendent, Kent Pekel, added that “We are not trying to indoctrinate people in Marxism. We are trying to teach people to think critically."
Like most public issues, this one isn’t simple. What and how we teach children about American history, how we balance admiration for America’s achievements and the need to address its failures certainly leaves room for questions and debate. Yet a major barrier to learning and conversation is how we encounter such topics in the media and online.
The 3-minute KAAL.TV broadcast showed conflict and emotion. Both are graphic but the segment lacked depth. There was no explanation of CRT or its potential implications for schools. This is the danger of the salience effect. (It also fosters emotional hijacking (see Question #4.)
The salience effect occurs when prominent or conspicuous features of an issue or event dominate our focus. Things become salient when they capture our attention. Our brains are primed through evolution to pay heed to things that are strikingly different or dangerous. So stark sound bites or stories presented as “breaking news” with high emotional content grab us. Reporters are used to the saying that “if it bleeds, it leads.” Salient features often foster emotional contagion: they spread virally aided by modern technologies and social media algorithms designed to feed us more content matching what has already caught our attention.
The salience effect is ubiquitous. Media reports on inflation or unemployment focus on the rising price of gasoline or the crying single parent who’s out of work but not the systemic causes of these problems. The story of someone who died after getting the COVID vaccine spreads virally even though the cause of death had nothing to do with the vaccine. Watching a Facebook news feed or looking at what’s trending on Twitter bombards us with salient information that is often only surface deep. If we hope to understand issues and reasonably analyze proposals to deal with them, the salience effect might be our first stop but must not be our last.
Let’s Talk
What are some examples of the salience effect on the Internet today?
New Home Construction
(Credit: wikimediacommons.org)
Avoid the Single-Cause Fallacy
As the COVID pandemic eased in the spring of 2021, media reports began highlighting inflation concerns. The price of new homes, for example, was rising quickly, in many areas by double digits. One headline shouted “Home prices surged in April at a ‘truly extraordinary’ rate.” (Note the salience effect of that lead.) Housing experts, economists, politicians and ordinary Americans began to weigh in. The brain is a meaning-making machine, so we immediately search for reasons. Some said the cause was the pent-up demand of people who didn’t house-hunt during the pandemic. Others found the cause in the rapid rise in the price of lumber. Some blamed President Biden’s COVID relief package for adding too much economic stimulus. Still others said home sellers were just creating bidding wars because of a supply shortage.
The single-cause fallacy is the tendency to assume every problem has a cause and that once we find the cause, we can solve it. If student test scores are down, the cause must be too little time spent on reading and math – so do more instruction in the basics. If the crime rate spikes, the cause must be too little law enforcement, so increase the size of the police force.
In their intriguing book, The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons highlight the single-cause fallacy. In a series of broadcasts over several months before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, they show how MSNBC’s Chris Matthews speculated on the reason for going to war.
“What is the motive for this war?” (2/4/ 2003)
“I wanted to know whether 9/11 is the reason, because a lot of people think it’s payback.” (2/6/2003)
“Do you believe weapons of mass destruction was the reason for this war? (10/24/ 2003)
“Why do you think we went to Iraq? The real reason, not the sales pitch.” (10/9/2006)
The single-cause fallacy is strengthened by three thinking traps. One is confusing correlation with causation (see Question #6). The fact that two things occur in close proximity (“co-relate”) leads to the conclusion that one caused the other, often without further question: Biden becomes president and home prices surge, so he must be the reason. Another trap is our tendency to assume every question has one right answer. After all, in school teachers always posed a question and asked “what’s the answer?” Finally, the sooner we hit on a cause, the faster we can then jump to “what do we do?” That’s our need for closure (see Question #5). Americans are problem solvers. Yet significant public issues are far too complex for single-cause answers.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
- Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Housing prices, for example, rose partly because of low supply and high demand but also because the price of lumber skyrocketed. Lumber mills cut back when they projected lower demand as COVID surged, so they were short on supply when COVID ebbed. The lumber industry also didn’t foresee increased demand due to do-it-yourself projects by people stuck at home. Tariff issues with Canada and China impacted the price and supply of lumber. When COVID eased, the lumber industry lacked workers, many of whom had been laid off and found others jobs. Multiple causes – and these are just some of them.
Let’s Talk
List as many possible causes as you can for the growth of obesity in America.
Prevent Domain Dependence (Limited Perspectives on the Issue)
Captured Bay of Pigs Fighter Being Interrogated
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The single-cause fallacy is fueled by another trap - people who look at problems only from one vantage point. In April 1961, just three months into his presidency, John F. Kennedy approved the Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Kennedy relied heavily on CIA advisors, and the invasion was a disaster. Kennedy launched an effort to understand how he failed. What he found proved decisive in his success with the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Kennedy learned he relied too heavily on the CIA and that his decision making lacked sufficient opportunities for disagreement and consideration of other options. When he met with former President Eisenhower just a week after the failed invasion, Eisenhower asked him: “Mr. President, before you approved this plan did you have everybody in front of you debating the thing so you got pros and cons yourself and then made your decision, or did you see these people one at a time?” Kennedy admitted he had never held such a meeting of diverse areas of expertise and viewpoints.
Kennedy fell victim to domain dependence – the options we consider in making decisions on an issue depend on the expertise (domains) brought into the decision process.
After learning of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Kennedy created ExComm, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (NSC). In addition to the usual NSC military officials, cabinet Secretaries and agency-heads, Kennedy added the current and former ambassadors to the Soviet Union, lower-ranking officials from State, Defense and CIA and several special advisors. Not surprisingly, the initial options all involved military action. Kennedy balked and forced the diverse group to come up with other options. Theodore Sorensen, Special Counsel, speechwriter and an ExComm member, commented years later on the importance of this domain diversity in addressing public issues: “economists always wanted an economic solution, lawyers a legal solution, diplomats a diplomatic solution. Why should I be surprised the military wanted a military solution?” By adding extra domains of experience Kennedy succeeded in removing the missiles by combining a military blockade, a back-door diplomatic arrangement with the USSR and wide support from world nations.
The importance of diverse backgrounds and perspectives is essential in understanding any public issue. If gangs are a problem, law enforcement needs to be at the table. But so do social workers, educators, mental health professionals, drug counselors, school administrators, parents, community organizers and job development professionals. This leads to a deeper understanding of a complex problem and more options for addressing it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren at a Town Hall Meeting
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Erin Murphy was delighted to complete her doctoral degree, yet it came with $280,000 in student debt. After two years of paying $400 a month, she’d paid off just $1,000 of the principal; all the rest was interest. Even planning to double her monthly payment, she calculated that the accrual of interest meant she’d never be debt free. She’s not alone. Outstanding student debt in 2022 was over $1.75 trillion spread across 45 million Americans, damaging futures and slowing economic growth.
Reducing student debt led to two major proposals: government cancellation of all student debt or extended repayment periods and/or lower interest rates. This is where the issue has stood for years. (In 2022, President Biden proposed cancelling some student debt, a very controversial move.) It’s an example of the “either-or trap.” Many opposed the first option as unfair to those who have paid their debts and many doubt the second will help enough.
Fact Finder
What are at least five options for dealing with the student debt problem?
The “either-or trap” occurs whenever a decision is presented as having only two choices. We witness this often: pro-choice or pro-life; gun rights or gun control; Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter; tax increases or economic growth. Public issues are not the only ones subject to this. Management professor Paul Nutt studied 168 cases of major decisions by corporate leaders and found 71 percent considered only two options.
Either-or options encourage taking sides and making arguments to strengthen the side chosen. They dampen creativity in identifying other choices, including ones that may combine features of the either-or choices and thus gain wider support. They limit understanding others’ views, harden political positions and curtail conversation and compromise. Democracy depends, after all, not on perfect solutions, which are rare, but on good solutions that address as many of the causes of a problem as possible and bring together as many people as possible.
“Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.”
- Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
One seductive variant of the either-or fallacy is to act as if there are other choices but to make them so unpalatable that no one would select them. On health care reform, for example, one might offer three proposals: (1) universal, government-run health care, (2) abolishing Obamacare, or (3) continuing with the current public-private mix of health insurance options. There are huge political hurdles to (1) and (2) so the only really viable choice is (3) and that’s where public policy has been stuck.
As you try to understand an issue, therefore, be wary of these four thinking traps:
The Saliency Effect: allowing prominent or shocking features of a story or event to take too much prominence, cutting short detailed understanding
The Single Cause Fallacy: assuming every problem has one cause and ignoring the complexity inherent in public issues
Domain Dependence: using a single type of expertise, cutting off the contributions of those with different backgrounds
The Either-Or Trap: assuming there are only two options to deal with an issue without exploring other possibilities
Thinking citizens can avoid these barriers.
Avoiding the salience effect: As we noted in Question #6, be wary of WYSIATI – What You See Is All There Is. Any significant public issue is more complex than it may appear from headlines or emotional parts of a news story. Three tips to counter the salience effect include:
o Be Wary of Words like “Bombshell” and “Breaking News.” Watch out for shock-filled headlines in social media posts. These can reduce your thinking to the most salient, but not necessarily the most important features of an issue.
o Assume There’s a Lot More to Any Story. When the Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside, Florida collapsed in 2021, media stories focused heavily on the tragedy for residents and included speculation that climate change and/or faulty construction were at fault. Full understanding of this issue required much greater study – the impact of building codes and inspections; condo associations and how they budget for repairs; the economics of condo construction, sales and maintenance; and even the psychology of how people deal with trade-offs between immediate costs and possible future events.
o Avoid Diagnosis Momentum. Confronted with a problem, we yearn for quick resolution. Reporting and social media posts use the salience effect to suggest what the problem is and thus encourage us to move quickly to what a solution might be. In How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman, a physician, notes that doctors often come to an initial diagnosis within a couple minutes of seeing a patient. The rest of their efforts are spent doing tests to confirm their diagnosis or passing the patient on to specialists in the diagnosed malady. They thus cut off deeper exploration of the patient’s symptoms and, sadly, even listening to the patient. So, when you think you understand the problem from a brief, very salient report, assume you don’t. Keep your diagnosis open.
Looking for Multiple Causes: After every mass shooting, calls for gun laws escalate. Yet research on mass shooters suggests it is a very complex problem. Gun laws may help but cannot fix the problem. A major study of perpetrators of mass shootings over a fifty-year period showed: (1) the majority suffered early childhood trauma and exposure to violence, (2) most had a recent personal crisis - often related to their workplace, (3) most had studied other mass shooters and may have been confirmed in their motives or radicalized by online searches, and (4) the great bulk obtained firearms legally or from family. Clearly, these multiple causes require a robust set of solutions. In addition to new gun laws, the study suggested things as varied as better building security, control of the spread of online information about mass violence, proactive violence prevention through working with schools, colleges, churches and employers, better social services and mental health treatment, and education on the signs of psychological trauma and encouragement for people to report potential mass shooters.
When you study a problem, these action steps may help avoid the single-cause fallacy:
o Draw a “Mind Map.” Put the problem in the center of the map (see example below) and generate as many potential causes as you can (a good System 2 practice – see Question #4). Each potential cause may suggest other causes.
Mind Map for Why Won’t the Voters Approve School Bond Issues
o Ask Lots of Questions. Seek information to understand all the dimensions of a problem. Observing President Kennedy at a White House evening session with invited guests, Marg McNamara, wife of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, commented that “[I]t was absolutely fascinating. No one could get a word in edgewise! The whole evening was devoted to Kennedy’s questions.”
o Read from a Variety of Sources - not just those that fit with your politics or point of view. Talk to others with an interest in the problem and ask them what they think the cause(s) may be.
o Use Multiple “Frames” to Understand a Problem. Think of a “frame” as a window into a problem. Every window gives a vantage point on causes from a certain area of expertise and/or group of people, just as every window in a house offers a different view. For drug addiction, for example, one window on the problem is mental health. Others include at least: law - enforcement, border security, penal codes and the pharmaceutical industry. Each frame is like a domain of expertise with a particular set of knowledge and ways of looking at a problem. (For more on frames, see Question #10.)
There is a danger, of course, that an effective search for the many causes contributing to a problem can turn into “analysis paralysis” in which endless study puts off taking action for too long. The goal is to balance the rush to closure with the need to act. Four-star general and Secretary of State Colin Powell used a “40’70” rule: when facing a decision: get no less than 40 percent of the information you need but no more than 70 percent and use your intuition to decide where in that range to stop. Remember of course that intuition should be based on expertise not just a gut feeling.
Countering Domain Dependence: adopting the above strategies will ensure you get input from various domains of expertise. If you’re not sure which domains are important, use an approach suggested by George Washington University professor Michael Marquardt. He asks three questions about an issue: Who knows about it? Who cares about it? Who can do something about it? For example, one answer to “Who can?” in regard to homelessness in a community may be the mayor. She may not be an expert but will certainly have a useful point of view – and her help will be essential in community action steps. Those who answer the question “who knows” might be leaders of community organizations, mental health experts, homeless advocates and homeless people themselves. Each of the three questions may identify people not part of the answer to another of the three questions. Using all three thus enables you to keep expanding the pool of people and domains of expertise that can help. Involve others interested in the issue in answering these three questions as they may know people to include that you do not. As with the search for causes, you’ll need to balance the desire to expand the domains of expertise with the need to move forward, but scoping out who knows, who cares and who can is usually possible in a short amount of time – and you may well add new people into your domain search as you start working the issue.
Avoiding the “Either-Or” Trap: previous techniques help generate a variety of options, thus helping to avoid “either-or” choices or “fake” options meant to limit thinking to only one seemingly sensible alternative. Other steps you can take include:
o Acknowledge Your Reality is Partial. As a colleague once put it, “where you stand depends on where you sit.” We all see a public issue through our own eyes and biases. Others see it through theirs. “Either-or” choices often arise from people who limit their thinking to how they define the reality of an issue. Force yourself to explore others’ views through visiting their websites, reading their journals, and talking to them. New options will emerge.
o When Given Only Two Options Keep Searching. Only two options, especially if one or both are unpalatable, is a sure sign that more options need to be generated. Do we raise taxes or cut programs to balance the city budget? If either choice would lead to major protests, work with the issue, experts and constituencies to find other options.
In applying these tips, we invariably rely on our memory – of facts, people, previous dealings with an issue and American history and government. But how good is our memory and what can we do to make sure we recall things well? That’s the focus of Question #8.