When faced with a choice of two liars and someone with no chance of winning, should we go for the less outrageous liar or the candidate with no chance (who may be more honest, but only because of self-delusion)?
Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment is practically impossible for other researchers to accurately reproduce. In 1973, Erich Fromm argued, as only a third of the guards displayed sadistic behaviors, SPE is more accurately an example of how a situation cannot influence a person's behavior.[12] He states that there were generalizations in the experiment's results and argued that the personality of an individual does affect behavior when imprisoned. This ran counter to the study's conclusion that the prison situation itself controls the individual's behavior. Fromm also argued that the methods employed to screen participants could not determine the amount of sadism in the subjects.[37]
“Well, if you’re a voter, you could try not being a complete fool. You could try thinking for a few seconds about whether it’s likely that a campaigning politician is actually representing things accurately.”
But is it rational to do that given that voting is marginally useless?
I don't believe that voting marginal uselessness is the main problem.
A more careful analysis of political issues will mean, for most people, getting into cognitive dissonance: they will be forced to question some of their most cherished (and mainly false) believes. That's painful.
Joke? You really think there's some kind of anarchy where no one occupies a seat of power and yet things still get done. Imagine trying to produce steel under conditions of anarchy.
I've personally lived in a society without a government and things were getting done just fine. As for your example-- steel would still be produced by steelworkers. Can you explain how governments help to make it? Do they operate a sheet metal roller or a blast furnace?
Please elaborate on this society you live in without government that produced steel . As for myself I worked in the steel industry and have been in many steel mills both us and Canada.
Out of curiosity, I went to the American Bar Association website to see what they had to say in terms of honesty in the legal profession. Note that the article was written by a former ABA Ethics Counsel member and is not in fact official ABA policy.
Not surprisingly, the author stated that "lawyers must be honest, but they don't have to be truthful."
Which seems entirely backwards. Certainly, it is truth that matters, and sometimes you have to lie in order to protect it, or do what is right.
For what it's worth, I looked into personality differences between politicians and ordinary citizens for slightly different purposes[1] recently and found three kinda relevant studies:
- Caprara et al. (2010) looks at personality differences between Italian MPs and Italian voters (conditional on age and education level) and finds no statistically significant difference in conscientiousness.
- Best (2011) (working with a sample one order of magnitude larger) looks at differences between German MPs and ordinary Germans and finds that politicians are less conscientious.
- Dynes, Hassell, and Miles (2018) finds that conscientious individuals are less interested in running for office.
Best, Heinrich. 2011. “Does Personality Matter in Politics? Personality Factors as Determinants of Parliamentary Recruitment and Policy Preferences.” Comparative Sociology 10 (6): 928--48. https://doi.org/10.1163/156913311x607638
Caprara, Gianvittorio, Donata Francescato, Minou Mebane, Roberta Sorace, and Michele Vecchione. 2010. “Personality Foundations of Ideological Divide: A Comparison of Women Members of Parliament and Women Voters in Italy.” Political Psychology 31 (5): 739--62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00780.x
Dynes, Adam M., Hans J. G. Hassell, and Matthew R. Miles. 2018. “The Personality of the Politically Ambitious.” Political Behavior 41 (2): 309--36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9452-x
It could also be that perhaps politicians are not all that dishonest relative to the average. Maybe we just don't like people with power over us as a general rule? That seems fairly plausible to me, and maps with my experience. People also have unfavorable impressions and make jokes about bosses, groups with higher status than their own, potential rivals, etc.
I don't think you've really shown the proof that politicians are more dishonest. In addition, statements like "Perhaps because a major attraction of the job is the opportunity to exercise power over other people. If that’s a major driver in your life, then you’re probably kind of a bad person." seem overly simplistic to me. Might it be that we all have some desire to do this, but people within power have more ability to exercise the desire?
I'm not sure, but it sometimes seems like you're extrapolating too far with simple narratives. Which oddly enough is also what partly you're criticizing politicians for.
Thank you Michael! Another well-reasoned article. In your list of 'why' people put up with it: what about simple indoctrination? After all, cradle to grave, the State is presented as legitimate. In a sense we all grow up in this cult. As it is, cult thinking is difficult to escape even though the typical cult is rare and isolated...how much more difficult for us to escape when the whole world believes it?
Could not that be an overriding reason the State persists? Would this not identify a root cause, and therefore lead to leverage-able strategies? I know of no psychologist or cult expert who has analyzed this.
Loved your Problem of Political Authority book so much. If I could I'd stock all those little library boxes in my neighborhood with copies but at $80 for a physical copy these days and for Kindle too!? Ouch!
When faced with a choice of two liars and someone with no chance of winning, should we go for the less outrageous liar or the candidate with no chance (who may be more honest, but only because of self-delusion)?
On top of your very good arguments the fact that power itself makes people worse seems to be missing.
Remember the Standford Prison Experiment
Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment is practically impossible for other researchers to accurately reproduce. In 1973, Erich Fromm argued, as only a third of the guards displayed sadistic behaviors, SPE is more accurately an example of how a situation cannot influence a person's behavior.[12] He states that there were generalizations in the experiment's results and argued that the personality of an individual does affect behavior when imprisoned. This ran counter to the study's conclusion that the prison situation itself controls the individual's behavior. Fromm also argued that the methods employed to screen participants could not determine the amount of sadism in the subjects.[37]
“Well, if you’re a voter, you could try not being a complete fool. You could try thinking for a few seconds about whether it’s likely that a campaigning politician is actually representing things accurately.”
But is it rational to do that given that voting is marginally useless?
I don't believe that voting marginal uselessness is the main problem.
A more careful analysis of political issues will mean, for most people, getting into cognitive dissonance: they will be forced to question some of their most cherished (and mainly false) believes. That's painful.
Joke? You really think there's some kind of anarchy where no one occupies a seat of power and yet things still get done. Imagine trying to produce steel under conditions of anarchy.
I've personally lived in a society without a government and things were getting done just fine. As for your example-- steel would still be produced by steelworkers. Can you explain how governments help to make it? Do they operate a sheet metal roller or a blast furnace?
Please elaborate on this society you live in without government that produced steel . As for myself I worked in the steel industry and have been in many steel mills both us and Canada.
I lived in a society without a de facto government in the past. The production of steel was done by private enterprises.
What country was that?
Out of curiosity, I went to the American Bar Association website to see what they had to say in terms of honesty in the legal profession. Note that the article was written by a former ABA Ethics Counsel member and is not in fact official ABA policy.
Not surprisingly, the author stated that "lawyers must be honest, but they don't have to be truthful."
Which seems entirely backwards. Certainly, it is truth that matters, and sometimes you have to lie in order to protect it, or do what is right.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2019/december-2019/_truthiness_-and-professional-responsibility/
For what it's worth, I looked into personality differences between politicians and ordinary citizens for slightly different purposes[1] recently and found three kinda relevant studies:
- Caprara et al. (2010) looks at personality differences between Italian MPs and Italian voters (conditional on age and education level) and finds no statistically significant difference in conscientiousness.
- Best (2011) (working with a sample one order of magnitude larger) looks at differences between German MPs and ordinary Germans and finds that politicians are less conscientious.
- Dynes, Hassell, and Miles (2018) finds that conscientious individuals are less interested in running for office.
[1] https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/apropos-the-swedish-general-election/
Best, Heinrich. 2011. “Does Personality Matter in Politics? Personality Factors as Determinants of Parliamentary Recruitment and Policy Preferences.” Comparative Sociology 10 (6): 928--48. https://doi.org/10.1163/156913311x607638
Caprara, Gianvittorio, Donata Francescato, Minou Mebane, Roberta Sorace, and Michele Vecchione. 2010. “Personality Foundations of Ideological Divide: A Comparison of Women Members of Parliament and Women Voters in Italy.” Political Psychology 31 (5): 739--62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00780.x
Dynes, Adam M., Hans J. G. Hassell, and Matthew R. Miles. 2018. “The Personality of the Politically Ambitious.” Political Behavior 41 (2): 309--36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9452-x
It could also be that perhaps politicians are not all that dishonest relative to the average. Maybe we just don't like people with power over us as a general rule? That seems fairly plausible to me, and maps with my experience. People also have unfavorable impressions and make jokes about bosses, groups with higher status than their own, potential rivals, etc.
I don't think you've really shown the proof that politicians are more dishonest. In addition, statements like "Perhaps because a major attraction of the job is the opportunity to exercise power over other people. If that’s a major driver in your life, then you’re probably kind of a bad person." seem overly simplistic to me. Might it be that we all have some desire to do this, but people within power have more ability to exercise the desire?
I'm not sure, but it sometimes seems like you're extrapolating too far with simple narratives. Which oddly enough is also what partly you're criticizing politicians for.
Thank you Michael! Another well-reasoned article. In your list of 'why' people put up with it: what about simple indoctrination? After all, cradle to grave, the State is presented as legitimate. In a sense we all grow up in this cult. As it is, cult thinking is difficult to escape even though the typical cult is rare and isolated...how much more difficult for us to escape when the whole world believes it?
Could not that be an overriding reason the State persists? Would this not identify a root cause, and therefore lead to leverage-able strategies? I know of no psychologist or cult expert who has analyzed this.
Perhaps the state persists because people consider the alternative.
Loved your Problem of Political Authority book so much. If I could I'd stock all those little library boxes in my neighborhood with copies but at $80 for a physical copy these days and for Kindle too!? Ouch!