Social Science

Robert Winston “writing in the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1590776,00.html :

bq. While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action – incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way – is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious bent.

Well I’m quite open to the idea that those specially drawn to religion have a chemical imbalance in their brains, but this thesis surely has to contend with the startling temporal fluctuations in religiosity that different societies undergo. The Irish and Italians, two name but two, don’t seem especially religious at the moment, but go back a generation or three …. I doubt very much that their genetic stock has changed that much.

A few days ago, Tyler Cowen gave a “quite unfavourable review”:http://www.slate.com/id/2125041/entry/2125047/ to Barbara Ehrenreich’s _Bait and Switch_. Tyler observed, not unreasonably, that a job candidate like Ehrenreich’s _alter ego_, who didn’t appear to have much in the way of social networks, was unlikely to secure many offers. But as Paul Campos “observes today”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050919&s=campos091905 this logic cuts both ways – manifestly unqualified candidates can land plum positions which are far, far above their “level of incompetence”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle, as long as they have the right college room-mates.

bq. It’s clear that hiring Brown to run FEMA was an act of gross recklessness, given his utter lack of qualifications for the job. What’s less clear is the answer to the question of exactly what, given Brown’s real biography, he is qualified to do. … Brown’s biography on FEMA’s website reports that he’s a graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law. … Of more relevance is the fact that, until 2003, the school was not even a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) … it’s fair to say that Brown embarked on his prospective legal career from the bottom of the profession’s hierarchy. … When Brown left the IAHA four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer–a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn’t attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA. It’s bad enough when attorneys are named to government jobs for which their careers, no matter how distinguished, don’t qualify them. But Brown wasn’t a distinguished lawyer: He was hardly a lawyer at all. When he left the IAHA, he was a 47-year-old with a very thin resumé and no job. Yet he was also what’s known in the Mafia as a “connected guy.” That such a person could end up in one of the federal government’s most important positions tells you all you need to know about how the Bush administration works–or, rather, doesn’t.

Ehrenreich’s experiences as a middle-aged woman with a thin resume and no networks worth speaking of stacks up, shall we say, in an interesting fashion against Michael Brown’s experiences as a (slightly less) middle-aged man with an equally thin resume (if not a worse one) and high-level connections to the Republican kleptocratic classes. Tyler is right that personal networks count for a lot. But Ehrenreich’s riposte, I imagine, would be that the networks you have access to are a product of both your social position and your “‘ability to be a suck-up'”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/09/08/mclemee. A point which Brown’s skyrocketing career in the current administration drives home trenchantly (even now they’re hesitating to fire him).

Maria’s “post about America”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/04/myths-about-america/ got me thinking about issues to do with social mobility. Here I want to offer some completely data free speculations, to float a hypothesis for commenters to shoot down if they want to. That hypothesis is that there’s far too much higher education in Western societies and that it constitutes a real barrier to social mobility (and is probably bad for demographics too). To put it in a nutshell: strategies for improving social mobility by getting a broader swathe of the population into higher ed are bound to fail because it is too easy for the middle classes to maintain their grip on access to education. A better strategy would be to take that card out of middle class hands by abandoning the insistence on credentials that aren’t materially relevant to the job at hand.

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Don’t miss the “Guardian’s profile of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1556482,00.html . A nervous breakdown after reading too much Wittgenstein, friendship with Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and the following priceless comment on Richard Dawkins: “My first wife, a wonderful woman, used to refer to Dick as the Selfish Gene, just because of the way he acts. ” Definitely worth a look.

My friend and colleague Jimmy Doyle has a guest post on Normblog: “Human Agency and the London Bombings”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/08/human_agency_an.html . I hesitate to summarise Jimmy’s argument here, since it is stated with characteristic carefulness and precision, but among the more striking claims he endorses is that genuine human actions cannot figure among the causes of other human actions:

bq. human actions cannot be thought of as mere events in a causal chain of further events. This is expressed in the traditional legal doctrine of _novus actus interveniens_ , according to which a human action cuts short the chain of causally-connected events consequent upon any previous action. For the cause of a human action is not an event at all, but an agent: a person, a human being.

I am not putting a counter-argument, but merely making an observation, in saying that if Jimmy’s view is correct then much of social science and history rests on a mistake. Economics and psychology, for example, certainly presuppose that one person’s action can figure among the causal antecedents of another’s. And all those books on the “causes” of the First or Second World Wars would have to be pulped or substantially rewritten.

Jimmy advances this consideration in favour of his view:

bq. I should emphasize that I have not tried to show that what is presupposed in our ordinary thought and talk about human action is true. But if it turned out false, that would be a disaster; and we would very likely find it impossible to lead recognizably human lives consistent with such a realization.

I suspect that we would find it a good deal easier than he supposes to lead “recognizably human lives”, but let’s leave that to one side. The examples of history and social science show that whilst Jimmy may be right to say that we engage in much thought and talk about human action which rests on the very presuppositions he mentions, we also engage in a great deal of talk about human behaviour that rests on the causal view he rejects. Very likely we would find it hard to get along without that mode of thought and talk too.

“Brad DeLong”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/07/a_better_class_.html has a go at the anthropologists at “Savage Minds” for “two”:http://savageminds.org/2005/07/25/whats-wrong-with-yalis-question/ “posts”:http://savageminds.org/2005/07/24/anthropology%u2019s-guns-germs-and-steel-problem/ which in turn attack Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel”:http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?partner_id=29956&cgi=search/search/&searchtype=kw&searchfor=Jared%20Diamond%20Guns%20Germs%20Steel. I’m mostly in agreement with Brad, but think that there’s a more interesting question lurking in the background; the Savage Minds critiques seem to me to be less motivated by professional jealousy than by a wrongheaded understanding of levels of causation. Ozma, one of the Savage Minds bloggers suggests “in comments”:http://savageminds.org/2005/07/24/anthropology%e2%80%99s-guns-germs-and-steel-problem/#comment-824 that while she thinks that Diamond is wrong on the facts, her more fundamental objection to his work is that it’s _the wrong kind of anti-racism._ [click to continue…]

Via “Tim Lambert”:http://timlambert.org/2005/07/lott-libels/, some evidence that these two properties might still be orthogonal. Tim reproduces an email exchange between John Donohue and a representative of the Federalist Society’s chapter at University of Chicago. They are trying to organize a debate between Donohue and the awful John Lott, but they fail through a sequence of scheduling problems exacerbated by Lott’s efforts (on his blog) to make it look like Donohue is afraid to face him in public. You have to give the Federalist Society person credit for an evenhanded and respectful demeanor in the face of relentless provocation from Lott’s trademark mix of misrepresentation, slander and evasiveness. Eventually the head of the Chicago chapter writes to Donohue telling him they’ve withdrawn Lott’s invitation to speak because of his repeated refusals to remove the libels of Donohue from his blog. So full marks to them for being on the up-and-up. The fact that the American Enterprise Institute remain happy to have Lott as a senior fellow, on the other hand, speaks for itself at this point.

Do you know what RSS means? If you do then you are more savvy than the majority of American Internet users.

The latest memo from the Pew Internet and American Life Project examines an important topic: people’s awareness of Internet terms. In a survey administered to Internet users across the U.S. the researchers found that only 9% of users have a good idea of what the term “RSS feeds” means while 26% claimed never to have heard of it. “Podcasting” is the other term with least recognition as 23% had never heard of it and only 13% claim to know what it is. Of concern from a privacy/security perspective is that only 29% have a good idea of what “phishing” means, 52% for “Adware”, 68% for “Internet cookies” and 78% for “Spyware”.

Not surprisingly, familiarity with the terms is related to age, but even among the youngest, most connected group (18-29 year olds) only 12% claim to understand “RSS feeds” and “podcasting” (as compared to 5% of those 65 and above).

Regular readers of CT may recall that all of this is close to my interests as an important aspect of my work is looking at people’s Internet skills. My paper examining proxy measures of actual skill is coming out this Fall. (I’ve mentioned it here before.) In it I show that the types of knowledge items on which the Pew researchers just collected data are better predictors of people’s actual skill than traditional proxies such as amount of Internet experience or even self-perceived skill (a very common proxy in the literature).

Why does all this matter? First, I think it is helpful to remember what people may or may not know when one is enthusiastically trying to recommend things to them (as I tend to do) or why some people’s machines get overrun with malware (and why some may find it easier to just buy a new computer instead of trying to get the current infected one fixed). Second, as the Web matures (in both good ways – more sophisticated services – and bad ways – more unwanted disruptions) the divide among users will likely increase. This is what I have referred to as the “second-level digital divide“, differences among those already connected (as opposed to the plain old-fashioned “digital divide” that points out the differences between users and non-users).

In addition to being related to age, Internet know-how also tends to be related to education. The Pew report does not break this down for us, but I have found this in previous work (both in my dissertation and in a paper with my graduate student Amanda Hinnant) exploring similar data. (I can point to a conference abstract, but the paper is currently under review so I am not posting a full version.) The point here is that those in already privileged positions (e.g. higher levels of education) tend to be more savvy about the Web and may well benefit from its uses more than those in less privileged positions. This means that instead of leveling the playing field, Internet use may contribute to social inequality.

The Pew memo comes out just as I am putting some finishing touches on a similar survey (although much longer than what they probably had here). Due to budget constraints I will not be administering it on a nationally representative random sample, but still believe the findings should be of interest. There is much more research to be done about what it is that people do and do not understand with respect to their Internet uses.

[Link noticed on digg.]

Talking-up the good things about the English national character is all the fashion in the wake of last week’s bombs: stoicism, stiff upper lip, mustn’t grumble, etc. As it happens last week I also read Kate Fox’s pop-anthropology participant-observer account of the English. Funny and well-0bserved in parts is my verdict on the 400-odd pages of “Watching the English”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340818867/junius-21 , though it was getting a bit crass and tedious towards the end. Still, the book has its moments, most of which have to do with class. The most memorable being the ironic-gnome rule:

bq. I once expressed mild surprise at the presence of a garden gnome in an upper-middle-class garden …. The owner of the garden explained that the gnome was “ironic”. I asked him, with apologies for my ignorance, how one could tell that his garden gnome was supposed to be an ironic statement, as opposed to, you know, just a gnome. He rather sniffily replied that I only had to look at the rest of the garden for it to be obvious that the gnome was a tounge-in-cheek joke.

bq. But surely, I persisted, garden gnomes are always something of a joke, in any garden — I mean, no-one actually takes them seriously or regards them as works of art. His response was rather rambling and confused (not to mention somewhat huffy), but the gist seemed to be that while the lower classes saw gnomes as _intrinsically_ amusing, his gnome was amusing only because of its incongruous appearance in a “smart” garden. In other words, council-house gnomes were a joke, but his gnome was a joke about council-house tastes, effectively a joke about class….

bq. The man’s reaction to my questions clearly defined him as upper-middle, rather than upper class. In fact, his pointing out that the gnome I had noticed was “ironic” had already demoted him by half a class from my original assessment. A genuine member of the upper classes would either have admitted to a passion for garden gnomes … or said something like “Ah yes, my gnome. I’m very fond of my gnome.” and left me to draw my own conclusions.

There is a pointer on Lifehacker today that made me smile: an Ask MetaFilter discussion about a question regarding the use of Excel. The Ask MeFi community was able to answer the query so it proved to be useful, as it often is. Regardless, my reaction to seeing that pointer was that the person asking this question probably does not know about the ultimate resource for advice about Excel: MrExcel.com. It is THE place to search for, and if unsuccessful, to ask about advice regarding Excel. I have already blogged about it.. but looking back in my archives I realize now that it was three years ago. I think the site is worth another mention (if nothing else because now compared to three years ago there are many more people reading what I blog about).

The people on the Mr.Excel forum (not necessarily all misters from what I can tell) give free advice about using the program from the fairly trivial to the extremely complex. They will write original code for you if that’s what’s most helpful. I have had some incredibly wonderful experiences with the site getting crucial help with cleaning up some dissertation data way back when and recently while editing some spreadsheets to a more manageable format. I highly recommend that resource if you are stumped by any Excel features (or even if you are not just to see what shortcuts you may be able to dig up).

As I noted in my post a few years ago, I hope there are people studying communities like this. There seems to be quite a bit of work, for example, on the free/open source community. There is also quite a bit of work on various online communities. But I have seen little scholarship (granted, I have not looked actively) about studies of online communities that provide so much tangible value for free to active members and outsiders alike.

PS. Random observation: My initial post about Mr.Excel was on July 10, 2002 and my post last year about online communities was on July 6. I guess I like to blog about this stuff in July. I’ll leave it to Kieran to run a more systematic analysis on the topics of interest by time of year among Timberites.:-)

We have finalized our list of speakers for next year’s Technology and Social Behavior Colloquium Series at Northwestern. Bruno Latour will be our first visitor followed by other great researchers engaged in fascinating projects representing numerous academic disciplines (in order of their visits): Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford, Anne Holohan from Univ. Trento, Bob Kraut from CMU, David Mindell from MIT, Linda Jackson from Michigan State, Sarah Igo from UPenn and Batya Friedman from Univ. Washington.

You can sign up on our announcement list to receive reminders about these events.

Some physicists have come out with a paper on the Eurovision song contest. Of course, we at CT like to be ahead of the curve and thanks to Kieran’s ingenuity reported similar findings over a year ago. So much for this being “new research”.

There has been much excitement about and focus on social networks in the past few years ranging from social networking sites to several high-profile books on the topic.

Interestingly, much of the buzz about recent work covers research by physicists. It’s curious how physicists have expanded their research agenda to cover social phenomena. I thought their realm was the physical world. Of course, since social phenomena are extremely complex to study, as a social scientist, I certainly welcome the extra efforts put into this field of inquiry.

What is less welcomed is watching people reinvent the wheel. Sure, partly it’s an ego thing. But more importantly, it’s unfortunate if the overall goal is scientific progress. Much of the recent work in this area by physicists has completely ignored decades worth of work by social scientists. If we really do live in such a networked world where information is so easy to access, how have these researchers managed to miss all the existing relevant scholarship? Recently Kieran pointed me to an informative graph published by Lin Freeman in his recent book on The Development of Social Network Analysis:

People whose overall work focuses on social networks are represented by white dots, physicists by black ones, others by grey circles. As is clear on the image, the worlds exist in isolation from each other. It would be interesting to see year-of-publication attached to the nodes to see the progression of work.

I have been meaning to write about all of this for a while, but John Scott from the Univ. Essex addressed these issues quite well in some notes he sent to INSNA‘s SOCNET mailing list a few months ago so I will just reproduce those here. (I do so with permission.)

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“Savage Minds”:http://savageminds.org/ is an elegantly-designed new blog run by six anthropologists. Its roster includes Alex Golub, whose site I used to read more often in the days before blogs, and who once “wrote a post”:http://alex.golub.name/log/?p=28 containing the following story:

bq. Met with my advisor the other day to go over a conference paper I gave him that would eventually be turned into a chapter. He said that it was ‘better than ok’, which is the most positive comment I’ve ever gotten from him. Much better than when I was writing my MA, when he’d give me back drafts with comments like “don’t ever give anything of this quality to me again ever”.

I sometimes relate this anecdote to graduate students in order to preempt any passive-aggressive whining about my comments on their work being insufficiently kind and appreciative.

This Jane Galt thread on poverty and obesity has many special moments. The basic lessons are as follows, helpfully summarized by SomeCallMeTim:

In the space of a week, Jane, Mindles, and the commenters have fleshed out the Republican policy towards the poor. To wit:
1. Those tricksy bastards (Dems) are wildly overstating the problems [this post];
2 A lot of the problems associated with the lower end of the income scale are a result of the stupidity of the poor (and really, what can you do with the stupid?) [this post];
3. Almost all Republicans have suffered through much more trying times than any of the poor have faced – and they’ve kept the aspidistra flying, dammit; the poor need to stop whining [this post];
4. Mercy is twice blessed because it is given; it cannot be commanded by the government. If someone has screwed up and doesn’t get another chance – well, they made their own bed. That someone else, with a different background, has had a second chance (or however many chances one gets in getting from 20 to 40 as a drunk) is of no import whatsoever, and people who are envious of the latter group should have had the forethought to have better parents. Indeed, even asking that we temper our scorn for them is too much – might be a disincentive to change [drug post];
5. Of course, the poor don’t need to have forethought because we keep cosseting them. If we let a few old people starve to death on the streets, they’d smarten up, work harder, and start investing; doing anything at all to help the poor merely robs them of the incentive to improve their lot [SS post];
6. Occasionally, you run across the very rare situation where it’s hard to entirely blame the poor for their situation, like natural disasters. In those cases, we may give them some help. But, before doing so, it’s important to note
– that they’ve done very little for us;
– that they are insufficiently grateful at the moment of the crisis;
– that if we’re going to put aside our principles and help them, we must get credit! [stingy post]

Still, these two comments are the best:

it seems that leftists and liberals are really, really innumerate… anyone interested in the real world and good in math seems to be very libertarian or conservative…(Link)

and:

A pound of ham will make the equivalent of 20 quarter pounders, by my math. (This somewhat misses the point, as I wouldn’t put a quarter pound of ham on my sandwich, and probably neither would you.) Link

Ah, science. (And I grant that the comments are not strictly contradictory). On a more serious note, I was thinking today of how much better off the residents of American inner cities would be if the Singapore model of hawker centres prevailed. Sure, there’s fattening char kway teow, but every hawker centre has a fruit juice and sliced fruit stand with cheap papaya, watermelon, and kiwi fruit, not to mention carrot juice. I understand that crime is a deterrent, but why exactly is it that US inner-city markets have such awful, expensive, fly-blown produce, even the ones in Oakland CA? Is this true in poor neighborhoods in Great Britain? I understand that there are supply chain/perishability problems, but is it only this that makes it cheaper to sell St. Ides and a Big Grab Doritoes than mustard greens?