jost_j_t_kay_a_c_thorisdottir_n_social_and_psychological_bas

4.Suicide

5.Rape

These lists, contrasting the top problems facing U.S. public schools in 1940 and 1980, have been widely circulated by pundits, policy-makers, and journalists who cite them as evidence of our rapid social and moral decline (O’Neill, 1994). The vivid image of lost innocence that these lists convey was seized upon by ideologues to advance their critiques of modern life. For instance, William Bennett, a prominent conservative author and cabinet secretary in the Reagan and Bush administrations, cited the lists in his book on cultural decline, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators (1994). Rush Limbaugh read the lists on his popular right-wing radio program. The conservative journalist Gorge Will and the anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly cited the lists in their op-ed columns. Tim LaHaye referred to the lists in a book advocating the restoration of traditional family values. In addition to these conservative authors and activists, the lists were also cited by moderates and liberals including Derek Bok, Jocelyn Elders, Ann Landers, and Anna Quindlen.

When Barry O’Neill, a management professor, saw the lists posted on a campus bulletin board, he was intrigued and investigated their origins. Using some careful detective work, O’Neill eventually traced the lists back to their source, a born-again Christian activist named T. Cullen Davis, who used the lists to critique the public education system. When O’Neill asked how he generated the lists, Davis admitted, “They weren’t done from a scientific survey. How did I know what the offenses were in 1940? I was there. How do I know what they are now? I read the newspapers.” Apparently the lists, which had been cited as frightening evidence of the declining trajectory of public morals by experienced journalists, intellectuals, and activists, were based on little more than one man’s hunch.

The odd story of the creation and transmission of Davis’ lists has three features that may help to illuminate the connections linking perceptions of decline, psychological biases, and political ideologies. First, many intelligent people seem to have fallen for this hoax even though it presented an implausibly stark contrast that should have been met with the kind of skepticism that prompted O’Neill to trace the lists back to their dubious origins. The first part of this chapter reviews evidence that exaggerated beliefs in social decline are actually quite widespread, and the lists thus may have been easy to believe because they fit a popular worldview that sees abundant evidence of moral and cultural decay. Second, the procedure Davis used to generate the lists has features that resemble a psychological bias that may be important for understanding why exaggerated beliefs in social decline are so ubiquitous. Davis indicated that his information about school conditions in the

1940s was based on his own direct experiences as a student, whereas his information about contemporary school conditions was derived from media accounts. This raises the intriguing possibility that the change in school conditions that Davis thought he perceived might instead be attributed to the change in his sources of information (direct experience in 1940 versus media accounts in 1980) and the change in his own perspective (student in 1940 versus born-again Christian adult in 1980). The second part of this chapter reviews evidence for a general bias that causes people to mistake changes in their own perspectives for changes in the external world. We argue that this bias can help explain widespread perceptions of decline, because many of the personal changes that people experience as they mature tend to sensitize them to social threats, thus contributing to the illusion that socially conditions are, in fact, getting worse. Finally, although the lists were occasionally used by moderates and liberals, they were originally designed to promote a socially conservative agenda. The concluding section of this chapter reviews evidence that perceptions of decline are associated with conservative attitudes, and explores how the illusion of decline provides a political advantage to conservative movements.

WIDESPREAD PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL DECLINE

“Things aren’t the way they used to be.” “It’s not like it was in the good old days.” “They don’t make things like they used to.” These and other familiar expressions from everyday life convey the impression that social conditions are changing for the worse. Perceptions of social decline are indeed widespread, and these perceptions are, in many cases, exaggerated when compared with actual trends.

Perceptions of moral decline are particularly common. “Moral decline” was one of the 10 most common themes that respondents listed in 1985 when asked what was the most important event or change that had occurred in the past 50 years (Schuman & Scott, 1989). When people are directly asked about moral change, the majority perceives decline. For instance, in a 1998 Tipp/ Christian Science Monitor survey 66% of respondents judged that morality had declined since the 1950s and, in a 1988 CBS News/New York Times Poll, 72% of respondents agreed that there has been “a severe breakdown in moral standards in America.” People who are concerned about declining values often emphasize a shift from more socially responsible values to more selfcentered values. For instance, in a 1996 survey, 66.5% agreed that “compared to twenty years ago, Americans have become more selfish” (Wolfe, 1998).

It is unclear exactly what people mean when they say that morality has declined. For this reason, it is hard to compare perceptions of moral decline

to objective trends. However, many of those who believe that Americans today are less moral and more selfish would no doubt be surprised to learn that rates of volunteering and inflation-adjusted charitable contributions have both increased in recent decades (Ladd, 1999). It seems that, contrary to popular impressions, we have hardly become a nation of selfish free-riders.1

Even when judgments of decline are more specific and can more confidently be compared with objective trends, the evidence supports the conclusion that these impressions are often exaggerated. In a 1998/1999 survey (Sniderman, Brady, & Tetlock, 1998–1999), 73.7% of respondents judged that crime had increased during the preceding 10-year period despite the fact that crime rates had actually declined dramatically throughout the United States during that period (LaFree, 1999). The belief that children are increasingly neglected by their parents is also common, with 59.6% of respondents in the 1990 General Social Survey (Davis, Smith, & Marsden, 1972–2004) agreeing that the amount of time parents spend with their children is decreasing. However, the quantity of time parents spend with children has actually increased since the 1960s (Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson, 2004). Widespread teenage pregnancy is often cited as an indicator of social decline, but people often exaggerate this problem. For example, in a 2003 poll, 68% of adults judged that teen pregnancy was increasing, despite the fact that teen births had declined by 31% from 1991 to 2002 (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2003). Finally, many people seem to believe the popular “culture war” thesis, which suggests that Americans’ values have become increasingly polarized in recent years (Hunter, 1991). For instance, whereas 86% of respondents to a 1996 survey judged that Americans shared more values in the past than they do today (DiMaggio, Evan, & Bryson, 1996), studies tracking trends in American values (Baker, 2004) and political attitudes (DiMaggio, 2003; DiMaggio et al., 1996; Mouw & Sobel, 2001) find little or no evidence of increasing polarization (but see Hunter, 1996, 2006).

1 When judging the magnitude of social change, people may disagree for a number of reasons, including differences in the temporal reference point they use to define change (Eibach & Ehrlinger, 2006) and whether the change is framed as a loss or a gain (Eibach & Keegan, 2006). In the case of judging moral change, people’s judgments may differ based on how they define what constitutes a moral issue. Haidt and Graham (2007; this volume) provide persuasive evidence that conservative morality is based on a broader set of basic values than the morality of liberals. Furthermore, many of the social changes associated with modern life seem to threaten distinctively conservative values (Haidt & Graham, this volume). Thus, social changes that would seem morally innocuous from a liberal perspective may constitute legitimate evidence of moral decline when considered from a conservative moral perspective.

The popular impression that social conditions are declining is not unique to modern times or Western culture (Murphy, 2005b). Expressions of concern about decline can be found in settings as varied as Ancient Greece and Israel, Confucian China, early Christian Rome, and late 19th century Europe (Herman, 1997; Murphy, 2005b). The prevalence of perceptions of decline over time and across cultures is a clue that these perceptions are often exaggerated, as Robert Bork (1996) argues:

Regret for the golden days of the past is probably universal and as old as the human race. No doubt the elders of prehistoric tribes thought the younger generation’s cave paintings were not up to the standard they had set. Given this straight-line degeneration for so many millennia, by now our culture should be not merely rubble but dust. Obviously it is not: until recently our artists did better than the cave painters (p. 6).

If perceptions of social decline are often exaggerated, then the crossgenerational and cross-cultural prevalence of these perceptions suggests that they may be rooted in a general psychological bias. In the next section, we review evidence that the perception of social decline is sometimes the product of the common tendency to mistake changes in oneself for changes in the external world.

MISTAKING CHANGE IN ONESELF

FOR CHANGE IN THE WORLD

Throughout their lives, people undergo many changes, including relatively minor changes in expectations or attitudes and more extensive changes like major role transitions. All of these changes have the potential to alter the way a person perceives the world. For example, a person who wins the lottery perceives the mundane pleasures of everyday life to be less enjoyable after sampling the luxuries of wealth (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). The fact that people undergo changes that alter their perceptions complicates their attempts to judge how external conditions have changed during their lifetimes. Social scientists face an analogous problem in making inferences about change in the prevalence of a social problem when they have altered the methods they use to track that problem over time. For example, the recorded prevalence of autism has increased dramatically over the past four decades (Wing & Potter, 2002). This apparent rise in prevalence of autism has been attributed to many causes, including childhood vaccinations. However, the criteria for diagnosing autism have broadened substantially over this same period. Thus, at least some of the increased cases must be attributed to the broader diagnostic standards of today compared with the past.

Although professional social scientists can rely on sophisticated models to determine how much an apparent change in a social problem should be attributed to changes in measurement, lay perceivers must rely on the cruder tools of everyday inference when confronting the related problem of determining how much of a change they perceive in external conditions should be attributed to changes in their own attentiveness to those conditions. Much potential for confusion exists when a change in one’s perceptions could be attributed to change in the perceiver, change in the external world, or some combination of both. When facing this confusion, we find that people are prone to exaggerate change in the external world when they themselves have changed in ways that have altered their perceptions. For example, participants whose eating habits became more restrictive over a period of time perceived a greater increase in the prevalence of advertisements for unhealthy foods during that period than did those whose eating habits had remained relatively unchanged (Eibach, Libby, & Gilovich, 2003). In another study, when participants’ arms were fatigued over the course of an experimental session, they perceived an illusory increase in the weight of an object if they lifted that object with their fatigued arm but not if they switched to their other, nonfatigued arm (Eibach, Libby, Ehrlinger, & Johnson, 2008).

We argue that this tendency to mistake change in oneself for change in the external world is a consequence of naïve realism, the deep conviction that one’s own perceptual experiences are veridical representations of external reality, unmediated by construal processes (Ross & Ward, 1996; Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1966). When one’s perceptions of external conditions change, naïve realism causes one to begin by assuming that this reflects a true change in the external objects of perception. It takes more active reflection to move beyond this realist assumption and consider the possibility that changes within oneself might be the true source. Consistent with this, we found that participants often will not take into account relevant self-changes as sources of changed perceptions unless they are explicitly prompted to consider how personal changes may have altered their perspectives (Eibach et al., 2003). Moreover, even when people do appreciate the need to take into account the influence of self-changes, they tend to underestimate the influence of these factors because their implicit self-theories often underestimate the magnitude of self-change over time (Ross, 1989). Indeed, experimental manipulations of participants’ theories of self-change influence their judgments of change in the external world; the more participants believe their perspectives have changed over time, the less change they judge has occurred in external conditions (Eibach et al., 2003).

The process of mistaking change in oneself for change in the world is one mechanism that can produce exaggerated judgments of external

change. However, for this process to explain widespread illusions of social decline, we must assume that many of the changes that people undergo as they mature tend to darken their perceptions of the world. We have studied a number of common life transitions that have the potential to increase a person’s sensitivity to the negative aspects of the social world. For each of these personal transitions, we have conducted survey studies of people actually undergoing the transitions and experimental analogue studies designed to test whether the processes of change involved in the transition cause people to perceive an illusory increase in the negativity of external stimuli.

The Transition to Parenthood

Parenthood is a common experience that has the potential to transform the way a person views the world. When a person becomes a parent, the responsibility of taking care of a vulnerable child requires a new type of vigilance, in which the parent is alert to sources of danger that a nonparent could safely ignore. The transition from a nonparental mindset to a more vigilant parental mindset might cause people to perceive an illusory increase in external dangers if they fail to take into account how changes in their vigilance have affected their perceptions. Previously, we documented that parents judge that crime rates are greater in the period after their transitions to parenthood than were crime rates in the period preceding their transitions (Eibach et al., 2003). We also found that people who first became parents in the 1990s believed that crime rates had increased during that decade, even though crime had actually dramatically decreased, as was recognized by both nonparents and those who transitioned to parenthood before the 1990s. These correlational studies suggest that, when people acquire the more danger-sensitive mindset of a parent, they can mistakenly conclude that dangers in the world are becoming more prevalent.

We recently conducted follow-up studies to experimentally test whether the transition from a nonparental to a parental mindset causes a person to perceive an illusory increase in the dangerousness of external stimuli (Eibach et al., 2008). In one of these studies, college students viewed visual stimuli that varied in their level of violent, disturbing content. The stimuli were presented in two blocks, and we manipulated the mindset participants adopted while viewing each block. One condition was designed to mimic the transition to parenthood. While viewing the first block of images, participants judged how peers their own age would be affected by each image. While viewing the second block, they judged how young children would be affected by each image, a task similar to one that actual parents face when they monitor the content of TV shows and Internet sites to protect their

children from harmful content. Because the sequence of tasks in this condition required participants to increase their vigilance from block one to block two, this condition represented an experimental analogue of the change in mindset that people undergo when they transition into the parental role. We compared these participants’ judgments of change in the threat of the images to the judgments of control participants who had used the parental mindset while viewing both image blocks and participants who started with the parental mindset while viewing the first block and then shifted to a nonparental mindset while viewing the second block. We predicted and found that, compared with participants in the two control conditions, those who transitioned to a parental perspective judged that there had been a significantly greater increase in the violence and danger of the second block of images, analogous to the illusory perception of increasing crime that real parents perceived when they transitioned into the parental role in our earlier, correlational studies.

Increased Responsibility

Related to the transition to parenthood is the transition from a focus on opportunities in one’s youth to a focus on security in adulthood, when people accumulate responsibilities to their families, workplaces, and communities. For the young person who is unencumbered by such adult responsibilities, the world often seems full of opportunities for new experiences and personal growth. However, for the mature person, the focus often shifts from exploring new options to securing one’s status and fulfilling the more demanding responsibilities of adulthood. This shift from a focus on opportunities and personal growth in early life to a focus on responsibilities and security in adulthood has the potential to significantly alter a person’s perceptions of external conditions. Specifically, the responsibilities and duties associated with adulthood should activate a prevention-focused mindset, sensitizing the person to external risks and dangers. By contrast, the more idealistic orientation of youth is associated with a promotion-focused mindset that is relatively less risk-sensitive (Higgins, 1998).

If the accumulation of responsibilities in adulthood shifts people into a more risk-attentive, prevention-focused mindset, and if people fail to appreciate that maturity changes their perspectives in this way, then this could help explain exaggerated perceptions of increasing threats. We tested this hypothesis in a survey in which adults reported how their goal orientations changed over time (Eibach et al., 2008). Specifically, participants reported whether they had become more focused on opportunities, more focused on responsibilities, more focused on both opportunities and responsibilities, or experienced no change in their goal-focus. Participants also reported their

level of agreement with a number of statements about changes in various social dangers. As predicted, participants who experienced an increase in responsibility-focus perceived a significantly greater increase in social dangers than participants who had not become more responsibility-focused.

We found converging evidence in a laboratory analogue study in which participants perceived an illusory increase in external threats when they were experimentally induced to transition from a promotion-focused to a preven- tion-focused mindset (Eibach et al., 2008). Participants played a card game with a deck that contained both reward and penalty cards. The critical condition was designed to simulate the transition from a promotion-focused to a prevention-focused mindset. Participants in this condition began the first half of the game with instructions to maximize their acquisition of points (pro- motion-focus) but then, in the second half of the game, they were instructed to shift to trying to retain as many of their accumulated points as possible (prevention-focus). These participants, who transitioned from a promotionfocused to a prevention-focused game strategy, perceived a significant increase in the quantity of penalty cards in the second half of the game compared with the first half, despite the fact that the quantity of penalty cards was held constant. Participants in two control conditions who were instructed to use a constant prevention-focused or a constant promotion-focused game strategy throughout the session did not perceive an illusory increase in penalty cards.

Physical Aging

We have also found that the effects of physical aging can influence perceptions of social decline. The aging of the body tends to increase the experience of daily frustrations. If people do not appreciate the extent to which increasing frustrations are a consequence of their own physical decline, they may conclude that external conditions are becoming more frustrating in various ways. We tested the specific hypothesis that aging can make driving more frustrating, thus contributing to the belief that other drivers have become more reckless. As predicted, we found that participants perceived a greater increase in the aggressiveness of other drivers over time, the more their own reflexes and coordination had declined with age (Eibach et al., 2008). If this result is a consequence of mistaking change in oneself for change in the world, then the association should be weakened when participants are prompted to take into account self-change as a source of changing perceptions. As expected, the correlation between declining reflexes and the perceived increase in reckless driving was significantly weakened when participants reported change in their own reflexes before judging change in the behavior of other drivers.

Cumulatively, these studies support our hypothesis that the tendency to mistake change in oneself for change in the external world is a source of

popular beliefs in social decline. These mistaken beliefs about social change are likely to have political consequences, because beliefs about conditions influence policy preferences, even when those beliefs are inaccurate (Gilens, 2001). In the next section, we explore whether exaggerated perceptions of decline not only affect people’s specific policy preferences but also their broader ideological commitments.

CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY AND PERCEPTIONS

OF SOCIAL DECLINE

Conservatism2 often involves a nostalgic attitude toward the past and defense of traditional social and political arrangements in the face of modern trends ( Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). In his survey of conservative intellectual history Nisbet (1986) writes, “Conservatives, knowing well the appeal of tradition, the depth in the human mind of nostalgia, and the universal dread of the ordeal of change, the challenge of the new, have rested their indictment of the present frankly and unabashedly on models supplied directly by the past” (p. 93). Sullivan (2006) succinctly captures this nostalgic tendency of conservatism when he writes, “All conservatism begins with loss” (p. 9). Indeed, a lament for the passing of the good old days is a prominent theme in right-wing rhetoric ( Jendrysik, 2002), as can be observed in the titles of several popular books by conservative pundits and intellectuals, including William Bennett’s The De-Valuing of America (1994), The Death of Outrage (1998), and The Broken Hearth (2001); Allan Bloom’s The Closing of

2 The label “conservative” is commonly used to refer to several different ideologies. Indeed, the New Right is an often tense marriage of distinct ideologies. One of the broadest distinctions within this movement, at least in the North American context, is the distinction between social and economic/libertarian conservatism (Klatch, 1991). Compared with economic/libertarian conservatives, social conservatives have a stronger commitment to traditional social norms and institutions and therefore are more likely to oppose reforms that introduce new norms or seek to reengineer basic institutions. Economic/libertarian conservatives often resist the conservative label in part because they do not share the traditional conservative’s fear and distrust of social change, unless such change threatens the free market (e.g., Hayek 1960). Since our analysis concerns attitudes toward social change, we are mainly interested in the attitudes of social conservatives rather than those of economic conservatives. Thus, when we refer to conservatives in the text, we are referring primarily to social conservatives. We are also referring to conservatism in the political sense, not the psychological sense (see Jost et al., 2003).