The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691137560 ISBN 13: 9780691137568

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in behavioral research on a wide variety of topics, from behavioral finance, labor contracts, philanthropy, and the analysis of savings and poverty, to eyewitness identification and sentencing decisions, racism, sexism, health behaviors, and voting. Research findings have often been strikingly counterintuitive, with serious implications for public policymaking. In this book, leading experts in psychology, decision research, policy analysis, economics, political science, law, medicine, and philosophy explore major trends, principles, and general insights about human behavior in policy-relevant settings. Their work provides a deeper understanding of the many drivers--cognitive, social, perceptual, motivational, and emotional--that guide behaviors in everyday settings. They give depth and insight into the methods of behavioral research, and highlight how this knowledge might influence the implementation of public policy for the improvement of society. This collection examines the policy relevance of behavioral science to our social and political lives, to issues ranging from health, environment, and nutrition, to dispute resolution, implicit racism, and false convictions. The book illuminates the relationship between behavioral findings and economic analyses, and calls attention to what policymakers might learn from this vast body of groundbreaking work. Wide-ranging investigation into people's motivations, abilities, attitudes, and perceptions finds that they differ in profound ways from what is typically assumed. The result is that public policy acquires even greater significance, since rather than merely facilitating the conduct of human affairs, policy actually shapes their trajectory. * The first interdisciplinary look at behaviorally informed policymaking * Leading behavioral experts across the social sciences consider important policy problems * A compendium of behavioral findings and their application to relevant policy domains

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eldar Shafir is the William Stewart Tod Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

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"Roll over economists. We have always, pridefully, thought of ourselves as the major arbiters of good public policy: take it or leave it based on cost-benefit analysis.The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy challenges that hegemony. In each interesting chapter--on topics ranging from discrimination and poverty to health, savings, and bureaucracy--the book shows the role of psychology in public policy. Only one word can describe this book: wow!"--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics

"This book establishes that psychology has a great deal to contribute on public policy matters of great concern to everyone. I doubt whether so many superb psychologists and behavioral scientists have been found between the covers of a single book before. Their contributions do not disappoint and it seems certain that many policy issues are going to look different from now on."--Richard Nisbett, University of Michigan

"From well-documented biases to important discrimination and intervention policies, this amazing collection takes a systematic approach to behavioral aspects of public policy and gathers together the best in the psychology of decision making and behavioral economics."--Uri Gneezy, University of California, San Diego

"Behavioral public policy is an emerging field, with a great deal of interesting work just beginning to be done. This book is a compilation of perspectives by a truly stellar collection of leading researchers in a range of social science disciplines. For graduate-level courses on public policy, it is difficult to imagine any book that is better for learning about this field."--Daniel J. Benjamin, Cornell University

Aus dem Klappentext

"Roll over economists. We have always, pridefully, thought of ourselves as the major arbiters of good public policy: take it or leave it based on cost-benefit analysis.The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy challenges that hegemony. In each interesting chapter--on topics ranging from discrimination and poverty to health, savings, and bureaucracy--the book shows the role of psychology in public policy. Only one word can describe this book: wow!"--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics

"This book establishes that psychology has a great deal to contribute on public policy matters of great concern to everyone. I doubt whether so many superb psychologists and behavioral scientists have been found between the covers of a single book before. Their contributions do not disappoint and it seems certain that many policy issues are going to look different from now on."--Richard Nisbett, University of Michigan

"From well-documented biases to important discrimination and intervention policies, this amazing collection takes a systematic approach to behavioral aspects of public policy and gathers together the best in the psychology of decision making and behavioral economics."--Uri Gneezy, University of California, San Diego

"Behavioral public policy is an emerging field, with a great deal of interesting work just beginning to be done. This book is a compilation of perspectives by a truly stellar collection of leading researchers in a range of social science disciplines. For graduate-level courses on public policy, it is difficult to imagine any book that is better for learning about this field."--Daniel J. Benjamin, Cornell University

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The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy

Princeton University Press

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-13756-8

Contents

Foreword Daniel Kahneman.............................................................................................................................................viiList of Contributors..................................................................................................................................................xiAcknowledgments.......................................................................................................................................................xviiIntroduction Eldar Shafir............................................................................................................................................1Chapter 1. The Nature of Implicit Prejudice: Implications for Personal and Public Policy Curtis D. Hardin Mahzarin R. Banaji........................................13Chapter 2. Biases in Interracial Interactions: Implications for Social Policy J. Nicole Shelton Jennifer A. Richeson John F. Dovidio...............................32Chapter 3. Policy Implications of Unexamined Discrimination: Gender Bias in Employment as a Case Study Susan T. Fiske Linda H. Krieger..............................52Chapter 4. The Psychology of Cooperation: Implications for Public Policy Tom Tyler...................................................................................77Chapter 5. Rethinking Why People Vote: Voting as Dynamic Social Expression Todd Rogers Craig R. Fox Alan S. Gerber.................................................91Chapter 6. Perspectives on Disagreement and Dispute Resolution: Lessons from the Lab and the Real World Lee Ross.....................................................108Chapter 7. Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity Paul Slovic David Zionts Andrew K. Woods Ryan Goodman Derek Jinks....................................................126Chapter 8. Eyewitness Identification and the Legal System Nancy K. Steblay Elizabeth F. Loftus......................................................................145Chapter 9. False Convictions Phoebe Ellsworth Sam Gross.............................................................................................................163Chapter 10. Behavioral Issues of Punishment, Retribution, and Deterrence John M. Darley Adam L. Alter...............................................................181Chapter 11. Claims and Denials of Bias and Their Implications for Policy Emily Pronin Kathleen Schmidt..............................................................195Chapter 12. Questions of Competence: The Duty to Inform and the Limits to Choice Baruch Fischhoff Sara L. Eggers....................................................217Chapter 13. If Misfearing Is the Problem, Is Cost-Benefit Analysis the Solution? Cass R. Sunstein....................................................................231Chapter 14. Choice Architecture and Retirement Saving Plans Shlomo Benartzi Ehud Peleg Richard H. Thaler...........................................................245Chapter 15. Behavioral Economics Analysis of Employment Law Christine Jolls..........................................................................................264Chapter 16. Decision Making and Policy in Contexts of Poverty Sendhil Mullainathan Eldar Shafir.....................................................................281Chapter 17. Psychological Levers of Behavior Change Dale T. Miller Deborah A. Prentice..............................................................................301Chapter 18. Turning Mindless Eating into Healthy Eating Brian Wansink................................................................................................310Chapter 19. A Social Psychological Approach to Educational Intervention Julio Garcia Geoffrey L. Cohen..............................................................329Chapter 20. Beyond Comprehension: Figuring Out Whether Decision Aids Improve People's Decisions Peter Ubel...........................................................351Chapter 21. Using Decision Errors to Help People Help Themselves George Loewenstein Leslie John Kevin G. Volpp.....................................................361Chapter 22. Doing the Right Thing Willingly: Using the Insights of Behavioral Decision Research for Better Environmental Decisions Elke U. Weber.....................380Chapter 23. Overcoming Decision Biases to Reduce Losses from Natural Catastrophes Howard Kunreuther Robert Meyer Erwann Michel-Kerjan..............................398Chapter 24. Decisions by Default Eric J. Johnson Daniel G. Goldstein................................................................................................417Chapter 25. Choice Architecture Richard H. Thaler Cass R. Sunstein John P. Balz....................................................................................428Chapter 26. Behaviorally Informed Regulation Michael S. Barr Sendhil Mullainathan Eldar Shafir.....................................................................440Chapter 27. Psychology and Economic Policy William J. Congdon........................................................................................................465Chapter 28. Behavioral Decision Science Applied to Health-Care Policy Donald A. Redelmeier...........................................................................475Chapter 29. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Debiasing the Policy Makers Themselves Paul Brest.........................................................................481Chapter 30. Paternalism, Manipulation, Freedom, and the Good Judith Lichtenberg......................................................................................494Index.................................................................................................................................................................499

Chapter One

The Nature of Implicit Prejudice Implications for Personal and Public Policy CURTIS D. HARDIN MAHZARIN R. BANAJI

Some fifty years ago in Arkansas, nine black students initiated a social experiment with help from family, friends, and armed National Guards. Their successful attempt to desegregate Little Rock's Central High School following the decision in Brown v. Board of Education is among the most momentous events in America's history, leaving no doubt about its historic importance and the significance of its impact on public policy. Nevertheless, as many have noted, even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a blatant de facto segregation in living and learning persists and in some circumstances has intensified (e.g., Orfield, 2001). The American experiment in desegregation is a reminder that public policies, however noble in intent, may not realize their aspirations if they do not include an understanding of human nature and culture. In other words, they cannot succeed if they are not founded on relevant scientific evidence, which reveals the nature of the problem, the likely outcomes, and how social transformation can best be imagined. As an example of the importance of basing policy in science, there is the research of Robert Putnam showing the unsavory result that ethnic diversity may actually increase social distrust. As the ethnic diversity by zip code increases, so does mistrust of one's neighbors, even same-ethnicity neighbors (Putnam, 2007). The naive optimism that diversity will succeed in the absence of a clear understanding of the dynamics of social dominance and intergroup relations is challenged by these and other similar revelations (e.g., Shelton, Richeson, and Dovidio, this volume). Hence, even well-intentioned public policies are unlikely to yield positive outcomes unless they are grounded in the best thinking available about how people actually think and behave. Sadly, this has not been the case, both because policy makers are not sufficiently respectful of the importance of science as the guide to social issues and because academic scientists resist imagining the policy implications of their evidence.

In this chapter, we address the topics of stereotyping and prejudice, staying firmly within the bounds of what science has demonstrated. However, in keeping with the mission of this book, we spell out what we see to be some obvious, and also some less obvious, tentacles to questions of public policy. We posed the following questions to ourselves: What are the broad lessons learned that have changed our understanding of human nature and social relations in recent decades? In what way does the new view run counter to long-held assumptions? How should policy involving intergroup relations proceed in light of these discoveries? And, can we speak about "personal policies" that may emerge from the education of individuals about the constraints and flexibility of their own minds while also considering the notion of policy in the usual "public" sense? Our contention is that personal and public policy discussions regarding prejudice and discrimination are too often based on an outdated notion of the nature of prejudice. Most continue to view prejudice as it was formulated generations ago: negative attitudes about social groups and their members rooted in ignorance and perpetuated by individuals motivated by animus and hatred. The primary implication of the old view was that prejudice is best addressed by changing the hearts and minds of individuals, for good-hearted people will think well of others and behave accordingly. However, research in recent years demonstrates that the old view of prejudice is incomplete, even dangerously so. Staying with it would lead to policy choices that might be ineffectual, or worse. Staying with it would be akin to ignoring the evidence on smoking and cancer.

How has the scientific understanding of prejudice changed? In short, we now know that the operation of prejudice and stereotyping in social judgment and behavior does not require personal animus, hostility, or even awareness. In fact, prejudice is often "implicit"—that is, unwitting, unintentional, and uncontrollable—even among the most well-intentioned people (for a review, see Dovidio and Gaertner, 2004). Moreover, although the discovery of implicit prejudice initially brought with it an assumption that it might be unavoidable (e.g., Bargh, 1999; Devine, 1989; Dovidio et al., 1997), research demonstrates that, although it remains stubbornly immune to individual efforts to wish it away, it can be reduced and even reversed within specific social situations through sensible changes in the social environment (e.g., Lowery, Hardin, and Sinclair, 2001; Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary, 2001). In sum, in addition to the real problems that malicious "bad apples" pose for social policy, research demonstrates that prejudice also lives and thrives in the banal workings of normal, everyday human thought and activity. In fact, an overemphasis on the bad apples may well be detrimental to considerations of policy because it assumes the problem of prejudice to be that of the few rather than that of the many (Banaji, Bazerman, and Chugh, 2003).

We believe that the new understanding of prejudice that has evolved over the past three decades invites a transformation of the public debate regarding how the problem of prejudice may be productively addressed. Hence, this chapter will review the research that has so dramatically changed the contemporary understanding of the nature of prejudice, with an emphasis on research demonstrating (a) the existence of implicit prejudice, (b) the ubiquity of implicit prejudice and its consequences, (c) principles by which the operation of implicit prejudice may be influenced, and (d) the policy changes implied by a recognition of what the mind contains and is capable of. In so doing, we argue that although implicit prejudice has disturbing consequences for social judgment and behavior, potential solutions may arise in part from a reconceptualization of prejudice—less as a property of malicious individuals and more as a property of the architecture of cognition and known mechanisms of social learning and social relations.

The Nature of Implicit Prejudice

The discovery that prejudice can operate unwittingly, unintentionally, and unavoidably emerged from several related developments in psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. Most politically salient was the persistence of social, economic, and health-related racial discrimination despite an increasing unwillingness, during the late-twentieth century, of Americans to consciously endorse "explicit" racist attitudes (e.g., Bobo, 2001; Dovidio, 2001; Sniderman and Carmines, 1997). Although the observation of dissociations between explicit intergroup attitudes and intergroup discrimination was hardly unprecedented (e.g., Allport, 1958; La Pierre, 1934), it was met with an increasing interest in assessing political attitudes unobtrusively, either to circumvent the role of social desirability in attitude expression (e.g., Crosby, Bromley, and Saxe, 1980; Fazio et al., 1995; Word, Zanna, and Cooper, 1974), or to address the possibility that the psychology of prejudice in the United States had evolved into more sublimated, symbolic, or otherwise less deliberately hostile forms (e.g., Dovidio and Gaertner, 2004; Jackman, 1994; Sears and Henry, 2005). Equally important, developments within the information-processing paradigm of psychology made the study of implicit cognition—including automatic, implicit prejudice—both newly possible and theoretically coherent (e.g., Banaji and Greenwald, 1994; Bargh, 1999; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). Finally, the social-psychological interest in implicit prejudice resonated with a broader interdisciplinary appreciation across the brain sciences of the variety, sophistication, and richness of information processing that occurs outside the window of conscious deliberation, indicating, among many other things, that prejudice is hardly the only kind of thinking largely implicit in nature (e.g., French and Cleeremans, 2002).

The Discovery of Implicit Prejudice

The discovery and identification of implicit prejudice as consequential, ubiquitous, and distinct from "explicit," or conscious, endorsement of prejudiced attitudes has now been firmly established by decades of research, hundreds of studies, thousands of participants from around the world, and a variety of research methodologies. Implicit prejudice was captured initially in two basic experimental paradigms that emerged from the information-processing nexus of cognitive and social psychology—one demonstrating the effects of concepts made implicitly salient through experimental manipulation, and the other demonstrating the existence and correlates of implicit semantic associations.

The effects of cognitively salient concepts on social judgment were initially captured in now-classic experiments demonstrating that evaluations of social targets are implicitly influenced by recent exposure to judgment-related information (Higgins, Rholes, and Jones, 1977; Srull and Wyer, 1979). Although interdisciplinary consensus about the importance of implicit cognition exhibited by this research tradition had been building for many years, its application to stereotyping was captured in Patricia Devine's iconic paper (1989), which marked the beginning of a paradigm shift in the social-psychological understanding of stereotyping and prejudice more generally.

In the critical experiment, participants evaluated a hypothetical person named "Donald" as more hostile if they had been subliminally exposed to a large versus a small proportion of words related to common U.S. stereotypes of African Americans. The finding was striking because it suggested that crude stereotypes could operate unintentionally and outside conscious awareness to influence social judgment, and it was disturbing because it showed that implicit stereotyping occurred to an equal degree whether participants explicitly endorsed racist attitudes or not.

This basic paradigm has since been used in scores of experiments that confirm the implicit operation of prejudice and stereotyping in social judgment including, but not limited to, ethnicity and race (e.g., Dovidio et al., 1997), gender (e.g., Rudman and Borgida, 1995), and age (e.g., Levy, 1996). As an example of the existence of implicit gender stereotypes, women but not men were judged as more dependent after recent exposure to female stereotypes, and men but not women were judged as more aggressive after exposure to male stereotypes (Banaji, Hardin, and Rothman, 1993). The effects of stereotype salience were equally large for women and men, regardless of the levels of explicit prejudice. In sum, research in this tradition suggests that mere knowledge of a stereotype can influence social judgment regardless of explicit intentions and regardless of the social category of the one doing the stereotyping.

Research demonstrating the implicit influence of cognitively salient stereotypes in social judgment has been complemented by research in the second paradigm that establishes the extent to which stereotyping and prejudice operate as webs of cognitive associations. Like Freud's discovery that mental architecture is revealed by quantifying what most easily comes to mind given targeted conceptual probes, the notion was initially captured in now-classic experiments showing that judgments on "target" words are faster if they are immediately preceded by brief exposure to semantically related, as opposed to unrelated, "prime" words (e.g., Meyer and Schvaneveldt, 1971; Neely, 1976, 1977). These semantic relations are now known to be highly correlated with those identified in free-association tasks (for a review see Ratcliff and McKoon, 1994). Extensive research demonstrates that a variety of social beliefs and attitudes function as semantic and evaluative associations across several procedural variations, including conditions in which the prime words are exposed too quickly for people to see (for reviews see Fazio, 2001; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). For example, simple judgments about target female pronouns were faster after brief exposure to prime words either denotatively or connotatively related to women (e.g., lady, nurse) than words related to men (e.g., gentleman, doctor), and judgments about male pronouns were faster after exposure to prime words related to men than women (Banaji and Hardin, 1996; Blair and Banaji, 1996). Similarly, people were faster to judge words associated with negative stereotypes of African Americans after exposure to black faces than to white faces (e.g., Dovidio, Evans, and Tyler, 1986; Dovidio et al., 1997; Wittenbrink, Judd, and Park, 1997). Such results have been taken to demonstrate the automatic nature of beliefs or stereotypes when they capture associations between social groups and their common stereotypes, and have been used to demonstrate the automatic nature of attitudes or preferences when they capture associations between social groups and common evaluations of them.

Research in this tradition suggests the ubiquity with which common prejudice and stereotyping operates among all kinds of people along lines laid down by extant social relations on a variety of dimensions. These include, but are not limited to, ethnicity and race (e.g., Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald, 2002a), gender (e.g., Banaji and Hardin, 1996), sexual orientation (e.g., Dasgupta and Rivera, 2008), body shape (e.g., Bessenoff and Sherman, 2000), the elderly (Perdue and Gurtman, 1990), and adolescents (Gross and Hardin, 2007). Implicit prejudice of this kind develops early in children across cultures (e.g., Baron and Banaji, 2006; Dunham, Baron, and Banaji, 2006, 2007) and appears to involve specific brain structures associated with nonrational thought (e.g., Cunningham, Nezlek, and Banaji, 2004; Lieberman, 2000; Phelps et al., 2000).

Characteristics of Implicit Prejudice

Although the identification of the course, consequences, and nature of implicit prejudice continues to evolve in research spanning disciplines, research methodologies, and specific social categories, its fundamental characteristics are now firmly established. Implicit prejudice (a) operates unintentionally and outside awareness, (b) is empirically distinct from explicit prejudice, and (c) uniquely predicts consequential social judgment and behavior. Underlying all claims about the operation of implicit prejudice is the fact that the implicit operation of stereotypes and prejudice is robust and reliably measured, as indicated by hundreds of published experiments (e.g., Banaji, 2001; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). In addition, research shows that implicit prejudice is subject to social influence, a finding that is important to public policy considerations, although the immediate operation of implicit prejudice is difficult, if not impossible, to control through individual volition.

The most important characteristic of implicit prejudice is that it operates ubiquitously in the course of normal workaday information processing, often outside of individual awareness, in the absence of personal animus, and generally despite individual equanimity and deliberate attempts to avoid prejudice (for reviews see Devine, 2005; Dovidio and Gaertner, 2004). Evidence of this process includes experiments demonstrating that social judgment and behavior is affected in stereotype-consistent ways by unobtrusive, and even subliminal, manipulations of stereotype salience. Typically in these kinds of experiments, participants attempt to be fair and unbiased and, moreover, exhibit no evidence of knowing that their recent experience included exposure to stereotypes used in their evaluations. Experiments that manipulate stereotype salience subliminally through extremely rapid exposure to words or images make the case especially strongly (for reviews see Bargh, 1999; Devine and Monteith, 1999). Interestingly, implicit prejudice of this kind appears to operate regardless of the personal characteristics of research participants, including participant social category, and regardless of individual differences in related explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes. The implication is that anyone who is aware of a common stereotype is likely to use it when it is cognitively salient and relevant to the judgment at hand (e.g., Hardin and Rothman, 1997; Higgins, 1996).

(Continues...)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691137560
• ISBN 13: 9780691137568
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 536
• Herausgeber: Shafir Eldar
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar