Empirical and conceptual science: a vital partnership

Posted on 11 August 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

It’s great fun to be an interdisciplinary thinker. It’s exciting to make connections that shed new light on old problems. I love the world “outside the box.” Or rather, here’s the graphic on my ironic Halloween t-shirt:

think_inside_the_box

Even though it’s amazing to work in this world, it’s also frustrating, because you can do careful, precise work and still run into the square-peg-round-hole problem. What I’m referring to here is the distinction between empirical and conceptual science.

Empirical science works like this. You make observations. You notice patterns in your observations. You come up with an idea that would account for those patterns. But before you can have confidence in your idea, you need to test it – to compare it with other ideas that could also account for those patterns. You follow the standards of rigorous testing, you get your results, and you compare it with your original idea. Maybe it supports your idea, or maybe you need to tweak your idea a bit, or start over. If it supports your idea, great – now you test it again under different conditions to see whether your findings “generalize” more broadly. And so on. This is a world of methods, findings, rigor, and validity.

Empirical science is very important. Without empirical science, we don’t get medicine or advanced technology. (Like effective vaccines for a worldwide pandemic!)

But empirical research isn’t all there is to science. There’s also the conceptual part, the framework that helps us make sense of the world. This is the part of science I most enjoy – coming up with a new way to look at a situation, then exploring its implications. Or, to be more precise, bringing together existing ideas into a model that gives us new tools for thinking about important problems.

That’s what I’ve been doing in my research on meta-narratives. The idea that there are Continue reading →

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How the War on Terror gave us Donald Trump

Posted on 10 August 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

Twenty years ago, the United States began waging a “war” on terror, and now we learn that it was War on Terror ideas that fueled Trump’s rise to power.

Today, the NYT’s Ezra Klein interviewed his colleague, Spencer Ackerman, about his a new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. In the book, Ackerman talks about how all of Donald Trump’s most egregious campaign themes were actually War on Terror themes, and how Obama missed vital opportunities to repair the situation. You can read the transcript of Klein’s interview here, or listen to the podcast here.

Klein starts right off by laying out the War on Terror meta-narrative. Here it is:

“America faces an existential threat from an undefined, though implicitly brown immigrant Muslim enemy that must be defeated at all costs. America is innocent in this threat. They hate us for our freedom. They hate us for what makes America America. And they are not just trying to defeat us. They are trying to change us. We are in a war of values, a civilizational conflict.”

Once you’ve spelled it all out like that, it’s easy to pick holes in it, especially when you remember that every time terrorists have attacked Americans, they’ve told us why. It’s not that Continue reading →

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George Packer’s four warring visions

Posted on 20 July 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

Are we really “Four Americas,” as George Packer’s recent Atlantic article tells us? Does this really mean, as he says, that “competing visions of the country’s purpose and meaning are tearing it apart”?

I haven’t yet read his new book, from which the article is drawn, but I did hear him give a talk on this very topic, back in 2018. I tried chatting with him a bit afterwards, during the book-signing, but he seemed very tired and not much receptive to conversation. I also listened to the talk again online a couple of times after, so I’ve given his ideas a lot of consideration over the past three years. My conclusion is that although I really like his ideas overall, there’s also some value to examining them a bit more analytically, and I may not end up agreeing with all of his conclusions.

First, Packer reminds us that for much of the 20th century, the two major political parties “had clear identities and told distinct stories. The Republicans spoke for those who wanted to get ahead, and the Democrats spoke for those who wanted a fair shake.” Now, though, Packer tells us there are four main stories: “Free America,” a libertarian vision of personal freedoms and property rights; “Smart America,” a more cosmopolitan vision in which everyone deserves opportunities, but merit will determine rewards; “Real America,” a nationalist story of America’s common people, who work with their hands and take pride in being superior both to a “parasitic elite” and a “shiftless underclass”; and “Just America,” or rather, “Unjust America,” which insists on including all Americans as equal citizens and reminds us that we have yet to do so. In his article (and I assume the corresponding chapter of his book), Packer covers a lot of recent history, telling us how each of these stories took hold and so far, how it’s played out. (Caveat – Packer isn’t splitting America into four groups, each of which has one of these beliefs; he’s just pointing out that four main beliefs about groups are circulating, but individual Americans may embrace more than one, or none, of them.)

Packer calls each of these worldviews “narratives,” but since none of them has a defining story (an account of particular events that led to how things are, which everyone uses to support their beliefs), I’m going to assume that instead he’s really talking about meta-narratives. Let’s see what meta-narrative science can tell us about them.

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“Happily ever after!” The new GOP storyline

Posted on 27 June 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

On the one hand, it’s heartening that Republicans recently voted to make Juneteenth a new federal holiday. On the other hand, with all the Lost Cause handwringing during the Trump years, one wonders why.

In a recent Slate interview, historian Matt Karp explains his theory. (Thanks, W.H., for the link!) Karp thinks it’s the latest episode in a strategic meta-narrative shift on the part of Republicans. Quoting Karp,

“The right’s support for Juneteenth signifies that they are investing more energy in claiming credit for emancipation. Rather than downplaying or diminishing or cynically undermining, decentering the importance of slavery altogether, they’re saying, Yes, it was terrible—and we fixed it.”

This strategy is not so new for America – we’ve embraced our history as a succession of Triumphs all along. “We” beat the British to establish a new nation, “conceived in liberty.” “We” achieved our Manifest Destiny by claiming all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “We” helped our allies in Western Europe win two world wars, and then won the Cold War, establishing the U.S. of A. as the world’s only Superpower.

As Karp summarizes: “We beat Nazism, we beat communism, we beat slavery.”

And much of this is non-partisan, but there are partisan Triumphs too, as when some white liberals thought Obama’s election as president marked an end to racism. (Oops.)

The Triumph genre is especially powerful. It’s structured as a Mission (progress toward a goal), followed by a decisive achievement. We won! Just like with any work of fiction, it’s that closure at the end that feels so satisfying. So there are two emotional payoffs: We get to feel good Continue reading →

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The ‘agile dolphin’ plan: Boris Johnson’s meta-narrative vision for Britain

Posted on 11 June 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

Say what you will about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – the man clearly grasps the political power of meta-narratives. Tom McTague profiled Johnson in the latest issue of The Atlantic, and concluded that to Johnson, “the point of politics – and life – is not to squabble over facts; it’s to offer people a story they can believe in. In the prime minister’s view, those who wanted to remain in the EU during the Brexit referendum didn’t have the courage to tell the real story at the heart of their vision: a story of the beauty of European unity and collective identity. Instead, they offered claims of impending disaster were Britain to leave, most of which haven’t come to pass, at least not yet. The story voters believed in was fundamentally different—in Johnson’s words, “that this is a great and remarkable and interesting country in its own right.” “People live by narrative,” he told me. “Human beings are creatures of the imagination.”

Johnson is right about several things.
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There are storms, and then there are “storms” — reassurance from the world of survey science

Posted on 29 May 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, columnist Karen Tumulty described her concerns about the Republicans’ failure to endorse the January 6 investigation for which they’d helped set the terms. Some of her worries are based on recent non-partisan polling. As she put it:
“Fully 20 percent of more than 5,500 adults questioned in all 50 states — and 28 percent of Republicans among them — said they agreed with the statement that ‘there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.’”

Without questioning Tumulty’s conclusions, or the accuracy of the polling, I do want to reassure all of you reading this that it’s probably not quite that bad. Years of experience in designing and conducting surveys about worldview beliefs have taught me something not obvious — when people are answering questions like that, they’re often not describing their thoughts and beliefs up to that point, but instead, just their emotional reaction to the question. And in this case, the question was emotionally loaded.

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On men understanding women, or, why Harry Potter’s gender mattered

Posted on 3 May 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

Boys don’t read books written by women, said Joanne Rowling’s publisher, and they didn’t want her first name on the book, hence the “J.K.” by which we all know her. It’s good for her that she pictured Harry as a boy, because surely the publisher would have felt even more strongly about a female protagonist. Boys, so the stereotype goes, don’t read stories about girls.

This has been a perpetual problem for “girl’s literature.” As an example, let’s take Anne of Green Gables.

anne_sittingonluggage_t800

This enormously popular series of books went on to inspire a terrific Canadian mini-series in 1985. As one student put it, Anne is “most plausibly aimed at a female audience,” and although I don’t have data, it’s reasonable to guess that most of Anne’s readers and viewers are female.

gus_pikeFor the TV series, however, its Avonlea spinoff was probably designed to appeal across genders – although the main character was ostensibly Sara Stanley, an orphaned rich girl sent to live with her family on Prince Edward Island, the character who really captured our hearts and imaginations was Gus Pike, introduced in the second season, the earnest, poor, musically gifted son of a rascally pirate.

A Facebook post today by author Mary E. Lowd reminded me of a wonderfully illuminating study I read back in grad school. (I read so many cool things in grad school!) In this study by psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley, high school students read a story and were asked to mark an E in the margins whenever they experienced an emotion. Using the frequency of these emotional experiences as an indicator of involvement, Oatley found that girls were more “involved” in the story than boys and equally involved with male and female characters, whereas boys were emotionally responsive only to the male characters.

One interpretation would be that girls are more empathetic, but I don’t think that’s it. I think Continue reading →

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“Bright Eyes” and La Dolce Vita

Posted on 1 April 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

Although I finished my PhD years ago, I have the good fortune to continue to be welcome at the weekly lab meetings for my advisor, Gerard Saucier, where he talks with his grad students about the many interesting things he’s working on and thinking about. Today’s meeting covered what he described as a “smorgasbord” of topics, among them cultural differences in value hierarchies, or more simply put, what people believe is important.

Several philosophers have proposed their own hierarchies of values, like Francis Hutcheson and Jeremy Bentham. In general, at the very top of the hierarchies are more universal values: the well-being of everyone. Next comes the well-being of one’s own family and friends, then more abstract good things like art and science, then one’s own interests that don’t cause harm to others, and at the bottom, more selfish gratifications that may involve treating others poorly. In other words, if your highest principles are the public good, you could use this ranking to decide how to prioritize things you might be interested in doing.

But in his research, Gerard has learned something interesting, which caught my attention in the past, and which he mentioned today also – there’s another familiar value ordering that’s different from the philosophers’ hierarchies. It goes like this: At the very top, we have success – not necessarily money or material goods or with a disregard for others, but pursuing one’s ambitions with regard for intelligence, wisdom, family security, and self-respect. After that comes true friendship, enjoying life, being responsible, honest, and broad-minded, in a “world Continue reading →

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The remarkable story of Little and Little (2021)

Posted on 30 March 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

This morning I read a delightful academic paper, with an even more delightful backstory. The lead author, Sabine Little, is a professor at the University of Sheffield, specializing in “Languages Education,” especially multilingualism. Her native language is German. So when the Littles had a child, they naturally decided to raise him to be bilingual, with Sabine speaking German, and Toby’s father his native English. When Toby was 4, however, he asked his mother to stop speaking German to him. Then, when he was 6, he asked her to resume, as he had realized he wanted to learn German. He also asked if they could “do research together.”

I imagine that at the age of 6, Toby’s idea of “research” was that it was something potentially worth his attention because he knew it was important to Sabine. As a mother, I know how it feels when your child decides to try something because they see you doing it, although my own memories along these lines were much less consequential. I’m thinking of when my younger son was 2 or 3 and wanted to try some of the foods he saw me eating. His initial reactions to red salsa were pretty amusing, but in the end favorable; his conclusions about romaine lettuce went the other direction. Nevertheless, I was flattered.

Toby and Sabine, however, were making a much larger commitment. As they explain in the paper, “Through a joint research diary, we regularly and rigorously chronicled both language-related conversations and our emotions linked to the process of bringing back the heritage language.” Over two and a half years, that research diary ended up at 83 typed pages, or 25,450 words. And, “Since Toby had proposed the study himself, his desire to be involved in all Continue reading →

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How China’s ruling story helped kill 2.6 million people, and counting

Posted on 13 March 2021 by Laura Akers, Ph.D.

So far, more than 2,640,000 people around the world have died from COVID-19. Thanks to the vaccines, maybe the death toll won’t climb much higher, and maybe life will soon return to normal. But is there anything China could have done to nip this disaster in the bud?

This week I watched the PBS Frontline episode from February 2, “China’s COVID Secrets,” and I learned that the importance to the Chinese government of its Stability meta-narrative may have played a big factor.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify that as far as I know, we have no basis whatsoever to disparage China’s rulers by implying that they’re indifferent to the pandemic and the toll it’s taken on the world. I don’t know them and I don’t have access to that kind of information about them, but I personally think it’s important – without solid evidence to the contrary – to assume that people (yes, even politicians!) are basically trying to do their best. (And all too often we do have solid evidence to the contrary, but one has to feel sorry for some public figures in this regard.)

I also want to make it clear that a great many Chinese people, especially the scientists and health care professionals, have worked very hard and effectively since the first days of the outbreak, doing what they could to understand the new virus and protect people from it.

Nevertheless…

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