The importance of wisdom in social science research

20Feb/12

The importance of wisdom in social science research

Almost all social psychologists are smart, but few are wise. I would argue that you can't advance our collective understanding of the human condition by being smart, without also adding some wisdom to give context to what you study.

For example, the most essential paradigm in social psychology is the experiment and the more controlled the experiment is, with fewer extraneous variables, generally the more prestigious the article. However, as these experiments become more and more specific, isolating psychological mechanisms and ruling out alternative hypotheses, they also largely become more divorced from reality. After all, reality is usually uncontrolled and contains more, not fewer variables. Further, most experimenters have an initial hypothesis and will keep working to create the conditions that show their hypothesis to be true. As such, if I show that X causes Y in a lab, it doesn't necessarily follow that X causes Y in society. Often, another researcher will confirm that X does not cause Y using a different paradigm. Since you get to construct the paradigm to show what you want to show in an experiment on humans, what does such a study actually prove? Perhaps a better characterization of the findings of such research is that X can cause Y, rather than the more simplistic X causes Y.

There is something very valuable in showing that X can cause Y. Good social science research performs the same function as a good parable or a good memoir, often illustrating a truth that we know deep down, but often forget. Thinking fast can make you take unwise risks. Being grateful can make you happier. Crying wolf can make people ignore real requests for help. Whether through story or statistics, these examples examples of what can happen are often helpful in considering our daily life.

However, the average person often knows many of these truths already and it takes wisdom to move these examples beyond the realm of the self-evident and into the realm of useful knowledge. This recent New York Times op-ed, by Barry Schwartz, illustrates how one can take parables generated by research (e.g. on how too much of something can be bad) and create something wise. In it he argues that efficiency can make us better off, yet can cause hardship too. I excerpt a bit of it below, but it doesn't do the original article justice, so I hope you read it.

So whereas some efficiency is good, more efficiency may not be better. The psychologist Adam Grant and I published an article last year suggesting that the “too much of a good thing” phenomenon may be more general than commonly thought. Some choice is liberating; too much choice is paralyzing. Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation leads to folding under pressure.

...

Perhaps we can use the criticism of Bain Capital as an opportunity to bring a little friction [the opposite of efficiency] back into our lives. One way to do this is to use regulation to rekindle certain social norms that serve to slow us down. For example, if people thought about their homes less as investments and more as places to live, full of the friction of kids, dogs, friends, neighbors and community organizations attached, there might be less speculation with an eye toward house-flipping. And if companies thought of themselves, at least partly, as caretakers of their communities, they might look differently at streamlining their operations.

We’d all like a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon. The forces of friction that slow us down are an expensive annoyance. But when we’re driving a car, we know where we’re going and we’re in control. Fast is good, though even here, a little bit of friction can forestall disaster when you encounter an icy road.

Some social scientists think studying human behavior and thought is like physics. If intelligent people spend enough time on it and collect enough data, we experts can figure out all the rules. But research on human beings is inherently messy, especially for those of us who believe in free will. Just imagine how much trouble physicists would have if atoms could decide whether or not to split.

Another view of social science is that it is but one form of evidence, in a conversation about the human condition that has gone on for millions of years and a marketplace of ideas that is far broader than our parochial disciplines and methods. Social scientists provide a unique and important way of thinking about the world, and I'm hopeful the gap between data and knowledge will decrease as data on human behavior is increasingly collected and shared by all sorts of organizations and the wisdom of crowds replaces the intelligence of a very smart few.

- Ravi Iyer

ps. This is part of a series of posts I'm writing to help crystallize my thoughts for a presentation I'm doing at South by Southwest on how moral psychology and big data are converging. Comments that help sharpen my thinking are welcome and please attend my presentation if you will be at SXSW. I'll certainly upload slides/video afterwards.

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Tagged as: marketplace of ideas, moral psychology, new york times, sxsw Leave a comment

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Isabel Penraeth
February 21st, 2012 - 21:38

First thee says this: “Some social scientists think studying human behavior and thought is like physics. If intelligent people spend enough time on it and collect enough data, we experts can figure out all the rules. But research on human beings is inherently messy, especially for those of us who believe in free will.”

Then thee says this:
“Social scientists provide a unique and important way of thinking about the world, and I’m hopeful the gap between data and knowledge will decrease as data on human behavior is increasingly collected and shared by all sorts of organizations and the wisdom of crowds replaces the intelligence of a very smart few.”

If I understand correctly, in the first case thee implies it is *not* sound to believe intelligence matched with data will equal deeper (wiser) insight into human behavior. In the second case, thee seems to argue that the solution is more data *plus* sharing of that data, which will increase the wisdom gleaned from the data because more people (beyond narrow fields of research) will be analyzing it. Due to the technical nature of the data thee describes, however, I do wonder how much of a crowd there will be and how much they will be willing to set aside the pursuit of a scientific or marketing career to promote broader wisdom. I’m wondering if the open science paradigm is more applicable. http://www.openscience.org/blog/?p=269

I also can’t help thinking thee has already described something of a kind of wisdom of crowds in mentioning The Boy Who Cried Wolf: folk stories filtered down over centuries, some retained because they were found to offer useful wisdom to future generations.
Ravi
February 21st, 2012 - 22:52

Isabel, I agree with most of what you said, especially the last part as I do believe that folk stories do represent a kind of wisdom of crowds. I suppose I don’t believe that social science data actually ought to be that technical in nature, such that the wisdom of lay people cannot be applied in aggregate. Often times, I feel like social scientists turn to complex methods when simple methods don’t work, or because they want to be more science-y. Just my opinion..:) Thanks for your always interesting comments and for the link to the open science paradigm, which is definitely in the ballpark of where I’d like to see things go.
Scott Wagner
February 23rd, 2012 - 10:21

Ah, wisdom vs. knowledge, thrown out in the blogosphere as if it was just another minor topic, instead of a lynchpin of human endeavor- yeah, drop by and opine a little for my presentation….well Ravi, I set an egg timer before commenting, since a day or a lifetime is not enough on the topic, but:

- Let’s reduce wisdom for a moment to a process influencing mechanism. This ‘middle way’ thinking you mention impacts the scientific method primarily by influencing where you go next- what questions you follow up initial knowledge with and which you don’t- and which data set you take on next. To take my pet (prejudiced) example, a slavishly Marxist approach to economics can apparently easily sound optimal to an intellectual, but a person who employs an ironic, instinctively moderate, or ‘friction’-based approach might ask ‘Many economic systems operate optimally in utopia- where might Marxism break down in real life, given the frictions naturally caused by the various emphases on eternal revolution, the exploitive nature of capitalism, atheism as optimal, and the inherent assumption of virtue and primacy of the proletariat?’ Wisdom generated by leveraging that friction to find useful knowledge (wisdom as moving from useful knowledge to useful knowledge) might lead you to quickly ask ‘Yipes- well, are there more robust, more stable economic systems?’ or ‘how do we stabilize this mess of pottage?’, instead of ‘Yipes- how the heck we gonna kill all these capitalists?’ Framing wisdom as asking the right follow-on questions helps clarify both its rarity and its interdependence on pertinent, accurate knowledge…and this ‘middle way’ has nothing to do with middle ground- more a way to refer to the application, by default, of inherent ‘frictions’ or opposites in analysis, i.e., a recognition of implications that run counter to any pure notion we care to name, as a matter of course. A fellow can be very middle-way in this sense and still, say, dump a bunch of perfectly good tea into a harbor.

- Marketing of reality: the inherent sexiness of an isolated, well-aimed knowledge that doesn’t take into account these frictions. The one that is currently annoying me is “The Republican War on Science”, though one can point all over the place, since this is the principle that underlies our republic’s largest internal weaknesses: fixations on pure notions of freedom (refusal to recognize the somewhat zero-sum nature of many competing freedoms); Hollywood images of strong leadership as bossy and fiercely hierarchical; Church as inherently good or inherently evil; the general exploitation/maximization of unhealthy bias for sales optimization; the vigorous life of the sound bite; the studious ignorance of even the concept of external costs; the currently devolving media markets, delivering well-aimed knowledges solely to the market segment that wants it (the news on Fox vs MSNBC). Life, wisdom is much more boring when there’s a comma in the middle of every sentence- much more fun to say ‘Go for it, dude!” than ‘Go for it, dude, but remember to keep the knee brace on like the doctor said.’ In addition to the annoying complexity, the latter versions are generally missing an exclamation mark.

I am reminded of Msgr. Pigliucci’s rejection of the Happiness Hypothesis, clearly without reading it, because “finding modern truth in ancient wisdom [is] a concept, I confess, about which I am somewhat skeptical.” Couldn’t help but hear a marketing-related bias against the staid, the well-trodden, in the offhand statement. Maybe I’m projecting. Because when the New Athiests are not making good points, their errors are of the first type above. Their certainty of the perils of religion has kept them out of Sunday School so long, in an ironically moral effort to stay pure of its influence, that we’re now saddled with a plethora of the wrong questions, with the attendant scurrying about and apoplexy. QED.

Oh, let’s stop there. I’m not any closer to presentation nuggets. I don’t want to help you anyway- I’m jealous of you getting to go to Austin, particularly because I travelled by there recently and didn’t even get to stop by. Hmph.
Ravi
February 24th, 2012 - 15:22

Scott…

Thanks (as always) for your thoughtful comment.
Calvin Lai
February 27th, 2012 - 07:33

Nice post. A recent book by Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, shares similar themes about the distinction between intelligence and wisdom and the overgeneralization of social science findings. Might be worth a read as well
Ravi
February 27th, 2012 - 10:48

Thanks for the recommendation and I’ll definitely check it out.
Scott Wagner
February 28th, 2012 - 15:54

I’m not sure Mr. Sowell’s book is worth more than a quick skim. He makes some excellent points about the dangers of incomplete knowledge that have been made elsewhere, and an interesting point that pertinent or contextual knowledge tends to be widely distributed, which is an intriguing idea, one that makes me think. I also like him picking on Paul Krugman repeatedly, who has a nearly unique opportunity, given his genius, to speak economic sense, yet chooses a sarcastic, belittling, unabashedly biased delivery that polarizes quite nicely, to little empirical effect.

I have a couple of problems with Mr. Sowell’s overall analysis. First, one must get used to every point being an opportunity to trumpet right-wing ideology as both wise and common-sensical, in a strange and ironic embrace of the same kind of intellectual cherry-picking he bemoans. I don’t mind this so much, primarily because I agree with him that most of the problems we have with intellectuals systematically skirting wisdom are liberal ones, if for no other reason than that the majority of academics are politically liberal (now- think tanks? Ahh. Different story). But the endless grinding noise and sparks from the sharpening wheel makes the whole analysis unnecessarily suspect: one has to read on the balls of one’s feet, with a set of welder’s goggles on to dodge all the subconscious indoctrination from the extraneous, immaterial dogma he passes on as assumptive fact. It also adds fuel to an unnecessarily negative bias toward intellectuals that gets going right at the start- it’s important to hate these little warped people early. So as long as you trust that the poison you are aware of drinking can’t harm you…

The most important complaint reminds me of the 1,199 page difference in length between the liberal and conservative health care plans in 2009 (that’s 1200 minus 1). Mr. Sowell has little to say on what constitutes wisdom, and explicitly considers his job done when his complaints sputter to an end. I realize mapping wisdom isn’t his goal- he’s about the job of condemning intellectual liberals who make Descarte’s Error- but he ignores essentially everything important about garnering wisdom, which is not so much a rejection of bad process but a positive, complicated good process in itself. I mean, we’ve been picking on Marxists successfully a long time now. The best way to contrast good and bad intellectualism is to illustrate the amazingly hard work needed for the good stuff, as in established sets of processes one needs to translate knowledge effectively into wisdom. One does not learn how to avoid intellectual misstep through example after example of failure, but rather from case studies of intellectual excellence, or at least a tentative rule book. A single chapter on: proper peer review; multi-disciplinary teams, with pertinently varied dimensions of background; employing known processes that inculcate a spirit of inquiry and eliminate bias; basic motivational/bias problem avoidance; incorporating standard change and risk management techniques when advocating change; that would’ve been useful. Go through just a bit of that and it puts the stupid to a lot of liberal pundits indeed. Instead, Mr. Sowell sticks with bad examples, which is fine as far as it goes, because yea, behold, we liberal thinkers are indeed a generation of vipers. Tell me something I don’t know, though: tell me how to avoid the mistakes I’m watching you make, Mr. Sowell.

Instead of meat, we’re endowed with such gruel as: Noam Chomsky, being a linguist, must be horrible at “politics” because he’s out of his area of expertise (it’s left hanging in the air that Chomsky’s vile output is a natural outgrowth of this entitled overreach). Mr. Sowell is a trained economist who writes about the economy, but has also written a great deal of a political philosophies of sorts, as well as general philosophy- and he wrote a book about children’s health and mind diseases. I presume he gets a bye on the area-of-expertise rule because-? Because he’s adequately dismissive of most intellectuals? Or adequately conservative/sensible? Well, lucky for him, and lucky for us that he hasn’t silenced himself about intellectualism on principle.

It’s an important subject- anybody devoting a few hundred pages to it will make useful points. I just think my kids could do a more useful, less risky treatise on wisdom in a twentieth the space, with better illustrations.

Yeah, what can I say. They’re smart kids.