The nature versus nurture argument has been around since at
least ancient Egyptian times. Both our genetic inheritance and what we
experience shape the development of self, according to the deceptively thorough
book by psychologist and science author, Robert Ornstein. I say deceptive,
because Ornstein provides no recognition, much less discussion, that we humans
can choose many of the experiences that determine what we become. Moreover, at
the time of his book’s publishing, the scientific world did not know that even
the nature side of the argument was historically flawed. Geneticists are now
learning that our choices of experiences regulate how our genetic endowment is
expressed.
Ornstein argues persuasively, but with little objective evidence,
that for any key dimension of person-hood or behavior, everybody operates around
an immutable set point. He fails to recognize that a person can change the set
point. Though it is not easy, people can change their set point dramatically:
witness the reformed addict, the religious convert, or the ner-do-well who
becomes a tycoon.
Ornstein’s thinking blind spot is typical of the age we live
in. People who struggle with life are regarded as victims, while people who
achieve are just damn lucky. From this perspective, people shoulder no blame or
guilt for being dysfunctional nor credit for being successful.
The bias against personal accountability is enshrined in the
current notion among scientists and social scholars that even when people make
choices, they do not choose freely. What we choose to do is driven by unconscious
drives arising from biology or the programming imposed by life experience.
People are biological robots. I argue against this view in my recent book, Atoms of Mind.
The biological robot bias is revealed in a recent research
report in a premier science journal. The authors conducted economic game
experiments to explain what causes people in conditions of scarcity to make poor
decisions. The reality behind this study is that people in poverty generally do
make bad choices that perpetuate their poverty. They play the lottery, borrow
too much, are unwilling to pay for preventive health services or
education, or save for specific future
needs, and may even fail to enroll in government assistance programs. The usual
explanation is that such maladaptive behavior is caused by the circumstances of
poverty, such as poor health, lack of education, and the like.
The authors, from the School of Business at the University
of Chicago, tested the idea that it is scarcity itself that drives poor
choices. Their experiments were based on giving varying spending “rich” or “poor”
allowances for experimental subjects to allocate in common TV game-show formats
such as Wheel of Fortune or video games.
The allowances were distributed as “paychecks” across multiple rounds of
the games. Games were structured so that players could sometimes borrow against
future earnings or save for future rounds. In one experiment, participants were
allocated a certain number of guesses in word puzzles (84 for the poor; 280 for
the rich), The poor engaged more deeply in the game and borrowed more. Subsequent
cognitive tests showed they were more mentally fatigued despite spending less
time in the game. Another experiment used a video game in which participants had
a fixed number of shots from a slingshot (30 for poor, 150 for rich). The poor
spent more time aiming each shot and borrowed more when the game allowed it (actually
the rich never accumulated a debt).
The results were interpreted to show that scarcity produces
a focusing effect. The poor pay more attention to the options and become more mentally
exhausted. Scarcity clearly promoted borrowing, which proved to be
counter-productive. The poor did not adjust their borrowing as they accumulated
debt, but as their budgets shrunk, they gradually increased borrowing relative
to their remaining budget. The poor were more likely to neglect the
opportunities of future rounds and borrow away from them. The poor performed
better when they could not borrow.
In sum, scarcity changed behavior for the worse. The poor
were more intensely engaged in the games but the focus on some issues came at
the expense of neglecting others, such as ignoring the real cost of borrowing.
Thus, the researchers implicitly concluded that the poor in
the real world are victims of their state of scarcity. Scarcity drives the poor
to make unwise choices that keep them trapped in poverty. The possibility that
the poor have the power to change their behavior was never considered. The authors
conclude that the poor cannot change their poor choices.
The solution advocated is wise government
policy that manipulates the poor in ways that limit the opportunity to make bad
choices. For example, policy should aim at reducing the number of decisions the
poor have to make by simplifying their economic choices, enrolling them in
savings programs by default, making it more difficult to borrow, advertising to
get them to sign up for relief programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and the
like. The nanny state needs not only to provide for the poor, but also to
intercede so the poor are not allowed to make so many bad choices.
Of course, we have known of government solutions to poverty
for a long time. There is Marxism, which says take from the rich to give to the
poor and its near-relative, Socialism, which re-distribute wealth and make everybody equally poor by not allowing anybody to get rich from ownership of
business. There is Fascism, in which dictators decide which companies can
prosper and limit the number of rich to those who are lackeys of the
government. There is U.S. “state-ism” which employs some measure of all the
others, but in less draconian ways.
Regardless of which government “isms” exist, we seem to live
in a world in which personal responsibility no longer matters. It isn’t
expected, and we don’t get much of it as a result. If you are poor, it is not
your fault, but the fault of your genes or bad luck or exploitation by the rich.
Only government can save us from ourselves. But who saves us from government?
Who wants to be saved from government? Around the world, and
now in the U.S., more people want more government, not less. Government can
protect us from ourselves. We no longer shoulder the burden of being “masters
of our fate, Captains of our destiny.” The corollary is that we may have less
opportunity to benefit from being our own Captain.
Sources:
Klemm, W. R. 2010. Atoms of Mind. New York: Springer
Publishing.
Ornstein, Robert. 1995. The Roots of the Self. New York:
Harper Collins.
Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., and Shafir, E. 2012. Some
consequences of having too little. Science. 338: 682-685.
