If you are not an educator, please help spread the word about this wonderful opportunity.

If you ARE an educator, would you like to bring more skepticism and critical thinking into your classroom? Would you like to be inspired, energized, and informed? The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 is a great place to meet other educators, gather materials (including printed copies of the JREF’s education modules for classroom use), pick up tips, and be inspired.

The Amaz!ng Meeting is attended by people from all walks of life and all over the globe. Speakers include scientists, philosophers, journalists, educators, activists, and even entertainers. Simply put, The Amaz!ng Meeting is James Randi Educational Foundation’s yearly celebration of science, education, and critical thinking. Educators who attend TAM will be able to bring what they have learned into the classroom.

In addition to three days of superb talks and panel discussions, TAM 2014 offers a full day of workshops, including two which will focus on incorporating skeptical thinking lessons into classrooms. This year’s theme, “Skepticism and the Brain” promises to be especially valuable to educators. And the JREF would like to help you join in!

In an effort to expand our promotion of education and the development of future critical thinkers, the JREF established the TAM Teacher Scholarship Fund in 2013. As many readers know, I am an educational programs consultant for the JREF and will be responsible for this project. The fund will pay the registration fees for a limited number (to be determined by donations received by June 15, 2014) of educators to attend The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 10-13.

The best news is that due to the generosity of the skeptical community, we are already on our way to awarding grants and we have a pledge from one donor, Brian Walker, to send at least TEN more teachers to TAM 2014!

Details regarding eligibility, how to apply, and what to expect can be found here.
If you would like to help send teachers to TAM 2014, you can do so here. Every little bit helps! Donations made after June 15, 2014 will be distributed to TAM 2015 grant recipients.

First, if you have not read Parts I and II, please read them now. The most important parts of those posts are:

Arguments over scope and the conflation of atheism and skepticism have reached a fever pitch, as have arguments over tone. I will talk about some of this, but I will not attempt to explain all of the issues in any detail because everything that needs to be said has been said here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here… Well, you get the picture. In fact, if you want to argue the definition of skepticism or Skepticism* in the comments of this post, don’t bother. Instead, read what I wrote about it last year, which I would simply repeat in answer…

…I suggest is this: Skepticism*, as a movement, is not hindered so much by the conflation of atheism and skepticism, the ridicule of believers, or attempts to promote values-based ideology as it is hindered by the blatant ignorance, arrogance, and irrationality displayed when those acts are committed.

In a field dedicated to reducing ignorance and irrationality, a field in which arrogance is toxic, I find this kind of behavior offensive. It is time that we reclaim Skepticism and restore its credibility and integrity.

If one of the major goals of Skepticism is to educate, shouldn’t we all understand the material?

I am angry. I am angry and a little fearful for our future. We live in dangerous times and the work of Skepticism is serious. The work is hard. It requires patience, discipline, empathy, and knowledge.

I am angry because an influx of people who have stumbled upon or been recruited to the work of Skepticism are making it much more difficult. We’re moving backwards. This is happening, in part, because some of these rookies insist that their understanding of that work is as good or better than the understanding of people who have studied and worked in the field for years. Many have little or no education in the basics of science or the scientific process. Some claim to follow the teachings of people whose works they have never read. Some believe that the ‘old guard’ have more to learn from them than the other way around. These people voice their opinions on blogs and in talks, discussing topics about which they consider themselves competent after reading a couple of blog posts, listening to a podcast, considering their own limited experiences, or MAYBE reading a book or two on the topic.

What’s worse, they argue about details with little or no understanding of even the big picture. They believe that their understanding is complete and, therefore, requires no study, no thought beyond the surface features, and certainly not time or mentoring.

This is anti intellectualism in a field which promotes intellect and deep thought.

The problem has bothered me for some time and, in fact, ignorance of one’s own incompetence is something that bothered me in my classroom so much that I studied its relationship to academic entitlement, narcissism, external attributions for achievements, and study strategies. What we learned is that narcissism, entitlement, and shallow study strategies are strongly correlated with the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the phenomenon that the least competent people overestimate their competence the most as part of a self-serving bias. As relative competence increases, overestimations decrease, until the 75th to 95th percentile (depending on the domain), when estimates are fairly accurate. This is particularly problematic in an academic setting because the less students understand a concept, the more likely they are to believe that they understand it, the less likely they are to make changes to ensure that they learn it, and the more likely they will be to feel entitled to a high grade for their poor work.

Skeptical activism is not unlike academics.  Incompetence feeds on itself in this effect. The more an individual overestimates their competence, the more entitled they believe they are to an uncritical audience to which they can voice their opinions. What’s more, the more confident a blogger appears, the more their audience will reinforce their views (because they convince the audience that they know; the same thing occurs with eye witness testimony), although this is somewhat limited to situations in which the view is shallow enough to for the audience to understand, a perfect enhancement to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

But high confidence is not an indication of actual understanding, nor is the number of supportive cheers of agreement from their followers.

The rest of this post will focus on one example of this, but there have been countless. This particular example is an especially egregious one, since she attacked both a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect and the field I defend daily. It was back-breaking straw for me.

When Amanda Marcotte whined that Daniel Loxton doesn’t want us to talk about religion, she built a now very familiar straw man and dressed him with inappropriate comparisons and other ignorant rambles. She appears to be upset because she somehow thinks that the usurping of a movement in motion, one which is founded on scientific principles, for the promotion of her personal political and religious ideology, should go unchallenged.

Amanda does not appear to understand what skepticism actually is or what science involves, yet she’s thrown her hat in, anyway. Perhaps she is insulted that somebody tried to tell her, I really don’t know, but I do know that the confidence with which she writes about the issues is unwarranted, a fact which is clearly demonstrated by the content of her post.

Amanda wrote,

“Look: atheism is the result of applying critical thinking and demands for evidence to the god hypothesis. It’s not any different than non-belief in all sorts of supernatural claims, such as ESP and ghosts. All of the weaseling around that is intellectually dishonest. It’s not about critical thinking, but about politics and frankly, not taking on religion because religion is seen as too powerful. “

Wrong.

What is intellectually dishonest is arguing about something you do not fully understand against people who are experts in the field. What is intellectually dishonest is advancing an uneducated opinion because the educated one does not help you achieve your own goals.

Her first two sentences demonstrate the problem with this entire post and most of the comments on it: ignorance. The rest of the paragraph is bullshit that Amanda made up. Nobody is ‘backing down’ and there is no concern that “religion is seen as too powerful”. This is not about politics. It is about scientific integrity.  This point has been made again and again, but ignored by people like  Amanda. Perhaps they ignore it because they do not understand it, or maybe they ignore it because it doesn’t help them, but the reasons don’t matter. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Science is the pursuit of truth. Truth is not value. Desires are not facts. Facts are not morals.

Scientific integrity requires adherence to scientific principles. Likewise, scientific skepticism relies on scientific integrity. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of people with opinions.

… Loxton decided to shit all over the work of people looking at improving gender, sexual oriention, class, and race diversity in the movement by complaining that the panel at The Amazing Meeting dedicated to this didn’t have any fucking Christians on it.

Again, she’s just making stuff up. Daniel noted that the diversity of the panel did not reflect the diversity of the audience in one important aspect. Framing this as “complaining that there were no Christians” is dishonest and the implication that Daniel does not care about issues of gender, class, and race is simply unfounded and abhorrent. Anyone who actually knows Daniel understands just how stupid that accusation is.

He firmly believes that the god hypothesis should be off-limits for skeptics, and that there should be a bright line between atheism and skepticism. This is ridiculous. “God” is a supernatural claim just like fairies and ghosts.

This statement, once again, not only demonstrates gross ignorance and shallow thinking, but the fact that she’s written an entire blog post questioning the knowledge of a professional skeptic on very basic definitions of the field without first educating herself is offensive and disrespectful. Had she even tried to understand the issues, a task which takes time and energy, she might have learned enough to at least recognize that she has a lot more to learn.

But I am clearly expecting too much, because Amanda thinks that “I don’t get it” equates to “It must not be true” as demonstrated by this parroting of Skeptical sound bites and bullet points, mostly taken out of context or misused (bold mine):

The excuse from “traditional” skeptics for making an exception for religion is that the god hypothesis is an untestable claim, and they’re only interested in testable claims. But as this fairy example shows, that’s not really true. There are plenty of things skeptics are skeptical about because of the preponderance-of-evidence standard. We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies because no one has ever produced solid evidence in favor of these things existing, and we combine that with an assumption that these things are highly unlikely and so the burden is on the people making the claims to prove them. I don’t see how god is any different.

… Yes, it’s true that you can’t test whether or not there is a god somewhere that simply refuses to show himself, but that’s also true of fairies, people with ESP, and ghosts. And yet it’s considered a good use of skeptical time to point out the weakness of the ghost/ESP argument. So why not god?”

She doesn’t ‘see it’, so it doesn’t exist. I hate to add to the sound bites when what is needed here is serious coursework, but there are some basic concepts that could help Amanda “see how” these things are different, starting with breaking down some of her giant straw man. Here are a few basic points that Amanda should have known before she wrote this post:

• Science is empirical, therefore scientific skepticism is empirical. This is more important than testability, although it is related. NOTE FOR THE RECORD: The concept of testability is watered down somewhat in my posts and comments because it is complicated. For a good discussion of these issues, I recommend Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World.

• Skeptics do not “make exceptions” for religion. The fact that “God exists” is not an empirically testable hypothesis is not the fault of skeptics or Skepticism. It is the nature of the hypothesis. Science and skepticism have nothing to say about any hypothesis which can never be tested empirically.

• Skepticism is not a set of beliefs or conclusions. This is important. “We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies” is not something that a good skeptic would say and the ‘we’ part is presumptuous. I certainly do not want someone like Amanda Marcotte speaking for me if this what she thinks skepticism is.

• What any Skeptic believes is irrelevant. Personal knowledge is derived in whatever way the individual chooses to derive it. Science and skepticism deal with shared knowledge. Shared knowledge requires empirical evidence.

• The reason that we can easily discount ESP in most cases is because it is usually easily tested empirically.

• Requiring empirical testability is not “giving religion a pass”. It is holding true to the scientific process, which is designed specifically to ensure that our human biases and personal values do not affect our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true. Religion’s most basic claims usually involve an omniscient and omnipotent being, making them largely untestable. This is not at all true of ESP, ghosts, or other traditional topics in skepticism. More on that below.

• A good skeptic would never state that there are no ghosts. A good skeptic would investigate specific claims of hauntings, searching for natural phenomenon which would explain the evidence. A good skeptic would not say there is no such thing as extrasensory perception. A good skeptic would say that we have no evidence to support precognition, telekinesis, etc.

• Skepticism is not about pointing out the weaknesses of arguments. It is about evaluating the evidence. These are not even close to being the same. When a self-proclaimed psychic moves the bar and says, “If it failed the test, then the forces that give me these powers do not want to be seen,” they make their claim untestable. Skeptics then have nothing to say in response. However, skeptics can provide natural explanations for phenomena (e.g., reveal that Peter Popoff was being fed information via an ear piece) which are much more parsimonious than supernatural explanations. This is also what we do with religious claims. If someone claims that God created man as he is today, we can point to the evidence which support the theory of evolution. If they claim that God created the universe, we can point to the evidence for the Big Bang. If they claim that God created the universe and man by making these natural processes possible, well then, we cannot refute that.

But Amanda would like to cast out Pamela Gay because Pamela believes in a personal God. Never mind the fact that she has never tried to sell that view to others, that she never claimed to support it with evidence, or that she is a very competent and knowledgeable Skeptic, scientist, science educator, and science communicator. Nevermind that Pamela Gay is a valued member of the Skeptical community who has done more to educate and excite young minds about science than all but a few others. [NOTE: minor edit for clarity, 08/07/11 9:50am]

Pamela Gay is not being irrational. Amanda Marcotte is.

Marcotte’s diet example is another case of irrelevant comparison. She states, sarcastically, that people are also touchy about their diet and so expressing skepticism about food trends is probably bad idea, too. This is clearly a straw man. We can demonstrate the effects of gluten empirically, so it is a poor comparison, too. Nobody is saying that people should not express skepticism about the existence of a God. What we are saying is that we cannot demonstrate empirically that God does not exist, therefore, if that is your conclusion, you cannot share that conclusion with others. The difference between personal knowledge and shared knowledge is not trivial.

Making others comfortable is not the issue, either, although making people uncomfortable out of arrogance and ignorance is certainly a part of the issue. I would like to point out that Amanda’s double-standard is pretty obvious in that paragraph. Apparently, the needs that matter are the needs of those she thinks deserve our attention and that’s it. But while we’re on the subject, it doesn’t matter if you are promoting skepticism, atheism, or your favorite restaurant. Being an asshole is being an asshole. The reason that DBAD matters to the rest of us is that when a dick represents Skepticism, they make our jobs more difficult.

The issue of scope is more complicated than the atheism/skepticism debate. The only reason that religion is given special consideration in the discussions of scope is that there are more people conflating atheism with skepticism than ever before. There are more people acting like superior assholes than ever before. People who could be helped by skeptical outreach as well as people who contribute a great deal to the movement (people like Hal Bidlack, a brilliant, scholarly, honorable man with years of service to the community) have been run off by the relentless arrogance of people like those I have discussed in this series of posts. The ignorant, the arrogant, and the irrational (I’m picturing monkeys of the ‘no evil’ variety, but with interesting facial expressions).

And this problem is growing.

Most of the comments on Amanda’s post demonstrate a frenzied groupthink that will further convince her that she’s on the right track. Comment number 41 describes this problem (among others) quite well: “One cool thing about having a political blog which is allegedly powered by skepticism is that people will be much more tolerant of logical fallacies.”

Some of the most fallacious comments:

…There’s nothing worse than an agnostic who thinks he’s more logical and skeptical than an openly religious person. Whether you’re an agnostic or a believer you’re engaging in special pleading on the god question, subjecting it to a different standard than any other question of existence, and you are not a skeptic nor are you logical.

“Special pleading” is a straw man that is repeated often. But it is just that: a straw man.

what the hell is skepticism for if not doing away with false beliefs?

More ignorance. There is no such thing as a ‘false belief’. Beliefs are simply what you hold to be true. Nobody actually knows for certain what is true. Skepticism is about evaluating evidence, period.

H0: There is no god. H1: There is a god. There is a serious shortage of evidence for H1, therefore we must accept the null hypothesis.

Introductory statistics cannot address the question of whether or not God exists.

If there’s a lack of humanpower and ressources to do everything, the question skeptics organizations should ask themselves is not why they should get involved in the more political aspects of skepticism, but why they should still waste ressources on the trivial, non-political aspects like Bigfoot/UFO/ghost/cryptozoology debunkings and such.

Wow. This is very disturbing, and I’m not just talking about the spelling or misuse of words like “aspects”. Apparently many commenters don’t watch television or get out of the house much. The number of shows devoted to ghost hunting alone is staggering. Then there are the shows about psychics of all ages, animal mind readers, monster hunting, etc. These shows are appearing on channels once devoted to science, for FSM’s sake. As for why we don’t get involved in politics, read this.

And anyone who is interested in the bigger picture – the picture concerned about meeting the goals of the movement – should read Comment number 75 on Amanda’s post.

The parroting that atheism is the result of applied skepticism that is so prevalent in the comments and stated in Amanda’s post is anti-skeptical. It demonstrates a failure to understand the fundamental process of skepticism and the empirical nature of science and scientific skepticism. The definitions of science and scientific skepticism were arrived at through centuries of study, collaboration, contemplation, and discussion. They are not negotiable, at least not without agreement from a vast majority of scientists.  If you cannot accept these definitions as they are, you have three choices:

1. Publish your opinions in peer-reviewed journals and hope that philosophers and scientists agree with you.
2. Keep arguing about it with Skeptics and impede our progress.
3. Go do something else.

*”Big-S Skepticism” refers to the work of the skepticism movement in promoting the practice of skepticism.

I was hoping to kick-start this blog with a highly critical review (AKA, rant) about the BS spouted by two members of a panel at the World Atheist Convention. The four-person panel all made reasoning errors, the severity of which ranged from ‘not even notable or worthy of criticism’ (Rebecca Watson) all the way to ‘so ironic, hypocritical, and irrational that I can see why atheists are so hated’ (AronRa). I may still get to this at some point, but I have been sidetracked by something else and I am highly motivated to write about it instead.

So here I am, about to do something that may shock a few people who have read my criticisms of her in the past. I am about to stand beside Rebecca Watson.

While reading James Croft’s review of the CFI Student Leadership Conference, mostly to find out how the agenda, which focused on activism (especially the featured talk by Desiree Schell) was received, I got to this:

The skeptical twitterverse has been buzzing with criticism of Watson’s talk due to her singling out a specific member of the movement by name and critiquing them in her talk.

Well, that got my attention. A talk about sexism (Watson’s topic was the Republican War on Women) in which she names names? Curiosity took over and I popped over to Twitter for a look. The first thing that caught my eye was this post by an attendee. I watched the video in which Rebecca describes her experience at the WAC after the same panel I was planning to write about. Essentially, after a day in which she publicly discussed her experiences with sexism and after making it clear that she was tired and wanted to go bed, she had (from her post on the matter):

…an unpleasant encounter I had with a fellow atheist that I thought might serve as a good example of what men in our community should strive to avoid – basically, in an elevator in Dublin at 4AM I was invited back to the hotel room of a man I had never spoken to before and who was present to hear me say that I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed.

In other words, he just didn’t get it.

I initially skipped the reply from a blogger in order to get an understanding of what any of this had to do with naming names at the CFI Conference. Then I got the gist: It seems that Rebecca quoted (and named) this blogger at the beginning of her talk, knowing that the blogger was in the audience. A blogger who’d criticized her. On a public blog.

The rest of the post recounted the discussion among some of the conference attendees that followed the talk. I found most of it somewhat disturbing, but I have to say that there was a part that made me laugh out loud (bold mine):

The primary response to the incident seemed to be that there was a power imbalance, and it was inappropriate for Rebecca to use her power as a nationally-known skeptic and as an official CFI-endorsed speaker at the conference to attack a student at said conference. Moreover, having been publicly called out by Rebecca Watson, Stef McGraw’s reputation as a skeptical student leader is now ruined forevarz.

The discussion of “power imbalance” carried over in a rebuttal by McGraw.

So there are multiple issues here, but I think they are related and I hope to make that relationship clear here. The questions are:

1. Was the story a case of sexualizing? Is Watson whining and/or demonizing men?
2. Why the disagreements? Don’t we recognize sexism when we see it?
3. Was Watson wrong to identify McGraw in her talk?
4. Was there an “imbalance of power” comparable, as was suggested by many, to sexual harassment in the workplace?
5. Is Watson an hypocrite?

Regarding the issue that sparked it all, I will spare you an analysis of what makes the incident a case of sexualizing (and creepy). Rebecca did a fine job of that in a post herself (which I quoted above). I am more interested in the incredible shallowness of the discussion, the lack of empathy demonstrated by McGraw and those who ‘sided’ with her on the issue, and the way the whole thing completely occluded any discussion of Rebecca’s talk, which is a talk I actually want to see and hear about.

I was amazed that a young woman could hear the story and not find it creepy. Perhaps it takes years of experiencing sexism for yourself before you can recognize and understand it. However, empathy doesn’t require that kind of understanding and I find the lack of empathy among the students who commented on this disturbing.

Watson blamed Stef’s reaction on ignorance and I won’t disagree, but a lack of perspective is more than just a failure to read the feminist literature. The difference between ‘getting it’ and not, I think, is in how deeply one is willing to think about the issues as well as and how much one is willing to be educated. Most importantly, how willing they are to listen to the views of those with more knowledge and experience than they have themselves. It is not dissimilar to the problem of expertise and, unfortunately, I see this as a symptom of a cultural shift away from both respect for others and the willingness to work for knowledge.

Mostly I think that shallow thinking and disrespect for wisdom stems from the narcissistic idea that one knows enough already. I realize this sounds like the typical crotchety “kids today!” attitude and maybe it is, but I am not alone in my thinking on it. I have seen so much of this in my classroom that it is now easy to for me to spot. Many simply do not think beyond the surface features of concepts, especially if doing so means that they might need to change their view.

The surface features of feminism that seem to get the most attention today are sexual freedom and equal voice. Both of these issues are complex and, when people oversimplify them in the name of feminism, the ‘solutions’ can exacerbate the problem. Sexism, the thing that feminism fights against, is not simple either.

On Sexual Freedom

If I were an anthropologist studying our culture today, I might get the idea that “sexual freedom” is about incorporating sex into every aspect of life or that it is the freedom to express one’s self sexually without regard to other people’s feelings. It’s not. Sexual freedom means YOU get to choose what happens to your body. You get to choose when and with whom to have sex. That’s all it means. In order to have that kind of freedom, we have to take responsibility. Culturally, it must be as okay to say “no” as it is to say “yes”. This cannot happen if women are primarily viewed as sexual objects when they do not choose to be.

With all freedom comes responsibility. In the Watson vs. elevator guy example, there were responsibilities on both sides. Watson’s responsibility was to refrain from expressing an interest in sex if she didn’t want it. She did more than that. She clearly expressed a desire to do something else: to sleep. Alone. The man in the elevator had a responsibility to consider the situation and put a little bit of thought into how she might feel about being propositioned at that time in that setting.

On a side note, calling women “prudes” because they do not choose to have sex with multiple partners, do not like it when men stare at their boobs (instead of listening), or do not enjoy a constant barrage of dick jokes, is the opposite of sexual freedom. Think of it as freedom of religion, which includes freedom from religion.

On Sexism and Equal Voice

Sexism is a deeply-rooted cultural phenomenon that is perpetuated, in part, by personal interactions involving struggles for power. Sexism is the set of subtle thought processes that keep women from equal access to resources for the same effort. It is not about simple numbers. It is not, for example, the high ratios if male to female speakers at conferences. It is the set of thought processes that, in part, leads to those high ratios and the thought processes that those high ratios perpetuate. What needs to change are the thought processes.

Getting more women involved is not a cure-all, especially if the women who are included are not qualified to contribute (which only serves to exacerbate the problem as it appears that’s what women have to offer; that’s what makes tokenism bad). And nobody who is qualified wants to be asked to speak simply because they have the right genitalia. This is what some people mean when they say that ratios are a “non-issue”. It’s not that they don’t matter. It’s the fact that the problem is not the ratios. The problem is the culture that keeps them high.

On Watson’s Public Flogging

Regarding the ‘naming of names’, I don’t know if I would have added the quotes to my talk, knowing that the blogger was in the audience, but how doing so is wrong escapes me. One comment was that Watson was “using the first part of her talk as a soapbox”, which tells me that either they haven’t seen her talk before or they haven’t been paying attention. Most of her talks begin with personal stories. Some are very long and most are irrelevant “small talk”, but some are soapbox-like. I don’t know if it is an intentional strategy for her, but it has the effect of bringing most of the audience closer, which makes them more receptive to the message. Speaking style is one of Rebecca’s strengths. As for the “soap box”, I wonder if they realize that what we ALL do is stand on a soap box and preach. Few of us actually take actions to affect policy change.

Other criticisms included calling into question Watson’s “atheist credentials”. I didn’t realize atheists needed credentials, nor is it relevant. Yes, I have criticized her openly (on more than one occasion, actually) in the past for speaking outside her knowledge base. I do not think she has done so in this case, but that does not matter because it is just not relevant.

One commenter actually claimed that, “…Dawkins or Christina [Greta, I assume?] would never insult someone who was in the audience at a peer conference.” Um. Really? Indeed, they would if it were warranted. At The Amaz!ng Meeting last year, Massimo Pigliucci’s talk was built around criticizing two very prominent skeptics, Michael Shermer, and James Randi (whose organization hosted the meeting; Shermer’s co-sponsored it) for a lack of hubris! In a university setting, academic talks are criticized on the spot by colleagues, in front of other colleagues. Open discussion, including criticism, is how shared knowledge is built.

The bulk of the criticism of Watson’s ‘calling out’ seems to be about power. Power to do what? Some have compared it to sexual harassment, which is a bit ridiculous and, again, shallow thinking.

McGraw and others claimed that Watson’s position and ‘celebrity’ in skeptic circles put McGraw at a disadvantage. That may be true, but I fail to see the relevance of this, either. This is not about power at all. There are no decisions to be made, positions to fill, salaries to pay, or awards to be given. It’s a disagreement, not an exchange. In cases of sexual harassment and discrimination, power is used to control people or coerce sexual favors in exchange for access to resources. To use some stereotypical examples, get the job, you need to sleep with the casting director. To get a raise, you’re expected to look the other way when your boss ogles you or slaps your ass. If you have sex with the teacher, they’ll give you an A. THAT is about power.

And McGraw’s reputation has “ruined” by Watson? Rebecca doesn’t have that kind of power. Nobody does. First, people do not start with “a good reputation” that can then only be reduced. Nobody is entitled to such a thing. A reputation is something you earn. Nobody can harm your reputation unless they lie. If they are telling the truth, then it is you who have harmed it.

Finally, some discussion of whether Watson is a hypocrite was pushed around. I have to say that, although it clearly doesn’t change my view of the elevator man’s actions or Rebecca’s in naming McGraw in her talk, it is clear that her actions and messages today are a world apart from what they were just a few years ago – or even more recently. However, I am encouraged by this recent edit to a 2006 post:

EDIT, June 26, 2011: Someone just sent me a link to this and asked me what I think about what I wrote more than five years ago. Well, I think I was wrong to make a joke that sexualized two women. I made a lot of off-color jokes back then, and to be fair I probably still do — but the difference now is that I’ve had five years to grow and change and learn about ideas like feminism and the patriarchy, and I’ve figured out that my actions and words will never be separate from those concepts.

And I am equally encouraged that she wrote this instead of trying to bury or hide from the past.

I have heard, third hand, that Rebecca’s talk, which was about a dangerous threat we face today, was excellent. I will have to wait for the video to be posted to judge for myself. In the meantime, I am hugely disappointed that some of the students were so wrapped up in the drama and threatened by the idea that we still have work to do to in promoting equality (work that doesn’t involve raising our own self-esteems) seem to have missed it along with its point.

Many Skeptics, Daniel Loxton and Massimo Pigliucci (So you think you’re a skeptic, don’t you?) come to mind, have discussed the need to restrict one’s public discussions in the name of Skepticism to topics within one’s area of expertise. In the absence of such expertise, we should only convey to the public a scientific consensus, if one exists. So how is a non-scientist or someone working in a different field supposed to know whether a scientific consensus exists and/or what that consensus is?

Well, that is what I had initially intended to write about today. I am afraid this post goes a little off-track, but it still covers important ground.

This post began as a set of corrections to some of the misleading statements in a recent post by Rebecca Watson in which she points out what she believes is wrong with Ben Radford’s use of an article to support his argument that images of thin women in media do not “encourage” eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. A friend alerted me to this post, knowing that I participated in a discussion on Facebook on the matter.

In her post, Rebecca accuses Ben of cherry-picking and quoting out of context. In a response to Rebecca , Ben defends himself quite well regarding the accusations that he misrepresented the authors (there were two), but I think that there is a lot missing from the discussion that is important and, in fact, this is shaping up to be a great example of why organized skepticism is needed and why more working scientists should get involved.

First, I share Rebecca’s concern that readers will assume that Botta’s findings support Ben’s claim. Ben writes,

Rebecca is assuming that the quotes were selected as representing the conclusions of those particular studies from which they were cited. I made no such claim.

This is true, but Rebecca assumed what most laypersons are likely to assume. It is far too easy to mislead when discussing complex topics such as this one. Evidence to support one’s assertions is difficult, too, when the assertion is that a claim is untrue. I think that Ben’s argument would have been better served by a more detailed discussion of the complexity of the issue and, perhaps, a quote from a recent review of the literature. Those are difficult to come by, but they provide the “big picture” view to which he referred.

Quoting from the introductions of research reports as Ben did is never a good idea, in my opinion, because it is hearsay. However, it is also problematic when people assume that a researcher’s conclusion can support an argument; it can’t. What counts as evidence is a finding.

For example, what prompted me to participate in the Facebook conversation was Rebecca’s comment:

Study after study shows that straight women and gay men develop eating disorders because our society tells them that they must be thin and pretty in order to attract a man (eg: [link to study by Siever]), and that attracting a man should be their #1 goal in life.

The study to which she linked found correlations among disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, the importance placed on physical attractiveness, and sexual orientation by gender. How that was translated into a causal chain involving societal influences and personal goals is quite alarming, but the paper itself provides some clues. The discussion is longer than any other section of the paper, less than parsimonious, and somewhat speculative. This is one of the reasons that researchers cite and discuss findings, not the conclusions other scientists draw.

As I explained to Rebecca,

Correlation does not equal cause.

Causal conclusions are extremely difficult to draw when you cannot randomly assign subjects to conditions and you cannot randomly assign people to be a straight women or gay men. It takes massive amounts of converging evidence from a variety of studies which eliminate rival hypotheses.

So to say that “straight women and gay men develop eating disorders because our society tells them [anything]” is a very bold statement that is not supported by the evidence. It is certainly not supported by the study to which you linked.

But the confirmation bias leads people to follow their current beliefs and demand to be proven wrong. For example, Rebecca ended her post with,

In the Facebook thread, I genuinely wanted to see what evidence actually supported the idea that the link between media and body image is a myth, but I got nothing from Radford or anyone observing the thread. So, I’m forced to continue to side with what appears to be the consensus opinion: the media’s portrayal of the thin ideal most likely negatively impacts the body image of those who process those images poorly.

First, the “who process those images poorly” part is a new assertion and one that reveals her understanding (or lack of understanding) of the findings. What does it mean to “process images poorly” anyway? She initially wrote, “processing them the wrong way”. Is there are “right way” and a “wrong way”? Botta’s variable of “image processing” involves whether the individual questions the weight of characters as realistic, whether they believe they are realistic, and whether they compare themselves to the characters. There’s no right or wrong here.

What’s more important is her comment that she wanted evidence that the claim is untrue. As I explained to Rebecca on Facebook, that’s not how skepticism works. The burden of evidence is on those making the claim, not those refuting it.

This post is becoming much longer than I’d intended, so I will skip criticism of Posavac’s article and Rebecca’s misrepresentation of the findings. Instead I’d like to discuss the Botta article as it seems to be at the center of this battle. My interpretation of it is quite different from Rebecca’s.

Some background that I found interesting: Botta is not a psychologist, but a professor of communications. Now, expertise can come from many places. Formal education in an area is not a guarantee that one is an expert (although, given no other information, it is much more likely that someone with a PhD in a given area knows that area well than someone without a PhD in that area). Likewise, one can gain expertise through years informal study and practice. My point, though, is that we should not assume that Botta is an expert on eating disorders.

What is more telling about this particular article is the journal in which it was published: the Journal of Communication. It is not published in the psychological literature where psychologists are likely to see and criticize it. A communications journal is not an inappropriate venue for this article, however, because it is not about eating disorders.

This 11 year old study is about body image.

In fact, Botta used the EDI (Eating Disorder Inventory), a well-established, valid, reliable inventory of disordered eating. However, she chose to use only those sub-scales related to body image disturbance, thus making generalization to disordered eating impossible. She did include a measure of “bulimic behaviors”. It’s really very puzzling. I cannot think of an explanation for this, but one would not be relevant. What is relevant: she did not measure disordered eating with the exception of “bulimic behaviors” and references to other eating disorders as a conclusion to this study would be a GROSS overgeneralization.

There are many, many studies regarding both immediate and long-term effects of media exposure on body image and the findings are not consistent, particularly those examining television viewing. Of course, the quality, methodology, and generalizability of those studies are not consistent, either. As always, null findings are likely to be underreported.

There is no scientific consensus that “ideal thin” media is a direct causal factor in body dissatisfaction. Skepticism of any claim to this effect is certainly warranted.

This area of research is fraught with methodological problems similar to the study of acupuncture and psychotherapy. Body image measures rely on self-report and studies involving media imagery make hypotheses obvious to the participants. What’s more, most studies involve short experiments from which generalizations about real-world effects are extremely difficult.

What the massive body of literature on body image suggests: person variables (characteristics of individuals) such as self-esteem (Jarry & Kossert, 2007), attachment orientation (Greenwood & Pietromonaco, 2004), neuroticism (Daily & Buunk, 2009), and even other components of personality (Roberts & Good, 2010) have direct effects on body image and/or mediate/moderate the relationship between media and body image. In other words, any relationship which exists between media exposure and body image is complex and, at the very least, indirect.

But that is not even what Ben was talking about in his original piece, nor is it what Rebecca started to discuss (given the title of her post). The topic was the question of whether the “popular view” that exposure to images of thin women promotes eating disorders is myth.

Even a surface treatment of that question has me scratching my head a bit given the nearly equally accepted “popular view” that there is an epidemic of obesity in this country.

While body image is highly correlated with eating disorders – it is even one of the diagnostic criteria – there is no evidence that poor body image, or even the desire to be thin, causes eating disorders. Stating that eating disorders are a direct result of wanting to be thin is a lot like saying that obsessive-compulsive disorder is the result of wanting to be organized or clean. Assuming a causal link exists, the direction of cause could easily be the opposite of what people think.

But let’s assume that what we’re really talking about is body image and not eating disorders. Do Botta’s findings really refute Ben’s assertions? Given that he did not discuss the study in detail, I am not sure if Ben knows, but let’s take a look.

Botta’s study is a complex analysis of a number of self-report measures which involves a large number of statistical tests. As such, some significant relationships are likely to occur by chance and it is important to consider the specific hypotheses when interpreting them. I’ve noted where Botta reported significant relationships that I believe should be considered with caution. That said, here is a list of what she found:

Factors in whether participants endorsed a thin ideal

What did NOT predict endorsement of a thin ideal:

• total television exposure
• exposure to “thin dramas” [shows like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210 – did I mention this study was more than decade old?]
• the extent to which participants reported questioning characters’ bodies when watching television

What DID predict endorsement of a thin ideal:

• the extent to which participants compared themselves to the characters
• the extent to which participants viewed the characters as realistic

Factors in body dissatisfaction

What did NOT predict body dissatisfaction:

• total television exposure
• exposure to “thin dramas”
• the extent to which participants reported questioning characters’ bodies when watching television
• the extent to which participants viewed the characters as realistic

What DID predict body dissatisfaction:

• Body Mass Index
• endorsement of the thin ideal
• the extent to which participants compared themselves to the characters

Botta also reported a significant interaction of endorsement of a thin ideal and total television exposure, but with a p-value of .03. Given the large number of tests produced in this kind of analysis, it pays to be a little more conservative and consider only those less than .01 as significant. Likewise, she reported that ethnicity predicted body dissatisfaction, however, she only reports the p-value as less than .05.

Factors in drive for thinness

What did NOT predict drive for thinness:

• total television exposure
• exposure to “thin dramas”
• the extent to which participants reported questioning characters’ bodies when watching television

What DID predict drive for thinness:

• Body Mass Index
• endorsement of the thin ideal
• the extent to which participants compared themselves to the characters

Again, Botta also reported that viewing the characters as realistic was related to drive for thinness, but with a p-value of less than .05.

Factors in bulimic “action tendencies”

What did NOT predict bulimic tendencies:

• total television exposure

What DID predict bulimic tendencies:

• Body Mass Index
• endorsement of the thin ideal
• the extent to which participants compared themselves to the characters

Again, Botta also reported that exposure to “thin dramas” predicted bulimic tendencies, but not in the direction you might think. The more they reported being exposed to “thin dramas”, the LESS they reported engaging in bulimic behaviors. Regardless, with a p-value of less than .05, I don’t believe it needs to be explained as anything more than an odd finding. In addition, there was an interaction of thin ideal endorsement with the questioning of characters that was difficult to fully interpret or explain.

So, do Botta’s findings support the claim that media images cause eating disorders?

Not. At. All.

Do they suggest that media images cause eating disorders?

Nope.

Do they suggest that media images cause body dissatisfaction?

Again, nope.

Do they suggest that media images teach women that thin is best?

No.

What do her findings suggest?

The amount of media exposure, even specifically to thin characters, is not directly related to whether women think that thin is best, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, or bulimic tendencies.

If her findings are similar to those of other researchers (and they are), they actually kinda support Ben’s assertion [we’re still in the “what if we were talking about body image” state].

What Botta’s findings also suggest: Women who compare themselves to characters on TV are more likely to think that “thin is best” than women who do not compare themselves to those characters. Also, thin ideal endorsement and current BMI are related to body dissatisfaction (not a surprise), drive for thinness, and bulimic behaviors.

So, it seems to me that what these findings tell us, beyond “media is not the problem”, is that women who are unhappy with their bodies engage in behaviors which are likely to make them even more unhappy. They have warped views of what is ideal and compare themselves to people who, in their judgment, fit that view. How this equates to “every word of it disagrees with Radford’s assertion that media images have no relationship to body image” I don’t know.

I think it is plain, though, that the issue is complex and so is the literature about it. It is fairly easy for the average human to view this kind of literature as supporting their current view of the world. It is also human to defend that view, even when it is not supported, and to ignore explanations of why they should be skeptical. That’s one of the reasons we need Skeptics (like Ben Radford).

Some References

Botta, R. (1999). Television images and adolescent girls’ body image disturbance Journal of Communication, 49 (2), 22-41 DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02791.x

Dailey, S.E., & Buunk, A.P. (2009). Female body dissatisfaction after exposure to overweight and thin media images: The role of body mass index and neuroticism Personality and Individual Differences, 47 (1), 47-51 : 10.1016/j.paid.2009.01.044

Greenwood, D.N., & Pietromonaco, P.R. (2004). The interplay among attachment orientation, idealized media images of women, and body dissatisfaction: A social psychological analysis in The psychology of entertainment media: Blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion. Shrum, L. J. (Ed.), 291-308 Other: 2003-88226-016

Jarry JL, & Kossert AL (2007). Self-esteem threat combined with exposure to thin media images leads to body image compensatory self-enhancement. Body image, 4 (1), 39-50 PMID: 18089250

Roberts, A., & Good, E. (2010). Media images and female body dissatisfaction: The moderating effects of the Five-Factor traits Eating Behaviors, 11 (4), 211-216 DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2010.04.002

Siever, M. (1994). Sexual orientation and gender as factors in socioculturally acquired vulnerability to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62 (2), 252-260 DOI: 10.1037//0022-006X.62.2.252

Dragon*Con is now just over three weeks away and the schedule is as solid as these things get, so I’m giving you the highlights as promised. I will be one BUSY Skeptic! [Edit: By the way, Dragon*Con will take place over Labor Day weekend, September 3rd through 6th.]

For those who have not heard of it, Dragon*Con an enormous SciFi/Fantasy convention held in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. Skeptrack, the skeptic fan track, is the brainchild of Derek Colonduno and Robynn McCarthy (A.K.A., “Swoopy”), hosts of Skepticality. As usual, they work their butts off and many skepticism activists do their best to make that work count by participating in talks and panels designed to spread the critical thinking bug to geeks everywhere.

Dragon*Con is very different from conventions like The Amaz!ng Meeting, and not just the costumes. TAM is, at heart, a Dog-and-Pony-Show for skepticism. At Dragon*Con activists do the work of activism and education. There are a number of fan tracks, including a Podcasting Track directed by Swoopy, and Space & Science Tracks, who work closely with Derek and Swoopy. In addition to the obvious Star Wars Track, Trek Track, and Whedonverse Track, there are literature, costuming, and writing tracks. There are also two tracks related to Skeptrack: Paranormal Track and X Track.

The former is self-explanatory, I hope, and this year I will be attending a workshop on that track by Ben Radford on investigating the paranormal (details below). I am very interested in the methods used for this kind of thing as they differ a great deal from the kind of work that I do.

Last year most of Skeptrack was streamed live, but there were some problems. I believe they will try this again this year with, hopefully, fewer headaches. If so, I will provide a link on Facebook and Twitter as soon as it is available, which might be as late as the first day.

If you are attending or planning to stream it live, here is where and when you can find me:

Skepticism, Scams, & Consumerism: Ranging from psychology behind sales to consumer rights, we discuss how as skeptics we identify and challenge dodgy products and pseudosciences.
Time: Friday 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
I will be moderating this panel and talking about the psychology of purchasing behavior. Panelists include Matt Lowry, Rachael Dunlop, Richard Saunders, & Tom Merritt.

The Calculus Diaries – Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, Survive a Zombie Apocalypse: Fun examples of math applications in the real world and why it’s important to understand even just the basic concepts.
Time: Friday 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Location: Hilton 202
This panel is on the Science Track and will mostly be the work of Jennifer Ouellette, whose book with that title will be released August 1st, just in time for me to read it on the plane. As a statistician, I hope I can contribute something worthwhile to the discussion.

How Your Brain Works, and How to Fool It: Our perception of reality is driven more by expectation, belief, and desire than by sensory input. An examination of how we fool ourselves.
Time: Friday 8:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: Hilton 202
NOTE: This is not the original title and I think it is a little misleading. The original title was “What You See Is [not always] What You Get (or WYSInaWYG)”. The topic is not about how to fool your brain, but how your brain fools you. I believe Jason Schneiderman plans to join me and would be a welcome addition.

Skepticism and Sexuality: When do we get skeptical about sex, the media? When alien cults want to save African clitorises, this panel is here to discuss the facts.
Time: Friday 10:00pm – 11:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
I will bring with me some of the most interesting myths about the psychology of sex, courtesy of my friend a colleague who teaches the best course on the topic evah. My fellow panelists include Heidi Anderson, Ben Radford, Kylie Sturgess, & Ginger Campbell. Desiree Schell will moderate.

Naturally Skeptical? The Psychology Behind Being a Skeptic: A round table discussion on the factors that do (and don’t!) contribute to becoming a questioner of the paranormal and pseudoscientific.
Time: Saturday 10:00am – 11:00am
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
I will once again take the reigns as moderator and lead a discussion of the psychology of critical thinking and open-mindedness. I am very pleased that Scott Lilienfeld has decided to join us. He has written quite a bit about pseudoscience in our field, including his latest collaboration, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior. Other panelists, who are not exactly chopped liver themselves, include D.J. Grothe, Matt Lowry, Kylie Sturgess, & Pamela Gay.

Mathematical Modeling Pitfalls: Model don’t always accurately reflect messy reality, particularly where human behavior is concerned. Algorithms can only mimic human behavior, and there is a lot of room for bias and error as a result.
Time: Sunday 11:30am – 12:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
I am not actually on the schedule for this, but Jennifer Ouellete invited me to contribute when I mentioned my love-hate relationship with modeling and my frustrations in teaching that models are not what they model. If I get it together in time, I will present what I think is a cool visual of what you can do with a simple model that shows how they can be effective science. Well, I think it’s cool, anyway!

Raising Skeptical Geeks: A few known skeptical parents talk about issues and how they a raising their kids to be better rational thinkers.
Time: Sunday 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Location: Hilton Crystal Ballroom
This is sure to be the highlight of my Dragon*Con experiences as I love to talk about my kids. I am collecting stories and funny quotes to share. I am also thrilled that fellow panelists will be three good friends and one of the geekiest dads (by all appearances) around: Daniel Loxton, Heidi Anderson, Desiree Schell, & Adam Savage.

Skepticism and Education: JREF now has a Director of Educational Programs – what else is being done out there and how can skeptics help educate the next generation?
Time: Sunday 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Of course this is on my list of favorites as well as one of the most important of the panels on which I will serve. Other panelists include D.J. Grothe, Michael Blanford, Daniel Loxton, Pamela Gay, & Matt Lowry. Kylie Sturgess will moderate.

Women: Myths, Feminism And Skepticism: Puzzled by feminine mystique? Searching for your ‘Inner Velma’? Join investigators on gender, pop-culture and what science REALLY tells us!
Time: Monday 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Oh, so many myths, so little time! This topic is rich and Heidi Anderson, Desiree Schell, Pamela Gay, Kylie Sturgess, and myself are looking forward to a fact-packed dicussion.

Skeptrack Sign-Off Wrap Up and Feedback: Join the skeptrack guests and speakers for a discussion about how things went, last minute news, and how we can make things better next year!
Time: Monday 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Unfortunately, I will not make this discussion and also make my flight home. I am sure, though, that there will be much greatness in the room.

That wraps up my obligations. Here are just a few the events I am looking forward to attending as an audience member (if possible – the * indicates an event I cannot attend due to a scheduling conflict, but recommend):

CSI: Paranormal
Time: Friday 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Joe Nickell

*Skeptically Speaking Live!
Time: Friday 8:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Desiree Schell

Skeptical Coffee Talk
Time: Saturday 8:30am – 9:30am
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: James Randi, D.J. Grothe, & Joe Nickell

Paranormal Investigation Workshop
Time: Saturday 1:00pm – 3:30pm
Location: Sheraton
Presenters/Panel Members: Ben Radford

*I Very Much Doubt That!
Time: Saturday 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Location: Hilton Crystal Ballroom
Presenters/Panel Members: James Randi

*Mystery Investigators Children’s Show
Time: Saturday 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Richard Saunders & Rachael Dunlop

Monster Talk Podcast Live
Time: Saturday 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Blake Smith & Ben Radford

Skeptic Zone Live!
Time: Sunday 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Richard Saunders, Rachael Dunlop, Kylie Sturgess, & Brian Brushwood

Skepticism 2.0: Blogging
Time: Monday 11:30am – 12:30pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: Daniel Loxton, Rebecca Watson, Brian Dunning, Rachael Dunlop, & Kylie Sturgess

Martial Arts Mysticism
Time: Monday 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Location: Hilton 205/206/207
Presenters/Panel Members: John Clements

You can find the full schedules as they become available on the track websites. I hope to see you there!

The Amazing Meeting 8 is now less than three weeks away and the details are beginning to take shape. If you are not attending TAM8, stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter as those in attendance will give you details for live streaming should JREF repeat last year’s efforts over Ustream.

Here are some of my personal highlights:

Thursday, July 8th

Friday & Saturday, July 9th & 10th

Sunday, July 11th

Woo Fighters is still collecting donations to send four worthy students to TAM8. As of this writing, I have secured the registration for one student. Three more are waiting patiently, hoping that enough people donate small amounts, they will add up. Please help if you can.

Last month I attended the Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association (WPA), at which two of my students were scheduled to present research. I will spare you the five-page (single-spaced) description of my peril-fraught journey to Cancun and the disappointment of losing the posters along the way and just tell you that I am very proud of how my students handled it.

Totally unrelated lizard image. If you close your eyes, you might be able to imagine a beautiful poster with a couple of people standing in front of it.

Now for the science.

In my experience, most teachers, particularly college instructors, believe that entitlement attitudes, student expectations, study strategies, work habits, and aptitude have changed dramatically in recent years. As students spend more time working in addition to school, they miss more class and devote less time to studying. In addition, because modern technology makes it possible to use (and provide a copy to students) slide show presentations and distribute study guides. As the proportion of courses taught by adjunct faculty, whose teaching load is greater than tenure-track faculty, increases, so does the proportion of exams given in multiple choice format. This, along with outcomes-based learning which shaped students’ habits in elementary and secondary school, promotes rehearsal study strategies.

We hypothesize that the result is a cycle of incompetence as an increasing proportion of college students who believe that memorization of material is an effective way to study and that they are entitled to be given the material and assessments which maximize the benefits of this strategy. In addition, these students do not understand what they memorize and are unprepared for coursework which builds on the material they should have learned. Because they then attribute their failures to outside forces, they do not change their habits and a vicious cycle continues. The literature on academic entitlement is thin, however, some recent findings suggest that academic entitlement attitudes are positively correlated with narcissism, external attribution patterns, feelings of superiority, and exploitative attitudes (Greenberger, et al., 2008; Achacoso, 2002).

To examine these variables, we asked students (N = 95) in upper-division psychology courses to complete a number of measures. Our specific predictions were:

• Entitlement attitudes are positively correlated with external attribution style, narcissism, and feelings of superiority.
• Metacognitive skills are negatively associated with rehearsal learning strategies and positively associated with entitlement beliefs.

As with previous discussions, I will minimize the amount of statistics and technical information I discuss I use to describe the study and its findings, but if you would like more specific information, please feel free to email me.

Our measures:

• The Superiority Scale (Robbins & Patton, 1985).
• Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1981)
• The Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale: Achievement Subscale (Lefcourt, Baeyer, Ware, & Cox, 1979). This scale measures the degree to which the participant attributes academic achievement to ability, effort, context (such as the difficulty of the course), and luck. The former two are internal attributes and the latter two are external.
• Learning Strategies Survey we developed to measure the study habits that student think work best. Scores determined relative amounts of passive, rehearsal, and active learning strategies.
1. Passive = attending lectures without taking notes, attending review sessions to study for exams, and using templates or examples to write papers.
2. Rehearsal = using instructor-provided lecture notes, memorizing terms and concepts (e.g., flash cards), using study guides, and studying from sample questions or past exams.
3. Active = taking notes in class, active reading from learning objectives, and drafting & revising papers incorporating feedback.
• An Academic Entitlement Survey we developed which encompassed expectations about the source of grades, what students believe should be expected of them, what they believe instructors should provide, etc.
• A Metacognitive Measure: Participants evaluated the validity of ten syllogisms (all invalid), then estimated the percentage they answered correctly. Performance in this task is fairly difficult for most people to judge.
• In addition, we asked participants to indicate the number of hours studying each week outside of class they believed was reasonable to do well in the course and how many class meetings per semester it was reasonable to miss.

The number of variables and the complex relationships we hypothesized make the findings a bit confusing, but it can be simplified to a series of strong correlations.

Not at all surprising was that the more class meetings students thought it was acceptable to miss, the less time studying they felt should be needed to to do well. What is surprising is that the more missed class meetings they thought were acceptable, the more they felt that academic achievement is determined by luck. Attribution to luck was also positively correlated with rehearsal learning strategies.

The more students attributed achievement to context, the more entitleed they felt.

In addition:

• Entitlement attitudes were positively correlated with narcissism and superiority, a finding which is consistent with most studies on entitlement.
• The greater the entitlement attitude, the more likely students were to use rehearsal learning strategies and the less likely they were to use active strategies.
• The more entitled students felt, the more they attributed academic achievement to external causes (context and luck) and the less they attributed it to effort (attribution to ability was not correlated with any variable).
• Superiority attitudes were positively correlated with attributions to context.
• The most telling finding and the strongest correlations: Overestimation of performance was positively correlated with estimated performance, but negatively with actual performance. In other words, the better students thought that they had done on the argument judgments, the worse they actually performed and more they overestimated their performance.

The worse students performed, the better they thought they'd performed.

These findings are consistent with those of Kruger and Dunning (1999), who found that incompetence is perpetuated by ignorance of incompetence. (Dubbed “The Dunning-Kruger Effect“)

Rehearsal learning strategies were correlated with entitlement and external attributions, suggesting that students who believe that rehearsal strategies work best are more likely to feel entitled to use them and less likely to attribute their failures to those strategies or their own efforts. Instead, they will attribute them to external forces such as luck, instructors, and other situational factors. As a result, they continue to use the same failed strategies.

Student use rehearsal strategies which are highly ineffective, but since they attribute failures to external factors such as context and luck, they do not recognize that they do not understand the material. Thus they are stuck in a cycle of metacognitive ignorance and rehearsal strategies ensuring that they continue with poor strategies and poor outcomes, remaining ignorant of the need for change.

Before we publish these findings, we intend to test the validity and reliability of our original measures and use structural equation modeling to map the complex relationships among the variables. This should be completed in the fall with new participants and I fully expect these findings to be replicated.

References:

Anchacoso, M.V. (2006). “What do you mean my grade is not an A?”: An investigation of academic entitlement, causal attributions, and self-regulation in college students. Dissertation Abstracts International, 67 (6-A) : 2006-99023-155

Greenberger, E., Lessard, J., Chen, C., & Farruggia, S.P. (2008). Self-entitled college students: Contributions of personality, parenting, and motivational factors Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37, 1193-1204 : 10.1007/s10964-008-9284-9

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 (6), 1121-1134 : 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Lefcourt, H., von Baeyer, C., Ware, E., & Cox, D. (1979). The multidimensional-multiattributional causality scale: The development of a goal specific locus of control scale. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 11 (4), 286-304 DOI: 10.1037/h0081598

Raskin, R., & Hall, C. (1981). The Narcissistic Personality Inventory: Alternative Form Reliability and Further Evidence of Construct Validity Journal of Personality Assessment, 45 (2), 159-162 DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4502_10

Robbins, S.B., & Patton, M.J. (1985). Self-psychology and career development: Construction of the Superiority and Goal Instability Scales Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32 (2), 221-231 : 10.1037/0022-0167.32.2.221

Each semester I teach at least one course with a co-requisite laboratory course in which students conduct psychological research in small groups. Due to certain requirements of the American Psychological Association, these studies are not eligible for publication in an approved journal. Although students sometimes meet the requirements and re-run these studies in order to present or publish the findings, the original studies are considered pilot studies.

Some of these studies are very well-designed and executed and the findings are often interesting new discoveries. So, I have decided that it is about time I shared some of them and I will begin today with a timely finding about impression formation.

This semester, Brittany Reid, Lisa Aguilar, and Nare Setyan were interested in factors involved in judgments of intelligence and credibility as applied to marketing and image management. Specifically, they wondered if a hedonistic culture (party attitude) promoted by a group resulted in lower judgments of intelligence and credibility than traditional cultures. In other words, if you advertise that you like to party, will people think that you are less intelligent?
There is very little in the scientific literature regarding the assumptions people make about the relationship between hedonic behavior and intelligence. In fact, we could find none. There are mixed findings regarding the factors involved in judgments of intelligence. Most find that men are judged more intelligent than women, although no practical sex differences exist in general measures. Some studies have found that unattractive men are judged as more intelligent than attractive men and that the reverse is true for women. Many studies have found the opposite. Some have even suggested that attractive people are judged as more intelligent than unattractive people because they are more intelligent.

One club, two websites: a traditional academic site (left) and one which emphasizes a 'party' attitude (right)

We know that the way people dress, the number of piercings, the number of tattoos and all sorts of other things affect our judgments of people’s intelligence, competence, and a host of other attributes. The truth is, in the absence of other information and in some cases even when explicit information (e.g., about intelligence) is provided, appearances matter. So what about behavior? How does that affect the impressions people form of others?

The researchers hypothesized that the creators of a hedonistic (party attitude) group are judged as less intelligent and less credible than those of a traditional group. To test this hypothesis, they created two websites for a university psychology club.

Appeared on the home page of both versions.

• The main photo on the front page was clearly taken at a party whereas the main photo on the traditional front page was a group of students.
• The “spring break” photo gallery contained photos of parties and women in bikinis and people drinking at parties. The same gallery on the traditional site contained photos of students building houses for a charity. The events galleries included similar, but more subtle differences in the activities depicted.
• The executive board’s biographies focused on casual attributes whereas the traditional board’s bios discussed science.

Participants (28 of them; the responses of men and women did not differ in any of the measures) were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. They were instructed to study the website for 5 minutes and that they would be asked to remember it later. Afterward, they navigated away from the website and completed a survey about the site. They were asked to indicate the degree to which they agreed with each of 10 statements using a 5-point Likert scale. The statements were:

• There should be more sites of this nature.
• This website promotes education.
• I would visit this website again.
• This website promotes “a good time”.
• I would recommend this site to others.
• I trust this site for credible information.
• The creator of this website is intelligent.
• This site is boring.
• I would view this site in my own time.
• I learned something new from viewing this website.

I will not bore you with the statistical output, but for those interested, I will note the following: The hypotheses were tested though independent samples t-tests comparing the judgments for numbers 6 and 7, then responses to all questions were also compared. The additional analysis is exploratory, but adjustments to alpha would only change the outcome of #10, which resulted in a p-value of .01. All other p-values are less than or equal to .001.

The findings are best illustrated by listing the agreements which did and did not differ among the groups. Tests of the research hypotheses appear in bold. The largest difference was in responses to question number 1:

So, the presence of a ‘party attitude’ did not affect evaluations of the site itself. The traditional site was not considered more boring and participants were no less likely to visit it than the ‘party’ site. Surprisingly, agreement on whether the sites promote ‘a good time’ did not differ, either.

However, the traditional site produced higher ratings of education promotion and participants were more likely to say they learned something from it. Participants were more likely to recommend the site to others and feel that more sites of its nature should exist.

Most importantly, however, are the research hypotheses themselves, which address the views that participants held about the website’s creators and the credibility of the information on the site. Clearly, the creators of the ‘party attitude’ site were judged as less intelligent than the creators of the traditional site. Of course the reasons for this are not clear in this study. Participants may not have felt that people who party are less intelligent, but rather that people who chose to emphasize this behavior on a site promoting an academic (and science-related) club were less intelligent. This is a testable hypothesis, just not tested here.

What is most concerning for this context, however, is the difference in credibility. The purpose of the club as described on the websites is, “To encourage professional activity and involvement.” The goal is not to form a social club. Of course the images of partying are not contradictory (even on the traditional site, the images involve groups having fun), but they do not promote the cause. These seemingly unrelated endeavors (academic and hedonic) appear to mix like oil and water and for a university club wishing to promote a scientific field, credibility is vital.

There are some things to keep in mind when drawing conclusions from these findings. Some of these strengthen the argument, some are limiting:

• Participants only viewed one website. They did not compare the websites side-by-side. This is a strength as participants were given no clues to the purpose of the experiment.
• This was a true experiment and, therefore, causal conclusions are reasonable.
• Everything is relative and when we discuss scientific findings, we are always talking about comparisons. A medication works relative to no medication. A teaching method is better than a different method. In this case, the traditional academic website is compared to one in which relatively more images and verbiage referred to leisure social interactions (parties).
• The participants were college students in a science field. The proportion planning to work in the field is probably a minority (it changes) and the proportion planning a career in research is very small. Many students major in psychology without awareness of the scientific rigor required for a degree. Still, the participants of this study have been trained in research methods and there is some reason to think that they may care more about science and academics than the general public. I am not sure this fact is important when considering the implications, but it may be.
• There were some mistakes which resulted in unintended differences between the websites. For example, on one, the biographies are aligned vertically and on the other, one is offset to the right. There is a link to the calendar at the top of one and not the other. The gallery links are in a different order. I agree with the researchers that there is no reason to think that any of these minor differences affected the results.

That just about sums up the experiment. I leave it to you to decide what these findings suggests about impression formation and management in other pursuits and fields. Certainly they are not generalizable to every situation, but they do provide food for thought.