The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society Book

<7/24/2016 addition at bottom>

Trout's introduction presents us with certain underlying premises such as the fact that what we may tend to refer to as a person's "bad decision" is often an attempt (successful or not) to pick the least-bad alternative available in the problematic contexts of today's society. Payday loans are problematic for the person taking the loan, but the people who take those loans tend not to have much better options. He tells us this to point to the issue of the poor choices our society often makes available despite the fact we may feel some empathy toward the person needing the payday loan. Feeling empathy is normal, but our minds don't have a simple, direct path from that feeling to action.

Trout's main concept is that human minds have subconscious tendencies / inclinations / biases that provide something like shortcuts for quick decision-making and/or decision-making under evolutionarily presumed conditions of limited information. In practice today, what happens is that people make choices based on subconscious mechanisms, although people like to feel our conscious minds have the real control. We convince ourselves what we do is more conscious, more accurate and more successful than what scientific studies tell us is truly the case. Trout advocates methods in which a person makes conscious decisions of a kind and under conditions where the subconscious mechanism don't play such a strong role. For instance, making a decision every payday whether or not to put money into savings tends to be unsuccessful, but making a decision to participate in an automatic deduction program for savings either doesn't activate the subconscious mechanisms as much or at least one only has to exert the conscious will on one occasion to get into the program.

Although I imagine what he said about that is mainly true, I don't have the background to say whether or to what extent he is exaggerating.

However, his approach assumes one has a conscious acceptance that something is a good idea. Suppose there's a man who knows and has come to terms with the fact nobody in his family has ever reached the age of 60. He may have no conscious interest in having automatic deductions from his paycheck for a retirement account. Having a positive conscious view of an option is a prerequisite to Trout's proposals, and that may be even more relevant in choices of elected officials.

Then much of the book is about applying such a method to government policy. In the abstract, and in an idealized conception of our society, this could be applied to social policy. There are social programs that many citizens consciously think are good ideas, but might keep procrastinating about implementing the way one might keep putting off saving money if one didn't have an automatic deduction program. In the concrete, there seem to be some differences. While some people may have family members who oppose using an automatic savings deduction program, I think opposition to social programs by some sectors of society is more certain and can play a different kind of role. And even if we assume that most of the population consciously favors a social program, elected officials are not average members of the population - and may either have different beliefs or act upon something other than beliefs on social issues. Also, politicians seem to be under even greater pressure from monied interests than average citizens are affect by their political influence.

Trout tells us about parole boards. They tend to let individuals (parole board members, prison personnel or "experts") interview potential parolees. Decisions are then made based on subjective impressions affected by the subconscious tendencies discussed in the book. The results are less accurate forecasts of which prisoners will commit crimes again than can be made by fairly simple formulas into which know facts can be entered. Scientific studies have shown that these formulas can be more accurate, but our criminal justice systems tend to continue to use the inferior approach. Trout argues that using scientific criteria and scientist advisors should be used in deciding government policies. (However, for one reason or another our political system is not inclined to act in that manner.)

[Consider the resistance from big money interests to something I would consider fairly simply - that when a consumer hires a "financial advisor" that professional should be obligated to act in the best itnerests of the consumer. Consider that there are laws of "reckless endangerment" and other acts which were not intended to do harm but did result in harm. Yet when Wall Street causes a world economic crisis (with tens of millions of people losing their jobs and millions losing their homes) our government does not consider that a criminal act. Such things reflect a double standard of what our elected officials are willing to do.]

Trout advocates that the government should use scientists to determine areas where there is a gap between what would be beneficial and what our subconscious leads us away from acting upon, then have experimental programs to see how well proposed solutions work. The results of the experimental programs could also be used to promote the advantages of implementing these programs on a full scale. [We see there is resistance from government to this in general. However, we also need to be able to evaluate when such programs are introduced to benefit special interests rather than society as a whole.]

He tells us that to avoid concerns that these experimental programs would continue indefinitely out of inertia even if they were not beneficial, the programs could be enacted with a specified "sunset." He then notes that once something is established, it can be changed even without a "sunset" in the law. He gives as an example the decline in the maximum income tax rate since the 1950's. I questioned how good an example that was, as it seemed to be more easily changed because it had the force of the wealthy behind it.

He suggests that pressure could be put on politicians who oppose new legislation by using statistics to show the consequences of not having such legislation. For instance, he discusses changes in fatalities since federal seat belt laws began, and the difference in fatalities in states with or without motorcycle helmet laws. Some situations like this may be well-suited for such comparison. However, I suspect this will be more difficult in terms of anti-poverty programs, on whether to cut Social Security and such issues.

He suggests various arguments against those who claim government regulations are "paternalistic." One that caught my attention is that we don't let 17-year-olds vote (and I might add we don't allow 15-year-olds to drive, 20-year-olds to drink, or 34-year-olds become president) - opponents of government regulations generally do accept various restrictions such as these.

[Trout tells us that some critics of government regulation present a society with an elected government as having citizens who are informed and can make their own decisions. Trout's objections to this are generally limited to the subconscious tendencies. There's plenty more. We saw how the tobacco industry knew cigarettes were harmful but but lied to the public. We recently learned Exxon knew about climate change for decades, but lied and hid facts. We saw Toyota's scheme on diesel mileage / pollution. There are deceptive advertisements. We saw government lies / secrets from the Pentagon Papers to Wikileaks to Edward Snowden. We know "campaign promise" is commonly understood to mean something a politician may have no intent of keeping. It's safe to say the public is fully and accurately informed.]

He talks about "citizens panels" and other methods to use more citizen input to improve democracy and develop government goals to act on behalf of the average person. He also suggests a constitutional amendment to guarantee financial security for all. Such ideas are fine with me, but it seems to me he is naive about the prospects for these unless democracy is increased in other ways first. The barriers in our social system may be outside his specialty (psychology.) However, as long as politicians are using gerrymandering, voter suppression and other means to circumvent true democracy, I think it's naive to treat politicians' failure to take the kinds of actions Trout talks about as just psychological bloopers. The major parties in the US include "superdelegates" in their primary process, providing a way to "veto" the choice of primary voters. When a citizen serves time for a felony and gets out of jail, he has had his right to vote taken away (and since the US incarceration rate is higher than in dictatorships around the world, that denies the right to vote to millions.) However, when a politician is convicted of corruption, when he gets out there's no legal prohibition on him running for office again. In the European nations Trout uses as positive examples, they have multiple parties based on beliefs. The US system favors two parties which (at this moment) tend to express different views, but which have no requirements restricting the beliefs of their members or politicians. Such as system is ideal for con men whose objective is personal gain rather than the well-being of the general population.

There were various points in the book where he gave examples he attributed to simple psychological tendencies, but which took place in contexts where economic-political motives were present.

[The book's title refers to the "gap" between having empathetic thoughts and taking action to help those for whom those empathetic thoughts were associated. One factor which is worth keeping in mind is that a small (but influential) minority in the population lacks a working conscience. They don't have those empathetic thoughts and have no use for ideas on how to be more effective in empathetic action. While the percentage of conscience-less people in the population is very small, the percentage in positions of influence is significantly higher than in the general population.]

- - - - - -

I found parts of the book preachy. Although he might be naive about the social system, it's not so much his views that make the preachy-ness unwelcome. It's that it takes away from the book which would be an attempt at a scientific approach to working toward human well-being.

- - - - - - -

7/14/2016

On thinking more about my review and my view the author was naive about politicians, I felt I should say some more. I don't know what percentage of politicians are more-or-less consciously just out for him- or herself. Some may just need the public attention or sense of status. Such people may more easily have their egos (and then actions) manipulated by lobbyists. Perhaps, such manipulation plays on the mechanisms which Trout discusses. We might investigate such a possibility by trying to see whether skilled lobbyists for consumer / labor / environmental groups (groups that can't provide the kind of personal gain big business can) can be as successful lobbyists as big money interests.

In any case, it seems to me it isn't necessary to assume that virtually all politicians begin from a selfish premise. Consider competition between businesses. If a few businessmen are ruthless and conniving, they can sell their products for less as a result of being harder on employees, sneaking in cheaper materials, using misleading ads, etc. Other businessmen may not have chosen to act as greedily as that, but in order to compete with inherently ruthless businessmen, they must adopt some of the same methods. The end result is that those businesses that survive and grow are more likely to behave in very selfish ways. This analogy may not be fully and completely replicated in the political arena, but I think we can easily see that a similar dynamic does take place in politics. Those politicians who are willing to live in that kind of environment, who can get elected and move up to higher offices under these conditions are likely to be either predisposed to be able to adopt the selfish pattern or are molded into that shape by the force of all power-brokers who have already taken that approach. There's some point where there are enough politicians "playing the game" that it becomes difficult for an adequate number to put sfficient focus on their conscious social beliefs - which is a prerequisite politician to truly use Trout's recommendations.

We might use Hillary Clinton's 2016 primary campaign as an example. While Clinton made campaign promises about campaign finance reform, her campaign continuously sought large contributions, used techniques such as "bundling" to allow greater influence of some contributors within legally-maximum contribution limits, used the Hillary Victory Fund as a means of collecting bigger contributions than legally permitted for those directly to a candidate's campaign committe and then stretched the rules as far as how the money was distributed, etc. In most election campaigns, her opponent would have been doing similar things, letting Clinton claim to be merely "fighting fire with fire." However, her primary opponent was focusing on large numbers of small contributions, and using none of these tricks. Clinton's choice to use any money from any source may have been less significant if she had been the underdog - but she had been the presumed winner from the beginning. And throughout the campaign, the media continued to speak of Clinton's decisive lead and the factors which would prevent Sanders from winning. Clinton could have discouraged large contributions during the primaries while assuring wealthy donors she'd be happy to take bigger contributions for the general election, but she didn't. So, does this fit Trout's framework which presumes Clinton's main conscious political ideas are for campaign finance reform, but mental mechanisms simply caused her to postpone action on that? (Especially, combined with the millions Clinton received in huge "speakers fees" at Wall Street firms and the like - for which she refuses to release the transcripts - just before she offically became a candidate for 2016, suggest she may have other priorities.)

At this point in time, the Democratic and Republican parties (generally speaking) have voters and politicians who express political perspectives than those in the other party, and (to a lesser degree) their politicians act in a politically distinguishable way. However, there are no political criteria for being allowed to vote in a party primary or to run as a party candidate. While every 4 years, each party writes a platform, there are no underlying party standards which restrict what may be in a party platform, and there are no obligations for a party candidate to speak consistently with the platform or to act consistently with the platform when in office. Political principles don't play a real role in the parties. The parties are "old boys networks" for mutual career assistance. The political positions of politicians reflect finding a substantial part of the population which will elect candidates based on campaign promises (and to a lesser degree actual performance in office.) On some level within consciousness, I assume some fraction of politicians does think they are working toward something they believe in. However, the context I've just described places other priorities first. Even if we can describe this context and resulting behavior in terms of Trout's mental mechanisms / biases, it is a more confining context than what average citizens deal with in making their political choices. So, it is misleading to try to suggest solutions with the expectation they apply equally to citizens and politicians.