1/25/17

Does size really matter?

Back in the 1950s, social psychologist Solomon Asch asked a bunch of Swarthmore students a simple question: Which of the three lines on the right is the same length as the line on the left?

Under ordinary conditions, almost everyone got the right answer.  But Asch wasn’t interested in ordinary conditions; he was interested in conformity.  So in an alternate condition, he set up the room like this:

Six of those seven men were stooges who’d been primed in advance.  Answering out loud, each gave the same, obviously wrong choice.  The seventh man was then asked his opinion.  Would he conform and select an answer he KNEW was wrong to go along with the crowd? Or would he remain strong and independent?  As Asch had predicted, a third (32%) of his subjects gave the conforming answer rather than disagree with the crowd.  A third. 

Yesterday, The Washington Post published the results of a little study of their own. LINK

"On Sunday and Monday, we surveyed 1,388 American adults. We showed half of them a crowd picture from each inauguration (see below) and asked which was from Trump’s inauguration and which was from Obama’s. As you might expect, 40% of the Trump voters gave the wrong answer compared to 8% of Clinton voters. "  

Then the Post asked the other half of their sample, “Which picture has more people?”  Got that? Which picture has more people?  15% of Trump voters said the picture on the left had more people compared to 2% of Clinton voters. Fifteen percent denied the evidence right before their eyes. Shades of Solomon Asch.

The Post concluded that people probably didn’t actually believe their wrong answer but were compelled to make it to keep their behavior in line with their belief in Trump.  While I agree that these Trump voters had skin in the game and answered in a way that aligned with their previous beliefs, I also think that conformity was in play.  

Keep in mind that Clinton voters are not immune from this. However, research has found that conservatives conform more than moderates who conform more than liberals. For example, this study was conceptually similar to Asch’s but used a word task rather than a visual task. 

So what does this mean for the future?  I predict that when Trump’s investigation of alleged voter fraud finds only small, unsystematic results, a chunk of Trump voters won’t believe it.  They can’t, because it would mean their guy was lying when he said he won the popular vote.  

It also means that this same chunk will continue to deny the evidence of their own eyes and good sense if it contradicts their strongly held beliefs. 

 

cartoon stock.com

1/14/17

How the dollar got its face.

The U.S. Mint has just announced a new series of $100 gold coins to be struck with various images of Lady Liberty. The first one, due out in April, shows Liberty as an African American woman with hair in braids and a crown of stars. She's gorgeous.

$100 Gold Piece

But as you can imagine, not everyone is thrilled.  The Twitter outrage came from both the right and the left.  Lady Liberty is white, dammit!

Actually, she's not. There's a long tradition of putting Native Americans on our coins. Some of them are even men.  You probably know a few of these...

But when it all started, Lady Liberty was the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

Seriously.

At the time of the American Revolution, there wasn't a great deal of British coinage available, so the colonies supplemented their currency with things like the Maria Theresa Austrian taler and the Spanish real de a echo or Spanish dollar. The Spanish dollar, whose name was derived from the Austrian coin, was worth eight reales  and gave us the piratical term, "pieces of eight".  Here's what it looked like.

Real de a ocho

The taler got a lot of mileage in Europe and elsewhere and was recognized as legal tender long after the Empress died.  In fact, the date of her death, 1780, remained on the coin until its final demise in 1961.  It was a very popular coin!  You can still buy them from the Austrian mint, but they're no longer legal currency.

Maria Theresa Taler

When the new American republic began to design coins, they looked no further than the popular taler for their design. And there's old Maria Theresa, sitting on our earliest coinage, Hapsburg nose and all.  This is a one cent piece from 1792, the first year the new country minted coins.

One Cent Piece

Below is a 1796 dollar.  The design is already evolving, but the draped bust remains identical to the taler.

Silver Dollar

So Lady Liberty started out as an autocratic European empress and has evolved over the years to reflect changing tastes and artistic impressions, including a fair number as a Native American.  The new $100 gold coin is just another step in that evolution, but in this case a return to one that more reflects American history.  I look forward to the Hispanic and Indian designs. Can a transgender Lady Liberty be far behind?

12/21/16

Heroes Part II

Yellow stars and the Danish King

Adversity can make heroes of any of us.  Here's a great example:

The King of Denmark, Christian X, had had some serious struggles with democracy early in his reign, but during WWII, he became a hero to his countrymen through his daily demonstrations of personal courage.  One of his most famous acts of bravery occurred during the German occupation, when the Nazis insisted that all the Danish Jews start wearing the yellow armbands required in the rest of the conquered lands. Here’s a popular version of what happened next.

"From the German occupation headquarters at the Hotel D'Angleterre came the decree: 

ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARMBAND WITH A STAR OF DAVID.

King Christian X

That night the underground transmitted a message to all Danes. 'From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.' The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing a Star of David. The following day the Germans rescinded the order."           Snopes.com

It’s a great story! I bet you’ve heard it, too. 

But it’s not true.

Not a word of it.

What the Danes actually did was much, much cooler. 

There were almost 8,000 Jews in Denmark at the start of WWII, all well integrated into the culture and society of the country.  When Hitler ordered the Danes to turn over their Jewish countrymen, they hid them instead, at considerable personal risk.  At the same time, the Danes secretly negotiated with the Swedish government to accept these refugees.  Then, one by one, in small boats and secret crossings, the Danes transported their Jews across the Øresund Strait to safety in neutral Sweden  Less than 500 were eventually captured by the Nazis. And even then, the relentless insistence of the Danish government on their safety led to almost all being returned alive at the end of the war.

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust

This is a great story too, but it has the advantage of actually being true.

So we have to wonder why the fake story got traction while the real story didn’t.

During the war, Norwegian political cartoonist Stig Höök (Ragnvald Blix) published a cartoon in the Swedish papers in which the Danish prime minister, Thorvald Stauning, and the King discussed what to do after the Nazis invaded. In the caption, the prime minister says: "What are we going to do, Your Majesty, if Scavenius (the foreign minister) makes all the Jews wear yellow stars?" The King responded, "We'll all have to wear yellow stars."

And so a story was born. Playing off this, Danish patriots in New York circulated a propagandist piece that juxtaposed the notion of the King wearing a star with a photo of the monarch on his brave daily rides through the streets of Copenhagen. That gave rise to a version in which the king actually wore a yellow star while out riding. Then the very popular Danish comedian and pianist Victor Borge (I adored Victor Borge!) picked up the story as part of his routines.  And finally, Leon Uris told the story in his 1958 novel Exodus. The subsequent hit movie put the last nail in the coffin of the true story.

OK, that’s an exaggeration. I'll bet some of you already knew the real story, but the fake story has everything going for it – a heroic king, a stirring example of opposition to oppression, and a happy ending.  But I’m also happy to put the real story out there. It may be harder to make heroes of a flotilla of unknown boatmen, but so they are. I salute you!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the best of seasons greetings to all. 

And, as an extra holiday present, here's a funny, funny bit from the talented and hysterical Victor Borge. Borge is the guy in front.