Monthly Archives: July 2017

Republicans Say Colleges Are Bad For the Country

Education, Politics, ,

We won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.

Donald Trump (2/23/16)

Americans are used to the intense partisan divisions over many political issues—abortion, gun control, health care, economic policy, and so forth. However, education has largely escaped from partisan debate. Although Democrats and Republicans may squabble about how much money to spend on education, and how education is to be delivered, it has always been part of the conventional wisdom that education itself is valuable to the individual and the society. Thus it was surprising to read this headline from a new poll from the Pew Research Center: “Republicans increasingly say colleges have negative impact in U. S.”

The data come from a national survey of 2504 adults conducted June 8-18, 2017. Respondents were asked whether they thought each of five institutions—churches, banks, labor unions, the news media, and college and universities—have “a positive or negative effect on the way things are going in the country.” Here are the results comparing Republicans and Republican-leaners vs. Democrats and Democratic-leaners.

Although partisan differences of opinion on the value of labor unions and the news media were anticipated, differences in approval of colleges and universities were just as large. Moreover, partisan differences over the effects of colleges have increased sharply in the last two years. Here are the time trends.

The change is almost entirely attributable to Republicans. Although Democratic attitudes toward colleges have remained stable, Republican attitudes have shifted dramatically in the negative direction. As recently as 2015, 54% of Republicans said colleges had a positive impact on society and 37% said their impact was negative.

Furthermore, this negative shift among Republicans cannot be attributed exclusively to those who have not gone to college. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, Republican college graduates are slightly less likely to give colleges and universities positive ratings. This would seem to suggest that negative personal experiences may have played a role in their dissatisfaction.

The Pew survey is silent about the reasons for this change in opinion, so I guess I’m free to speculate. First of all, we should remember that there has been considerable partisan realignment in the last decade. Therefore, this result could be due as much to the migration of people who dislike colleges into the Republican Party as to attitude change toward colleges among people who were Republicans all along.

A second explanation may be the negative publicity colleges and universities have received due to excessive drinking (sometimes leading to deaths), increases in reported sexual assault, and attempts to censor campus speakers (although the public should be aware that most of the censorship takes place silently during the preparation of the guest list, rather than afterwards). However, much of the pushback against campus disciplinary action against accused rapists is coming from Republicans, and it is wealthy alumni that consistently oppose crackdowns on fraternities that encourage underage drinking. Therefore, some of the objections may be to the punishment of offenders rather than to the offenses themselves.

A third possibility is that Republicans are objecting to the knowledge produced by college and university faculty rather than campus social policies. Although Stephen Colbert may claim he was joking when he said that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” it is almost certainly true that more of the scholarship coming out of both the natural and social sciences contradicts Republican policies than supports them. This has generated well-organized and financed resistance from business interests, especially fossil fuel corporations whose future profitability is threatened by climate change. Although Shawn Otto gave his book,The War on Science, a nonpartisan title, the text makes it clear that the war is being waged by churches, business groups and Republican party operatives. Chris Mooney gave his similar book a more candid title: The Republican War on Science.

Regardless of the reasons for this attitude change among Republicans, it poses a threat to the continued funding of public colleges and universities. The university system in which I taught has seen a sharp drop in state funding over the past 30 years.

The middle and lower class young people for whom the State System of Higher Education (SSHE) was intended have largely been priced out of the market. Enrollment is dropping (for this and other reasons). A private consulting firm hired by the state of Pennsylvania—without student or faculty input—has recommended reorganization that will almost certainly involve cutbacks in programs and downsizing of the system. Meanwhile, SSHE has announced a 3.5% tuition increase for next year, as the system continues to circle the drain.

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Racialization and Student Athletes

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IUP’s Tuition Increase, Part 2

Publicizing Bystander Intervention

Media, Social psychology, , ,

John Tumpane is a hero. On Wednesday, June 28, this Major League Baseball umpire was crossing the Roberto Clemente Bridge on his way to PNC Park in Pittsburgh, where he was to call ball and strikes in the Pirates’ game against the Tampa Bay Rays that night. He spotted a 23-year-old woman who had climbed over the railing and was looking down at the Allegheny River. As it turned out, she intended to commit suicide. Mr. Tumpane calmly attempted to talk her out of it, and eventually, with the help of some other passers-by, physically restrained her from jumping while another bystander called 911.

Believe it or not, an umpire is applauded at PNC Park.

Mr. Tumpane received a standing ovation at PNC Park the following night, and the story received both local and some national attention in the news media, including a front-page article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the following day, quoting Dr. Christine Moutier of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention saying that he did all the right things. From the perspective of social psychology, the important point is that he didn’t fall victim to the bystander effect.

The bystander effect does not refer to the failure of bystanders to intervene in an emergency. It refers to the paradoxical finding that the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely and more slowly they are to intervene. Two social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, read about the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City. It was originally reported that 38 people had witnessed the assault, yet no one intervened or called the police for 35 minutes. Darley and Latane hypothesized that the large number of bystanders was the key to understanding their failure to take action, and initiated a research program demonstrating that helping declines as group size increases. Researchers have recently concluded that the original news reports of Ms. Genovese’s death were exaggerated. Not all 38 people actually witnessed the murder and some of them called the police sooner than was originally reported. Nevertheless, the bystander effect has been replicated in dozens of studies.

Kitty Genovese and her Queens, New York neighborhood.

It’s not that surprising that bystanders fail to intervene. As Darley and Latane point out, a bystander must successfully work through five steps before intervention can take place. He or she must:

  • Notice the event
  • Interpret it as an emergency
  • Assume responsibility
  • Know the appropriate form of assistance
  • Implement a decision to help

The presence of others can interfere at any of these steps, but particularly the second and the third, where bystander intervention can be inhibited by either pluralistic ignorance or diffusion of responsibility.

Pluralistic ignorance. Is this really a suicide attempt, or is the young woman just clowning around? It would be embarrassing to make a fool of oneself by overreacting to a benign event. When in doubt, we look to other bystanders for cues to their interpretation of the situation. But they may also be trying to appear outwardly calm, looking to us for information. As a result, the bystanders could fall victim to pluralistic ignorance, in which a group of people arrive at a definition of the situation that is different from their individual first impressions. They may come to believe that nothing is wrong because no one else looks concerned.

We know from the newspaper article that Mr. Tumpane was initially uncertain about whether he was witnessing an emergency. He asked a couple in front of him, “What’s this lady trying to do?” and they said, “I don’t know.” Fortunately, this did not deter him from interpreting the situation as a possible emergency.

Diffusion of responsibility. We don’t know how many people were on the Clemente Bridge that afternoon. The article says it was “mostly empty.” This may have helped Mr. Tumpane to avoid diffusion of responsibility. If only one person had been aware of the emergency and failed to intervene, he or she might be considered responsible for the woman’s death. But the greater the number of bystanders, the more responsibility is diffused, or spread out, among the witnesses. With many bystanders, no one feels responsible.

Since there were at least a few other bystanders on the bridge that afternoon, we can credit Mr. Tumpane with taking the lead in assuming responsibility. He also knew how to help a person in distress and did so skillfully.

By the way, one of the take-homes from this research is that if you are ever the victim of an emergency in a busy environment, it is best to single out one of the bystanders (to avoid diffusion of responsibility), tell this person that you need help (to avoid pluralistic ignorance), and, if possible, tell him or her exactly what you need, i.e., “Call 911!”

Failures of bystanders to intervene in emergencies are often publicized by the news media. Such stories may unintentionally increase cynicism. Fortunately, Mr. Tumpane’s helpfulness also received media attention and recognition.

Another place people hear about bystander intervention or its absence is in social psychology classes. One group of researchers randomly assigned students to hear a lecture either on Darley and Latane’s experiments, which included information about how to respond appropriately to an emergency, or a totally different topic (the control group). Two weeks later, as part of what they thought was an unrelated study, each of these students encountered a young man lying motionless on the floor. Was he sick or injured, or merely drunk or asleep? Only 25% of the students in the control group stopped to help the student, but 43% of those who had heard the lecture on bystander intervention stopped to help. Far from perfect, but better.

People often claim they would like the media to tell them more good news. Publicizing successful instances of bystander intervention, along with information about how best to intervene, would seem to be win-win for both the news media and future victims of emergencies.

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Here I Am. Do You See Me?

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Correction