Cheryl Says She's An Atheist
Dec. 11th, 2012 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotProposal for a social psychology experiment:
We'll use four separate, sizable groups of people, say 75 people in each group. (Not that I know if that amount is any good or not, or if we want our overall pool to be similar socioeconomically. I'm not a statistician.)
Ask each member of Group One:
Ask each member of Group Two:
Ask two questions of each member of Group Three:
For the fun of it we could have groups for whom the name of our atheist is Jason, not Cheryl, to see if there are differences between how our subjects go about persuading a woman (albeit an imaginary one) as opposed to a man. Of course, we can also notice the differences between how male and female subjects undertake to persuade, and I suppose we could look at other demographic subsets within our groups — though slicing up our results demographically may result in subsets that are too small to give statistically meaningful results. E.g., if there are eight Asians among a group of seventy-five, those eight are not a big enough sample to generalize from at all about Asian attitudes.
But returning to the main reason for the survey: What I'm expecting to happen is that in Group Two, and Group Three when regarding Question 1, a greater percentage of people will be a bit more uncertain than those in Group One as to what arguments to use; that a greater percentage in Groups Two and Three than in Group One will offer multiple different arguments rather than just one or two, not being certain which arguments will speak to a particular person; and that many people in Group Four will be more uncertain still, a number of them being more flexible and creative and a number of others more puzzled and paralyzed. And I'm predicting that this'll even be true of the atheists among our subjects (atheists in Group Four being more uncertain and more flexible regarding what arguments will be necessary or effective than are the atheists in Groups One, Two, and Three), though presumably atheists in any group will be pretty uncertain anyway about what would be persuasive, given that they've not been persuaded.
Four hypotheses I'm testing:
--First, that people are more certain about what an unspecified member of a group will believe than about what an identified individual might believe, strange as that might seem, and even when the identification is exceedingly minimal, just a name.
--Second, that people have no idea how clueless they are regarding other people's beliefs. What Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said about there being "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" was self-serving in its context, the potential existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and their potential export, which became an American justification for invading — I assume (though I don't know this) that a lot shouldn't have been even in the "unknown" category, much less in the "unknown unknown," i.e., the category where we don't even know that we should look for something, much less where. But there certainly are genuinely unknown unknowns (I'd say that discontinuous energy levels were an unknown unknown for physicists in the 1890s, though someone who knows the history of physics, and physics itself, better than I do might know or suspect that I'm wrong), and to some extent the potential fact of them can be prepared for. Budgeted for, anyway. My experience is that, when it comes to other people's ideas, there's a lot of knowable stuff that could easily be in the "known" category or the "known unknown" category but that for most people is in the "unknown unknown" category. They think they're in known territory and simply don't know that there's something there they don't know. (Not that I work for a university or have access to funds to conduct a massive experiment of the sort I'm proposing. Think of this post as being an oblique elaboration on my Dead Lester post, both this post and that one, among others, getting the "mutual incomprehension pact" tag.)
--Third, that when we give people a hint that they don't know something, or remind them of it, at least some of them will respond with more uncertainty and more willingness to imagine alternatives. That's why I'd expect a fairly big difference in the response to Group Three's Question 1 and Group Four's Question 2, even though they're the same question. If you've already been prodded to wonder if Cheryl has a number of different reasons for being an atheist, and whether or not you know all of them, you might then be less certain and more imaginative as to what ideas might persuade her to rethink. I also expect there will be at least some difference between responses to Group Three's Question 2 and Group Four's Question 1, that the people in Group Three, in trying to think of what would persuade Cheryl, and having therefore come up with some instant rudimentary ideas as to what Cheryl's atheist beliefs are and her reasons for them, will be somewhat prone to stick with those reasons when asked for them in Question Two. I'd expect fewer people to respond with "How the fuck would I know?" to Group Three Question 2 than to Group Four Question 1.
--Four, that my reasons for being an atheist aren't even on most people's maps, and that few of my beliefs will show up in the ideas that people ascribe to Cheryl. (I bet not many people in the world would guess that one of my thoughts when reading Nate Silver on opinions converging towards the truth was that he was being insufficiently atheist. I bet he'd be surprised.</Frank being cryptically provocative>)
This experiment would also be something of a fishing expedition: maybe people would come up with reasons for being an atheist and reasons for believing in God that I hadn't thought of. Maybe there would be surprises regarding what people imagine will persuade other people, some unknown unknowns. I'd hope that at least a few people in Group One would ask "Which atheist?" (Give that person a job interview!) Maybe I'm all wet and the vast majority of subjects will feel the full uncertainty of "Cheryl says she's an atheist." But conversely I fear that the question is so daunting that we wouldn't get enough useful responses, that people would give the written equivalent of monosyllables and grunts. (Maybe we'd offer incentives or threats, tell you that you won't get paid unless you write at least four sentences for each question. Or maybe we'll appeal to people's altruism by begging and crying.) Perhaps we'll get angry retorts from polytheists for referring to "God" rather than to "the gods." I hope so.
We'll use four separate, sizable groups of people, say 75 people in each group. (Not that I know if that amount is any good or not, or if we want our overall pool to be similar socioeconomically. I'm not a statistician.)
Ask each member of Group One:
What arguments would you use to try and persuade an atheist to consider that there might be a God after all?[It's likely that at least a few people in each group will be atheists, but that's no reason they shouldn't try to answer the question.]
Ask each member of Group Two:
Cheryl tells you she is an atheist. What arguments would you use to try and persuade her there might be a God after all?We're trying to see if by giving our atheist a name, so a potential personal, individual history, we elicit responses here and there that are different in type from what we generally got in Group One.
Ask two questions of each member of Group Three:
Group Three Question 1: Cheryl says she is an atheist. What arguments would you use to try and persuade her there might be a God after all?It's important that the subjects complete the first question before seeing the second.
Group Three Question 2: What do you imagine Cheryl's reasons might be for being an atheist?Then for Group Four, we reverse the order of the two questions, again making sure the subjects finish the first before seeing the second.
Group Four Question 1: Cheryl says she is an atheist. What do you imagine her reasons might be for being an atheist?There are all sorts of ways to tweak these questions, were we to have access to a large population of potential subjects who were willing to respond to our questions. For instance, for a fifth and sixth group we could replace "What do you imagine Cheryl's reasons are for being an atheist?" with "What do you imagine are the various beliefs that make up Cheryl's atheism?"
Group Four Question 2: What arguments would you use to try and persuade her there might be a God after all?
For the fun of it we could have groups for whom the name of our atheist is Jason, not Cheryl, to see if there are differences between how our subjects go about persuading a woman (albeit an imaginary one) as opposed to a man. Of course, we can also notice the differences between how male and female subjects undertake to persuade, and I suppose we could look at other demographic subsets within our groups — though slicing up our results demographically may result in subsets that are too small to give statistically meaningful results. E.g., if there are eight Asians among a group of seventy-five, those eight are not a big enough sample to generalize from at all about Asian attitudes.
But returning to the main reason for the survey: What I'm expecting to happen is that in Group Two, and Group Three when regarding Question 1, a greater percentage of people will be a bit more uncertain than those in Group One as to what arguments to use; that a greater percentage in Groups Two and Three than in Group One will offer multiple different arguments rather than just one or two, not being certain which arguments will speak to a particular person; and that many people in Group Four will be more uncertain still, a number of them being more flexible and creative and a number of others more puzzled and paralyzed. And I'm predicting that this'll even be true of the atheists among our subjects (atheists in Group Four being more uncertain and more flexible regarding what arguments will be necessary or effective than are the atheists in Groups One, Two, and Three), though presumably atheists in any group will be pretty uncertain anyway about what would be persuasive, given that they've not been persuaded.
Four hypotheses I'm testing:
--First, that people are more certain about what an unspecified member of a group will believe than about what an identified individual might believe, strange as that might seem, and even when the identification is exceedingly minimal, just a name.
--Second, that people have no idea how clueless they are regarding other people's beliefs. What Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said about there being "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" was self-serving in its context, the potential existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and their potential export, which became an American justification for invading — I assume (though I don't know this) that a lot shouldn't have been even in the "unknown" category, much less in the "unknown unknown," i.e., the category where we don't even know that we should look for something, much less where. But there certainly are genuinely unknown unknowns (I'd say that discontinuous energy levels were an unknown unknown for physicists in the 1890s, though someone who knows the history of physics, and physics itself, better than I do might know or suspect that I'm wrong), and to some extent the potential fact of them can be prepared for. Budgeted for, anyway. My experience is that, when it comes to other people's ideas, there's a lot of knowable stuff that could easily be in the "known" category or the "known unknown" category but that for most people is in the "unknown unknown" category. They think they're in known territory and simply don't know that there's something there they don't know. (Not that I work for a university or have access to funds to conduct a massive experiment of the sort I'm proposing. Think of this post as being an oblique elaboration on my Dead Lester post, both this post and that one, among others, getting the "mutual incomprehension pact" tag.)
--Third, that when we give people a hint that they don't know something, or remind them of it, at least some of them will respond with more uncertainty and more willingness to imagine alternatives. That's why I'd expect a fairly big difference in the response to Group Three's Question 1 and Group Four's Question 2, even though they're the same question. If you've already been prodded to wonder if Cheryl has a number of different reasons for being an atheist, and whether or not you know all of them, you might then be less certain and more imaginative as to what ideas might persuade her to rethink. I also expect there will be at least some difference between responses to Group Three's Question 2 and Group Four's Question 1, that the people in Group Three, in trying to think of what would persuade Cheryl, and having therefore come up with some instant rudimentary ideas as to what Cheryl's atheist beliefs are and her reasons for them, will be somewhat prone to stick with those reasons when asked for them in Question Two. I'd expect fewer people to respond with "How the fuck would I know?" to Group Three Question 2 than to Group Four Question 1.
--Four, that my reasons for being an atheist aren't even on most people's maps, and that few of my beliefs will show up in the ideas that people ascribe to Cheryl. (I bet not many people in the world would guess that one of my thoughts when reading Nate Silver on opinions converging towards the truth was that he was being insufficiently atheist. I bet he'd be surprised.</Frank being cryptically provocative>)
This experiment would also be something of a fishing expedition: maybe people would come up with reasons for being an atheist and reasons for believing in God that I hadn't thought of. Maybe there would be surprises regarding what people imagine will persuade other people, some unknown unknowns. I'd hope that at least a few people in Group One would ask "Which atheist?" (Give that person a job interview!) Maybe I'm all wet and the vast majority of subjects will feel the full uncertainty of "Cheryl says she's an atheist." But conversely I fear that the question is so daunting that we wouldn't get enough useful responses, that people would give the written equivalent of monosyllables and grunts. (Maybe we'd offer incentives or threats, tell you that you won't get paid unless you write at least four sentences for each question. Or maybe we'll appeal to people's altruism by begging and crying.) Perhaps we'll get angry retorts from polytheists for referring to "God" rather than to "the gods." I hope so.
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no subject
Date: 2012-12-16 06:02 am (UTC)This is in part where the "more or less ethnocentric" stuff probably comes in -- and of course I'll have more to say about it when I've actually finished the book (what a concept!). I would guess that given the authors' definition and measures of ethnocentrism, most atheists and agnostics would be generally more tolerant of lots of different groups, hence "less ethnocentric" and likely also less likely to identify strongly with or against a group. But again these are just my guesses, not what the book says. (I'm using this comment thread somewhat selfishly to get thoughts that have been flitting around for a week out somewhere.)