Congressional Problems, Our Problems (Part 2)

Congressional Problems, Our Problems (Part 2)

Last time I discussed pressure to do something even if it’s wrong, and stage one thinking. Those problems affect all of us but especially congress. Now let’s move on to a couple of other problems.

A third congressional problem is that there is seldom any motivation for congress to fix the problems it creates. Just look at the mortgage issue for example. People who should never have qualified for mortgages were able to do so because of pressure on lenders and because of programs to allow them to get loans with no down payment. It should have been no surprise that many subsequently defaulted on those mortgages. So has congress cracked down on the problem? Of course not, that might cost votes. Instead we now have a program of mortgage subsidies that allows the subsidy to be used for the down payment. I'm afraid the results will be predictable.

In our own lives we are also tempted to stick with bad decisions long after we should recognize that they are bad. This is a natural human tendency, based on something that has benefited the race for eons. When a child misbehaves we usually do not immediately decide that having a child was a mistake and abandon that child. That is a good thing when it comes to children, but not with investments or most other bad decisions.

We all make mistakes. The wise learn from those mistakes and correct their problems. The unwise persist with their bad decisions, to their detriment. (In fact the truly wise learn from the mistakes of others.)

A forth problem is accessibility bias, the tendency to be unduly influenced by most recent or most noticeable events. The cognitive psychologists have done experiments demonstrating that what we have recently seen, or what is spectacular, tends to overwhelm the less spectacular things or those in the distant past. In one experiment, subjects spun a wheel giving numbers up to 100. Then they were asked to guess how many African countries were in the UN. There was an amazing correlation between the number they saw on that wheel and their guesses about UN countries. The number accessible in their minds unduly influenced their guesses on an unrelated topic.

Think of how this affects congress. Who gets most of their attention? Clearly not the guy working in a factory or on a farm trying to keep up with the needs of his family. No, there are union and business lobbyists, “public interest” groups with an ax to grind, and others twisting their arms or convincing representatives of their viewpoints. All that attention provides accessibility bias toward meeting the demands of those groups at the expense of good citizens who haven't time to camp on the representative's doorstep. The result is that congress has a distorted, one-sided view of reality.

Of course accessibility bias affects us all. The memorable advertisement, the spectacular and bloody news story etc. all cause us to view the world differently than we would otherwise. Without conscious effort to avoid distortion we will not have a good picture of the world.

I’ve mentioned four problems here:

Pressure to do something, even if it’s wrong,
Stage one thinking,
Failure to learn from and correct previous mistakes, and
Accessibility bias

Those four problems affect us all. However the nature of congress causes them to have more effect on that body than on most of us. We see the reason every time we look in a mirror. As Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Voters continue to demand action, even if wrong. Voters demand superficial solutions and fail to demand evaluation beyond stage one. Voters fail to demand that congress correct past errors or look beyond the lobbyists when making decisions. Until that changes, congress will not change.

What can we do? As voters we can demand that congress do better in these areas. More importantly, we can look at ourselves, how we vote and the things we ask of our representatives. However, beyond that we should encourage a return to a limited, constitutional government. We need to get away from the whole idea of government as a paternalistic solution to all our problems. The power to solve those problems is also the power to take our freedoms and create new problems.

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The Spectacular and the Important

You probably followed the story in the news. In December of 2006 three climbers went missing on Oregon's Mount Hood. Rescue teams converged, as did military aviation resources. The best guess was that they were near the summit but weather was so bad that searchers could not reach that area for nearly a week. Finally the weather changed allowing a search of the summit area, though it was a difficult operation. The body of one climber was found in a snow cave. The other two are still missing and presumed dead.

That sad event is only one of several high-publicity searches in which I've participated. At least four of them received worldwide news coverage. During the same years those publicized events occurred, our rescue team probably helped save many more people than we ever searched for, but those events will never make the evening news. The way we saved them was to simply provide information and advice that kept them out of trouble.

We have a public education program, which offers speakers to clubs, scout troops etc. We also put a team on Mount Hood during the peak climbing season to be ready in case of trouble and to talk to climbers. We have no way of knowing how many people made wiser decisions because of our outreach programs. We cannot know who would have been lost, injured, or killed had they not received that information. And of course the news seldom publicizes one of our people talking to a scout troop. Prevention is not as spectacular as is rescue.

The point of all this is that there is essentially no connection between how spectacular something is and its importance. Nor is there much connection between the obvious and the important. Millions of people go about their lives doing important things like raising children who grow up to be productive citizens. That is the most important job on the planet but it gets little attention. In fact in many circles people sneer at anyone “on the mommy track” as though that were a bad thing. Sadly, we tend to equate publicity or having lots of money with importance. Meanwhile we pay little attention to jobs that are important but not very lucrative.

This emphasis on the obvious is technically called “accessibility bias.” If something is very visible that skews our thinking, sometimes with disastrous results. It is the equivalent of the magician who distracts our attention with a lot of motion and color with one hand while the other hand does his tricks “hidden in plain sight” by our lack of attention to what is really happening.

The obvious, the most accessible, gets our attention. Such was the case when a young couple suffered a motorcycle crash. He appeared uninjured, his leather clothing having protected him from the abrasions he might have suffered. She, on the other hand, looked like something out of a nightmare (she had been wearing a bikini). There were scratches and abrasions all over her body. Everybody in the area wanted to help, especially her boyfriend. They called an ambulance which got her to the hospital where she recovered – in time to attend her boyfriend's funeral. He bled to death internally from a ruptured spleen. People had been distracted by her spectacular injuries so they overlooked his less obvious problems.

There are of course plenty of other examples of accessibility bias. The politician or activist who makes a lot of noise about some cause (which may already be improving). The salesperson or advertiser who calls our attention to the flashy aspects of a product, thus distracting us from the fact that we really don't need it. Even our own tendency to focus on a child's misbehavior and not notice that 95% of the time he is a loving, well-behaved young person.

What can we do about this? The only solution I know of is to pay more attention to all aspects of a situation. We can stop and think: What is that politician hiding: Is the child's behavior problem just an aberration. Is that news story really significant or just spectacular? That is not easy I know. We have to change habits. However it will be worth it.

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