Machiavellians Believe in Conspiracies Because That is What They Would Do

Why do some people believe conspiracy theories? Because they would join conspiracies themselves.

British psychologists Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton found that people with a machiavellian attitude toward deceiving and manipulating other people were more likely to believe in conspiracies to manipulate and deceive.

This makes me wonder what kind of people believe, as I do, that there are many "conspiracies" to help others and build up the world. Though I don't think of these as conspiracies so much as cooperation.

The Moral Majority is Gone from Young Memory

As background to today's discussion of Bill Bishop's The Big Sort, I was teaching the early history of the culture war. The students knew about many of the cultural changes of the Sixties. They knew that there was a conservative backlash. One ventured "Religious Right" as the name of the conservative mobilization.

But none of them had heard of the Moral Majority or Jerry Falwell.

When I was in college in the late '70s and early '80s, the Moral Majority was as familiar as the Tea Party is today.

Contented People Are More Likely to Vote

Baylor political scientist Patrick Flavin thought contented people would be less likely to vote, and discontented people more. Just the opposite turns out to be true.

This makes sense to me. Bill Bishop argued in The Big Sort that voting is mostly a way of expressing solidarity with community values. People in the majority party or ideology are more likely to turn out to vote regularly, while the minority party or ideology is much harder to mobilize in any given constituency.

Serenity Parenting Leads to Pro-Natalism

I just read a very Gruntled Center argument. Bryan Caplan, based on twin studies and his own parenting, came to this conclusion: parenting matters less to how kids turn out than most anxious "concerted cultivation" parents think. So lighten up and enjoy your kids. He calls this "Serenity Parenting."

The corollary is more interesting: if you don't really need to run yourself ragged raising each kid, you can have more of them.

I am looking forward to reading (and blogging) his book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.

Social Media Builds Social Ties

The Gruntled Center is naturally interested in a blog called Gruntled Employees. Jay Shepherd writes about employment law that makes for happy employees. He had an interesting post lately, "Vote 'Yes' on Social-Media Law." He urges companies to accept social media as a fact of life, and encourage employees to use them well, rather than try to prohibit social media on the job.

One of Shepherd's arguments for a "Yes" rather than a "No" policy is "Yes, these employees can act as effective brand ambassadors for their companies, and they should be encouraged to do so."

I am not precisely an employee of Centre College, and I am not at all an employee of the Hub Coffee House. Nor do I think of the work and life of either institution as merely a brand. But I am very interested in the life and prosperity of both communities.

A real example of what Shepherd is talking about occurred while I was reading Gruntled Employees. This exchange happened on Facebook:

Samantha ___ Misses Centre College. Who's with me?

(Within minutes, 12 alums liked this status.)

I wrote (I like your sentiment in missing Centre. I am still here, sitting in the Hub. Now I am thinking about y'all.)

Ted ___ Now I miss the Hub!



By such exchanges social media help build up the ties of social life. And, incidentally, help the "brand" if it, too, builds up the ties of social life.

Virginia Commemorates Both Sides of the Civil War

Robert McDonnell, the governor of Virginia whose policies I often disagree with, has issued a solid and well-balanced declaration of April as "Civil War History in Virginia Month." I particularly appreciate this point:

The largest wartime population of African-American slaves was in Virginia, yet through their own acts of courage and resilience, as well as the actions of the United States army and federal government, they bequeathed to themselves and posterity a legacy of freedom.

Acknowledging both sides of Civil War history in Virginia is, I think, superior to the Gov. McDonnell's earlier proclamation of April as "Confederate History Month."

Yes, Sex Discrimination Did Happen and Still Does

Mrs. G. thought my last two posts were insensitive to the actual discrimination experienced by women we know, especially in our mothers' and grandmothers' generation. So, just to be clear, I of course know that sex discrimination was not just rampant more than a generation ago, it was official policy. And I know that sex discrimination still goes on. There are women right now who are paid less because they are women.

BUT we have had a sea change since the 1970s in how we think of men, women, and work. The aim of both kinds of feminism has been to open all choices to women. In this endeavor we have been hugely successful. Not completely successful, but hugely successful.

And the main point of controversy between egalitarian feminism and difference feminism is whether, given a choice, men and women would choose each option at the same rate or not. I believe the unfolding facts increasingly support the difference feminist view. The goal of having all choices equally open to men and women remains, and remains vital. But equal opportunity will not, I am convinced, produce equal outcomes.

The Wage Gap is Due to Life Choices - The Attempted Rebuttal

Yesterday I argued that the wage gap between men and women is mostly due to the different life choices that men and women, as a group, tend to make. The American Association of University Women regularly argues that the wage gap is due to discrimination and a "glass ceiling." Their most recent report is here.

The AAUW report begins with the familiar claim that women earn 77 cents to a man's dollar - a 23% wage gap. Later in the report, though, they admit that

After accounting for college major, occupation, industry, sector, hours worked, workplace flexibility, experience, educational attainment, enrollment status, GPA, institution selectivity, age, race/ethnicity, region, marital status, and number of children, a 5 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation was still unexplained.

Many factors could go into this 5 percent gap, including discrimination. However, other research has found that woman are more reluctant to negotiate their wages, and men are more likely to ask for more than they were offered.

The AAUW report goes on to cite another study that shows the wage gap growing for college-educated women and men in the decade after college. They write

A similar analysis of full-time workers 10 years after college graduation found a 12 percent unexplained difference in earnings.

However, that "similar analysis" leaves out the crucial difference between men and women in their 20s - women are likely to leave or cut back on work when they have children, while men are likely to work more when they have children.

As Susan Pinker argued in The Sexual Paradox, the more choice women have, the more they differ from men. American college-educated women in the 21st century are among the freest to choose of any group of women in the history of the world.

The Wage Gap is Due to Life Choices, 2011

It is time for our annual discussion of why men earn more than women in the "Family Life" class. This year two enterprising students shared with the class two opposing current reports on this subject. I will blog one today and the other tomorrow.

Carrie Lukas, of the Independent Women's Forum, argues that there is no male-female wage gap. Sure, the median woman's wage is about three-quarters of the median man's wage, and has been for some time. However, when you make an apples-to-apples comparison, controlling for how much men and women work, their education, experience, job sector, industry, and firm, almost all of the pay gap disappears. In fact, for jobs that require more education in our knowledge-oriented economy, women start out doing better than men.

The core of the wage gap is that women are much more likely to choose to trade pay for family time. The gap begins in the prime childbirth and child-rearing years.

The second main cause of the wage gap, and one that egalitarian feminists and difference feminists most fight over, is that women are much less likely to take jobs that require the most time, intensive effort, and responsibility - which also tend to pay more. This gap continues after the kids are grown.

Men trade success for more money and power. Women trade success for more time and to focus on just the kind of work they like. These choices tend to improve women's lives. All it costs them is money.

Even Among Very Happy Parents, Marriage Matters to Kids

Child Trends has an interesting new report comparing how well the parents get along with how well the kids are doing.

"Social competence," measures whether kids are respectful of teachers and neighbors, get along well with others, understand other people's feelings, and try to resolve conflicts with others. If the child's parents are very happy, the kids are more socially competent.

The most interesting finding to me, though, is that even in this best-off group - very happy parents, socially competent kids - the kids with married natural parents are still better off.

The social competence rate is about the same for very happy married step-parents (60%), cohabiting biological or adoptive parents (58%), and cohabiting step parents (57%).

For married biological or adoptive parents, though, the proportion of socially competent kids is significantly higher: 70%

46% of Mississippi Republicans Think Interracial Marriage Should be Illegal

Public Policy Polling surveyed Mississippi Republicans about their preference for the GOP presidential nominee next year. In the middle of that survey they found this shocker:

We asked voters on this poll whether they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal- 46% of Mississippi Republicans said it should be illegal to just 40% who think it should be legal.

Among the potential nominees, people who thought interracial marriage should be allowed most favored Mitt Romney, while those Republicans who thought interracial marriage should be prohibited favored Sarah Palin the most.

College Trip to a University

I am taking my son on a college-exploring trip. Our family is strongly oriented to small colleges. My son is the third child, so I have always expected that he would diverge more from his parents than the first or second child did. One form of that divergence might be that he would want to try a university for his undergraduate education.

Universities offer amazing resources for students who know just what they want to to do. Child #3, who wants to be Under-Secretary of State for East Asians Affairs, may be that student.

So, we might have to suck it up if he wants to go to Vanderbilt. It's pretty rough.

Mappiness

I nifty British experiment has begun to map happiness using iPhones. Mappiness pings iPhone users who have signed up for the project several times a day to ask them how happy they feel and what they are doing. The phone will also tell the researchers where the respondents are, and the time of day. The research project can them map which places are happiest, and what sort of features those places have. The app also keeps track of the users responses over time, creating personal happiness graphs for each person.

Christian Practice, Not Nominal Faith, Prevents Divorce

The widely-reported statistic that Christians are as likely to divorce as other people is not quite true.

Brad Wilcox, of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, reports that people who attend religious services are 35% less likely to divorce than people who do not attend religious services.

Even more intriguing, though, is his report that people who report conservative Protestant beliefs, but who do not actually attend church, are 20% more likely to divorce than secular people are.

The Ballad of Mary Magdelene

This song, by Cry, Cry, Cry, has this wonderful line:

Long ago I had my work
When I was in prime
But I gave it up and all for love
It was his career or mine

Blue Kentucky

Last Sunday I wrote about basketball as the civil religion of Kentucky.

This week, the feeling is even stronger. The University of Kentucky men's basketball team plays a Final Four game tonight. Today, our town was blue and white. In the grocery store, the bank, the coffee shop, on the street - by my count every third person was wearing blue and white and/or the word "Kentucky."

The commonwealth will slow down at 8:40. This is a binding fact among people of all classes. Civil religion's high festival is upon us.

College Couples Parting With a Handshake

I have been re-reading the wonderful anthology of marriage and courtship texts, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar, collected by Amy and Leon Kass. In the selection from Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind is this gripping complaint:

When I see a young couple who have lived together throughout their college years leave each other with a handshake and move out into life, I am struck dumb.

Bloom fears that they suffer from true apatheia, from numb, passionless souls. I think the cause is not quite as bad as that. I think many college students have absorbed an ideology that they should not settle in to adult life until they are old - say, 30. College couples have all the normal human desire to find their mate and get on with life, which in any other culture and time they would just go ahead and do. They have an idea, though, that they should go experience things before they find their spouse.

The married couples who come to my "Family Life" class are subversively suggesting, by their very lives, the alternative idea that experiencing things with your spouse makes for a great adventure.

Kids Increase Married Parents' Happiness

Some studies had found that having children did not clearly increase parents' happiness, while others found that it did. Luis Angeles has cleared up the mystery, I think: Kids increase the happiness of married parents, but decrease it for single parents and cohabiting couples.

Moreover, Angeles found that married parents' happiness increased with each child up to three kids, which he thinks is the amount of kids most married couples want to have. Married mothers were made happier by having children than married fathers were - with three kids, mothers were made about twice as happy as fathers.

[ Luis Angeles, “Children and Life Satisfaction”, Journal of Happiness Studies, 2009]

11% Extremely Satisfied With Their Lives

I was sent a tidbit from a new Gallup poll. When asked, on a five-point scale, to rate how satisfied they are with their lives, most people (58%) said they were satisfied. Eleven percent chose the strongest ranking, saying they were extremely satisfied with their lives.

Basketball as Religion

Today is one of the great movable feasts of Kentucky's civil religion - the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The feast happens for a month each year, and Kentucky gets to participate almost every year through several avatars, most especially the University of Kentucky. This year has been a heightened collective effervescence. The team beat the top-ranked team in a very close game the other night. 90% of my friends' Facebook posts for the next ten hours were about the game.

Tonight the UK teams faces off against a traditional rival power, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Which means that the Bluegrass will simply stop functioning from 5 to about 7 tonight. I bet half the households in the middle of the state, and probably a quarter of the rest, will watch or listen to the game. Facebook will be full of running commentary. Tomorrow's conversation in all venues, high and low, male and female, of every color and nominal creed, will at least touch on the game, whatever the outcome.

Which is fine. Civil religion unites. The content does not have to be the most elevated, as long as it is shared. Indeed, there is only a minority taste for the most elevated content (or the least elevated, for that matter). Civil religion faith and practice pretty much have to be middle-brow and middle-morals. But if everyone is willing to care, and share their caring, then civil society is renewed. Which is a good thing.