The psychology of why we’re so gung ho about war with Iran.
By Sal Gentile.
PBS.ORG
March 14, 2012
Iranian security forces stand guard around the site of an explosion that killed a chemist working at a key nuclear facility in January. Even after a decade of war, Americans still support attacks on Iran like this one. (AP Photo/IIPA, Sajjad Safari)
The United States is just barely emerging from what has arguably been the longest period of war in its history. War-weary Americans say in polls that they support the speedy withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, a prospect that seems ever more likely after a series of tragedies there in recent weeks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed the lives of more than 6,300 American soldiers and run up a cost of more than $3 trillion. For a beleaguered public battered by three years of depressing economic news, one might think another war would be entirely out of the question.
And yet, two polls published on Tuesday show that, even as they remain skeptical of military adventurism abroad and disgruntled over high gas prices, most Americans support the idea of a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent that country from obtaining nuclear weapons. A CBS News/New York Times poll found that 51 percent of Americans support military action against Iran. A similar poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos put the number even higher, at 56 percent.
Such high levels of support might seem inexplicable, especially to those, like President Obama, who have been counseling patience amid the drumbeat of war. The costs of a war with Iran would likely be massive and immediate: rising gas prices, heightened regional instability and a long, bloody conflict with Israel at its center. A war with Iran would also likely wipe out the gains of the last few years in the fight against terrorism, providing an immediate recruiting tool for groups like Al Qaeda. And it would add a match to the tinderbox that is the already volatile Middle East.
So, what explains the fervor for war? Findings in a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that our enthusiasm for a confrontation with Iran might have something to do with how we talk about Iran. Reports from Iraq and Afghanistan have been regular features on our TVs and in our newspapers for roughly a decade now. Iran, however, remains a relatively fuzzy notion to us. Americans of a certain age will have in their minds the images from the 1979 hostage crisis, but that’s it. Who knows or cares much about Iran?
That, according to the paper, makes it easy for us to homogenize Iran as one coherent group. Our minds think of “Iran” not as a country where a small subset of elites force decisions upon a relatively helpless public, but as a person, essentially — a single entity with its own intentions, desires and plans. As David Berreby of Big Think points out, we see this in the way our media discusses the Iran situation. Sentences like “Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons” are commonplace (in fact, they often appear in the very polls used to gauge public opinion). We don’t think of individual “Iranians,” like the government scientist who was assassinated one day on the street. Our minds are wired to think of “Iran” as one single entity — and an evil one at that.
And when we do that, according to the researchers, we judge the group’s actions much more harshly than we would the actions of a disparate collection of individuals. In the experiment, the researchers told test subjects about a fictitious group of people called the “Greels.” Some of the participants learned that the Greels all looked the same and did their Greel things together, like a sort of hive. Others learned that the Greels were all different, came in different shapes and sizes, and behaved as individuals. When researchers asked participants to judge various moral behaviors of the Greels, participants who learned that the Greels were one big homogenous group judged their actions much more harshly than those who saw them as individuals.
The finding is consistent with what researchers have already known for years about how human beings express empathy and compassion. We’re much more likely to be emotionally affected by an individual story of hardship than we are by generalized statistics about large groups of people. This trend might be what happens over the course of a war like the one in Iraq. At the outset, we saw “Iraq” as a single entity, similarly bent on “obtaining weapons of mass destruction,” and we judged that nation’s actions very harshly. Only when stories of individual suffering began pouring in on our TVs and in our newspapers did we begin to see Iraqis as individuals, and change our minds.
Berreby, for his part, suggests a solution of sorts for this kind of dangerous generalized thinking: Replace “Iran” with the names of individuals, like Asghar Farhadi, the Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker. “The next time someone explains why the West might need to attack, try substituting ‘Farhadi and his family’ for ‘Iran’ and see how that feels,” Berreby wrote. Perhaps the same is true for our polls about a possible war with Iran, too.
All around us, the future is unevenly spread out in expanding digital cities, and dense pockets within these cities -- and in other parts of the world, dollops of the future have been squeezed out more sparingly, in small towns and distant regions barely on the digital map.
Por Jose Luis Cárdenas T. Abogado de la Universidad de Chile. LL.M y PhD. Freiburg, Alemania. Profesor de Derecho Constitucional Económico U. de Chile. Director de Asuntos Regulatorios del Laboratorio Chile.
El estado-nación y la sociedad actual sufren un doble acoso: el de la globalización y el de la biodiversidad; ambas corroen las fronteras que la modernidad había considerado sólidas e infranqueables. Las instituciones políticas, confinadas territorialmente y ligadas al suelo, son incapaces de hacer frente a la extraterritorialidad y al libre flujo de las finanzas, el capital y el comercio. Frente a esto, la sociología debe desmontar los marcos conceptuales que dieron cuenta de la modernidad para poder diseñar los trazos de las nuevas experiencias humanas. Sobre ello tratan las reflexiones que Zygmunt Bauman hace en este libro.
Dr. Gonzaga was introduced by Heather Patrick, Ph.D. (NIH). Dr. Gonzaga is the director of Research & Development for the online dating service, eHarmony, but will be addressing the nature of compatibility and sustained relationships in general. Considered an expert in the area of "relationship science", Dr. Gongaza will share with us some observations about "the changing face of relationships" and some of the findings which have emerged from his research into the dynamics and predictors of healthy, enduring relationships.
One of the most positive results of schools embracing new technologies is found when low-income students gain skills they otherwise wouldn’t. The ability to type, use email and execute basic computer functions like Word and Excel are imperative in today’s workforce. When students who have no access to computers at home learn these skills specifically because of technology in the classroom, they have a far greater chance of moving from have-nots to haves in the future. Having technological competence gives them a better chance of success in the workforce and gives them a greater ability and confidence to pursue online education university options.
When classrooms adopt iPads or other tablets in lower grades amongst younger students, the possibility that those students will be left behind in terms of the greater society decreases dramatically. Studies have consistently shown that new technology introduction to younger children provides better results than when introduced at a later age. Even if low-income students have no access to computers at home, the integration of new technology into all aspects of school life ensures that they have greater opportunities going forward.
There are some arguably negative implications to the adoption of new technologies as well. Some of the most evident for the short term involve dropping long-standing handwriting requirements. Penmanship was dropped from most English classes over the last twenty years and cursive writing requirements are quickly being cut from many programs as well. Depending on one’s perspective, not learning cursive in elementary school may not be the end of the world academically speaking. But advocates of teaching cursive argue that losing cursive is just one more case of technology eroding academic rigor.
There is another, lesser known, but reasonable argument against adopting computers across all academic disciplines. Pen and paper often tend to be more conducive to good writing than computer keyboarding. Longhand writing is more likely to result in well-reasoned, nuanced and intricate prose. This may arise from the fact that typing lends itself more easily to abrupt and punchy prose. The staccato quality of typing can work its way into writing. Stylistic arguments aside; a potentially far more worrisome implication for the long term is the increasing technology gap among schools.
When the only technology requirements for completing aprimary education involved paper, pencils, a slide rule and eventually calculators, the impact technology had in widening the divide between haves and have-nots was minimal. But the technology gap which exists in schools today also functions as a solidifier of social class. If low-income students are unlucky enough to attend schools which can’t fund technology purchases, the chance that they’ll find a way out of a low income life becomes less likely. It’s understandable that if a school can’t afford air conditioning, they’re probably not going to view iPads as a logical expenditure.
Twenty years ago, someone without computer skills could still expect to find a decent job which, though not providing a huge income, could still support a family. But now, jobs that used to be considered basic blue collar jobs require technological know-how. A car mechanic used to need mechanical aptitude and a good set of wrenches and they were in business. Working in customer service used to require basic telephone skills. But increasingly, even menial entry level jobs require much more computer literacy than what some disadvantaged students are getting in schools. If we want to ensure that more Americans continue to get a legitimate shot at the American Dream, we need to start a national dialogue focused on identifying workable solutions for narrowing the technology gap.
