What is the link between personal identity and behaviour? Two recent episodes pose this question. One is the death of Bill Barker, the PC who died during Cumbria’s floods. Was his death the act of a heroic character, or was he - as Matthew Parris asks - merely an ordinarily decent man who just happened to be in a dangerous place?
The other is Thierry Henry’s handball against Ireland. Did he do this because his character is that of a cheat? Or did he do it because he’s an ordinary guy who found himself in a position where there was an overwhelming incentive to act dishonestly?*
A recent paper sheds some light upon this issue. Researchers got some students to play a simple dictator game - giving them some money and letting them choose how much, if any, of the cash to share with others. They found several things.
First, there was a wide range of choices of how much money to give away, with some keeping all and others giving away half. Even among a narrow demographic - Mexican biology students - there is therefore considerable heterogeneity of behaviour.
Secondly, there’s a big difference between what people thought they should do and what they actually did. Most thought they should give half away. But only a few did so. Social norms, it seems, aren’t that powerful.
Thirdly, the link between what the students did and how they think of their own identity is tenuous. Yes, subjects who say they believe in fairness tended to give away a similar large sum. But those who thought of themselves as selfish of charitable gave very differing amounts. Self-perceptions of character, then, are only weakly correlated with behaviour. Perhaps talk about one’s own personality is cheap talk, which signifies little about actual behaviour.
The authors conclude:
This is, I think, consistent with the notion that the fundamental attribution error is indeed common: we often over-estimate the importance of “character“ as a determinant of behaviour, and under-rate situational forces.
There is, though, a political aspect here. If identity - be it identifying with religion or ethnicity - has only weak influence upon behaviour, mightn’t the identity politics of the non-Marxist left be over-emphasised, or even plain wrong?
* Or was he, as I suspect, inflicting the wrath of God upon the Irish people as punishment for giving us Jedward?
The other is Thierry Henry’s handball against Ireland. Did he do this because his character is that of a cheat? Or did he do it because he’s an ordinary guy who found himself in a position where there was an overwhelming incentive to act dishonestly?*
A recent paper sheds some light upon this issue. Researchers got some students to play a simple dictator game - giving them some money and letting them choose how much, if any, of the cash to share with others. They found several things.
First, there was a wide range of choices of how much money to give away, with some keeping all and others giving away half. Even among a narrow demographic - Mexican biology students - there is therefore considerable heterogeneity of behaviour.
Secondly, there’s a big difference between what people thought they should do and what they actually did. Most thought they should give half away. But only a few did so. Social norms, it seems, aren’t that powerful.
Thirdly, the link between what the students did and how they think of their own identity is tenuous. Yes, subjects who say they believe in fairness tended to give away a similar large sum. But those who thought of themselves as selfish of charitable gave very differing amounts. Self-perceptions of character, then, are only weakly correlated with behaviour. Perhaps talk about one’s own personality is cheap talk, which signifies little about actual behaviour.
The authors conclude:
Several contradictions arise that oblige us to be cautious when attributing identities to people and attempting to explain economic conduct in terms of these identities.If this is true even in the simplest laboratory experiments, how much more true will it be in the complex world?
This is, I think, consistent with the notion that the fundamental attribution error is indeed common: we often over-estimate the importance of “character“ as a determinant of behaviour, and under-rate situational forces.
There is, though, a political aspect here. If identity - be it identifying with religion or ethnicity - has only weak influence upon behaviour, mightn’t the identity politics of the non-Marxist left be over-emphasised, or even plain wrong?
* Or was he, as I suspect, inflicting the wrath of God upon the Irish people as punishment for giving us Jedward?
The people who emphasise identity politics in the UK at the moment seem to be, in rough order of virulence: the BNP, the DUP in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, Mebyon Kernow, UKIP, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the non-Marxist left. All those down to Plaid Cymru are selling an identity; and I suspect that they feel that if selling their identity limits their appeal, they will just have to be content with the support of the true faithful.
Isn't the internal contradiction (a term dug out of the midden left by old left debates) of the non-Marxist left's position on identity politics that they are simultaneously trying to raise people's awareness of their own ethnic identities and trying to get them to identify with a wider, 'left' tribal identity? The people they are trying to persuade are probably much less ethnic than they say they are (just as I have to admit that my behaviour is much less Yorkshire than I would expect from someone announcing themselves as "Yorkshire"). But isn't that just an added confusuion for the identity politics warriors*?
* I would have written 'crusaders' but 'warriors' seems to be the politically correct not-quite-adequate near-synonym.
Posted by: David Heigham | November 26, 2009 at 04:19 PM
"Or was he, as I suspect, inflicting the wrath of God upon the Irish people as punishment for giving us Jedward?"
My only reason for disagreeing with this is such a punishment is far too lenient. What ever happened to rivers of blood and plagues of locusts?
Posted by: Shuggy | November 26, 2009 at 07:34 PM
Chris - slightly off topic, but ...
How exactly do you pick up on these 'recent papers' ? I'm presuming you didn't stumble across it while randomly browsing some Basque academic website - after all, there are a lot of academic websites in the world. And half the papers in the world are hidden behind academic publisher paywalls or the Athens portal.
Do you have some sort of social sciences feed, or are there academic blog aggregators, or what ?
Posted by: Laban | November 27, 2009 at 09:45 AM
PS - what planet is David Heigham on ?
"in rough order of virulence: the BNP, the DUP in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, Mebyon Kernow, UKIP, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the non-Marxist left"
Sinn Fein/IRA have a couple of thousand murders to their credit - as far as I know the only party listed above with a paramilitary wing.
Posted by: Laban | November 27, 2009 at 09:49 AM
@ Laban - I subscribe to Repec's new economics papers service:
http://ideas.repec.org/n/
Posted by: chris | November 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM
@Labian
I should have said "in rough order of current virulence." Historically, Sinn Fein leads with the DUP second. Today, you must give them some credit reformed behaviour; even if repentance is hard to spot.
Posted by: David Heigham | November 27, 2009 at 05:26 PM
Cheers Chris ...
David - even on the current virulence, it's former Shinners who are trying to get back to the good old days of shooting and bombing - and the current Shinners know exactly who they are, but 'lay low and say nuthin'.
And how many people have the DUP killed ?
Posted by: Laban | November 27, 2009 at 10:06 PM
we often over-estimate the importance of “character“ as a determinant of behaviour, and under-rate situational forces.
But is this experiment not an example of differing responses to the same situation? Perhaps "character" is overblown, as in a kind of virtue ethic - practice makes perfect - but it would seem that personality type, probably inherited, would be more in play here.
Posted by: Dain | December 02, 2009 at 12:53 AM