Ambiguity aversion in politics

There's a link between David Cameron's holiday snaps and the moral panic about migrants. The link is ambiguity aversion.

We've known ever since Daniel Ellsberg's famous experiments that people don't like ambiguity or uncertainty; they much prefer known probabilities to unknown ones.

This is well known in financial markets: "markets hate uncertainty" is a cliche because its true. However, uncertainty aversion matters in politics too - a fact which is, I fear, under-appreciated. 

Here are some examples:

 - People fear immigration because it creates uncertainty: they are disquieted by the prospect that migrants will change their communities.The strong possibility that these changes will be benign is little comfort.

 - Terrorism is effective - in the sense of provoking a repressive backlash - because it creates uncertainty. The facts might show that Americans are more likely to be killed by policemen than by terrorists - but this doesn't matter because policemen are familiar and so cozy whereas terrorists are not.  

 - Both front-runners in the Labour leadership election are trying to offer Labour members familiarity: Andy Burnham talks of coming from outside the Westminster Bubble whilst Jeremy Corbyn offers policies which are as warmly nostalgic as Subbuteo and Thunderbirds.  

 - In talking of Jeremy Corbyn's support for nationalization, Peter Kellner says:

If people think he's doing it as a left-wing ideological move it wouldn't be a popular as if, say, David Cameron did it. If David Cameron said "I'm going to take the railways into public ownership" I think people would be dancing in the streets because nobody would accuse him of doing it for a left-wing ideological motive.

What he's getting at here is that the framing of policies matter. "Left-wing ideology" is unpopular because it seems unfamiliar and so creates uncertainty. Other motives - be they pragmatism or vote-grubbing - are more familiar and hence more acceptable; psychologists call this the mere exposure effect. This is how the Overton window works; policies that are outside the window and so rarely discussed appear to be uncertain and thus become unpopular.

 - Radio 4's Broadcasting House asked yesterday whether Ted Heath could become PM now - the point being that a single man would now be seen as strange and hence uncertain. It's for this reason that the media presented Ed Miliband as "weird"; they knew instinctively that the unfamiliar is bad. It's in this context that we should regard Cameron's holiday photo. The message is: "Look, I'm a normal, married guy - you can trust me."

And here's the thing. Some politicians are good at exploiting ambiguity aversion for partisan gains: they know to present themselves as regular guys and their opponents as weirdos.

But this is not the only way in which politicians should address the public's aversion to uncertainty. One function of the political sphere should be to provide institutions which help us to cope with uncertainty: a welfare state which cushions us from economic risks; public services which are flexible enough to deal with social change; an educational system and media which help us understand uncertainties. And so on. But it is not clear that these functions are being fulfilled. Aversion to uncertainty, it seems, is something to be exploited for partisan gain rather than addressed as a political problem.  

Another thing: it's easy to forget that Ted Heath became Tory leader in part because he offered familiarity. In the early 60s, the upper-class were regarded as out of touch toffs, as exemplified by Mervyn Griffith-Jones question about Lady Chatterley's Lover: "is this a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" In this context, the grammar school-educated Heath appealed to those wanting "normality".

Comments

[An Alien Visitor]

So all single men are now child abusers are they. I thought we were heading back to the Dickensian era but it appears we are going even further back to the Witch finder era.

[Matt Moore]

A small terminological point. I've always seen "uncertainty" to mean the risk associated with a known distribution, and "ambiguity" to mean the situation of not knowing the distribution. The known unknowns versus the unknown unknowns

Uncertainty/risk does not equal ambiguity, in other words. This is the point of Ellman's urn experiment. But you haven't parsed the differences in your analysis. You might be talking about either.

Best,

[A Single Man]

@An Alien Visitor - Nobody's really saying that though, are they?

As I understand it, a number of police forces are investigating whether histroical complaints or evidence against Ted Heath were investigated properly. So, there must, at least, have been some complaints or evidence.

It may turn out that the police forces at the time acted properly. Given other high profile cases it seems quite possible that they weren't.

Looking into this doesn't seem, to me, to be anything to do with branding all single men paedophiles.

[Luis Enrique]

I think there's a lot of truth in the idea that the unfamiliar is regarded with suspicion. But there must have been a time when privatisation was an unknown quantity, so familiarity doesn't always swing things (I don't mean you suggest otherwise)

[Ralph Musgrave]

I’m thrilled to learn from Chris that there’s a “strong possibility” that the “changes” brought by immigration will be “benign”.

So the contribution immigrants make to house price increases, and pricing first time buyers out the market is “benign”? And those Rotherham child abusers are benign? And blowing up trains and busses is benign? And killing the authors and cartoonists you don’t like is benign? I could go on.

To say there is no room for “uncertainty” as to the effects of immigration is bizarre.

[Laban Tall]

"they are disquieted by the prospect that migrants will change their communities.The strong possibility that these changes will be benign ..."

Is that "strong possibility" anything like "statistical likelihood"? People living in such changed communities don't seem to chuffed about it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/11785492/The-happiness-index-Where-is-the-worst-place-to-live-in-the-UK.html

[Igor Belanov]

One of the unfortunate certainties of life seems to be that there will always be some racists around.

[Bob]

"I’m thrilled to learn from Chris that there’s a “strong possibility” that the “changes” brought by immigration will be “benign”.

So the contribution immigrants make to house price increases, and pricing first time buyers out the market is “benign”? "
House prices increased in both immigrants and emigrant countries.
Ralph, house prices are up because the Homeownerists have rigged the market. Look up "Mark Wadsworth" for examples of this.

[Ralph Musgrave]

I’m delighted to see Igor Belanov come up with the bog standard, moronic and insulting suggestion that anyone concerned about immigration must be a racist.

Racism is defined in dictionaries as amongst other things the belief that some races are superior to others. The fact that you don’t want excessive numbers of immigrants in general or immigrants of another race in your country does not prove belief in the above “superiority” point, any more than a desire not to have daffodils in your garden proves you think daffodils are inferior to other flowers.

Second, what’s wrong with racism? According to psychologists some races have higher IQs than others. To that extent it's not unreasonable to claim that racism is a valid doctrine.

In short, Igor Belanov is totally clueless, as are most of the politically correct.

[Ralph Musgrave]

Bob,

Thankyou for referring me to Mark Wadsworth’s site. I’m well acquainted with it and make occasional contributions to it.

I’m also well aware that house price increases are partly down to “Homeownerists rigging the market”. I.e. the price increase is partly down in inadequate supply. But’s it’s nonsense to claim that increased demand has nothing to do with it. The fact is that Britain’s population is rapidly expanding, and that’s partly explained by immigration.

[Luis Enrique]

right Ralph, people who don't want black people around because they dislike them are not racist, so long as they don't claim to be superior to them. Merely that they find whites more likeable.

[Boursin]

@ Luis Enrique - Paradoxically, privatisation may have triumphed in part because it was so unthinkable for so long that nobody who opposed it had felt the need to come up with any specific arguments against it. For a idea to be unpopular because of its strangeness requires that it at least be known, but something coming from so far outside the Overton window as to be unknown does not meet this requirement.

@ Ralph Musgrave - That "amongst other things" rather gives the game away. The Oxford English Dictionary, for one, defines racism as '[a] belief that one's own racial or ethnic group is superior, OR that other such groups represent a threat to one's cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being'.

[Steven Clarke]

I think this might apply to NIMBYism.

New developments will change the character of a community. There is a strong probability that these changes will be benign.

But there is a chance it will not. And when many people have much of their wealth in an undiversified, leveraged bet (their house); they are afraid of that small risk.

Which is a shame because our failure to build enough homes in the right places has terrible costs.

[George Carty]

Ralph, do you think that greedy BTLers may have actually encouraged mass Third World immigration in the first place, because Third World immigrants are more willing than British-born people to live in extremely overcrowded conditions (and are thus more profitable for landlords)?

That could go some way to explaining why 50% of London's population is foreign-born...