Whom Do We Fear Or Trust

Whom Do We Fear Or Trust? (8/5/08)

A pair of Princeton psychology researchers has developed a computer program that allows scientists to analyze better than ever before what it is about certain human faces that makes them look either trustworthy or fearsome.

In doing so, they have also found that the program allows them to construct computer-generated faces that display the most trustworthy or dominant faces possible.

Such work could have implications for those who care what effect their faces may have upon a beholder, from salespeople to criminal defendants, the researchers said.

Theres another category of people who have a similar concern – politicians. Hmmm... salespeople, criminal defendants, politicians... lots in common there, no? Whats missing from this list... preachers, TV political pundits, military officers... pretty long list.

Unfortunately, we havent figured out how to run any large society, much less a modern one, without government and government officials, so were stuck with politicians for some time to come, Id guess. Well, at least that provides political scientists and researchers into aberrant psychology something to keep busy with.

The research described in the press release above isnt directly about politicians, but its a sequel to work of the principal investigator (Alexander Todorov) that is:

Who Will Win An Election? Snap Judgments Of Face To Gauge Competence Usually Enough (10/22/07)

A split-second glance at two candidates faces is often enough to determine which one will win an election, according to a Princeton University study.

Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. Todorov has taken some of his previous research that showed that people unconsciously judge the competence of an unfamiliar face within a tenth of a second, and he has moved it to the political arena.

His lab tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two candidates faces was sufficient to predict the winner in about 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator and state governor in the 2006 elections.

Other reports on this research: here, here.

Duh. At first glance all hes saying is that people tend to make snap judgments about a candidates competence... and those candidates go on to win the election. Thats not surprising, especially if one hypothesizes that voters tend not to go much beyond their snap judgment. And perhaps that is a valid conclusion, though hardly a welcome one.

In fact, Todorov had already published research showing that people make snap judgments about trustworthiness of people in general:

Snap Judgments Decide A Faces Character, Psychologist Finds (8/22/06)

We may be taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, our brains decide whether a person is attractive and trustworthy within a tenth of a second, according to recent Princeton research.

Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov has found that people respond intuitively to faces so rapidly that our reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction -- and that our intuitions about attraction and trust are among those we form the fastest.

OK, if Todorovs research is sound, people make snap judgments about whom they will trust or fear. So it would be useful to know more precisely what factors those judgments are based on. His latest research has tried to do just that. Quoting again from the latest press release:

Based on this data, the scientists found that humans make split-second judgments on faces on two major measures -- whether the person should be approached or avoided and whether the person is weak or strong.

From there, using a commercial software program that generates composites of human faces (based on laser scans of real subjects), the scientists asked another group of test subjects to look at 300 faces and rate them for trustworthiness, dominance and threat. Common features of both trustworthiness and dominance emerged. A trustworthy face, at its most extreme, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that form an almost surprised look.

An untrustworthy face, at its most extreme, is an angry one with the edges of the mouth curled down and eyebrows pointing down at the center. The least dominant face possible is one resembling a babys with a larger distance between the eyes and the eyebrows than other faces. A threatening face can be obtained by averaging an untrustworthy and a dominant face.

This is all rather discouraging. What is not addressed (yet) is how accurate such snap judgments are, especially as regards trustworthiness and competence of political candidates.

Its hardly as though perspicacious people havent been thinking about such issues for a very long time, of course. If I knew Plato better, Im sure thered be some choice observations in there somewhere to cite. Sort of goes along with what he said about the kind of judgments of reality made by people who can observe only shadows on the walls of a cave.

But another astute observer of human nature did have something to say about judging the intentions of people just from studying faces:

Theres no art
To find the minds construction in the face
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4. This is spoken by King Duncan, regarding the Thane of Cawdor, who has just been executed for treason. Macbeth enters right after this remark, and Duncan makes him the new Thane. Slow learner, that Duncan.)

Interestingly, one of Todorovs conclusions is that the kind of face people find most trustworthy is one that features, basically, a smile. Heres Shakespeares take on that, in words he gives to Hamlet:

O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

I have addressed previous similar studies along the same lines (by other investigators) here and here.

Discouraging? Yes. Especially so if this research were to accurately describe most of the electorate. But perhaps it would be better to look at whether there are subsets of the electorate that behave quite differently. Perhaps it would work to divide the (potential) electorate into those who have at least some interest in and knowledge of politics and government, and those who dont and basically dont give a damn.

In particular, there is some evidence that "undecided" voters, those who cant make up their minds until just before voting (if they vote at all) dont simply have a difficult time making a careful judgment. Instead, many "undecideds" are actually "low-information" voters, who dont follow politics very closely, and dont especially enjoy the process. Here are some (obviously partisan) anecdotal observations on this from the 2004 election.

If this is correct, then we can write off maybe 40-50% of the potential electorate as a random factor which is basically uninformed about and uninterested in details of politics and government. If they vote at all, their votes will be based largely on impressionistic factors of appearance, charisma, or group identity – snap judgments from the physical appearance of candidates, perhaps. Although many of them wont vote, those that do might make up perhaps 10% of the total, and they are fully capable of swinging any election in one direction or another.

It is often said that a deciding factor in the 1960 presidential election was that in the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon, the latter was recovering from illness, looked weak, and had a decided 5 oclock shadow. Nixon lost the popular vote by only 120,000 votes. Given how things turned out after Nixon came back to win the office in 1968, the judgments people made in 1960 may not have been so bad. But still such judgments seem like little more than a coin toss.

Further reading:

Poli Psy? – September 2000 online Scientific American article about the "shallowness" of criteria some voters use in voting decisions

The functional basis of face evaluation – June 2008 research article in PNAS about the research described in the first-mentioned press release

Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes – June 2005 research article in Science by Todorov et al on the relationship between neotenous appearance and perceived competence

Appearance DOES Matter – June 2005 commentary in Science on the preceding article

Tags: political science

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Heroes of the Motherland How the NSA Won the War in Iraq Or Wants You To Think It Did

Billmon has made one of his rare appearances at Daily Kos to mock the Washington Post - Heroes of the Motherland: How the NSA Won the War in Iraq (Or Wants You To Think It Did).

Earlier this week the Washington Post treated us to an in-depth profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, the military commander charged with running the world’s most omnivorous spy agency. And when I say “treat,” I mean it in roughly the same sense that the old Pravda used to “treat” its readers to accounts of the latest triumphs of Soviet tractor production ...

“Under Andropov, the KGB grew noticeably in political power, in personnel, and even in the number of buildings its occupied . . . Andropov was probably not deliberately pursuing any evil goals and was not attempting to create a police state; more likely, his actions were simply a question of gaining administrative turf . . . However, nothing constructive could have come out of this. Growing bureaucratic structures always search out activities to occupy their energies, and when they don’t find them, they invent them.”
Georgi Arbatov
The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics 1993

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Peak Coal Will the US Run Out of Coal in 20 Years or 200 Years

Greentech Media has an article arguing "peak coal" is occurring in the US as cheap to extract resources run out - Peak Coal: Will the US Run Out of Coal in 20 Years or 200 Years?. My understanding has been that coal use in the US has declined as natural gas has taken market share away from it, so Im not so sure I buy this (most early peak arguments seem to be more wishful thinking than reality based) but I havent looked at the data so maybe the two events are coinciding...

U.S. coal production has peaked, and the miscalculations that have led to estimates of a 200-year supply could create a serious electricity deficit for the nation, according to a new report from advocacy group Clean Energy Action.

“The belief that the U.S. has a ‘200-year’ supply of coal is based on faulty reporting by the EIA,” concludes the report, Warning: Faulty Reporting of U.S. Coal Reserves. “Most U.S. coal is buried too deeply to be mined at a profit and should not be categorized as reserves, but rather as ‘resources.’” “The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s estimate of the nation’s coal is ‘a faulty fuel gauge’ because the U.S. is rapidly approaching the end of economically recoverable coal,” explained report co-author Leslie Glustrom of Clean Energy Action. “We’re acting like we have a full tank. No one knows exactly when empty will come, but we should be prepared.”

The economic viability of the U.S. coal resource is compromised because “it is buried too deeply and costs too much to mine it,” Glustrom said. Peabody Coal CEO Greg Boyce’s Q3 2013 earnings report call remarks about reduced capital expenditures in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin seem to confirm that coal is becoming “too expensive to mine,” according to Glustrom. “Nationally, coal production appears to have peaked in 2008 at 1.171 billion tons,” the report states. “U.S. coal production in 2012 had fallen by about 155 million tons to 1.016 billion tons.”

EIA data puts production for the first half of 2013 at 488 million tons, Glustrom added. “We are not even on track to get to a billion tons. That would be back to 1993 levels.”

Think Progress has a post highlighting one of the drivers behind the "peak coal consumption in China argument, new restrictions on coal use in Shanghai and Beijing - Shanghai To Forbid Coal Burning As China Decides To Monitor Smog’s Effects.

On Friday, Shanghai released its Clean Air Action Plan in an effort to rapidly and substantially improve the air quality in China’s most populous city of nearly 24 million residents. The primary focus is to reduce the concentration of PM2.5 (particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less) by around 20 percent from 2012 levels by 2017.

The plan, which broadly targets six areas — energy, industry, transportation, construction, agriculture, and social life — will completely ban coal burning in 2017. This entails closing down more than 2,500 boilers and 300 industrial furnaces that use coal, or shifting them to clean energy by 2015. ...

Earlier this year a study found that severe pollution has slashed an average of five-and-a-half years from the life expectancy in northern China as toxic air has led to higher rates of stroke, heart disease, and cancer.

China has been making a very public push to confront growing concern over air pollution, including publishing a list of its 10 worst — and best — cities for air pollution each month.

China also released a new $817 billion plan to fight air pollution in September, with a strong focus on Beijing. According to a Greenpeace analysis, up to seventy percent of Beijing’s pollution comes from coal-burning factories and power plants surrounding the city.

China is also currently in the early stages of testing pilot carbon markets in seven cities, including Shanghai and Beijing. The pilot programs will help the government make a decision about setting up a national carbon market in the near future.

the Guardian reports that Al Gore and David Blood are warning about stranded investments in fossil fuel assets in coming years - Al Gore: world is on brink of carbon bubble.

The world is on the brink of the "largest bubble ever" in finance, because of the undisclosed value of high-carbon assets on companies balance sheets, and investment managers who fail to take account of the risks are failing in their fiduciary duty to shareholders and investors, Al Gore and his investment partner, David Blood, have said.

"Stranded carbon assets" such as coal mines, fossil fuel power stations and petrol-fuelled vehicle plants represent at least $7tn on the books of publicly listed companies, and about twice as much again is owned by private companies, state governments and sovereign wealth funds.

As the danger from climate change intensifies, and as rules on carbon and the introduction of carbon pricing in many parts of the world start to bite, these assets are expected to come under threat, from regulation and from the need to transform the economy on to a low-carbon footing. The "carbon bubble" has been identified by leading thinkers on climate change in recent years, but so far the findings have had little real effect on investor behaviour.

The SMH reports Australias largest coal mine / stranded asset is to be built in Queenslands Galilee Basin - Largest coal mine approved in Queensland.

The federal government has approved a massive coal mining project in central Queensland that will be the largest in the country. Environment Minister Greg Hunt approved the 37,380 hectare Kevins Corner project on Friday.

The mine, to be operated by a joint India-Australia consortium, GVK-Hancock, is the first to be approved since the introduction of a new water trigger rule by the previous federal government. Greenpeace claims Kevins Corner will use more than nine billion litres of water a year and the Lock the Gate Alliance says more information on its impact on Galilee Basin groundwater is needed.

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