Two ways to catch the Anti-Racism Bug

The official BLM movement started in 2013.  Like the #MeToo movement, the ideas have been simmering for a long, long time  but exploded when the conditions were conducive - vividly symbolised and triggered by the murder of George Floyd, and probably helped along by covid and toxic political narratives.  But that the problems have been there so long - despite so much activism - suggests they are extremely difficult to solve.  I am rather dismayed at a lot of what I read - not that it's wrong, but I worry that (righteous) outrage and anger hasn't work so far.  So what might be more effective?  What might help the idea of anti-racism (as opposed to simply non-racism) spread more effectively?

Covid-19 has brought to our attention a general metaphor for anything spreading; Rory Sutherland has recently argued that the adoption of new ideas and behaviours spreads much like a virus: by contagion.   Behaviour is contagious because we catch it from other people. Much of what we do results from unconscious mimicry of others around us. 

This is especially thought-provoking as we look at how ideas do or do not spread over time (and disease diffusion theory provides much more details as to precise mechanisms here).  We might like to think that good or moral ideas win by the sheer force of their excellence, but the thinking of ideas as spreading like a virus draws attention to the role of chance and circumstance - and of things underneath our conscious awareness.  Sutherland notes that as in virology, people’s susceptibility varies. If you do not own a microwave now, it is unlikely that you will ever buy one — you are effectively immune [to the idea of buying a microwave].  Does the same apply to anti-racist ideas?  How do people become immune to ideas with such moral power?  Furthermore, sometimes specific events enable specific outbreaks (think 1918 Spanish Flu and the spreading caused by mass movement at end of WW1; or what Covid-19 has done for video conferencing and work from home).  What matters about ideas is not only their value but also their transmissibility - that is, how persuasive they are in the context in which they arise.

So how might this affect how we see the spread of anti-racist ideas?  There are at least two competing approaches.

The Moralising Approach.  Drawing on Paul Rozin's research, psychologist Barry Schwarz has written about the ubiquity of smoking, in the not-too-distant past.  It's hard to recall that people smoked everywhere - in restaurants, airplanes, bars, schools; and that it was considered almost a right.  One would hesitate to ask anyone to stop - because people had the freedom to smoke, dangerous as it was.  Schwarz writes:  We seemed to agree that people have the right to be stupid. It’s my body and I’ll die if I want to!

So how did we get from that day to this one, with widespread smoking bans in public places?  Schwarz argues that it was the discovery of the effects of secondhand smoke; everything changed in a single generation when we realised that smoking was harming innocent bystanders, including our own children.  The point, he says, was that emphasizing its effect on others, took an individual (perhaps foolish) choice and moralized it.  It was no longer simply dumb to smoke; it was immoral.
Rozin's research also considers the move that now sees drinking and driving as criminal, rather than foolish (as it was when I was growing up); again a move from individual discretion to a matter of obligation.   Schwarz concludes that we are, as a society, reluctant to tell people how to live their lives, except insofar as individual decisions affect the lives of others. 

Of course, it is undeniable that racism affects other people; and understandable indignation and moral outrage is the driving force behind much of the protests and much of the anger.  But the very obviousness of this fact should make us wonder if this alone is enough.  Unlike smoking, we did not need to be told this was a moral issue; and I wonder if relying on morality alone is enough.  Activitist Ibram Kendi notes that historically, the use of 'moral suasion' (ie persuasion on moral grounds) to influence or change behavior has been largely ineffective.   Behavioral scientist Cristina Gravert has argued much the same; Emotions are, by definition, temporary. So is attention. Using activity-mobilizing emotions such as... anger, or fear can work exceptionally well to kick-start a new habit, but we still have months or even years of behavior change ahead of us. What we need is a cocktail of policies—including regulations, incentives, and nudges—that will promote good habits, even when our motivation has died down. That takes us to the second approach.

The Behavioural approach.   In both the smoking and drink driving cases it's interesting  to observe that historically, very unpopular and controversial legislation (in the UK, anyway) was passed before the change in hearts and minds.  So maybe it doesn't really matter why people do things, what matters is that they do them; and we should stop worrying about people's motivation.  Rory Sutherland has even gone so far as to say ...getting people to do the right thing sometimes means giving them the wrong reason. When I first read that, it did not sit well with me, but I've realised that:

• There are few things more painful than watching people who believe in the same noble purpose argue about whose reasons and motives are purer, descend into in-fighting and then totally lose sight of the original purpose. Let's leave ideological purity behind and try to agree on actions.
• Sometimes, arguing about reasons causes both sides to become further entrenched. The way to change someone's mind is for them to experience something different; so time spent on reasons is sometimes wasted.

So it's not that reasons are not important, but as Sutherland says Demanding people do the right thing and for the right reason is setting the bar rather too high.   His point is that we should just make it easy for people to do the right thing, and leave reasons to sort themselves out. When asked to create a campaign to increase the level of waste recycling in British homes, he writes that we avoided exploring what households think about the growth of landfill or the loss of polar bears;  instead we suggested that the principal behavioural driver of recycling is to do with circumstances rather than attitudes.   Put bluntly if you have two bins in your kitchen you'll separate your recyclable rubbish and recycle quite a lot, but if you have only one bin you probably won't. 

What's most interesting here is that by focussing on actions, this approach may, in the end, change attitude. I bet those who recycle because it is easy end up with a more positive attitude towards recycling and the environment, even if they started off skeptical; because we create the stories that fit around the events. As Sutherland says give people a reason and they may not supply the behaviour, but give people a behaviour and they'll have no problem supplying the reason themselves.

If that sounds counter-intuitive, or the recycling example is too far from issues of prejudice, consider Desai et al's research on how men's attitudes toward working women are affected by the roles of their wives.   The research examined the changing attitudes of single men, some of whom went on to marry working women, some of whom married non-working women,

The researchers found that the men's initial attitude toward working women was not a significant predictor of whether they married a working or non-working woman; but that once they were  married, the men's attitudes changed in a systematic way.  Men who married working women developed more favourable attitudes to working women;  men who married non-working women developed less favourable attitudes to working women.   This was true for more than 85% of the men surveyed.  Because the study controlled for the prior attitudes, it's clear that the nature of the marriage subsequently shaped men's views about working women, not the other way around. The changes in attitudes came after marriage not before.

So it seems that people adapt gender-role attitudes to accommodate their family circumstances; and more generally that behavioural changes change attitudes as much as the reverse.  What might that mean for shifting attitudes to race?  It does speak to the importance of having multi-racial environments (in our case, the need for us to have a more racially-mixed teaching staff is an obvious point).  I am wondering what other behavioural changes might be needed.

-----------------------------------------------

Overall, some judicious combination between the moralising and behavioural approaches is probably necessary - after all, what works for one person may not work for another.  We'll try both.

References

• Chugh, D. (2018) The Person you Mean to Be. Harper Business.
• Desai, Sreedhari & Chugh, Dolly & Brief, Arthur. (2014). The Implications of Marriage Structure for Men's Workplace Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors toward Women. Administrative Science Quarterly.
• Gravert, C (2020) Why Triggering Emotions Won’t Lead to Lasting Behavior Change Behavioural Scientist
• Kendi, I. (2019) How to be an Anti-Racist. One World Books
• McGee, E (2016) Has homosexuality become more accepted over time? A longitudinal study of 98 countries. Fayetteville State University Working Paper. 
• Rozin, P. (1999) The Process of Moralization. Psychological Science, Vol. 10, No. 3 (May, 1999), pp. 218-221
• Schwarz, B (2020) Secondhand Smoke, Moral Sanctions, and How We Should Respond to COVID-19. Behavioural Scientist
• Sutherland, R (2020). Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that do not make Sense. Ebury Books.
• Sutherland, R (2020) Have you caught the remote-working bug? The Spectator
• Thaler, R., and Sunstein C. (2009) Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin Books