One of my (Justin’s) interests, as you can see below, is the impact of behavioral science on educational outcomes. Within that realm, my particular curiosity isn’t just the type of outcomes most educational institutions are able to easily measure – GPAs, test scores, graduation rates – but what happens long after school is over. Anecdotally, I have noticed that the outcomes for people of color I’ve known at the selective schools I have attended have been less stellar, but I don’t really have any data on that (and I’d like to gather it). Having said that, it might just be who I happen to know, as there are plenty of doctors and lawyers out there.
I want to dive deeper, though. The external trappings of success are quite obvious, and salaries, real estate, and zip codes are easy enough to track. But are we, as minority graduates of so-called elite institutions, actually satisfied with their lives? Or, to put a finer point on it, are we at the same levels of satisfaction as our classmates? We know that racism exists no matter how much money you have, but the bill of goods we’re sold by such institutions implies that we’ll be somewhat safer from discrimination because of our closer promixity to traditional success. So, if this is true, bigotry should have less of an impact on people who are more externally successful, and, even if we’re not as satisfied as our peers, we should, perhaps, be closer to their level than people who, say, only have a high school degree. But ultimately, my real question is this: if it turns out that we’re not as satisfied as our peers, and that our graduation from selective schools does not, by itself, close the gap between our level of satisfaction and those of our classmates, can we use behavioral science to change this? And, to circle back to the beginning, can increasing satisfaction then have a positive impact on our more concrete success?
There are a few questions here to be asked and answered, starting with one that is more straightforward (and is probably answered out there already, so I just have to go and look): what are the concrete, long-term outcomes for minority (and I’d split it up into different ethnicities) graduates of top-tier schools? That’s the normal stuff, starting with GPAs and carrying on to salaries and perhaps other factors like homeownership. I also want to know about social lives, rates of marriage and divorce, substance abuse/mental health issues, even premature death if it happens to have occurred. I am theorizing, of course, that race has a legitimate correlation to such results, but I don’t know for sure, so I want to find out, gradually. And of course, we’d need to compare to people who didn’t graduate from selective schools, to see if the gap in satisfaction (if there is one) is larger, smaller, or the same.
In other words, for example, two such graduates, same age range, same career track, same type of zip code, same marital status, etc, but different ethnicities. Is one more satisfied than the other? You will not be surprised to hear what I suspect to be the answer to be, but I am perfectly willing to be wrong. And is that satisfaction gap smaller than it is for two counterparts with a different level of education?
You have to get into the weeds on this, of course. Maybe someone who isn’t satisfied at age thirty-five felt the same way when they were in school. And we’d have to analyze minority students who were raised in affluent areas from those who weren’t to see if there’s a difference there, as well (or maybe there isn’t, but we have to see). Or maybe I’ll just find out that my theory is entirely baseless.
There is also the undeniable fact that it’s still going to be self-reported self-assessment. There will be something squishy in there, because there always will be when you ask someone to describe something emotional.
And frankly, I do not yet have the research skills to piece this all together yet. But that’s okay, because I intend to acquire them.
What’s the point of all this?
Well, one of two things will happen if I pull this off. Either I find out that, no, race and satisfaction for graduates of selective schools – when compared to same for those without said degrees – do not correlate whatsoever and I move on to something else. Or my theory is right, and then I can think of ways that behavioral science can have a positive impact on these students to help them as they grow and strive to achieve.
The genesis of this project, way before I knew about any of it, was probably a day in the fall of freshman year, fourteen years ago. Our Resident Advisor gathered us in a group to ask us what we thought of our school experience thus far. And I took note of the fact that the white students all rated their experience at an eight, nine or ten, while the black students all chose two or three. Lying to myself and others, I said five, trying as I always did at the time to hedge my bets. (This project will cover more than just black students, to be clear, but that group only had white and black boys and girls.)
I’ve seen rather dispiriting outcomes for many of my classmates from both high school and college, substance abuse and dependency and really serious financial struggles the likes of which one might not expect from selective school graduates of any race. But again, those are my own friends, and perhaps many white students have had the same issues that I just don’t know about. And of course haven’t a real idea of someone else’s inner feelings. I think the schools try, they do, bless their hearts, but there is still something missing in the way they provide support to people who don’t resemble their typical and historical graduate. And I don’t say this out of self-pity or self-absorption – I’m fine, or, in the language being used here, very satisfied. But some folks aren’t, and I wonder if I can help figure out why, and how to change it.
I think, if there are thousands of adolescents out there who are thinking they are the only people who feel how they feel in the school where they’re expected to be molded into superstars, then perhaps behavioral design can help more than what the schools are already doing it.
I don’t really know. But I very much want to try and find out.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to begin sharing at least my initial research (on the type of traditional outcomes I mentioned at the outset) very soon.
We talk a lot about diversity and inclusion in almost every industry. Here in the public sector, I tend to think we do a better job of living these values, at least on a surface level.
But as soon as you peel back the surface, the homogeneity remains. So let’s talk about it.
Unlike corporate behemoths, the decision-makers in the public sector aren’t all of the exact same demographic. Maybe it’s because we’re explicitly not profit-driven, or maybe we’re just nice people (ha), but we do a fairly good job of our leaders not looking exactly the same.
When I say “looking,” I am of course referring to race and gender, perhaps the most visible categories we can be sorted into. There are other issues at hand (sexuality, disability, age, class, etc.), but when people stand together for a promotional picture, generally agencies are happy just to prove not everyone looks like a junior senator from a Midwestern state.
The problem is that we stop at step one. If we find we have a leadership comprised entirely of white men, we know it looks bad, so we make sure to change this…ever so slightly. This could lead to significantly more men of color, and that’s an improvement! Or it could lead to significantly more women. Also much better! But it’s like the way some folks pig out at dinner after eating a salad for lunch: your work is not done yet.
Would making leadership – and by this, I refer not just to full-time managers, directors and executives, but, perhaps even more importantly, to boards and fundraising as well – look more like the cast of Captain Planet solve every issue in the sector? No.
There are, as mentioned, the other categories that are harder to see. You could have every color of the rainbow leading the organization, but if everyone went to the same three colleges, you might not really be diverse or inclusive.
“Well who cares? It should just be a meritocracy!” That would be nice, and I want to live on that fantasy planet with you, but we’re here, not there.
The fact is, if our leadership has little in common with the communities we serve, we risk creating distance where we should be generating warmth and trust.
Some complain that there just aren’t enough skilled or experienced leaders who aren’t from certain demographics, and so therefore such an effort would necessarily lead to worse results.
My counterargument would be that we should spend much more time finding and nurturing new and emerging leaders from different backgrounds. And we should take great pains to find leaders who don’t necessarily remind us of ourselves, as that is a natural tendency we all fall into when we’re not careful.
Training, mentoring, professional development are all vital and are sorely undervalued in our fields. And the excuses leaders make are just a way of saying they don’t want to take on the risk of someone unproven, a tale as old as time.
I think we lose many potentially dynamic and effective leaders by not spending our time and resources on finding and developing them, or, perhaps even worse, we occasionally elevate someone “different” without having supported them in their ascent, and then, as they flame out, we shake our heads and tell ourselves we won’t make that mistake again.
The mistake actually being made is a constant, stubborn fact of our fields. And it’s up to us to do the work to address it.
Look around at who leads your agency, who makes the impactful decisions. Think about how different the faces and voices are. And if all the voices sound the same, you might really be holding yourself back.
Carrying these posts over from my personal site, as I believe that behavioral science can have a great impact on the public sector, especially given the relative lack of funding. Behavioral science can generate low-cost solutions to entrenched problems, and so I’ll occasionally describe books I’ve read on the subject.
Author: Daniel Kahneman
Year: 2011
So this is kind of the ur-text for this subject. It’s thick (literally), and dense (in every sense of the word). It will cover every single cognitive bias (or “heuristic”) that had been studied up through its publication, most of which were codified by Kahneman himself and his late partner Amos Tversky. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his behavioral science work, and the discipline would literally not exist if it weren’t for these two men.
But my god, it is not easy to read.
I took it with me on my vacation in early September. I read a novel very quickly and then turned back to this one. And my vacation was extended because of weather issues. And I could only get through 30 or maybe 40 pages on a good day. It was just that dense.
I struggled to the finish line. And I like Kahneman. A brilliant man whose work has ultimately, if indirectly, changed my life and that of many others.
But this is much more of a reference book than a book you can really leaf through or apply to your life from moment to moment.
The other books I’ve given capsule profiles in this space wouldn’t exist were it not for this book and its author, so it had to be covered.
It’s certainly very informative. And it’s not written in jargon or anything of the sort. It’s just not exactly pleasant to try and read. Quite an accomplishment to make it through and you’ll be all the better for it, but I would point you towards the others – and more I’ll talk about later – if you want a more accessible entry point into behavioral science.
I’m glad I finished it. I can just keep it on my shelf and point to it now!
Carrying these posts over from my personal site, as I believe that behavioral science can have a great impact on the public sector, especially given the relative lack of funding. Behavioral science can generate low-cost solutions to entrenched problems, and so I’ll occasionally describe books I’ve read on the subject.
Year: 2016
Author: Jonah Berger
Whereas “The Power of Habit” was the first behavioral book I sunk my teeth into (or, fitting for the subject, sunk its teeth into me), “Invisible Influence” is one of the more recent I’ve come across, looking around for a book to chew over on my commutes to and from work and finding it pleasant, if a bit short. It’s 232 pages, but a lot of those pages are cut in half by titles and such. It’s written by a marketing professor, and many (most) of the examples used are from real-life business decisions and other such accessible subjects. I complained about it being slight, but on the other hand, accessible though it may be, something like “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (which I’ll get to in this series, eventually) is nearly 500 pages of dense (though engaging) writing, and you and I both know that most people don’t bother with that sort of thing. And even if they do bother, they skim, or give up.
So there is a place and a purpose for a slimmer tome.
Berger’s argument is essentially that we must not deny the fact that our behavior is rarely something we fully choose for ourselves, much as we headstrong Americans like to think we’re independent. Of course, one of the principles of behavioral science is the fact that we tend to deny or ignore facts that don’t fit our worldview, so, paradoxically, the people who most need to hear this sort of thing would have the hardest time accepting it.
Some of the fun examples here include the fact that many successful athletes have older siblings (that they wanted to keep up with and then, eventually, defeated), why expensive products have barely visible logos, why running with people slightly faster than you can improve your own speed, and, sadly but importantly, why many black students have their academic achievement impacted by the spectre of “acting white.”
It’s essentially a series of vignettes – there’s a lot of Gladwell in it – but plenty of the real data to back it up. And, hilariously, it uses examples from my own eating club in college, Terrace, and how people can tell we belonged to the club by what we wore.
It’s not the “I’m trying to make this dense subject palatable” hard-hitting work of a “Power of Habit” or a “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” It’s more like tying together narratives that appear disparate but aren’t. And I think one thing that fascinates me about this topics is that it can be both a science that needs to be made accessible AND a bridge that brings groups of stories together.
Berger also usefully concludes each section with ways that the various stories and studies he has just mentioned can be used. This is a key, and it’s one thing that’s similar to “The Power of Habit.” None of this stuff is valuable if we can’t take it and use it.
And that’s my goal here, to encourage you to go out, learn more, and use it. It’s interesting and fun and all, but ultimately, if it’s not practicable, it’s pointless.