____TheSkepticalPsychologist.com____

Submitted to the Los Angeles Times and rejected.

The Los Angeles Times’ continuing and shameless push to get state agencies to rank teachers using student test scores is outrageously one-sided.  And, yes, there is another side to this issue.  I’m a research psychologist who designs psychological tests, and yet I’m strongly opposed to this new plan.  As teachers have been reminding us, test scores aren’t necessarily good measures of teacher effectiveness.  In fact, such scores always produce both “false positives” - high scores for students who have learned little except how to take standardized tests - and “false negatives” - low scores for talented, high achieving students who just don’t test well.  The very idea that our entire nation should try to manufacture cookie-cutter students who all look good on certain tests has little merit.  Young people differ one from another, and a truly effective education system will identify and nurture the strengths of every individual.

Reprinted in edited form from the Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2010, p. A 35.

Sycophant! Sycophant! That’s the best way to describe John Kenney’s drooling over Jonathan Franzen’s genius in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times entitled (in the print version) “Author! Author!  And so much more” (September 15, 2010).

Some of us, however, have no trouble separating the man from the book.  When you set aside the who and look at the what, The Corrections tumbles hard.  Rambling, paragraph-long sentences turn every character, no matter what his or her age, education or intelligence, into astute observers of every aspect of everything, even his or her own brain chemistry.

It’s only in a Franzen novel that a 7-year-old can spend an eon analyzing the underside of a dinner table.

And why does every character look so painfully stereotypical: the conservative and boring Midwestern couple, the brilliant but misunderstood socialist, the banker whose money just can’t seem to buy happiness?

Not one person in a million is as analytical as even a minor Franzen character. When we’re supposedly deep inside the head of Alfred or Chip or Denise, we’re really just viewing the tortured architecture of Franzen’s own cerebral cortex, which obviously fascinates him.  No one so naive about human thinking has any business writing books about our species, in my view.  He doesn’t elevate us; he distorts us to conform to his own obsessions, much as Sigmund Freud did a  century ago.

Yes, the other Times fawns, but isn’t that why we read the Los Angeles version - to escape the self-serving insanity of Franzen’s uber-intellectual buds in New York?

Reprinted from The Journal of Irreproducible Results, March 2010, pp. 6-7.

Thanks to the recent passage of laws restricting cell phone use in cars, I can finally start to breathe normally again while driving.   A growing body of research shows that even hands-free cell phones are potentially dangerous and cause automobile accidents.  No matter how practical or fashionable they may be, cell phones are out of place in the driver’s seat, and I’m grateful to our elected officials for finally tackling the problem.

Although the new laws are encouraging, I think there’s more we can do to promote highway safety. My own modest research program —observing and occasionally filming other vehicles while I was driving up the freeway from San Diego to Los Angeles recently — has revealed mobile threats to public safety every bit as dangerous as the mobile phone.  Here is what I found:

In heavy traffic, I observed eight people typing on PDAs, three reading the newspaper, and one completing a crossword puzzle (it might have been Sudoku).  It doesn’t take a controlled study to know that it’s impossible to drive properly while responding to text messages or reading the Los Angeles Times.  I also filmed eleven female drivers and one male driver (just outside of Los Angeles — possibly an actor) applying lipstick, eye shadow, foundation, mascara, or some combination thereof.  While the camera did capture some impressive feats of dexterity, is the car really the proper place for applying makeup, and can one really control a vehicle while admiring one’s reflection in a mirror?

I was even more alarmed when I passed a caravan of low-rider vehicles that were causing small earthquakes with their audio systems.  My own car swerved noticeably as they passed, which made me wonder how less stalwart drivers would handle such a threat.  And surrounded by all that noise, how were the drivers of those vehicles supposed to hear sirens, honking horns or cries for assistance?  People who blast their stereo systems are deaf for all practical purposes and should be fined heavily.  Come to think of it, why do we allow deaf people to drive?

Even talk radio can be distracting at times, especially when you’re listening to a complete idiot who doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.  That can really make the blood boil, which in turn affects focus and coordination.  Dr. Laura alone — p’lease!  her doctorate is in physiology, not psychology! — has undoubtedly caused hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of needless injuries and deaths. The solution:  a Tipper-Gore-style rating system for radio programming, with PD (Potentially Disturbing) talk-show hosts automatically muted.

Now this may sound like a joke, but it’s deadly serious:  we’re all rightfully disgusted by drunk drivers, but Ronald McDonald probably causes more highway mishaps each year than Jack Daniel.  The drive-thru restaurants in particular have introduced a host of truly heinous threats to highway safety, all of which should be banned from moving vehicles: hamburgers requiring more than one hand to hold (especially in vehicles with manual transmissions), fries so greasy you can barely grip the steering wheel, and super-sized Cokes that won’t fit in the cup holders so you have to put them between your legs and try not to squeeze.  And talk about hot coffee!  Every year, thousands of innocent Americans lose their lives on our nation’s roads because of gluttony, pure and simple.

I hesitate, in the name of good taste, to mention my concerns about kissing, cuddling and more aggressive sexual behaviors that are common in moving vehicles.  Modesty — and, I admit, some fear — prevented me from observing suspicious occupants too closely, but in one instance my camcorder, which I managed to hold high up on my window and slanting downward, did record a passenger’s hand engaged in inappropriate activity where the oversized drink is supposed to be.

But the most dangerous behaviors I observed were neither osculatory nor gustatory.  They were conversational.  This is where we need to get our legislators in gear, and quick.  In a mere two-hour drive, I filmed no fewer than sixteen heated arguments.  Sixteen!  Some of the exchanges involved couples, but most involved parents tangling with — well, let’s not mince words — disgusting brats.  Arguing while driving?  Extremely dangerous!  If merely driving solo in the diamond lane can draw a $341 fine (where the hell did that number come from?), shouldn’t arguing cost at least $682?   Let’s bite the bullet on this one, people, and do what needs to be done.   How about confining drivers to small (green and efficient) vehicles that tow passengers behind them in sound-proof trailers?  Let them yell and scream all they want!  Existing vehicles can be retrofitted with limousine-style barriers isolating the driver from unruly passengers in the back, with the front-seat passenger space reserved for groceries and deaf-mutes who don’t know sign language.

The latest cell phone research reminds us that any form of conversation is distracting, even when we’re not arguing.  Silence, people.  If we want our highways and byways to be safe, we need to keep our obscene, obnoxious, burrito-and-soda-filled mouths shut.

_______________________________
The author of 15 books, ROBERT EPSTEIN is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine.  His most recent book is Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence (http://Teen20.com).

Laurence Steinberg’s perspective on teens isn’t even slightly right (“A Conversation with Laurence Steinberg,” New York Times, December 1, 2009).  He dismisses all teens as equally impulsive and irresponsible, blatantly ignoring volumes of data that say otherwise.  My own new research suggests that 30 percent of our teens are more competent than half of American adults across a wide range of abilities.  As for the “teen brain” myth he’s pushing, there is no evidence whatsoever that the turmoil that is typical of American teens is caused by an immature brain.  All of the research on that topic is correlational, prompting brain scientist Gregory Berns to remark recently (in Scientific American Mind), “Nobody denies that the brain develops or that teens take risks, but how the two ideas got intertwined is beyond me.”  Berns’s new research even shows that danger-seeking teens appear to have more mature brains than do more cautious teens.  It’s especially ironic that Steinberg intends to spend some of his ill-gotten prize money on looking at teens in other cultures – “to determine whether adolescent behavior is biological or cultural.”  As he should darn well know, anthropological studies show unequivocally that teen turmoil is entirely absent in more than 100 cultures around the world; that fact alone shows that Steinberg’s assertions about the inevitability of teen turmoil are groundless.  Steinberg is receiving accolades for denigrating teens simply because he is supporting cultural stereotypes.  He will be seen by future generations precisely as we view the “distinguished” psychologists who backed racial psychology in the early 1900s:  as a shoddy thinker who misused science to support naive views about human nature.

 Published in The Huffington Post, October 9, 2009

This isn’t what it seems. It’s not really a Nobel Prize. It’s a “Thank-God-You’re-Not-Bush” Prize. We’re witnessing what research psychologists call a “contrast” effect, occurring in a grand way in an unlikely place.

Yes, many of us at home have mixed feelings about Obama because our economy is still sinking (although more slowly, of course!) and because our young men and women are still dying almost every day in Afghanistan and Iraq. But to people in other countries, such as some dowdy old folks sitting in a posh drawing room in Stockholm, Obama is the greatest thing since Saab introduced the heated driver’s seat in 1972.

Even though, unlike Nobel laureate Mother Teresa - who toiled helping the poor of India for 30 years before getting the prize - Obama hasn’t actually accomplished anything yet, he is, following George Bush, a Great Relief to the World, especially the Bush-weary world outside the U.S.

The contrast effect is a real and powerful phenomenon that has fascinated psychologists for more than a century. The basic idea is simple: a prolonged experience with a stimulus that has strong negative or strong positive value distorts the way we view new stimuli of the same sort. If we’ve had prolonged experience with a strong positive stimulus, we’ll tend to view new related stimuli negatively. And if we’ve had prolonged experience with a strong negative stimulus, we’ll tend to view related new stimuli positively.

This powerful phenomenon has been demonstrated in hundreds of laboratory experiments, and it’s also easy to demonstrate in every day life. I’ll demonstrate the effect sometimes in a psychology class by having a volunteer keep his or her left hand in a bucket of cold water and his or her right hand in a bucket of warm water for a few minutes. Then I’ll have the student dip both hands into a third bucket, containing room-temperature water. The result is bizarre: the student’s left hand feels the water as hot, while at the same time the student’s right hand feels the very same water to be cold.

When I was editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, one of the most popular articles we ran - “Why I Hate Beauty,” by Hara Marano and publicist Michael Levine - was about how the contrast effect distorts our perception of beauty. Bombarded by images of gorgeous Hollywood stars and starlets and New York models, we often perceive the perfectly attractive people around us to be unattractive - a frustrating phenomenon that’s brutal on our relationships.

The contrast effect works in many domains, including the political. And yes, it can even cause intelligent, well meaning people to confuse bringing peace to people with giving inspirational speeches about bringing peace to people.

It’s not a Nobel Prize. But now that he has it, maybe he’ll live up to it.

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, April 18, 2009

Regarding the recent front-page story (“Love put to test in psych course,” April 10, 2009) and subsequent editorial (“Falling in love,” April 11, 2009) in the San Diego Union-Tribune about my new, somewhat hands-on relationships course at the University of California San Diego:

For the record, all of the techniques that students are trying out are derived from scientific research described in course readings. Researchers in Boston, for example, have found that mutual gazing quickly increases liking and closeness, and a psychologist at SUNY Stony Brook uses a gazing exercise to improve outcomes of negotiations. Your editorial noted that the Bush-Putin meeting might have been improved by a simple locking of eyes, and that’s no surprise.

Having students try out the techniques we’re reading about has led to a dramatic increase in course enrollment and attendance, passionate interest in course material, and fun and engaging class experiences. It will also allow many students to be more successful in a wide range of relationships throughout their lives. If there’s a down side to experiential education, which I’ve promoted over most of my 30-year teaching career, I’ve never found it.

ROBERT EPSTEIN
Department of Psychology
University of California San Diego

The Recent Scandal in Pennsylvania Is the Tip of an Ugly Iceberg

Reprinted from The Huffington Post and the Pennsylvania Citizen’s Voice

The recent scandal involving Pennsylvania juvenile court judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan is the tip of an ugly iceberg.

Ciavarella and Conahan have pleaded guilty to charges that they took kickbacks totaling $2.6 million in return for sentencing minors to incarceration at private detention centers, even when such sentences were not warranted by the facts.  In a typical case, a stellar 17-year-old high school student was ordered to serve three months in detention simply for posting a spoof about her vice principal on her MySpace page, even though the page clearly noted that the material was a joke.

Over a period of five years, upwards of 2,500 young people may have been sentenced unjustly to terms ranging from a few months to several years, with parents charged substantial fines in many cases.  Some juveniles are still incarcerated—a potential nightmare for authorities to try to sort out.

The case has prompted gasps from public officials and considerable news coverage, so perhaps you’ve already heard about it and have drawn your conclusions.  But here’s what you don’t know.

The juvenile justice system was ill-conceived from the start and has unjustly incarcerated millions of young people, not just a few thousand.  The U.S. system, and in fact virtually all juvenile justice systems in countries that now have such systems, were set in motion in 1899 in Cook County, Illinois, by Jane Addams and her wealthy, upper-class colleagues at Hull-House, a Chicago institution dedicated to social reform.

Documents from that era, including Addams’ own writings, make it clear that the agenda of the new court system was not entirely benign.  One of its main reasons for being was to give authorities virtually unlimited power to sweep the offspring of poor immigrants off the streets of major cities, where they were considered an ugly nuisance to America’s morally superior affluent.  New crimes by the dozen were invented for the young that had never been considered crimes by adults:  playing ball on the street, staying out late, consorting with older men, truancy, immorality, and the all-encompassing “incorrigibility”—all basically crimes against the self, not others—often resulting in standard sentences of three years or more.

Addams also believed that America’s sinful, “tender” young people could be returned to the right path by being housed in reformatories staffed entirely by nurturing women.  The tough, angry teens who were actually being incarcerated had other ideas, and by 1928, when the juvenile justice system had spread to all but two states, reformatories had become harsh, crowded, understaffed, underfunded prisons, complete with manacles and whippings.  An extensive 2001 study by the National Research Council confirms that the system as a whole is still disgraceful today, producing “negative effects on behavior and future developmental trajectories.”

The most egregious aspect of the juvenile injustice system was that it stripped minors of their constitutional rights, including the right to a trial by jury and the right to counsel.  Even as of 1960, fewer than 5 percent of juvenile offenders were represented by attorneys, with most hearings taking place in secret and no transcripts or recordings made.  The issue finally came to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 when it heard the plight of Gerald Gault, a 15-year-old from Arizona who had been sentenced to six years of detention for placing an obscene phone call to a neighbor.  There were no witnesses at his hearing—not even the neighbor who had made the complaint—and had Gault been an adult, the maximum sentence would have been two months in jail and a $50 fine.  In a scathing decision, the court aptly called the juvenile justice system “peculiar,” but it did not broadly restore constitutional rights to minors, leaving open the gaping loopholes exploited by Ciavarella and Conahan.  Only about half of the defendants in Ciavarella’s court were represented by counsel, for example.

If anything, things have gotten worse since 1967.  The 1974 federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act created links between the juvenile justice, mental health, and child welfare systems which have made it increasingly easy to keep young people locked up for years, bouncing from one system to another in what experts call “unplanned” incarcerations.

We need one system of justice and one set of crimes, and no one should be deprived of constitutional rights because of age.  The Fifth Amendment plainly says that “no person” shall be deprived of due process of law; what a tragedy that our society has so often ignored the breadth and power of that language.  As for youth laws, it offends common sense to define staying out late to be criminal just because someone is under a certain age.  A crime should be defined by its harmful effects on people or property, not by the age of the perpetrator.

But wouldn’t a single justice system put our tender young people at special risk?  Not at all.  The adult justice system offers far more resources and protections than any juvenile system, and punishment in the adult system is, at least in theory, always tempered by concerns about competence.  When a perpetrator is found to be mentally ill, retarded, or senile, penalties and housing are adjusted accordingly.  In that respect, where individual young people have special needs, they are far better off in the hands of the adult system—and the U.S. Constitution.

If you have any interest in the future of computers, artificial intelligence, or beautiful Japanese androids, read on….

One of my YouTube videos just crossed the million mark!  It’s a clip of me visiting a beautiful, lifelike, female android in Japan.  Her skin is as soft as human skin (although cold!), and she has the same hairdresser as the newscaster after whom she was modeled.  If you’d like to view the video–and get a glimpse of the remarkable world of machine intelligence that’s coming soon, click here.

My most recent book–an academic text called Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer–is all about that future.   I’ll spare you the considerable cost of buying the book.  Instead, you can read the best parts free of charge by clicking here.  You’ll be able to read the foreword by the eminent philosopher Daniel Dennett, along with my introduction, which is all about the somewhat scary and largely unfathomable future of machine intelligence.

Think you know what the Internet is?  Think again!  It’s not really a tool for human communications; it’s actually an “InterNEST”–a huge, luxurious home we’re building for the first super machine intelligences that come into being about 20 years from now.  What they’ll do in their new home–whether they’ll be friendly to humans or decide to swat us like flies–no one knows….  Click here to read more.

Best wishes for 2009!

Dr. Robert Epstein
http://TheCaseAgainstAdolescence.com
http://CreativityCompetencies.com
http://DrEpstein.com

There are many other types of legitimate partnerships that could use legal validation.

Published in the Los Angeles Times
December 4, 2008

Ever since California voters passed Proposition 8, defining marriage in the state as between one woman and one man, my wife and I have been arguing about it.

She was appalled by the vote, and even more appalled when I told her that I wasn’t. “You’re such a bigot,” she said, “not to mention a hypocrite! How can you be for gay rights [which I am] and against same-sex marriage?” My wife is from the north of England, where they don’t embrace that famous restraint of Londoners.

“Well, I’m only sort of opposed to gay marriage,” I tried to explain, but that just led to more name-calling. I was “wishy-washy,” “cowardly,” a “nobhead.” I don’t even know what that last term means, but judging by my wife’s tone of voice, it was not a compliment.

In these kinds of situations, I’ve learned that written communication is best. So here, my love, is why I think California voters — not to mention voters in 29 other U.S. states — did the right thing.

First, I think everyone but the most mindless libertarians would agree that it’s wise to allow the state to regulate family life to some extent, especially when children are concerned. Through most of human history, children were considered chattel, fully under the control of their parents, no matter how abusive or neglectful. Then, in 1875, Abraham R. Lawrence, a justice of the New York Supreme Court, took up the landmark case of a young girl who had been regularly beaten by her parents. In his ruling, Lawrence took an unprecedented step to end the chattel tradition, ruling that the state could limit parents’ rights when children were at risk. Extensive legislation establishing children’s rights followed, eventually spreading across much of the world.

Many governments also have defined and limited the way adults can partner with each other, although approaches have varied widely. During the 1800s, the then-new Mormon church openly practiced polygyny (one man, several wives), emulating the common patriarchal practices of the Old Testament. Because Christian authorities had banned all forms of polygamy (polygyny, polyandry and group marriage) in the 4th century, mainstream American Christians generally frowned on Mormon polygyny, and court actions and laws eventually forced the Mormon church to ban it too. A unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1878 set the precedent for state interference in religious marriage practices, concluding that “laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.”

Lifetime one-man one-woman marriages aren’t the only kind of partnerships sanctioned by governments, however. In some countries with large Shiite populations, for example, short-term, fixed-duration marriages (Nikah Mut’ah) are allowed — kind of like our cohabitation rite, except with official recognition and an expiration date. And in many Muslim countries, men are allowed to take up to four wives, a practice described in the Koran. Nearly 1,000 cultures around the world allow some form of polygamy, either officially or by nonregulation; in Senegal, nearly half the marriages are polygamous. In the U.S., both the Libertarian Party and the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed laws prohibiting polygamy.

As for same-sex marriage, since 2001, seven countries have come on board, including mainly Catholic Spain, even though the Roman Catholic Church is officially opposed to the practice.

There is no convincing evidence — absolutely none — that these various forms of romantic partnership do anyone, or any society, or any children, any harm. So I’m not really skeptical about same-sex marriage per se. If anything, I think that same-sex marriage is a shortsighted idea that doesn’t go far enough.

Most Americans insist that they want the word “marriage” to continue to mean a long-term, opposite-sex union, as it has in the Judeo-Christian world for nearly two millennia. To put this issue into better perspective, imagine that English were more like German and that the word marriage had a lot more syllables: longtermoppositesexunion. Should same-sex couples wed under that label?  I say no — and that gay activists have been fighting the wrong battle.

The real challenge is to have the state begin to recognize the full range of healthy, non-exploitative, romantic partnerships that actually exist among human beings. Gays are correct in expressing outrage over the fact that official recognition, the power to make health decisions, inheritance rights and tax benefits, have long been granted to only one kind of committed partnership in the United States. But wanting their own committed relationships to be shoe-horned into an old institution makes little sense, especially given the poor, almost pathetic performance of that institution in recent decades. Half of first marriages fail in the U.S., after all, as do nearly two-thirds of second marriages. Is that really a club you want to join?

Even if marriage were redefined to accommodate same-sex couples in California, would any real benefits ensue? The state’s current domestic partnership law — wait, I mean its longtermsamesexunion law — does nearly everything a state can do for a romantic same-sex couple, creating near parity between gay and straight couples. Gay “marriage” adds little except the label, still leaving those all-important federal rights — accelerated immigration rights, Social Security and federal tax benefits, veterans benefits and many others — completely inaccessible.

Let’s fight a larger battle, namely to have government catch up to human behavior. That means recognizing the legitimacy of a wide range of consensual, non-exploitative romantic partnerships, each of which should probably have its own distinct label.

In the U.S., the highest priority should be to give official recognition to cohabitation, which is, in effect, renewable short-term marriage. Married households are now in the minority in the U.S., and cohabitation is increasing, especially among the elderly. Cohabitors are wary of lifetime commitments (in part, perhaps, because such commitments so often prove to be illusory in our culture), but many would probably like the option of getting the same rights and benefits during their cohabitation that married people have.

This would be a step toward stabilizing relationships as they actually occur in 21st century America, and perhaps even toward reducing our disgraceful divorce rate. Trying to force all legitimate partnerships into one defective box — longtermoppositesexunion — denies millions of caring partners the benefits of state recognition and sets up millions of others to fail.

So, my love, as you can see, I’m not really opposed to gay marriage per se. What I’m opposed to is narrow thinking. The world is changing fast, and one change we need to consider is to have governments recognize a wide variety of legitimate, caring relationships. Gays have pushed us toward greater tolerance of the unfamiliar, but we have a long way to go.

Robert Epstein is a visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. His most recent book is The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen.

Newt Gingrich (“Let’s End Adolescence,” Business Week, Oct. 30, 2008) is correct in asserting that adolescence is a “failed experiment” in the United States, but his proposal to pay young people to graduate a year or two early from high school is hardly a solution to the extensive problem we have created over the last century.  As I show in my new book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, adolescence is maintained by a complex system of laws and institutions that are growing stronger every day, driven by widespread misconceptions about teen competence, the drug-company-inspired myth of the “teen brain,” and media and fashion industries now extracting nearly $200 billion a year from young people completely mesmerized by the idiotic world of teen “culture.” 

Reversing this trend will require no less than the reeducation of the American public and the dismantling of major institutions.  In more than 100 cultures around the world where young people are welcomed into adult society  at early ages, the teen years are without turmoil.  The extreme turmoil of our own teens, reverberating painfully through our families and our society, is a creation of our culture and entirely unnecessary.