Peace is not the result of integrated coexistence. It is the result of well-defined geographic and political boundaries.

Social Science Palooza IV

International New York Times | 3 July 2014

 
David Brooks

A day without social science is like a day without sunshine. Fortunately, every morning Kevin Lewis of National Affairs magazine gathers recent social science findings and emails them out to the masses. You can go to the National Affairs website to see and sign up for his work, but, in the meantime, here are some recent interesting findings:

Working moms sometimes raise smarter students. Caitlin McPherran Lombardi and Rebekah Levine Coley studied the children of mothers who work and those of mothers who don’t. They found the children of working mothers were just as ready for school as other children. Furthermore, among families where the father’s income was lower, the children of working mothers demonstrated higher cognitive skills and fewer conduct problems than the children of nonworking mothers. As with all this work, no one study is dispositive, but here is some more support for the idea that mothers who work are not hurting their kids.

The office is often a more relaxing place than the home. Sarah Damaske, Joshua Smyth and Matthew Zawadzki found that people are more likely to have lower values of the stress hormone cortisol when they are at work than when at home. Maybe that’s because parenting small kids is so demanding. But, on the contrary: Having children around was correlated with less relative stress at home. 

Hearts and minds may be a myth. Armies fighting counterinsurgency campaigns spend a lot of effort trying to win over the hearts and minds of the local populations. But Raphael Cohen looked at polling data from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and found that public opinion is a poor predictor of strategic victory. Public opinion is not that malleable, and its swings are more an effect than a cause. That is, counterinsurgency armies get more popular as they win victories; they don’t get popular and then use that popularity to win. 

Attractive children attract less empathy than unattractive children. Robert Fisher and Yu Ma studied how much help children received from unrelated adults when they were experiencing difficulties. People perceive that attractive children are more socially competent and, therefore, are less likely to help them, as long as the need is not severe. So, if you are creating an ad to get people to donate to your hospital or charity, you might avoid child models who are winners in the looks department.

Too much talent can be as bad as too little talent. Most people assume there is a linear relationship between talent and team performance. But Roderick Swaab and others studied team performance in basketball and found that more talent is better up to a point — after which more talent just means worse teamwork and ultimately worse performance. In baseball, more talent did lead to better team performance straight up the line, but in activities like basketball, which require more intra-team coordination, too much talent can tear apart teamwork. 

Title IX has produced some unintended consequences. Phoebe Clarke and Ian Ayres studied the effect of sports on social outcomes. They found that a 10 percentage point increase in state level female sports participation generated a 5 or 6 percentage point rise in the rate of female secularism, a 5 point rise in the proportion of women who are mothers and a 6 point rise in the percentage who are single mothers. It could be that sports participation is correlated with greater independence from traditional institutions, with good and bad effects.

Moral stories don’t necessarily make more moral children. Kang Lee, Victoria Talwar and others studied the effectiveness of classic moral stories in promoting honesty among 3- to 7-year-olds. They found stories like “Pinocchio” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” failed to reduce lying in children. However, the story of “George Washington and the Cherry Tree” significantly increased truth-telling. Stories that emphasized the bad effects of lying had no effect, but stories that emphasized the good effects of telling the truth did have an effect.

Good fences make good neighbors. When ethnic groups clash, we usually try to encourage peace by integrating them. Let them get to know one another or perform a joint activity. This may be the wrong approach. Alex Rutherford, Dion Harmon and others studied ethnically diverse areas and came to a different conclusion. Peace is not the result of integrated coexistence. It is the result of well-defined geographic and political boundaries. For example, Switzerland is an ethnically diverse place, but mountains and lakes clearly define each group’s spot. Even in the former Yugoslavia, amid widespread ethnic violence, peace prevailed where there were clear boundaries.

Most social science research confirms the blindingly obvious. But sometimes it reveals things nobody had thought of, or suggests that the things we thought were true are actually false. 

That’s a message for you, federal appropriators.