Typically, when asked, many people will be reluctant to admit that they would place blind trust in somebody who is in a high-power position. Too many stories of politicians and top executives abusing their power run through the media. Making oneself vulnerable to such power holders thus doesn't seem like the sensible choice.
Rational actor theories agree with this anecdotal wisdom: they suggest that people will be trustworthy toward someone else only if being so is instrumental in maintaining that relationship. Given that powerful people tend to have many partners to choose from, they place – relatively speaking – less value in any particular relationship, reducing the likelihood that they will behave in a trustworthy fashion.
In other words, powerful individuals can afford to betray others – they can always find new people to work with. Rational actor theories further assume that the less powerful party to an exchange will predict this behavior and, as a result, place less trust in their more powerful counterpart.
However, our research shows that this is not the case. In fact, we observe exactly the opposite pattern. Over a wide variety of different experimental paradigms and measures, we find that less powerful actors place more trust in others than more powerful actors do. That is, trust is greater when power is low rather than high.
Our problem is that we trust powerful people too much.
(Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday October 08 2015, @05:05AM
Their explosions are so sciency!
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @07:51PM
You laugh, but the thing is they actually explain their methods.
Since they don't leave themselves a veil, they are one of the more trustworthy ones out there.
Yes, the explosions are often just for fun, but so what.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 09 2015, @12:10PM
No, I just grin. Haven't laughed for ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @05:06AM
Problem is that social science is bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @05:48AM
No, the problem is that some think that bullshit is social science! The reason they believe such OUTRAGEOUS things is because they believe that social science is bullshit, and they erroneously imagine this is reciprocal, when in fact it is not, and moreover, their initial thesis is in fact incorrect. OK, maybe not so much "incorrect" as "incoherent". As in, "not even wrong"? Tom? Is that you, Tom? Tell me about psychiatry one more time, Tom!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dltaylor on Thursday October 08 2015, @05:46AM
Any discipline that has as a basic axiom that any human, or group of humans, are capable of anything but incidental rational behavior is going to be wrong about almost everything. There are far too many counter-examples for that premise to have any validity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:02AM
Any discipline that has as a basic axiom that any human, or group of humans, are capable of anything but incidental rational behavior is going to be wrong about almost everything.
Amazing! So let me get this right: Social sciences have as a basic axiom that humans are only incidentally capable of rational behavior, which is itself an only incidentally rational behavior, so that social science is self-consistent. That is better than the self-contradictory pronouncements of internet philosophers of science, so we can predict that social science will be right about almost everything. One thing it will be correct about is the prevalence of anti-social science attitudes on the internet, or what we might call the Anti-social Un-scientific Injustice Warriors! AUIW! Thus a great acronym is born. Use it often and with pride and prejudice. Extreme prejudice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Thursday October 08 2015, @07:16AM
Then you are describing economics.
But it is actually worse than that: their primary theories lack even the most basic scientific analysis and are mostly driven by parrots and ideology.
Economic commentary has much more in common with sports commentary than science.
But I agree that the "rational actor theory" stands up to scrutiny about as well as a piece of single-ply toilet paper does to a tsunami.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Eunuchswear on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:54AM
And money, never forget that.
After 2008 it turned out a lot of economics "researchers" who'd been singing the praises of banking deregulation were being paid as "consultants" by the banking industry.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:31PM
But it is actually worse than that: their primary theories lack even the most basic scientific analysis and are mostly driven by parrots and ideology. Economic commentary has much more in common with sports commentary than science.
I think the most obvious point is missed here. When money or ideology is at stake, then anything can be determined to be true or false with a fairly reasonable sounding bit of rhetoric. That just means you have an extremely hard testing environment, not that you don't have a science.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday October 09 2015, @12:06AM
Nonsense.
Make assertions as fact without any proper evidence has nothing to do with science. Its sports commentary: IOW just some nitwit running their mouth.
Worse yet then going on to dictate public policy based on these assertions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 09 2015, @07:49PM
Nonsense. Make assertions as fact without any proper evidence has nothing to do with science.
I agree with that statement. What I don't agree with is the assertion that there is no science at all.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday October 09 2015, @10:51PM
It is common to discuss topics as if Outliers do not exist for the sake of sanity.
I also realise that there has recently been a push towards proper analysis.
Nevertheless in the mainstream where it counts....
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @01:17PM
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday October 10 2015, @07:46PM
And that is not what I was suggesting.
Straw man by weak metaphor, is it?
Well, a riposte in king then:
I am suggesting we should not take the extremely noisy signal and press it on our master CD for worldwide distribution as an audio masterpiece which the law should have every citizen be legally bound to purchase regardless of their musical taste.
This is in essence what has already happened.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @10:28PM
I am suggesting we should not take the extremely noisy signal and press it on our master CD for worldwide distribution as an audio masterpiece which the law should have every citizen be legally bound to purchase regardless of their musical taste.
This is in essence what has already happened.
So what? Poor political decisions have little to do with economics, aside from providing evidence. Sciency rationalizations have even less to do with actual economics aside from using some common jargon.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday October 10 2015, @11:12PM
This is complete nonsense and I can see now that you are just arguing due to stubbornness and a severe case of head up bum.
This discussion is over.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 11 2015, @02:46AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:23PM
Any discipline that has as a basic axiom that any human, or group of humans, are capable of anything but incidental rational behavior is going to be wrong about almost everything.
So... humans are capable of incidental rational behavior? And that breaks someone's theory? Who would that be and how much beer did they consume first to construct the validity of the theory?
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:28AM
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton [1] [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:51AM
My favorite internet mashup:
Knowledge is power. (Sir Francis Bacon) Power corrupts. (the aforementioned Lord Acton) Study hard, be evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @10:17AM
Crispy bacon is delicious.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 08 2015, @06:42PM
-- Anthony Bourdain
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday October 08 2015, @07:08AM
So far, my life experiences tell me that trusting a man who wears a suit is not wise.
Although they rarely use a gun or a knife, they can cut you up with their pen big-time. That smiling face and handshake are preludes to a pretty big surprise.
The Temptations did a song detailing the same in the 60's. [youtube.com]
You are quite expendable.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @04:35PM
So far, my life experiences tell me that trusting a man who wears a suit is not wise.
Although they rarely use a gun or a knife, they can cut you up with their pen big-time. That smiling face and handshake are preludes to a pretty big surprise.
The Temptations did a song detailing the same in the 60's.
At least a generation older than that.
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
-- "Pretty Boy Floyd" by Woody Guthrie
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday October 10 2015, @03:44AM
Thanks....
Keying "Woody Guthrie" into YouTube gave me some music the likes of which I have not heard in quite some time.
Thanks to those YouTubers that keep this old stuff alive. Without your efforts, a lot of this older folk art will slide to oblivion, never seen or heard of again.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:05AM
Less powerful people (falsely) place trust in more powerful people. Yes, that is definitely real life. A lot of it has to do with imagining the powerful person as you would like them to be. Justin Bieber fans might find the real Justin Bieber to be a jerk, but as long as he's just a face on TV, they can fill in much more attractive details.
For me, the ultimate expression of this is the shocking faith that people place in government. In the end, the government consists of a bunch of people. People who have been granted semi-anonymous power over your lives of everyone else.
Think of any office you know: some people are good, many are just muddling through, and some - some are venal, and enjoy exercising power over others, especially if they can do so with little danger of consequences. These are the people who make governments dangerous.
The more powerful the government, and the more people it employs, the greater the danger. The tales you hear of police abusing their authority are the obvious cases. But this ranges from the clerk who can delay your paperwork all the way up to the NSA (or other national equivalents) that feels entitled to spy on the entire population.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @12:29PM
Or the clerk who denies your paperwork because she has the despotic fantasy that separation of church and state was repealed and she's working for a theocracy of her religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @05:43PM
Or the clerk who denies your paperwork because she has the despotic fantasy that separation of church and state was repealed and she's working for a theocracy of her religion.
I think the logic is not that the 1st amendment was repealed, it is that the first amendment stops our State from infringing on religious beliefs by allowing someone to use the power of our State to enforce their personal religious views on others even when those views are against the State's laws.
This would imply that, if the guy who did the recent killing spree in Oregon, who was apparently killing people based on their religious beliefs, was doing it for his own personal religious beliefs, his actions should not be punishable by the State. It would also mean that any religious doctrine, say Sharia Law, takes precedent over the State's laws. Of course, his theory is completely inconsistent and taken to the obvious conclusion would lead to complete chaos and theocratic violence throughout the country.
Yeah God?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:42AM
Power corrupts, but that's not where it starts. In order to gain power, a person has to have no problem in using other people. A people user is per definition less trusting, because he will think others are like him and have similar goals. A trusting person on the other hand, is less likely to gain power because you have to (ab)use people to get there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Eunuchswear on Thursday October 08 2015, @09:51AM
There's a little RWA [umanitoba.ca] in all of us.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @10:07AM
Here's what the actual studies say:
So this says high-power people trust low-power people less than low-power people trust high-power people.
In other words, power players trust others less than non-power players do.
Summay: Those in power distrust others.
I don't see anything in the descriptions that compares trust of people in the same position in people with or without power. That is, as far as I can see from the descriptions, they would be completely compatible with e.g. the following trust relation (NP = non-powerful person, PP = powerful person):
NP trusts NP more than NP trusts PP, NP trusts PP more than PP trusts NP, PP trusts NP more than PP trusts PP.
Note that with that hypothetical order, powerful people would consistently be less trusted than non-powerful people, and yet the study results, as described in the quoted paragraphs, would still hold.
Now of course it might be that the actual studies showed more, but given that the article is apparently written by those who did the study, I'm assuming that the description of what the study measured is accurate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2015, @03:42PM
Look at all of human history: the norm is always a small group of people with control over a large number of peons. Revolutions by the peasants are rare. Peasants go along with it. Human beings are *adapted* to this power structure just like our monkey relatives.