Environmental Heterogeneity and Phenotypic Markers Create Longer Distances Between Nodes
Life
is uncertain. Life in lower income communities is more uncertain
than the norm. This unpredictability will have profound consequences
for the life historical features of the poor in American society
where differential gender, race, and class may be permanent markers
of social inferiority. It is tempting to speculate that the costs of
conformity are not perceived by the compliant or convert, and
psychological research suggests three categories of response that may
lead individuals to commit errors of judgment in uncertain
conditions. People may employ a “representative heuristic” when
drawing conclusions impulsively, without rational methods of
decision-making. On this basis, a model of the world—not
necessarily a conscious one—is constructed which is more likely to
value what has occurred in the past, decreasing the effect of new
stimuli representing changes in the environment. If, as Shelby
Steele stated, “The [non-immigrant African-American underclass] …is
basically as free as he or she wants to be.”, an opinion with which
I partially agree, most of these individuals may not view the world
as Steele does because of historical factors.
My
qualified support of Steele’s statement is based on the
observations that initial conditions, and the events that succeed
them, are dynamic. Some lives may spin out of control, take a
chaotic path, unpredictably. Rigid conformity to norms of groups
(e.g., the “black church,” Black Lives Matter, Nation of Islam)
to which the individual is exposed may stabilize the environment, as
Muzafer Sherif suggested more than 70 years ago. It is important to
investigate whether the representative heuristic is more likely to be
formed before, after, or during the process of compliance of
conversion and to understand tactics and strategies that might be
employed to weaken its constraints upon perception. For example,
instruction in decision-making techniques might counteract
representativeness.
Individuals
may, also, misjudge the probabilities of events occurring in time and
space. Judgments based on the underlying odds of phenomena occurring
in communities of the underclasses may not accurately predict events
in the social, economic, and political mainstream networks. Repeated
experiences in an environment will be generalized to other
environments and will lead to expectations about how others will
behave. These processes, characteristic of all organisms with
learning capacities, will function in the underclasses to foreclose
the perception of opportunities where they exist outside their
communities that are often segregated from non-marginal spaces. This
resistance of learned beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors will
contribute to a form of passive conformity through continuing
reinforcement of the behaviors initially conditioned, and it may be
difficult for the Panopticon Network to police marginal spaces.
Little
is known about changing mind-sets, redrawing cognitive maps short of
intensive behavioral modification (e.g., by psychotherapy, coercion,
force). But, I believe that public schools and local governments can
significantly influence the experiences of young members of the
underclass in spaces outside their own proscribed communities, thus
increasing the likelihood that they will make veridical decisions
and, perhaps, decreasing the probability of conformity as a denial of
and recomposition for the consequences of real and perceived
victimization.
Errors
in judgment may, also, result from the manner in which a problem is
“framed.” Research has demonstrated that solutions to problems
depend on the architecture of a statement. It has been found that
the most rational decisions are made when statements are framed
broadly rather than narrowly, and, it seems to me, that narrow
framing is likely to favor conformity by restricting the pattern of
events in the environment to which the individual responds.
Alternative social tactics and strategies, then, would not, all other
things being equal, be perceived, limiting cognitive flexibility.
Many
years of my teaching career were spent at two “historically black
colleges.” At one of these schools, a student of mine claimed that
psychologists used the white rat for their laboratory studies
because, “Psychology is a racist science.” The narrowness of
this student’s statement led to errors in judgment, most likely
strongly influenced by emotions, preventing her from imagining
alternative explanations. Similar to expressing a representativeness
heuristic and ignoring the underlying probabilities of events, narrow
framing is the result of and has the ability to create perceptual
biases, constraining our understanding of the world. My student was
prevented from coding certain components of her environment in
particular ways as if the limitations of her knowledge of events
corresponded to richness of interpretation. This young woman was not
unable to learn—to modify her behavior; but, learning was made more
difficult because a stage of re-framing was required to adjust her
perceptions in order to associate the genetic homogeneity of a white
rat with its appropriateness as a relatively homogeneous lab control,
rather than a symbol of historical domination.
Narrow
framing may make a person more likely to conform to elements of the
Panopticon Network by creating a relatively undifferentiated set of
stimuli with which events are endowed with meaning. Fewer
environmental cues, then, will be available for association and
identification. If conformity is a type of social influence, then
individuals who frame narrowly are more susceptible to incitement
because fewer stimuli will evoke their conforming (cooperative?)
behavior. Coherent belief systems may attract many citizens in
societies, but those on the margins who frame narrowly may be
especially resistant to potentially life-enhancing social influence.
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