A Risky Paradigm An Evaluation of Risk and Decision-Making in American Society

A Risky Paradigm

An Evaluation of Risk and Decision-Making in American Society

Christopher Stanley

Psychology Senior Project

For Professor Nelson Donegan

May 2, 2011

Abstract:

This paper argues that our society is caught in a paradigm of risk that works to perpetuate

inequality because the ruling class is able to construct and allocate risk thereby

minimizing risk for themselves and maximizing risk for others. From the macro level of

institutional allocation to the micro level of risk perception, the decisions people make

daily are a result of their socially constructed risk environment and socially constructed

risk attitudes.

I. Introduction

Risk is a paradigm. On a micro level its mental representation is what drives one

in decision making, while on a macro level its assessment of a situation warrants

appropriate management. Society has created risks and is now obsessed with controlling

them. This paper argues that our society is caught in a paradigm of risk that works to

perpetuate inequality because the ruling class is able to construct and allocate thereby

minimizing risk for themselves and maximizing risk for others. On a micro level, I show

that cognitive biases affect people’s risky decision making and their aggregate is how

inequality is manifested. The paper will be broken into the following parts.

Part II labeled Construction will first discuss why risk is significant today, and

then will detail the transitive quality about risk that makes it make it possible to construct

risk.

Part III labeled Allocation will set the stage for our current situation. It will show

how in the United States risk has been allocated and what this means for society.

Part IV labeled Perception will discuss how people perceive risk and specifically

it is that society socially constructs peoples risk perceptions.

Part V labeled Decision Making will introduce the process of decision-making

and how cognitive biases and heuristics cause actors to make irrational decision.

Finally the part labeled Mike will follow a character I created and all of the

decisions that people make to determine his future. Mike is an African American high

school drop out and must make a decision regarding his future. I will discuss all of the

forces pushing and pulling him away from making a wise decision. I then digress and

evaluate the decisions that are made regarding how people perceive Mike in society and

how society’s perception of Mike is constructed in a way that works to perpetuate social

and economic inequality.

The point of this paper is to show that because risk is socially constructed is has

been constructed in such a way that perpetuates inequality. From the macro level of

institutional allocation to the micro level of risk perception, the decisions people make

daily are a result of their socially constructed risk environment and socially constructed

risk attitudes. We see through the our character Mike that the constructions of risk are

unfair if we wish to live by the Red, White, and Blue; that is equal opportunity for all.

II. Construction

Studying everyday decision-making under risk is particularly interesting because

of the society we live in today. Ulrich Beck has coined the period we live in today as the

“Risk Society.” That is, through the evolution of scientism and the developments of

technology, post-modernity has become a society dominated by risk. The scientific and

technological developments of the period of modernization have created risks and

hazards that are incalculable. Because risk is now incalculable, no one can be held

accountable for the hazards and their consequences.

Modernity has also allowed for the creation of cultural constraints. Evolution in

science and the scientific method has allowed for a validation of what is and is not

“normal.” Social actions and behaviors are considered “normal” relative to the

surrounding social institution and its ideology. The “norm” can similarly pertain to the

construction and allocation of risk in society; that is, risk, like behavior, can be in

extremes and today there is a normative level of risk that society members should expect.

Differing from the norm poses a threat to society in some social actions, it is therefore the

goal of social institutions to control by creating laws and establishing social constructs to

control the extremes. Beck argues that the norm is a rationalization for social control by

defining what is and what is not acceptable.

Because of globalization and technological innovation, risk existing today is

incalculable and unanticipated, most risks exist in a ‘permanent state of virtuality,’ the

moment they become real they are no longer risks, rather catastrophes. Beck argues that

the response to this level of risk is transformation, that is to allocate risk

The perceived riskiness of an event differs between its victim and its beneficiary.

In risk analysis literature, there is currently a great debate regarding who determines what

is deemed harmful. On one hand, it is argued that “harm is self-evident or a manifest

quality of an outcome.” On the other hand it is argued that “harm is not objective; it

essentially entails an evaluation of an outcome and a conclusion that the outcome is

unacceptable.” This belief allows for the possibility that a harmful event may be regarded

by some as beneficial. A bomb goes off and 15 terrorists are killed. To the terrorists and

their families, this is a very much harmful event, however to the majority whom are now

without the terrorist threat, this event is very beneficial. Assessing the net harm of a

hazardous event depends the acceptability of its outcome by the affected victim and

beneficiary. Because those affected individuals determine what is harmful and what is

not, risk being a function of harm is therefore a socially constructed notion by individuals

and institutions.1

III. Allocation

Because risk is a socially constructed phenomenon, some people have a greater

capacity to influence its reflexivity, and not everyone benefits. The inequalities for social !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Breakwell, Glynis (2007). The Psychology of Risk. Cambridge University Press

control allow powerful actors to maximize risk for others, while minimizing risk for

themselves.2

In the United States a similar transformation happened in the 1970’s, the advent

of Becks “Risk Society. At its very basic form, the definition of risk is the potential that a

chosen action will lead to an undesirable outcome. Therefore, in a society where wealth is

a cornerstone of ones success and decisions work towards achieving success, a transfer of

risk form one social group to another can be regarded as a series of bad (high risk) and

good (low risk) wealth decisions; inequality.

Income inequality in the United States has been increasing ever since the 1970’s;

and in 2006 the country had among one the highest levels of income inequality

worldwide. In 2010 the top 20% of Americans owned 49.4% of the nations income while

the 15% of the nation’s people living in poverty only owned 3.4% of the nations income.

A different measure, wealth inequality, refers to the unequal distribution of financial

assets (i.e. cars, investments, businesses). Currently, the top 10% of people possess 80%

of all financial assets while the bottom 90% hold only 20% of all financial wealth.3

Wealth is different from income; it has a psychological element of agency or the ability

to act that grants people more options and eliminates restrictions on how one can live life.

Further, “wealth provides for both short- and long-term financial security, bestows social

prestige, and contributes to political power, and can be used to produce more wealth.”4

It would seem as though that after the Civil Rights movement, which aimed to

end racial discrimination and move towards a more egalitarian society, the economic

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2 Beck, Ulrich 1992 Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. 3 Hurst, Charles E. Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences, page 31. Pearson Education, Inc., 2007 4 Keister, Lisa A. and Stephanie Moller: “Wealth Inequality in the United States”, page 64. Annual Review of Sociology, 2000

inequality gap in America would lessen. That obviously was not the case. A popular

conservative movement took off in America took off and what became was the “Great

Divergence,” a term coined by the economist Paul Krugman to describe the income gap.

Between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent,

but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.5 Krugman calls this

the era of “movement conservatism,” a term used to describe a set of interlocking

institutions in communications media, religion, higher education, law, and mega-

corporations with a right winged neoconservative attitude.

Public policy became a commodity largely owned by corporate America. In the

1970’s, campaign finance laws were rewritten and soon policy no longer became

democratically representative, but worked in the favor of the few and the powerful. What

precipitated from this movement was a shift of risk away from the wealthy and onto the

poor. In Ulrich Beck’s risk society, this is the act of the transformation of risk.

Over the past 40 years, public policy, the war on drugs, and the privatization of

prisons in the United States have worked in combination to shift wealth into the hands of

politicians, bankers, lawyers, and health care providers at the expense of largely minority

persons and lower-class families. The mechanisms and history behind this shift are vast,

however; in short, the “War on Drugs” exponentially incriminated minority individuals

because of Supreme Court legislation eviscerating the Fourth Amendment protections

against unreasonable searches and seizures by the police. As a result implicit cognitive

biases aligned with stereotypes led to a disproportionate incrimination of minority

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!5 Krugman, Paul 12 August 2007 <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/introducing-this-blog/>

individuals.6 While cracking down on drug crime offenses, individuals with profiteering

incentives have been behind political contributions made to politicians to set criminal

justice policies to “get tough” on penal policy and lobby for increased privatization of the

prison industry. In 2002-2004 election cycle, corporations with a stake in the expansion

of the private prison invested $3.3 million in campaign donations. The incentives are

misaligned; they are not set up to promote the greater good, rather the same people

profiteering from prisoners are the ones responsible for putting them in jail.

Who is to blame? Well, this is an example of a sociological shift of risk. Robin

(2004) says that this is a consequence of “paranoid style of American politics” that led to

a rapidly growing volume of laws and police inspections.7

Burgeoning social regulation is not spread evenly. Hirschi stressed its class distribution. It

criminalizes street life, and therefore those whose lives are most exposed to the street, the lower

classes. The upper classes retreat to gated communities, leaving those in the middle to live with

a heightened sense of risk; they cannot afford total security, their kids go to public schools, and

they regularly have to use the streets. Hence those in the middle that make up the bulk of the

electorate turn to the state for protection.8

This is a type of social control that derives its power by making a majority of

people fear a smaller segment. The elite who have control over forms of mass

communication to spread ideas (politics, media) use political fear as an instrument of

control over the masses. ”the most salient political fear, the one that structures our lives

and limits our possibilities, is the fear of the enemy of the state.”9 Today Americans learn

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!6 Substance abuse and mental health services administration, results from the 2002 national survey on drug use and health: detailed tables, prevalence estimates, standard errors and sample sizes (Washington, DC: office of national drug policy, 2003, table 34 7 Skoll, Geoffrey. (2010). A Social Theory of Fear. Palgrave Macmillan. New York ,NY 8 Skoll, Geoffrey. (2010) 9 Skoll, Geoffrey (2010)

to fear a specific criminals class and what the state does to those criminals. In risk

literature these individuals are perceived to be relatively riskier, they threaten the norm.

IV. Perception

“A Cultural Theory of Risk” asserts that individuals selectively attend to risks in a

manner that support their way of life, their norm. On a greater level, it is an approach that

attempts to make sense how and why individuals form judgments about risk. At its core

the theory suggests individuals decisions regarding risk are influenced by their immediate

social group and by the degree that they feel bonded to larger social groups. The theory’s

creator, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, used a “group/grid” typology to categorize

individuals as “high or low” participants to understand more about people’s attitudes

towards risk and how they perceive it. Group refers to how bonded an individual is to

surrounding social units and how absorbing the group’s activities are on that individual.

Grid refers to the social norms that exist between groups and how strong or weak (high or

low) their levels of interaction are with other individuals. In high grid scenario an

individual adheres strictly to a set of social rules whereas an individual in a low grid is

free to act according to their own social relations because they no longer feel obligated to

abide to formal classifications. Placing these dimensions in a two axis system results in

four outcomes, Douglas labels these Hierarchic (HH), Egalitarian (HL), Fatalistic (LH),

and Individualistic (LL) to describe one’s way of life. Each has distinctive patterns of risk

perception because individuals perceive things that endanger their own way of life as

risky. In the end the theory asserts that people acting within social groups, downplay

certain risks and emphasize others as a means of maintaining and controlling the group.10

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10 Douglas, Mary; Wildavsky, Aaron. (1983) Risk and culture: an essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley. University of California Press.

Research by Kahan et al. set off to test the Cultural Theory of risk to see if

individuals selectively credit or dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supporting of their

preferred form of social organization. In an 1800 person survey that confirms cultural

worldviews then asks risk perception questions, it was found that risk perceptions do vary

across race and sex. The most significant discovery coined “white male effect” found

that white males are less concerned with a wide variety of risks than are minorities or

women. Relating Douglas’ group/grid typology, it is found that white males generally

hold more anti-egalitarian and individualistic attitudes than the general population.11

Kahan et. al. found that

The white male effect is an artifact of variance in cultural worldviews: Sex and race per se did

not influence risk perception among the members of our large and broadly representative

sample; rather these characteristics influenced risk perception only in conjunction with

distinctive worldviews that themselves feature either sex or race differentiation or both in

social roles involving putatively dangerous activities.12

Kahan’s results indicate people accept or dismiss risk claims in a manner that confirms

their cultural values. The white males insensitivity to risk can be seen as a form of

cultural identity threat that afflicts hierarchical and individualistic attitudes.

Psychological research on stereotype and social identity threat provides support for this

conclusion. Cohen, Aronson & Steele find that individuals conform their beliefs of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 Kahan, Dan. Donald Braman, John Gastil, Paul Slovic & C. K. Mertz, (2007) Culture and Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining the White-Male Effect in Risk Perception, 4 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 465 (2007). 12 Kahan et al. (2007)

information in a way that supports beliefs associated to the group to which they belong,

even when presented with clear and contradictory information.13

Kahan also reports that the white male effect is an outgrowth of cultural

cognition, that is people tend to form perceptions of risk and related facts that cohere with

their self-defining values.

On a similar note, sociologist Geoffrey Skoll wrote, “The masses orient their

political preferences with those of the upper class and adopt their risk perceptions.”

14Relating this idea to the popular book, The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander

argues that the perceived riskiness of the black community is the result of identifying the

black race of criminals of the drug war. Alexander highlights a media campaign launched

by the Regan administration a couple years after the drug was as an effort to publicize

horror stories of black crack dealers in ghetto communities.15

Overnight, the worst racial stereotypes about black communities were reinforced

and what resulted was what Alexander likes to call “The New Jim Crow,” an era of social

inequality fueled by racial stereotypes, enforced by mass incarceration, and set into action

by the social and economic elite. However, what was even worse was the effect these

had on people now constructed their individual perceptions of risk. The role that risk

plays in lives is pervasive because it affects every single decision you make, whether or

not this decision will likely harm or benefit you is important to everyone.

IV. Decision Making

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!13 Cohen, G. L., Aronson, J., & Steele, C. M. (2000). When Beliefs Yield to Evidence: Reducing Biased Evaluation by Affirming the Self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(9), 1151-1164 14 Skoll, Geoffrey. (2010). A Social Theory of Fear. Palgrave Macmillan. New York ,NY. 15 Alexander, Michelle. (2010) The New Jim Crow. The New Press. New York.

It has long been the goal of philosophers, economists, psychologists, and

sociologists to understand why people make what choices. Understanding the

mechanisms behind decisions would result in predictive theories hopefully leading to

policy decisions for the betterment of mankind. However, the social sciences do not fully

understand why people make what decisions, shouldn’t everyone be rational?

In 1979 Kahnemen and Tversky published “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of

Decision Under Risk.” This study identified biases and heuristics that affect ones

decision-making. After long rejecting psychological theory for a model of rational choice

to explain individuals behavior, Economics and its theories in recent have been largely

criticized because of the large amount of published material in behavioral economics and

decision theory that contradict the rational choice paradigm.

At the core of this extensive amount of literature is the actual decision one makes.

Decision-making is described as the cognitive processes that result in a selection of a

course of action among alternative scenarios. 16 A longtime goal of psychology is to

understand these cognitive processes to determine why people make what decisions.

Some decisions are relatively easy to make, coffee or tea? Others involve more

complex processes that may inhibit optimal decision-making. In every decision a person

makes there is a risk assessment and a decision between potential costs and benefits.

Should Jim buy a motorcycle? Large economic benefit, potentially catastrophic health

costs. Jim will choose an optimal course of action based on how his perceived benefits

differ from his perceived costs. This was an easy decision to make for Jim who was only

concerned about what this motorcycle would do for his reproductive fitness; to shy to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!16 Reason JT. Human error. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

admit that he used the rationale of the bikes economic benefit as the deciding factor.

After all, the bikes commercial did advertise 0% APR offer for the first 12 months,

assuming Jim gets his expected pay raise he would be able to pay this off no doubt in a

year. Consequences of this decision may be physical injury or debt, but these were all

risks he was willing to accept for the potential that this bike may attract his future wife. It

is likely that Jim would decide against buying a motorcycle if he was cognizant of the

fact that motorcycle rider deaths are 30 times more common than drivers of other

vehicles17 and that the economic benefit due to gas would likely be diminished by his

now higher life insurance premiums. This story is an example of a risky decision being

made, and Jim likely falling prey to Herbert Simon’s “bounded rationality.” That is,

human decision-making is limited by available information, the information processing

ability of the mind, and the time allowed to make a decision.18 Because of this, Jims own

estimate of risk was very different than the ‘objective’ estimate that exists in the absence

of Jim’s bounded rationality.

A decision like this leads psychologists to ask the question “what is going on in

his mind that makes this sound like a good idea?” The perceived risk of the event is what

Jim based his decision on and includes how he understood the potential consequences of

the event.

So, how does risk construction, allocation, perception and decision making play in

the relationship between the seamless inequality perpetuator that is the criminal justice

system? The purpose of the following section is to follow the decisions made by all

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!17 Clarke, David D.; Ward, Pat; Bartle, Craig; Truman, Wendy (November 2004) In-Depth Study of Motorcycle Accidents. Department of Transport, UK 18 Simon (1987b) Bounded Rationality. In John Eatwell. Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman (eds.), The New Palgrave: A dictionary of economics, Vol. 1 (pp.226-268). New York

parties involved in the incarceration of a minority group member “Mike”, from the

decision to commit the crime to the judge’s prison sentence for Mike. The point of this is

to show the perpetuation of inequality is not a conscious decision, but rather has become

institutionalized by decisions people make which are a result of the construction,

allocation, and perception of risk.

Mike will make a decision based on his perceived riskiness. I use an evolutionary

psychological approach in additional to Solvic’s psychometric paradigm to explain how

Mike perceived greater benefits than costs in his decision. Then, I dissect the decisions

made by the cop to arrest him, the jury to convict him, and the judge to sentence him. If

Mike was well aware of all of the psychological biases working against him in the

criminal justice system, he very well may have made a different decision on whether or

not to involve himself with drugs. That however is in retrospect, and until risk allocation,

risk perceptions, and cognitive biases no longer have the same effect as they do today on

society, Mike and people of the same socio-economic status will continue to be the

victims of risk in American Society.

IV. Mike

Evolutionary Psychological Approach to Risky Decision Making

Evolutionary psychology attempts to understand the processes that gave form to

brains, mind, and behavior through an interdisciplinary approach involving psychology,

science, and evolutionary biology.19 Evolutionary biology suggests the complexity of the

mind and brain are organized to achieve the proliferative success of genes, Darwinian

fitness. Exploring decision making through an evolutionary psychologist mindset

attempts to understand the ways ones perceptions and evaluations about the costs,

benefits, and uncertainties associated with risky decision making operate as a function of

ones material and social circumstances in life. What is of particular interest to Mike’s

situation is the ways evolutionary psychology can explain the irrational ways he

processes information, orders priorities, and makes decisions.

Let us say Mike is one of the 49% of African American who are high school

dropouts in 2010.20 It is unlikely he will get a job without a high school diploma seeing

that the current rate of unemployment Among African Americans is 17.5%.21 In 2003,

Cinque L. Muhammad wrote an article titled “Gangs grip Black males as a viable life

alternative.” Based on his points regarding the education systems, lack of familial

structure, peer pressure by gangs, and a quoted individual saying, “I’m 17, I’ve lived my

life” it is plausible that Mike, perceiving his life as a dead-end, will likely be involved in

gang violence.

One day Mike is proposed with an offer to become an essential part of a massive

drug trade in the town that he lives in. Being unemployed, without a high-school diploma

and hungry, he gladly accepts the offer. Why? Did he not consider the potential

consequences of that decision, or did he and the benefits out-weigh the costs.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!19 Cheney, Dorothy. Nesse, Randolph. (2001) Evolutionary Psychology and Motivation. Volume 47 of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. University of Nebraska Press 20 http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/10/34execsum.h29.html 21 Haynes, Dion. Washington Post. Accessed April 29, 2011 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/14/AR2010011404085.html>

Let us first address how he perceived risk in this decision. Kahneman and

Tversky’s, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Making Under Risk” provides a

descriptive model of human behavior for decision’s that people make involving risk. One

interesting component within Prospect Theory demonstrates that people’s attitudes

towards risk attitudes concerning gains differ from risk attitudes concerning losses.22

They found that in general when an option is framed as a gain, people are risk averse, and

when an option is framed as a loss they are risk seeking. They find that people are

generally more risk averse. That is, people strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring

gains. Nearly a century earlier, Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, once

wrote, “we suffer more… when we fall from a better to a worse situation, that we ever

enjoy when we rise from a worse to a better.”23 In an evolutionary psychological mindset,

Wilson theorizes that:

relinquishing prior gains has evolved to be aversive in the specific context of social bargaining

because, in ancestral environments, to relinquish prior gains was to advertise weakness,

inviting future demands for further concessions.24

So if this type of behavior described Mike, then he would pass up the opportunity

to involve himself with illegal gang and drug activity because according to Prospect

Theory, in the realm of gains, Mike would prefer a sure thing (a minimum wage job) over

the risky option and having the possibility of getting nothing (dealing drugs). Instead he

accepted the offer, but why?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!22 Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky (1979), "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica, 47, 263-291 23 Smith, A. (1759/1892). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. New York: Prometheus Books. 24 Cheney, Dorothy. Nesse, Randolph. (2001)

Incite from evolutionary biology tell us why men sometimes choose higher risk

options when present circumstances are perceived as dead ends. Choosing the risky

option is often an adaptive choice if to stay in your current situation yields a low level of

utility. In a historical realm this type of behavior could typify successful explorers,

warriors, and adventurers, men who had little chances of obtaining material and social

success. In a present day realm, a risky option to unlawfully acquire or sell stolen or

illegal goods might be perceives as a more attractive option when legally obtaining

wealth yields chump change.25

A similar scenario takes places in the Animal Kingdom. Seed-eating birds are

generally risk averse, preferring a low-variance option, but they become risk seeking

when their body weight or sugar is so low that to spend the night without food would

result in death. Instead, they take the risky option and search furiously for food because

that way it can be found at a higher than average rate.26 Even though a high-variance

option increases the bird’s chances of starvation by searching for food, an average yield

gives them a dead-end scenario and will yield in death. The bird accepts the increased

risk of finding even less in exchange for finding enough.27

Both of these ideas parallel Mike’s dead-end situation. Taking dangerous risks to

unlawfully acquire stolen goods or illegal drugs is perceived as a more attractive option

because safer lawful means of acquiring material or social success yield chump change.

Another problem Mike has in interpreting the risk he now faces with a lifestyle of

dealing drugs is the actual probability of getting caught. He assumes that he has learned

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!25 Caro, Tim. (1998) Behavioral Ecology and Conservation Biology. Oxford University Press. 26 Caraco, T. (1980). On foraging time allocations in a stochastic environment. Ecology, 6(1), 119-128. 27 Cheney, Dorothy. Nesse, Randolph. (2001)

the rules of the game and the probability of getting caught during any one exchange is

very low. Prospect theory has shown that when judging small probabilities and large

probabilities people tend to round them to a zero change that the small probability will

occur and assume large probabilities will come with certainty. So, what Mike does not

realize is that over the course of his drug dealing career, the small probability he believed

he could get caught in any one exchange becomes significant when the number of

exchanges as up.

At any rate, Prospect Theory and incite from evolutionary psychology can give us

an idea about how Mike will assess the risky decision that he is confronted with. We

observe how his dead-end situation causes him to make riskier decisions in addition to

how he may misinterpret the probability of getting caught.

At any rate, these mechanisms of decision behavior are just an example of how

the literature on evolutionary psychology addresses decision making under risk. It

explains Mike’s risk seeking attitude, while loss aversion addresses why the social and

economic elite do what they do to maintain their wealth and power.

Psychometric Paradigm and a Cultural Theory of Risk

Because of the significance of risk in our society since the 1970’s, a group of

researchers have been studying risk perception by examining the judgments people make

when they are asked to evaluate and characterize hazardous technologies and activities.28

The research they conduced tended to focus on how risk perception is influenced by

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!28 Slovic, Paul (1987) Perception of Risk. Science, New Series, Vol. 236, No. 4799. (Apr. 17, 1987), pp. 280-285

emotion, affect, and stigma. Like, Prospect Theory, the Psychometric Paradigm finds that

perceived risk is quantifiable and predictable. Perhaps the most significant finding in

their research was that people irrationally say most risks in society as being unacceptably

high.

Researchers assert that there is three higher order factors that contribute to

the way that a risk is perceived. First is how well the person understands the risk. Second

is what emotions does the risk evoke, they particularly examined the emotion of dread.

Third is how many people are exposed to the risk.

To analyze the individual risk perceptions for a variety of different hazards,

researchers developed a taxonomic scheme to explain the apparent aversion people have

for some hazards but not others. “The most common approach to this goal has

employed… physical scaling and multivariate analysis techniques to produce cognitive

maps of risk attitudes and perceptions.”29 That is, participants are asked to judge

attributes (i.e. controllability, voluntariness, uncertainty, dread) about hazards, then give

an overall risk assessment of that hazard. The output is a cognitive map hazards that show

consistently shows correlates between hazard attributes and their perceived riskiness.

The Psychometric Paradigm shows us how characteristics of hazards affect the

ways individuals perceive different types of risks. It is found that in pleasure seeking

activities and in scenarios of economic gain, people tend to judge benefits as high and

risks as low. 30 Mike’s decision to involve himself in drug trade (economic gain) or usage

(pleasure seeking activity) will be skewed in such a way thus that the benefits of the act

are higher than the risks.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!29 Slovic, P (1987) 30 Mendelsohn, Gregory R. (1993) Perceived Risk, Dread, and Benefits. Risk Analysis Vol. 13, No, 3

Well, why is this significant for Mike? Couldn’t everyone be confronted with this

situation where they will perceive risk in this same way? First, because of the community

that Mike lives in, it’s wise to assume that he has much more exposure to drug activity

than the general public. People are never even confronted with this situation because of

their environment. Second, recall A Cultural Theory of risk that asserted, “individual

perceptions of risk reflect and reinforce their commitments to visions of how society

should be organized.”31 People perceive risk in this society as a function of its conformity

to their cultural norms and how it threatens their way of life. In 2007, Kahan et al

extended Cultural Theory with Slovic’s psychometric paradigm to conclude that

individuals selectively credit and discredit risks to protect their identity. They cross-

examined results from the psychometric paradigm with the constructs of Douglas group-

grid typology to see how “cultural world views interact with the impact of race and

gender on risk perception in patterns that suggest cultural-identity-protective

cognition.”32 Because of Mike’s surrounding community and the individuals that have an

influence on him, he is likely going to identify with that group and adopt their cultural

world-views impacting his own perceptions of risk. Mike selectively discredits the

riskiness of drug usage and trade more than people of other socio-economic groups

because his relatively greater exposure to it has habituated an avoidance response.

These studies have not been empirically proven for Mike’s specific scenario of drug

usage and trade. The above analysis is an extrapolation of results from risk perception

studies that study hazards that share similarities to drugs trade and usage (i.e. sensation

seeking, and economic gain). The main point stressed in this section is to show that risk

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!31 Kahan et al. (2007) 32 Kahan et al. (2007)

perception which is contrasted by ones social environment, is an obstacle to rational

decision-making. And that specific to Mike, it his perceptions of risk direct him to make

riskier choices than he otherwise should have. This the first decision made of three that

that will lead to the incarceration of Mike and fulfill the unfortunate and unconscious

perpetuation of inequality in the criminal justice system as evidenced by the irrationalities

of decision-making. The next section addresses the arrest of Mike. Today, people still are

implicitly racially biased.33 The relaxation of search and seizure laws has put power into

the hands of police to arrest individuals they suspect of wrongdoing. Because of implicit

racial biases, a disproportionate amount of minority members are arrested. The next

section will discuss the psychological literature biasing the decisions made by police

officers.

Police: Racial Discrimination in Search and Seizure

One day Mike was driving down the street, and changed lanes without signaling.

A police officer saw him and decided to pull him over and search him on the basis of

having committed a minor traffic violation. African Americans are twice as likely, and

Latinos three times as likely to be topped and searched by officers as are Caucasians.34

Why? Minority members are irrationally associated with drug crime; they are perceived

as being likely candidates for drug crime because society has constructed risk and labeled

them in that way. A study indicates that over the past 30 years there has been a

disproportionate and completely inaccurate exposure of African American’s and their

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!33 Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18 34 Alexander, Michelle (2010)

association with street crime in media statistics. Astonishingly, in that same study

participants were told a story about a crime without images and when questioned after the

fact, 60% of participants believed they saw an image of the offender and 70% believed

the perpetrator was African American.35

In 1995 a survey asked participants from all racial groups to “close your eyes for

a second and envision a drug user, then to describe that person.”36 The results were

astonishing and indicated that 95% of people pictured a black drug user while only 5%

envisioned a person from other racial groups. These results actually differ quite

significantly from the reality of drug users. African Americans are responsible for only

15% of drug use in 1995 while white people and people of other racial groups make up

the majority.37 It would be wise to assume that these results transfer quite well to a

population of police officers. Everyone, especially law enforcement officials have been

exposed to the racially charged media and politics since war on drugs began. It is shown

by cognitive bias research that conscious and unconscious biases lead to discriminatory

actions even in people who have no intent to discriminate.38 While some racial schemas

operate on a conscious level, others operate automatically, uncontrolled and below

conscious awareness that affect rational deliberations.39

In a quite popular study probing this concept, participants played a video game

that displayed images of black and white individuals either holding a gun or a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!35 Gilliam, Franklin and Shanto Iyengar, “Prime Syspects: Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public,” American Journal on Political Science 44(200): 560-73 36 Burson, Betty. Jones, Dionne. “Drug Use and African Americans: Myth Versus Reality,” Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Winter 1995):19 37 Burson and Jones 38 Nilanja Desgupta, “Implicit Ingroup Favortism, Outgroup Favoritism, and Their Behavioral Manifistations,” Social Justice Research 17 (2004): 143 39 Dovidio et al., “On the Nature of Prejudice” Automatic and Controlled Processes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 33 (1997): 510 516-17,534.

miscellaneous object (soda, wallet, cell phone) and were told to decide as quickly as

possible to shoot the target if it posed a threat. Participants were most likely to mistake a

black individual as armed when he was not. These results are consistent with other

studies that indicate a pattern of discrimination reflected by automatic and unconscious

thought processes.40

Whether explicitly or implicitly biased, given racial attitudes and their associations with

discriminatory behavior it is evident that black individuals would become targets and

sometimes irrationally assumed to be involved in criminal activity. Law enforcement is

not blind, and because of its limited scope of power it must focus enforcing individuals

who are believed to be riskier suspects. Because of media campaigns and the salient

stereotypes of black individuals, they became the targeted group. Proportionally, drug

arrest differences between white and black Americans is very significant. Between 2004

and 2009 black people averaged 1165.19 arrests per 100,000, while white people

averaged only 374.55. As such, blacks are arrested at a rate over 3 times that of whites

proportionally to their populations.41

The society we currently live in is representative of an allocation of risk social

constructed by racial stereotypes to target black individuals for drug crime. Individual

actors are not aware of it, they simply conform to their social constructs and view risk

from that point of view. Police do not consider how they may be racially biased in

making an arrest when white people are actually comparatively more involved with drug

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!40 Correll, et al., “The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2001): 1314 41Racial Differences in the War on Drugs. Statistics from Cornell University. Accessed May 1, 2011. <http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/info4470/projects/~ab667/arrest_proportions.pp>

crime.42 However, the most unfortunate thus far is the similarly irrational decision made

by Mike whose views the benefits of using and dealing drugs greater than the potential

costs. In addition to that risk assessment it is unlikely that he accounted for how he is at

increased risk because of his minority status. Maybe if Mike were aware of it’s effect, he

would have adjusted his probability of getting caught because of his skin color and seen

that the magnitude of costs and outweigh those of possible benefits.

This next paragraph follows Mike after he was arrested. It reviews literature that

claims judges and jurors unknowingly misremember facts in racially biased ways. In any

case a verdict decision or sentencing decision influences by these biases would be

severely skewed from the objective reality of what actually happened and what was said

in trial.

Judges and Juries: Forgetting Facts and Making Decisions

“In delegating both fact finding and decision-making authority to judges and

juries, the American legal system makes a supposedly elementary but unsupported

psychological assumption—that these individuals can cognitively process, evaluate, and

weigh the facts that were presented during trial.”43

However, attempts to bring psychology into the decision-making analysis of

jurors and judges have identified that completely rational decision-making falls prey to

cognitive biases within the courtroom. This next section will address two separate effects

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!42 Mosher, Clayton James., Scott Akins. (2007) Drug and Drug Policy: The Control of Conscious Alteration. London, Sage Publications Inc. 43 Simon, D. (2004). A third view of the black box: cognitive coherence in legal decision making. University of Chicago Law Review, 71, 511-586.

that alter the cognition in trail decision-making. The first addresses the same

psychological ideas addressed in the above section and argues that implicit racial bias

likely affects legal decision-making by altering the judge and jury member’s memories of

case facts. The second effect that I call the risk-sentence paradigm draws a logical

conclusion from the perceived riskiness of African Americans and the effect of fear of

crime in sentencing punitiveness. This paradigm asserts that because of the public’s risky

perception of backs and their fear of victimization, they will receive worse consequences.

Implicit racial bias in the courtroom

It is assumed that judges and jurors do not have perfect retention and recall of

information presented in a case, however it is hoped that these effects on cognition do not

manifest themselves in racially biased ways. Remember that research on implicit racial

bias has shown people experience difficulty and show differences when performing

simple tasks where racially charged information is present. Unfortunately these biases

have been proven to play a role in the courtroom.

There are two types of memory errors that distort the way judges and juries recall

information, forgotten information and distorted recollections.44 Most of the time, people

are unaware of these and they do not occur randomly, rather they are normal, predictable,

and occur in line with racial stereotypes.45

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!44 Schacter, Daniel. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. 4-5 (2001). 45 Lenton, Alison et al., Illusions of Gender: Stereotypes Evoke False Memories, 37 J. Experimental Social Psychology. 3

With respect to both encoding and recall of information, stereotypes facilitate the way the brain

stores and processes information. Thus, when people attempt to recall information that is

somewhat hazy in their memories, they generally rely on familiarity and expectations to help

fill in the content of those memories. But familiarity and expectations can be code for

stereotypes. As a result, people often recall stereotype- consistent information more easily than

stereotype-inconsistent information.46

One study probing this hypothesis confirmed the influence of stereotypes on

memory recall and distortion. Skorinko and Spellman presented participants with

scenarios of stereotypically white (ecstasy usage and identity fraud), two stereotypically

black crimes (crack cocaine usage and shoplifting), and two stereotypically neutral

crimes (marijuana usage and joyriding). After reading and processing the information,

participants were asked to recall crime information by matching the race of the

perpetrator to the crime. It was found that participants were more likely to recall the race

of the defendant when the crime matched the racial stereotypes of the defendant. This

study asserts that implicit racial biases affect the information possessing and

remembering in legal settings.47

In an analysis of conviction rates as a function of black-white jury representation,

it is found that the percentage of blacks in the jury pool significantly changes the

conviction percentage of black and white offenders. When no black people are present,

84% of black defendants are convicted while 68% of white people are convicted. When

one black person is present, the conviction rates are identical and when two black persons

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!46Levinson, Justin. Forgotten Racial Equality: Implicit Bias, Decisionmaking, and Misremembering, 57 Duke L.J. 345, 413–14 (2007) id. at 415–17 47 Skorinko, Jeanine L., Spellman, Barbara A. (2006) Stereotypic Crimes: How Group-Crime Associations Affect Memory and (Sometimes) Verdicts and Sentencing. Duke Law Journal ,June 2006.

are present the conviction rates reverse with 86% for white and 77% for black

defendants.

One study probing this hypothesis confirmed the influence of stereotypes on

memory recall and distortion. Skorinko and Spellman presented participants with

scenarios of stereotypically white (ecstasy usage and identity fraud), two stereotypically

black crimes (crack cocaine usage and shoplifting), and two stereotypically neutral

crimes (marijuana usage and joyriding). After reading and processing the information,

participants were asked to recall crime information by matching the race of the

perpetrator to the crime. It was found that participants were more likely to recall the race

of the defendant when the crime matched the racial stereotypes of the defendant. This

study asserts that implicit racial biases affect the information possessing and

remembering in legal settings.48 One statistic showing the significant of this effect states

that, Black male drug users are 13 times more likely than White male drug users to be

sentenced to jail, even though the estimated drug usage rates are equivalent for the two

groups.49

Risk-Sentence

Unfortunately, the presence of implicit racial bias will affect the verdict of Mike’s

trial as well. Based on the stat that he is 13x more likely to get convicted than a white

drug user, lets assume that he is found guilty and is awaiting the judge’s sentence.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!48 Skorinko, Jeanine L., Spellman, Barbara A. (2006) 49 Human Rights Watch. (2000). Punishment and prejudice: Racial disparities in the war on drugs. Human Rights Watch Report: United States, 12(2), G1202.

Findings from previous studies suggest that Blacks and Hispanics are likely to receive

more punitive sentences than Whites. In Brennan’s (2008) study of sentencing outcomes,

she examined a random sample of felony drug offenders convicted during calendar year

2000 in a large urban jurisdiction in North Carolina. The analysis focused on black,

white, and Hispanic differences. White offenders received less severe punishments than

either blacks or Hispanics while Hispanic offenders were particularly disadvantaged

because they received harsher punishments relative to both blacks and whites.50 In the

study, the offender’s committed similar crimes however, because of their race received

different punishments.

Generally, sentencing punitiveness is supposed to be based on the idea the public

fears crime and consequently demands appropriate punitive sanctions for offenders. Fear

of crime refers to public feelings, thoughts and behaviors about the personal risk of

criminal victimization.51 In a loose sense, it can be answered by “how does this individual

threat society?” Correctly answering this question is the judge’s responsibility to

accurately perceive the extent to which the public fears the offender and the crime he

committed. The judge then decides on an appropriate punishment. In a study that tested

lay people and court practitioners assessment on the effect of fear of crime and

sentencing; it was found that fear of crime had no effect on lay peoples sentencing, but

that the court practitioners perceptions of the public level of fear of crime made an impact

on their own decision.52 Why is this? Shouldn’t the educated experts have a toolkit to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!50 Brennan, Pauline. Race/Ethnicity and Sentencing Outcomes Among Drug Offenders in North Carolina. The University of Nebraska at Omaha. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice November 2008 vol. 24 no. 4 371-398 51 Gabriel, U. & Greve, W. (2003). The psychology of fear of crime: Conceptual and methodological perspectives. British Journal of Criminology, 43, 600-614. 52 Ouimet, Marc., Coyle, Edward. (1991). Fear of crime and sentencing punitiveness: comparing the general public and court practitioners. Canadian Journal of Criminology. October 1991 (149-162)

more accurately assess the social climate of fear? In fact, their exposure to crime as a

function of their profession caused them to be biased in their fear assessments. The

availability heuristic in Prospect theory tells us that we estimate the probability of a

certain event by the ease at which it comes to mind. A judge whose job is to examine

criminal lawsuits has had personal experience with victims of crime and can recollect

quite easily emotions of fear evoked in the courtroom. Lay people do not have similar

memories.53

So how does this connect to Mike? Well, another study by Addington concluded

that perceived risk preceded and caused fear of crime.54 It was already shown that

because of Mike’s minority statues he is perceived as a risky individual. Because

perception precedes judgment for fear of crime, it is likely that Mike will receive a more

severe sentence because of his minority status.

Conclusion

This decision made in court will mark the final decision of the criminal justice

system currently operating in America. A complete detailed analysis may also include

decisions made regarding the parole and continued imprisonment of Mike once in behind

bars. This would explain the continued mass incarceration of minorities in support of the

expansion of the privatized prison industry. Mass incarceration has endless implications

for the social and economic impacts of these socio-economic groups.

The current situation described in this paper is meant to reveal one thing about American

society; it has been dominated by risk and the construction, allocation, and perception of

risk work in ways that disfavor members of lower socio-economic groups. The reflexive

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!53 Kahneman, Tversky (1979) 54 Addington, Lynn. Fear of Crime and Perceived Risk. Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide

nature of risk and its commoditization by the upper classes has constructed society such

that risk is allocated to lower socio-economic groups so they confront more and riskier

situations in life. By his environment, Mike was automatically disadvantaged from

obtaining socio-economic success because of the options available to him. This however

only describes one edge of the sword. It would be reasonable to assume, why doesn’t

Mike just make the right decisions? Easier said than done, to overcome these societal

problems, not only does Mike need to have an objective risk assessment to overcome

society influenced risk preferences, but so do all the other actors that make decisions to

affect Mikes future. The unfortunate thing about the decisions everyone makes is they’re

based of socially constructed risk perceptions. Having risk-seeking people in riskier

environments is bound to yield volatile returns, while risk-averse upper class members

who hoard wealth face riskless scenarios. This is the problem our society is facing today,

the paradigm of risk, unfortunately it’s not conscious because if it was we could change

it, rather it’s institutionalized.

Bibliography:

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7/5$/<!U$11.0.%5.8!$%!'=.!Y/0!(%!U0M&8,!A'/'$8'$58!10(3!2(0%.<<!;%$6.08$'+,!"55.88.#!F/+!>)!@I>>,!d=''PBeeDDD,60#5,5(0%.<<,.#Me$%1(RRJIeP0(b.5'8el/L]]Je/00.8'mP0(P(0'$(%8,PPf!!7./8(%!!OC,!cM3/%!.00(0,!E.D!!_(09)!E_B!2/3L0$#&.!;%$6.08$'+!40.88)!>??I,!!A5=/5'.0)!U/%$.<,!C=.!A.6.%!A$%8!(1!F.3(0+B!c(D!'=.!F$%#!-(0&.'8!/%#!7.3.3L.08,!RTZ!H@II>K,!!Simon, D. (2004). A third view of the black box: cognitive coherence in legal decision making. University of Chicago Law Review, 71, 511-586.!!A$3(%)!c!H>?QJLK!:(M%#.#!7/'$(%/<$'+,!a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e>Q?@K,!C=.!C=.(0+!(1!F(0/<!A.%'$3.%'8,!E.D!_(09B!40(3.'=.M8!:((98,!!AML8'/%5.!/LM8.!/%#!3.%'/<!=./<'=!8.06$5.8!/#3$%$8'0/'$(%)!0.8M<'8!10(3!'=.!@II@!%/'$(%/<!8M06.+!(%!#0M&!M8.!/%#!=./<'=B!#.'/$<.#!'/L<.8)!P0.6/<.%5.!.8'$3/'.8)!8'/%#/0#!.00(08!/%#!8/3P<.!8$h.8!HY/8=$%&'(%)!U2B!(11$5.!(1!%/'$(%/<!#0M&!P(<$5+)!@IIS)!'/L<.!SR!!!