As a counterpoint, recall the claim that a group of teenagers publicly proclaiming celibacy is effective, as long as they can view themselves as an embattled minority (less than 1⁄3 of the community).
That does make some intuitive sense given this result, but it also runs counter to the more general failure of celibacy pledges I recall reading about (Google fished a related story here). Can you provide a citation?
Incidentally, I find it interesting that pledge-breakers are less likely to be prepared (less use of birth control and condoms) for extramarital sex when they have it anyway. Seems like a clear example of motivational self-deception interfering with rational planning.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that pledge-breakers are less likely to be prepared (less use of birth control and condoms) for extramarital sex when they have it anyway. Seems like a clear example of motivational self-deception interfering with rational planning.
Actually, it’s an example of a much more specific pattern: Robert Fritz’s idea-belief-reality conflict. A social ideal (celibacy) is set up to offset a feared social anti-ideal (sinful promiscuity), setting up two opposing “interests” (in Ainslie’s model of the will), one of which is identified with conscious control (celibacy) and one which is not (sex). Since the latter interest is not planned, it is satisfied hastily as soon as preference reversal occurs.
In a perverse way, setting up an ideal for one’s self actually strengthens the feared desire or behavior, by making the avoided thing part of a negative self-identity. As Fritz puts it, who would create an ideal of being celibate, but someone who’s afraid they won’t be celibate? A person with no desire for sex has no reason to make such a big deal out if it.
The same thing applies to any pledge you make a big deal out of. Or as I like to put it, “whatever pushes you forward, holds you back.” My past ideal to be organized and productive derived from a fear of being sloppy and lazy, not a desire for actual organization or productivity.
Based on this, I would indeed expect pledges of any sort to be an indicator of a strong desire to do the opposite of the pledged thing. I would expect an even stronger correlation, however, if you separated the people pledging into two groups, based on their answer to the question, “What would happen if you broke your pledge?” If the person answers that something bad will happen, I predict a higher correlation with actual failure than if they say something like, “Well, I wouldn’t like it, but I would move on.” The latter person is not in “push” or “ideal” territory, the former is.
This prediction is not specific to celibacy pledges, btw; I’m saying that anybody making a public pledge could be sorted into one of those two groups, with the “push” group having a distinctively higher probability of having their effort end in failure, and the other group being more likely to stick to their direction. And it’s not so much a matter of my personal observation (although I certainly have observed it ) as it is a logical prediction from Seligman’s research into optimism and Dweck’s research into the “growth” mindset. “Something bad will happen if I fail” is not a thought engaged in much by optimists or the growth-minded, and it’s optimists and growth-minded people who are most likely to succeed when a task needs sticking to.
As Fritz puts it, who would create an ideal of being celibate, but someone who’s afraid they won’t be celibate?
While this makes intuitive sense to me as a rhetorical question, I think one actual answer is “someone embedded in a culture that positively values celibacy pledges as status signals”. It seems that more folks with innate athletic talent create and promote ideals of athletic virtue, while folks with more innate cognitive talent lean toward ideals of intellectual achievement.
That said, I’d agree that these are edge cases compared to the quantity of public pledges that do indeed appear to be fear-driven, in which case “whatever pushes you forward, holds you back” looks reasonable. Note though that the negative consequences I’m talking about aren’t so much a direct result of the backfiring pledge strengthening their desire (they might easily have had sex regardless) as they are of an inaccurate belief sabotaging their ability to act rationally. Even if the pledge and subsequent belief did work to decrease the odds of extramarital sex, the net gain could well be negative if this difference doesn’t outweigh the consequences of the more drastic failure modes (unwanted pregnancies and diseases).
It seems that more folks with innate athletic talent create and promote ideals of athletic virtue, while folks with more innate cognitive talent lean toward ideals of intellectual achievement.
You would think so, but a key symptom in this type of “ideal” is whether it’s also Serious and Important And In Capital Letters, because that’s an indication of an aversive component. People with talent usually don’t elevate the subject of their talent to a Serious Ideal (as opposed to something they just think is fun and wonderful) until they develop some kind of fear about it.
And when the ideal itself is framed negatively -- celibacy, teetotaling, etc. -- one may be a bit more certain that aversion is involved. Pledging these things is likely a signaling of the form, “don’t punish me for nonconformance, I am conforming and promoting conformance to tribal standards”.
In any case, whether the tribe explicitly makes the ideal a goal, or if you just create it personally because of a bad experience, the same machinery and behaviors end up on the case.
From my own experience, I never thought about being “smart” until some kid bugged me about it… and then I wound up making it a part of my identity, which then had to be defended. Before that, it was not a Serious Ideal, and didn’t negatively affect my self-esteem or behavior. After, it was something I had to expend lots of energy to protect and avoid challenges to.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to know when you have one of these ideals, as the more pervasive they are, the less visible they become. And, when confronted about one, the natural response is to shy away from the subject—after all, the ideal exists precisely so we can avoid its opposite.
This mechanism is also the root of hypocrisy—talking about an ideal frees us from having to do anything we don’t actually want to, because it’s really only about avoiding the opposite. Any time we don’ want to do something, we can always rate it as a poor way of fulfilling the ideal, even if the act will improve* things with respect to that ideal.
Pledging these things is likely a signaling of the form, “don’t punish me for nonconformance, I am conforming and promoting conformance to tribal standards”.
That may well just be the evolutionary origin of the signal. I’m no ev-psych expert, but I’d be surprised if all or most signaling behavior involved fear somewhere in the brain. It seems entirely plausible to just produce a brain that wants to conform and promote conformance, given enough time to adapt.
In any case, whether the tribe explicitly makes the ideal a goal, or if you just create it personally because of a bad experience, the same machinery and behaviors end up on the case.
For non-adapted ideals (meaning the desire isn’t built-in), agreed.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to know when you have one of these ideals, as the more pervasive they are, the less visible they become.
Completely agree. About the only cue I have for noticing them is picking up on reflexive emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to their cause, but these only tell me that a background operator is acting, not necessarily much about the nature of that operator. Do you know of any others?
I’d be surprised if all or most signaling behavior involved fear somewhere in the brain.
I said it was probably for avoiding punishment; some conformance behavior is approach- rather than avoidance-driven. Ideals that you go after because you admire them, not because you’ll be a bad person if you don’t. Note that part of the evolutionary punishment mechanism is also punishing non-punishers… we don’t generally see people being zealously evangelistic about truly positive ideals, only ones where there’s punishment involved. So we tend to see most of the problems with idealism when there’s an aversive component.
About the only cue I have for noticing them is picking up on reflexive emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to their cause, but these only tell me that a background operator is acting, not necessarily much about the nature of that operator. Do you know of any others?
A few off the top of my head:
The “push” test—ask what happens if you don’t get the result you want. Does it make you feel bad?
The “should” test—do you find yourself angry at others or the world because things should be different?
The criticism test—are you criticizing yourself or others for not living up to some standard?
The “yes but” test—have you arrived at some conclusion that seems reasonable to you, but you respond to the idea of implementing it with “yes, but...”?
The “afraid I’m” test—how would you complete the sentence, “I’m afraid I might be...”, with an emotionally-negative label?
(And yes, by the above tests, some of my not-too-long-ago comments on LW would qualify me for harboring such an ideal… which is why I took a little time off and then dropped certain subjects I was “shoulding” on, once I noticed what was happening.)
(And yes, by the above tests, some of my not-too-long-ago comments on LW would qualify me for harboring such an ideal… which is why I took a little time off and then dropped certain subjects I was “shoulding” on, once I noticed what was happening.)
Right, birth control is basically a conflict between genetic and human interests. Short-leash genetic control is situationally triggered and can be difficult for our conscious mind to admit / predict ahead of time. We think we will have self-control, but when the time comes, the short-leash modules trigger and convince us to have unprotected sex (to advance genetic interests). Making it as easy as possible to not give in to short-leash temptation is important for resisting it, which is why keeping condoms around is better than abstinence, and an IUD or injectable birth control is better yet.
Admittedly there is some rationality to the idea of not just ameliorating temptation but avoiding it. Also I suspect abstinencers have a different utility function than I do—they view sex as bad in and of itself and not just because of consequences like unwanted pregnancies. Their method makes more sense given that viewpoint. If it worked, at least.
We think we will have self-control, but when the time comes, the short-leash modules trigger and convince us to have unprotected sex (to advance genetic interests).
I’m not sure this makes sense as an evolutionary mechanism. Contraception hasn’t been around long enough for it to be a selective pressure, has it?
My impression is that celibacy pledges do something, although maybe not abstinence education, but I don’t trust much of what I read, since it’s so politicized. The article you link to says that it doesn’t prevent sex before marriage, but that’s a pretty high bar. The paper I was talking about (I added a citation above) says that it delays sex by 18 months; that just doesn’t get you past marriage. Here is a paper that claims pledges do nothing, that earlier results didn’t control for enough.
Let’s not worry about absolute effect and instead look for robust results. I think it’s robust that seeking abstinence leads to less birth control and a higher ratio of STDs to pregnancies. Also, the point of my original claim, about embattled minorities, is robust to that kind of selection bias.
As a counterpoint, recall the claim that a group of teenagers publicly proclaiming celibacy is effective, as long as they can view themselves as an embattled minority (less than 1⁄3 of the community).
New Yorker
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That does make some intuitive sense given this result, but it also runs counter to the more general failure of celibacy pledges I recall reading about (Google fished a related story here). Can you provide a citation?
Incidentally, I find it interesting that pledge-breakers are less likely to be prepared (less use of birth control and condoms) for extramarital sex when they have it anyway. Seems like a clear example of motivational self-deception interfering with rational planning.
Actually, it’s an example of a much more specific pattern: Robert Fritz’s idea-belief-reality conflict. A social ideal (celibacy) is set up to offset a feared social anti-ideal (sinful promiscuity), setting up two opposing “interests” (in Ainslie’s model of the will), one of which is identified with conscious control (celibacy) and one which is not (sex). Since the latter interest is not planned, it is satisfied hastily as soon as preference reversal occurs.
In a perverse way, setting up an ideal for one’s self actually strengthens the feared desire or behavior, by making the avoided thing part of a negative self-identity. As Fritz puts it, who would create an ideal of being celibate, but someone who’s afraid they won’t be celibate? A person with no desire for sex has no reason to make such a big deal out if it.
The same thing applies to any pledge you make a big deal out of. Or as I like to put it, “whatever pushes you forward, holds you back.” My past ideal to be organized and productive derived from a fear of being sloppy and lazy, not a desire for actual organization or productivity.
Based on this, I would indeed expect pledges of any sort to be an indicator of a strong desire to do the opposite of the pledged thing. I would expect an even stronger correlation, however, if you separated the people pledging into two groups, based on their answer to the question, “What would happen if you broke your pledge?” If the person answers that something bad will happen, I predict a higher correlation with actual failure than if they say something like, “Well, I wouldn’t like it, but I would move on.” The latter person is not in “push” or “ideal” territory, the former is.
This prediction is not specific to celibacy pledges, btw; I’m saying that anybody making a public pledge could be sorted into one of those two groups, with the “push” group having a distinctively higher probability of having their effort end in failure, and the other group being more likely to stick to their direction. And it’s not so much a matter of my personal observation (although I certainly have observed it ) as it is a logical prediction from Seligman’s research into optimism and Dweck’s research into the “growth” mindset. “Something bad will happen if I fail” is not a thought engaged in much by optimists or the growth-minded, and it’s optimists and growth-minded people who are most likely to succeed when a task needs sticking to.
While this makes intuitive sense to me as a rhetorical question, I think one actual answer is “someone embedded in a culture that positively values celibacy pledges as status signals”. It seems that more folks with innate athletic talent create and promote ideals of athletic virtue, while folks with more innate cognitive talent lean toward ideals of intellectual achievement.
That said, I’d agree that these are edge cases compared to the quantity of public pledges that do indeed appear to be fear-driven, in which case “whatever pushes you forward, holds you back” looks reasonable. Note though that the negative consequences I’m talking about aren’t so much a direct result of the backfiring pledge strengthening their desire (they might easily have had sex regardless) as they are of an inaccurate belief sabotaging their ability to act rationally. Even if the pledge and subsequent belief did work to decrease the odds of extramarital sex, the net gain could well be negative if this difference doesn’t outweigh the consequences of the more drastic failure modes (unwanted pregnancies and diseases).
You would think so, but a key symptom in this type of “ideal” is whether it’s also Serious and Important And In Capital Letters, because that’s an indication of an aversive component. People with talent usually don’t elevate the subject of their talent to a Serious Ideal (as opposed to something they just think is fun and wonderful) until they develop some kind of fear about it.
And when the ideal itself is framed negatively -- celibacy, teetotaling, etc. -- one may be a bit more certain that aversion is involved. Pledging these things is likely a signaling of the form, “don’t punish me for nonconformance, I am conforming and promoting conformance to tribal standards”.
In any case, whether the tribe explicitly makes the ideal a goal, or if you just create it personally because of a bad experience, the same machinery and behaviors end up on the case.
From my own experience, I never thought about being “smart” until some kid bugged me about it… and then I wound up making it a part of my identity, which then had to be defended. Before that, it was not a Serious Ideal, and didn’t negatively affect my self-esteem or behavior. After, it was something I had to expend lots of energy to protect and avoid challenges to.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to know when you have one of these ideals, as the more pervasive they are, the less visible they become. And, when confronted about one, the natural response is to shy away from the subject—after all, the ideal exists precisely so we can avoid its opposite.
This mechanism is also the root of hypocrisy—talking about an ideal frees us from having to do anything we don’t actually want to, because it’s really only about avoiding the opposite. Any time we don’ want to do something, we can always rate it as a poor way of fulfilling the ideal, even if the act will improve* things with respect to that ideal.
That may well just be the evolutionary origin of the signal. I’m no ev-psych expert, but I’d be surprised if all or most signaling behavior involved fear somewhere in the brain. It seems entirely plausible to just produce a brain that wants to conform and promote conformance, given enough time to adapt.
For non-adapted ideals (meaning the desire isn’t built-in), agreed.
Completely agree. About the only cue I have for noticing them is picking up on reflexive emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to their cause, but these only tell me that a background operator is acting, not necessarily much about the nature of that operator. Do you know of any others?
I said it was probably for avoiding punishment; some conformance behavior is approach- rather than avoidance-driven. Ideals that you go after because you admire them, not because you’ll be a bad person if you don’t. Note that part of the evolutionary punishment mechanism is also punishing non-punishers… we don’t generally see people being zealously evangelistic about truly positive ideals, only ones where there’s punishment involved. So we tend to see most of the problems with idealism when there’s an aversive component.
A few off the top of my head:
The “push” test—ask what happens if you don’t get the result you want. Does it make you feel bad?
The “should” test—do you find yourself angry at others or the world because things should be different?
The criticism test—are you criticizing yourself or others for not living up to some standard?
The “yes but” test—have you arrived at some conclusion that seems reasonable to you, but you respond to the idea of implementing it with “yes, but...”?
The “afraid I’m” test—how would you complete the sentence, “I’m afraid I might be...”, with an emotionally-negative label?
(And yes, by the above tests, some of my not-too-long-ago comments on LW would qualify me for harboring such an ideal… which is why I took a little time off and then dropped certain subjects I was “shoulding” on, once I noticed what was happening.)
What subjects were those, praytell?
Right, birth control is basically a conflict between genetic and human interests. Short-leash genetic control is situationally triggered and can be difficult for our conscious mind to admit / predict ahead of time. We think we will have self-control, but when the time comes, the short-leash modules trigger and convince us to have unprotected sex (to advance genetic interests). Making it as easy as possible to not give in to short-leash temptation is important for resisting it, which is why keeping condoms around is better than abstinence, and an IUD or injectable birth control is better yet.
Admittedly there is some rationality to the idea of not just ameliorating temptation but avoiding it. Also I suspect abstinencers have a different utility function than I do—they view sex as bad in and of itself and not just because of consequences like unwanted pregnancies. Their method makes more sense given that viewpoint. If it worked, at least.
I’m not sure this makes sense as an evolutionary mechanism. Contraception hasn’t been around long enough for it to be a selective pressure, has it?
My impression is that celibacy pledges do something, although maybe not abstinence education, but I don’t trust much of what I read, since it’s so politicized. The article you link to says that it doesn’t prevent sex before marriage, but that’s a pretty high bar. The paper I was talking about (I added a citation above) says that it delays sex by 18 months; that just doesn’t get you past marriage. Here is a paper that claims pledges do nothing, that earlier results didn’t control for enough.
Let’s not worry about absolute effect and instead look for robust results. I think it’s robust that seeking abstinence leads to less birth control and a higher ratio of STDs to pregnancies. Also, the point of my original claim, about embattled minorities, is robust to that kind of selection bias.