This may be pedantic, but even your edited statement strikes me as false. There SHOULD be reasonable and widespread moral disapproval of the practice, but in point of fact there isn’t, really. (Nor with drugs, actually). “Scared Straight” is still a STRONGLY favored tactic for most authoritarian regimes in the United States. “Sex Ed”/Health classes love showing disgusting pictures of advanced STD cases; high school principles love inviting DARE officers to come arrest kids and drag them to jail to teach them how horrific it would be to get caught; our culture really does approve of this entire style of argument. It’s as pervasive as it is irrational, and is actually part of the interlocking kyriarchial systems that status-based primates tend to fall back on when thinking is hard.
My sense is that >35% of Americans would agree that using graphic car crash images in a safe driving class was inappropriate. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people would generalize the moral principle in any coherent way—or even realize that DARE is a parallel at all.
Do you think I’m overly optimistic in my estimation?
After collecting additional data (just one date point, but I trust my wife), I’m forced to concede that I was wildly overestimating the percentage of Americans who would disapprove. My new estimate is well into “Aliens are real” / “Elvis is alive” territory.
I’d still feel better if there were formal studies we could both point to, to verify or refute our assumption (and hopefully to shed some light on why it happens).
My instinct is that it has to do with favor for authoritarian parenting and similar primate dominance hierarchies, but I’d need to do way more research to be able to speak with any kind of confidence on the matter.
This may be pedantic, but even your edited statement strikes me as false. There SHOULD be reasonable and widespread moral disapproval of the practice, but in point of fact there isn’t, really. (Nor with drugs, actually). “Scared Straight” is still a STRONGLY favored tactic for most authoritarian regimes in the United States. “Sex Ed”/Health classes love showing disgusting pictures of advanced STD cases; high school principles love inviting DARE officers to come arrest kids and drag them to jail to teach them how horrific it would be to get caught; our culture really does approve of this entire style of argument. It’s as pervasive as it is irrational, and is actually part of the interlocking kyriarchial systems that status-based primates tend to fall back on when thinking is hard.
Hmm . . .
My sense is that >35% of Americans would agree that using graphic car crash images in a safe driving class was inappropriate. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people would generalize the moral principle in any coherent way—or even realize that DARE is a parallel at all.
Do you think I’m overly optimistic in my estimation?
I very, very much do. Want to help devise a sociology experiment to find out?
After collecting additional data (just one date point, but I trust my wife), I’m forced to concede that I was wildly overestimating the percentage of Americans who would disapprove. My new estimate is well into “Aliens are real” / “Elvis is alive” territory.
Sigh.
I’d still feel better if there were formal studies we could both point to, to verify or refute our assumption (and hopefully to shed some light on why it happens).
My instinct is that it has to do with favor for authoritarian parenting and similar primate dominance hierarchies, but I’d need to do way more research to be able to speak with any kind of confidence on the matter.