April 28, 2016--Bandwagon Effect

Among other things being underreported about both the Republican and Democratic races is the bandwagon effect.

The inclination of people to join a winning campaign in spite of having sat on the sidelines up to the time when it became clear who would win or having previously supported another candidate.

It's the impulse to support the winning ticket. To be associated with winning. Not to be left behind. In part to be able, retrospectively, to say that, "All along I was for so-and-so."

The so-and-so's in the current situation, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who, in the last two weeks have broken into the clear as frontrunners and are now self-proclaimed "presumptive nominees."

Literally, a bandwagon carries a band in a parade or other entertainment such as in the circus. In fact, the bandwagon as metaphor was first noted in American politics when Dan Rice, a famous circus clown, used his bandwagon to attract attention to his political campaign activities--he was so popular that in 1868 he ran for president of the United States!

An actual clown running for president. How unprecedented.

Some refer to the phenomenon as an "information cascade," a rush to consensus derived from the rapid spread of information about how one candidate or another is faring. This used to occur through newspaper reports and word-of-mouth as the result of what was heard or seen on radio or TV. Now, with the proliferation of cable news networks and social media platforms one can learn almost instantly what is transpiring and thus rushing to get on board before it is too late can happen rapidly.

There have been careful studies of the impact of the bandwagon effect on political campaigns. The best of these studies suggest that voters are potentially twice as likely to vote a particular way when someone is expected to win. Thus, politicians are prone to play the "expectations game." Sometimes lowering expectations to disguise a poor outcome or, in situations where expectations can unleash bandwagon behavior, exaggerating expected results.

If the bandwagon effect is now operating as a consequence of Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's remarkable string of primary victories, one might expect to see a quick wrap-up to both campaigns.

Keep an eye on Indiana. Cruz and Trump at the moment are running about even. If there is a bandwagon rush to Trump's candidacy, we might expect him to win on Tuesday, even with Kasich sort of sidelined, by at least ten points.

But then there's the Carly Fiorina effect . . .

March 10, 2015--Lincoln Brigade

Last weekend reading about how Mohammed Emwazi ("Jihad John") was drawn to ISIS and became its most infamous executioner and how three young men from Brooklyn were apparently headed in the same direction, I was reminded of other examples of young men being drawn to ideological struggles, signing up for them because they believed in what they were seeking to accomplish, often by bloody means.

I want to be careful here. What ISIS is perpetrating is as evil as anything we have seen in a century. And so I do not want even to imply a false equivalency. But when we struggle to figure out what about ISIS is so compelling to these gullible and pathetic young people, we might want to take a close look at what drew other young men from around the world to take sides in the Spanish Civil War, especially Americans who made their way there as part of the Lincoln Brigade.

Though many of liberal persuasion today see what the Brigade stood for to be admirable--it was militantly anti-fascist and, in the case of many Brigade members, pro-Soviet, socialist, and communist--still, like ISIS, it was a magnet for thousands of alienated, revolutionary youth of its era and, as much as some supported its agenda, at least as many saw these foreign volunteers as outsider interlopers who had no business meddling in what initially a local struggle.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 pitted Nationalist fascist forces under General Francisco Franco against the army of the duly elected socialist Republican or Loyalist government. The former were supported militarily by Nazi Germany, who field-tested modern forms of blitzkrieg and air warfare in Spain, including the indiscriminate bombing of civil populations, while the Republicans were directly aided by the Soviet Union. Thus, the war was seen to be a dress rehearsal for World War II.

The Nationalists won and Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist for 36 years.

It was in support of the Loyalists that the Lincoln Brigade was organized and attracted 2,800 fiercely committed Americans. 750 died in combat. At the time, those who left for Spain were roundly criticized as radicals who had no business fighting for a country other than the United States.

Attempts to understand the appeal of causes and movements of these kinds find that though ideologies may differ--even radically--there are psychological characteristics among recruits that are consistent across the spectrum. The best thinking suggests that groups that are most appealing offer disaffiliated recruits what they crave most--a sense of belonging and a place to act out their resentments.

This may sound like psychobabble, as is any attempt to summarize something as complex as the appeal of radical groups and cults, but to dismiss participation as a simple expression of evil is not helpful. Again, to join ISIS is far from the same as enlisting in the Lincoln Brigade, but there are useful lessons that might help offer alternative appeals to youth seeking affiliation and, failing that, suggest ways to fight the scourge that is the Islamic State.

March 2, 2015--Manias

Manias of the historical kind are a form of collective mental illness with some of the same characteristics of the classic psychological state in individuals where manias include periods of great excitement, euphoria, hyperactivity, and delusions. A full blown cultural mania sees these characteristics generalized to affect hundreds, thousands, even millions and can crop up periodically over centuries.

I find these mass manias to be fascinating, where desires become uncontrollable and otherwise simple interests become obsessive. Not only do they often have an amusing side (for example, the Dancing Mania of the early Renaissance), but they also give us insight about the human capacity to be drawn into collective or mass movements of all sorts, from global religious extremism to obsession about things as seemingly meaningless as tulip bulbs and blue and black or white and gold dresses.

Among my favorite historical manias is the Dancing Mania that reached its peak in 1518 in Strasbourg, Alsace and was so pervasive that it was called the Dancing Plague.

It broke out through a wide swarth of Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It attracted thousands of participants including men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed.

One notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in July 1518. There, hundreds took to dancing for days without rest and many died of heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion. Musicians typically accompanied the dancers in an attempt to distract them but their presence only made matters worse.

Though the St. Vitus' Dance, as it was described, was widely reported at the time it was poorly understood. No one then or since has come up with a convincing analysis of what brought it on and what inner human sources it tapped. Some who studied the mania suggest that it emerged from religious cults that were widespread but, for that matter, there is no generally agreed-upon theory as to what attracts people so totally to cults or religious movements. So the mystery remains as to the origins or human proclivity to participate in what some have labelled mass psychogenic illness.

Of a very different sort, but at least as intriguing, is the Tulip Mania that occurred in Holland between 1636 and 1637. It was the Dutch Golden Age and financial investments and instruments of various kinds were proliferating. None more inexplicable or as widespread among most classes, including the Dutch royals, was the one that saw the recently-introduced tulip soar in value to the extent that some individual tulips were traded for the equivalent of 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.

And just as quickly as the tulip craze inflated it collapsed. Some economists consider this to be the first speculative bubble, not entirely unlike the real estate bubble of recent years that burst in 2007-8 and brought about the Great Recession.

Others, mainly conservative economists who dismiss psychological impulses as affecting economic behavior, see it as an example of the efficient-market hypothesis, where tulip trading was just as much an expression of rational investing as buying and selling Apple or Exxon stock.

I have a very different view, seeing the tulip market to be very much like the Dance Plague where inner emotional forces took control and overrode rational thought and constraint.