Why Can’t More Poor People Escape Poverty? A radical new explanation from psychologists.

[dkf]

Flannery O’Connor once described the contradictory desires that afflict all of us with characteristic simplicity. “Free will does not mean one will,” she wrote, “but many wills conflicting in one man.” The existence of appealing alternatives, after all, is what makes free will free: What would choice be without inner debate? We’re torn between staying faithful and that alluring man or woman across the room. We can’t resist the red velvet cake despite having sworn to keep our calories down. We buy a leather jacket on impulse, even though we know we’ll need the money for other things. Everyone is aware of such inner conflicts. But how, exactly, do we choose among them? As it turns out, science has recently shed light on the way our minds reconcile these conflicts, and the result has surprising implications for the way we think about one of society’s most intractable problems: poverty. 

In the 1990s, social psychologists developed a theory of “depletable” self-control. The idea was that an individual’s capacity for exerting willpower was finite—that exerting willpower in one area makes us less able to exert it in other areas. In 1998, researchers at Case Western Reserve University published some of the young movement’s first returns. Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Dianne Tice set up a simple experiment. They had food-deprived subjects sit at a table with two types of food on it: cookies and chocolates; and radishes. Some of the subjects were instructed to eat radishes and resist the sweets, and afterwards all were put to work on unsolvable geometric puzzles. Resisting the sweets, independent of mood, made participants give up more than twice as quickly on the geometric puzzles. Resisting temptation, the researchers found, seemed to have “produced a ‘psychic cost.’”

Over the intervening 13 years, these results have been corroborated in more than 100 experiments. Researchers have found that exerting self-control on an initial task impaired self-control on subsequent tasks: Consumers became more susceptible to tempting products; chronic dieters overate; people were more likely to lie for monetary gain; and so on. As Baumeister told Teaching of Psychology in 2008, “After you exert self-control in any sphere at all, like resisting dessert, you have less self-control at the next task.”

In addition, researchers have expanded the theory to cover tradeoff decisions, not just self-control decisions. That is, any decision that requires tradeoffs seems to deplete our ability to muster willpower for future decisions. Tradeoff decisions, like choosing between more money and more leisure time, require the same conflict resolution as self-control decisions (although our impulses appear to play a smaller role). In both cases, willpower can be understood as the capacity to resolve conflicts among choices as rationally as possible, and to make the best decision in light of one’s personal goals. And, in both cases, willpower seems to be a depletable resource.

http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/89377/poverty-escape-psychology-self-control

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. ok

but, what does this have to do with the Prez :shrug:

[dkf]

2. Sorry wrong place. iPhone. Nuff said.

[Tesha]

3. "Alert" on your own post -- the moderators will probably put it where you request. (NT)

[dkf]

5. Done. I had no idea we could request this.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. heh.

maybe the mods will move it.

[DebJ]

6. Oh..so the point is poor people remain poor because of their

own decision-making and will-power capacity. What a load of crap. And that savings account would be soooooo helpful, because it helps them with impulse control. Good God in heaven above, there is no money to put in savings accounts when you are poor.

This article infuriates me.

[valerief]

7. I think it's more that it's exhausting to be poor, because there are far more

life and death decisions poor people have to make than rich people have to make.

Like, duh, we already knew this, but I guess rich people need to study something. No skin off their backs.

[dkf]

9. It may help to design programs to help people in the cycle.

Why pooh pooh research? I think psychology is fascinating.

[JoePhilly]

17. But the article does not seem to be pushing that correctly.

Rather than acknowledge that having to make these extremely hard decisions day after day after day, hurts the poor ... the article seems to want to "fix the poor people" so they can be better.

The article is correct that making these decisions day after day after day, weakens the poor. Absolutely true.

The thing is .... the trade-offs they make often have NO "good solution".

And that is the point. The idea that you can teach them to make better decisions, when NONE of the options in front of them are good options, is where this article fails.

It is very easy to make trade offs when you don't have to make many trade offs. In fact, most of the trade-offs made be those who are more well to do, are not tradeoffs at all, they are simply "short term delays" that have little consequence. A rearrangement of events. For the poor, the decision to not do something is often a long term event.

For the poor, these are not "short delays", and they are not "rearrangements" of things that will ultimately occur.

The article is correct regarding the toll this takes on the poor, but "fixing the poor" is not the answer.

[justabob]

44. you got it

Bad options... That is so true. Life is a series of horrid "heads I win, tails you lose" situations when you are poor. Good point about the long delay vs short delay too, that is also painfully true.

[StarsInHerHair]

46. yeah, I don't think it's flagging willpower but being WORN DOWN by poverty

& the article FAILS to explain why the wealthiest-who are depicted as having SUPERIOR WILLPOWER-are dismantling societies in Europe & North America, ALL FOR MORE WEaLTH!

[TheDebbieDee]

8. The whole subtext that people somehow deserve the bad things

that happen to them piss me off! Meanwhile, people somehow deserve the good things that happen to them......

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. I don't expect much from "The New Republican" magazine anyway. nt

[barbtries]

15. thanks for the heads up

i'm going to skip it. was feeling pretty equivocal about how useful it could possibly be.

[chervilant]

20. No doubt

it helps salve the consciences of the uber wealthy. Helps them externalize responsibility for snarfing all the 'scarce resources' we've been mendaciously warned just won't 'go around.' Like Oprah, 'giving away' so much on her shows, blithely ignoring the damages wrought by her obscene amount of wealth.

I am hopeful that those of us whose critical thinking skills take us beyond the El Toro Poo Poo can channel our righteous anger towards the greater good come this October, in Freedom Plaza.

[ProSense]

11. This article is

pushing the notion that poor people have become lazy and banking can save them. What a crock.

<...>

Some promising approaches have already been tried. Starting in 2002, economists Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin created and analyzed a unique type of savings account at a small rural bank on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. The Green Bank of Caraga’s SEED accounts (Save, Earn, Enjoy Deposits) let clients place restrictions on when they could access their money. SEED clients could set either a date before which or a minimum savings amount below which they couldn’t access their own funds. Twenty-eight percent of existing bank clients who were offered the accounts enrolled in them, and, after one year, the economists found, customers saved over 300 percent more with SEED accounts than they would have without them. The accounts offered an opportunity to circumvent self-control failure, in the same way Ulysses bound himself to the mast to resist the Sirens’ call.

The developed world offers numerous such “commitment products”: certificates of deposit, pension plans, government savings bonds, and education savings accounts, to name a few. But, in the developing world, institutional supports for flagging willpower are far fewer. To make use of these new discoveries, similar products that explicitly attempt to reduce willpower costs could be developed in numerous fields, from health to education to agriculture to financial management.

<...>

Where's the money supposed to come from? They're talking about people living in poverty. Before they can save, they have to be lifted out of poverty.

The piece does include this to try to give credibility to the premise:

<...>

Third, money itself can go a long way toward altering the dynamic that leads to willpower depletion among the poor. Government transfers of money have proven successful in Mexico and Brazil, for instance. In particular, attaching conditions to these transfers—such as requiring school attendance, regular clinic visits, and savings behavior—may allow for an end-run around the kind of willpower-based poverty traps that too frequently seem to end with the poor making unwise decisions.

<...>

Yeah, well those approaches make sense, and none of them mention anything about "savings behavior"

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor.

[dkf]

12. Or maybe the truth is we like that the poor spend everything they have.

Someone needs to buy things after all.

[ProSense]

14. WTF?

Are you suggesting that people who are having trouble feeding and taking care of their families and those who are homeless put something aside for a rainy day?

[Sentath]

24. This article is hateful,

the research is important.

I don't think it should be a surprise that being poor requires more high risk decisions than being solidly middle class or having a proper safety net. Not any more surprising than that walking a tightrope 10 feet is more tiring than walking on a curb and that is more tiring than a quality sidewalk.

Knowing that willpower is limited, exhaustible and restorable is important.

[RagAss]

13. Free Will is a taught delusion.

[Uncle Joe]

16. I believe that part of this analysis hits the nail on the head, that being

trade-offs do sap willpower but the article seems to take the opposite approach to the obvious and logical answer.

A living wage, and universal single payer health-care would go a long way toward eliminating those trade off decisions that people living on the margin have to make, thus their willpower would not take so many psychic hits.

This analysis is a strong argument for much greater social spending to lift the poor and lower middle income class to a solid middle class.

One other point, if a walk through nature helps to restore willpower, greater emphasis must be placed on the environment, greener cities with easy access to the natural world.

Thanks for the thread, dkf.

[Hutzpa]

18. IBTL

:popcorn:

[AngryAmish]

29. why would this be locked?

[JackRiddler]

19. If only poor people *willed* it, there would be more jobs and higher wages?

How come posts quoting the right-wing New Republic don't inspire immediate derision on this supposedly liberal-left site?

[Forkboy]

21. You answered your own question with your qualifier....

"supposedly".

[highplainsdem]

22. Poorly designed test. Feeding radishes to food-deprived people will leave them with low blood sugar

and that in turn will make them have more trouble with the puzzles and be in a worse mood so they'll quit more easily.

OTOH, the people who ate the sweets would have had a least a temporary blood sugar boost so they'd think more clearly and feel better. Especially with the chocolates, which are known to improve mood.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/04/27/chocolate-and-mood-disorders/

Maybe the other tests were better designed and actually proved something about willpower. But that test didn't.

[Uncle Joe]

25. The did they say there were a hundred more experiments over 13 years that corroborated it.

Over the intervening 13 years, these results have been corroborated in more than 100 experiments. Researchers have found that exerting self-control on an initial task impaired self-control on subsequent tasks: Consumers became more susceptible to tempting products; chronic dieters overate; people were more likely to lie for monetary gain; and so on. As Baumeister told Teaching of Psychology in 2008, “After you exert self-control in any sphere at all, like resisting dessert, you have less self-control at the next task.”

I would like to know more about how those were conducted.

[bvar22]

35. Nobody disputes that.

The implication that people are poor because they make bad choices is what is being disputed.

Anecdotal testimony:
I know someone who has lost everything because his wife developed Cancer.
He spent every nickle, and went deep into debt to take care of her.
He mortgaged his home to keep her comfortable,
and is now underwater.
Now he has no savings for his retirement,
and is having trouble finding a job due to his age (57) and a Bad credit report.



I guess he should have "chosen" to just dump her on the street.

[Uncle Joe]

38. That isn't the implication that I took from the study, here is what I took from it and

my own belief.

1. Everybody has willpower.
2. Willpower = motivation.
3. Making stressful decisions saps willpower regardless of income bracket.
4. The poor must make more stressful decisions because they're living on the edge and have less margin for error, so every day is a tougher struggle, this is emotionally exhausting.
5. Where I differ with the OP is in the solution as I have posted on this thread, if the U.S. had a living wage and universal single payer health coverage, fewer people would be faced with those willpower sapping trade-offs aka; stressful decisions re: survival.
6. As I posted on a different thread re: Obama's golf playing, even well off people face stressful decisions or trade-offs which in turn sap their willpower, however the poor face the most.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. I agree. K&R

I think one of the reasons that poverty is becoming more intractable is because the array of temptations is far greater than it once was. When radishes are now one of hundreds of choices, not just three, there's bound to be something which will prove irresistable.

My kids can't pay their bills but MUST HAVE a better cellphone, or a new tablet PC, or a pack of cigarettes. If I stop smoking, I gotta treat myself to a sundae. If I buy a cheaper cellphone, I'll buy a pair of shoes "with the savings". Any perceived voluntary deprivation should be matched by an unusual splurge to bring justice into balance.

Our choices do influence our economic circumstances. We're not all passive helpless observers of our own misfortune.

Savings IS the path out of poverty. Absent saving, no amount of income is sufficient.

[Uncle Joe]

26. And having no or too little income to survive amounts to no savings. n/t

[wickerwoman]

33. +1000

And even if you have savings, even a moderately lengthy stint of unemployment or any kind of serious illness will set you back to nothing in the blink of an eye.

It's all a gamble and I don't blame poor people who see that the game is rigged and that the house usually wins saying "fuck it" and spending any little surplus they can eek out on a few moments enjoyment rather than putting it in the bank so it can be wiped out by the next flat tire or extortionate bank fee or so it can be used as an excuse to deny them medicaid or food stamps later.

[Uncle Joe]

34. Exactly and that's why I posted up-thread that a living wage and universal single payer health-care

would go a long way by giving the people a fighting chance by greatly reducing if not eliminating those willpower sapping trade-offs, ie: food or medicine, car repair or rent etc. etc.

[lumberjack_jeff]

42. Universal health care will go a long way toward reducing bankruptcy.

But without people taking an active role in their financial wellbeing through savings it won't do much to solve the problem of chronic poverty.

[Igel]

27. People seem to miss the article's points, they're so busy defending themselves or theirs.

Nobody's arguing that the current decisions poor people make are the only cause of their current states.

In many cases, they share a large portion of the blame. I watch poor kids daily making bad choices that predispose them to poverty in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years. Some get a job and drop out of school to make enough money for a better apartment or to buy nice clothes, and mask it as "needing to help my mom make ends meet." They have food; they have shelter; they have the basics--but they want a bit more, now. Some kids nearby have bet the bank on being in the NBA, they practice constantly and barely pass school. This is a choice, to be sure, but they've blinded themselves to the odds and the choices before making them. I watch poor adults making bad decisions, sometimes opting for show over importance, sometimes opting for luxury for a few minutes over something that'll be of long-term use. They're miscalculating. They're demonstrating what the article's about.

The family who lost the house we're in had 3 phone lines, cable, DishTV, three cars (two of them less than 3 years old when they lost the house) for two adult and 3 kids under age 15. The dishwater was broken; the stove had two burners not working. The family before us spent $200 a month on entertainment when $30 would have done. They didn't care about the stove not working, they ate out a lot. These were choices. With a different set of choices they'd have kept the house, their equity, and instead of having a bankruptcy on their record, $10k in debt that collectors are after them for, they'd have a house and much less debt.

Nobody makes these decisions for them and they bear the consequences. This is different from having a job and being laid off because of offshoring or a financial crisis. It's easy to focus on one and not the other. But "blaming the victim" is only a reasonable defense when the victim is, indeed, innocent. In some cases omniscience might have been needed to avoid a really bad choice; still, most of the time the choices are distributed over time and not everything rides on one decision. The best defense I can muster for many of them is that they're ignorant of the choices or simply don't believe their choices matter.

Once you're 40 and a high-school drop out with three kids, it's really, really hard to find choices that'll legally and sustainably get that $150k/year household income level within the next 6 months. Once you're scrambling, you're scrambling--and you need to find better ways of managing your self-discipline so that when the choices that come along come along you can make them wisely.

The article points out that additional income would give the poor some breathing space. Training people, especially when young, to make better decisions would help provide breathing space. Immediate help might be nice in many cases and required in some cases, but it's unclear to me that even with an additional $50k/year given to them for three years many of the poor would be much better off in year 5. It's the lottery-millionaire problem: The bad choices that led a man to be impoverished continue once he has $5 million, and after 5 years more bad choices (this time without the pressure to scramble to survive) leaves him in bad fiscal shape again.

[ProSense]

31. No one is missing the point of the article, and

<...>

In many cases, they share a large portion of the blame. I watch poor kids daily making bad choices that predispose them to poverty in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years. Some get a job and drop out of school to make enough money for a better apartment or to buy nice clothes, and mask it as "needing to help my mom make ends meet." They have food; they have shelter; they have the basics--but they want a bit more, now. Some kids nearby have bet the bank on being in the NBA, they practice constantly and barely pass school. This is a choice, to be sure, but they've blinded themselves to the odds and the choices before making them. I watch poor adults making bad decisions, sometimes opting for show over importance, sometimes opting for luxury for a few minutes over something that'll be of long-term use. They're miscalculating. They're demonstrating what the article's about.

<...>

...what a crock! The notion that wanting more and making bad decision are traits limited to the poor is ludicrous.

<...>

The article points out that additional income would give the poor some breathing space. Training people, especially when young, to make better decisions would help provide breathing space. Immediate help might be nice in many cases and required in some cases, but it's unclear to me that even with an additional $50k/year given to them for three years many of the poor would be much better off in year 5. It's the lottery-millionaire problem: The bad choices that led a man to be impoverished continue once he has $5 million, and after 5 years more bad choices (this time without the pressure to scramble to survive) leaves him in bad fiscal shape again.

<...>

:wtf:

[chervilant]

28. hmph!

"...resolving conflicts among choices is expensive at a cognitive level and can be unpleasant. It causes mental fatigue."

No duh! How arrogant for these researchers to 'conclude' that willpower 'seems to be a depletable resource'!

This is just another strategy to blame and shame those of us whose resources are so limited that we cannot even DECIDE whether to have the damned muffin, because it's just not an option!

Clearly, I'm not quite there yet, since I still have access to the internet (with hopes of selling enough stuff on eBay to justify the expense). However, I have friends who are there. AND, I will be there shortly, I know. I'll be like our Bobbolink, hitting the library to have access to the websites I've grown accustomed to visiting. Living in my car or with my sister. Losing all the furniture, cookware, tschotskes, and gradoo I've accumulated over the past fifty years. Losing everything of measurable material worth, but NOT my internal personal worth!

Even though I'm not homeless yet, I struggle daily with anxiety and ennui. I have to remind myself that WITHOUT EXCEPTION the Universe has provided for me, often in the most astonishing ways. I have to remind myself that my advocacy has merit, and that self-esteem trumps praise from others more than a hundredfold. Of late, I take myself to places where I can ground myself in the wonder of our amazing planet, and this renews me.

I have not yet succumbed to misanthropy, despite its eagerly beckoning, gnarly fingers. Articles like this one are NOT helpful...

[WinkyDink]

30. Money cures poverty.

[etherealtruth]

37. Cures financial poverty every time

...doesn't always work for moral bankruptcy, though.

[WinkyDink]

41. Too often inversely proportional.

[ecstatic]

32. I can vouch for the diet/overeating part

everything else I'm not sure... I have self control in every area except stopping mid-bite. Hmmm...maybe I could put this theory to work. Maybe I could overspend and then undereat.

[bvar22]

36. Choices are soooo difficult.

Should I have my chef prepare the Lobster,
or the Rack of Lamb?

I think I will practice some self-discipline, and have the Lobster.

Now...
The Ferrari or the Lamborghini?

[JVS]

39. Could such psychology explain why the upper middle class is so incredibly greedy?

Is the reason that people making 6 figures cry about how it isn't really much because they feel they've sacrificed so long for it that they become rapacious?

[Odin2005]

40. What a bunch of fucking BS! It's the "poor people don't know how to save" crap all over again.

This is bigoted slime.

[MadHound]

43. Wow, the second piece of "academic" nonsense I've seen here this evening

I hope that it doesn't become a trend.

[6000eliot]

45. Of course the answer can't possibly be that capital requires a cheap labor force.

[suffragette]

47. There is clearly choice involved

The choice of the wealthy to oppress and control people, to deny them fair wages for their work and appropriate time off to enjoy the fruits of their labor and to exert their money, influence and power to keep society from adopting adequate social services such as single payer health care.

When you deny people rights, you deny them the ability to progress.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

48. Surprisingly, the article does mention, in passing, one solution that actually works:

Third, money itself can go a long way toward altering the dynamic that leads to willpower depletion among the poor. Government transfers of money have proven successful in Mexico and Brazil, for instance. In particular, attaching conditions to these transfers—such as requiring school attendance, regular clinic visits, and savings behavior—may allow for an end-run around the kind of willpower-based poverty traps that too frequently seem to end with the poor making unwise decisions.

Heh. Even them had to acknowledge that works.