Understanding our Perceptions

“It’s what you make of it that counts.” I’m sure we’ve heard this expression so many times in regards to colleges, experiences, and other choice events that may not always go our way. Even though this cliche seems like a cop-out for someone who doesn’t know how to properly console you, there is a lot of truth behind it. Our perceptions control how we appreciate (or don’t) our lives.

Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics, illustrated this concept in a beautifully stunning manner: by tracking the pain in colonoscopy patients. He measured both the patients’ reported pain as the procedure occurred and their reported pain after the procedure has ended. He found that people perceived worse experiences when their colonoscopy ended on a high spike of pain, even if they had had relatively no pain up until then. Kahneman tried on more thing with this experiment, too. After that big spike of pain where the procedure would normally have ended, Kahneman had the doctors extend the colonoscopy’s duration. This extended time added just small levels of pain. So what happened?

When the operation was over, the patients perceived the extended colonoscopy as a less painful experience than the colonoscopy ending in a pain spike, even though they received that  pain spike and additional pain. The only difference was that the patients who ended with the small amounts of pain remember it ending relatively painlessly, so their perceptions were drastically different from those who received overall less painful procedures. This tells us that our perception of the world around us has powerful implications regarding how we react, consciously and subconsciously, to the events in our lives.

College life also illustrates the power of perceptions well. Though the tier of a college can determine the quality of an education you receive, most of the learning and experiences you will have will by dictated by how you view your college. If you believe you will have a good time and can make the best of your college experience, then you will seek out the experiences and educational opportunities that mean the most to you and have an amazing, immersive time. If, however, you go into a college thinking, “man, this wasn’t even in my top three choices, this is going to suck!”...well, it might suck. Not because of the college though, because of your attitude towards it.*

Even the types of phrasings in popular expressions, like “coming out of the closet,” contain subtle hints as to how society perceives certain kinds of action. Though coming out is thankfully more celebrated and acceptable than it previously was, the phrase “coming out” still bothers me. Coming out of a closet (or I guess anything else) sounds like something one would be ashamed to do—they must have gone to the closet to hide their shame from the people enjoying life outside. Even though we may not realize it, phrasings like the shameful “coming out” impart negative connotations on those who do it and our attitude towards homosexuality. If we wanted to empower those who are publicly announcing their orientation, as we should, we need to use an expression that does not carry negative connotations. Maybe our new word for that should be “sharing.” Yeah Johnny? He shared with me about two months ago. Sharing is something that is done on an even field—one person has information that they willingly choose to divulge with another. “Coming out” puts the person who is already vulnerable on a psychologically lower level than the rest of society even before they begin that often arduous process.

It doesn’t seem like it, but our perceptions play a bigger role in our lives than we realize. They shape our views of important issues and can dictate our beliefs. They can be easily manipulated, however, for good and for bad. I want to impart to you the power that perceptions play in our daily lives, and get you to think about how you once perceived something big in your life—and if you could have viewed for better or for worse.

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*I think this perception applies mainly to freshman who were incessantly told throughout high school that they need to attend the best schools, get the best degree, etc. I think that as people progress through college, they start to see how it is an all-around great opportunity regardless of where they went. I talked about this in a previous post: http://moderatelyunbiased.blogspot.com/2013/11/more-thoughts-on-education-our-culture.html

The Power of Shamelessness

You are about to give the most important speech of your life but you’re a wreck: you’re sweating, your hands are trembling, and your mouth is drier than a ball of cotton. You remember a good public-speaking tip you once heard: picture the audience in their underwear. You try it, and the speech goes…actually, I have no idea how it goes. I have never tried that approach with public speaking. What I instead rely on in situations like those is my shamelessness.

Shamelessness is an underrated tool in our personal arsenal. It isn’t something you do, it’s how you respond to your and others’ actions. For me, it is mainly brushing off the embarrassment I inevitably incur from freely expressing myself.

I’ve found that a big part of shamelessness is the ability to laugh at yourself after you’ve done something that, well, deserves it (like me walking into a tree branch the other day while I wasn’t texting…I’m still not entirely sure how that happened). Once you make fun of yourself, the stage is set—no one else can bring you down because you’ve already done that. When people laugh at themselves, they become more relatable in the eyes of others. Many comedians are successful because they know how to leverage this concept. Things happen to us all the time, dumb things that we are embarrassed about. But when we hear people sharing their own embarrassments, we relate to them.

I think this is a major reason why we also tend to laugh at the sufferings of others: it is an inconspicuous way to mask our own. With the attention focused on someone else, we aren’t reminded of the things that we would otherwise be shameful of.

I should mention that shamelessness alone does not grant these powers. It takes confidence to laugh at yourself, do stand-up, or speak in public. But most of society already understands the benefits of confidence. What I don’t think society knows is the potential of shamelessness. Confidence and shamelessness work together to empower people to try things they’ve never done before. You could be confident and share an idea you think is good, but then if people react badly to it and you are prone to shame, you could lose that confidence and become scared to offer your ideas or suggestions. If, however, you are less shameful, you could take that bad idea in stride, recognize that not every idea you put forth will be perfect, and move on.

So after considering our original scenario, I don’t think the best way to get over the fear of public speaking is to imagine everyone else in their underwear; I think the best way is for you to be in your underwear. If you can keep going after that, there won’t be a thing you can’t do: you’ve transformed a terrifying atmosphere into a casual, one where you can speak freely without worrying about messing up…it’s really strange how badly I want to try this at some point in my life.

So recognize that not all of your ideas and actions will be considered normal. It is likely that you’ll do or say something stupid that made more sense in your head. But when this happens, laugh at yourself! Embrace shame, that natural human feeling, and transcend it. It may surprise you how far you can go.

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And in reference to my initial point, is this really what you want to imagine?

More Thoughts on Education: Our Culture of Comparison

Two weeks ago I wrote about the potential of implementing flipped learning-style classroom models. While flipped learning, and especially Khan Academy’s approach, is drastically better than normal educational methods, there is another problem in our educational culture that may be even greater than than pitfalls of traditional teaching: the attitudes towards testing.

Testing has obvious benefits; it’s important to measure how good students are at something. With that information, we can target what students know and what needs to improve. The problem is that our attitude towards testing breeds comparison rather than emphasizing improvement. Teachers’ salaries are increasingly being determined by how well kids perform, which was the cause of the Chicago teachers’ strike. Students become competitive and care more about their grades rather than what they learn from the class. Especially for standardized testing, the need for comparison puts more emphasis on rote memorization and template completion than on the intellectual venture that is learning.

Testing should focus on improvement. Kids are bound to fail at things, but our scholastic culture leads those kids to believe that their failure is a sign that they are not smart enough for school. They learned at a young age that failure is not an option, and if they cannot get themselves out of a rut, they can ultimately become disinterested in school altogether. We need to encourage a culture where failure is acceptable because otherwise we will not be prepared for it when it will inevitably occur.

We’ve created a culture of comparison where students must not only pass their classes, but do so with flying colors. They face expectations from their peers, parents, teachers, and just about everyone else. This doesn’t prepare people for college and the real world. We aren’t teaching kids what it’s like to fail, and that’s a really important experience to go through. Think about how some college denials affect kids who’ve never experienced failure before. At least 25% of Harvard applicants with a 2400 SAT get rejected, and that was in 2007. The numbers of rejected 2400s have gone up drastically since then. This shows more than anything that the real world takes a dynamic, multi-dimensional approach in evaluating the capabilities and performances of students. Kids are not going to be able to cope with this sort of rejection because our culture teaches instills unhealthy values.

In this culture of comparison, we are punishing kids for failing when failing is how you learn. This is related to many things I’ve heard about innovation recently.

To foster an atmosphere conducive to innovation (which people are going crazy about these days), we should be encouraging fast failures. How quickly can you fail, pick yourself up, and fail again? If you keep on trying, one of those failures just might bring success. It is in our continued failures that we learn about ourselves and the world around us, why we failed and what we can do to prevent it from occurring again.

The other day I heard of a journalist who hung up every rejection letter he’d received from the companies he applied to. He used that wall as motivation and, because he never lost sight of his dream, eventually found employment.

I’m not sure how to tackle this problem—eliminating standardized testing and weighting students’ improvement over their numerical grades seems like a good start. I think an amazing way for students to learn would revolve around a lenient curriculum the students create for themselves. This way, they’re passionate about the material they’re learning and they wouldn’t have to worry about “performing to the grade;” they could express themselves and find out what they truly want to do.

Even if that idea is utopian, one thing’s for sure: students will not be prepared for their lives if they are bred in our unhealthy culture of comparison.

The Future of Education

In 1991, Harvard professor Eric Mazur was trying to find a better way to teach his students physics. He was often unable to explain things to his students because he possessed such a mastery of the material that he couldn’t understand where and how students were misinterpreting it. Eric realized that other students who had a stronger grasp of the material could help those struggling students because they better understood what they were thinking. Eric soon came to believe that the time spent lecturing his students would be better spent in peer discussion. He changed his entire teaching model: his students would read the material before coming to class and they would spend their class time reviewing concepts they didn’t grasp with peers and doing practice problems to solidify their knowledge. What Eric named Peer Review was one of the first modern models of what is now known as “flipped learning.”

In typical classrooms, children are (A) bored because they grasped the information quickly and have to sit through the teacher reviewing it, (B) learning the information at the same speed the teacher teaches it—what school systems hope for—or (C) falling behind because the teacher is moving too fast. I have been in each of those situations more than once, as I’m sure many people have also been. In this normal teaching style, students are taught the material at a pace that satisfies the courses’ time requirement, not the learning needs of the individual students. If a student doesn’t understand the concepts by the end of class, he must then complete the homework, a more difficult test of the conceptual knowledge which he does yet understand, all on his own. Is the educational environment we want our children to be raised in?

The future of education is constantly discussed, but what do we have to show for it? Is the future just high-tech gadgets, or should we change the way students learn. I believe that flipped learning is the future of education. It offers the students the opportunity to view the material as many times as they need to understand it; they can skip ahead or go at a slower pace until they get it. If they still don’t comprehend it, they have the entire next day of class to receive help from classmates who did understand it or the teacher. And this is just with books—technology can truly revolutionize the way children learn and are taught. In fact, it's happening now.

The Khan Academy is a website created for students and educators. It has over 3,000 videos offering lectures in subjects from advanced physics to 3rd-grade math. But for mathematics, the subject for which Khan Academy was initially created, it is so much more than just a lecture library. Khan Academy prompts quizzes after every mathematical concept taught. Students must get 10 problems on a certain topic correct before they can advance to the next. To measure students’ progress, Khan Academy has a teacher interface designed for teachers: teachers can view the individual quizzes students take and see which concepts they’re struggling on, at what point in time they completed different benchmarks, and more individualized information. This allows the teacher to come to a student knowing exactly what they’re struggling with. 

Khan academy has taken education to a personal level and children and educators love it; kids are talking about math in the hallways and they’re excited to go home and do work. And teachers won't lose jobs over this new type of learning. As the embedded video shows, the teacher is still essential; their method of teaching just changes from static to dynamic. Getting kids involved in programs like these could eliminate the kids who just assume they’re “bad at school.” The personalized learning will allow a much higher percentage of students to understand the material; students will learn the material better, and more importantly, gain confidence in their abilities. Adopting a flipped learning model is so simple, too--the professors wouldn't have to do much differently and they already possess the materials to make it happen. It is important to note, however, that the flipped learning approach doesn’t apply to every class model, nor should it be a substitute for all types of learning; it applies best to lecture-based classes where the teacher is writing equations on a board or going through a powerpoint for students to copy down.

Though some college classes are starting to be taught with a flipped model in mind, many still aren’t. Worse yet, almost no classes in levels of lower education are taught this way. Why is this? Flipped learning is of course a new concept, so it’s possible many just do not know about it (I didn’t until recently). But there’s a bigger reason: society is hesitant to change the status quo. When it comes to something as precious as our children, why change what has been working for ages? There is always a risk in change, that is true. But change consistently occurs because the potential results are too great to pass up. In schools, every effort should be given to nest learning at the core of students’ interests. We don’t want to wait for those who change the world, we want to shape them.

My Hope for Iran: Hassan Rouhani

I picked up a copy of the New York Times on my way to lunch and looked at the front page. My heart started racing after reading a headline: Iran’s Leaders Signal Effort at New Thaw.

Iran has been antagonistic with the west ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the following hostage crisis. Iran was becoming more amiable around the second millennium, but soon reverted to its 1979 self. Iran’s refusal to disclose information about its nuclear program and proliferation of anti-western sentiment has pushed them further away in the eyes of our people and our government. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) were leaders responsible for the direction Iran has recently taken.

Yet reading today's New York Times article gave me hope that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Recently-elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is promising the change that can improve and fortify relations between Iran and the US: he is emphasizing flexibility in negotiations, releasing political prisoners, and promising that Iran will never seek nuclear weapons. Already working on the reforms he promised during his campaign, Hassan Rouhani seems like he truly wishes to repair and strengthen Iran's ties with western nations. Even the anti-western Supreme Leader (who is the true ruler of Iran and much more powerful than any president could ever be) is endorsing his plan.1

Rouhani at a press conference before his inauguration.

So why am I so happy about this? I am happy that America may reconcile with one of its biggest adversaries, yes. But I’m excited for the people of Iran and the US. 

Though some Iranians are anti-western fanatics who believe nothing but the creed the revolution was founded upon, many Iranians understand that the West, and in particular the US, is comprised of good people. It’s the US government the Iranians don’t like, not the people. Unfortunately, we Americans do not view Iran and Iranians the same way. Believing that every Iranian imitates the ideals their government displays, many Americans develop an internal mistrust or dislike of Iranians that is rooted to our core.

When many US citizens hear about Iran, they are only capable of seeing the image of the enemy.  We hear speculation about Iran’s ongoing nuclear program and fear for the worst. We see an American flag-burning on TV so we denounce them terrorists. These scenarios are real in Iran, yes, but it is imperative to realize that they are not representative of all Iranians. It’s representative of a tiny minority, and Americans judge nations like Iran off of those small moments that receive disproportionally large media attention.2 What if Iranians saw the Westboro Baptist Church protesting the Sandy Hook vigil? Iranians would conclude that Americans believed that those murdered kids got what they deserved.3 Those scenarios are not at all representative of our beliefs or attitudes, but they are used as a foundation for judgment and condemnation.

In regards to Iran’s nuclear program, it is likely that it was initiated for harmful purposes. But the same way that it wasn’t individual Americans’ faults that we sent troops into Afghanistan or Iraq, it is not Iranians’ fault they have that program—Iranian citizens do not even know how developed it is because the government keeps that information classified. I’ve studied the Iranian political scene; the institutions are not democratic and citizens have much less influence than we do over policy and policymakers. It’s not the citizens’ fault, and we must recognize that to break the stereotype surrounding Iranians like a dense smog.

I think I have these viewpoints and am particularly interested in Iran because two of my best friends are Iranian. I became friends with them before I knew too much about Iranian-US relations, but I don’t think it would have mattered. Becoming friends with someone who differs from us illuminates the humane, relatable side they had all along—the side often ignored when minorities or potential enemies are depicted. I was fortunate to have been exposed to diverse people from a young age. Sure, their skin color and religion and culture are different, but they have the same feelings, sense of humour, and basic wants we all have. We cannot continue to stereotype and condemn a people because their government follows policies we don’t agree with. It is not fair to them and to ourselves.

This is why I’m so happy that Hassan Rouhani is bringing Iran closer to the US. Though ideally we should appreciate the Iranian people for who they are, many Americans are blinded by the stereotypes they're consistently exposed to. But if Hassan continues to bring Iran closer to us, we see Iranians up close and recognize that they are no different from us. With increased exposure to them, the attitudes once held will vanish to but a whisper of our biased past. A world full of growth and friends is out there. We just need to let ourselves see it.

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1. There is a good chance this is just because the sanctions have crippled Iran’s oil income.
2. So does the media control our perception of the world around us? Another time, passion blog.
3. If you’re curious why the Westboro Baptist Church protested the vigil, it’s because they believed the murderer’s acts were judgement from God —judgement we deserve for allowing gays and lesbians to live in our society (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/westboro-baptist-church-picket-connecticut-school-shooting_n_2312186.html).

Riddle Me This: The Challenge of a Riddle

Why are riddles and brain teasers popular in our culture? What do people get out of hearing confusing, contrived scenarios that sort of make sense in the end? Are they just fun, or is there something more at play? I was thinking about these questions a while back and drew some conclusions that might just make sense.

To start with, humans are naturally competitive. We have sports teams, business, and even games to illustrate this (you could argue that games are just entertainment, but doesn’t some of that entertainment derive from winning and losing?). So as competitive beings, when someone comes up to us and says “I have a riddle,” what we’re essentially hearing is, “I have some knowledge that you don’t, but I’m going to test you to see if you can figure it out.” The riddle is interpreted as a challenge and we must prove ourselves to the riddler by completing that challenge.

After initially conceiving this idea, I asked my brother, Nick, if he wanted to hear “something confusing that sort of makes sense.” He said, “how long?” I responded, “never mind, do you want to hear a riddle?” He instantly said yes. This made sense to me: why should Nick have wasted his time hearing something confusing that sort of makes sense? There was no potential benefit for him, no positive incentive. But when I instead offered him a riddle, the incentive appeared: he could prove to himself and to me that he possessed the same knowledge I did. The challenge had been accepted.

Unfortunately for Nick, I did this for the sake of the experiment and thus had no riddle or confusing tale prepared for him. But wait, isn’t a riddle “something confusing that sort of makes sense?” That’s exactly what a riddle is. Changing the phrasing of something that had no personal benefit to a riddle was all it took for Nick to go from an unenthused “how long” to an instantaneous “yes.” His inherent competitiveness took over and he eagerly awaited the riddle.

On TV shows and in movies this hidden aspect is not only understood but made obvious. Many scenes involve heroes unable to advance unless they can solve a riddle. Whether it’s simple wordplay or the thing with the twin brothers (one always lies, the other tells the truth) the riddle determines whether or not the hero is worthy of passing. In viewing these scenes, we assign the “challenge” of the riddle only to the specific cinematic scenario, but in reality a riddle’s challenge grips us more often than we realize.

I’m going to show you one of my favorite “riddles.” Below there’s a white sheet of paper with a dot in the middle.

What is it?

Give up?

It's a polar bear blinking in a blizzard, of course!

Now what do you feel? You’re probably thinking that that was pretty dumb and there’s no way anyone could have guessed that correctly. If someone tells a riddle or presents a problem with a bad or unsatisfactory solution, we’re likely to call them out. By having us hear the answer (and thus admit defeat) we have given up the challenge. So when we learn that the challenge didn’t make sense or was un-aswerable, we want to redeem that moment of intellectual inferiority by calling out the riddler and discrediting their entire problem. This also explains why we don't readily welcome hints. A hint provides assistance, so if we solve the riddle with a hint then we don't feel as if we truly match up to the riddler.

So what is my point here? Should we stop telling riddles altogether? No, they’re good fun and can be quite clever. I’m not suggesting abandoning the competition. I’m merely offering up why we are interested in them. They provide us competitive humans with a little challenge, a little brain exercise that measures and compares our abilities. The Riddler wasn’t a good Batman villain just because he threatened to kill someone; he was a good villain because he’d keep you entertained with a riddle while threatening to kill someone. That’s probably taking the competitiveness aspect too far, but at least now we know why he was so entertaining.

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Also, watch Batman face off against the Riddler in this collegehumour video!

Why are we annoyed when other cars let people into our lane, but not when we do the same?

I’m not talking about highway bottlenecks where lanes close and you’re forced to let people in; I’m referring to those situations where we or other drivers choose to let a car in. 

When the driver in front of us lets someone in, we might get a little annoyed at both cars for causing us to slow down. But when we choose to let that car in, we tend to be less annoyed at the car and the overall situation, and can even derive pleasure from it.

What draws the line between annoyance and pleasure is the sense of reward we do or do not get. When someone else lets a car into our lane, they are slowing down and wasting our time to help someone who does not have the right of way. There is no reward for us. But when we personally let someone into our lane, we are being nice and helpful. Our good deed rewards us with a sense of self-satisfaction and we are less likely to be bothered by the predicament. 

This is even the same in school lunch lines: we let our friends in but we get annoyed when others do it. On the road, should we choose to let another driver in, the intimacy of friendship is simulated by our proximity to the other driver.  

Becoming annoyed when other drivers let cars in while obtaining pleasure from doing the same action ourselves is indeed irrational. After all, whether we or other drivers let the adjacent cars into our lane, the result is the same: the car joins our lane in front of us. What ultimately affects our judgment of the situation is whether the one to gain something, even something as slight as positive feelings, is us. 

Expectations—How I fell prey to stereotypes

In one month I’m headed off to my first year at The Schreyer Honors College at Penn State. Yet whenever I’m asked what school I will be attending in the Fall, as recent high-school graduates are invariably asked, I usually just say Penn State, leaving out Schreyer altogether. While I certainly recite that entire title in a business or professional environment, I find it a bit pretentious to include “Schreyer Honors College” in social settings. This may be especially so because I am not trying to imply to the 60 other kids from my school going to Penn State that I am better or smarter than they are. So I resolved to say that I just go to Penn State, at least in social settings. 

But when one parent asked me what school I was going to, something surprising occurred. Arriving at my friend’s house one day, I greeted his father who was gardening outside. After exchanging pleasantries, the conversation shifted to my future school as I had expected it to. “So where will you be going next year?” Without hesitation, I responded: “Schreyer Honors College at Penn State.” 

What had just happened? 

Why, after deciding that including Schreyer sounded pretentious, did I say it? I felt the words form in my mouth but was powerless to stop their emancipation. And it did sound a little pretentious. I thought at the time that because my friend is going to an Ivy League, I had included Schreyer to give Penn State more comparative weight. But this exact same scenario happened again with another friend’s parent, and this friend was going to a school similar to Penn State. I anticipated the question and tried to suppress the response, but Schreyer fumbled gracelessly out of my mouth like a barrel crashing down a waterfall. Why was I suddenly losing power over how I wished to describe my school?

After mulling this over, I finally understood why I think this happened: the parents, like my friends, were Asian.

As I’m sure you all know, one of the stereotypes surrounding Asians is that they are smarter than the average person, especially in mathematical and scientific areas. I certainly am not saying that I believe those to be true, or that I am racist or biased towards Asians in any way. Rather that just the knowledge and presence of those stereotypes induced me to expect those parents to have higher standards to which I should appeal to—prompting me to include Schreyer. Even before speaking to the second parent, I consciously reminded myself of the previous outcome, but Schreyer came out regardless. I succumbed to these stereotypes just as anyone else could have. 

This is not a testament to my individual beliefs, but rather to the powerful implications of stereotypes on behavior and thought. Even though we may not believe these stereotypes, we need to acknowledge that these stereotypes exist and that, no matter how much we believe we don’t, we act upon them. Only then can we begin to overcome them.

Ideas for Improving Voter Registration

In my recent post about primaries I discussed how filling out my voter registration card prompted me to look into primaries, thus delving into how closed, semi-closed and open primaries function with regards to different party affiliations. I later realized that there is an inherent problem with the actual voter registration forms we all fill out: obtaining and submitting them.

The National Voting Registration Act of 1993 (the Motor Voter Act) enabled those obtaining their licenses to simultaneously receive voter registration forms. But even then a large amount of people getting their licenses were only 16 years old, two years too young to vote. This creates a problem: these 16-year-olds are given their voter registration forms to maintain and eventually submit, but there are plenty of teenagers who, expectedly, misplace their forms or lose interest in registering after a 2-year waiting period. 

To fix this, the DMV or another government organization could mail the voter registration forms to registered drivers on their 18th birthday. It is a very simple idea that could yield impressive results. And perhaps if these adolescents receive a voter form on the advent of adulthood, they will better understand their responsibility as American citizens and feel more inclined to participate in the voting process.

Why not take this a step further? Perhaps we should mail those voter forms to every American citizen on their 18th birthday. The ones who don’t care about voting wouldn’t go to the trouble of filling out the form and returning it. And even if apathetic voters do register, I don’t believe they would regularly exercise a right they do not want. But for those who had always wanted to register but either didn’t know how to, couldn’t find a form, or simply didn’t have the time to, this would be a generous and helpful action.

Though one can find state websites for registering to vote literally just by Googling “register to vote,” most people either do not know this or do not think voting matters enough to warrant the time registration takes. Though mailing forms to every 18-year-old citizen may not be feasible, it would be effective. 

People respond to incentives: providing people with accessible and simple ways to register as voters would increase our voting-eligible population and enhance our democracy. More advertising could be done for registration. Forms could be placed in more frequented locations, like banks. They could even be mailed out to immigrants who complete naturalization tests, or better yet, given to them on the spot--unless of course they’re under 18!

Open Our Primaries

Having just turned 18, I recently filled out my voter registration papers to mail to my district office. After breezing through my name, address, and other basic information, I reached the “Party Identification” section: I had to label myself a Democrat, Republican or Independent. I was hesitant to forever align myself with all the viewpoints Democrats and Republicans attempt to encompass, so I wanted to register myself an Independent. I knew though that some states didn’t allow Independents to participate in important events like primaries, so I checked Pennsylvania’s primary rules. It’s a good thing I had checked—I wouldn’t have been able to vote!

The parties of a state choose what type of primary[1] to hold each presidential season. Many are very detailed and complex, but the types of presidential primaries generally follow three models:

Closed Primary – only members affiliated with that specific party can participate in the primary

Semi-Closed Primary – members affiliated with that specific party and those unaffiliated with any party (Independents) can vote

Open Primary – anyone (affiliated or not) can participate in the primary

Pennsylvania, as I soon learned, uses a closed primary system for its Democratic and Republican primary.

Conducting closed primaries is a terrible, undemocratic practice.

If you are an Independent, a member of the Green Party, or anything not directly affiliated with the two main parties, you can’t participate in a closed primary. How can a democratic institution operate under this principle? Barring people from voting for potential presidential candidates because they don’t identify themselves with one of two ideologies? It’s ridiculous. Especially to a generation decreasingly identifying themselves with either of the two main parties, closed primaries have to go.

Approximately 30%[2] of our electorate identify themselves as independents. That’s over 66.5 million people that have a significantly reduced say in selecting the future president. And there are many more people not registered as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent who have no say in a closed primary. This is one of the reasons why many Americans are so turned off by politics: they believe they can’t influence anything. And to a degree, they’re right.

Allow open primaries where anybody can vote for any candidate. It is such a simple change to make, yet it would mean a world of difference.  At the very least, change all closed primaries to semi-closed ones so more of the electorate get to participate in selecting who ultimately runs for president.

But a party wants to select their best candidate possible, so allowing non-party members with different ideals to select candidates will only decrease the chances that a favorable candidate will be selected, right?

Wrong. Entirely.

Allowing only party members to vote in their primary ultimately leads to more polarized candidates being elected. This is because only more politically active members (who are typically more polarized) tend to participate in primaries.[3] But if primaries allowed people from all ends of the spectrum to participate in their processes, candidates selected from those primaries would be more representative of the more moderate beliefs of the American public. This works the same way that increasing the sample size of a statistical study ultimately leads to more accurate results. By allowing independents and members of other parties to impart their opinions and values, the two main parties actually have a BETTER chance of getting their nominee to the white house because the nominee will more accurately reflect the views of the entire American population.  

And just because someone is registered with one party doesn’t mean they constantly want to vote along those lines. Often times they do not like the candidates their own, out-of-touch party supports, and they want to select the candidate they support most. We don’t always vote for the party they are registered with, but closed primary systems require us to act as if we do. Allow open primaries and fix this problem.  

But isn’t it possible that members from one party could go into an opposing party’s primary and support a less popular candidate in the hopes that winning is made more difficult for the opposing party’s favored candidate?

That’s called party raiding, and it does occur. But both parties have the capability to do this, so the effect balances itself out. Furthermore, such an insignificant fraction of those who vote in primaries (which is unfortunately miniscule to begin with) partakes in this practice that party raiding rarely produces results different from those of a pure primary. If people do choose to raid the other party, that simply means they don’t get to vote in their own primary, and sacrificing that opportunity is more foolish and narrow-minded than party raiding itself. And like I mentioned before, there are people who’re registered with a party they don’t plan on voting for—they could just as easily “raid” the party’s primary since they’re already registered with that party.

So my heartfelt congratulations to Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the 17 states with open Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. And the semi-closed primaries of Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island and West Virginia tell me that those states are on the right track.

Imagine yourself in a room. There’s a limited supply of air and one window. Would you want that window closed or open?  Just as we live on air, our nation thrives on democracy—without that open window, it is thinning.

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[1] I use the term “primary” throughout this post to refer to both primaries and caucuses. Though primaries and caucuses function differently, their categories of participation are the same as those of primaries'.

[2] Abramson, Aldrich and Rohde, Change and Continuity in the 2004 Elections, 2005; Ambinder, "A Nation of Free Agents," Washington Post, September 3, 2006.

[3] This is why candidates are forced to “change” their views during their campaigns: in the primaries they are more ideologically extreme to appeal to the voters in the primary and become the nominee, but in the general election they ease their views to appeal to the more moderate American population. I will make a post about this and general primary participation rates later.

Moderately Unbiased

I didn’t care much about politics when I was younger.

I saw and heard about it on the news but I knew nothing of it. I don’t recall my parents telling me much about politics, and what little they did discuss with me was often infused with disappointment and frustration. Having recently finished my school’s political science course on US Government, I started to understand why my parents feel that way. And why it’s so crucial that that attitude changes.

As I learned in class, my parents’ sentiment is shared by a majority of Americans. And having taken that course? Throw me in the mix! It is kind of a mess. But it is critical that we citizens understand how our political system works so that we are not disillusioned by it. We need to educate ourselves so that we can participate in the political process to create the change we want to see. We are responsible for our actions, and if we want progress and change, then we should equip ourselves with the means to make it happen.

Taking that US government course showed me something else, too, something huge: there are so many unknown ideas we can implement to improve the entire structure of American politics. In fact, many of the problems we face in politics and around the world have simple, unique solutions. More good news? The solutions are already out there.

I’m starting this blog to spread ideas—mostly those I’ve accumulated from others, but some of my own as well. There is an infinite number of ideas floating around, yet so frequently they are overlooked because we don’t want to believe that anything can be better than how we’ve come to know it. We need to be able to give these ideas, methods, systems, and styles our fairest consideration and put aside all the prejudices and preconceptions in our mind that come with changing the status quo.

We need to be, at the very least, moderately unbiased.