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Do influential people develop more conventional opinions?
Following up on Robin's question I think the answer is yes, mostly. We are talking about the time series here, as people rise in influence. I see a few mechanisms:
1. People "sell out" to become more influential.
2. As people become more influential, they are less interested in offending their new status quo-oriented friends.
3. As people become more influential, their opinion of the status quo rises, because they see it rewarding them and thus meritorious.
4. The status quo is good at spotting interesting, unusual people who will evolve (sell out?) and elevating them to positions of influence.
5. Oddballs who are influential arrive first at where the status quo is later headed, and eventually they end up looking conventional.
6. Influential people are asked to write increasingly on general interest topics ("How to Be Nice to Dogs") and thus they find it harder to be truly unconventional. They cultivate skills of conventionality because that is what they are paid for or allowed to express.
Can you think of other mechanisms? Who are some test cases for these hypotheses?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 16, 2009 at 07:21 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
The whole academic literature on financial analyst behavior confirm most of the mechanism you spotted.
Posted by: lausard at Mar 16, 2009 7:27:26 AM
High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Henry A. Kissinger
Posted by: bjk at Mar 16, 2009 7:46:36 AM
As people become more influential, the status quo moves towards the positions they originally had, making their opinions more conventional.
You can tell this story causally or not, with the influence of the individual being either phenomenal (the cause of the change in the status quo) or epiphenomenal (with their increased influence being a result of the status quo shifting towards their position).
Posted by: Dan Hirschman at Mar 16, 2009 7:53:11 AM
Don't you want to allow for the possibility that as people become more influential/older/ more mature they may actually learn new stuff, gain greater perspective etc. In other words they may discover that conventional thinking has greater merit than they previously thought. And they may be in fact correct. Isn't our thinking in good part determined by our social and economic position relative to other groups?
Posted by: Jonathan at Mar 16, 2009 7:53:57 AM
Perhaps the way to become influential has something to do with how to seem deep.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/how-to-seem-and.html
"The part I experienced as effortful was picking a response understandable in one inferential step and then phrasing it for maximum impact."
It argues that in order to strike a chord you have to be a step ahead of those listening to you. Not several steps and not right next to them, but one inferential step ahead. If you want to maximize your influence, you cannot, thus, argue far from the status quo.
Posted by: Mikko at Mar 16, 2009 7:56:06 AM
Is it something to do with top line editors writing humorous columns while greenhorns wrestle with serious topics or top executives turning very jovial and backslapping type? [TNM]
Posted by: Tusar N. Mohapatra at Mar 16, 2009 8:10:42 AM
Perhaps the following is true (p=0.3)
I think that some artists and musicians are good examples. They are original and sometimes do revolutionary stuff when young and poor but become repetitive and boring once they become rich and bourgeois, dating celebrities and populating cocktail parties. The artists that remain doing original and exciting stuff are often those that in some way or another reject the mainstream social life and conventions (e.g. by doing lots of drugs).
Posted by: londenio at Mar 16, 2009 8:20:57 AM
1) By definition, influential people can directly influence outcomes by the opinions they express, whereas marginal persons cannot. Thus, the influential person can often use a conventional argument to achieve an outcome, whereas a marginal person can influence outcomes only by using an unconventional argument that wins in the long run. In other words, the opportunity cost (in terms of social outcomes) of expressing an unconventional opinion is lower for marginal persons, higher for influential persons.
2) Entry into the mainstream increases one's knowledge of facts and arguments supporting conventional opinions.
3) Point 2) lets you respond the incentives of point 1) without having to think "I'm selling out."
Posted by: Roger Koppl at Mar 16, 2009 8:41:44 AM
I believe there is a good paper on this topic. It explains why artists sell out as they become famous and the theory applies to thinkers as well!
ABSTRACT: Artists face choices between the pecuniary benefits of selling to the market and the non-pecuniary benefits of creating to please their own tastes. We examine how changes in wages, lump sum income, and capital-labor ratios affect the artist's pursuit of self-satisfaction versus market sales. Using our model of labor supply as a guide, we consider the economic forces behind the high/low culture split, why some artistic media offer greater scope for the avant-garde than others, why so many artists dislike the market, and how economic growth and taxation affect the quantity and form of different kinds of art.
Cowen, Tyler and Alexander Tabarrok. 2000. An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular Art, or High and Low Culture. Southern Economic Journal 67(2): 232-253.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1061469
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Mar 16, 2009 8:52:28 AM
Tyler, you may have overlooked a stronger variant of #6.
Most professors are very passionate about their field of study, e.g. economics. To become influential, professors usually need to make incisive, indelible, and non-convential analyses of something or other. That's what attracts the attention of other economists.
But after becoming an influential economics professor, they profess their field not just to other economists but to the public at large. And I believe it was on this very blog that I read about the differences in opinion by "left" and "right" economists on what economic policies would be best for the financial crisis was way over-stated.
An influential economics professor would love to get that idea out to the public, right? All of a sudden instead of focusing on the weak areas of economics and doing new, wacky analyses, wouldn't there be a strong incentive to become a messenger for "look at all the stuff we economists have gotten right!"?
Posted by: Curt Fischer at Mar 16, 2009 8:57:46 AM
It takes a while for really good ideas to permeate and get accepted.
So you have to spend some time being a cheerleader for your ideas, which also takes time away from developing another really good idea.
And in the end, nobody wants to challenge you, they just want some more good ideas.
Posted by: michael webster at Mar 16, 2009 9:04:17 AM
No. 3 (the status quo has rewarded influential people) sounds like the best explanation to me, at first glance.
But I would add another option: Becoming more influential usually goes hand-in-hand with becoming older and becoming more knowledgeable about the ways of the world (since one's access to inside information improves). One therefore comes to see that maybe there are good reasons why the status quo is what it is. (Maybe call it "the devil you know" syndrome.) To paraphrase from memory something a James Gould Cozzens protagonist says somewhere, When you're young, you're taught that people aren't what they appear to be. But when you get older, you realize that people are exactly what they appear to be, if you have the eyes to see it.
Also, I look upon myself as a test case. As I've progressed from a young, poor liberal-arts major trying to make it in publishing to a middle-aged, wealthy, Ivy-League-educated partner in an influential law firm, my views have gradually moved from socialism to libertarianism to classical liberalism verging on conservatism.
Posted by: JP at Mar 16, 2009 9:28:25 AM
7) People more rigorously self-censor their less conventional opinions as they become more influential, because they perceive the negative consequences (personal and societal) of being incorrect are greater.
Posted by: Pat Gillett at Mar 16, 2009 9:34:40 AM
Einstein, Friedman, and Reagan are examples of influential people who had keen insights into some problems and were able to convince large numbers of people of their views until they became conventional. They did not have special insights outside their core insights.
Impressionist painters or Picasso were unconventional for a period but I think people are wrong to assume that they were young and without a concern about commercial success, only to sell out later. Technology and society were changing during the impressionist period. New paints made painting outside easier. Train travel made trips to the countryside easy and affordable. The introduction of photography encouraged new thinking in painting. American elites, newly rich, took a liking to the style and it increase in popularity. As more people were exposed to the new style, it grew in popularity. Not really much different from the introduction of spices in cooking.
Musicians, especially young musicians, are often a product of a blending of styles. This new blend may have an audience and grow or it may just stay a fringe taste. British bands heard race music and brought back rock and roll to America. Then they experimented with country music, Indian music, disco, reggae, etc. Some worked better then others. But over time, as more people experimented, everything starts to be derivate and less new to the consumer. But on some level the music was always derivate of something else, just new to listener.
Posted by: DanC at Mar 16, 2009 9:42:39 AM
You can test your hypothesis # 1 with the recent transformation of Larry Summers. You can start your test with a detailed analysis of his speech last week at the Brooking Institution. In my view it's a total "sellout" of his integrity and expertise. G. Mankiw has already pointed out some of his reversals, but there are several others that are worse.
Posted by: E. Barandiaran at Mar 16, 2009 10:01:11 AM
Influential people have more at risk.
If an influential person throws a very unconvential idea out there, s/he risks rejection and therefore may lose influence. Influential people will likely become more cautious as they become more influential.
Posted by: Scott Wentland at Mar 16, 2009 10:31:39 AM
show me an influential person and i will show you a person who trades in the moral outrage of the masses.
Posted by: babar at Mar 16, 2009 10:32:15 AM
If influential people are not changing the status quo, then they aren't really influential. So #5 gets my vote. ("Oddballs who are influential arrive first at where the status quo is later headed, and eventually they end up looking conventional.")
Posted by: John Mansfield at Mar 16, 2009 10:55:56 AM
E. Barandian,
"total transformation of Larry Summers," what? Well, in his speech
at Brookings he left behind his more critical views of labor unions from
some of his research of about 20 years ago, but other than that, I am
hard pressed to think of anything else that Summers has publicly said
or supported since becoming a top adviser to Obama that is obviously
out of line with his previous views. Keep in mind that we are not
talking about someone who has ever been particularly unconventional or
wildly innovative, although without doubt brilliant as well as very
self-confident to the point of overweening arrogance. And as for being
influential and powerful, he was Chief Economist of the World Bank in
the early 1990s, served in the Treasury ending up as Secretary under
President Clinton, and then was President of Harvard after that. If
he "sold out" to become influential it was probably more like 20 years
ago.
More generally, I would say that Tyler's list is pretty good, and I
can think of many people who would fit each of the categories, with
many fitting several of them at a time. Probably the one that has
the least overlap with the others is #5, which I find kind of cool.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 16, 2009 11:05:09 AM
Surely Tyler himself is a potential example, as his NYT articles seem to be designed not to offend. (This is just an impression I've gotten; I haven't, for example, attempted to juxtapose excerpts from the NYT articles and MR posts. Maybe I should.)
But I seem to recall that Tyler himself made this point about Paul Krugman, in attempting to explain how a once-sensible person could go so wrong at times.
Basically, though, this is a variant on Lord Acton: power (of persuation) corrupts (a person's viewpoint).
Posted by: Rich at Mar 16, 2009 11:26:17 AM
I think pat and Scott above have the right point. When you're young and unknown, you can take more risks--sometimes, you'll look like a fool, but hey, everyone does that sometimes when they're young. When you're established and well-known, the risk of looking like a fool gets higher, both because being a fool is less tolerable (you're supposed to be an expert in this area, how could you say something so dumb?) and because you have more at stake (not a possible career in the field if you do everything right, but an existing well-established career in the field).
I suspect we would benefit from more mechanisms to make it easier for innovative, established people to continue to be iconoclastic. Other than tenure, I'm not sure what that would be.
Posted by: albatross at Mar 16, 2009 11:33:04 AM
What people think of conventional opinions and how they are formed depends entirely on whether or not they themselves hold such opinions.
If they do, then obviously holding conventional opinions simply indicates that you are responsive to the way things are.
If they don't, then obviously holding conventional opinions is something to be deconstructed, to be explained by somewhat pathological processes such as class interest and/or incentives.
Posted by: Barbar at Mar 16, 2009 11:33:59 AM
Your anti-spam verification was impassible for me using either Firefox or Camino on Mac OS/X. In Firefox (with a flash blocker), I couldn't even see the challenge, in Camino, I could see it, but the page refused to accept my comment unless I turned on Javascript. Is there any way to fix this?
Posted by: albatross at Mar 16, 2009 11:35:12 AM
I like number 5.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Mar 16, 2009 11:37:13 AM
I can think of some exceptions, the current Pope being one. If anything his criticism of the status quo (both inside and outside of the Church) has increased with his influence. You'd think 1 would likely for a Pope, but 2 or 3 are not important for people in truly powerful positions. In fact, if your power is secure, destroying the status quo increases your power relative to your rivals.
Posted by: 8 at Mar 16, 2009 11:50:47 AM
