I felt that this article could have said more about possible policy interventions and that it dismisses policy and political interventions as crowded too quickly. Having thought a bit about this area in the past I thought I would chip in.
MORE ON POLICY INTERVENTIONS
Even within established democracies, we could try to identify measures that avoid excessive polarization and instead reward cross-party cooperation and compromise. … (For example, effective altruists have discussed electoral reform as a possible lever that could help achieve this.)
There are many things that could be done to prevent malevolent leaders within established democracies. Reducing excessive polarization (or electoral reform) are two minor ones. Other ideas you do not discuss include:
Better mechanisms for judging individuals. Eg ensuring 360 feedback mechanisms are used routinely to guide hiring and promotion decisions as people climb political ladders. (I may do work on this in the not too distant future)
Less power to individuals. Eg having elections for parties rather than leaders. (The Conservative MPs in the UK could at any time decide that Boris Johnson is no longer fit to be a leader and replace him with someone else, Republicans cannot do this with Trump, Labour MPs in the UK cannot do this with a Labour leader to the same extent).
Reduce the extent to which corruption / malevolence is beneficial for success. There are many ways to do this. In particular removing the extent to which individuals raising money is a key factor for their political success (in the UK most political fundraising is for parties not for individuals). Also removing the extent to which dishonesty pays, for example with better fact-checking services.
More checks and balances on power. A second house. A constitution. More independent government institutions (central banks, regulators, etc – I may do some work in this space soon too). More transparency of political decision making. Better complaint and whistle-blowing mechanisms. Limits on use of emergency powers. Etc.
ARE POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS CROWDED?
Alternatively, we could influence political background factors that make malevolent leaders more or less likely… interventions to promote democracy and reduce political instability seem valuable—though this area seems rather crowded.
You might be correct, but this feels a bit like saying the AI safety space is crowded because lots of groups are trying to develop AI. However it may not be the case that those groups are focusing as much on safety as you would like. Although there are many groups (especially nation states) that want to promote democracy there may be very specific interventions that prevent malevolent leaders that are significantly under-discussed, such as elections for parties rather than leaders, or other points listed above. It seems plausible that academics and practitioners in this space may be able to make valuable shifts in the way fledgling democracies are developing that are not otherwise being considered.
And as someone in the improving government institutions space in the UK is is not evident to me that there is much focus on the kinds of interventions that would limit malevolent leaders.
I will probably add some of your intervention ideas to the article (I’ll let you know in that case).
I felt that this article could have said more about possible policy interventions and that it dismisses policy and political interventions as crowded too quickly.
Sorry about that. It certainly wasn’t our intention to dismiss political interventions out of hand. The main reason for not writing more was our lack of knowledge in this space; which is why our discussion ends with “We nevertheless encourage interested readers to further explore these topics”. In fact, a comment like yours—containing novel intervention ideas written by someone with experience in policy—is pretty much what we were hoping to see when writing that sentence.
Better mechanisms for judging individuals. Eg ensuring 360 feedback mechanisms are used routinely to guide hiring and promotion decisions as people climb political ladders. (I may do work on this in the not too distant future)
Very cool! This is partly what we had in mind when discussing manipulation-proof measures to prevent malevolent humans from rising to power (where we also briefly mention 360 degree assessments).
For what it’s worth, Babiak et al. (2010) seemed to have some success with using 360 degree assessments to measure psychopathic traits in a corporate setting. See also Mathieu et al. (2013).
(I wasn’t sure what to do with this when I found it, I might add other policy reports I find to this thread too until I have the capacity to actually work on this in any detail)
Thanks for sharing these additional ideas and insights!
Also removing the extent to which dishonesty pays, for example with better fact-checking services.
I ran (and published a paper on) an experiment on fact-checking for my Psychology Honours in 2017, so I have a smidge of knowledge here, though it’s a bit rusty. Some brief thoughts:
I do suspect “better fact-checking services”, in the sense of more accuracy or checking more facts, would be somewhatbeneficial
But I think there’s some reason for pessimism about just how much people really “care” about the results of fact-checks, even when they see those fact-checks. Here’s my study’s abstract:
In the ‘post-truth era’, political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants’ beliefs about those statements—regardless of whether participants supported Trump—but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. Therefore, the null effect of fact-checks on participants’ voting intentions and feelings may have arisen because of this artificially created balance. Moreover, Trump’s statements were not contrasted with statements from an opposing politician, and Trump’s perceived veracity was not measured. The present study (N = 370) examined the issue further, manipulating the ratio of corrections to affirmations, and using Australian politicians (and Australian participants) from both sides of the political spectrum. We hypothesized that fact-checks would correct beliefs and that fact-checks would affect voters’ support (i.e. voting intentions, feelings and perceptions of veracity), but only when corrections outnumbered affirmations. Both hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a politician’s veracity does sometimes matter to voters. The effects of fact-checking were similar on both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting little motivated reasoning in the processing of fact-checks.
This is also relevant to the following sentence from the original post: “While the notion of Dark Tetrad traits is not foremost in most people’s minds, one could argue that much political debate is about related concepts like the trustworthiness or honesty of candidates, and voters do value those attributes.” I think this is true, but probably less true than many might think (or at least than they would’ve thought pre-2016).
And then there’s also the matter of whether people come to encounter fact-checks in the first place. In my study’s conclusion, I wrote that “participants were unable to avoid fact-checks or to select which ones they received. In reality, some people may not encounter any fact-checks at all [9], and the sample of fact-checks which others encounter is often influenced by selective exposure and selective sharing [65,66].” (I feel weird about quoting myself, but 2017 Michael knew more about this than 2020 Michael does!)
So I’d tentatively see more value in making fact-checking services “better” in the sense of being clearer, more attention-grabbing, better publicised, or things like that (as long as this doesn’t cost too much accuracy, nuance, etc.), rather than in e.g. making more or more accurate fact-checks.
And there may be still more value in somehow “shifting norms” towards valuing truth more highly, or things like that, though I don’t know how one would actually do that. (I’m guessing this post is relevant, but I haven’t read it yet.)
I’ve just read the results of an interesting new study on the effect of red-flagging some information on social media, with flags such as “Multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news”, and variations with “Multiple fact-checking journalists” replaced by, alternatively, “Major news outlets”, “A majority of Americans”, or “Computer algorithms using AI”. The researchers tested the effect this had on the propensity of people to share the content. The effect of the “fact-checking” phrasing was the most pronounced, and very significant (a reduction of about 40% of the probability to share content; which jumps to 60% for people who identify as Democrats). Overall the effect of the “AI” phrasing was also very significant, but quite counterintuitively it has the effect of increasing the probability of sharing content for people who identify as Republicans! (By about 8%; it decreases that same probability by 40% for people who identify as Democrats.) https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-find-red-flagging-misinformation-could-slow-spread-fake-news-social-media
Thank you for the insight. I really have no strong view on how useful each / any of the ideas I suggested were. They were just ideas.
I would add on this point that narcissistic politicians I have encountered worried about appearance and bad press. I am pretty sure that transparency and fact checking etc discouraged them from making harmful decisions. Not every narcissistic leader is like Trump.
Yeah, that sounds right to me. And reminds me of a paper I read when working on that experiment, the abstract of which was:
Does external monitoring improve democratic performance? Fact-checking has come to play an increasingly important role in political coverage in the United States, but some research suggests it may be ineffective at reducing public misperceptions about controversial issues. However, fact-checking might instead help improve political discourse by increasing the reputational costs or risks of spreading misinformation for political elites. To evaluate this deterrent hypothesis, we conducted a field experiment on a diverse group of state legislators from nine U.S. states in the months before the November 2012 election. In the experiment, a randomly assigned subset of state legislators was sent a series of letters about the risks to their reputation and electoral security if they were caught making questionable statements. The legislators who were sent these letters were substantially less likely to receive a negative fact-checking rating or to have their accuracy questioned publicly, suggesting that fact-checking can reduce inaccuracy when it poses a salient threat.
Relatedly, it could be that “more” or “better” fact-checking would lead to better actions by or discourse from politicians, even if voters “don’t really care much” about fact-checks or never really see them, due to politicians overestimating what impact fact-checks would have on voters’ perceptions.
(To be clear, I do think fact-checks probably have at least some impact via the more obvious route too; I wonder mostly about the magnitude of the effect, not whether it exists.)
Hi, interesting article. Thank you for writing.
I felt that this article could have said more about possible policy interventions and that it dismisses policy and political interventions as crowded too quickly. Having thought a bit about this area in the past I thought I would chip in.
MORE ON POLICY INTERVENTIONS
There are many things that could be done to prevent malevolent leaders within established democracies. Reducing excessive polarization (or electoral reform) are two minor ones. Other ideas you do not discuss include:
Better mechanisms for judging individuals. Eg ensuring 360 feedback mechanisms are used routinely to guide hiring and promotion decisions as people climb political ladders. (I may do work on this in the not too distant future)
Less power to individuals. Eg having elections for parties rather than leaders. (The Conservative MPs in the UK could at any time decide that Boris Johnson is no longer fit to be a leader and replace him with someone else, Republicans cannot do this with Trump, Labour MPs in the UK cannot do this with a Labour leader to the same extent).
Reduce the extent to which corruption / malevolence is beneficial for success. There are many ways to do this. In particular removing the extent to which individuals raising money is a key factor for their political success (in the UK most political fundraising is for parties not for individuals). Also removing the extent to which dishonesty pays, for example with better fact-checking services.
More checks and balances on power. A second house. A constitution. More independent government institutions (central banks, regulators, etc – I may do some work in this space soon too). More transparency of political decision making. Better complaint and whistle-blowing mechanisms. Limits on use of emergency powers. Etc.
ARE POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS CROWDED?
You might be correct, but this feels a bit like saying the AI safety space is crowded because lots of groups are trying to develop AI. However it may not be the case that those groups are focusing as much on safety as you would like. Although there are many groups (especially nation states) that want to promote democracy there may be very specific interventions that prevent malevolent leaders that are significantly under-discussed, such as elections for parties rather than leaders, or other points listed above. It seems plausible that academics and practitioners in this space may be able to make valuable shifts in the way fledgling democracies are developing that are not otherwise being considered.
And as someone in the improving government institutions space in the UK is is not evident to me that there is much focus on the kinds of interventions that would limit malevolent leaders.
Thank you, excellent points!
I will probably add some of your intervention ideas to the article (I’ll let you know in that case).
Sorry about that. It certainly wasn’t our intention to dismiss political interventions out of hand. The main reason for not writing more was our lack of knowledge in this space; which is why our discussion ends with “We nevertheless encourage interested readers to further explore these topics”. In fact, a comment like yours—containing novel intervention ideas written by someone with experience in policy—is pretty much what we were hoping to see when writing that sentence.
Very cool! This is partly what we had in mind when discussing manipulation-proof measures to prevent malevolent humans from rising to power (where we also briefly mention 360 degree assessments).
For what it’s worth, Babiak et al. (2010) seemed to have some success with using 360 degree assessments to measure psychopathic traits in a corporate setting. See also Mathieu et al. (2013).
Relevant policy report from the UK Parliament on enforcing the Ministerial Code of good behaviour, (from 2006): https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmpubadm/1457/1457.pdf
(I wasn’t sure what to do with this when I found it, I might add other policy reports I find to this thread too until I have the capacity to actually work on this in any detail)
Less directly relevant but somewhat interesting too: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpubadm/121/121i.pdf
Thanks for sharing these additional ideas and insights!
I ran (and published a paper on) an experiment on fact-checking for my Psychology Honours in 2017, so I have a smidge of knowledge here, though it’s a bit rusty. Some brief thoughts:
I do suspect “better fact-checking services”, in the sense of more accuracy or checking more facts, would be somewhat beneficial
But I think there’s some reason for pessimism about just how much people really “care” about the results of fact-checks, even when they see those fact-checks. Here’s my study’s abstract:
This is also relevant to the following sentence from the original post: “While the notion of Dark Tetrad traits is not foremost in most people’s minds, one could argue that much political debate is about related concepts like the trustworthiness or honesty of candidates, and voters do value those attributes.” I think this is true, but probably less true than many might think (or at least than they would’ve thought pre-2016).
And then there’s also the matter of whether people come to encounter fact-checks in the first place. In my study’s conclusion, I wrote that “participants were unable to avoid fact-checks or to select which ones they received. In reality, some people may not encounter any fact-checks at all [9], and the sample of fact-checks which others encounter is often influenced by selective exposure and selective sharing [65,66].” (I feel weird about quoting myself, but 2017 Michael knew more about this than 2020 Michael does!)
So I’d tentatively see more value in making fact-checking services “better” in the sense of being clearer, more attention-grabbing, better publicised, or things like that (as long as this doesn’t cost too much accuracy, nuance, etc.), rather than in e.g. making more or more accurate fact-checks.
And there may be still more value in somehow “shifting norms” towards valuing truth more highly, or things like that, though I don’t know how one would actually do that. (I’m guessing this post is relevant, but I haven’t read it yet.)
I’ve just read the results of an interesting new study on the effect of red-flagging some information on social media, with flags such as “Multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news”, and variations with “Multiple fact-checking journalists” replaced by, alternatively, “Major news outlets”, “A majority of Americans”, or “Computer algorithms using AI”. The researchers tested the effect this had on the propensity of people to share the content. The effect of the “fact-checking” phrasing was the most pronounced, and very significant (a reduction of about 40% of the probability to share content; which jumps to 60% for people who identify as Democrats). Overall the effect of the “AI” phrasing was also very significant, but quite counterintuitively it has the effect of increasing the probability of sharing content for people who identify as Republicans! (By about 8%; it decreases that same probability by 40% for people who identify as Democrats.)
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-find-red-flagging-misinformation-could-slow-spread-fake-news-social-media
Thank you for the insight. I really have no strong view on how useful each / any of the ideas I suggested were. They were just ideas.
I would add on this point that narcissistic politicians I have encountered worried about appearance and bad press. I am pretty sure that transparency and fact checking etc discouraged them from making harmful decisions. Not every narcissistic leader is like Trump.
Yeah, that sounds right to me. And reminds me of a paper I read when working on that experiment, the abstract of which was:
Relatedly, it could be that “more” or “better” fact-checking would lead to better actions by or discourse from politicians, even if voters “don’t really care much” about fact-checks or never really see them, due to politicians overestimating what impact fact-checks would have on voters’ perceptions.
(To be clear, I do think fact-checks probably have at least some impact via the more obvious route too; I wonder mostly about the magnitude of the effect, not whether it exists.)