Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is an episode from 'freakanomics.' They are economists who studied the causes and solutions of violent crime, which is rampant in parts of Chicago, including on the South Side, where the U of Chicago is located. The link goes through a few stats regarding Chicago crime. Here is a podcast and transcript: Preventing Crime for Pennies on the Dollar (Ep. 219): Full Transcript - Freakonomics Freakonomics
In 2009, the Chicago Public Schools asked them to build a model to predict how to better spend funding to deal with 'at-risk' youth. The program they had was expensive and not very effective. CPS turned over a massive database of student profiles to the economists.
Quote:
Stephen J. DUBNER: How well did your predictive model seem to work?
LEVITT: It worked okay. But not fantastically well. …
But if you really dig down into it, you realize, “Wow, this is such an unlikely and semi-random act that we really didn’t have much predictive power at all.”
So they kept looking for other answers. The interview talks about a guy who had had success working with youth, named Tony DiVittorio. This is all very interesting, but what really caught my attention was when another researcher named Sara Heller discusses DiVittorio's methods in the context of what she calls "adaptive compliance." She explains:
Quote:
HELLER: Think about a youth walking down the street in an upper-middle class neighborhood. If someone comes up and demands his cell phone, probably his automatic response is going to be to hand it over and then go run and tell an adult. He’s built up that automatic response over many years of being in situations where that has become very adaptive, right? Where adults are reliable, where compliance is a constructive behavior....
So then the obvious question comes, why does a kid in DuPage County (wealthy Chgo burbs) have "adaptive compliance," while the kid on the South Side doesn't? One of my favorite books is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, about the migration of blacks from South to North during the 20th century. Part of the book deals with people who wound up in Chicago. There are heartwarming success stories but also you can see the roots of what is today's violent crime problem in Chicago.
A key takeaway from that book is that, for these black migrants, the authorities were the enemy. They were not to be trusted. The authorities rarely dealt in good faith. It's not tough to imagine why under such conditions, 'adaptive compliance' would not be able to thrive. That point is not made in the 'Freakanomics' link, but to me it seems an obvious insight.
There is much more detail at the link about the research. There's a lot of interesting stuff about behavioral experiments that were conducted. It's about 41 minutes but well-presented and worth a listen, or at least a skimming of the transcript.
This is an episode from 'freakanomics.' They are economists who studied the causes and solutions of violent crime, which is rampant in parts of Chicago, including on the South Side, where the U of Chicago is located. The link goes through a few stats regarding Chicago crime. Here is a podcast and transcript: Preventing Crime for Pennies on the Dollar (Ep. 219): Full Transcript - Freakonomics Freakonomics
In 2009, the Chicago Public Schools asked them to build a model to predict how to better spend funding to deal with 'at-risk' youth. The program they had was expensive and not very effective. CPS turned over a massive database of student profiles to the economists.
So they kept looking for other answers. The interview talks about a guy who had had success working with youth, named Tony DiVittorio. This is all very interesting, but what really caught my attention was when another researcher named Sara Heller discusses DiVittorio's methods in the context of what she calls "adaptive compliance." She explains:
So then the obvious question comes, why does a kid in DuPage County (wealthy Chgo burbs) have "adaptive compliance," while the kid on the South Side doesn't? One of my favorite books is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, about the migration of blacks from South to North during the 20th century. Part of the book deals with people who wound up in Chicago. There are heartwarming success stories but also you can see the roots of what is today's violent crime problem in Chicago.
A key takeaway from that book is that, for these black migrants, the authorities were the enemy. They were not to be trusted. The authorities rarely dealt in good faith. It's not tough to imagine why under such conditions, 'adaptive compliance' would not be able to thrive. That point is not made in the 'Freakanomics' link, but to me it seems an obvious insight.
There is much more detail at the link about the research. There's a lot of interesting stuff about behavioral experiments that were conducted. It's about 41 minutes but well-presented and worth a listen, or at least a skimming of the transcript.
Because the child from DuPage County (from the suburbs of a city, from small town America, from rural communities) from past experience has learned that things can be replaced, that they are the most important thing to keep safe, and adults will not only comfort you but they will try to help you fix your loss. The child in Chicago from past experience has learned that things are hard to come by, they may not be the most important thing to the adults in their lives and often those adults can barely take care of their own problems so they don’t have the ability to help you.
__________________
When I post in bold red that is moderator action and, per the TOS, can only be discussed through Direct Message.
There's an interesting experiment recounted in the podcast, conducted at a place called Dawes Park, a few miles SW of the U of C, in the heart of crime central. They found some teens playing basketball and asked them to participate in a 'game,' where one guy would be holding a water bottle, and the other would have 20 seconds to get it out of his hand.
Quote:
HEALY: Can I try this game with you guys?
We sent producer Bill Healy there. Healy modified the fist exercise. Instead, he used a water bottle. He gave the bottle to Deonte Griffin and told another kid he had to get it out of Griffin’s hand.
HEALY: You got 30 seconds, all right? You’ve got get this bottle away from him and there’s only one rule, okay? And that’s that there are no rules.
At the conclusion of the game, kid B (the taker) was asked:
Quote:
HEALY: The question that they wanted me to ask then is, “Why didn’t you just ask him for it?”
D. GRIFFIN: That is a good question. I don’t know. I guess that’s just a …
Tajaelien GRIFFIN: That was just a game you just told us.
D. GRIFFIN: But you know what? It’s crazy because if you think about it mentally, I could have just asked for it. It’s like your subconscious tell you to take it, instead of doing the right thing; which is asking for it, which would be something simple. You don’t have to waste no energy. It’s like you gotta take it. It’s ironic because it almost relates to Chicago.
This simple experiment thus provokes some reflection by subject D. Griffin, and illustrates what researcher Sara Heller calls 'automaticity.' The option of just asking for the bottle never occurred to him.
It's probably better to just listen to this on the podcast for this recounting. It can be heard @ the very beginning of the podcast, then they come back to it and finish @22:30. This 'game,' btw, comes directly from the methods of the above mentioned Tony DiVittorio, the counsellor who had unusual success..Podcast link:
One more money quote from the link. ('BAM' is the acronym of the program based on the methods of DiVittorio and the research):
Quote:
HELLER: The first year of BAM, we saw a 44 percent decline in violent crime arrests, and a 36 percent decline in other nonviolent non-property, non-drug arrests. We see an increase in school engagement that we think might end up eventually, once the kids are old enough, improving graduation rates by maybe 7 to 22 percent.
DUBNER: The improvement is wildly large, at least to my eyes. I don’t want to say, “Too good to be true.” I don’t mean to imply that I don’t believe it, but wow, it seems as though it really works.
HELLER: I agree with you. The first time that we saw these effects we thought, “Wow, can this be right?”
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
