talkpolitics | The Latest From The Unintended Consequences Department

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com posting in

I don't know how much of a discussion topic there is here, but, like numbers stations, this is another one of those quirky things I have to share.

Poking around Boing-Boing during lunch, they posted the above video and a link to the (in?)famous marshmallow test. I'll let Jonah Lehrer explain:

Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow...A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.

...

Most of the children were like Craig. They struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. “A few kids ate the marshmallow right away,” Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. “They didn’t even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later.” About thirty per cent of the children, however, were like Carolyn. They successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist.

It turns out that this is all related. The kids who could resist the longest, who could figure out ways to cope, what have you? It turns out they did better on test scores, were more sociable, and had fewer temper issues over time. This same sort of psychological pattern held throughout the years. Seems reasonable, right?

Lehrer has followed it up this week with new data regarding the impact of lead paint on the brain. The average IQ loss for children with lead in their system was 7 points, and MRIs indicated quite a bit of outright brain volume loss in those with the most exposure. It all trended properly, too - the more exposure to lead paint in your system, the more pronounced the brain volume loss.

So lead stopped going into most gasolines, new homes stopped using lead paint, and the exposure dropped. The goal of reducing lead exposure is achieved. As many of you know, I tend to note the unintended consequences of policies, whether it be on health care or on stimulus spending, and have significant concerns about those results. This is an instance where the unintended consequence of reducing the lead in gasoline and paint may have an added benefit: it may be directly impacting the crime rate:

For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent.

...

Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans’ blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future.

The science, also linked in the original article by Lehrer, backs this theory up:

Childhood lead exposure is associated with region-specific reductions in adult gray matter volume. Affected regions include the portions of the prefrontal cortex and ACC responsible for executive functions, mood regulation, and decision-making.

I thought people might find this interesting, both on a scientific and sociological level as well as a policy one. While it doesn't necessarily answer or change the political realities of many policies, it definitely raises some extra ideas as to thinking more critically about how a policy may impact a society, positive or negative.

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From:

johnny9fingers.livejournal.com

But one could argue that such information would lead to a government being almost obliged to ban lead in gasoline on the grounds of social order, fewer court costs, fewer incarcerations, etc & etc.

Not that I am.

From:

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com

An unintended consequence of more attention toward unintended consequences perhaps?

There's that danger with any sort of social thought process, though, no?