It's how you ask the question that matters

[andrewducker]

The New York Times took a poll.  They asked half the people whether they thought that gay men and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the US army.  60% said yes.  They asked the other half whether they thought that homosexuals should be allowed to serve openly in the US army.  44% said yes.

One can only assume that people are made of crazy.  And stupid.

From

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

No, you should assume that their views are lightly held, so that a small difference in phrasing will change them.

[andrewducker]

If their views are so lightly held that a change in phrasing with identical meaning causes them to change them then they are crazy. And stupid.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

No, they are not insane, and they are not idiots. They are selfish and disinterested.

[andrewducker]

Clearly insane. Clearly idiots.

(How long do you think we can keep this up for? Think we can get anyone else to join in?)

[meihua.livejournal.com]

This comment makes no sense to me, sorry.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Semiotics. They're interesting and important. No, two apparently equivalent words do not, in real world terms, mean the same thing.

[andrewducker]

Well, we're both making blanket generalised assertions without anything to back them up, which strikes me as the least useful form of communication ever.

I mean, contradicting something I said without offering any reasoning wasn't going to change my mind, so I assume that it wasn't meant as an actual attempt to do so. Therefore I can only assume that you were doing it for fun, so I was joining in by contradicting you in return. I assumed we were engaging in something like the Monty Python "Argument" sketch.

You weren't being _serious_ were you???

[andrewducker]

Of course not - "gay man" includes the word "man", which has a humanising effect on the people you're talking to, priming them to respond in a more empathic manner towards the subject you're asking them about.

I still despair though.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Are they identical? If you believe that men should be able to serve and women shouldn't, then you'd answer no to the first and yes to the second, wouldn't you? Although I'd expect the figures to skew in the opposite direction based on that.

How big was the answering sample? If there were 100 people in each then it could be simple differences of opinion that only average out as the sample size increases massively.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was perfectly serious. You don't really think that there is a case of mass insanity, and while you may think that there is a case of mass stupidity, I think that's a very patronising line to take. I consider your explanation a more extraordinary one than mine, and I consider replacing an extraordinary explaination with a less extraordinary explaination a perfectly reasonable thing to do, even without any evidence to follow that up. That is, you'll note, how general hypothesis-forming works; find the simplest, most likely thing.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Above certainly wasn't meant to imply that you didn't already know that, of course!

There are vast applications of semiotics to all sorts of humanities fields. F'rex, the semiotics of academic gender studies jargon are virtually guaranteed to get them exactly the audience, positive and negative, that they indeed gain.

[andrewducker]

Aaah. In which case I'd like to say that I wasn't making a diagnosis, nor was I attempting to deduce their actual levels of IQ, I was merely deing disparaging in my despair.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I saw something in the BPS digest, suggesting how you frame something can change a person's thought processes toward it. I think we all make (unconscious) associations and the word "homosexuals" might be triggering to some people but "gay men and lesbians" don't seem to hold the same impact.

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-framing-affects-our-thought.html

[andrewducker]

Yup - when people use in-group language with out-groups and expect the same reaction then both sides tend to get a nasty shock.

[andrewducker]

The national telephone poll was conducted with 1,084 adults Feb. 5-10 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points for each half sample. Complete poll results and article will be available this evening at www.nytimes.com.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see you're already discussing that kind of angle with cairmen :)

[andrewducker]

Isn't that one of the founding concepts used in CBT? That how you frame something strongly affects how you think about it?

[andrewducker]

Always nice to have you commenting though!

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Which in a way, I was responding to as well. I think your despair is misplaced, and it's not as bad as you think!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

"68% think we spend too much on foreign aid. 59% think it should be cut"

(Yeah, the semiotics comments are more relevant, but this is funnier!)

[andrewducker]

I shall hope so. I'd rather people were just negligent than having completely incoherent mental models (see also comments below about the humanising effect I think that "gay man" might have on people's reactions).

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I know, but I hate commenting the obvious unless I have something interesting to add :)

[andrewducker]

On a similar note, there was a recent poll put together by The Metro (owned by The Mail), which said "We spend X amount on foreign aid - is this enough?"

Because most people said "Yes" they led with a headline of "We're spending enough - stop now!". If most people had answered no then they could have led with "We're not spending enough! Spend more!" and either way round the government looks bad...

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Of course, for some groups (fundementalist religions, for example) this is a feature, not a bug.

[ahsirakh.livejournal.com]

Also, "homosexual" draws attention to the act of sex more than "gay men and lesbians" does.