cognitive dissonance: The Atlantic article

[polly_mer]

Reading many of the higher ed articles regarding the next year has been interesting.  A pretty good mass media article on cognitive dissonance seems appropriate to discuss.

[kaysixteen]

The article is of course very good, written by experts.   I am wondering exactly what cognitive dissonance scenario you are alluding to, however?   Would it be the notion that is (perhaps?) being held by various uni adminiscritters, to the effect that 'returning to ftf classes in the midst of a pandemic creates real risk to student, and especially faculty/ staff health' vs. 'students want to come back and will not continue to do ol and we need their $'?  If so, I agree with you, and wonder openly which side will win out. since, despite the best efforts of those admins trying to put the latter view into force, the pandemic may well ultimately force their hands into the former position nonetheless.

[Ruralguy]

I would think  $ will win the argument, at least for tuition driven schools, unless/until there is some sort of governor's order to close. At my school there is significant faculty backlash, but the administration's reply is "Your arguments are sound, but if we close, we go out of business, so we aren't closing."

[kaysixteen]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

[Hibush]

Reading many of the higher ed articles regarding the next year has been interesting.  A pretty good mass media article on cognitive dissonance seems appropriate to discuss.

This observation from the article seems relevant to the topics we discuss here, in particular why people stay in lousy academic positions.

oing through hell and high water to attain something that turns out to be boring, vexatious, or a waste of time creates dissonance: I'm smart, so how did I end up in this stupid group? To reduce that dissonance, participants unconsciously focused on whatever might be good or interesting about the group and blinded themselves to its prominent negatives. The people who did not work hard to get into the group could more easily see the truth—how boring it was. Because they had very little investment in joining, they had very little dissonance to reduce.

That result from their research implies that people who are really challenged by their doctoral work, struggle even, and then have a long and difficult time to find a position, will be the most stubborn in sticking with that position regardless of how objectively bad it is. How much does that phenomenon obtain in academic hiring?

If I were an exploitative employer, I'd take advantage of the mental processes that reinforce the cognitive dissonance that makes the faculty think they have to stay no matter what.  (Mahagonny's employer seems not to be on to that scheme.)

[polly_mer]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

That is indeed the cognitive dissonance problem.  The entirely foreseeable outcome is being ignored in the hopes that only the desirable outcome of getting the money will happen.

[Diogenes]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

That is indeed the cognitive dissonance problem.  The entirely foreseeable outcome is being ignored in the hopes that only the desirable outcome of getting the money will happen.

And once the semester begins, throw in a little sunk-cost effect pushing them to stay the course and admincritters will rationalize away staying open, because they had to have made the right choice, due to their consistency bias. They will then minimize the risks of COVID to stay open and turn around and blame the risk on the massive Drop/Fail/Withdrawal rate that's sure to come because of the fundamental attribution error.

It's all really a great case study in cognitive/social psychology and behavioral economics.

[Parasaurolophus]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

I would think that's true, but it may just be that enough people will have given up and accepted the catastrofuck by then that business just continues as usual unless and until you start seeing hundreds or thousands of deaths at a particular college, or the faculty ranks are hollowed out too far. If the rest of the city or state has given up and accepted horrific losses, it'll be a lot easier to justify pressing on at a particular college.

[Caracal]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

I would think that's true, but it may just be that enough people will have given up and accepted the catastrofuck by then that business just continues as usual unless and until you start seeing hundreds or thousands of deaths at a particular college, or the faculty ranks are hollowed out too far. If the rest of the city or state has given up and accepted horrific losses, it'll be a lot easier to justify pressing on at a particular college.

This isn't a "covid is no big deal" argument. However, it would be extremely unlikely for there to be hundreds, much less, thousands of deaths at any college. That's true even at the largest institutions. Take a very large state school with 30k students. That usually equates to 3k or so faculty and staff. Switzerland did a study based on seroprevalence that estimated the overall risk of dying for people who got infected with covid was 0.6 %. If we just took that number for those 33k faculty and staff, and absolutely everyone on campus got infected (which wouldn't happen) then we'd end up with 165 deaths. However, that number is still way too high because the risk of dying of Covid varies so much by age. The swiss study showed a risk of less than one in 10k for people age 20-49. That's the vast majority of students, so actually if the entire student body of a college got infected by this metric you'd expect only 3 deaths.

Faculty and staff, of course, are older, and potentially more at risk. However, for people 50-64, the risk is around 0.15 percent, at least according to that study. For people over 65 that number goes up to 5.6 percent. So if a quarter of the faculty and staff was over 65, which seems high, that would still be 40 deaths. The point is, we aren't anywhere near 100, much less hundreds or thousands and we've assumed absolutely everyone gets Covid and that the people who are most vulnerable would all still be teaching.

And please, this isn't an argument for colleges reopening based on an acceptable number of deaths, or a general claim that this is no big deal. But, we don't need to go into hyperbole. Things are bad enough as they are.

[Stockmann]

The death rates will rise if the local healthcare system is overwhelmed, though - there is a domino effect of sorts (and it might not be young adults directly overwhelming the system, but older adults catching covid from college students). For example, someone in my wife's hometown died recently in a traffic accident because no ER would take him because they're all overwhelmed with covid cases. Also, at some point in Lombardy they stopped trying to save people over 80, then people over 70, because they didn't have enough ventilators, etc to try to save everyone and they figured younger people who needed a ventilator had better odds of survival than older people who needed a ventilator. So if the local healthcare system becomes overwhelmed then the death rates of everything (from cancer to traffic accidents to ordinary pneumonia) are going to rise, not just of covid. Lombardy is, of course, not the worst case scenario - in Guayaquil there are people still trying to find their relatives' corpses because when the system collapsed no one was keeping track of IDs of dead bodies, at least not of those rotting on the streets.

[polly_mer]

The focus on death rates ignores the more general category of significant adverse effects.  Most places probably aren't going to have bodies stacked in the streets.

However, having people out for weeks/months in large enough numbers will be a PR and legal problem, especially since counterexamples exist (better bubbles, online) of what can be done.

Paying good money for an in-person experience that just plain sucks will also end up as a PR problem, even if the lawsuits go nowhere.  One emergency suckiness that affects practically everyone is more forgivable than advertising 'normal', but then having cancelled class meetings in droves for individual faculty illnesses, many useless class meetings because large numbers of students can't attend while ill so the discussions etc. don't happen, and a lack of refunds for students who are sick enough to miss enough of the term that withdrawal is the best option.

[Stockmann]

I agree, but admins who have decided to officially reopen f2f in the fall are either delusional or have decided that PR, good will, etc be damned and they're going to get their pound of flesh now, come hell or high water.

[spork]

Ok, but at least some schools that choose to go full-bore with ftf this semester will likely have to be shut down mid-semester after significant covid positive testing amongst students and staff; some may even experience outbreaks and significant numbers of illness or even death.  The PR nightmare that this will present (some of which will devolve onto schools going full ftf that do not experience such bad outcomes this semester) will likely cancel out short-term $ advantages.

That is indeed the cognitive dissonance problem.  The entirely foreseeable outcome is being ignored in the hopes that only the desirable outcome of getting the money will happen.

And once the semester begins, throw in a little sunk-cost effect pushing them to stay the course and admincritters will rationalize away staying open, because they had to have made the right choice, due to their consistency bias. They will then minimize the risks of COVID to stay open and turn around and blame the risk on the massive Drop/Fail/Withdrawal rate that's sure to come because of the fundamental attribution error.

It's all really a great case study in cognitive/social psychology and behavioral economics.

Examples so far this week (and it's only end of business on Tuesday):

• Fall intercollegiate sports have been cancelled but sports teams will hold practices on the usual schedule.
• Current state regulations require that students arriving from approximately three dozen other states will have to quarantine and attend classes remotely for the first two weeks of the semester.
• Because students who are on campus will have a mix of F2F and online classes, they will need spaces on campus to participate in synchronous online classes, because they won't have time to shuttle back and forth between their dorms or apartments. Our campus doesn't have those spaces.
• A handful of students have informed the university that they will be taking all their courses 100% online, even though some of those courses are being taught on campus in F2F format. No one is expecting more students to make the same choice.

[Cheerful]

Current state regulations require that students arriving from approximately three dozen other states will have to quarantine and attend classes remotely for the first two weeks of the semester.

Yesterday, Syracuse U said they don't have enough room for out-of-state students to do the New York State 14-day quarantine so Syracuse U is looking into reduced rate hotel rooms for the 2,000 affected students.

Yeah, right.  Let's say it's $100 a night.  A student will pay $1,400 plus meals (and who will deliver the meals?) to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks before the semester starts?  LOL!

Edit: I used my 500th post for that!  It should have been something cheerful!

[Parasaurolophus]

However, it would be extremely unlikely for there to be hundreds, much less, thousands of deaths at any college. That's true even at the largest institutions.

Absolutely, I don't disagree. I was presenting a conditional (if it's not the case that hundreds die, then it will be business as usual). Since the antecedent is very likely to be true, the consequent follows.

The point was just that, barring something absolutely apocalyptic happening, I can easily imagine colleges shrugging their shoulders right along with the rest of society. It doesn't look like we're there yet, but I wouldn't write it off yet, either.