I agree, it seems paternalistic interventions don’t work is a good heuristic. What I took away was that the programs that worked—a nurse coming to the house over several years or a big brother program—provided a setting where something like a friendship could happen. A long term, more intimate relationship might have been what worked. The program provides the opportunity for the effective relationship, but can’t force it.
Consistently, several times in the past I’ve noticed that what can matter most in health care settings—compassion, etc. - can’t be bought or legislated. But if policies don’t get in the way, things work out because nurses are compassionate, etc. Anyway I’ve had some nurses that were, and was grateful, knowing that it was a gift rather than something I could rely on always.
I took the program outcome prediction test cleanly, and got a good score and am talking about it, which actually sort of makes my meta-analysis suspect to some degree because of signaling issues… however… In lower paragraphs I talk about the test’s details so anyone clicking into the comment itself who wants to take the test “fairly” should go do that before reading further...
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The scoring recommended at the end seems wrong, and biased against people having confidence in their own abilities, because you were supposed to assign programs to one of THREE results (helped, neutral, hurt) and doing that at random should give you ~2.6 right by accident. Thus, if you got 4 of them right, or even 3, it is more likely than not that you were probably reasoning things out at better than chance rates.
A long term, more intimate relationship might have been what worked. The program provides the opportunity for the effective relationship, but can’t force it.
“Monkey see, monkey do” is a really important factor, that interacts with the rarely considered third possible “made things worse” outcome, because this heuristic doesn’t just predict the cases of efficacy but also predicts that putting people into proximity (especially benevolent proximity) so they are emotionally close to “bad people” (even if those bad people are claiming to be counter-examples out of benevolent intent) will cause those put in proximity to the less than ideal people to become worse. This was already my rough working hypothesis and I called the “actually made things worse” outcomes of the Scared Straight and behavioral half of the 21st Century Learning Centers on this basis, without having already read about these specific programs in advance.
“A bad apple spoils the barrel” and “If you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas” are relevant folk sayings that capture the harm-causing aspect of the insight in a less than scientifically precise way. Probably a lot of people have heard the sayings and yet still got the questions wrong. Luke probably knows about the downside angles but has called attention to the positive side in the past :-)
One thing the general model suggests is that there might have been personal down sides for the “Big Sibling” volunteers and the nurses of the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, although I would naively guess that the psychology of being higher status (via adulthood and professionalism, respectively) might have protected them from acquiring too many negative characteristics from the people they mentored.
I agree, it seems paternalistic interventions don’t work is a good heuristic. What I took away was that the programs that worked—a nurse coming to the house over several years or a big brother program—provided a setting where something like a friendship could happen. A long term, more intimate relationship might have been what worked. The program provides the opportunity for the effective relationship, but can’t force it.
Consistently, several times in the past I’ve noticed that what can matter most in health care settings—compassion, etc. - can’t be bought or legislated. But if policies don’t get in the way, things work out because nurses are compassionate, etc. Anyway I’ve had some nurses that were, and was grateful, knowing that it was a gift rather than something I could rely on always.
I took the program outcome prediction test cleanly, and got a good score and am talking about it, which actually sort of makes my meta-analysis suspect to some degree because of signaling issues… however… In lower paragraphs I talk about the test’s details so anyone clicking into the comment itself who wants to take the test “fairly” should go do that before reading further...
...
The scoring recommended at the end seems wrong, and biased against people having confidence in their own abilities, because you were supposed to assign programs to one of THREE results (helped, neutral, hurt) and doing that at random should give you ~2.6 right by accident. Thus, if you got 4 of them right, or even 3, it is more likely than not that you were probably reasoning things out at better than chance rates.
“Monkey see, monkey do” is a really important factor, that interacts with the rarely considered third possible “made things worse” outcome, because this heuristic doesn’t just predict the cases of efficacy but also predicts that putting people into proximity (especially benevolent proximity) so they are emotionally close to “bad people” (even if those bad people are claiming to be counter-examples out of benevolent intent) will cause those put in proximity to the less than ideal people to become worse. This was already my rough working hypothesis and I called the “actually made things worse” outcomes of the Scared Straight and behavioral half of the 21st Century Learning Centers on this basis, without having already read about these specific programs in advance.
“A bad apple spoils the barrel” and “If you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas” are relevant folk sayings that capture the harm-causing aspect of the insight in a less than scientifically precise way. Probably a lot of people have heard the sayings and yet still got the questions wrong. Luke probably knows about the downside angles but has called attention to the positive side in the past :-)
One thing the general model suggests is that there might have been personal down sides for the “Big Sibling” volunteers and the nurses of the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, although I would naively guess that the psychology of being higher status (via adulthood and professionalism, respectively) might have protected them from acquiring too many negative characteristics from the people they mentored.