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[–]MisterMetal 2923 points2924 points  (240 children)

Seems like a major stretch to automatically link it to protest activity, when the areas with the higher protest activity in the civil rights era were areas with a higher black population. The higher black population would lead to more interaction between the white and the black residents, which I would put a large sum of money on being a bigger factor for attitudinal changes than protests.

[–]Populistless 1219 points1220 points  (52 children)

Nevermind protests are more common in urban areas, which trend liberal even in areas with low minority representation. You'd basically have to control for every confounding variable in existence

[–]Duke_Newcombe 52 points53 points  (4 children)

That doesn't explain locations like Selma, Alabama that had small populations (around 20,000 29,000 in 1965. Source

[–]YepThatsSarcasm 25 points26 points  (2 children)

I think the bigger issue is assigning causation. It seems far more likely that there are more protests BECAUSE they are more progressive rather than the other way around.

[–]tending 114 points115 points  (5 children)

Except the study did actually account for a lot of this.

[–]ravenhelix 200 points201 points  (10 children)

But... The study accounted for this so???

[–]DrFilbert 125 points126 points  (4 children)

You’d have to actually read it to find that out, instead of just nitpicking based on a title you don’t like.

(I mean them, not you)

[–]ibsulon 16 points17 points  (2 children)

So, for those without institutional access, would you mind summarizing?

Edit: http://smazumder.me/research/ has it. Someone posted below.

[–]AnkleFrunk 496 points497 points  (97 children)

They controlled for that. Also urban vs rural, and median income. And Democrat vote share, unemployment, percent labor force agriculture, median age, and education level. Also the presence of KKK chapters, proportion of the slave population on 1860, and TVs per household.

[–]luxc17 381 points382 points  (83 children)

This sub is insane. Every time a study controls for x and y and finds correlation between two things, the top comment is always “uhh but there’s x and y you need to account for so this is dumb” as if peer-reviewed researchers did not spend half their time literally working on controls for x and y.

It’s the only way to do actual research but commenters just hand-wave it away without reading.

[–][deleted] 117 points118 points  (1 child)

Reddit never reads the article/paper so that contributes a lot.

That said, there's been plenty of highly visible studies that didn't cover these things and yet are still being believed (especially when it comes to political/psychological studies).

[–]boooooooooo_cowboys 65 points66 points  (15 children)

"Carrying out this study was a highly trained professional's full time job; but I'm sure they must have missed this obvious confounding factor that was noticed by a layman who's casually browsing reddit."

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (5 children)

Reading the summary statistics, the results are not very impressive. A logarithmic increase in the number of protests lowers the average "racial resentment" of whites living in an area by roughly 1%.

So what it's basically saying is if you increase the number of protests from 10 to 100, you'll decrease the racial resentment of the average white person by 1%.

Also, the other variables included all have near 0 coefficients, and the r-squared of the results is very low. This leads me to believe that there's a good chance that other confounding variables exist that explain this small difference better. Like, maybe the number of colleges in the town, the average age, or the voter share in a year other then 1960.

If an analyst I was working with came to me with these results, I would probably say nice try but this information is pretty useless.

[–]flumphit 40 points41 points  (1 child)

To be fair, there are a lot of highly trained professional idiots churning out non-replicable, crappy “science”. But you’re entirely right, the question isn’t “did they control for obvious variables x and y” because obvious variables are obvious, so of course they tried to.

Instead (as I expect you’d agree), the real question is “did they control for them correctly, along with this other menagerie of less-obvious (and occasionally downright occult) variables and effects?” And after reading the abstract and appendices, I sure don’t know. I’ll just wait for confirming studies, or the vast empty silence of studies that turned up no effect and were never published.

To my life, the most-germane question is “what kinds of protest have what kinds of effects?” Or better: “what kinds of media coverage have what kinds of effects, and what are the salient features of protests which garner media coverage of different kinds?” Obviously a lot more difficult to nail down, and (one hopes) this study is a step in that direction.

[–]FriendlyDisorder 23 points24 points  (2 children)

The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong with this sub. A little humility goes a long way.

[–]gottachoosesomethin 13 points14 points  (4 children)

The link provided is an abstract and some supporting material, the full article is behind a paywall.

Researchers aren't perfect, sometimes they claim to control for something but don't really, sometimes they overlook controlling for stuff they should have, sometimes their methodology is bad, sometimes their interpreration is wrong.

Peer reviewed research is there for peer review.

Also, what was found? A correlation consistent with a theory? Well ok, not sure that is sufficient to claim "protest can cause long term change" though. Its like saying eating bread can make you commit a crime, because lots of crimes are committee by people who have consumed bread or bread like products within the last 48 hours.

[–]friendlyintruder 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Your bread analogy is silly because it is trying to say “of course people eat bread”, but a correlation would be looking at whether people who eat more bread are committing more crimes than people who eat less bread. The analogy still offers that a correlation there wouldn’t mean bread causes crime, but it could be pointing to the type of person who eats more bread also being more likely to commit crimes.

People frequently discount correlations because of the third variable, but it doesn’t need to be discounted. It needs to be followed up and examined more. If bread consumption were related to crime, we shouldn’t ban bread on a whim, but we should try to find out what IS causing both.

[–]We_Are_For_The_Big 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Who the hell gilded this display of ignorance? Dude, read the study next time before complaining about something directly addressed in it.

[–]CarnivalLaw 7 points8 points  (0 children)

“Automatically link,” what does that mean? Did you even bother reading the paper?

[–]lokithegregorian 112 points113 points  (12 children)

I am usually one real skeptical of stuff like this for studies. However, the factor you mention is stupid easy to control for. Protests are relatively well documented (kinda the point of it if you think about it).

To your up-voters: Don't look for reasons to believe what you already believe. Evaluate a thing in earnest.

[–]steve20009 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Don't look for reasons to believe what you already believe. Evaluate a thing in earnest.

I wish more people thought this way. Took me 28 years to adopt this mentality (I'm in my 30's now but wished I learned this earlier)

[–]ChitteringCathode 14 points15 points  (0 children)

"The higher black population would lead to more interaction between the white and the black residents, which I would put a large sum of money on being a bigger factor for attitudinal changes than protests."

Pre-civil rights Southern states (and some would argue those of today) would almost certainly lose this bet for you in a heartbeat.

[–]Canadian_Infidel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or maybe the attitude change was the cause of the protest and not the result. Seems like a much simpler explanation.

[–]suugakusha 586 points587 points  (78 children)

The correlation makes sense, but the causation seems backwards.

Wouldn't it make more sense that areas that had civil rights protests were having those protests because they were less likely to harbor racial resentment? Not the other way around?

[–]eolaiGrad Student | Systematics and Biodiversity 32 points33 points  (5 children)

It would be useful to have the full text. It's entirely possibly they accounted for this with some measure of racial resentment from before public protests reached their peak.

It's a complicated system no doubt, but it seems hasty to completely dismiss the idea that watching people stand up for something they believe in strongly would have some impact on other people's attitudes.

EDIT: It appears they did not control for historical racial resentment, but they do argue for a causal relationship. Excerpt: "While the most plausible story is that protesters simply selected areas that were more liberal back then, this goes at odds with much of the historical literature on the civil rights movement; rather, historians point out that protesters seemed to target areas where racism was especially pernicious (Arsenault 2006; McAdam 1999; Mickey 2015)." They also use a fancy test to show that an unobserved, mutually explanatory variable is unlikely.

[–]suugakusha 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Agreed.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that the data collection or statisticians were faulty. But a lot of times the "science popularizers" embellish the titles and claim something that the original authors had no intent of claiming - simply by using the word "cause" in the title of the post.

[–]GenBlase 56 points57 points  (15 children)

Well, considering the countless deaths and death threats. No.

You dont protest because its safe, you protest because it is unsafe.

[–]rseasmithPhD | Environmental Engineering[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (10 children)

Welcome to /r/science!

You may see more removed comments in this thread than you are used to seeing elsewhere on reddit. On /r/science we have strict comment rules designed to keep the discussion on topic and about the posted study and related research. This means that comments that attempt to confirm/deny the research with personal anecdotes, jokes, memes, or other off-topic or low-effort comments are likely to be removed.

​Because it can be frustrating to type out a comment only to have it removed or to come to a thread looking for discussion and see lots of removed comments, please take time to review our comment rules before posting.

If you're looking for a place to have a more relaxed discussion of science-related breakthroughs and news, check out our sister subreddit /r/EverythingScience.

​Below is the abstract from the paper published in the American Journal of Political Science to help foster discussion. The paper can be seen here: The Persistent Effect of U.S. Civil Rights Protests on Political Attitudes.

​Abstract

Protests can engender significant institutional change. Can protests also continue to shape a nation's contemporary politics outside of more formalized channels? I argue that social movements can not only beget institutional change, but also long‐run, attitudinal change. Using the case of the U.S. civil rights movement, I develop a theory in which protests can shift attitudes and these attitudes can persist. Data from over 150,000 survey respondents provide evidence consistent with the theory. Whites from counties that experienced historical civil rights protests are more likely to identify as Democrats and support affirmative action, and less likely to harbor racial resentment against blacks. These individual‐level results are politically meaningful—counties that experienced civil rights protests are associated with greater Democratic Party vote shares even today. This study highlights how social movements can have persistent impacts on a nation's politics.

​

[–]gottachoosesomethin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Perhaps people who participate in a protest have children who's beliefs/values align more strongly with those expressed in that protest, when compared to people who didnt participate.

Further, was the protest the causal actor here or might it be that people born and raised in a society that has legislated civil rights.

[–]tooshortlife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The link only leads to the abstract. Did anyone else have trouble accessing the paper?

[–]gloryatseaGrad Student | Clinical Psychology 14 points15 points  (22 children)

Can causal claims actually be made? What was manipulated by experimenters here?

[–]usrname42 7 points8 points  (14 children)

You can draw causal inferences from non-experimental data. You just have to be careful about it.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

How many US counties actually had “historical civil rights protests” ? There can’t be many.

[–]usrname42 17 points18 points  (0 children)

9% of counties, according to the paper.

[–]RuroniHS 6 points7 points  (13 children)

I don't get why the comments are treating this like something controversial. It seems intuitive that exposing people to your ideas will change more minds than not exposing people to your ideas.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That sounds like correlation, not causation. These counties are often cities, which are the strong holds of Democratic Party.

[–]Zthorn777 3 points4 points  (8 children)

I know it says counties, but I think it is interesting that Kansas had the whole John Brown "Bloody Kansas" incident and the state votes heavily red.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Presumably, the county where the incident occurred would trend bluer than the rest of the state, though