THINKER'S ALMANAC - July 6

The Lake Wobegon Effect - 

Event:  First broadcast of Prairie Home Companion, 1974

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don’t read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining. -Garrison Keillor

Today is the anniversary of the first broadcast of the radio show the Prairie Home Companion. The show was conceived by Garrison Keillor, the show’s host.  Keillor modeled his show on the Grand Ole Opry.  

In addition to commercials for imaginary products and live music, each week's show featured a monologue by Keillor about his mythical hometown Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.  Each monologue began the same way:  “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon,” but the stories that Keillor told about the Lake Wobegon residents were always different.  Keillor’s colorful descriptions, humor, and insights into the human condition brought his characters to life and brought listeners back each week.

In addition to using the same opening, Keillor also used a stock concluding line each week for his monologue:  “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

                                                              Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It’s the last part of Keillor’s sign-off, “all the children are above-average,” that has captured the imagination of sociologists who have adopted Keillor’s fictional town in what they call the Lake Wobegon effect -- the tendency for groups of people to overestimate their achievements and competence in relation to other groups.

The term entered the lexicon in 1987 when Dr. John Cannel published a study revealing that every state claimed that their students’ test scores were above the national average.  Although Cannel’s finding is sometimes called in-group bias, the Lake Wobegon moniker is a much more colorful and whimsical metaphor for the phenomenon.

Often we think of metaphor as the exclusive tool of poets.  The fact is, however, that every good communicator understands and uses metaphor to connect the known and the unknown.  Scientists, business people, psychologists, sociologists, and doctors all turn to metaphor to communicate their ideas, theories, and discoveries.

This is done so frequently that there’s an entire book of these metaphors called The Babinski Reflex.  The author, Philip Goldberg, calls them metaffects:

. . . a recognized effect, law, or principle whose official meaning can be transferred to another context.  The Babinski Reflex, for example, is a term describing an automatic response in the foot of an infant, thought to be a vestige of our primate ancestry.  As such, it resonates metaphorically with certain forms of adult behavior that might be considered primitive or infantile . . . .” (1)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Lake Wobegon Effect, and how is it different from another specific metaffect?

Challenge:  Cause for the Effect

What is an example of an effect that happens frequently enough to be named?  Research one of the effects below or create your own based on your experience and/or observation.  Write a definition of the effect, as well as some background details on its causes along with when, where, and why it occurs.

Cocktail Party Effect, Eureka Effect, Butterfly Effect, The False Consensus Effect, Hawthorne Effect, Boomerang Effect, Bandwagon Effect, Barnum Effect, Dunnin-Kruger Effect, Pygmalion Effect.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

July 6, 1535:  On this day, Sir Thomas More was executed in London.  In his 1516 novel Utopia, More envisioned a perfect island state with universal education, common land ownership, religious tolerance, and shared labor.  Unfortunately, his imagined vision did not match reality.  More was caught in the middle of religious and governmental conflict when Henry VIII established the Church of England, separating from the Catholic Church.  Because More disagreed with the King’s decision, he resigned his office in the English Parliament and refused to take a loyalty oath. As a result, he was imprisoned and eventually beheaded.  More’s severed head was set on a spike on London Bridge where it remained on display for a month as an ominous warning to “traitors.”  When the head was finally taken down, it was discarded in the river, where More’s daughter Margaret Roper retrieved it and attempted to preserve it with spices.  When Margaret died in 1544, More’s head was finally laid to rest with her in St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury (2).

Sources:

1-Goldberg, Philip. The Babinski Reflex. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990: 130-3.

2-Larson, Frances.  Severed:  A History of Heads Lost and Head Found.  New Yori:  W.W. Norton & Company, 2014:  93.