Unintended consequences

In history and the social sciences , unintended consequences are the results of actions that were not intended. These consequences can be foreseeable or not foreseeable, but they are always a logical or probable result of the action. For example, some historians speculated that without the Treaty of Versailles , which was humiliating for Germany, World War II would not have come about. From this point of view, the war would be an unintended consequence of the treaty. The concept has been around for a long time, but was not popularized until the 20th century by the sociologist Robert K. Merton .

Unintentional consequences can be roughly divided into three categories:

• a positive effect, also serendipity or unexpected gain .
• a perverse effect that can be the opposite of what is intended.
• a negative effect, where the intended often occurs, but at the same time negative consequences occur.

The law of unintended consequences

The so-called 'law of unintended consequences' is not a law of nature in the sense of Ohm's law , for example , but a humorous expression according to which an expedient action has unintended, unexpected and usually undesirable consequences. In other words, every cause has multiple consequences, at least one of which is inevitably an unpredictable side effect. This unintended side effect can be more significant than the intended effect. Similar to Murphy's Law , the Law of Unintended Consequences represents a warning against the belief that humans are in complete control.

history

The concept of unintended consequences has its earliest known origin in Adam Smith , the Scottish Enlightenment , and consequentialism . However, it was not popularized until the 20th century by Robert K. Merton. In his 1936 article The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action , Merton attempted to systematically analyze the problem of the unintended consequences of purposeful actions. It stressed that these actions were limited to those with motivations and various alternatives.

causes

Possible causes of unintended outcomes are complexity , perverse incentives, human stupidity , self-deception, ignorance of human nature, and emotional or cognitive biases . Merton gives 5 possible reasons:

1. Ignorance: It is impossible to foresee all the possibilities.
2. Mistake: Using methods that have worked in the past but are not fair to the current situation.
3. Short term interests that can dominate long term.
4. Core values ​​can enforce or prohibit individual methods that are disadvantageous in the long term.
5. Self-Destructive Prophecy : Fear of certain consequences leads people to find solutions before the problem occurs, so the problem not occurring is unexpected.

Examples

Unintended positive effects

• The medieval practice of creating large game reserves for hunting on the part of the nobility led to the preservation of large green spaces and parks in England and other parts of Europe . In the no man's land abandoned by humans with other intentions , for example in the demilitarized zone in Korea or the exclusion zone of Chernobyl , the flora and fauna is spreading. The minefields on the Falkland Islands are now bird sanctuaries .

• The sinking of ships in wartime led to the formation of coral reefs that have aesthetic, scientific and tourist value.

• The legalization of abortion in the US appears to have led to a decline in crime decades later, according to a scientific study , as many women whose embryos would have become criminals had abortions . However, whether the legalization of abortion in the US led to such an effect is controversial (see The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime ).

• Some drugs have unexpected, positive side effects . The pain reliever ASS can also be used for anticoagulation . Other unintended side effects justify the so-called off-label use .

Unintended negative effects

• Streisand effect : Attempting to remove certain information on the Internet can lead to it being spread even more.

• The import of exotic animal and plant species regularly has drastic effects on local ecosystems, for example the cane toad , which was used in Australia for biological pest control and where it developed into a plague itself.

• More generally the cobra effect ; it describes measures that are taken to solve a particular problem, but which ultimately exacerbate precisely this problem.

• In 1990, the Australian state of Victoria made the wearing of bicycle helmets compulsory for all cyclists. Although this measure reduced the number of head injuries to cyclists, this was mainly due to the decline in the use of bicycles among young people due to the unpopularity of helmets. Another study found that wearing helmets is counterproductive to health, causing net health costs of $ 0.4 billion to $ 0.5 billion in Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.

• The Prohibition in the United States was originally intended to reduce the trade in and consumption of alcohol, however, promoted the organized crime in the alcohol industry. Similar perverse effects arose from the War on Drugs .

• In the language of the secret services , the term blowback is used to denote the undesirable effects of covert operations. One example is the support given to the Afghan mujahideen , who developed into al-Qaeda .

• The abstinence campaign of the clergyman Theobald Mathews in Ireland in the 19th century, during which thousands of people swore never to drink alcohol again, led to increased consumption of the more harmful ether .

See also

• Emergence
• Externality
• FMEA
• Pyrrhic victory
• SNAFU

literature

• The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action by Robert K. Merton, American Sociological Review , Vol 1 Issue 6, Dec 1936, pp.894-904
• Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, Vantage Books, 1997.
• Tomislav V. Kovandzic, John Sloan III, and Lynne M. Vieraitis. Unintended Consequences of Politically Popular Sentencing Policy: The Homicide-Promoting Effects of 'Three Strikes' in US Cities (1980-1999) . Criminology & Public Policy, Vol 1, Issue 3, July 2002.
• Vulcan, AP, Cameron, MH & Heiman, L., Evaluation of mandatory bicycle helmet use in Victoria, Australia . In: 36th Annual Conference Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, Oct 5-7, 1992 .
• Vulcan, AP, Cameron, MH & Watson, WL, Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Use: Experience in Victoria, Australia . In: World Journal of Surgery , 1992, 16: pp. 389-397.

Web links

• Unintended Consequences Entry in the Encyclopedia of Economics
• Museum of Unintended Consequences

Individual evidence

1. ^ Walter Stahl: The politics of postwar Germany . Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., New York, 1963, pp. 149-150.
2. ^ Robert K. Merton, Versatile Sociologist and Father of the Focus Group, Dies at 92 , Michael T. Kaufman, New York Times.
3. ^ Library of Economics and Liberty: Unintended Consequences, Rob Norton
4. ^ Renowned Columbia Sociologist and National Medal of Science Winner Robert K. Merton Dies at 92 Columbia News
5. ^ Robert K. Merton Remembered Footnotes, American Sociological Association
6. ^ Robert K. Merton, Versatile Sociologist and Father of the Focus Group, Dies at 92 , Michael T. Kaufman, New York Times.
7. ^ ^{A b} Robert K. Merton: The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action . In: American Sociological Review . 1, No. 6, August, p. 895. Retrieved May 30, 2008.
8. ↑ Merton, Robert K. On Social Structure and Science. The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ http://www.dnr.maryland.gov/dnrnews/pressrelease2008/020708a.html
10. ↑ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18853363/
11. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ http://www.cdnn.info/news/industry/i061227.html
14. ↑ John J. Donohue, Steven Levitt: The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime. Archived from the original on May 11, 2011. Information: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: MIT (Ed.): Quarterly Journal of Economics . 116, No. 2, May 2001, pp. 379-420. doi : 10.1162 / 00335530151144050 . Retrieved December 30, 2009. 
15. ↑ BBC February 15, 2001, Aspirin heart warning
16. ↑ Cameron, M, Cameron, M., Vulcan, A., Finch, C, and Newstead, S: Mandatory bicycle helmet use following a decade of helmet promotion in Victoria, Australia-an evaluation . In: Accident Analysis and Prevention . 26, No. 3, June 1994, pp. 325-327. doi : 10.1016 / 0001-4575 (94) 90006-X .
17. ^ Evaluating the Health Benefit of Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Laws, Piet De Jong, Macquarie University - Actuarial Studies, October 26, 2009
18. ↑ MSNBC article on Bin Laden and blowback ( Memento of the original from December 2, 1998 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Atlantic magazine article: "Blowback" Observer article: Why 'blowback' is the hidden danger of war