What is the law of unintended consequences examples?
A nation, for example, might ban abortion on moral grounds even though children born as a result of the policy may be unwanted and likely to be more dependent on the state. The unwanted children are an unintended consequence of banning abortions, but not an unforeseen one.
What is meant by the law of unintended consequences?
The law of unintended consequences is a frequently-observed phenomenon in which any action has results that are not part of the actor’s purpose. The superfluous consequences may or may not be foreseeable or even immediately observable and they may be beneficial, harmful or neutral in their impact.
What is Merton’s law?
Merton identified five principle causes of unanticipated consequences: ignorance; error; immediate interest which neglects consideration of longer term, and potentially, negative consequences, basic values that may enjoin us not to act in certain ways, despite the likelihood of the actions producing unanticipated.
What is the saying about unintended consequences?
The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.
Is a good example of the law of unintended consequences quizlet?
An example is DDT used to kill insects that eventually gets into birds making their eggs fragile and affecting reproduction of healthy young. Research media, perhaps via Internet, for stories that illustrate the law of unintended consequences.
Which are examples of unintended consequences quizlet?
Unintended consequences are outcomes that can never be anticipated in advance. The protection of jobs in the U.S. sugar industry is an example of an unintended consequence of the U.S. government’s restrictions of sugar importation.
What causes unintended consequences?
Possible causes of unintended consequences include the world’s inherent complexity (parts of a system responding to changes in the environment), perverse incentives, human stupidity, self-deception, failure to account for human nature, or other cognitive or emotional biases.
What are the unintended consequences of people’s actions that disrupt a system equilibrium?
Because the consequences of people’s actions that disrupt a system’s equilibrium usually are unintended, Merton called them latent dysfunctions.
What are unintended consequences quizlet?
unintended consequences. outcomes that are not the ones intended by a purposeful action. law of unintended consequences. any intervention in a complex system may or may not have the intended result; but will inevitably create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.
What are unintended consequences public policy?
Unintended consequences are common and hard to predict or evaluate, and can arise through all parts of the policy process. They may come about through ineffective (null effect), counterproductive (paradoxical effect), or other policy mechanism (harmful externalities).
What is unintended mistake?
1. An apprehending wrongly; a misconception; a misunderstanding; a fault in opinion or judgment; an unintentional error of conduct.
What did Robert K Merton mean by unintended consequences?
Sociologist Robert K. Merton popularised this concept in the twentieth century. In “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” (1936), Merton tried to apply a systematic analysis to the problem of unintended consequences of deliberate acts intended to cause social change.
What is the history of unintended consequences?
The first and most complete analysis of the concept of unintended consequences was done in 1936 by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton. In an influential article titled “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” Merton identified five sources of unanticipated consequences.
What is the law of unintended consequences?
The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people, and especially of governments, always have effects that are unanticipated or “unintended.” Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.
What would happen if the law was obeyed?
To the extent the law was obeyed, Locke concluded, the chief results would be less available credit and a redistribution of income away from “widows, orphans and all those who have their estates in money.” The first and most complete analysis of the concept of unintended consequences was done in 1936 by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton.