Unintended Consequences

There are three types of unintended consequences. One is called unintended benefit, when a purposeful action has unanticipated positive side-effects (sometimes called a windfall). For example, aspirin was developed for pain and fever but also happens to be an anticoagulant that helps protect against heart attack and helps reduce the damage from thrombotic strokes.

A second type is called unintended drawback, when a purposeful action has unanticipated negative side-effects. For example, the added safety features of modern cars, intended to reduce injury, have led to riskier driving behavior because drivers feel safer and better protected. This riskier behavior (speeding, following too closely, applying the brakes too late) has offset, to some extent, the benefits of those safety features. The result is that certain kinds of automobile crashes have increased in prevalence.

A third type is called perverse effect, when a purposeful action has an outcome contrary to what was intended (sometimes called a backfire). For example, hate groups protesting the removal of a Confederate statue from a park in Charlottesville were met by counter-protesters, with violence being the predictable result. Far from deterring the removal of monuments, the rally hastened the removal of Confederate monuments all over America. Cities don’t want to host violent protests and so they expedited plans to remove all monuments that might attract hate groups. Those hate groups, by their actions to seek attention, have spurred a growing recognition of the threat they pose. The more they rally, the more they try to exploit violence, the less likely any Confederate relics will survive the coming purge.