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Thursday, October 23, 2008
Cognitive Dissonance and American Political Thought (or: Why Your Uncle Will Never Vote for Obama)
Do me a quick favor and take half a second to recall the most frustrating political argument you’ve ever had. You know, the one where you listed myriad facts to support your argument and your temperature rose and you left in absolute disbelief that people could be so blind and ignorant. (Remember that argument? Odds are it involved that friend-of-a-friend you hate who wears topsiders. God, that guy sucks.) Did you ever wonder why that debate was so maddeningly stagnant? It’s not just because your counterpart was a prick (even though he definitely was).
Recent studies of the human cognitive process have revealed some very interesting and entirely depressing things about the way our supposedly rational minds work.
We all know that someone’s opinion is formed and reinforced in great part by the information to which they choose to expose themselves. If you’re getting all your news from Daily Kos, you’re probably fairly certain that Bush is building a mutant army to enslave us all and McCain is some sort of Tyrannosaur. But what if someone were to correct you, citing facts and historical information, wouldn’t that change your mind?
Turns out, probably not. From ArsTechnica (bold is mine):
“[A] study by John Bullock of Yale showed volunteers a political ad created by NARAL that linked Justice John Roberts to a violent anti-abortion group, followed by news that the ad had been withdrawn. Interestingly, Democratic participants had a worse opinion of Roberts after being shown the ad, even after they were told it was false.
Over half (56 percent) of Democratic subjects disapproved of Roberts before the misinformation. That rose to 80 percent afterward, but even after correcting the misinformation, 72 percent of Democratic subjects still had a negative opinion.”
So. Um. Darn? If this study is correct, truth and facts are pretty much useless once you’ve formed an opinion. Just a matter of who gets to your brain first. That’s… well, that’s just plain disheartening, if you ask me.
How do we combat this dissonance, you may ask. Well, I’m not a head doctor, but I’d say that maybe we should all take just a little more care in forming opinions in the first place. Then maybe you wouldn't be so wrong all the time, like I've been saying for years.
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5 comments:
Kyle,
You should look at the work of George Lakoff on the concept of framing. Lakoff and others argue that people connect to issues emotionally, and that facts are not useful in making the argument.
The framing argument isn't perfect, but it is quite useful in thinking about what does and doesn't work.
Your Roberts example demonstrates it perfectly -- those folks were predisposed not to like Roberts, and so they came out even more predisposed, even though there were no actual facts to change their mind.
The idea is to frame arguments in a way that will resonate with peoples' existing values.
So, for example, when arguing for increased foreign aid, you don't say that the U.S. is last among developed countries in terms of the percentage of its budget that goes to foreign assistance -- because nobody believes that can be true (most Americans are convinced that 10 percent of our budget goes to foreign aid).
Instead, you tell them that we need to help people to help themselves, that helping them now means that we won't have to help them later.
it probably also helps if you can show ppl hard proof of your facts, be it books, studies, something online, ANYTHING. Rattling off memorized statistics and other info is never going to stick, not because the other person believes you to be lying or misinformed, but simply because regurgitated facts will simply get swallowed up in the rest of the words being bandied about, to the point that the facts and your related conclusions all mush together. just a thought.
Jeff - not sure what you're slamming him on - seems as though there is a pretty clear citation of the source in the piece:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-does-ideology-trump-facts-studies-say-it-often-does.html
I don't think he's slamming me, I think he's saying that the more concrete and tangible your argument, the more effective you will be in changing opinions.
I understand the point, but the whole idea of this post was to show that this is not necessarily the case. The subjects in this study were shown concrete evidence, and still maintained their established views. Such stubbornness is evidenced in arguments about Obama's religion and history, the existence of WMDs in Iraq, the validity of Intelligent Design Theory, etc... It is, in my opinion, a very real cognitive problem, and one that is deeply entrenched in the minds of anyone who disagrees with me.
yeah, no slam. studies like this pop in Discover a few times a year.
kyle's post just reminded me of a recent conversation with my Dad about all things political: every time i'd mention some fact or news-update i saw online about either candidate, 30 seconds later my words had already faded into the past, which made the whole debate seem like we were just going around in circles instead of building on each successive point.
although, you know my dad, Chris. maybe it's a localized phenomenon.
i guess my problem is, when discussing anything in a casual, strictly verbal setting (where no one is taking notes or keeping score) it's almost impossible to keep the debate constantly evolving because we're just not mentally equipped to keep track of/incorporate all the new things we're hearing. which is frustrating, because if we could take intermissions and review/study what was actually being said, we might all find ourselves updating our opinions far more often in everyday life.
i know this isn't quite the idea that the study is getting at, but it's related. basically, our feeble human brains suck at adjusting to reality, even when it's slapping us in the face. which may be what i need to try with my Dad.
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