Bias

Why is it easier for partisans to fight than to recognise common ground? An answer can be found in the psychological phenomena of cognitive dissonance. In 1949, Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman demonstrated that despite the aphorism 'seeing is believing', the reverse is often the case – our beliefs can dictate what we perceive. Using a unique deck of playing cards which contained some colour-reversed cards (e.g. red spades) they demonstrated that the expectation of what a deck of cards should look like was more important than actual observation: nobody noticed there was anything unusual about the deck.

In the 1950s, studies of this kind led Leon Festinger and his colleagues at Stanford University to develop the theory of cognitive dissonance. This holds that when a person is facing contradictory cognitions there is a driving force that compels their mind to acquire or invent new beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, in order to reduce the dissonance between these thoughts. Cognitive dissonance is thus the uncomfortable feeling of being confronted by things that 'should not be, but are'. The need to avoid this causes people to create rationalisations to help dismiss the disconfirming evidence, a situation rendered even more problematic when people have committed to a belief publicly.

To reduce cognitive dissonance, people will either adopt other people's beliefs (peer pressure), adopt a view that makes the person who believes differently significantly distinct from themselves (discrimination), or apply pressure to those who believe differently (persecution). The same mechanism can account for "myside" bias (or confirmation bias), whereby people find it easier to accept information compatible with their prior beliefs, and harder to acknowledge contradictory observations. There are dozens of other phenomena that psychologists have observed which show the same general trend.

These cognitive biases may seem to reopen the case for egoism, but nothing in their working suggests all behaviour is self-interested, let alone selfish. Rather, they show that our minds work subconsciously towards maintaining a consistent set of beliefs. I'm inclined to suspect that it's just as well they do, otherwise any kind of rationality or reason would be nearly impossible. The surprising thing is how easily we adopt new ideas when they fit with what we already believe, and how vehemently we oppose them when they do not.

Part 17 of 23 in the Pentenary series.

Comments

[Michael]

Hello again,

This is a great topic for a post. I'm hardly an expert in this sort of area, but I've known people who are.

1. Cognitive dissonance is part of a whole family of cognitive bias cases and studies which sheds light on the belief-forming habits of human beings.

2. As I read this post I thought one thing really lit up. You firstly make the correct suggestion that this kind of phenomena would distinctly have implications for the issue of egoism. I'd make that an even wider claim to say that this type of empirical insight has a great impact on how we understand moral agency as philosophers.

3. But what the implications are, should be said to be unclear in the least. Is rationality impossible? Hell no! By most normal measures (like the understanding of logic, or emotional reasoning, or what have you...) there is a semblance of a putative notion of what we might call rational behaviour. What these studies do, however, is seriously complicate them.

4. There have been a number of seperate movements and positions both within analytic philosophy and without, which wants to make the suggestion that ethics and the understanding of human nature, needs to account for these kinds of studies.

So you have for instance, schools of thought like 'old school' experimental philosophy (Steven Stitch and John Doris) who believe that understanding these studies shed light on altering our accounts of belief and morality. Doris as I understand, addresses a whole lot of interesting cases, like Priests who ignore a homeless man on the way to a seminar on the good samaritan...

Then you have the current xphi people who do their own researchand try to answer questions; I think the difference between the aforementioned camp of 'old school' experimental philosophers and the xphi people of today are that the latter attempt to do their own experiments and make a serious statement about philosophical method; the former are more conservative and are philosophical about new evidence; there's a subtle difference.

Then you have someone like Sam Harris, who believes that a secular alternative to religious morality is by an understanding of psychology. There are cases that Harris addresses such as how human beings are able to accept contradictions without any qualms, or confabulate about committing wrong acts, which in themselves are empirically and psychologically interesting cases, but also these complex cases are not even touched upon by religious traditions.

5. Concluding remark: Turning to cognitive bias studies opens a whole can of worms to our normal moral understanding, to conventional a priorist theorising about ethics, and to traditional religious accounts of the nature of morality.

These kinds of studies are not only interesting in their own right as empirical cases; but our theorising about morality and agency must come to terms with them; and sometimes just make some theses in moral philosophy less tenable (e.g. internalism about belief and moral justification)

On a side note, this is the kind of thing that advertisers and political campaign officers love because these psychological tricks are great ways to convince people. Talk about knowledge being dangerous...

[Chris]

Michael: Always a pleasure to get your insight on these issues!

Regarding your notes, I omitted discussion of other forms of cognitive bias for brevity; an early draft of this piece was twice as long, so I boiled it down. :)

I agree that cognitive dissonance complicates rather than eliminates the possibility of rationality. But personally I'm not pursuing a campaign to "debug" rationality, since I believe this kind of project generates more problems than it eliminates.

"Doris as I understand, addresses a whole lot of interesting cases, like Priests who ignore a homeless man on the way to a seminar on the good samaritan..."

Yes, I know this study, but I believe it was deeply flawed. The situation contrived was such that one could easily read it as a drunken destitute; there was no compelling reason for the seminarian to believe the encounter warranted intercession. But the experimental protocol *did* create an urgency on the part of the seminarian to make it to their next appointment. What the experiment seems to suggest is that seminarians feel a sense of duty to those who they are going to speak in front of. This is hardly an imputation of immorality! Check it out; you may have a different perspective.

You've spoken about the "xphi" crowd over on your own blog, but I just don't have enough of a handle on what they do to really have an opinion at the moment...

"Then you have someone like Sam Harris, who believes that a secular alternative to religious morality is by an understanding of psychology."

Yes, because psychology, as we all know, is a discipline which in no way depends upon normative judgements. :) I find it hilarious that Harris has such staunch faith in this research discipline that he cannot see the circularity involved in using psychology to determine moral categories (that is, distinctions which were partially involved in establishing the categories of psychological distinction which determine the moral categories which....) Consider, as a simple example, the use of the term "deviant" in psychology. Harris is naive if he thinks psychology is so well-founded that it can serve as an autonomous starting point for the consideration of ethics.

"There are cases that Harris addresses such as how human beings are able to accept contradictions without any qualms, or confabulate about committing wrong acts, which in themselves are empirically and psychologically interesting cases, but also these complex cases are not even touched upon by religious traditions."

This is a strange claim. If you mean the religious traditions did not have an opinion on categories of distinction that did not exist at the time of their founding, we can hardly be surprised! If he means that the modern representatives of these traditions do not have an opinion on these distinctions now that they have been asserted, then he is simply wrong.

"Concluding remark: Turning to cognitive bias studies opens a whole can of worms to our normal moral understanding, to conventional a priorist theorising about ethics, and to traditional religious accounts of the nature of morality."

I would counter this claim by saying that cognitive bias studies do indeed open a whole can of worms for moral understanding, but that no ethical tradition - ancient or modern - is unaffected by those worms. And I would further suggest that in many Eastern traditions, the worms have long been known but were not placed in a can because a can is a modern artefact. ;)

I'm not sure that a priori ethics theory is undermined, however, by identifying the problematic areas involved in executing such moral theories. Presumably some kind of pragmatic argument could be levelled, though.

"On a side note, this is the kind of thing that advertisers and political campaign officers love because these psychological tricks are great ways to convince people. Talk about knowledge being dangerous..."

Absolutely. And Harris et al also use these tricks for their own rhetorical gain. How else are we to interpret the attempt to justify (sole) moral authority via an appeal to empirical studies if not a rhetorical move intended to undermine the moral authority of alternative approaches?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!