11 December 2021 | New Scientist | 47JENNIEEDWARDS^that we want to believe in the first place.
There is a saying from the [late] American
journalist Upton Sinclair that it’s very hard
to get a man to understand something when
his livelihood depends on not understanding
it. In the lab, we see this manifested when you
give people a logical syllogism [two statements
with a logical conclusion] and ask them if the
conclusion follows from the premises. If the
conclusion is something that they want to be
true, they are apt to ratify an invalid syllogism –
and vice versa if it is a conclusion that they
don’t want to be true.And myside bias?
Motivated reasoning can be in the service
not just of a goal that favours the individual,
but often the larger coalition that he or she
belongs to, in which case it’s called the myside
bias. Namely, you direct your reasoning to
end up with a conclusion that is already a
belief in your team, your coalition, your party.
It’s among the most powerful of the many
cognitive biases that have been documented
by cognitive psychology. It afflicts the
[political] left and the right. Being smart >human history, it was hard to tell what was
true or false. What is the origin of fortune and
misfortune? What is the origin of the universe?
What actually happens behind closed doors in
palaces and halls of power? You can’t find out.
But there are some beliefs that will rally your
coalition together – that are uplifting, that are
morally edifying, that are entertaining – and
those stories for most of our history were as
close as we could get to the truth, and they
served as a substitute for the truth.
What’s unusual now is that we have a lot
of means to answer questions that formerly
were just cosmic mysteries. Before that, it was a
matter of conjecture. And a good story was the
best we could do. We carry over that mindset
when it comes to the cosmic, the counterfactual,
the metaphysical, the highly politicised.You describe key mechanisms through
which people form irrational beliefs – the
three M’s of motivated reasoning, myside bias
and mythological belief. Can you unpack them
one at a time?
Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon where
we direct our reasoning toward somethingthat ideas should be evaluated as to whether
they’re true or false.
You also claim that some seeming irrationality
can be understood as the rational pursuit of
goals. How so?
Rationality always has to be defined with
respect to a goal. What are you deploying
your thought processes to attain? The goals
sometimes can be dubious, but you can be
extremely methodical at attaining them.
I cite the defenders of Donald Trump against
accusations of irrationality, who will say:
Well, he got to be president, didn’t he? If the
goal is glorifying Donald Trump, rallying his
supporters and gaining the levers of power,
he was quite a genius at it. From the point
of view of his own rationality, there was
a certain cunning.
But surely the current “pandemic of poppycock”,
as you call it, is something new?
Conspiracy theories are probably as old as
human groups. Paranormal woo isn’t new.
Neither is fake news. These are maybe the
default mode of our species. For most of