The folly and foibles of human psychology

Mike was procrastinating the other day on his favorite website, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/, when he came across a brief interview with a Clinton partisan in Pennsylvania. The reporter asked this woman what she thought about the prospect of the superdelegates deciding who will be the Democrats' nominee for president. The woman replied (and I'm paraphrasing), "I'm against it. I think if the superdelegates get to decide the nominee, it means the rest of the voters' voices aren't being heard." The reporter then pointed out that Hillary Clinton's best chance of winning the nomination lies with the superdelegates, to which the woman promptly responded "Oh, then I'm for it."

Obviously the reason this little exchange even made it into the online article in the first place is because its absurdity is humorous. I admit we laughed at this when we first read it, but actually, it seems that the rest of us are also quite vulnerable to this type of motivated reasoning. As it turns out, there is some evidence that people rely on different cognitive strategies depending on their motivation: if someone is motivated to arrive at an accurate conclusion, she is more likely to rely on reasoning strategies that are appropriate to the task at hand. On the other hand, if she is motivated to arrive at a particular conclusion (the conclusion that Hillary Clinton should be the Democrats' nominee, for example), she is more likely to rely on whichever beliefs and strategies will generate that conclusion.

For a species that spends so much of its time yapping about how reason has allowed us to transcend the rest of the beasts, we're not nearly as rational as we're cracked up to be. We tend to pick and choose whichever problem-solving strategies will give us the answer we want. This seems to be a particularly acute problem when the issue is morally charged. For instance, in one study, a group of people were presented with sham 'facts' about the deterrence effect of capital punishment. Some of the fake 'facts' suggested that capital punishment was effective as a deterrent, and some of the 'facts' suggested that it was ineffective. Guess what happened? The subjects actually proved quite adept at scrutinizing the fake facts and criticizing the fake 'studies' that had produced the fake facts -but only when the 'facts' were those that undermined their own stated positions on capital punishment! If a 'fact' supported their position, they neither questioned its validity nor scrutinized the methodology of the fake study that produced it. It seems we are perfectly capable of picking out the holes in others' arguments, but only when we happen disagree with them. We're not very good at spotting the fallacies in our own positions, which makes me wonder how we can maintain so much confidence in our own views when we seem so reluctant to question them.

As an astute observer of human behavior, Charles Darwin seems to have noticed this cognitive tendency long before any studies on it were ever conducted. When he was compiling data in support of his theory of evolution by natural selection, he made himself note down immediately any observations that seemed to contradict his pet theory. As he put it, "I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from my memory than favourable ones." Perhaps we should all try to follow his lead...

*Z Kunda. The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin. 1990 Nov;108(3):480-498.

*CG Lord, L Ross, MR Lepper. Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1979 Nov;37(11):2098-2109.