[The Spinozist Mormon] Use and Abuse of Hidden Biases

[Christian Y. Cardall]

Recently published:

Studies presented at the conference, for example, produced evidence that emotions and implicit assumptions often influence why people choose their [fill-in-the-blank], and that [fill-in-the-blank] stubbornly discount any information that challenges their preexisting beliefs.

What would you guess goes in the blanks?

As you can read in today’s Washington Post, the terms in the two blanks above are not ‘religion’ and ‘believers’ as you might have feared, but “political affiliations” and “partisans.” Perhaps there is still reason for concern, however: it’s no accident that politics and religion are proverbially linked as subjects to be avoided in social situations calling for decorous avoidance of conflict. The following phenomenon, for example, surely rings true for religious as well as political partisans:

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy—but only in candidates they opposed.

So what do the brain scans have to do with this? This is where it gets interesting:

When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats—the scans showed that “reward centers” in volunteers’ brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

Ah, the sweet rewards—or should we say guilty pleasures?—of uncritical loyalty and devotion.

It seems reasonable to guess that a biologically measurable tendency like this has an evolutionary basis: aside from the fact that the tendency to follow the leader of the pack surely preceded the ability to rationally question him, in terms of survival (and happiness) value Social Coherence probably gives Truth a serious run for its money.

Perhaps we can be grateful that the human brain’s primal addiction to filtered information, its natural capacity for cognitive dissonance, prevents valuable bonds from unraveling unnecessarily or prematurely; but as with any evolved tendency—whose very existence at least hints that it ‘works,’ or at least used to, at some level, for something—there are reasons to not allow it unchecked sway. (Cases in point: sex and violence.) We rightly value valiant fidelity and half-blind, long-suffering charity. But it is also written that some wrenching conversions are necessary, even if they divide families, and promise not peace but the sword.

Listening—giving new and scary views fair consideration—doesn’t seem to have a lot to recommend it, since it may cost you your life, or at least your life as you know it. And yet, depending on party affiliation, we cannot help admiring and hoping to emulate the likes of Joseph and Jesus, or Spinoza and Socrates—all men who found unexamined religious and even physical lives not worth living, and preferred the truth that made them lonely but free to the loyalty that would have made them happy and prosperous.



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Posted by Christian Y. Cardall to The Spinozist Mormon at 1/30/2006 07:15:00 PM