When collective decisionmaking turns on facts or other propositions that are understood to bear special significance for the interests, standing, or commitments of opposing groups ... identity-protective cognition* will predictably exaggerate differences in their understandings of the evidence. But even more importantly, as a result of a dynamic known as ‘naive realism,’ each side’s susceptibility to motivated reasoning will interact with and reinforce the other’s.
Naïve realism refers to an asymmetry in the ability of individuals to perceive the impact of identity-protective cognition. Individuals tend to attribute the beliefs of those who disagree with them to the biasing impact of their opponents’ values. Often they are right….Nevertheless, in such situations individuals usually understand their own factual beliefs to reflect nothing more than ‘objective fact,’ plain for anyone to see. In this regard, they are psychologically naïve about the contribution that group commitments make to their own perceptions.
Naïve realism makes exchanges between groups experiencing identity-protective cognition even more divisive. The (accurate) perception that a rival group’s members are reacting in a closed-minded fashion naturally spurs a group’s members to express resentment — the seeming baselessness of which provokes members of the former to experience and express the same. The intensity, and the evident polarization, of the disagreement magnifies the stake that individuals feel in defending their respective groups’ positions. Indeed, at that point, the debate is likely to take on meaning as a contest over the integrity and intelligence of those groups, fueling the participants’ incentives, conscious and unconscious, to deny the merits of any evidence that undercuts their respective views. (links/citations in the original)
Sound like anything we’ve heard, read, or experienced in national conversations recently?
While it’s accepted that each of us will associate with and identify with others who share similar values, interests, and beliefs as we do—not exactly a breakthrough psychological finding—understanding that we do so and how it interferes with what otherwise be a more rational and deliberative thought process is an important revelation. Combine that awareness with the attribution of inappropriate or unacceptable motivations to “opponents”—at least occasionally an incorrect assumption on our parts—and a corresponding failure to realize the flaws and blind spots in how we process information … conflict seems the inevitable outcome.
With awareness, however, comes opportunity. In this instance, we’re now presented with new choices which have at least the potential to tone down the divisive rhetoric and develop sounder appreciation for and understanding of the perspectives of those with whom we’ve been previously inclined to simply dismiss.
That’s not to suggest that we must now undertake full-blown reconsiderations of every value and belief we’ve developed over the course of our lifetimes. Perhaps hours of free time each day might afford a few that luxury, but for most of us, these psychological short-cuts help us navigate our way through the more complex and relevant issues without wholesale analysis at every turn.
What this opportunity and awareness does provide is an occasional chance to actually listen to the genuine motivations, values, and beliefs others bring to the conversation, rather than pigeon-hole them into pre-determined categories—an undertaking which offers little hope of genuine dialogue and cooperative efforts to solve the challenges we now face.
Perhaps the more important issue: do we want to problem-solve, or continue to score points for our team in a game with no end in sight and surely no winners? Open ourselves to broader understanding, more information, and more pathways to help create a better future for ourselves wouldn’t be the worst choice we could make.
* Identity-protective cognition refers to the tendency of people to fit their views to those of others with whom they share some important, self-identifying commitments. Group membership supplies individuals not only with material benefits but a range of important nonmaterial ones, including opportunities to acquire status and self-esteem. Forming beliefs at odds with those held by members of an identity-defining group can thus undermine a person’s well-being—either by threatening to drive a wedge between that person and other group members, by interfering with important practices within the group, or by impugning the social competence (and thus the esteem-conferring capacity) of a group generally. Accordingly, individuals are motivated, unconsciously, to conform all manner of attitudes, including factual beliefs, to ones that are dominant within their self-defining reference groups.
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