Why Facts Don\u2019t Change Our Minds<\/a>
\nElizabeth Kolbert
\nFebruary 27, 2017 Issue<\/p>\nThe vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments\u00a0than with thinking straight.<\/p>\n
Coming from a group of academics in the\u00a0nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can\u2019t think straight was shocking.\u00a0It isn\u2019t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and\u00a0elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who\u2019s followed the research\u2014or even\u00a0occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today\u2014knows, any graduate student with\u00a0a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally\u00a0irrational<\/strong>. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now.\u00a0Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?<\/p>\nIn a new book, \u201cThe Enigma of Reason\u201d (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo\u00a0Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Mercier, who works\u00a0at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central\u00a0European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait<\/strong>, like\u00a0bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to\u00a0be understood in that context.<\/p>\nStripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and\u00a0Sperber\u2019s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans\u2019 biggest advantage over\u00a0other species is our ability to co\u00f6perate. Co\u00f6peration is difficult to establish\u00a0and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the\u00a0best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract,\u00a0logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather,\u00a0it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cReason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for\u00a0themselves,\u201d Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or\u00a0just plain dumb from an \u201cintellectualist\u201d point of view prove shrewd when seen\u00a0from a social \u201cinteractionist\u201d perspective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s bad enough that we value and trust the opinions of majorities over our own reason. Research shows that the smartest amongst us are the least confident in our knowledge and the least informed are the most (over) confident. Average people assume they know a lot about the world. Trusting that majority to shape our views should worry intellectual humans.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, when confronted with ignorance, most of us start to waiver in our certainty and admit we don\u2019t know a lot. If you ask someone to explain, in detail, something he or she claims to know well, that over confidence is self-corrected. Ask someone to explain what they don\u2019t really understand if you want to later change an opinion based on faulty facts.<\/p>\n
Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed\u00a0world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled\u00a0with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water\u2014and\u00a0everything that\u2019s been deposited in it\u2014gets sucked into a pipe and from there into\u00a0the sewage system. But how does this actually happen?<\/p>\n
In a study conducted at Yale, graduate students were asked to rate their\u00a0understanding of everyday devices, including toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks.\u00a0They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the\u00a0devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Apparently, the effort\u00a0revealed to the students their own ignorance, because their self-assessments\u00a0dropped.<\/em><\/strong> (Toilets, it turns out, are more complicated than they appear.)<\/p>\nSloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the \u201cillusion of explanatory\u00a0depth,\u201d just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they\u00a0actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case\u00a0of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is\u00a0something humans are very good at. We\u2019ve been relying on one another\u2019s expertise\u00a0ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key\u00a0development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and\u00a0Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and\u00a0others\u2019 begins<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cOne implication of the naturalness with which we divide cognitive labor<\/strong>,\u201d they\u00a0write, is that there\u2019s \u201cno sharp boundary between one person\u2019s ideas and\u00a0knowledge\u201d and \u201cthose of other members\u201d of the group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nFew people can describe how a computer chip works, but we rely on those chips. Few people can even explain how a car works in detail, yet we would generally say we understand the basics of cars. We don\u2019t know a lot, and there\u2019s way too much to know in our world. We overstate our expertise, because to admit we know so little would be paralyzing.<\/p>\n
Those of us who admit ignorance are the exception to norms. We are the freaks.<\/p>\n
I am painfully aware of what I don\u2019t know, which is why I read and study so much. I always feel ignorant, and that leads me to feel insecure. Oddly enough, I also don\u2019t tend to trust experts unless I can understand what they are saying or what they have written. I\u2019m a natural skeptic in social structure that doesn\u2019t work well if everyone is a skeptic.<\/p>\n
We need most people to just accept that technology, complex systems, and the universe function as intended.<\/p>\n
As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they\u00a0simultaneously created new realms of ignorance<\/strong>; if everyone had insisted on, say,\u00a0mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age\u00a0wouldn\u2019t have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete\u00a0understanding is empowering<\/strong>.<\/p>\nWhere it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the\u00a0political domain. It\u2019s one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it\u00a0operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without\u00a0knowing what I\u2019m talking about. Sloman and Fernbach cite a survey conducted in\u00a02014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Respondents\u00a0were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could\u00a0identify Ukraine on a map. The farther off base they were about the geography, the\u00a0more likely they were to favor military intervention. (Respondents were so unsure\u00a0of Ukraine\u2019s location that the median guess was wrong by eighteen hundred miles,\u00a0roughly the distance from Kiev to Madrid.)<\/p>\n
Surveys on many other issues have yielded similarly dismaying results. \u201cAs a rule,\u00a0strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,\u201d Sloman and\u00a0Fernbach write. And here our dependence on other minds reinforces the problem. If\u00a0your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then\u00a0my opinion is also baseless. When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me,\u00a0his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that\u00a0much more smug about our views. If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any\u00a0information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How does the ignorance of the complex shape political debates? Because we put our trust in the \u201ccommunity\u201d to which we belong, assuming the experts in our community know how things work. We trust our political experts, and distrust the opposition\u2019s experts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous,\u201d Sloman and Fernbach\u00a0observe. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment,\u00a0substituting public policy for household gadgets. In a study conducted in 2012,\u00a0they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? Or merit-based pay for teachers? Participants were asked\u00a0to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with\u00a0the proposals. Next, they were instructed to explain, in as much detail as they\u00a0could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into\u00a0trouble. Asked once again to rate their views, they ratcheted down the intensity,\u00a0so that they either agreed or disagreed less vehemently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m not sure rhetoricians are equipped to help reveal to people their ignorance, or the ignorance of groups. Too many rhetoricians rushed to embrace crowdsourcing and other \u201cwisdom in numbers\u201d modes of problem solving. We\u2019re the same scholars who want group work and collaboration simply because those must be better than individual thoughts and ideas.<\/p>\n
If anything, scholars should be the most skeptical group when considering groups<\/strong>. Maybe small groups of experts collaborating are okay, but random groups are certainly not wiser than one expert in a field.<\/p>\nOur political systems are proof that pluralities and majorities are flawed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Enigma of Reason,\u201d \u201cThe Knowledge Illusion,\u201d and \u201cDenying to the Grave\u201d were\u00a0all written before the November election. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway\u00a0and the rise of \u201calternative facts.\u201d These days, it can feel as if the entire\u00a0country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by\u00a0no one or by Steve Bannon. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a\u00a0solution. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m a pessimist. Thankfully, on that I am aligned with the community of experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rhetoric, as a field, has long admitted that pathos persuades more people than reason and logic. The Greeks and Romans recognized the danger of this…<\/p>\n
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