My-side Bias

[mobb_deep 919]

I thought this was an interesting read. Basically reinforces that the bored politrolls are wasting time arguing all day.

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/10/09/my-side-bias-makes-it-difficult-for-us-to-see-the-logic-in-arguments-we-disagree-with/

In what feels like an increasingly polarised world, trying to convince the “other side” to see things differently often feels futile. Psychology has done a great job outlining some of the reasons why, including showing that, regardless of political leanings, most people are highly motivated to protect their existing views.

However a problem with some of this research is that it is very difficult to concoct opposing real-life arguments of equal validity, so as to make a fair comparison of people’s treatment of arguments they agree and disagree with.

To get around this problem, an elegant new paper in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology has tested people’s ability to assess the logic of formal arguments (syllogisms) structured in the exact same way, but that featured wording that either confirmed or contradicted their existing views on abortion. The results provide a striking demonstration of how our powers of reasoning are corrupted by our prior attitudes.

Vladimíra Čavojová at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and her colleagues recruited 387 participants in Slovakia and Poland, mostly university students. The researchers first assessed the students’ views on abortion (a highly topical and contentious issue in both countries), then they presented them with 36 syllogisms – these are formal logical arguments that come in the form of three statements (see examples, below).

Mainly the participants had trouble accepting as logical those valid syllogisms that contradicted their existing beliefs, and similarly they found it difficult to reject as illogical those invalid syllogisms that conformed with their beliefs. This seemed to be particularly the case for participants with more pro-life attitudes. What’s more, this “my-side bias” was actually greater among participants with prior experience or training in logic (the researchers aren’t sure why, but perhaps prior training in logic gave participants even greater confidence to accept syllogisms that supported their current views – whatever the reason, it shows again what a challenge it is for people to think objectively).

“Our results show why debates about controversial issues often seem so futile,” the researchers said. “Our values can blind us to acknowledging the same logic in our opponent’s arguments if the values underlying these arguments offend our own.”

 

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/20/our-brains-rapidly-and-automatically-process-opinions-we-agree-with-as-if-they-are-facts/

In a post-truth world of alternative facts, there is understandable interest in the psychology behind why people are generally so wedded to their opinions and why it is so difficult to change minds.

We already know a lot about the deliberate mental processes that people engage in to protect their world view, from seeking out confirmatory evidence (the “confirmation bias“) to questioning the methods used to marshal contradictory evidence (the scientific impotence excuse).

Now a team led by Anat Maril at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem report in Social Psychological and Personality Science that they have found evidence of rapid and involuntarily mental processes that kick-in whenever we encounter opinions we agree with, similar to the processes previously described for how we respond to basic facts.

The researchers write that “their demonstration of such a knee-jerk acceptance of opinions may help explain people’s remarkable ability to remain entrenched in their convictions”.

Now, across four studies, Maril and her team have found that something similar occurs for opinions. They composed 88 opinion statements, written in Hebrew, that covered politics, personal tastes and social issues, such as “The internet has made people more isolated” or “The internet has made people more sociable”. They presented dozens of Israeli participants with versions of these statements that were grammatical or not (e.g. the gender or use of singular/plural were incorrect) and the participants’ task was to indicate as rapidly as possible whether the grammar was correct. Later, the participants were shown all the statements again and asked to indicate whether they agreed with them.

The key finding was that participants were quicker to identify statements as grammatically correct when they agreed with the opinion expressed in the statement, compared with when they disagreed (there was no difference for time taken to identify ungrammatical statements as ungrammatical). This was the case even though their agreement with the opinion expressed in the statements was irrelevant to the grammatical task at hand. “The results demonstrate that agreement with a stated opinion can have a rapid and involuntary effect on its cognitive processing,” the researchers said, which is similar to the epistemic Stroop Effect observed for facts.

“The current findings suggest that despite adults’ understanding of the notion of subjectivity, they may react to opinion-incongruent statements as if they were factually incorrect,” the researchers said, adding, “The distinction between factual truths and opinions held to be true is pivotal for rational discourse. However this distinction may apparently be somewhat murky within human psychology.”

[supermike80 1,600]

Once whomever wrote this spelled polarized incorrectly...I stopped reading..

I realize that's crappy, but it's the truth.

[mobb_deep 919]

Once whomever wrote this spelled polarized incorrectly...I stopped reading..

I realize that's crappy, but it's the truth.

Thats actually the proper English spelling, but fair enough.

[SenatorRock 708]

holy tldr

 

I can understand the "my side" argument in the past.

 

Immigration, abortion, taxes, etc.

 

That is not what is happening in America currently.

 

Currently you have mentally ill people on a 23 month tantrum because they did not get their way. They have thrown all debate out the window and rely on violence, division, character assassination, literal assassination attempts, and guilty/shame/censorship to get the other side to bend the knee.

[Thornton Melon 596]

I would agree with this study if they were right. But theyre not....I am.

[penultimatestraw 473]

Hack

[mobb_deep 919]

holy tldr

 

I can understand the "my side" argument in the past.

 

Immigration, abortion, taxes, etc.

 

That is not what is happening in America currently.

 

Currently you have mentally ill people on a 23 month tantrum because they did not get their way. They have thrown all debate out the window and rely on violence, division, character assassination, literal assassination attempts, and guilty/shame/censorship to get the other side to bend the knee.

Exhibit A right here folks. Now we just need wiffleball to complete the narrative.

 

ETA: its a 5 minute read. That a drop in the bucket for someone who seems to spend 6-8 hours a day reading news articles and watching trump videos.