Chapter 4

Humans aren’t wired to think rationally. That’s been confirmed recently by brain scans, but our irrational reaction to hard evidence has been the subject of scholarly study for some time.

Psychologist Leon Festinger says, “It is psychologically painful to be confronted with information that contradicts what we believe.

We strive to avoid that unpleasant feeling of psychological conflict which occurs when deeply held beliefs are challenged by conflicting evidence.

“The Moonbat Effect” – A barking moonbat is “someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency.” But we use it as originally intended, to apply to all far-out cases whose beliefs make them oblivious to facts, regardless of party or ideology.

“The Psychology of Deception” – Psychological experiments have shown, for one thing, that humans tend to seek out even weak evidence to support their existing beliefs, and to ignore evidence that undercuts those beliefs. In the process, we apply stringent tests to evidence we don’t want to hear, while letting slide uncritically into our minds any information that suits our needs. Psychology also tells us that we rarely work through reasons and evidence in a systematic way, weighing information carefully and suspending the impulse to draw conclusions. Instead, much of the time we use mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that save us mental effort. These habits often work reasonably well, but they also lead us to conclusions we might dismiss if we applied more thought.

We tend to overgeneralize from vivid, dramatic single examples. For example, news of a terrible airline crash makes us think of commercial flying as dangerous; we forget that more than 10 million airline passenger flights land safely every year in the United States alone.

The “Pictures in Our Heads” Trap – Don’t always conform to the real world. Sometimes we have to avoid mental shortcuts and take the long way around if we want to avoid being manipulated or making these mistakes on our own. Ask yourself, “Is the picture in my head a good likeness of reality? Does this Democrat in fact favor this tax increase? Does this Republican in fact want to cut Social Security benefits? Where’s the evidence?”

The “Root for My Side” Trap – There’s evidence that our commitment to a cause not only distorts our thinking but also affects what we see-and don’t see-as we observe the world around us. David Perkins, a professor of education at Harvard did a study about how people reason when asked to think about a controversial issue. He observed a strong tendency for people to come up with reasons favoring their own side, and not even to think about reasons favoring the other. To avoid this psychological trap, apply a bit of the scientific method to political claims and marketing messages. When they sound good, ask yourself what fact could prove them untrue and what evidence you may be failing to consider.

The “I Know I’m Right” Trap – Means that those who most need to revise the pictures in their heads are the very ones least likely to change their thinking. Of such people, it is sometimes said that they are “often in error but never in doubt.”

The “Close Call” Trap – Psychological research shows that when we are confronted with tough decisions and close calls, we tend to exaggerate the differences. We crave certainty, and don’t want to agonize endlessly about whether we made the right decision. This mental habit helps us avoid becoming frozen by indecision, but it can also make changing our minds harder than need be when the facts change, or when we have misread the evidence in the first place. Once in a while we need to ask, “Would I feel this way if I were buying this product (or hearing this argument) for the first time? Have new facts emerged since I made my initial decision?”