Brexit, Trump and "post-truth": the science of how we become entrenched in our views

28/2/2017

Brexit, Trump and 'post-truth': the science of how we become entrenched in our views

Kris De Meyer, King's College London

Finally a new year is here after the most politically divisive 12 months in a very long time. In the UK, Brexit shattered dreams and friendships. In the US, the polarisation was already huge, but a bitter election campaign made the divisions even deeper. Political rhetoric doesn’t persuade evenly. It splits and polarises public opinion.

As a citizen, the growing divisions trouble me. As a neuroscientist, it intrigues me. How is it possible that people come to hold such widely different views of reality? And what can we do (if anything) to break out of the cycle of increasingly hostile feelings towards people who seem to be on “the other side” from us?

To understand how the psychology works, imagine Amy and Betsy, two Democrat supporters. At the start of the presidential primary season, neither of them has a strong preference. They both would like a female president, which draws them towards Hillary Clinton, but they also think that Bernie Sanders would be better at tackling economic inequality. After some initial pondering, Amy decides to support Clinton, while Betsy picks Sanders.

Their initial differences of opinion may have been fairly small, and their preferences weak, but a few months later, they have both become firmly convinced that their candidate is the right one. Their support goes further than words: Amy has started canvassing for Clinton, while Betsy writes articles supporting the Sanders campaign.

How did their positions shift so decidedly? Enter “cognitive dissonance”, a term coined in 1957 by Leon Festinger. It has become shorthand for the inconsistencies we perceive in other people’s views – but rarely in our own.

What people are less aware of is that dissonance drives opinion change. Festinger proposed that the inconsistencies we experience in our beliefs create an emotional discomfort that acts as a force to reduce the inconsistency, by changing our beliefs or adding new ones.

A choice can also create dissonance, especially if it involves a difficult trade off. Not choosing Sanders may generate dissonance for Amy because it clashes with her belief that it is important to tackle inequality, for example.

That choice and commitment to the chosen option leads to opinion change has been demonstrated in many experiments. In one recent study, people rated their chosen holiday destinations higher after than before making the choice. Amazingly, these changes were still in place three years later.

Almost 60 years of research and thousands of experiments have shown that dissonance most strongly operates when events impact our core beliefs, especially the beliefs we have about ourselves as smart, good and competent people.

Elliot Aronson's and Carol Tavris's "Analogy of the Pyramid", as it it appears in Right Between Your Ears.

Pyramid of choice

But how do we become so entrenched? Imagine Amy and Betsy at the top of a pyramid at the start of the campaign, where their preferences are fairly similar. Their initial decision amounts to a step off each side of the pyramid. This sets in motion a cycle of self-justification to reduce the dissonance (“I made the right choice because …”), further actions (defending their decision to family, posting to friends on Facebook, becoming a campaign volunteer), and further self-justification. As they go down their sides of the pyramid, justifying their initial choice, their convictions become stronger and their views grow further apart.

A similar hardening of views happened in Republicans who became either vocal Trump or #NeverTrump supporters, and in previously independent voters when they committed to Clinton or Trump. It also applied to Remain and Leave campaigners in the UK, although the choice they had to make was about an idea rather than a candidate.

As voters of all stripes descend down their sides of the pyramid, they tend to come to like their preferred candidate or view more, and build a stronger dislike of the opposing one. They also seek (and find) more reasons to support their decision. Paradoxically, this means that every time we argue about our position with others, we can become more certain that we are, in fact, right.

The view from the bottom of the pyramid

The further down we go, the more prone we become to confirmation bias and to believing scandal-driven, partisan and even fake news – the dislike we feel for the opposing side makes derogatory stories about them more believable.

In effect, the more certain we become of our own views, the more we feel a need to denigrate those who are on the other side of the pyramid. “I am a good and smart person, and I wouldn’t hold any wrong beliefs or commit any hurtful acts”, our reasoning goes. “If you proclaim the opposite of what I believe, then you must be misguided, ignorant, stupid, crazy, or evil.”

It is no coincidence that people on opposite ends of a polarised debate judge each other in similar terms. Our social brains predispose us to it. Six-month-old infants can already evaluate the behaviour of others, preferring “nice” over “nasty” and “similar” over “dissimilar”.

We also possess powerful, automatic cognitive processes to protect ourselves from being cheated. But our social reasoning is oversensitive and easily misfires. Social media makes matters worse because electronic communication makes it harder to correctly evaluate the perspective and intentions of others. It also makes us more verbally aggressive than we are in person, feeding our perception that those on the other side really are an abusive bunch.

The pyramid analogy is a useful tool to understand how people move from weak to strong convictions on a certain issue or candidate, and how our views can diverge from others who held a similar position in the past.

But having strong convictions is not necessarily a bad thing: after all, they also inspire our best actions.

What would help to reduce the growing antipathy and mistrust is to become more wary of our default stupid-crazy-evil reasoning, the derogatory explanations that we readily believe about people who disagree with us on matters close to our heart. If we keep in mind that – rather than being the “truth” – they can be the knee-jerk reaction of our social brains, we might pull ourselves just high enough up the slopes of the pyramid to find out where our disagreements really come from.

Kris De Meyer, Research Fellow in Neuroscience, King's College London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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WHAT DOES BELIEF LOOK LIKE INSIDE THE BRAIN?

13/5/2015

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Neuroscience research has shown that, at the level of the brain, the difference between ‘believing’ (accepting that something is true) and "not believing" (rejecting something as false) is the same for all of us. This is regardless of the content of the belief, i.e. whether it’s our view on how to run the national health service, how to organize the welfare state, or what to do about climate change.

Given this commonality, it’s unfortunate that we often end up in gridlocked debates and conflicts when we have different views over something. By highlighting what we share with those who disagree with us, documentary Right Between Your Ears offers new ways to think about the polarization that exists over important issues in society.

We have until 21 May 2015 to raise the remaining funding to finish the film. Please help us by supporting and sharing http://bit.ly/rightbtw or link via twitter @rightbtw. On the Kickstarter page we have some great rewards for supporters as a thank you in return, including the DVD of the film, artwork, and the opportunity to have a credit as supporter of the film.

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Feeling Right, Being Wrong

29/4/2015

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This article appeared originally on the website of the Royal Society of the Arts (the RSA).
The original is here
Have you ever wondered how people can become convinced of something, beyond all doubt? Or have you ever been convinced yourself and adamant about it to others?

How we get to this state of holding strong convictions and how we deal with being wrong or having our convictions challenged by others, is the topic of our documentary Right Between Your Ears. With the support of the RSA, we have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to finish the film.

Why we made the film

Convictions (regardless of whether they are right or wrong) drive the polarisation of many of the public and political debates that the RSA and its Fellows are seeking solutions for. Everything from immigration and the welfare state to human rights, foreign interventions, health care, education and public debates over science such as climate change, vaccines and evolution.

What these issues have in common is that there are people with strongly-held convictions on either side who think “I am right and you are wrong”. In recent years, some of these debates have become increasingly polarised and gridlocked, and paradoxically, the more people argue the more they become convinced that they are right.

As a neuroscientist, my interest lies in understanding how our brains impose order and meaning on the sights and sounds coming from the world around us. As a citizen, I wanted to understand how people can look at the same events and come to such contrasting views about the important issues in society. In conversations with my friend and filmmaker Sheila Marshall, I increasingly put the two interests together, and saw the need to illustrate the scientific insights that exist in this area to a wider public.

When we came across the story of a group of people in the US who came to believe the world would end on 21 May 2011, we embarked on making a documentary, Right Between Your Ears. One of our aims was to understand how it feels like to believe this extraordinary truth. A second aim was to capture a unique situation: unlike in our gridlocked public debates, this group of people would find out if their conviction was right or not, on that given date.

Beyond the public sphere, our predisposition to “feel right” also affects our personal lives. One popular saying goes: “You can be right or be in a relationship.” Other examples are how we (rightly or wrongly) justify the decisions we make in our professional careers, how we take, or fail to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, and how we react to conflicts with family, friends and work colleagues.

Right Between Your Ears explores what lies at the heart of this by fusing the story of the believers before, during and after 21 May, with interviews with social psychologists, behavioural economists and a historian. One of the believers also takes part in a brain scan study about belief. Together, these perspectives give a unique insight into the nature of belief, and turn the film from a story about “them” and “their” beliefs, into a story of how we believe.

An important aspect of 21st Century Enlightenment

By giving insight into the nature of our convictions, the film offers new ways to think about those situations in life where we disagree fundamentally with other people. Our “common-sense” reaction is to denigrate them for their different views. But clearly, it is not an acceptable situation if people with opposing convictions are locked into accusing each other of the same stupidity or shortsightedness.

From my perspective as a neuroscientist, I therefore see it as an essential part of the 21st Century Enlightenment revolution that we find different ways to think about the nature of our fundamental disagreements. By meeting many interested people during the course of working on the film, our work is already having an impact. For instance, I contributed a chapter about the relevant neuroscience and psychology to a UCL policy report on the communication of climate science, and am just completing a book chapter where the same insights are applied to controversies over educational practices. I also give regular workshops to enable the next generation of science communicators to deal more constructively with the communication of contested issues. But we need your help to spread the impact that this work can have even further.

How can you get involved?

We are running a Kickstarter campaign to raise the final post production funding for the film, and have some great rewards for your support in return. Please view, back and share our campaign page via this link: http://bit.ly/rightbtw and help us raise £12,000 before 21 May 2015.

To ensure the long-term impact of the film, we will work together with organisations who can benefit from the film in their own work. For instance, groups interested in conflict resolution and dialogue, and educational organisations and schools. We know we have many like-minded Fellows in the RSA, so please do get in touch if our aims have inspired you via info@rightbetween.com or follow @rightbtw on Twitter.

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The Act of Killing

1/7/2013

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In 2001, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer started a film project with survivors of a little-known genocide that took place in the 1960s. Working conditions were tense. Often, the military would roll in to intimidate and impound their cameras. It seemed the genocide perpetrators were still in charge, and did not like their version of history to be challenged by the victims’ families.

One thing was remarkable about these acts of intimidation: within minutes of meeting Joshua, the perpetrators were speaking openly, even boasting, about how they had tortured and executed people. One day, one of the survivors who worked with Joshua told him: “Why don’t you film their boasting? That way you can show to the world what happened.”

So he did. Over a period of 7 years, he filmed 40 of them, working his way up the chain of command. Until he came to nr. 41, Anwar Congo, who became the main character of the just released documentary The Act of Killing. On the surface, Anwar is leading a happy life, unrepentant for his deeds. Underneath, he is being plagued by nightmares of the killings he performed. Joshua asked Anwar and his pals to re-enact their killings in any way they wished. They did - in ever more elaborate scenes inspired by their favourite American gangster movies and actors: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, John Wayne. The result is the most harrowing film I have ever seen, and, arguably, the most important.

Every act of injustice that brings about suffering hides an imbalance between cause and effect. If the harm committed is large, victims and outsiders try to find big causes to explain it. But perpetrators never experience the same suffering they inflict on their victims, and regardless of the magnitude of the suffering, all one can find are petty justifications: “I was only doing my job”, “we had to do it”, “my conscience told me”, “we didn't know”. Political theorist Hannah Arendt, in her book about Nazi Adolf Eichmann, called this condition the banality of evil.

The Act of Killing really drills the mismatch between the horror of the perpetrators’ crimes and the subsequent pettiness of their justifications into your head. Mostly because Anwar himself increasingly becomes aware of this as he re-enacts his past. Until, finally, the barrier between his horrific deeds and the banality of his justifications breaks. The result is the most powerful scene I have ever seen in a film - which is all I will say about it here.

When stripping away the acts of atrocities, the precise historical context of the genocide, the corrupt regime that created a culture of impunity and celebration of violence, what we are left with is a film about something essentially human. The need for self-justification, the need to feel that we are right in our beliefs about ourselves as good people, and the difficulty of facing the opposite: that we are capable of committing acts that are stupid, wrong, or hurtful.

And here lies some hope in Anwar’s story. In Joshua’s words:

"They're desperately trying to run away from the reality of what they've done. You celebrate mass killing so you don't have to look yourself in the mirror in the morning and see a murderer. You keep your victims oppressed so that they don't challenge your story. When you put the justification – the celebration – under a microscope, you don't necessarily see a lack of remorse, but you start to see an unraveling of the killers' conscience. So what appears to be the symptom of a lack of remorse is in fact the opposite. It's a sign of their humanity."
[Source: Henry Barnes, The Guardian]

Joshua gets a lot of opposition with this message, but it does carry a seed of hope. If Anwar is really the stuff of our darkest dreams - an evil monster - we are in trouble because we’ll never manage to get rid of the monsters like him. If he is a human being who was put in a context where his humanity broke down completely, then what we ought to strive for is a system and a society where the context becomes impossible. One way to do that is to contrast empathy for others with the potentially destructive consequences of self-justification. An arduous task, but The Act of Killing is an important part of that message.

The Act of Killing is out since 28 June 2013 in cinemas across the UK. It will soon appear in the US and other countries around the world. Details of screenings: UK, worldwide.

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The Real me Believes

23/6/2013

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20 May 2011. We are sitting on a terrace in sunny California, in a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area, having blueberry pancakes American style with Simon. He is a friendly and articulate man, a real-estate agent in an upscale part of town with a double university degree in computer science and biochemistry.

A little black bird is nesting in a tree in front of our table. Every time someone passes under the tree, it flies from its nest and, to our great amusement, pecks the person on the back of the head. Even an unsuspecting dog gets a peck. The food is good and the conversation wanders far and wide. It’s a beautiful, relaxing afternoon.

Except - it could be our last...

At least, that is the conviction of Simon. We met him at Family Radio, a religious broadcaster in nearby Oakland. Family Radio is at the center of a campaign to warn the world that 21 May 2011 will be Judgement Day. Like many of the people we met over the past weeks, Simon has wound down his business activities. Why amass more worldly goods if there is no tomorrow? Instead, he focuses on studying the prophecy and getting the word out to friends and family. This comes at a huge emotional cost: many regard him as crazy for holding his conviction. But unlike many conflict situations - where people remain convinced that they are right and the "others" are wrong - Simon will shortly find out whether his Judgment Day beliefs are true or false. Not according to someone else’s standards of the truth, but according to his own.

Lunch is finished and we prepare to leave. We have to return to Oakland, where we plan to go into the night of the prophecy with a group of believers. Farewells are cordial. “The real me believes this, but there are other parts of me which are still in doubt”, Simon told us in an interview a few days before. The next day, on 21 May, he will be the first of the believers to call us.

This blog post is a shortened version of a blog written for "Wrong!", an Open Night at the Wellcome Collection in London, 5 July 2013 7-11pm. Sheila and Kris will speak about Right Between Your Ears at 8.45pm. The event is free. First come, first seated. More details at Wrong!

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