This page contains “extra ideas” about motivated reasoning.

It begins with an overview-summary of basic ideas, quoted from a section – Causes and Effects of Motivated Reasoning – in my page about CRITICAL THINKING.

motivated reasoning is "a tendency for people to believe what they want to believe, and find reasons for believing it."  Although "an evidence-based logical evaluation [with skillful critical thinking] should promote an appropriate humility, with a logically-justifiable appropriate confidence that is not too little, not too much, ...  we often see people being over-confident about the logical justification for their own personal views, and the views of their groups. ...  People can persuade themselves into feeling overly confident that their own views are correct, and opposing views are incorrect, by... selecting their evidence, adjusting their logic, adjusting their values."  By contrast, "one way to improve our mutual understanding & respecting is by trying to think-and-behave like a judge [with thinking that is neutral, unbiased, objective], not a lawyer [with biased thinking & arguing]."  Regarding causes, "Why are so many so confident?  Because it feels good, and gains allies."

And with more detail about causes:

A major source of overconfidence is the motivated reasoning that occurs because people (individually and in groups) have mixed motivations, combining logic-and-emotion in our thinking-and-feeling;  logically we want to have accurate understanding;  and emotionally we want to have a positive self-image so we can feel good about ourselves (as individuals & as a group)* and (as individuals in groups) we want to get respect from others and have supportive allies, and (as individuals & as groups) we want to win arguments, to have a positive self-image and a positive group-image.  Being in a group often leads to social pressures, with group dynamics that influence the reasoning of members, and reinforce their tendencies to be individually overconfident. ...   * The self-image of a person (or group) is improved when they can reduce the unpleasant cognitive dissonance (i.e. dissonance in thinking) that occurs when they recognize an inconsistency between their beliefs, or between their beliefs and actions.    /    Most causes of motivated reasoning operate at the levels of individuals & their groups, so we can get useful insights from experts who study the psychology of individuals (alone & in groups) and sociology of groups.

And my experience of Monday-and-Tuesday teaching helped us learn that...

If we want accurate understanding we should get the best information & arguments that all position-views can claim as support.  And we can recognize that even when we have valid reasons for preferring one view, people with other views also may have good reasons, both logical and ethical, for their choices, so we should have respectful attitudes.

The rest of this page is “extra ideas” to supplement the basic ideas.

Causes and Effects of Interpersonal Pressures

Below I describe the negative tribalism that "occurs when strong loyalties produce some negative effects, in addition to the positive effects of loyalty."  These negative effects can affect those outside the team, and also members of the team, due to...

Interpersonal Pressures:  To reduce disrespectful attitudes, accurate understanding is useful but isn't sufficient, because other factors also influence our thoughts & emotions, attitudes & actions.  Sometimes tribal attitudes develop when members of a group convince themselves that “we are smart, they are stupid” and “we are good, they are bad” regarding issues that are extremely important, so “they are a threat, are the enemy.”  This kind of thinking – with not enough respectful understanding and too much disrespectful overconfidence – can lead to un-critical groupthink and un-productive words & actions, online or in person.  Interpersonal social pressures occur when a person wants to be respected in a group that rewards a disrespectful attitude toward those who – due to their “stupid and bad” views on issues that are important for the group's insiders – are defined as outsiders.*

Due to these interpersonal pressures, the social dynamics of a group can affect the cognitive reasoning of its members, amplifying their tendencies to use motivated reasoning and to become overconfident.  When this happens, a person may treat their opponents (i.e. people with other views) in harmfully disrespectful ways, and justify their own unkind behavior by rationalizing, by thinking “my opponents are stupid-and-bad so they deserve the harmful treatment they're getting from me.”  This type of rationalizing (to justify behavior) is promoted by polarizing groups when the person's desire to be a contributing member of the group – and be respected by people in the group – motivates them to become active in “the battle of us-against-them” by using unkind words & actions.

The social dynamics of a group can affect the actions of its members when interpersonal pressures overcome its members' empathy & kindness and intensify their disrespectful attitudes;  if there isn't effective filtering, these attitudes can lead to disrespectful actions.  In some ways, in some situations, people behave differently (and less wisely) in a group than when they're alone.  Unfortunately, often the sociological effect of a group is to increase (to amplify, intensify, magnify) the psychological tendencies of its members, including motivations to behave in unkind ways that include public shaming.  But...

Maybe disrespect can be reduced IF more people encourage their groups to socially reward those (both inside & outside the group) who try to promote peace by communicating more enjoyably and productively when there are disagreements.  And IF we — when we're thinking-and-behaving as individuals and in groups — improve our empathy with kindness, because...

Empathy with Kindness improves Understanding and Respect

How?  It's easier to treat another person respectfully when with empathy you understand their thinking & feeling, and with kindness you want to help make life better for them.  In a mutually supportive relationship, empathy-with-kindness can improve understanding & respect, and be improved by it, with each helping produce the other.

Empathy plus Kindness:  Thinking with empathy is beneficial for others when it's combined with kindness-and-caring in feeling & thinking & actions, when an attitude of caring for others (in feeling & thinking) leads to caring for others (in actions).  When your actions {or mine} are motivated by kindness, by genuinely caring for other people, this will reduce the weaponized use of empathy when it gives you an understanding of how to either help a person or hurt them, and (without kindness) you want to hurt them.  Unfortunately, this can occur when empathy (a useful skill) is not accompanied by kindness (an essential aspect of good character).  But with empathy-plus-kindness, life is better.  More people will have better lives when more of us are more often motivated by kindness, with goals of trying to “make things better” for other people, wanting to affect their lives in ways that are beneficial for them;  and when our empathy-based compassion is more often actualized with kindness in our actions, including our words.  Each of us can want our actions to produce win-win outcomes, and can recognize (as in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life) that each of us affects many other people, and our own life is better when we affect others in ways that make their lives better.

Wanting Win-Win:  In many life-situations, two understandings (external for others, and internal for self) are combined when you ask – while defining your goals – “what do they want?” (using empathy to understand others) and (using self-empathy to understand yourself) “what do I want?” and (if you choose to define your goal as an optimal win-win result) “what do we want?” and then “how can we get it?”

Wanting Wins for More People:  You decide whether you want win-win (instead of lose-win or win-lose, or even lose-lose) and also how you define the scope of your goals.  How broadly do you define "they" when you're trying to achieve win-win results that will be good for you and for them?  Unfortunately, the scope of win-win goals becomes more narrow when one strategy for developing strong relationships among insiders (within a team) — by promoting hostile “us against them” attitudes toward outsiders (not in the team) — converts positive teamwork into negative tribalism.*  One way to reduce our tendencies toward negative tribalism (when loyalty to insiders leads to hostile attitudes-and-actions toward outsiders) is to increase our understanding and respect.     {* negative tribalism occurs when strong loyalties produce some negative effects, in addition to the positive effects of loyalty.}   {one polarizing influence is the “package deals” of American political parties}

Clever and Kind:  In a wise insight, Abraham Heschel said "when I was young, I admired clever people;  now that I am old, I admire kind people."  With whole-person education we can help students, while they are still young, appreciate the value of being truly clever (with skills in creative-and-critical productive thinking that helps make things better) and also kind.

By contrast,...

Unkind “Shaming Actions” don't improve Understanding & Respect

Some people, individually and in groups, want to sometimes cause trouble for teachers and for others.  Typically these actions are disrespectful and unkind, are deficient in empathy-based understanding and compassion.

Here are my oversimplified descriptions of some common terms for different ways to cause trouble:  a call-out culture publicly calls attention to a person's actions (including their words, written or spoken, recently or in the distant past) that are considered unacceptable.  This attention-focusing can be beneficial (by encouraging personal accountability and increasing awareness of social injustices in useful ways) or detrimental;  in extreme cases, call-out culture becomes cancel culture that not only publicly shames a person, but also tries to cancel their influence by ruining their professional life (and usually their personal life) with aggressively retributive “canceling demands” that punish them, to serve as a warning for others, with the shaming done in ways that typically just harm the person who is being “canceled” instead of benefiting them by helping them improve.

Or instead of aiming for social justice, in similar ways a person can be publicly shamed for personal reasons, with cyberbullying by a group in social media, using tactical actions that are similar to the older in-person bullying by an individual or group.  But with online shaming, a human tendency toward hurtful thoughts-and-actions can be amplified by online anonymity (if a bully wants it) and by the social dynamics of an over-confident group.

[[ more:  IOU- later I'll link to videos (and articles, books,...) about this, including some by Jonathan Haidt;  he is not a political conservative (he occasionally describes his liberal-leaning views) but he places a high value on free speech and respectful discussion of ideas, and he doesn't like the ways our freedom is being threatened by call-outs & canceling. ]]

Business uses Our Motivated Reasoning

Some companies (e.g. social media, cable news channels, search engines) develop business strategies that take advantage of our motivated reasoning, especially our confirmation bias.

These business strategies can influence us to spend much of our time in echo chambers with "an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own." {wikipedia}

• social media (like Facebook) is designed to help you “hang out” with people who share your views, thus appealing to your confirmation bias, and your tribal desires for finding allies who support your views, and developing personal relationships that support your self-image.

• cable news channels (beginning with CNN in 1980, followed by MSNBC & Fox News in 1996, and then others)* specialize in attracting viewers from the left or the right by helping to satisfy their confirmation bias, by “telling them what they want to hear,” no more and no less.     {* other sources of news (e.g. Twitter) also can appeal to confirmation bias.}

• search engines are (I think)* designed to “give people what they're looking for” to make them happier with the search engine, due to their confirmation bias.  Why?  Because if a person is unhappy with the pages recommended by the search-results of a company, that person (and maybe their groups if they share their disappointment with allies) may decide to use the search engine of a competitor.   {the biasing influence of search engines is probably weaker than for news channels & social media}  {of course, in addition to its business strategy a company can also add biasing for other reasons.}  {* it's just "I think" because these claims are disputed, and I haven't yet researched (using experience that's second-hand or first-hand) the claims, or the relative biasing in searches by Google & Yahoo & Bing versus DuckDuckGo}

Motivated Reasoning and Political Parties

In the United States, a major factor that increases overall motivated reasoning and hostile polarization is...

Political Package Deals:  Our electoral system requires (for practical purposes) a two-party system {why?} and each major party offers a “package deal” with many parts, with policies-for-actions on a wide variety of important societal issues.  If a person wants to become involved in politics and have a practical effect, they must compare the two package deals and choose whether to vote mainly for candidates from one party or the other, and maybe to argue for (or even work for) one party or the other.  In this discussion I'll call the two parties “X” and “Y”.

Cognitive Dissonance → Motivations to Be Personally Consistent:  After a person chooses a political party, they will be motivated to prefer everything in the package deal of that party.  Why?  IF they choose Party X but instead of "everything" they think some policies of Party Y are better, they would recognize an inconsistency between their actions (choosing X) and their beliefs (disagreeing with some policies of X), and this recognition of personal inconsistency would produce unpleasant cognitive dissonance within them, damaging their self-image.  Often, when a person says “I prefer ALL policies of X” they are deceiving themselves by thinking “I am not making a mistake, because my actions (choosing X) and beliefs (preferring all policies of X) are consistent & are correct,” even though with neutral reasoning (like an unbiased judge) they would prefer many parts of the X-Package and some parts of the Y-Package.   /   For example, a person might initially choose Party X based mainly on issues A & B.  After this choice, for personal consistency they will be psychologically motivated to agree with X-Positions on all issues, not just on A & B, but also on other parts of the X-Package, on C, D, E, F, G.  They will use motivated reasoning in allways (e.g. by oversimplifying and ignoring important distinctions between the logical support for A, B, C, D, E, F, G).  The result is that they will be very confident (and will feel strongly) about all party views, not just A-B but also C-D-E-F-G.    {but here is a counter-argument: Even with unbiased judging, a person's worldview-beliefs and their core values (about some things-in-life being more important than other things) can produce “clusters of preferred positions” that logically go together;  e.g. if they like A & B, they also logically (with unbiased reasoning) probably will like C & E & F, so there can be logical reasons to strongly support MORE views of one party, even if not ALL of the views.}     /     These motivations to be personally consistent are combined with...

Motivations to Be Socially Consistent:  When a desire for personal consistency (thinking “I support Party X, so I should approve all positions of X”) combines with a desire for social consistency (thinking “I'm a member of X, so I should be loyal to my allies,” so I want my views to be consistent with their views), this mutually supportive combination will increase the tendencies of individuals, and their groups, to be more confident and feel more strongly.  Some results of this are beneficial for the individuals and their groups.  But more generally, many results are detrimental when the two-way support between these levels (personal and social, with each level supporting the other) produces polarizing pressures (personal and social) that, when they're not overcome by empathy and kindness, produce an increase of misunderstandings, with hostile disrespectings.

Ideological Purity in Political Parties:  Beginning in the mid-1960s, there has been increasing polarization between the two political parties.  For reasons that are emotional and practical, politicians want to maintain & strengthen their party allegiances.  They don't want to fight with their allies, they want to be a loyal party member who is appreciated & respected by their allies, and is given power.  Therefore, politicians tend to not disagree with “the party line” because this is psychologically uncomfortable and sociologially unproductive, because if they “go against the group” they usually will lose more than they gain, personally and politically.  Instead they tend to behave in ways that will increase their loyalty-bonds within their party.  Typically, any dissent from “the party's package deal” is too costly, so dissent is reduced.  Within each party there is a range of views, but this range is narrowed by pressures to conform (to make all party-politicians agree with all party-positions, and vote as a unified block), with desires for group-unity (and group-power) producing group-uniformity in thinking about the package deals of each party's positions.  Thus, in the past few decades we've seen variability within each party decreasing, and overlapping-of-views between the parties decreasing, so polarization-between-parties has been increasing.

also:  Many companies (e.g. cable news channels, social media, search engines) develop business strategies that take advantage of our motivated reasoning, especially our confirmation bias.

Our System – Primary Elections:  In most states the system for primary elections favors the choosing of non-centrist candidates who are more left-wing extreme or right-wing extreme.  Or it forces the centrist candidates — if they want to win the primary election(s) so they can be in the general election — to move further from the center toward a left-extreme or right-extreme.

Our System – General Elections:  Our electoral system requires a two-party system because a candidate can win, and be elected, even if they get less than 50% of the vote;  e.g. the presidential winners in 1968, 1992, 2000, 2016 had percents of 43, 43, 48, 46.  The result is to convert votes for a 3rd party candidate into “wasted votes” that have no direct practical effect, re: who wins the election.  Most people don't want to “waste their vote” on a candidate from a minor party who cannot win, so they usually vote only for candidates of a major party.  And almost always a major-party candidate wins, so if a politician wants to win they will join a major party.  The overall result is to eliminate minor parties (3rd, 4th,...) or at least reduce their political influence, to "require (for practical purposes) a two-party system."    /    Also, a 3rd party may decide (and this usually seems wise) that it won't offer a candidate in a close election because their 3rd party will hurt the major party it's closest to.  In fact, this happened in the presidential election of 2000 when the Green Party got 1.64% of votes in Florida (from people who otherwise would have voted more for Al Gore than for George Bush who won Florida by only 0.01%) which caused Gore to lose the state, and thus — due to our strange system with an Electoral College in which most states use “winner takes all” for their state's Electoral Votes — to lose the national election.    /    [[more:  how revisions of our electoral system — to insure (e.g. by using Ranked Choice Voting) that a candidate can win only if they receive more than 50% of the votes — would produce many benefits, but why (unfortunately) adoption of these revisions has been slow and limited.     {also, proportional representation, da-ur2.htm#erevisions}

I.O.U. – The parts of this page that need a lot of revising-work are in this brown box.  I've begun revising some parts and moving them out-of-the-box, but until the revising is finished these parts won't necessarily be in the sequential order they eventually will have;  they're just individually ready for public viewing, as independent separate sections.

 
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