Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello wonderseekers!
Whatever your spiritual belief system, political bent, or hottest take, you probably think you are someone who can reasonably look at a situation and make a decision based on the facts. But of course, we can’t all be right, can we? This election season (which hopefully has come to a resolution as you are reading this) has folks from both sides aghast at just how unwilling the other is to ‘see sense.’ And this becomes especially exasperating when you have facts to support your position, but your conversation partner just won’t change their mind.
This is a phenomenon known as naïve realism. Most of us tend to operate under the belief that our perceptions of reality are accurate and objective. We are generally confident in our views and thus prone to dismissing alternative perspectives. We see ourselves as open-minded but that’s because we are generally unaware of our biases.
Naïve realism is really an umbrella under which any number of cognitive biases sit, and these biases make it difficult for us to change our minds, even when confronted with clear evidence to the contrary. One of the most common of these biases is confirmation bias, where we seek out information that confirms what we already believe. This is supported by its vicious cousin, cognitive dissonance, which is the mentally challenging tug-of-war we experience when faced with information that challenges our previously held beliefs. And let me tell you, our little noggin will do backflips to avoid cognitive dissonance!
But why is our brain built this way? Why is it so hard to ‘see reason’ when faced with irrefutable evidence? And what does it have to do with toilets? Here’s the explanation.
The most recent research appears to suggest that our brains didn't develop our ability to reason with the purpose of sussing out the truth or even to solve problems. Rather, it developed it to collaborate within a community. I’ve linked below to an article about this idea, and this quote struck me: ‘Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.’
So the two biggest roles ‘evidence’ played for us was not to reason out the ‘truth’, but rather to be convincing enough to win arguments (so you can lead the group) or to understand just enough to contribute to the community (so you can benefit from the support of the group). And what do I mean when I say benefit from the group? Think of it as a sort of division of cognitive labour.
For example, could you really explain to me how a toilet works? We use it every day, but we may be surprised to find that we are probably not all that clear on precisely how it’s built and how it functions. But because we use one every day, we overestimate our understanding — it’s something called the ‘illusion of explanatory depth’.
In reality, we don’t know as much as we think we do individually, but as a community, we hold so much shared knowledge. And this is typically great because we can all have our areas of expertise, which makes for a strong community. Not everyone needs to be a plumber, right? And because we share the cognitive load, we don't really need to stretch our reason muscles very much.
But, now, between social networks and fringe media and conspiracy theories, we are all suddenly forced to be experts in epidemiology or tariffs or geopolitics, and yet none of us is practised enough to reason beyond our ‘illusion of explanatory depth.’ And then we turn to our community for answers (hello, echo chambers), but aren’t aware of the biases that block us from changing our minds when our community gets it wrong.
So how can we battle this? Three ways. First, try to hold onto your ideas lightly. So rather than saying, ‘I’m positive,’ say instead something like, ‘What I understood to be true.’ The latter tells your brain that a new understanding could be acquired. Second, verify, verify, verify — from different sources with different angles. If the information can only be found in a few outlier publications or from a cousin’s sister’s dog trainer, it’s probably incorrect. And lastly, beware of repetition. Propagandists and manipulators use this technique because they know that the more something is repeated, the more likely we are to believe it.
What might you be willing to change your mind about? Tell me!
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Cognitive biases and brain biology help explain: Why facts don’t change minds.
Why facts don’t change our minds: New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
Watch: The Knowledge Illusion: Why we never think alone.
Sorry, no video this week! It’s Bonfire Night here in London and the fireworks are going outside non-stop. I can’t manage to get a good enough clip (grrrrr) and it’s making me batty. Should have considered that this morning before the fun, but I didn’t, so apologies!
See you next week!
With wonder,
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