The Bias That Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking
- Length: 256 pages
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- Publisher: The MIT Press
- Publication Date: 2021-08-31
- ISBN-10: 0262045753
- ISBN-13: 9780262045759
- Sales Rank: #78803 (See Top 100 Books)
Why we don’t live in a post-truth society but rather a myside society: what science tells us about the bias that poisons our politics.
In The Bias That Divides Us, psychologist Keith Stanovich argues provocatively that we don’t live in a post-truth society, as has been claimed, but rather a myside society. Our problem is not that we are unable to value and respect truth and facts, but that we are unable to agree on commonly accepted truth and facts. We believe that our side knows the truth. Post-truth? That describes the other side. The inevitable result is political polarization. Stanovich shows what science can tell us about myside bias: how common it is, how to avoid it, and what purposes it serves.
Stanovich explains that although myside bias is ubiquitous, it is an outlier among cognitive biases. It is unpredictable. Intelligence does not inoculate against it, and myside bias in one domain is not a good indicator of bias shown in any other domain. Stanovich argues that because of its outlier status, myside bias creates a true blind spot among the cognitive elite–those who are high in intelligence, executive functioning, or other valued psychological dispositions. They may consider themselves unbiased and purely rational in their thinking, but in fact they are just as biased as everyone else. Stanovich investigates how this bias blind spot contributes to our current ideologically polarized politics, connecting it to another recent trend: the decline of trust in university research as a disinterested arbiter.
Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Many Faces of Myside Bias The Terminology Confusion: “Confirmation Bias,” “Belief Bias,” and “Myside Bias” Demonstrations of Myside Bias across Paradigms and Types of Thinking Myside Bias: From Laboratory to Real Life Why Is Myside Processing Such a Ubiquitous Tendency? 2. Is Myside Processing Irrational? The Knowledge Projection Argument and Koehler’s Proof B The Local versus Global Rationality of Myside Bias Globally Justified Myside Thinking: Projecting Testable Beliefs versus Distal Beliefs Belief Polarization Can Be Normative Differentiating the “Good” Myside Bias from the “Bad” Myside Bias Is Projecting a Worldview onto Evidence Necessarily Irrational? Expressive Rationality and Myside Bias Rational Myside Bias and the Tragedy of the Communications Commons 3. Myside Thinking: The Outlier Bias The Strange Case of the Missing Individual Difference Predictors Other Individual Difference Anomalies Belief Bias—but Not Myside Bias—Correlates with Cognitive Ability Convergence with the Normative Arguments in Chapter The Domain Specificity of Myside Bias Predicting Myside Bias versus Predicting Proposition Agreement 4. Where Do Our Convictions Come From? Implications for Understanding Myside Bias Overlooking Content Effects in Recent Psychological Science Beliefs as Possessions and Beliefs as Memes Functionality and the Reflective Acquisition of Beliefs Tools for Gaining Distance from Convictions Summary and Conclusions 5. The Myside Blindness of Cognitive Elites The Bias Blind Spot The Perfect Storm for a Bias Blind Spot: Academics Studying Myside Bias In Search of the Cognitive Deficiencies of Conservatives The Great White Whale of the Cognitive Elites: Finding Deficiencies in Trump Voters 6. What Should We Do about Myside Bias? Avoid the Bias Blind Spot of the Cognitive Elites Recognize That, within Yourself, You Have Conflicting Values Recognize That, in the Realm of Ideas, Myside Bias Causes an Obesity Epidemic of the Mind Treat Your Beliefs Less like Possessions by Realizing “You Didn’t Think Your Way to That” Be Aware That Myside Bias Flourishes in Environments of Ambiguity and Complexity Avoid Activating Convictions by Resisting Unprincipled Bundling Be Aware That Partisan Tribalism Is Making You More Mysided Than Political Issues Are Oppose Identity Politics Because It Magnifies Myside Bias Rebuilding the University as a Corrective to Myside Bias Notes Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter References Subject Index Name Index
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