THE POWER TO MISLEAD YOURSELF AND OTHERS or AN ARGUMENT FOR DOUBT

Folks seem to think people (other people) believe nonsense due to poor intelligence, low educational attainment, or lack of knowledge. It’s not an unreasonable hypothesis. Trouble is that we have so many studies at this point suggesting the opposite is true: that the most fertile minds for conspiracy and delusion are those more intelligent ones. (How does that rub you?)

More than a decade ago now a Yale law professor, Dan Kahan, looked into the relationship between ideology and intelligence. In one famous study, titled Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection, Kahan graded subjects using a test of their reasoning ability. Though folks on the right and left of the political spectrum scored about the same, the highest scoring individuals in both groups, surprisingly, were the most likely to display political bias when assessing the truth and accuracy of various political statements. Kahan and his team showed subjects scoring highest in numeracy, for example, were better able to objectively evaluate statistical data; but that groups’ smarts only applied when they were told the data was for something those subjects felt neutral about, such as the effectiveness of a dermatitis ointment. When, on the other hand, that very same data was presented as being related to a topic those people find highly divisive, like gun control, those same folks with the best numeracy scores consistently demonstrated irrational bias along the lines of their ideological leanings.

These studies have been replicated and many more developed and run since. (See: Joslyn & Haider-Markel, Kahan, Taber & Lodge, and West, et al.) The correlation between intelligence and ideological bias seems robust. And, of course, that’s a real problem for most people’s intuition that a propensity for wrongthink is about a deficit in smarts or schooling. How interesting, too, that the real difference between those of us who are less and those of us who are more intelligent is that we stupid folks are merely more easily misled by others while the clever, who are just as likely to be confused, tend to prefer a carefully crafted homebrew of self-bamboozlement? That seems to track.

Still, a more recent study argues that, though the above is true, bias tends to be ideologically motivated, such bias is not evenly distributed. Pennycook and Rand make the case, in The Psychology of Fake News, that “Although people do preferentially believe news that aligns with their politics, this occurs as much or more for true headlines compared with false headlines — and thus people are actually more accurate, not less, when judging headlines that are politically concordant.” The authors suggest further that propaganda and “fake news” is typically absorbed and disseminated on social media due not to stupidity or political leanings but inattention, lack of careful reasoning, and/or and absence of relevant knowledge. They tell us “Rather than being bamboozled by partisanship, people often fail to discern truth from fiction because they fail to stop and reflect about the accuracy of what they see on social media.”

So then, to my reading, clever folks who are busy are the real threat needing to be addressed. And all of this also highlights the power of and universal need for doubt. (#DubitoErgoCogitoErgoSum) Regardless, these findings appear to make sense given that minds evolved to perpetuate one’s own survival, not ascertain truth. And in the social context of individual human lives, where personal well-being, reproduction, and group belonging always were and remain paramount, developing a real preference for what is beloved or trendy over what is factual seems almost certain.

Doesn’t it also seem likely that humans would develop an aptitude for quickly dropping or outright ignoring what is true in favour of habit or group preference? Perhaps. And isn’t it true that intelligence, educational attainment, and rationality have never been tethered in the way the popular imagination demands? Doesn’t such a deeply social existence insist that the smartest, most reliable path is telling people what they want to hear, doing what others want you to do, and generally not rocking or upsetting any of even the smallest, most flimsy, and least stable of boats or apple carts? And then isn’t it positively ruinous when all our most significant social institutions (from schools to media and courts to government) select for clever people best able to win debates and who are most prone to please their peers and superiors — not cultivating or seeking out those who are skilled at uncovering and sticking with what is true? I think it is. And I think it shows how astonishing it is that our species has made any scientific progress at all.