The Great American Divide

"Hillary is a murderous lying monster!"
"Trump is a narcissistic charlatan and predator!"

Does one of these exclamations resound firmly with you? Is the truth of it self-evident?

Humans have this curious psychological trait that shifts our perception of facts so heavily to our way of thinking that we must perform corrective measures to keep from keeling over.

To put our ship back in balance we must do something that on the surface seems rather odd: we must subject ideas that we agree with to *greater* scrutiny, diligence, and fact-checking than ideas that are contrary to our beliefs.

"Say what? Why? What is this insanity?"

This “insanity” is called confirmation bias. Isn’t it satisfying to find and read tirades such as those above that support our beliefs? Don’t we relish (and greedily drink from) reports from right- or left-leaning websites, opinion pieces from armchair political experts, or even viral memes when they support (confirm) our beliefs (biases)? And how do we respond to those ideas that fly in the face our beliefs?

“Crazy!” “Unsubstantiated!” “Stupid!” “Un-American!”

I’ve read post after post by Trump and Clinton supporters who are angry at and baffled by each other and yet say almost the exact same thing:

“I honestly don’t understand how any rational human being could support [Trump][Clinton]! Are those people hopelessly stupid or just mindless sheeple who have been sold a lie?”

While some of us might truly believe that the over 100 million or so Americans that disagree with us politically are mindless subhuman chumps, I suspect there is another more reasonable explanation for this astonishingly great American divide. You guessed it: confirmation bias.

The desire to feel supported and validated in our beliefs is normal and understandable, but it’s often not rational. And by “not rational” I mean that we come to many beliefs emotionally, not rationally, and then unconsciously cherry-pick facts to dress those unrefined emotions in a respectable suit of rationality. Rationalization ex post facto.

"When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!" John Mackay, Irish-American industrialist, 1852

I know of only one antidote to our tendency to uncritically accept those things that appear to confirm our beliefs. That is a simple awareness and admission that perhaps we are not the one clear mind in a sea of the deluded - that we just might be one of the more than seven billion people affected by confirmation bias.

If we can admit and accept this aspect of human nature, we can make a rational effort to look at both sides of an issue (or person, or political movement) as dispassionately and rationally as our three-pound meatloaf of nerve cells marinating in a vat of emotionally-charged chemicals will allow.

Sure, we may end up with the same conclusion or opinion that we had before, but one can hope, at the very least, that we can come out of this confirmation bias-balancing exercise with a little more tolerance, and maybe even some understanding, of those people with whom we disagree.

Who knows, I’ve even heard stories of a few rare individuals who have allowed facts and evidence to hoist the anchors of belief from the sea floor of emotions and gain the freedom to explore new lands in the world of ideas. One can hope.

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of general psychology, 2(2), 175.