Bias in the Brain

[Caro]

Bias in the Brain

By Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com



Are we all a bunch of biased partisans, who never think about our beliefs, or change them? You might think so after reading about a recent study. The Washington Post (“Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases”) reports that an Emory University psychologist, Drew Westen, discovered using brain scans that individuals presented with negative information about political candidates “were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed.” Further, according to the Post:

When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats -- the scans showed that "reward centers" in volunteers' brains were activated.

Well, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it has to be, right? No, that’s not the way it has to be...

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[Sammy Pepys]

1. Yeah, I believe it.

I think a lot of the reason I believe what I believe have to do with my own termperment and sensibilities that don't immediately have anything to do with politics. I'd imagine everyone is like that to some point.

[Mythsaje]

2. I don't buy it...

I've made 180 degree turns on more than one occasion given new information or a new set of circumstances. When I was younger I was a definite liberal, but I slowly drifted rightward, thankfully skipping right over the whole neo-con nonsense, and ending up on the Libertarian side of things.

Of course, I always had a problem with the idea of giving corporations power as opposed to government (I don't trust anyone having too much power over me, and I consider corps to be even MORE dangerous than government, considering we have very little recourse against them--though how much recourse we have against government abuse at this point is questionable).

But I've always challenged the idea of supply-side economics. I think it's nonsense to discount the power of the average citizen to stimulate the economy through spending their extra cash. When they HAVE extra cash. They spend money locally, while the wealthy, if given money through "tax breaks" usually squirrel it away and don't stimulate crap.

I also don't believe in nanny-state crap, but I also don't believe in daddy state crap. I think the WOD is nonsense, I believe in self-defense, and I believe that too few "representatives" actually represent their constituents. Yes, there may be a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties, but it's not that apparent to the average citizen.

I'm not partisan...I distrust them all equally, until they prove themselves worthy of trust. It may not be the way it should be, but it's the way it is.

[Caro]

6. Well, I changed from conservative...

... to liberal. So there you go.

I didn't say in the commentary that people never change. What I said is that change is difficult, and that's why MOST people never do.

Caro

[mzteris]

3. How we interpret an incident

depends on our POV (among other things)

Here are some excerpts from a book that might illustrate this just a bit.

Tell Me a Story : Narrative and Intelligence (Rethinking Theory) by Roger Schank

"The key point here is that once we find a belief and connected story, no further processing, no search for other beliefs need be done. We rarely look to understand a story in more than one way." (p.73)

"An incident is remembered in terms of how it is seen in the first place. That is, labeling is in many respects an arbitrary process. ...And, of course, even that last categorization is arbitrary since one person might characterize the victim as being blond, while the other might characterise him as being fat." (P.222)

"Yet what we learn is still entirely up to us. No one teaches us how to index after all. We make up our own way of seeing the world,..." (P.113)

((((Here's a particularly good example. Two people break up - she blames him, he blames her - who is right? Maybe they BOTH are, or maybe NEITHER are - but from their own POV - it's how they see it - and they CAN'T see it any other way! I won't post the story itself - it's your typical breakup story - just some of Schank's conclusions. )))

"In effect, once she decided to see their situation as one of betrayal, she didn't need to see it any other way. Aspects of the relationship between the two people unrelated to betrayal, or that contradicted the notion of betrayal, were forgotten. Seeing a particular story as an instance of a more general and universally known story causes the teller of the story to forget the differences between the particular and the general. ....In other words, the concept of betrayal becomes what she knows about this situation. It controls her memory of the situation so that new evidence of betrayal is more likely to get admitted into memory than contradictory evidence."(P.148)

"...Is this relationship, however, an example of betrayal? Certainly, the teller relates the story so that betrayal is an accurate description. But betrayal was used as a skeleton story around which the actual story was constructed. In other words, by using a skeleton story for betrayal, the teller could only construct a story of betrayal. All other aspects of the story were left out. But why, for example, could the teller not have told a story of "devotion"? Only small changes would be needed to make this a story of devotion - a statement that he still loves her and hopes that she will return to her former self or one that shows he values and will support her in her role as mother. ....We want to see the situations that we encounter in terms that are describable to others. We only have a short time in which to tell these stories. So, even if the fit with those stories is not exact, seeing and describing complex stories in terms of standard stories provides an easy shorthand method for communication." (P.148-149)

"The skeletons we use indicate our point of view. Storytelling causes us to adapt a point of view. With this adaption comes a kind of self-definition, however. We are the stories we tell. ...As we come to rely upon certain skeletons to express what has happened to us, we become incapable of seeing the world in any other way. The skeletons we use cause specific episodes to conform to one another. The more a given skeleton is used, the more stories it helps form begin to coher in memory. Consequently, we develop consistent, and rather inflexible points of view." (P.170)

[Caro]

4. One of the things they teach...

... in 12-Step programs is to always examine your own part in any conflict. It's hard to do at first, but gets easier the more you do it.

The benefit of doing this is that if you're "rigorously honest", as they say, you start to see a pattern. And it's when you start to see how you contribute to your conflicts with others that you can start to change and thereby to have fewer conflicts.

Caro

[Strong Atheist]

5. From what I have observed, people do not like to look

critically at ANY cherished beliefs/ideas, not just political ones, so this does not surprise me.