Post No.: 0982
Furrywisepuppy says:
Most of the time, our likes and dislikes, instead of rational arguments, determine our beliefs about the world – this is the ‘affect heuristic’. For instance, an ardent meat-eater will believe that eating meat is justified no matter what the arguments concerning animal welfare or environmental impact are compared to the alternatives.
Due to the affect heuristic, if we receive a good grade then we’re more likely to rate the quality of a course higher, and vice-versa. The dominance of conclusions over arguments or reasonings is most pronounced wherever emotions are involved. So your pre-existing political preferences will determine the arguments you’ll find compelling – hence if you, say, don’t believe in state interference, you’ll likely reject interventions to curb climate change, or you might even deny that climate change is problematic altogether.
So our emotional attitudes to things drive our beliefs about their benefits and risks, not so much the other way around. If you like something, you’ll tend to believe its benefits are high and risks are low, and vice-versa. Oftentimes, we like something, then justify it, and the conclusion of liking that thing never changes although the arguments to try to support it might – which is totally against scientific or reasoned methods of belief. The overall weight of argument and evidence regarding complex issues can often swing, and if one were reasonable, one’s beliefs would also swing, not stick dogmatically to one’s current worldviews; but we do tend to stick doggedly to our current beliefs because we’re driven more by emotion than reason. Woof.
People therefore usually behave more like lawyers attempting to justify the conclusions they’ve already arrived at by other means, like via their feelings, than like scientists who assess and constantly reassess all the arguments first and then come to a conclusion after that. People tend to form their beliefs first based on their personal self-interests or pre-existing worldviews and then attempt to find evidence to support those views, instead of are open-minded to all alternative possibilities and then let the evidence guide their beliefs.
If the overall weight of evidence shifts, a good scientist will also shift views, hence being able to shift views is generally a commendable quality, not a stain on someone’s credibility. It can therefore be erroneous to regard people who present unwaveringly firm black-or-white views and predictions as more credible and authoritative than those who are trying to explain the complexity and uncertainty of something, as if ‘simple answers’ equals ‘he/she knows what he/she’s talking about’ (this is related to ‘cognitive ease’ and the problem of lazy TL;DR – a lot of tough reading is usually involved when assessing complex issues). This is why politicians frequently look for short, catchy, emotive sound bites.
With ‘confirmation bias’, we don’t gravitate towards opposing evidence but information we want to hear i.e. that supports the view we already believe. Evidence that backs up our existing worldviews is automatically regarded as more legitimate, accurate or significant than any counterevidence against them. We need to assess all evidence even if the evidence we cherry-pick is true otherwise it’s like counting only the goals one team scores and not the other! We must be able to criticise our own stances too.
We phrase our online searches according to our biases. (Try entering the search term you used plus the word ‘debunked’ and see what the results are too?) And it’s like no one searches for ‘should I divorce my spouse?’ unless they’ve been thinking about divorcing their spouse. Then whatever pages we click on and read with critical ‘defences up’ or ‘defences down’ will be based on whatever we feel like reading based on our own biases (including level of effort). Plus, online, one can find almost anything one wants to find because there’s no survival-of-the-fittest mechanism there based on ‘truth’. Lies, myths and inaccuracies can potentially last there forever along with the truths, then constantly mount and be constantly referred to and (re)propagated by others with certain self-interests, or unwittingly.
Web searches bring to the top the best search-engine-optimised pages, not necessarily the most reliable in terms of truth. There’s therefore a risk with self-directed studying, where one chooses the curriculum and information sources for oneself. Studying with others within a diverse class would also expose us to many unexpected perspectives, arguments and ideas.
A lawyer may consider the opposing arguments but not to wonder if the other side might actually be correct or to spend resources that may potentially add support to the other side’s arguments, but merely in order to pre-empt and counterattack the other side, such as with techniques like casting doubt or confusion. Casting doubt on a political candidate, even if the allegation cannot be/hasn’t been proved true, is often damaging enough for their campaign because people are usually risk-averse.
Note that TV advertisements are effective at building name recognition and awareness of a candidate’s policies but any effect on voting is usually minor and limited to late deciders (although even a small effect may be critical in a close campaign). Rather than spend resources trying to persuade new people to agree with your policies, it can therefore be more time and cost-effective to simply demographically identify those who might already agree with your polices yet who don’t normally vote, and help them to actually use their vote.
Due to natural biases, if we disagree with someone, it’s not ‘I’m idiotic if I don’t agree with you’ but ‘you’re idiotic if you don’t agree with me’!
Coercive forms of persuasion include name-calling, jeering, heckling, over-dramatisations, relying on aggression, bullying, intimidation or shouting over the other side instead of presenting purely calm and cogent reasonings with relevant and specific evidence. To a wiser person though, such tactics are a sign of a losing side that’s trying to use emotive means to bolster their arguments because their core arguments are lacking.
It’s hard to be truly impartial regarding emotive subjects – it just depends on how emotionally invested one is regarding the outcome of a debate. We can be reasonable and our views can change (at least marginally) in the face of new information despite the primacy of conclusions, but this can depend on how great one’s emotional attachments to one’s beliefs are – it’s like one’s affect must change first before one’s beliefs can.
The affect heuristic is also a form of substitution, whereby if a question is too complex for one to answer cognitively, it’ll be answered emotionally. People tend to vote on difficult issues according to their affect whenever they’re too personally complex to assess too, unless there’s a default choice. When we don’t fully grasp the reasonings then all we have left is our emotions or affect. If citizens fail to properly understand things, like the way student loans currently work in the UK (which isn’t like an upfront cost but more like a graduate tax that might never be fully paid back if the graduate doesn’t end up earning enough), then they’ll decide things based on how these issues emotionally affect them instead, which might mean they back the sub-optimal choice for themselves.
Tapping into our fluffy desires and fears also taps into our emotions; albeit this doesn’t mean that all fears are without reasonable basis. An ability to be guided by a healthy fear of (potentially) adverse consequences aids survival overall. And individuals who cannot feel the appropriate emotions before they make decisions (due to brain damage) have an impaired ability to make even simple decisions, like choosing which cheese to buy when faced with a bewildering array of fromages in a supermarket – a purely rational analysis of ‘which cheese one wants’ would likely lead to decision paralysis, or at least take an extremely long time(!) Therefore our emotions are vital.
We presume that winning the lottery would make us feel incredibly happy for a very long time but ‘affective forecasting’ reveals that such emotions dissipate far faster than expected. Winners do feel happier for a short while but will quickly settle back to their usual, old state of happiness once more. The same for losses, whereby we anticipate that a loss of limb would make us feel sad forever; but if it happens, the sadness doesn’t persist quite so long.
Emotions are transient – we become quickly adapted and used to something that gives us either elevated happiness or sadness much more than we anticipate, like after moving house. So don’t worry too much about change because it won’t be as bad for as long as you may think. And practice and experience makes everything easier.
Our current mood also affects our behaviours, which in turn affect outcomes and even how others treat us, which can create virtuous/vicious circles. And nothing in life is as important as you think than when you are thinking about it too.
When we’re in a happy mood, the world seems friendlier, there’s hope for the future, our past seems rosier, we’re more sociable and altruistic, decisions are easier to make and good news more readily comes to mind. It increases how much we like ourselves and others, improves our ability to resolve conflicts and strengthens our immune system. Being happy determines your success in both your personal and professional life.
It’s bi-directional too – our moods affect our perceptions, and our perceptions affect our moods. We smile when we’re happy, and can feel happier when we smile :D. So try beaming a long smile (think of something that’s funny or joyful) before and as you do anything, like before an exam or public speech. Sit upright too. Stand and walk with your shoulders back, an open stance and your head held up or neutral, not down. Due to posture feedback – confident people walk with a more upright posture, and people who walk with a more upright posture feel more confident. Walk and basically behave as a happy person. So be more expressive when conversing, speak with a passion and zest, use more positively charged words like ‘love’ and fewer self-references like ‘I’, and give confident handshakes.
But due to the ‘empathy gap’, we can lack empathy with ourselves when we’re in one state of mind or context compared with ourselves (or others) when we’re (or they’re) in a different state of mind or context, like thinking that a TV quiz show is easier than the contestants are making it seem when they’re in front of the heat of the studio lights and an audience of judgemental viewers like us piling pressure on them, whilst we’re sitting cosily on our sofas!
We might judge someone who’s being a sore loser when we’d likely be just as sore if we’d lost instead. We might believe we’d not fall for temptations to cheat when we have no opportunity to cheat, but we might actually be tempted too if we found ourselves in a situation to cheat with little chance of getting caught. We might believe we’ll choose a healthy option for dinner after we’ve just had lunch, but after feeling tired and stressed in the afternoon, we’ll likely go for something comforting and convenient come dinner time. We might want one thing today but want something else tomorrow.
So unless we’ve physically been in a context, that’s being anticipated, many times before – and we’re honest with our own historical track record – we’ve got to somehow anticipate our future state of mind (e.g. stress levels, tiredness, hunger) within the situation we’ll be in, and not assume we’d be feeling how we are at present. We should reduce the surety of our predictions of our future behaviour, or implement measures that’ll nudge us towards making better decisions come the time we must enact our decisions, like locking in what we’re going to have for dinner in advance, or having things that’ll nudge us to take the stairs over the lift or draw our attention onto what’s important on the road for our safety.
Woof.
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