As the Worm Turns

I’ve posted claiming that political affiliation should be seen as a function of psychology and not belief. That’s a crazy thing to say. Assertions that absurd need to be defended.

So I’ll back-track: I am exaggerating for rhetorical effect. Of course there is more to it than just an individual’s psychology and worldview. There’s also the capacity for self-deception.

Arnold Kling has a kick-ass short essay explaining how this works. On one level being informed is too costly to be worth it:

The general public follows what I would call a “low-investment” strategy for avoiding the truth.
…
Ilya Somin…points out that there is no particular reason for citizens to make a large investment in learning facts or forming coherent beliefs about political issues. The low probability that your vote will make a difference makes for an adverse cost-benefit calculation from obtaining information.

On another level — the level of public intellectuals — there is a “high-investment strategy for avoiding truth”:

[Paul Krugman] puts considerable effort into emphasizing facts and arguments that support his overall position, while ignoring conflicting evidence.
…
Limbaugh and Krugman … both follow strategies that are designed to reinforce prior beliefs of conservatives and liberals, respectively. They highlight information and arguments that support their prior beliefs. When they encounter contrary evidence, they engage in “motivated skepticism,” seeking to undermine the credibility or minimize the significance of the adverse information.

Now that we have a sense of how individuals protect their particular worldviews, we just need a plausible account of where those worldviews come from. I’ve always suspected that there’s an evolutionary advantage to having multiple personality types in a population, but I’ve always been amenable to evolutionary psychology.

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Rationality, Science, Psychology, Arnold Kling