I loved that post. I commented on it originally, but I’ll comment here too.
People probably use bicameral reasoning for a lot of things, but I doubt that too many people actually use it for thinking about politics.
I remember sitting around a campfire with my mom and grandpa in like kindergarten and listening to them discuss politics. My grandpa was talking about all these issues, and my mom was admitting to not being well-informed or having strong opinions about any of them. She said, “As long as democrats approve of abortion, nothing will convince me to vote for them.” My grandpa sighed and told her she was trapped in a religious bubble, that there was a whole world out there she was ignorant of.
But I remember thinking, “Wow! Mom is actually smart.” If democrats are murdering tons and tons of babies every year, and we only hope they go to heaven but God doesn’t actually say, who cares about money or guns or school or any of that other stuff? Even global warming was insignificant, since we believed the earth was going to end anyway. Maybe global warming would just be His way of destroying it. So based on abortion alone, I considered myself Republican until I deconverted from Christianity.
Maybe a week after deconverting, I thought, “well, I guess I should think about voting democrat now.” This was based solely on environmental concerns. There was no longer any guarantee that the earth would end anytime soon, and I’d quite rather it didn’t. All the other issues were fun to think about if I could find the time to inform myself, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about them.
So ultimately, maybe a lack of scope insensitivity could be the root cause of the strong correlation between political party and religious affiliation. Everyone blames herd mentality, which is a huge part of it, but even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers… which is a nice counter for people who think that accurate beliefs aren’t too important as long as people’s beliefs make them happy.
While your family’s situation is explained by lack of scope insensitivity, I’d like to put forward an alternative. I think the behavior you described also fits with rationalization. If you family had already made up their mind about supporting the Republican party, they could easily justify it to themselves (and to you) by citing a particular close-to-the-heart issue as an iron-clad reason.
Rationalization also explains why “even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers”—it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Yeah, but if my mom’s parents were on one side of the fence, that would make it less likely for her to hop to the other side, right? She did seem like she thought the democrats were probably right about some things, but that those things were dwarfed by the larger issue. So I’m still mostly convinced this instance was a lack of scope insensitivity.
it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Ah yes, good point. I’m guilty too, haha. A few years ago I engaged in some motivated cognition to convince myself there were solid secular reasons to oppose gay marriage, since everyone I knew and respected was against it even though they claimed to believe in the separation of church and state.
I loved that post. I commented on it originally, but I’ll comment here too.
People probably use bicameral reasoning for a lot of things, but I doubt that too many people actually use it for thinking about politics.
I remember sitting around a campfire with my mom and grandpa in like kindergarten and listening to them discuss politics. My grandpa was talking about all these issues, and my mom was admitting to not being well-informed or having strong opinions about any of them. She said, “As long as democrats approve of abortion, nothing will convince me to vote for them.” My grandpa sighed and told her she was trapped in a religious bubble, that there was a whole world out there she was ignorant of.
But I remember thinking, “Wow! Mom is actually smart.” If democrats are murdering tons and tons of babies every year, and we only hope they go to heaven but God doesn’t actually say, who cares about money or guns or school or any of that other stuff? Even global warming was insignificant, since we believed the earth was going to end anyway. Maybe global warming would just be His way of destroying it. So based on abortion alone, I considered myself Republican until I deconverted from Christianity.
Maybe a week after deconverting, I thought, “well, I guess I should think about voting democrat now.” This was based solely on environmental concerns. There was no longer any guarantee that the earth would end anytime soon, and I’d quite rather it didn’t. All the other issues were fun to think about if I could find the time to inform myself, but I wasn’t terribly concerned about them.
So ultimately, maybe a lack of scope insensitivity could be the root cause of the strong correlation between political party and religious affiliation. Everyone blames herd mentality, which is a huge part of it, but even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers… which is a nice counter for people who think that accurate beliefs aren’t too important as long as people’s beliefs make them happy.
While your family’s situation is explained by lack of scope insensitivity, I’d like to put forward an alternative. I think the behavior you described also fits with rationalization. If you family had already made up their mind about supporting the Republican party, they could easily justify it to themselves (and to you) by citing a particular close-to-the-heart issue as an iron-clad reason.
Rationalization also explains why “even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers”—it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Yeah, but if my mom’s parents were on one side of the fence, that would make it less likely for her to hop to the other side, right? She did seem like she thought the democrats were probably right about some things, but that those things were dwarfed by the larger issue. So I’m still mostly convinced this instance was a lack of scope insensitivity.
Ah yes, good point. I’m guilty too, haha. A few years ago I engaged in some motivated cognition to convince myself there were solid secular reasons to oppose gay marriage, since everyone I knew and respected was against it even though they claimed to believe in the separation of church and state.