Flexible Facts.

Today on the blog we are going to discuss an interesting subject from an article that Pat provided. While the article is pretty lengthy it is well worth the read. I always thought I was open minded and when presented with the facts willing to change my mind. Now, after reading the article I'm not so sure. My doubt centers clearly on the subject of politics. It disturbs me to no end when the political talk show pundits distort fact after fact and yet their followers are convinced they are telling the truth. Now I wonder if I am as guilty as those that I accuse. You can read the entire article here:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=1

Quoting a paragraph on us ignoring facts "On its own, this might not be a problem: People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. A striking recent example was a study done in the year 2000, led by James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong anti-welfare bias.)"

Quoting another paragraph "What’s going on? How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them."

Quoting a third paragraph, trying to understand why we ignore facts. "One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are."

Why is it so hard to admit we are wrong? Why do we ignore the facts that prove us wrong? Do you feel facts change your mine when you are wrong? In the third paragraph above it seems to explain how cults expand and then keep people under their wings, have we reached the point where our political parties are now cults?

Thanks, Pat for an interesting article and subject for discussion! It gives new meaning to the phrase from Dragnet, "just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."

WHO AM I?

Yesterday's answer was Willa Cather

I was the first woman born (1918) in my state to earn a college degree. I was the eighth of nine children born to a hard drinking dad with a bad temper that ruled the household. Mom often had to beg dad for money to buy clothing and other necessities for the family. Mom sometimes stole coins from his coin purse, and she sold an occasional cheese out of his sight. I was unhappy seeing the subterfuge required of my mother to maintain a simple household. When the Bible was quoted to me to defend the subordinate position of women to men, I declared that when I grew up I'd learn Greek and Hebrew so that I could correct the mistranslation that I was confident lay behind such verses. At sixteen I began teaching to augment the family's income. I replaced a male teacher but was paid less than half his wage. I asked for equity and my salary increased to sixteen dollars per month, higher than average pay for a woman but less than that of a man doing the same work. When nineteen instead of taking another teaching position I enrolled in school. I studied algebra, logic, geography, literature, manners, and more. I continued to teach and, when possible, to study at private academies. When I lost my sister I stayed close to home to keep my grief-stricken mother company. Before turning twenty-five I traveled by train, steamship and stagecoach to Oberlin College, the country's first college to admit both women and African Americans. I entered college believing that women should vote and assume political office, that women should study the classic professions and that women should be able to speak their minds in a public forum. While there I experienced severe headaches and took to removing my bonnet during Sunday sermons to ease the pain but was required to sit in the back row so that others would not see my barehead in church. In my third in college I met an abolitionist and suffragist and together we would eventually marry abolitionist brothers and thus become sisters-in-law. I was the first recorded American woman to retain her own last name after marriage. My first solo speech was given at the invitation of a local anti-slavery society in celebration of the anniversary of West Indian emancipation. I took my place among the men on the speaker's platform and delivered my speech. I was called before the College's Ladies' Board to answer for the transgression of speaking to a mixed audience. Against my families advice I became a well known lecturer. I wrote and spoke extensively about a wide range of women's rights, publishing, often distributing speeches by myself. I was called "the morning star of the woman's rights movement." In 1856 I was accused in court, and spoke in defense of a rumor put forward by the prosecution that I gave a knife to former slave Margaret Garner, on trial for the killing of her own child to prevent it from being enslaved. I wowed Mr. Greeley at the first Women's Rights Convention with the following words: "We want to be something more than the appendages of Society; we want that Women should be the coequal and help-meet of Men in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life. We want that she should attain to the development of her nature and womanhood; we want that when she dies, it may not be written on her gravestone that she was the "relict" of somebody." Who Am I?