on thinking

            Why is it that otherwise reasonable people so frequently hold tightly to completely unreasonable conclusions on certain subjects?  Why, for example, are there Ph.D.’s who are not entirely certain Barack Obama was born in Hawaii?  Why are there doctors and lawyers and CEO’s who are fairly certain the twin towers were brought down by the CIA?  Why are there teachers of science who consider evolution apostasy?

            Why are there otherwise sober, law-abiding citizens who secretly horde weapons and ammunition in preparation for the day they have to defend themselves against U.S. Army units sent by the government to take their weapons and property from them? Why are there multitudes of presumably intelligent parents who refuse to have their kids vaccinated against childhood diseases?

            Fortunately, we have modern psychology to explain these conundrums to us.  The answer, it turns out, lies in our proclivity for engaging in what the shrinks call “motivational reasoning,”  which, like so many terms psychology gives us, chooses its words poorly.  “Motivational reasoning,” it turns out, isn’t really reasoning at all.  The more appropriate word choice would be “rationalization.” 

            The word “reasoning” infers a process whereby one obtains facts, processes them, verifies them, tests them in a real world environment where possible, then synthesizes from them a conclusion blind to everything except what the facts support.  It is, in other words, an inductive process, one in which a study of particular instances leads to a general law or conclusion.

            “Motivational reasoning” involves the diametric opposite of that process.  It involves starting with a preferred conclusion and seeking facts that will support it.  It is, in essence, a deductive process, which does not so much involve reasoning as rationalizing, finding a way to justify a conclusion one has already drawn.

            On the subject of the President’s birth, for example, we now have as part of the public record every legal or para-legal document that can exist, all saying he was born in Hawaii.  There is the Certificate of Live Birth, the co-called Long Form Birth Certificate, and the birth announcement that appeared in a Hawaiian newspaper.  There are also hospital records from the hospital identified on all those documents as the place in which Obama was born, indicating that indeed a male baby was born to his mother in that hospital.

            Reason would suggest that, on the basis of the facts, the person now holding the office of President of the United States was indeed born in Hawaii.  The “birthers,” however, motivationally reasoned for a long time that since Obama refused to produce the Long Form Birth Certificate, it was safe to conclude he wasn’t born in Hawaii.  When he did produce that document, it introduced a fact not consonant with their preferred conclusion, so they motivationally reasoned instead that the document was a forgery, part of the vast, cabalistic conspiracy that promoted Obama to office in the first place.  They deduced a fact, in other words, to support their preferred conclusion.

            It’s easy to ridicule the birthers and the climate deniers and the left wing conspiracy believers, but in truth we should do so with some trepidation.  Much as we don’t want to hear this, all of us engage in “motivational reasoning” from time to time, and indeed, our ability to do so is part of what keeps us sane.  

            We all of us like to believe that when we think about something, we do so with our brains alone and produce conclusions that are therefore completely rational, logical and objective.  That, however, is a warm and fuzzy fiction.  Some 2500 years ago, Aristotle pointed out that thoughts are influenced by feelings and that very often feelings are generated by thoughts.  If I’m already in a bad mood, discovering that my car won’t start may well become clear evidence the world is out to get me.  If I’m in a good mood when my car refuses to start, it may become an excuse to call my boss and say I can’t get to work that day.

            On the other side of the coin, if something triggers in me the thought of a camouflaged yahoo sitting in a deer stand 30 feet in the air with a high-powered rifle and a telescopic sight engaging in the “sport” of waiting for Bambi to amble innocently into range, angry feelings will well up immediately.

            The point is that much of what we think is a function of how we feel, and much of what we feel is a function of how we think.  And motivational reasoning doesn’t just happen in regard to fringe element things like the ones I’ve mentioned so far.  For example, there is no reasonable way to deny that Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare would end “Medicate as we know it.”  Medicare as we know it is a plan where the government automatically pays about 80% of any medical bill a senior citizen accrues.  Ryan’s plan would involve the government giving seniors a subsidy with which to buy private insurance, which would then pay some percentage of their medical bills.  Two very different processes.

            Here’s where motivational reasoning comes in.  A conservative will look at that fact and see that individuals are being required to take greater responsibility for themselves and that the total cost to government is lowered.  Since those square perfectly with two important pre-disposed conclusions the conservative holds sacred, he feels good about the Ryan plan, and will hold up those two "facts" as justification for that.  A rationalization.

            A liberal looks at the same fact and sees that  private insurers will benefit greatly and seniors will be far less certain of adequate health care.  Since those square perfectly with two pre-disposed bad feelings the liberal has about anything conservative, he will conclude the Ryan plan is a bad one, and hold up his feeling induced thoughts as justification.  Another rationalization.

            Notice that in both cases, all the facts are in fact facts.  Notice as well that both the liberal and the conservative are trumpeting the facts that support their already formed conclusion or feeling, and somehow missing—or managing to reject—the ones that don’t support that conclusion or feeling.

            We’ve all heard the phrase, “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.”  It’s a phrase we always manage to convince ourselves (more motivational reasoning) applies beautifully to the way other people act but not at all to ourselves.  In point of fact, though it is probably true that some among us are more inclined to not be confused by facts than others, dismissal of inconvenient truths is something we all engage in.

            What has perhaps made motivational reasoning such an au currant topic in psychology today is that NOT engaging in it may be getting harder and harder to do.  What inclines us to engage in motivational reasoning—again, rationalization really—rather than purely cognitive reasoning is to a large extent the degree to which feelings derived from prejudices—ethnic, religious, political, economic, social, cultural, whatever the source—inform our beliefs.  And there has been, over the past 50 or 60 years, a sea change in the birth and nurturing of prejudices—or at least it seems that way from the anecdotal perspective of someone who has lived through the past 50 or 60 years.

            Until 1980, when Ted Turner launched CNN as a 24 hour news channel, national and international news were things most Americans received on TV once a day, around dinner time, and not really at all on the weekends.  Newspapers published a morning edition, and in most urban areas, an evening edition—which similarly rarely appeared on the weekends.  There was no internet, at least not in most people’s homes, let alone their telephones.

            There was not, in other words, the ominipresence of “information” with which we are bombarded now.  Until 1980, TV news came from NBC, CBS or ABC.  Now, by my count, there are something like 18 television channels (on my cable system) broadcasting some form of “news.”  And there’s the internet, where “news” comes constantly from sources that are not always even findable, much less reliable.  And talk radio.  I won’t even go there.

            Just as important, maybe more so, until the ‘80’s, the gold standard for any news organization, broadcast or print, was dissemination of verifiable information without comment or interpretation.  Just the facts, ma’am, as a popular ‘50’s TV show often said. Newspapers had their editorial pages, of course, and TV had its “commentary” shows, but even there, great care was taken not to print or broadcast any opinion that could not be thoroughly supported by facts.  Even CNN, in its early days, was more of a headline deliverer than a headline explainer.

            That approach to journalism is now so old-school as to seem almost quaint.  Today, every newspaper is expected to have a “slant,” (the New York Times is liberal, the New York Post is conservative), and while the broadcast networks have remained relatively objective in their news reporting (Fox News excepted), every cable channel has a clear philosophy.  As of course, does every internet site.  If you want a liberal spin, go to huffingtonpost.com.  If you’re conservative, try drudgereport.com. 

            The point is that prejudices, biases, pre-conceived conclusions, even bigotries, are much easier to come by and much easier to nourish than they ever were before.  Hence, motivational reasoning is a much bigger part of what all of us do every day.

            I hear pundits and ordinary people alike grouse every day about the “hyper-partisanship” that dominates our politics.  I have a solution.  Let’s turn the clock back to 1980, shut down all cable news channels, all talk radio, all internet sites with any political, social, religious, etc. content, and require that nothing appear in print or broadcast that can’t be independently verified by at least three sources.  That would probably give many of us a lot of holes to fill in our day, but it might also force us to start seeing information in its broadest rather than narrowest context and make us more willing to let facts persuade us as to truth and less willing to go cherry picking for facts that support the truth we like best.