RAYMOND — I keep seeing and hearing speculation about many of our new president’s mystifying comments – from insisting voting fraud explains Hillary Clinton’s far higher popular vote total to saying that on 9/11 he saw thousands of people “cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations … as the World Trade Center came down.” Are they lies (so attempts at manipulation) or delusions (suggesting mental illness)?
I’ve heard similar concerns regarding our governor, Paul LePage, who has proudly declared, “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular”; has suggested that most drug traffickers in Maine are men of color from other states and “half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave,” and has called on Maine to “bring the guillotine back” and publicly execute drug traffickers.
May I suggest an alternative explanation to lying or lunacy? It’s more consistent with psychological science and may also explain the thinking of many of their supporters (perhaps even many detractors): confirmation bias, combined with heuristics (mental shortcuts, especially availability and representativeness); cognitive dissonance, and, perhaps, being “closed” on a personality trait called “openness to experiences.”
What does that mean? “Confirmation bias” is an incredibly pervasive tendency to notice, remember and value evidence (“facts”) that supports preconceptions and beliefs. “Availability” means our natural tendency to utilize evidence that’s right there in front of us (even if inaccurate) and not bother looking for evidence that’s less accessible. “Representativeness” means tending to judge “truth” by how well something matches our mental image or prototype – whether it seems consistent with our pre-existing beliefs.
“Cognitive dissonance” is discomfort with ideas and evidence that don’t fit our beliefs, urging us to make them fit anyway instead of changing our beliefs to fit the evidence. And those more “closed” to experience tend to be more culturally conservative, more prone to prejudice and less interested in intellectual engagement and scrutinizing ideas.
So, consider Donald Trump remembering his inaugural address from his own viewpoint of standing right in front of a huge crowd and feeling really good about what he sees. That’s his available evidence at the time, and it’s representative of and confirmatory to believing – since he won the election – that most Americans support him.
Now, consider his own comments from the speech at the CIA. “I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field” – creating cognitive dissonance. “I’m like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people,” acknowledging his evidence was how it “looked” to him – availability – suggesting he values and utilizes that over and above more distant (if more verifiable and accurate) evidence.
This is not lying. This is not delusion. This is a normal human tendency, a flaw in human reasoning that scientific thinking helps counterbalance. Only Trump repeatedly dismisses and rejects scientific findings (e.g., that terrorism by Muslims accounted for only one-third of 1 percent of murders in America last year), and his reactions strongly suggest an impulsive, gut-feeling way of thinking, not a self-skeptical, disconfirmation-seeking, scientific one.
He epitomizes the consequences of anti-science. Our natural, human, flawed thinking gets us by in many situations; it produces good-enough decision making most of the time. But when situations get complicated, nuanced and emotionally charged, if not using a science-based approach, watch out!
You can apply the same rubric to Gov. LePage. Consider his binder of photos of drug dealers arrested in Maine. “I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic,” he asserted last August. But subsequent examination found that only 40 percent of those pictured appeared black or Hispanic, while about 60 percent were white.
How could LePage have exaggerated so badly? “Le-Page, like his buddy Trump, is a pathological liar, fraud, and con artist” was one online response to a Portland Press Herald article about the situation. Another called LePage’s assertion a “delusion.” But psychological science suggests it might be neither nefarious intent nor insanity but real, compassionate concern fueled by misperceptions that persist because these two Republican leaders neither value nor utilize scientific thinking to provide correction for flawed human reasoning.
Unfortunately, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote almost 800 years ago, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The scientific method followed about 400 years later. It seems that many of us – including voters and elected officials – haven’t learned either of these lessons yet.
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