Ebook Self-Deception as the Root of Political Failure
Just about everyone thinks that their politicalviews are better than the views of smarter or better trained others. On economic issues, few voters defer to the opinions of economists. Nor does this appear to be a well-grounded suspicion of experts. Many citizens are deliberately dismissive, stubborn and irrational. At the same time these individuals maintain a passionate self-righteousness. They are keener to talk than to listen, the opposite ofwhat an information-gathering model would suggest. Individuals tend to believe that their private self-interest coincides with the national self-interest. Debates and exchange of information tend to polarize opinion rather than producing convergence.
Individuals of ten continue to hold their political views even when a contra ryrealitystares themin the face. Numerous twentieth-century intellectuals supported Stalin and the Communists. They refused to abandon the Communist Party ven when information about massacres and purges became well-known, instead rationalizing their commitments by reinterpreting the evidence. Many Muslims, when confronted with decisive evidence of the role of Osama bin Laden in the events of9/11, including a taped confession, have responded byclaiming that the evidence is faked and that Osama is innocent. Some charged that the bombing was a “Zionist conspiracy,” masterminded by Israel. A Gallup pollshowed that 61 percent of the respondents, from nine Muslim countries, think Arabs had nothing to do withthe attacks.
These examples show the significance ofself deception in human behavior and in politics. By self-deception I mean individual behavior that disregards, throws out, or reinterprets freely available information. Individuals frequently treat their personal values as a kind of ideal point, and assume that the pursuit of those values also yield the best practical outcome. For instance, religious groups who reject parts of modern medicine (e.g., blood transfusions) might also believe that those treatments are not very effective in medical terms. Similarly, people of ten interpret "information issues"as "value issues,"or underweight the relevance of information for the issue at hand. To use the terminology of Feigenbaumand Levy (1996), individuals have preferences over beliefs rather than being pure truth-seekers. Ifwe put the argument in Bayesian terms we can think of each individual as having a prior. Individuals welcome confirming evidence for the prior but they throw out disconfirming evidence.
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Ebook Self-Deception as the Root of Political Failure
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