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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Wait, Wait, I had that all wrong - listen to this guy

I Was Wrong 
I had it all wrong. You are not going to see many blog entries with that title!

I have been working on the premise that we need to all agree on what is true, and rational, etc. If people disagree, they are clearly mistaken, and we can work on their information, understanding. We can even work to overcome their built in bias, and error prone thinking.

NOPE - not going to happen. Just let it go. There is a small mountain of research that says normal people go with their instinct most of the time. It's the FAST brain, the gut, the mechanism that evolution gave us to make snap decisions to protect us. It might be possible to train people to work hard with their SLOW brain, spend some time, understand their own bias, etc. But it is uphill, and a lot of work.

The other force at work is CULTURE. Our fast brain goes where our cultural mindset sends it. We are literally not in charge of that If I think I am in charge of my life - that is how things are. If you think that a demon is in charge of yours, or that no one is in charge of your life - that is how things are. It is almost impossible to change that. Our western culture of WEIRD people has us firmly in its grasp. Most of the rest of the world do not share our weird ideas. Trust me on this. 

So  . . . what you need to do is go with the flow, where we are. Understand it. Adapt to it. And maybe, just maybe, you can nudge it a bit.  For a command lesson on this, watch this pair of interviews with Frank Luntz. He is a "communications consultant" with a very insightful view of the American people. It is based on a lot of methodical research, and he is constantly tuning it. Historically, he has represented the GOP, the more conservative portion of our society. Of late, he has moved to a "in defense of truth" position. 

There are two interviews that were part of the FrontLine series on our political world, that are particularly telling. They are long - but I will guarantee that you will come out of there a changed person. He changed my mind. And that is quite an accomplishment! Ask anyone. 

He understands how people work. He reads people. He interviews them, he runs ideas by them. 
This is my shorthand description of what he does: 

  • Listen to understand fully
  • Empathize with the emotion being expressed. You do not need to agree - but express understanding and empathy for the person and what they are sharing.
  • Respond to that - not what you think is a good idea, or even what science and facts tell you is the right thing to do. Go with their feelings.
  • Words are very important. Research what words resonate with your audience. Use those. Avoid ones that get a negative or critical response.  Try to nudge them a bit to a different perspective.
He uses an "Instant Response" focus group technique to read the tone of a group.

Interviews
This one is after the January 6, 2021 insurrection and invasion of the capital. It is remarkable. He explains how the GOP lost Georgia.   
Trump's American Carnage: Frank Luntz 1/27/2021 
It is part of this FrontLine documentary: Trump's American Carnage, 1/26/2021 

https://youtu.be/BVUs4dS30c0 53 minutes


This one is also excellent. It was 9 months before the 2020 election.
America's Great Divide: Frank Luntz Interview 1/13/2020
The FrontLine documentary: America's Great Divide 1/13/2020

For excellent examples of the use of language, watch this one which talks about how to address the current pandemic:  https://youtu.be/HgInPdK3pB0

For more on Frank Lutz, Ted Talks, etc.: https://www.filuntz.com/




Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Reflective Cognition - Metacognition - and Conspiracy Theories

Are We All Crazy?
If you are anything like me, the political world of the past 4 years has been unbelievable. How is it possible that 72 million people support an obvious narcissistic idiot? How can they believe outlandish conspiracy theories spawned by and for him? I have spent a lot of time reading the research literature to make some sense of this. I recently got a major insight into this. This entry is a brief summary. It will be updated as I learn more. You can also contribute - note the comment section at the end.  Thanks for that. 
We are all in this together and I am counting on you.

I want to keep this short and simple, so the main body is bullet points. There are more details in the annotated references. If you are really interested in this, take a look at those. OR, if you are the typical LAZY thinker - never mind. There is nothing here for you. Just move on. 

We are Normally Fast Thinkers
People fall into these illusions for one primary reason - they are NORMAL, and normal people are FAST thinkers. (The research literature actually refers to "lazy thinkers", but that seems derogatory to me.) There are many studies that show that there are other influences at work to meddle with our decision making, but this one seems to be primary. The others have influence, but I think that a lack of reflective cognition is the top one, and we should focus on that one. Just discovering that terminology opened a whole new set of research for me. A short list of some of the theories: 

  • Fast thinking
    A more technical description is a lack of "reflective cognition", or "metacognition". It's from the Greek. It means thinking about thinking. People who pay attention to how their brain and / or gut works, are much more likely to avoid the instant, intuitive responses that most of us are prone to, most of the time. This was evolution's gift. We decide rapidly, and for safety. We recognize a face without any thought process. It is the same for friend or enemy. Fast thinking is our normal mode of operation. Slow thinking, reflective thinking is slow, and takes a lot of energy.
  • Motivated reasoning.
    This is where we leap to accept quick answers that fit out needs for belonging, for being correct, to maintain our self esteem. 
  • Confirmation bias
    A very similar approach - we tend to believe what is consistent with what we already believe. We have a resistance to ideas which attack our existing beliefs. This tendency is so strong that data which is offered that appears to be contrary to our existing belief system, actually serves to shore that up as a defensive mechanism. 
  • Identity protective cognition
    This is confirmation bias to the extreme. When our self identity is wrapped up in a group, our sense of purpose and meaning, any attack on that must be resisted strongly. 
  • Heuristics -
    "Rules of thumb" such as Availability, Representativeness, Anchoring, Affect. These are some of the shorthand intuitions we use. For more see Dwyer. Given that we are primarily intuitive or "lazy" thinkers, understanding these shorthand leaps can be helpful to persuade an audience.
  • Satisficing
    This is a heuristics or rule of thumb identified by Simon to explain how we make irrational economic decisions. We tire easily, and we settle for "good enough". Just imagine trying to make a truly rational choice in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Nutrition, cost, flavor, size, texture, etc. You just go with one that feels right at the moment. TP is another good example - imagine shopping for TP by the price per sheet.
  • Tribal identity
    We are fundamentally social animals. We need to belong, to be part of, to be held close. As our society fragments more and more, our sense of self is tied to less groups and smaller ones. If that small group moves one way, we do not have other social ties to fall back on, so we must go along. See the research by Lilliana Mason

How the Brain Works
I have written about this elsewhere, but here's the shorthand. Our brain or gut (they are the same) is a non stop stream of events. It's like James Joyce's Ulysses on steroids. We have a sense of self because we follow just one of these never ending chains. The challenge is to recognize that there are many, many options going by, and we can choose which one to follow. We are not blindly driven to just go with the flow. We can opt to control it. See Bargh on this. But this takes considerable time and energy.

Information from Current Technology is Overwhelming 
Facebook and the like present us with so much information that our normal filtering mechanism for what can be trusted cannot keep up. Our brain is already taxed with the normal stuff of life - family, friends, work, getting food, shelter, friendship. Taking the time and energy to engage in thinking about our thinking is not an intuitive practice. For things like elections, the actual return on our effort is miniscule - our vote barely counts - so the energy expended is usually commensurate.

Training in MetaCognition and Reflective Cognition Might Help
The jury is out on this, but one possibility seems most likely to my lazy brain. Some research indicates that people who are prone to reflective cognition are better able to discern what is objectively true, and can temper their rapid intuitional response. It seems that some small percentage of us (Pareto) do this fairly consistently, and that a larger percentage might be able to be educated in this practice (mindfulness). The normal curve would say that another small percentage are never going to be able to do this. That does not mean that they are evil or stupid. They are just lacking this skill, like someone with dyslexia. For them, we have to come up with other infrastructure assists. For the bulk of us, hopefully some program of education might suffice.

How to Educate All of Us
If this is true, and it is just the beginning of a theory for a solution, how in the world do we alert the broad swath of humankind about this? Just being open to looking at our thinking process would de facto require that we are already well versed in Reflective Cognition. Piling another bit of information on top of the already overwhelming load is simply not going to work. There is not much available in the literature on this. We could try:
  • Mindfulness education from pre-school to graduate school. We used to do something called mental hygiene, which introduced us to the world of psychological research. Something similar might help get this into common parlance and thinking.
  • Infrastructure "nudges" to move the general populace in the way most beneficial to a positive outcome. Make the most desirable outcome the first one, the default one. Rank choice voting - open up the visible choices. 
  •  Can you identify a few more? 
A Universal Meme to the Rescue
One more thought. There are two research studies by Pennycook that hit me between the eyes with ideas on this. The Podcast, You are Not So Smart, highlighted the most recent one. What if this became a THING, a MEME? What if we had a MEME expressing this, a symbol, an acronym that succinctly put it all together? What if that meme was the topic of the evening news. of the Saturday Night Live cold open? What if it was mentioned in every TV sitcom, movie and mystery? Harvard School of Public Health did just that to get the idea of a designated driver in front of the general public. And I am persuaded, my fast thinking part, that this is exactly how gay marriage so quickly became an accepted cultural shift.

You Can Help
My problem is that I have zero artistic and cultural sense about what meme might work. And I have less than zero ability to get it in front of anyone. Can you help? Stop and Think about it. Be Aware of your brain. Look It UP first. Your Gut is Wrong - Check it out. My Brain Feeds on Facts, does yours? No FAST Thinking Zone. Slow down. Etc.

Technology to the Rescue
I have hope that we will eventually understand how we think and communicate well enough that we can build some infrastructure to help. We need software and tools that enable us to communicate and negotiate, and to come to a consensus on what is true, what is real, and how to best move humakind forward. The internet and social networks got us into this mess by accident. Bring that technology to bear on the problem. We need some fancy "software" that will help us communicate, and negotiate creative alternatives that we can all support. If you want to read a purely fictional account of how this might work, look at the reference for (Finn), and the book Hieroglyph. It's a great story from Canada, and it gave me a lot of hope that this is doable. The story is about an indigenous tribe negotiating with a political leader about their role in Canada. They use all kinds of tools and methods to clearly understand his position, and to explain their position in the best framework that he will most likely understand. 

Of course, it is set in Canada, and you know that they are really different. They seem to be much more community oriented. And if you figure out how they got that way - let me know. It may be just the colder climate - think of all the Nordic countries. BUT  . . . then we also have Russia and the like. 

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WAIT - This may be a waste of time and energy
This post had only been up a few hours, and I learned something that makes me think this is a total waste of time. This interview with Frank Luntz on PBS's Frontline is really telling. He conducts polls and focus groups to find out what people want, what they fear, what they respond to. Then he proposes a way to present an idea to people in a frame of reference that they will buy. He is talking about the Trump and Republicans and the riot that invaded the Capital on 1/6/2021. He seems to be without personal scruples, a gun for hire. But he seems to know how to get a read on his intended audience, and how to reach them.   https://youtu.be/xT3hPuY8w5M 

I know "reframing" works - there is a lot of research on that.
Luntz learns enough about groups of people to determine the terminology that will reach them where they are. He does not give a damn how they think, or how they get their ideas. He just wants to persuade them to go his way, or your way - if you are paying him. E.G. - don't call it a "wall", call it a "barrier". Do NOT call it an "insurrection". "Riot", maybe.

He gets it, and my guess is most politicians do as well. There is simply no way to have people really think and respond to rational arguments. The thing to do is to figure out where the wind is blowing and get in front of it. With some tuning and talking points, you can hopefully steer the craft a bit with the wind. In this realm, there is no known way to sail upwind. No one has yet come up with a keel deep enough.

This from the Wikipedia entry: 
Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. ... If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."[4]
Luntz's description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. ... my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. ... We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind."[4]

I have been, as they say, barking up the wrong tree. Forget about understanding how this works. Use what we know about how people work, and just persuade them to YOUR story. The crazies seem to be in charge right now. Use the same tools and move them the other way. But that does not feel like it is progress. It is just more manipulation and skulduggery. The one with the bigger club or more money wins. Rats. 

BOTTOM LINE
Give up on changing the audience, or the electorate.
  • LISTEN to the audience, to the electorate.
    Find out what their primary concern is. Focus groups, language, ideas. 
  • EMPATHIZE with that view.
    You don't need to agree with it, but listen and empathize. Hold on to them, wish them well. 
  • RESPOND to that - not to what you think is a good idea, or even what science tells you is the right thing to do. Steer the ship a bit - don't fight it. 

REFRAMING
I added some book references on the reframing model, a la Luntz. I apologize for this - I have to go read them and figure out how much of this to just toss.  Again - my apologies - assuming there is anyone who really cares about this. Thanks.

References

  • Bargh, John, Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do.
    This is a collection of the author’s research on how humans actually operate. Most of what we do is an unconscious response to a need, an urge. It is Kahneman’s fast brain, but it operates in all parts of our body. From the introduction:
    “Dr Bargh takes you into his labs at New York University and Yale where his ingenious experiments have shown how the unconscious guides our behaviour, goals and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behaviour and addiction. He reveals the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more. Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as tricks to help you remember to-do items, shop smarter and sleep better. Before You Know It will profoundly change the way you understand yourself by introducing you to a fascinating world only recently discovered, the world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.”

  • Bandler, Richard, & John Grinder,  Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning 
    I have only read the introduction to this book, and I am impressed. This is a scientific analysis of how to use language to persuade people. Not persuade them rationally - but how to speak to their emotions. How have I missed this? I feel like I went down the rabbit hole of rational thinking. My apologies. When exactly does this stop? 

  • Carter, Lee Hartley, Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don't Seem to Matter, Paperback – September 1, 2020, Post Trump election analysis that is telling. I have not read it as yet - the foreword seems focused on one on one persuasion - seek first to understand, etc. I will have to wait until I read more. Donald Trump as the Master Persuader. Scott Adams would understand this well.
  • Cohen, Jeffrey L, Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs
    This study describes 4 experiments in which the subjects were persuaded that their political party supported policies which were, in fact, antithetical to their party, and they said they agreed with them. When asked if they were simply following the party line,  they were insistent that their beliefs were not based on their party allegiance. They composed essays describing in detail how they arrived at these values. The bottom line is that we are almost automatically driven to hold to beliefs that identify us with our group. It is very hard for individuals to step outside of that influence.  You can download a PDF of the study here:
    https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Party-over-policy%3A-The-dominating-impact-of-group-Cohen/5cad54ca73fb0f4d38a8c5795139bac7069f44c8
  • Dwyer, Christopher, 4 Outcomes of Lazy Thinking, Using heuristics to understand why people fall prey to fake news. 02/22/2019, Psychology Today.
    This is basically a commentary on an article in the New York Times about the research of Pennycook and Rand which is cited here. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/fake-news.html for the original article. He has a decent bibliography attached. His contribution is that he relates this research to some of the original scientific insights by Kahneman, on confirmation bias, and Simon on satisficing, and the heuristics or rules of thumb which they describe. Given that we are intuitive thinkers, if you want to persuade people of that ilk, understanding these tendencies would be important https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thoughts-thinking/201902/4-outcomes-lazy-thinking

  • Farias, Miguel, Are the Brains of Atheists Different to Those of Religious People?, 01/30/2021,
    And the answer is, it appears so. The interesting thing about this piece is that it is from a group funded by the John Templeton Foundation, who are adamantly opposed to any disparagement of religion by science and scientists. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, seems to be resistant to mystical experience, and his brain waves indicate why. “With Dawkins, though, the experiment failed. As it turned out, Persinger explained, Dawkins’ temporal lobe sensitivity was “much, much lower” than is common in most people.” There also appears to be a cultural dimension to all of this. “ The results confirmed that a cognitive analytical style was only linked to atheism in three countries: Australia, Singapore and the USA.” https://neurosciencenews.com/atheist-brains-17640/
  • Finn, Ed; Cramer, Kathryn, Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, This is a remarkable little book of short stories about the potential near term future. The first one is by Neal Stephenson, who always makes me think. The book is the result of a project at the University of Phoenix to put scientists in touch with creative authors, to try to project what their research might actually accomplish. It kind of raises the bar for the medium and the researchers. One story is particularly relevant here, Degrees of Freedom. It is about a political dispute in Canada between indigenous peoples and a politician. The genius of it is that it uses many things we understand about how humans communicate, how we make decisions, how we influence each other, and brings them all to bear to help this politician and the tribe communicate, and find a common ground. I found it absolutely brilliant. AND . . . it does give me hope that we might actually be able to understand how we work, and how we might assist our communications enough to be able to effectively negotiate results that will benefit all of us. You can read a bit of the discussion here: https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/08/response-to-degrees-of-freedom/ "What I found most interesting was the attempt by Karl Schroeder to really think about how the future of new media technologies can have an explicit impact on the way we do politics – specifically deliberative and democratic politics. There’s a lot of science fiction that relates to how technologies might encourage authoritarian politics, but not a lot about how they might bring about more positive ways that democratic deliberation might occur."
  • Greenway, Tyler S., & Barrett, Justin L., Intuitive and Reflective Cognition,
    "Cognitive science has distinguished between two types of thinking: intuitive and reflective. Intuitive cognition is fast and automatic, whereas reflective cognition is slow and deliberate. These two types of cognitive systems mutually influence each other. Together, intuitive and reflective cognition may determine how cognitively natural or unnatural certain thoughts may be, thereby influencing the likelihood that particular ideas and practices may become shared enough to be recognized as cultural. The distinction between intuitive and reflective cognition also has theoretical and methodological implications for the study of human thought and behavior, including cultural expression."
    https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1906 or https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1906

  • Lakoff, George, Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, 2014, I had read this a few years ago, and I thought the author had some real insight into how to use language to persuade people. But it did not occur to me at the time, that persuading people rationally was a waste of time and energy. The key is to figure out what they are tuned to want and like, and then reframe your ideas along those lines. Forget about facts and focus on emotions.
  • Luntz, Frank, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, 2008, I would never read this book, based on its title. But understanding where the author is coming from, it is a very important book. More later after I read it! To get a good feel for this guy and what he can do, watch this interview on PBS Frontline: https://youtu.be/xT3hPuY8w5M This is an older interview, but it explains the difference this guy found between Obama and Trump - and his sense of when it started: https://youtu.be/ii9DCfTUiUw BUT - he describes it, he does not offer any wisdom on what the bleep we can do about it.
  • Mason, Lilliana, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, 2018, This author's research indicates that our sense of tribal identity is more at risk today because we have become so polarized. In the past, people had many different social contexts that gave meaning and purpose to life. With our great divide, many people now have only one or two significant groups that give them that sense of self. If data is offered that seems to threaten that sense of belonging, they are much more prone to reject it out of hand. I found the book helpful, but not 100% persuasive.
  • Mcraney, David, Podcast: YANSS 198 – The psychological mechanisms that led to the the storming of the Capitol, an event that sprang from a widespread belief in a conspiracy theory that, even weeks later, still persists among millions  January 29, 2021
    This is an interview with Lovecraft about his most recent research, and the finding that cognitive reflection may actually help with “fake news” and conspiracy theories.
    https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/01/29/yanss-198-the-psychological-mechanisms-that-led-to-the-the-storming-of-the-capitol-an-event-that-sprang-from-a-widespread-belief-in-a-conspiracy-theory-that-even-weeks-later-still-persists-among-2/
  • PennycookGordon, & David G. Rand, Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election, 01.21.2021, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-51 This is a pre-published research article on the false beliefs that were spread among Republican supporters after the 2020 presidential election. The amazing thing is how many people this impacted - millions of people were deceived by multiple conspiracy theories.
    “Despite a lack of any meaningful evidence of systemic election fraud, a majority of Trump voters believed that fraud is common in U.S. elections (>77%), and that Trump won the 2020 election (>65%).”
    Relevant to our topic, one of the findings is that more reflective voters were less likely to be persuaded by the groundless claims. They tested for this attribute with the standard “reflective cognition” test.
    “Thus, political knowledge and engagement were associated with increased political polarization, rather than accuracy. In contrast, cognitive reflection – a measures of one’s ability and disposition to think analytically (Frederick, 2005; Toplak et al., 2011) – was associated with a reduced belief that Trump won among Trump and Biden voters (these correlations are more robust among Trump when the analysis is restricted to individuals who passed the attention check questions; see supplement).”
    “Across two studies with 3446 participants, we found consistent evidence that analytic thinking plays a role in how people judge the accuracy of fake news. Specifically, individuals who are more willing to think analytically when given a set of reasoning problems (i.e., two versions of the Cognitive Reflection Test) are less likely to erroneously think that fake news is accurate.”
    “Thus, our evidence indicates that analytic thinking helps to accurately discern the truth in the context of news headlines. More analytic individuals were also better able to discern real from fake news regardless of their political ideology, and of whether the headline was Pro-Democrat, Pro-Republican, or politically neutral; and this relationship was robust to controlling for age, gender, and education.”
    “Contrary to the popular Motivated System 2 Reasoning account of political cognition, our evidence indicates that people fall for fake news because they fail to think; not because they think in a motivated or identity-protective way. This suggests that interventions that are directed at making the public more thoughtful consumers of news media may have promise.”

    There is hope! If you are interested in more on this topic, the bibliography here is excellent.
  • Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019b). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50.
    This is an extensive collection of research on this topic - how we actually DECIDE what we know. The problem is not that people are stupid, or uneducated - the problem is that our normal behavior is simply lazy. As Kahneman indicated, our fast brain, our gut reaction is automatic. Our slow brain, our reflective cognition takes a lot of energy and time - and we are not prone to do it.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011