Quotes About Bias

El partidismo extremo puede ser literalmente adictivo.

The findings get more disturbing. Perkins found that IQ was by far the biggest predictor of how well people argued, but it predicted only the number of my-side arguments. Smart people make really good lawyers and press secretaries, but they are no better than others at finding reasons on the other side. Perkins concluded that "people invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the entire issue more fully and evenhandedly.

Wason called this phenomenon the confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and interpret new evidence in ways that confirm what you already think. People are quite good at challenging statements made by other people, but if it's your belief, then it's your possession—your child, almost—and you want to protect it, not challenge it and risk losing it.19

You can take the IAT yourself at ProjectImplicit.org

skilled arguers Ã¢â'¬Â¦ are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views."50

each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons.

ProjectImplicit.org

Simplemente, no sentimos tanta empatía hacia los que vemos como -los otros-

This principle, called "negativity bias,"13 shows up all over psychology. In marital interactions, it takes at least five good or constructive actions to make up for the damage done by one critical or

Once people join a political team, they get ensnared in its moral matrix. They see confirmation of their grand narrative everywhere, and it's difficult-perhaps impossible-to convince them that they are wrong if you argue with them from outside of their matrix.

The authors pointed out that nearly all research in psychology is conducted on a very small subset of the human population: people from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (forming the acronym WEIRD).

The Weirdest People in the World?"2 The authors pointed out that nearly all research in psychology is conducted on a very small subset of the human population: people from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (forming the acronym WEIRD).

These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions.

people invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the entire issue more fully and evenhandedly."22

Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic killing

But the rest of the time—which is almost all of the time—accountability pressures simply increase confirmatory thought. People are trying harder to look right than to be right.

If I could nominate one candidate for "biggest obstacle to world peace and social harmony," it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are.

Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive.

If people can literally see what they want to see—given a bit of ambiguity—is it any wonder that scientific studies often fail to persuade the general public?

And now that we all have access to search engines on our cell phones, we can call up a team of supportive scientists for almost any conclusion twenty-four hours a day. Whatever you want to believe about the causes of global warming or whether a fetus can feel pain, just Google your belief. You'll find partisan websites summarizing and sometimes distorting relevant scientific studies. Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide you to the study that's right for you.

Liberals and conservatives actually move further apart when they read about research on whether the death penalty deters crime, or when they rate the quality of arguments made by candidates in a presidential debate, or when they evaluate arguments about affirmative action or gun control.39

For not only is wiping out bias and hate impossible in principle, in practice eliminating prejudice through central authority means eliminating all but one prejudice—that of whoever is most politically powerful.

stamping out prejudice inevitably means making everybody share the same prejudice

A solid group of 100 or so [cognitive] biases has been repeatedly shown to exist,