Whatever your opinion of President Barack Obama, it isn’t hard to find someone who disagrees. A recent poll in the US found that Obama is the most divisive president since the 1950s: 81 per cent of fellow Democrats think he’s doing a good job but only 13 per cent of opposing Republicans agree.

How can so many people make a judgement about the same person and come to such different conclusions? The obvious explanation is that they are biased – by their political affiliations, by the media, by their friends and family and much else.

This obvious explanation is correct. But who, precisely, is biased? It depends who you ask. Those who approve of Obama think the conservatives, and their media, are the biased ones. Those who don’t, think it’s the liberals. In fact, they are both right.

As any psychologist will tell you, pretty much everything you think and do is coloured by biases that you are typically totally unaware of. Rather than seeing the world as it is, you see it through a veil of prejudice and self-serving hypocrisies.

To get a handle on this, think about your own opinion of Obama. You probably believe your view to be an honest and objective assessment based on a range of evidence from both sides. Perhaps you’ll grudgingly acknowledge that you feel the way you do because you are liberal/conservative, but then reassure yourself that being liberal/conservative is the only rational choice, so that’s OK.

You have just experienced the illusion of naive realism – the conviction that you, and perhaps you alone, perceive the world as it really is, and that anybody who sees it differently is biased. According to Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton University, this conviction is “inescapable and deep”.

If, at this point, you are thinking: “Yeah, right, that might be true of other people, but not me,” then you have fallen foul of yet another aspect of the illusion: the bias blind spot. Most people will happily acknowledge that such biases exist, but only in other people. “It’s not that we’re blind to the concept of bias, or to the fact that it exists,” says Pronin. “We’re just blind to it in our own case.”

Why are we so blinkered? The problem is that our biases – which form and solidify in childhood and early adulthood – operate below the radar, in our subconscious. It is not that people do not look inwards to question their own judgements and beliefs. Many do. But their biases are not consciously available for inspection, so they leap to the conclusion that their beliefs are correct and based on rational reasoning.

Many of the biases are a harmless variant of the positive illusions we routinely entertain in order to shelter our fragile egos from reality, such as a tendency to take credit for success but deny responsibility for failure.

Others are more serious. Few people believe that they are racist or sexist, and their beliefs are honestly held, and yet time and again they are betrayed by their actions. In one experiment, people were shown a picture of a man and a woman and asked to say which they would prefer as police chief. They were also told that the male candidate was “streetwise” and the female candidate “formally educated”, or vice versa. Most people chose the male candidate and then, when asked why, justified their decision by saying that whichever quality had been attributed to him was more important for the job.

While opinions are obviously ripe for bias, facts are also at its mercy, with people adept at interpreting the world to fit with their existing beliefs. For example, environmentalists interpret the fact that most scientists and governments are convinced that humans are changing the climate as open-and-shut evidence that we are. But sceptics just see a conspiracy. No amount of new information will change their minds, and yet on the whole, both camps sincerely believe their views are unbiased and rational.

Similarly, we seek out information that fits with our beliefs and ignore or dismiss information that doesn’t. This “confirmation bias” has been shown time and again, for example in experiments in which people are asked to read a range of evidence about a contentious topic such as capital punishment. Even when exposed to arguments on both sides, most people interpret the evidence in a self-serving way, accepting the data that supports their views and dismissing or ignoring the rest. The scary thing is that they have no awareness of doing it. Similarly, confronting people with new information that contradicts their beliefs more often than not ends up hardening their position.

Sadly, even knowing that you are biased doesn’t necessarily help. “I know that I am susceptible to all sorts of biases because I’m a human being,” says Pronin. “But in a given instance, I’m still not likely to be aware of it.”

I struggle with long sentences

To cut a long story short…oh.

Interesting….

You were quick to judge when I said something about my exerience in Paris that I was being racist or presuming that someone speaking Arabic (I would not have know what lanuage it was) in Paris was an Asylum Seeker. All I was doing was conveying a personal frightening experience and repeating what a man who had come to our aid had told me…..

so presumed prejudices are learnt behaviour??????

I do not consider myself to be racist I work with now and have for the last 6 years different groups which either include AS or are all AS I am DEFINATELY not prejudice to this group

As Stevie Wonder said there is good and bad in everyone….. 8)

stopped when it got all freudian about unconscious processes and ego. Is it by an american [ as if the tpoic did nto give that away anyway]by any chance as they are the only people still giving any credence to that Freud.
I know my opinions are biased because we are discussing opinions and not facts. You cant really have an opinion about whetehr the internet exists but you can have one about whether it is any good for humanity. Most people [ they dont come on stw much] can see the opposing persons view but still disagree with it.
EDIT:If we did not pre judge situations we would be much less well equiped to deal with novel situations. We can generalise from one situation to another and this may be accurate or innaccurate
For example i went to x town and got mugged at 2 am by a black male
we could conclude
dont go to that town it is dangerous
dont go out at 2 am it is dangerous
dont go out at 2 am in that town it is dangerous
only black men are dangerous
only men are dangerous etc
only black men are dangerous in that town
etc the trick is to make the most accurate one.
that said evolutionary it is better to have a false positive [ avoid possible danger] than a false positive – wander blindly into danger.

The terms “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” in their modern usage, generally relate to a perceiving subject (normally a person) and a perceived or unperceived object. The object is something that presumably exists independent of the subject’s perception of it. In other words, the object would “be there,” as it is, even if no subject perceived it. Hence, objectivity is typically associated with ideas such as reality, truth and reliability.

The perceiving subject can either perceive accurately or seem to perceive features of the object that are not in the object. For example, a perceiving subject suffering from jaundice could seem to perceive an object as yellow when the object is not actually yellow. Hence, the term “subjective” typically indicates the possibility of error.

The potential for discrepancies between features of the subject’s perceptual impressions and the real qualities of the perceived object generates philosophical questions. There are also philosophical questions regarding the nature of objective reality and the nature of our so-called subjective reality. Consequently, we have various uses of the terms “objective” and “subjective” and their cognates to express possible differences between objective reality and subjective impressions. Philosophers refer to perceptual impressions themselves as being subjective or objective. Consequent judgments are objective or subjective to varying degrees, and we divide reality into objective reality and subjective reality. Thus, it is important to distinguish the various uses of the terms “objective” and “subjective.”

bah, slaughtered by waderider 🙁

81 per cent of fellow Democrats think he’s doing a good job but only 13 per cent of opposing Republicans agree

So what you’re saying is that members of his own party support him and the opposition don’t? Really? Gosh. who’d have thought? And is that what the rest of the post was about? Sorry, but just couldn’t be arsed reading the rest of it.

I struggle with long sentences

good for you

You were quick to judge when I said something about my experience in Paris…

I didn’t judge

And is that what the rest of the post was about?

Yes, I mean No

😯

Is now a little bit in awe of Junkyard and won’t ever go to Paris again just in case…..

I haven’t bothered to read more than the first few lines of the OP but I saw some percentages showing that people disagree. Assuming there is a right then surely only those opposing it are wrong so it isn’t proof we are all wrong*

*for the record, I am married and there for wrong by default

I know my opinions are biased because we are discussing opinions and not facts…etc

you mean the naive realism bit?

*for the record, I am married and there for wrong by default

hahahahahaha xx

I haven’t bothered to read more than the first few lines of the OP but I saw some percentages showing that people disagree. Assuming there is a right then surely only those opposing it are wrong so it isn’t proof we are all wrong*

😀

Junkyard, Please do finish the article, I’m interested to see your responses in the context of the full piece.

Perhaps a wee mention of New Scientist would help… 🙄

why would that help?
it would certainly increase the likelihood that the thread gets deleted, only some would consider this to be help

Because otherwise it’s just plagiarised…?

Perhaps a wee mention of New Scientist would help…

Attribution is for pussies.

I didn’t pass it off as my own work, so no. I should think it was clear that it was a lifted article.

Well, you posted it with no reference to where you got it from, under your forum name, so yes, I’d say you did pass it off as your own work.

What would have been so hard about putting;

From today’s New Scientist;

Whatever your opinion of President Barack Obama, it isn’t hard to find someone who disagrees. A recent poll in the US found that Ob…
Then it really would be clear, rather than you just ‘thinking’ that it was.

yeah, alright if you say so. Though i doubt anyone here thought i wrote it myself and i referred to it as ‘the article’. Junkyard pointed out that it was by an American. but if you still thought it was mine, than i apologise.

This just proves how very right I am about everything really.

I’ve met grum. He certainly is a real article! 🙂

You have just experienced the illusion of naive realism – the conviction that you, and perhaps you alone, perceive the world as it really is, and that anybody who sees it differently is biased

I would call that either arrogance, stupidity or an stw regular.
In the example cited I think sexist would do.
Other interesting ones are the Fundamental Attribution Error – google it- and also with racism / sterotyping. Many racists know people of a race they hate. this does not make them change their view of the group that person belongs to rather they remove that person from that group and say they are not like the rest of the group. Again I would just say their generalisation is poor/wrong.
Obviously intropsection is nonesense as was shown by early psychological methodologies. However when psychologists give people insufficient information to produce considered conclusions [and make them choose]we can hardly be surprised that they use bias to reach a decision. I would say the bias in sexism exists from conformity and learning…we see more males being coppers than females. i suspect we could get a different result if we used nursing for example. If i had a bloke and a woman and you asked me to guess which was a copper and which was a nurse it would always be more accurate [ thousands of trials] to say male copper female nurse. It is bias/prejudice [ pre judging based on observable data] but it also has a basis in reality and would not make me a sexist even though the world may be.
To be a truly tabula rasa you need to be either a child a moron or a zen buddisht at enlightenment. I dont disagree bias happens I would disagree about the causes and the explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

EDIT: how could anyone think that that was his own work and it needs referencing to avoid confusion 😯

EDIT: how could anyone think that that was his own work and it needs referencing to avoid confusion

I didn’t think it was his own work. I knew it wasn’t his work. Thats. The. Point.

I just wasted 5 mins of my life reading this bollox.

But that’s just my opinion, so I’m probably wrong.

I had to read a whole load of rubbish just to find out that the OP didn’t write this nonsense himself.

I even get the New Scientist. That looks like one of the bits that I try to avoid reading as being too dull and worthy for me.

I didn’t think it was his own work. I knew it wasn’t his work. Thats. The. Point.

So did everyone else, I can’t imagine anyone thought he was passing it off as his own work

if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck etc.etc,

oh, MB that was A Douglas Adams quote, not my own work 😉
the duck that is, not the rest of it 🙂

Sorry uplink,but that’s a misattribution,IIRC Teddy Roosevelt originally.

Sorry uplink,but that’s a misattribution,IIRC Teddy Roosevelt originally.

oh no, will I get reported 🙂

Actually,I’m wrong too,the infallible wikipedia cites James Whitcombe Riley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test .

Militantbiker. Did you read the article? See it was about biases, how pre-concieved notions can affect peopleds opinions. I was interested in the points raisred, especially in the context of the arguments here. Can you see that knowing it was from the New Scientist. ,might influence people’s views on the article? For precisely the reasons cited in the article. So in this context it would not have been helpful, combined with the fact that k knowingly reproducing copyrighted material may be a problem fo the mods and result in the closing of the thread. So there were good reasons for not citing the source. But of course I missed th important point which it appears is the fact that you too have read a magazine this week and people should know all about it.. it is clear that it is amgazine article, anyone too dim to realise that would probably be unable to contirbute to the intention of the thread anyway, or in fact switch a computer on. So, tell me again how citing its source would have been helpful?

Often contradicted, Never wrong. 😉

Oh no! CharlieFungus is getting some of his own!

NEVER EVER use cut and paste, mate!

Actually,I’m wrong too,the infallible wikipedia cites James Whitcombe Riley

What’s TJ got to say? – he won’t be wrong

If you are going to quote someone put a link and reference to the original work.

So, tell me again how citing its source would have been helpful?

You would have been able to sleep at night, you monster!

If you are going to quote someone put a link and reference to the original work.

Why? – it’s only a bicycle forum on the internet here not anything that really matters