The largely relative nature of comparisons we make on the fly is extremely important. We don't view things big-picture, by default we view everything locally.
Getting positive or negative reactions to something you do or say is a greater influence on your thinking than logic and reasoning, the new research suggests – so if you're in a group of like-minded people, that's going to reinforce your thinking. Receiving good feedback also encourages us to think we know more than we actually do.
So maybe it's not being a group of like-minded people per se that causes groupthink, but rather the praise they give each other ? Praise is much more likely in a group of like-minded individuals, but that would shift the root cause of groupthink in an interesting way : it's not hearing the same view, but hearing praise and being rewarded for the view.
The team behind the tests says this plays into something we already know about learning – that for it to happen, learners need to recognise that there is a gap between what they currently know and what they could know. If they don't think that gap is there, they won't take on board new information.
"What we found interesting is that they could get the first 19 guesses in a row wrong, but if they got the last five right, they felt very confident," says Marti. "It's not that they weren't paying attention, they were learning what a Daxxy was, but they weren't using most of what they learned to inform their certainty."
Again, I would really like research focusing on the conditions under which we form the most rational, evidence-based conclusions and have the most appropriate degree of confidence in those conclusions. Dunning-Kruger has been known since Plato's time, let's try something else now. It seems to me that people are uniquely irrational when it comes to higher reasoning : they don't walk into walls very often or repeatedly jam electrical wiring into various orifices, yet they're perfectly capable of believing the Earth is flat. They're also capable of launching rockets to the Moon. So what causes these different modes of thinking ? It can't just be sheer stupidity. And if I praise these current researchers for their study, I'd like to think that doesn't encourage them to believe it more, or there'd be a horrendous feedback loop. We can't all be permanent slaves to such dog-like methods of reinforced belief.
Backfire effect studies have found that beliefs start to shift if contrary information makes up ~30% of what someone's exposed to. Perhaps something similar happens with reinforcing beliefs, because clearly under some conditions, having constant praise causes suspicion rather than reinforcement. Everyone eventually realises that parental praise is usually higher than deserved, without resentment. The importance of relative comparisons is very interesting, but there's clearly more to it than that.
https://www.sciencealert.com/feedback-study-explains-why-false-beliefs-stick
I think this is also why we have to limit our exposure to self confirming takes on things we are already biased toward. I know my general rule for planning sessions is it there are more than one people who agree, one of them is not needed in the meeting.
ReplyDeleteJoe Carter it's also why we probably need to value gadflies more than we usually do.
ReplyDeleteJohn Wehrle As long as somebody is trading ideas and not insults, I tend to appreciate the exchange. Beyond that, once ideas have been traded, the is a certain hanger on type who seems to think that having the last word or repeating the same understood point over and over can add value. To me it turns an otherwise valuable perspective into a buzzing gadfly.
ReplyDeleteJoe Carter that sounds more like an ego issue than what I think of as a gadfly but I agree that it's not helpful.
ReplyDeleteI know a few people who are first-rate ideas people. They'll come up with crazy ideas almost unconstrained by known facts and discard them without prejudice once evidence emerges to the contrary. Unfortunately I know rather more people who will come up with crazy ideas and stick with them to the bitter end, constantly blaming dogmatic groupthink mainstream science for for not listening to their half-baked ravings.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor I have often wondered if our ideas are serving an evolutionary objective such as perhaps that of a symbolic fire that we use to protect (or distract/deny etc.) us from the scary abyss of the unknown. or maybe as social glue, since defending ideas without a tangible hook to the the objective seems to happen with passion and sincerity so often with so many of us that I am not so sure of my own perspective despite my effort to understand the difference between hypothetical speculations and more solidly grounded evidence.
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