Motivated reasoning and cognitive bias are terms used by psychosocial researchers to describe a tendency among people to filter information, turn off eyes and ears, and consider only the evidence they want to hear.<\/p>\n
Everyday in our local newspaper, I\u00a0read letters to the editor. Letters from hotheads. Letters from bigots who rationalize hatred even as they deny their bigotry. \u00a0Most remarkable is the inventiveness of people who go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize the irrational and engage in willful self-deception.<\/p>\n
Fake news, bogus conspiracies, straw man arguments, exaggerated and embellished claims, errors of attribution, errors of reasoning, denial, projection \u2026 all are examples of cognitive bias.<\/p>\n
Each week, I see examples of willful self-delusion in opinion letters and online discussions. One reader says:\u00a0\u201cYou make me sick to think that you walk the streets and could be near me. You are probably one of the animals \u2026\u201d; a cognitively biased abreaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe left absolutely hates Donald Trump. They hate him with every fiber of their being, every cell in their bodies, but they don’t precisely know why.\u201d \u00a0But we do know why! \u00a0Do you\u00a0see what we see? \u00a0Do you see\u00a0Trump’s defects of character? \u00a0Do you see the bullying of a disabled man, a travel ban that handcuffs children, a deportation order that sends a hospitalized girl with a brain tumor to a detention center? \u00a0Partisan bias is cognitive bias when you fail to see the insanity and inhumanity.<\/p>\n
Conservative commentator Kathleen Parker condemns his reckless rhetoric. Hothead Trump loyalists denounce Parker as a traitor.<\/p>\n
President #45 bashes the press as \u201can enemy of the people.\u201d Senator John McCain defends a free press as a constitutionally protected right. \u00a0Hothead Trump loyalists\u00a0denounce McCain.<\/p>\n
There will always be an angry rabble who cast a blind eye on gross misuses of power. Never dismiss a mob whose hunger for red meat is insatiable. If you fail to feed them, they will assail you as assuredly as flies drawn to carrion.<\/p>\n
Galloping hissy fits, boorish misuses of words, ad hominem character assassinations, misquotes, harping, carping, nitpicking, accusations, fabrications, deceptions, insults, and angry outbursts \u2014 hardly a week goes by without uncouth examples of cognitive bias leaping off page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"