The idea of conscious vs. unconscious thinking is not new - going back to Freud, the Greeks and probably a long time before that. However it has recently been given a sharper focus with insights into the neural underpinnings of cognitive processing. The detailed work of neuroscientists and popular expositions from Hubel, Koch, Pinker and Dennet have reinforced how much of cognition is automatic and below conscious control. A lot of our thoughts and especially our day-to-day behavior are governed not by deliberate, reflective thinking but by autonomous sub-threshold cognitive processes. In many ways our conscious experience, even when we appear to be making decisions, is more of a post-hoc story-telling narrative that we tell ourselves to justify why we did what we just did. There have been a number of experiments that explored this concept, including with patients that had surgically separated hemispheres (Gazzaniga), as well as a recent study on normal people using trick surveys.
In the excellent book The Robot's Rebellion, Stanovich explored how we use automatic and reflective thinking in our day-to-day lives. A key concept is that our interest as rational agents does not always align with our automatically programmed cognition. In particular our automatic cognition may operate in our genetic interests, rather than our interests as rational human beings. Furthermore, it can be difficult to overcome automatic cognition. We have to first identify that a concept requires rational, reflective consideration (either by someone else bringing it to our attention, or by noticing internal cognitive dissonance). We then usually need to expend considerable mental effort to analyze the concept, and essentially reprogram our automatic cognition to conform to our rational analysis, resolving any further chains of dissonance that this may provoke. Not everyone is motivated to do this, and fewer still are motivated to do it often. Yet this is an essential part to adapting to new ideas.
Is it possible that a difference between conservatives and liberals lies in a willingness and capability to reprogram automatic cognition to conform to rational reflective thought? It is telling that some key conservative issues are contraception, abortion and hostility to out-groups, exactly what you would expect from a cognitive architecture programmed for our genetic interests. Other issues such as male/female division of labor were adaptive in the EEA. It is less clear where traits such as religiosity and authoritarianism come from, however it could be that someone who is less well able to overcome genetically programmed automatic cognition is also less able to overcome socially programmed automatic cognition instilled mostly during the formative childhood years. We should keep in mind that today's conservative would have been considered quite liberal 50 years ago, and liberals will probably be looked on as hopelessly biased by our descendants 50 years hence. So clearly there is a mixture of genetic and social programming. Is overcoming your cognitive programming an indicator of a liberal mind?
Interesting idea. Another book on the subject that I read recently was 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman. He talks about the two systems in the mind; the first system is fast and intuitive but prone to bias and systematic error, the second is slower and requires more effort to use but is more logical and able to calculate. Both systems are adaptive even at the level of the human, though. We don't need to go down to the genetic level to find examples where fast, automatic judgement will be superior to rational, but slow, analysis. The system 1 intuitive guesses will be right nearly all the time as far as individual survival and reproduction are concerned.
ReplyDeleteWas that really a tiger I saw back in the woods there? A careful rational evaluation might have shown that it wasn't but even if some of the time I run screaming from a mere shadow, that's a cost worth paying for the 2 second head start I get the times when it really is a tiger.
I'm all on board with the selfish gene theory in general, but I don't think we need to invoke it here. Fast snap judgements that have a relatively high chance of error are valuable even at the level of the human organism as a whole, in many cases.
I've read Kahneman's book too, and it was good but more skimmed the surface compared to the deep dive that is Stanovich's book. The key point is to recognize that we are host to 3 different kinds of entities - genetic replicators, memeplexes, and our rational selves. Most of the time the interests of these 3 types of entities coincide. In the example of running from the tiger what is good for our genes is good for us, so no conflict. However they do not always coincide. It can be genetically adaptive for us to be hostile to people who look different, even though it makes no rational sense. The brain systems that are under tighter genetic control are what Stanovich calls the autonomous set of systems - the 'fast' in Kahnemann's fast & slow, and what I'm calling autonomous cognition. Where motivational conflicts arise these systems are more likely to be biased towards our genetic interests than is our rational cognition. Of course part of modern living is that we have learned to reprogram our genetic endowment by installing a set of memeplexes at an early age, this is the centuries-long program of humanistic improvement that we are engaged in. Many of these memes help to overcome our genetic biases (such as expanding our in-group sphere and modulating violent tendencies). However they do come with their own baggage, such as religion, urban legends etc. My point is that there are differences between people in how well they are able to reprogram their autonomous set of systems. These differences in ability map to conservative and liberal thinking.
DeleteOK, so that first comment was more of a sidebar really. On the substantive point of the post, the idea that conservatives are in thrall to cognitive programming, I find it less than compelling to be honest. It seems like you are saying that conservatives are less rational and unable to see that the instincts that made sense in the EEA are no longer valid; in other words they are stupid. Given the educational spread of conservatives and the rational (if short term) self interest displayed by rich conservatives that doesn't seem likely to me, absent some serious studies that examine and support that position.
ReplyDeleteEven the examples you give of opposition to contraception and abortion don't seem to support your theory. I'm not sure that they are universal conservative principles rather than just policy positions of the current generation of US conservatives. And wouldn't a selfish reproductive instinct favor the use of contraception and abortion in out-groups? Hostility to issues that are key to female emancipation seems to me like a more likely cause for conservative opposition to abortion and contraception. Though by now, opposition to abortion seems to have become primarily totemic; a badge of tribal identity more than anything else.
The distinction is more subtle than what you are parodying. We all rely on our autonomous set of systems for most of the thinking that we do day in and day out. Our rational selves are more rarely invoked than what we like to imagine. I don't think it is controversial to say that there are likely to be differences between people in both motivation and ability to utilize their rationality to reprogram their autonomous congnition. I think you are too quick to dismiss the possibility that conservative ideas find root in genetic predispositions and outdated memeplexes - just look at the all the recent "family values" conservative positions and ask yourself do they favor genetic interests or humanitarian interests? Is it possible that opposition to gay marriage is due to residual programming installed by genetic replicators and insufficiently cleansed by modern social memeplexes?
Delete