Jimmy Kimmel recently had some fun duping Trump supporters, first by promoting the Healthcare.gov site as "Trumpcare" and then by asking Trump supporters if they think Hillary Clinton should be impeached. In the first case, he was simply calling Obamacare by a different name, and in the second he was asking about impeaching someone who doesn't hold public office. When his targets fell for, much hilarity ensued.
But, in a way, this is somewhat unfair as he was taking advantage of a psychological blindspot that everyone has when thinking about things with which we are emotionally involved. I addressed the Two system model of thinking and the Affect Heuristics in the excerpt from a conference paper posted below. This excerpt explains the Two System model at some length (which should be generally useful for my students) before discussing the affect heuristic and how it makes people vulnerable to misinformation:
Kahneman
introduces the two systems of thinking with a simple demonstration which is
worth repeating here. First, he asks you
to look at the picture shown in figure 2 below
Figure 2:
(Kahneman, 2011, 19)
He notes
that a single glance at the photo was probably enough for you to notice that
the person in the photo was a woman with dark hair who appeared to be angry and
was probably about to say something unkind. He goes on to point out that you
probably deduced that without even intended to do so. Thus, you employed an
automatic thought process that constitutes System 1, which he informally calls
fast thinking. In general, he notes that
“System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no
sense of voluntary control. (Kahneman, 2011, 20)
He then
asks you to look at a multiplication problem (17 x 24). Here, he surmises that at first glance you
were probably able to identify it as a multiplication problem that it involved
17 and 24. However, he suggests that most readers probably could not provide
the correct answer to the problem (568) without spending some time computing
the answer. Indeed, doing so would have involved some mental strain as most
people would have to recall the steps of the process learned in school in a
“deliberate, effortful and orderly” process that he notes is the prototype of
System 2 or slow thinking. (Kahneman, 19-20)
He summarizes System 2 as follows:
System 2 allocates attention to the effort full metal activities that
demand it, including complex computations.
The operations of System 2 are often associated with a subjective
experience of agency, choice, and concentration. (Kahneman,
2011, 20-21)
While
System 2 may be commonly associated with agency and choice, Kahneman points out
that people use System 1 to do most of the things they do in life, such as carrying
on a conversation, driving a car, or simple arithmetic (e.g., 2+2 = ?). Most
of things that people do repeatedly in life, they do without ‘stopping to
think’ about doing so. System 1 is what allows them to do so. In contrast,
‘stopping to think’ requires an exercise in self-control to stop other
activities and devote cognitive effort to thinking, both of which are
requirements of using System 2.
The
seeming effortlessness of System 1 belies its complexity as can be seen in
Kahneman’s description of its main function:
“The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of
your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that
link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with
some regularity, either at the same time are within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened,
the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in
your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your
expectations of the future.” (Kahneman, 2011, 71)
So,
System 1 is doing a lot more than just memorizing that 2+2 = 4. Rather, it is
modeling and monitoring the world as one knows it, as well as interpreting and
predicting events. Most importantly, it is doing so continuously and
automatically with little effort. Thus,
it is doing the kinds of things specified by Burke’s model of identity
verification and Gidden’s conception of practical consciousness.
As
remarkable as System 1 is, Kahneman points out that it has many quirks. First
among these is an ability, that tends towards bias, for finding causal
connections. To demonstrate this, Kahneman offers the following brief
statement:
“Fred’s
parents arrived late. The caterers were expected soon. Fred was angry.”
(Kahneman, 2011, 74)
He notes
that most people will automatically understand that Fred was angry because his
parents arrived late, not because the caterers were expected soon. In so doing,
System 1 is identifying a causal connection between Fred’s anger and one thing
(the parents’ late arrival) and not another (the imminent arrival of caterers).
While this is very useful for understanding the passage, Kahneman notes that
System 1 tends to jump to conclusions. It is prone to impressions of causality
and therefore offers a causal link between Fred’s anger and one of the other
statements in the passage. It does this based on the information provided
without questioning the information’s completeness or quality. As Kahneman puts
it:
“System 1 excels at
constructing the best possible story that incorporates ideas currently
activated, but it does not (cannot) allow for information that it does not
have… The measure of success for System
1 is the coherence of the story it manages to create. The amount and quality of the data on which
the story is based are largely irrelevant.
When information is scarce, which is a common occurrence, System 1
operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions.” (Kahneman, 2011, 85)
Of
course, System 2 is available to question the conclusions to which System 1
jumps, but there are several obstacles to System 2 doing so. First, using
System 2 requires concentration and effort. System 2 does one thing at a time,
which means it must block out other activities to work and cannot work if
distracted. Maintaining the self-control also consumes mental energy and can
led to ego depletion which impairs the functioning of all mental activity. As a
result, Kahneman describes System 2 as “sometimes busy and often lazy.”
(Kahneman, 2011, 81 )
Kahneman
notes that both System 1 and System 2 have a confirmation bias resulting from a
tendency to employ a positive test strategy that searches for confirming
evidence rather than disconfirming evidence. For instance, if asked whether an
acquaintance is friendly, people will tend to search their minds for instances
of that person being friendly instead of instances in which the person was
unfriendly. While people can learn to employ other strategies, and those
individuals that do so repeatedly on a day-to-day basis may even train System 1
to do so (just as a few people might be able to automatically give the answer
to 17 x 24 or a chess master can unhesitating play against several lessor
opponents), Kahneman argues that most people do not have an intuitive grasp of
the statistical principles used to test empirical hypotheses.(Kahneman, 2011).
More
importantly, for the purposes of this paper, System 2 is susceptible to an
affect heuristic through which their emotional likes and dislikes affect their
beliefs about the world. While there are many instances when System 2 is able
to resist accepting the conclusions to which System 1 jumps and apply logical
analysis, System 2 is less able to do so in situations in which the affective
attitudes and beliefs are involved. In such cases, Kahneman describes System
2’s functioning as follows:
“…System 2 is more an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a
critic of those emotions – an endorser rather than an enforcer. Its search for
information and arguments is mostly constrained to information that is
consistent with existing beliefs, not with an intention to examine them. An
active coherence-seeking System 1 suggests solutions to an undemanding System
2.” (Kahneman, 2011, 103 - 104)
To see
this in action, consider the photo in figure 2, which made the rounds in
forwarded emails circa 2002 (in the days before Twitter and Facebook. The photo
seems to show then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle using the wrong hand to
salute during the pledge of allegiance. The accompanying text usually interpreted
the photo as evidence of how clueless and/or unpatriotic Daschle and Democrats
were.
Figure 2
(Source: https://www.truthorfiction.com/daschle/)
Of
course, it is patently absurd that a Senator would not know which hand to use
in the pledge, or for that matter where his own heart was, but it takes close
and careful examination of the photo to determine that it is photo-shopped.
Specifically, one needs to notice that Daschle’s suit jacket is buttoned the
wrong way and that hand he is using does not have a wedding ring or wristwatch
on it as it would if he was saluting with his left hand. To do that kind of
methodical analysis requires using System 2 and, therefore, requires an
individual to devote some concentrated cognitive effort to the task. Most
importantly, this requires someone to choose to devote that effort because
System 2 does not function automatically.
The
implication of the affect heuristic is that people who have a positive
emotional response to the image, or more precisely the conclusion to which
System 1 jumps when interpreting the image, will be unlikely to engage System 2
to question it. Indeed, if system 2 is engaged in such a case, it is likely to
search for confirming rather than disconfirming evidence for System 1’s
conclusion. Therefore, someone who is emotionally committed to being a partisan
Republican, or to the non-partisan view that all politicians are idiots, would
have a very hard time not believing that this photo is authentic. Conversely, someone who is a partisan Democrat
would be motivated to use System 2 to reject the implied message of the photo
(not to mention the explicit message that accompanied it in the forwarded
emails). It is important to note that
this appears to be the ‘correct’ response only because we know that the photo is a
fake.
PS- It is vital to keep in mind that the affect heuristic is not unique to republicans but rather is something to which we are all vulnerable.
