Dogma

dog·ma n. pl. dog·mas or dog·ma·ta

1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.
2. An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true. See Synonyms at doctrine.
3. A principle or belief or a group of them: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” (Abraham Lincoln).

Short-Circuit Decision Making

Ellen Langer's, et al, 1978 experiment [LANGER] in "mindless" social influence is tremendously popular with sales and marketing professionals the world over: the experimenters arranged to shut down all but one photocopier in a library. Predictably, a line formed. Experimenters then asked the person at the head of the line one of three questions:

1. May I go ahead of you?
2. May I go ahead of you, because I'm in a rush?
3. May I go ahead of you, because I need to make some copies?

The interesting-but-expected result of the study is that 60% of people asked "May I go ahead of you?" acceded, but 94% of those asked "...because I'm in a rush?" did. The inference, of course, is that when given a legitimate reason—being in a rush—people are willing to go along.

The even more interesting, albeit not nearly as expected, result of the study was that when people were given a bad reason—"because I need to make some copies"—they still gave in. 93% of the time, adding "because I need to make some copies" got a place in line.

The reason sales and marketing types love this is obvious: give someone the appearance of a reason, "because the earth is round," and they are more likely to agree. Give someone the appearance of a reason to buy, and they are more likely to buy.

The sociological implication is straightforward: our brains shut down when we aren't actively involved in what we're doing. Standing in line doesn't take a lot of thought, so our brains disconnect from what we're doing—waiting—and start daydreaming about winning the lottery, or that cute coworker. In this state, when we aren't actively thinking about what's going on around us, "placebic information" suffices to manipulate us. This is called "short-circuit" decision making, because the form of the request, complete with the key word "because" and a placebo justification, satisfies our social requirement for politeness and explanation and encourages assent without real consideration of what was requested.

Short-Circuit Evaluation

More recently, a study announced by Emory University has shown that political partisans tend to "short circuit" their thinking when dealing with conflicting information about political figures they were sympathetic toward.

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry). The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering.

The result of this was that partisans denied the obvious contradictions of "their" candidate, but were perfectly willing to see contradictions in the opposing candidate. Republicans could find fault with Kerry, Democrats could find fault with Bush. And both sets of partisans could find fault with Tom Hanks and other "neutral" figures.

What this suggests about politics is obvious: the party partisans really can't change their minds. But it suggests something more, too: that once we've made up our minds, we don't really want to change them. So much so that we're unwilling to "see" evidence that clearly contradicts what we already believe.

What's it mean?

The first thing that occurred to me, a day or so after reading this, was to cite this in almost every discussion I saw or took part in that appeared to be stagnated. Slashdot flamewars, on-line chat boards, everywhere: they aren't going to change their minds, so stop arguing. But then it hit me: it's worse than that.

What's 'Independent' mean?

I like to think of myself as an "independent". I cross party lines. I agree with some people on some things, and other people on other things. But can I change my mind? Do I suffer from the same ossification of thought, or am I receptive to new evidence, new interpretations, new opinions when it comes to issues where I have already decided?

Sadly, I think the answer is no. It's just that simple. I think I'm inflexible. And that saddens me. Although now I have a justification for being inflexible. How sweet is that? Wait 'til I have kids: the little bastards won't know what hit 'em.

What happens when you're wrong?

Let's say there's a bunch of guys trapped in a mine somewhere in Appalachia. And while watching the Orange Bowl, the news ticker scrolls across the bottom of the screen informing us that the mine has been entered, the trapped miners found, and all of them are still alive. How cool is that?

This was the front page story of virtually every daily paper in the U.S. All of us who were up late at night (the Orange Bowl went into triple overtime) saw the announcement. And of course the late night talk shows made a production of it. And the west coast, three hours behind, was still in prime-time when the discovery took place.

A big percentage of the population, then, believed the miners were alive if not well, rescued through hard work, some planning, and divine providence. I was among them. We were wrong.

Come the dawn, the reports were corrected. Of thirteen bodies recovered, only one was alive—barely. Furor. Outrage. Why?

Why should people who didn't know the miners, didn't know their families, and, let's be honest, only a week before would have made 'Deliverance' jokes if the subject of Appalachian miners was raised, why would these people be so outraged over the fact that the news networks reported some false information, although they corrected it in only a few hours?

Short-circuiting is important, but perilous

Let's look at what 'short-circuiting' actually is, for a minute. I work as a software developer. To me, this ability to develop an unthinking reaction is like what was once called 'microcode' in the days when electronic dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's an ability that we humans have to program our own behavior. There are other names for this, of course: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Visualization, Faith. But this one is demonstrably real. There is, according to the study cited above and a bunch more, a visible difference in behavior that is 'self-programmed' versus behavior that requires thought.

To me, that represents a valuable tool provided by evolution. Other animals may or may not have it. But any critter that doesn't have it will take hundreds or thousands of generations to adapt to some circumstance. Those of us that have it can self-program in a matter of years, maybe even in a matter of days. Yell out "Grenade!" and watch every soldier in the room hits the floor. That's not an evolved behavior. And it's not a cognitive process, either. It's an instant reaction that has been learned from the environment, and reinforced by adrenaline and fear. (One day I'm going to stage this experiment with my unknowing buddy, Wigwam Jones. I'll have to take one of those home defibrillator kits, or maybe I can just make my own with a pocket knife, a lamp cord, and some Vaseline.)

Anyway, the point of this is that short-circuit behaviors can be tremendously valuable. But when they go wrong—when we program ourselves with behavior or attitude that is shown to be unavoidably incorrect—there's no ignoring it. The miners are not alive. They are not resting, or pining for the fjords. These are, incontrovertibly, ex-miners. What's an organism to do? Our clever scheme has failed. Horribly.

I think one thing we do is get mad. Really mad. The benefit of short-circuiting is that our brains can be doing other stuff while we appear to be responding to things we've pre-programmed. But the downside is that when we have to undo some of that programming, we're not so good at it. Getting used to the idea that we're wrong isn't just "aww, we're wrong." It's "God damn it! We'll have to recode that entire section."

That, to me, is why so many people got really, amazingly upset over the misreporting of the deaths of the Sago miners. Not that they died. Not that the news reported something incorrect. But because we started to make assumptions based on the survival of those miners—we began incorporating their continuing lives into our world-view—and then we had to reverse ourselves, immediately, with no appeal. They aren't "mostly dead." They really are irretrievably, uncontestably "all dead." The only thing left to do is go through their pockets and look for change. Deal with it.

That's one of the risks of short-circuit thinking. If you "encode" your brain with something, changing your mind is expensive. So one strategy is to ignore contrary evidence. Just ignore it, and maybe it'll go away. That has to be cheaper than re-evaluating days or months or years or decades of experience in the light of new information. "Round, you say? The world is round? Don't be idiotic. Everyone knows it's flat. Round—how absurd!"

Uses and abuses of short-circuit thinking

This explains the quest for, and duel over, sound bites. "George Bush kills babies. John Kerry is soft on crime. Tom Hanks is soft on babies." For a news agency, the right sound bite or headline ("Dewey Wins!") can express a whole passel of thinking. That has value for politicians, ad-men, reporters, educators, anyone who for good or ill is trying to affect the way we think: say the word "adjective" and I will immediately sing

We hiked along without care.
Then we ran into a bear.
He was a hairy bear,
He was a scary bear,
We beat a hasty retreat from his lair.
And described him with adjectives.
(Man, that was one big, mean, ugly bear!)

All things considered, I'm pretty happy with that particular piece of programming. I still know what an adjective is, all these years later. But I don't necessarily want to smoke your brand of cigarettes, or buy what you're selling: short-circuiting can be bad or good.

My particular fear with this is that CNN, and Reuters, and all the other news organizations are trying as hard as ever they can to deliver the news as quickly as they can. Bloggers are doing it even more. And 'little mistakes', like the fact that they're totally wrong, can slip through.

While that's incredibly annoying when they report that people are still alive who obviously are not, it gets worse when the errors are subtle. Because there will always be that temptation to "spin" the error. Instead of announcing "We made an error. Here's what we should have said:" the media (all forms) will be tempted to say "Continuing with our story of the ..., here's something slightly different."

That means that people like me, and like you, will get that first juicy bit of wrong information, and build our worldviews on that. We'll short-circuit the later "clarification." And newspapers count on that. Readers see the "retractions" page, but they don't really account for that. They remember what they heard the first time, because that's what made an impression.

Crackpots?

The problem with letting people sit for a week, instead of a few hours, with bad information, is that they internalize it. Then it's a lot harder to try and correct whatever bogus or poorly presented information is out there. The people who have followed the story are "partisans". They know the facts, and don't want to hear anyone tell them different. They know that people who are saying anything different are 'kooks' and 'cranks' and 'crackpots'. Because they know the story, see.

Just like you and I know that there was only one gunman. And that Americans really did land on the moon. And there aren't any alien spaceships at Area 51. We know that. And we know that all the Sago miners but one are still alive, see. That other story's just crazy talk.


[LANGER] Langer, E., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 635-642.