BOOK REVIEW --THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL

BOOK REVIEW -- THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion © 2021, Adrian Bardon Oxford Press Reviewed by Terry Defoe BA (Soc.) Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC BA (Psyc.) Open learning University, Vancouver BC M.Div. Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon Saskatchewan May 15, 2023 • We really live, folks, in two worlds. There are two worlds. We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, it's where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes overlap. The four corners of deceit are Government, Academia, Science, and Media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it's how they prosper. Rush Limbaugh • People believe what they want to believe. Our belief-forming processes can be so distorted by fears desires and prejudices that an otherwise sensible person may sincerely uphold a false claim of the world despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When we describe someone as being "in denial," we mean that he or she is personally threatened by some set of facts and consequently fails to assess the situation properly according to the evidence, instead arguing and interpreting evidence in light of a pre-established conclusion. From the cover notes • Human beings are not primarily rational beings. Rather we are social creatures. We draw our identities from our tribe. Most of what we believe is inherited. Belonging to a tribe is very important to our sense of well-being. We want our decisions and beliefs to make us look good in the eyes of our tribe. We are constantly aware of the fact that we may face sanctions should we take a stance the difference from our group or our tribe. Page 24 • We desperately need to make better decisions about energy and the environment, health, and political economy. they are massively exacerbated by the pernicious effects of implicit bias and self-deception. Page 295 In a polarized world, ideology can influence perception of reality in socially dysfunctional ways. When beliefs are threatened by factual information, biased thinking can stand in the way of important public policy. Author Adrian Bardon investigates the role of human psychology and ideology in denying scientific, economic, and religious truth. People rarely weigh evidence dispassionately before reaching a conclusion. Philosopher David Hume argued that reason is a slave to the passions. Spurred on by our motives and not by our sense of reason, we are susceptible to unconscious bias. Our interests and emotional needs affect our values and choices as well as our worldview. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON Many factors, including self-interest, peer influence, prejudice, and favoritism, distort our view of reality. Our justifications are supported by selective attention to evidence. We consider ourselves much more objective in our judgements than others. Our behaviour is strongly influenced by incentives. We disagree on policies and even on the facts that support them. Those who seek to manipulate public opinion appeal to existing prejudices. People of different political persuasions seem to be living in different realities. Many people judge scientific statements based on their prejudices and allegiances rather than on the data. The same event or situation can be seen in very different ways. For example: • • • Are the poor victims of unjust circumstances or irresponsible and lazy? Are immigrants a dangerous threat to our way of life? Or are they valuable potential members of society, able to make important contributions for the good of all? Was a police shooting justified in the circumstances, or was it murder? Polarization, prejudice, bias, and wilful self-deception combined with political misinformation or disinformation can destroy political discourse. The human mind has a strong tendency to close off unwanted conversations. Denial is emotionally motivated and exists despite strong evidence to the contrary. People make choices on the basis of pre-existing emotional attachments to foregone conclusions. A person is in denial when they have little reason, all things considered, to believe a false claim. They are in denial when they have been exposed to good reasons, all things considered, to doubt that which is untrue; and have some emotional need to believe it. • Disinformation: a deliberate twisting of the truth, made more effective in a context of ignorance about a particular issue. Public policy must be grounded in solid science. There are twice as many conservatives in America as there are liberals. Many Americans, regardless of their political persuasion, are ill-informed about science and the economy, and that lack of knowledge has a negative impact on social and economic policy. A significant minority of the American population denies evolution. In addition, the typical voter doesn’t know much about political party platforms. These disparate elements provide optimal conditions for the formation of bias and self-deception. • Motivated cognition: an unconscious tendency to process information incorrectly. • Denial: emotionally self protective self deception. Relevant facts are rejected. inconsistency is eliminated by actually altering perceived reality. Denial hides from the truth. • Denialism: simple denial expended and intensified. Rather than just suppressing the truth, denialism builds what is considered to be a new and better truth. • Bullshit: an intent to influence or create a certain reality being simply indifferent as to whether those claims are true or false. We human beings possess powerful psychological defences enabling us to rationalize, reinterpret, and distort negative information. These are not delusions. Delusions arise from illness or psychiatric disorder. In the process of denial, evidence still matters, but there is a strong desire to justify conclusions. Common reasons for denying reality include self-interest, avoiding feelings of insecurity or loss of control. Denial is motivated by the desire to defend cultural or political identity. Page 2 of 7 BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON • Cognitive Dissonance: when information demanding a reassessment of current beliefs is encountered, rather than enduring the psychological discomfort caused by that reassessment, the challenging information is rejected. Dissonance suppresses inconvenient information rather than denying it outright -- a primary characteristic of denialism. In the process, that suppression means that the dissonance is avoided but not defeated. It is more difficult to change the mind of a person involved in denialism, given the fact that mental resources have been employed to eliminate rather than ignore the problematic information. Denialism is the driving force behind declarations of racial superiority, the arguments of anti-vaxxers, climate or science deniers. Denial in its various iterations makes ideological conflict exceedingly difficult to resolve. Authoritarianism, as opposed to democracy, believes it has the right to impose beliefs and practises on others. Under authoritarianism, the only possible resolution is for one side to suppress or dominate the other. This is very different from factual disputes which can be resolved without violence. The concept of denial explains why evidence and justification can be a little or no value as to whether someone believes something or not. Self-deception and motivated cognition are cognition-bypassing mechanisms. • Implicit Bias: relatively unconscious and automatic features of prejudiced judgement and social behavior. Individuals claim to know the truth intuitively. It just feels right without considering evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts. Thus, if the people I trust say something is true, it must actually be true. Again, emotion trumps reason. • Affect Bias: the distorting effect that emotion commonly has on behaviour. Our emotions influence our sensory processing. Self-interest is a powerful motivator of denial. We are willing to expend a great deal of effort in order to maintain beliefs supporting our moral worthiness, intelligence, or competence. We are motivated, in addition, to maintain beliefs that support our social group. Partisanship skews information processing. When our social identity is under threat, we tend to use reasoning as a tool to assert and defend ourselves rather than to develop accurate beliefs. Jonathan Haidt argues that our reasoning process is like a lawyer defending a client rather that a judge or a scientist seeking the truth. Those who self-identify as conservatives score high on the conscientiousness dimension of personality assessments. Higher levels of conscientiousness relate to concerns about security, predictability and authority. Conservatives tend to place individual rights and responsibilities over community right and obligations. Liberals, on the other hand tend to score higher on the openness dimension of personality tests. Liberals are more comfortable with uncertainty, complexity and novelty. • Cultural Cognition: a tendency to conform beliefs about disputed matters of fact, such as global warming, to the values that define our cultural identity. With the rise of the Internet and social media, people have increasingly separated themselves into communities of like-minded individuals, either in person or online. We support and defend our group’s ideological perspectives. We are guided by group leadership through media that tells us what we want to hear. There is a certain emotional value in denying information that makes us uncomfortable as opposed to denying something based on facts and evidence alone. For example, creationists deny evolution not Page 3 of 7 BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON because of ignorance but by social factors that will make them “pay the price” with fellow creationists, should they abandon traditional views and accede to the scientific consensus. • Confirmation Bias: avoiding material that challenges one’s self worth, identity or belief system, preferring sources that corroborate existing beliefs rather than considering evidence from neutrally selected sources. Online searches are influenced by confirmation bias. “… The current media landscape allows individuals to fill their days almost exclusively with ideologically friendly inputs across multiple platforms.” (page 34) Those with a desire to manipulate public opinion are quite adept at exploiting emotional needs and biases, confirming their prejudices and disparaging evidence to the contrary. Unconscious confirmation bias is a very real issue in scientific research. As astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter once said, “People forget that when we talk about the scientific method, we don’t mean a finished product science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves and our inventing ways to avoid fooling ourselves.” Any investigation of the pervasive human tendency to deny the truth must take into account our need for belonging. For many individuals the most important factor in what they choose to believe about climate change is not the facts of the matter but social realities like getting along with their friends and their families. There is a dangerous feedback loop between confirmation bias and the group polarization effect. We prefer to be correct rather than seeking out the truth for truth’s sake. Challenges to our basic worldview including our religious beliefs are met with anger, rationalization and even conspiracy ideation. If all the facts seem to be against you there must be a conspiracy of experts to deceive you. “In a democracy a lack of information and or education leads to bad public policy. The problem is not ignorance or stupidity. The problem is lack of information or misinformation.” The more people regard themselves as having expertise in some area the more closed minded they become. More information does not help sceptics to discover the best evidence. The critical issue, therefore, is not ignorance but a wilful blindness to the truth. Honest reasoning is held captive by the interests of a political party social class or ideology. Intellectual obstinacy is much more dangerous than mere ignorance. Greater education and political sophistication give the true believer more ammunition to justify their views. Denial cripples our ability to face urgent public policy issues like climate change effectively. Perhaps people just don’t know about global warming. Maybe it’s an educational issue. But, as we have seen, ignorance is not the main issue. An individual’s political ideology is a major factor in determining their assessment of this issue. Certain websites try to create the appearance of controversy. Conservative pundit George Will says, "Global warming is socialism by the back door. Concentrated power in Washington wants to control our lives.” Add to this the fact that some evangelicals deny that humans can destroy the earth, giving precedence to a Bible verse from the book of Genesis, chapter 8, verses 21 and 22: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease." Most evangelicals understand this verse to mean that only God controls when the earth will come to an end. Page 4 of 7 BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON The Trump administration did its best to politicize science. The scientific method has been constructed in such a way as to protect against confirmation bias and its biased search for information. Expertise was less important than political allegiance. Statements issued by the administration were often lacking any connection to mainline science but were intended to move public opinion, preserve endorsements, donations and party support. Former President Trump lied about things that were common knowledge to the general population. A bully uses derogatory terms to relieve their own insecurity through degrading others. Political conservatism seeks to minimize regulations and keep taxes as low as possible. Solving the climate crisis would require massive government intervention. The monetary cost of dealing with climate change is a clear threat to conservative political ideology. The climate crisis is an existential threat to the established system of production and consumption. Most people think short term versus long term. Denialism on climate change is fostered through deliberate misinformation by vested interests. A common protective response to threatening information is to circle the ideological wagons. Right wing media is suffused with toxic partisan misinformation. Right wing politicians often turn to conspiracy theories and accusations of collusion. They are suspicious of scientific expertise. Democrats seem to be unaware of the fact that just reciting facts is less effective than messages that involve the emotions. "Asking whether people believe in evolution doesn't measure scientific literacy. It measures whether you’re religious. It's an expression of identity." Much of the disinformation about vaccines originates in a single study now thoroughly discredited and retracted. Denial is about finding comfort in beliefs contradicted by evidence. Modern science threatens conservative identity. Their views on the theory of evolution are directly connected to traditional religious conceptions of nature and its origins, not on the current scientific consensus. They are likely to define science in such a way as to conform to common sense and religious traditions. Scientific authority, however, belongs to the data, not to any particular individual. Dissent is encouraged. Overturning theories is rewarded. A variety of opinions is encouraged. The door is always left open for a new data. Derogatory labels for those engaged in denialism are counterproductive. Avoid implying that each group is fundamentally alien to the other. Extremists love us versus them thinking. If radical agents of denial can convince large numbers of people that climate change is a hoax, that evolution by natural selection is untrue, and the vaccines are unsafe, what are the chances that rational thinking regarding economics is possible? Cutting taxes on the wealthy is not the best way to encourage economic growth. Conservativism is a mediation on, and theoretical rendition of, the felt experience of having great power, seeing it threatened, and try to win it back. Why the dogmatism, why the rage? Why do the people insisting that climate change is a hoax also say that universal health insurance will lead to disaster and tyranny? Those engaged in radical denial wrap their arguments in fear and uncertainty. Ideology allows for a switch to a simplistic, top-down form of cognition, and an avoidance of detailed logical reasoning. People often jump to conclusions from anecdotal evidence. • The deficit theory of poverty: “Poor people are poor because of their own moral and intellectual deficiencies.” Page 5 of 7 BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON • The just world phenomenon: blames victims for their own suffering, dismissing circumstantial or structural factors leading to that situation. In the radical conservative world, what you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. In an ideological context, reason is used as a tool or a weapon strengthened by emotional arguments. Professional merchants of doubt justify science denial and climate change denial by muddying the waters with regard to the scientific evidence. Right wing media outlets and public commentators continually stoke fear on various issues. Political and economic elites have a strategy of tricking socially conservative, low-income voters into supporting politicians whose real priorities center on pushing economic, rather than social issues. Denial is automatically and forcefully engaged when challenges to religious belief crop up. Religiosity serves profound emotional needs. We resist new information if we perceive that it is going to undermine our long-held beliefs. Our religious community has a significant impact on how we process information presented to us. Religious beliefs survive in the face of overwhelming reasons not to believe only because they serve important emotional needs including purpose, certainty, stability, inclusion, superiority, and or protection of cultural identity. Different personality types are attracted to groups that match their preferred conception of God. Liberals stress a God of love and empathy. Conservatives on the other hand prefer a God of fatherly discipline and order. Sacred texts like the Bible offer the possibility of many different interpretations allowing plenty of room for scholars to cater to different audiences. Religious belief is the catalyst for all kinds of prejudice. Ideology is a tool of oppression, not the cause of oppression. When people really want to do something, they will seek out an ideology to support that desire. Religious literalism may be both directly and indirectly implicated in the obstructive politicizing of science that we have seen in the last few years. Those who believe that the world will end with the return of Christ are not going to be enamoured with the idea of a climate catastrophe. Dealing with climate change requires a willingness to face hard facts about the future but religion is all about avoiding hard facts Religion and science are competing ultimate explanations of reality and are naturally in competition with one another. In the last decade we have seen scientific expertise increasingly rejected by powerful literalist Christian interest groups. Religious beliefs in certain literalistic forms may be ultimately harmful to the public good. The pervasive anti-intellectualism of conservative denialists leads to a dangerous credulity among its members. The official party platform for the Texas GOP specifically included its opposition to teaching critical thinking skills in the school curriculum. "We oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills and similar programs which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the students’ fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” The republican war on science is a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies. Religion evolved to challenge efforts to dispute it. When an individual’s religious worldview is challenged we need to remember that this is a challenge to something that is very important to them. Homeschooling is a very effective way of blocking off sources of dissonant information. There is plenty of evidence that Americans are poorly informed on a whole host of scientific issues. • The backfire effect: rather than being convinced by the truth, denialists may double down and harden their response to challenging information. Having rationalizations corrected doesn't stop the contrary minded from finding new ones. Page 6 of 7 BOOK REVIEW – THE TRUTH ABOUT DENIAL | ADRIAN BARDON Persuasion on political issues is more likely when issues are framed in ways that resonate with, rather than threaten, group identity emphasizing solutions the audience finds ideologically acceptable. It is counterproductive to force people into an ideological corner. It is critical to get people of different persuasions to work together on issues of mutual interest. REFERENCE BARDON, Adrian (2020). The Truth About Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press. Page 7 of 7