THE RIDICULOUS OFTEN TERMINATE IN GROSSNESS AND BRUTALITY
Looking at ridiculousness today in American politics with some psychology perhaps at play. Several references included on general theme of the absurdity of political expression.
The image below from Pew indicates a variety of words related to surveys of a wide range of people in describing today’s politics in one word. This survey was done last summer. I found it interesting, and worth seeing.
The following article from 2015 and the Guardian seemed to address the subject of the day. Or at least a portion of it. This article “pre-Trump,” looked at our American politics squarely, and notes a trend which has only become more obvious with time. I felt that parts of this article, in particular the act of confidence in a political figure to be right on point. Now everyone can identify the hubris of Donald Trump, and he’s the poster child for the less than bright person exuding confidence. Seems that this might be his number one asset to his supporters. He probably has never admitted a mistake in his life, as his psychological condition prevents ever doing so. And his supporters love him for this, even though they might not be aware of it. The Dunning-Kruger effect is quite apparent in our former president as well. Roy Cohn’s tutelage of Trump in never admitting a mistake and always to blame the opponent of the same thing fit nicely into what appears as a personality disorder in the former president. It really was a self-reinforcing loop, leaving the possibility of not doing the phenomenon highly unlikely. Somehow Trump, through his politics, has convinced many Americans that he is not an elitist, he’s just a regular guy, which is quite a sell job. Trump has his ‘gifts’ we must admit, but not in the striving for good by any stretch of the imagination.
Democracy v Psychology: why people keep electing idiots
Dean Burnett
@garwboy
Thu 2 Apr 2015 02.05 EDT
Politicians. Their reputation is very poor. In fairness, this is largely their own fault, but it would be foolish to assume every politician is like this. If they were, the whole infrastructure would collapse before you could say “can I claim this on expenses?” Still, everyone assumes they’re despicable, so always assume the worst.
Politician enacts a bad policy? They’re a terrible person. They change their mind and reverse it? They’re weak and not fit to lead. Politicians promise improvements (cut taxes, increase spending)? They’re obviously lying. Politicians promise to do something unpopular (raise taxes, cut spending)? A cast-iron guarantee it will happen. It’s a lose-lose situation, so why do they bother? Many politicians are clearly in it for themselves, but there surely are plenty who really do want the best and just put up with the negative opinions they get.
So, for the record, not all politicians are idiots (although your definition of idiot may vary). But plenty are. The US seem particularly afflicted with them; Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, these people were/are contenders for the presidency. And the archetype George W Bush WAS the president. For 8 YEARS. The man whose idiotic musings managed to sustain businesses had a nuclear arsenal at his command.
Not that the UK can feel smug, with the amount of demonstrable idiocy in our own system. Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Grant Shapps, Jeremy Hunt, David Tredinnick, a ridiculous Labour party (complete with mugs), the rise of UKIP, and the beloved bumbling mayor Boris Johnson.
Plenty of people are quick to point out that Boris Johnson is actually very intelligent/dangerous, that he’s only pretending to be a buffoon. But this underscores the point; an intelligent person has to feign stupidity to achieve political success.
What’s going on here? Logically, you’d want an intelligent person who understands the best approach and methods for running a country in the best possible way. But no, people seem drawn to demonstrations of questionable intellectual abilities. There are a wide variety of ideological, cultural, social, historical, financial and other factors involved, because politics incorporates all of these things, but there are also some known psychological processes that may contribute to this phenomenon.
Confidence inspires confidence
Confident people are more convincing. This has been demonstrated in many studies. Most studies focus on a courtroom setting, and suggest a confident witness is more convincing to a jury than a nervous, hesitant one (which obviously has worrying implications for justice), but it can be seen elsewhere. It’s a phenomenon used-car salesmen and estate agents have exploited for decades. And politicians are clearly aware of it, hence all the media training and PR management; any politician that doesn’t come across as assured and confident gets (metaphorically) destroyed. So confidence is important in politics.
However, the Dunning-Kruger effect reveals that less-intelligent people are usually incredibly confident. More intelligent people, by contrast, aren’t at all. Self-appraisal is a useful metacognitive skill, but one that requires intelligence; if you don’t have much of it, you don’t consider yourself flawed or ignorant, because technically you don’t have the ability to do so.
So if you want an intrinsically confident person to publically represent your political party, an intelligent person would be a bad choice in many ways. This can backfire though; studies have shown that when a confident person is shown to be wrong/lying, they are then considered far less reliable or trustworthy than an unconfident person. This may explain the negative image of politics, which is mostly a series of confident individuals making big promises and failing miserably to keep them. That sort of thing really puts people off.
Politics is complicated
Effectively running a country of tens of millions, all of which have different requirements and demands, is an incredibly complicated job. There are just so many variables that need to be considered. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to condense all this into a convenient soundbite for use with the modern media, so personalities tend to come to the fore more often. And the less intelligent personalities are more confident, so are more persuasive, and so on.
People are often put off by intellectual and complex subjects and discussions in any case. They may have no experience with the issue, or may find it too daunting to want to engage with, because doing so successfully would require a lot of time and effort. But politics, particularly democracy, requires people to be involved.
Personality studies suggest that many people demonstrate goal orientation, a “disposition toward developing or demonstrating ability in achievement situations”. Feeling that you are actively influencing something (e.g. an Election) is a powerful motivator, but if some knowledgeable type starts spouting big words about interest rates or health trust deficit management, this is going to alienate those who don’t follow or grasp such things. So if a confident person says there’s a simple solution or promises to make the big complicated thing go away, they’re going to seem far more appealing.
This is also demonstrated by Parkinson’s law of triviality, where people will spend far more time and effort focussing on something trivial that they do
understand than something complicated that they don’t. The former offers far more scope for contribution and influence. And people do love trivial things, ergo less-intelligent people condensing down the big issues into brief (but inaccurate) snippets is a potential vote-winner.
People like to relate
One of the often-cited qualities of George W Bush was that people felt they could “have a beer with him”. Ergo, they felt they could relate to him. By contrast, elitism is a negative quality. The idea that those running the country are outside the norms of society is alarming to many, hence constant efforts by politicians to “fit in”.
The majority of people are prone to numerous subconscious biases, prejudices, stereotyping and prefer their own “groups”. None of these things are particularly logical and invariably are not supported by actual evidence and reality, and people really don’t like being told things they don’t want to hear. People are also keenly aware of social status; we need to feel we are superior to others in some way to maintain our sense of self-worth. As a result, someone more intelligent saying complicated things that contain uncomfortable (but accurate) facts isn’t going to appeal to anyone, but someone demonstrably less-intelligent is not challenging to someone’s perceived social status, and if they’re going to say simple things that support inherent prejudices and deny uncomfortable facts, then so much the better.
It’s an unfortunate situation, but it just seems to be the way people’s minds work. There’s a lot more to it than what’s mentioned here of course, but including that would make the whole thing more complicated, and that’s no way to get people to like something, as should be obvious by now.
Dean Burnett thinks democracy would be perfect if it weren’t for all the people involved. He’s on Twitter, @garwboy
The law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that people within an organization commonly give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task.
Behavioral research has produced evidence which confirms theories proposed by the law of triviality. People tend to spend more time on small decisions than they should, and less time on big decisions than they should. A simple explanation is that during the process of making a decision, one has to assess whether enough information has been collected to make the decision. If people make mistakes about whether they have enough information, then they will tend to stop collecting information too early to adequately inform their big decisions. The reason is that big decisions require collecting information for a long time. It leaves more time to make a mistake (and stop) before getting enough information. Conversely, for small decisions, where people should stop early, they may inefficiently continue to ponder for too long.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.
There are disagreements about what causes the Dunning–Kruger effect. According to the metacognitive explanation, poor performers misjudge their abilities because they fail to recognize the qualitative difference between their performances and the performances of others. The statistical model explains the empirical findings as a statistical effect in combination with the general tendency to think that one is better than average. The rational model holds that overly positive prior beliefs about one's skills are the source of false self-assessment. Another explanation claims that self-assessment is more difficult and error-prone for low performers because many of them have very similar skill levels.
Dean Burnett looks to be a good fellow to follow on Twitter (X) as well as on Threads with garwboy. Below is an example of why following him might make one smarter, or at least smarter than one named Elon.
Okay, I was debating whether to imply that Trump and his acolytes are actually creative, hence could be termed as eccentric. It is not a one to one fit most certainly. But my idea of Trump’s mind includes some factors expressed in the Scientific American article from 2011. He is creative in how he manipulates the mainstream media to his advantage. One must give him this in all honesty. And clearly his propensity to always arrive at a conspiracy theory, this factor being part of his appeal, might seem to indicate factors such as magical thinking, and mild paranoia. One might theorize that he may indeed have unusual perceptual experiences, as often his rhetoric may indicate such. I feel that many of his followers may be of the schizotypal personality types, in their apparent irrational acceptance to this man’s words, regardless of what the irrationality of the words might be. In any case I found this interesting enough to include today. I am contemplating the cognitive disinhibition in Donald Trump. I have a feeling that perhaps this plays a role in his cognitive thoughts.
MAY 1, 2011
12 MIN READ
The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People Are Eccentric
Highly creative people often seem weirder than the rest of us. Now researchers know why
BY SHELLEY CARSON
Schizotypal personality can appear in a variety of forms, including magical thinking (fanciful ideas or paranormal beliefs, such as Schumann’s belief that Beethoven channeled music to him from the grave), unusual perceptual experiences (distortions in perception, such as Dickens’s belief that he was being followed by characters from his novels), social anhedonia (a preference for solitary activities—Emily Dickinson, Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton, for example, favored work over socializing), and mild paranoia (unfounded feelings that people or objects in the environment may pose a threat, such as Hughes’s legendary distrust of others).
Schizotypal personality is a milder version of the clinical psychiatric condition called schizotypal personality disorder, which is among a cluster of personality disorders labeled “odd or eccentric” in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The schizotypal diagnosis grew out of large epidemiological studies in which researchers noticed that the relatives of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia were more likely to exhibit odd behaviors and beliefs than relatives of those not afflicted with schizophrenia. Schizotypal people, for instance, may dress in an idiosyncratic style; their speech patterns may be somewhat out of the ordinary; they may respond ineptly in social situations; their emotional responses may be inappropriate; they may believe in supernatural phenomena such as telepathy and omens; and they may be hard to get close to—both physically and emotionally. In short, schizotypal individuals are eccentric.
Harvard researcher Dennis Kinney and his team replicated Heston’s study 40 years later and suggested that schizotypal individuals may inherit the unconventional modes of thinking and perceiving associated with schizophrenia without inheriting the disease itself. In this study, Kinney and his colleagues rated 36 adopted offspring of schizophrenic parents and 36 matched control subjects adopted from nonschizophrenic parents using the Lifetime Creativity Scales. They found that the adopted offspring of schizophrenic individuals who themselves displayed signs of schizotypal personality had higher scores for creativity than the control subjects. The Kinney group also made a new discovery: some of their control subjects who did not have a family history of schizophrenia met the profile for schizotypal personality—and they too scored higher for creativity than other control subjects.
Taking the reverse approach, recent studies by British investigator Daniel Nettle and Australian researchers David Rawlings and Ann Locarnini have confirmed that creative individuals tend to score higher on scales of schizotypal personality than less creative individuals. In my research at Harvard, done in part with my colleague Cynthia A. Meyersburg, I have found that study participants who score high in a measure of creative achievement in the arts are more likely to endorse magical thinking—such as belief in telepathic communication, dreams that portend the future, and memories of past lives. These participants are also more likely to attest to unusual perceptual experiences, such as having frequent déjà vu and hearing voices whispering in the wind.
Too Much Information
Cognitive disinhibition is the failure to ignore information that is irrelevant to current goals or to survival. We are all equipped with mental filters that hide most of the processing that goes on in our brains behind the scenes. So many signals come in through our sensory organs, for example, that if we paid attention to all of them we would be overwhelmed. Furthermore, our brains are constantly accessing imagery and memories stored in our mental files to process and decode incoming information. Thanks to cognitive filters, most of this input never reaches conscious awareness.
There are individual differences in how much information we block out, however; both schizotypal and schizophrenic individuals have been shown to have reduced functioning of one of these cognitive filters, called latent inhibition (LI). Reduced LI appears to increase the amount of unfiltered stimuli reaching our conscious awareness and is associated with offbeat thoughts and hallucinations. It is easy to see that allowing unfiltered information into consciousness could lead to strange perceptual experiences, such as hearing voices or seeing imaginary people.
Cognitive disinhibition is also likely at the heart of what we think of as the aha! experience. During moments of insight, cognitive filters relax momentarily and allow ideas that are on the brain’s back burners to leap forward into conscious awareness, in the same manner that bizarre thoughts surface in the mind of the psychotic individual. Consider this example from Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 book A Beautiful Mind, about Nobel Prize winner (and diagnosed with schizophrenia) John Forbes Nash. When asked why he believed that aliens from outer space were contacting him, he responded: “Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.” (Nash’s case illustrates how the cognitive mechanism of the eureka moment is similar to the delusional experience called thought insertion, in which individuals suffering from psychosis believe that outside forces have placed thoughts in their brains. Most people suffering from psychosis or schizophrenia do not produce ideas that are considered creative, however. The ability to use cognitive disinhibition in a creative way depends on the presence of additional cognitive abilities associated with a high level of functioning.)
Reduced cognitive filtering could explain the tendency of highly creative people to focus intensely on the content of their inner world at the expense of social or even self-care needs. (Beethoven, for example, had difficulty tending to his own cleanliness.) When conscious awareness is overpopulated with unusual and unfiltered stimuli, it is difficult not to focus attention on that inner universe.
As the market value of creative thinking increases, the round-hole world may continue to make adjustments to accommodate and assimilate eccentrics. Such accommodations already exist in communities with high concentrations of artists, writers, scientists and computer geeks. Managers within these communities tolerate bizarre clothing choices, disregard of normal social protocols and nontraditional work schedules in the interest of promoting innovation. At Dean Kamen’s company, Deka Research & Development, for example, not only is denim well accepted but employees are allowed—even expected—to solve problems and complete tasks in whatever way works best for them.
Square pegs (and octagonal pegs with conical appendages) no longer have to work so hard at fitting in. It is high time. Indeed, we all owe a deep debt of gratitude to those whose creative work has been accomplished at the expense of square-peg feelings of alienation and ostracism. The creative efforts of eccentrics add richness, beauty and innovation to the lives of those of us who have fit somewhat more comfortably into our round holes.
Politics brings out the jerks in many people. I thought this study at the University of Nebraska was interesting in what it found. Also included is a figure of more recent research from the same authors shown in the image below. This was found on Kyle Hull’s Twitter (X) feed.
Why politics bring out the worst in us
Survey study shows people are more willing to bend their morals when they engage in the political realm
Date:
February 8, 2024
Source:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The findings from a large survey study, co-authored by Kyle Hull [@kylejhull], Kevin Smith and Clarisse Warren, demonstrate the willingness of people to bend their morals -- even behave unethically -- when engaging in the political realm.
Results also suggest that hostility toward outgroups (i.e., opposing party) is the driving factor for the moral ambiguity exercised when respondents switch from the personal to the political arena.
And there is not just one guilty party.
"People, regardless of age or ideology, were more willing to engage in immoral behaviors and judgments if the behaviors were in the political realm," said Hull, a visiting assistant professor in political science.
"And a lot of it was just driven by genuine internal dislike of the 'other' side."
The researchers developed a survey and engaged four different samples of adults, totaling 2,472 respondents.
The survey included nonpolitical and political moral behavior scales and political and nonpolitical moral tolerance scales.
"Basically, we were taking the same person and asking them virtually the same questions," said Smith, Leland J. and Dorothy H. Olson Professor of Political Science.
"The only difference in the items is we changed 'person' to 'politician.' And that was enough to shift people's moral judgment. It changes in a way that induces more flexibility in our moral assessments."
That includes assessments of politicians' bad behavior, as the co-authors found people are more morally tolerant of politicians they liked, similar to the behavior they were willing to tolerate from a friend.
I came across an interesting article about dumb ideas being believed by smart people. I’ve included some excerpts from this article as it fits within my subject and has been a particular question upon my mind for some time. Primarily I’ve known many very competent, successful people over the years with the most peculiar political ideas. This article addresses this. I first will post from Twitter (X) some posts from the author Rob Henderson.
Why Dumb Ideas Capture Smart and Successful People
Intelligent individuals are better at understanding the reputational consequences of their beliefs
ROB HENDERSON @robkhenderson
In his book The Social Leap, the evolutionary psychologist William von Hippel writes, “a substantial reason we evolved such large brains is to navigate our social world… A great deal of the value that exists in the social world is created by consensus rather than discovered in an objective sense… our cognitive machinery evolved to be only partially constrained by objective reality.” Our social brains process information not only by examining the facts, but also considering the social consequences of what happens to our reputations if we believe something.
Indeed, in his influential theory of social comparison processes, the eminent psychologist Leon Festinger suggested that people evaluate the “correctness” of their opinions by comparing them to the opinions of others. When we see others hold the same beliefs as us, our own confidence in those beliefs increases. Which is one reason why people are more likely to proselytize beliefs that cannot be verified through empirical means.
In short, people have a mechanism in their minds. It stops them from saying something that could lower their status, even if it’s true. And it propels them to say something that could increase their status, even if it’s false. Sometimes, local norms can push against this tendency. Certain communities (e.g., scientists) can obtain status among their peers for expressing truths. But if the norm is relaxed, people might default to seeking status over truth if status confers the greater reward.
Furthermore, knowing that we could lose status if we don’t believe in something causes us to be more likely to believe in it to guard against that loss. Considerations of what happens to our own reputation guides our beliefs, leading us to adopt a popular view to preserve or enhance our social positions. We implicitly ask ourselves, “What are the social consequences of holding (or not holding) this belief?”
But our reputation isn’t the only thing that matters when considering what to believe. Equally important is the reputation of others. Returning to the peripheral route of persuasion, we decide whether to believe something not only if lots of people believe it, but also if the proponent of the belief is a prestigious person. If lots of people believe something, our likelihood of believing it increases. And if a high-status person believes something, we are more prone to believing it, too.
Indeed, the Canadian anthropologist Jerome Barkow posits that people across the world view media figures as more prestigious than respected members of their local communities. People on screen appear to be attractive, wealthy, popular, and powerful. Barkow writes, “All over the world, children are learning not from members of their own community but from media figures whom they perceive as prestigious… local prestige is debased.” As this phenomenon continues to grow, the opinions and actions of the globally-prestigious carry even more influence.
Prestige paradox
Which brings us to a question: Who is most susceptible to manipulation via peripheral persuasion? It might seem intuitive to believe that people with less education are more manipulable. But research suggests this may not be true.
High-status people are more preoccupied with how others view them. Which means that educated and/or affluent people may be especially prone to peripheral, as opposed to central, methods of persuasion.
Indeed, the psychology professor Keith Stanovich, discussing his research on “myside bias,” has written, “if you are a person of high intelligence… you will be less likely than the average person to realize you have derived your beliefs from the social groups you belong to and because they fit with your temperament and your innate psychological propensities.”
This is not unique to our own time. William Shirer, the American journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, described his experiences as a war correspondent in Nazi Germany. Shirer wrote, “Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, beer hall, or café, I would meet with outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting nonsense they heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but one was met with such incredulity, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty.”
Likewise, in a fascinating study on the collapse of the Soviet Union, researchers have found that university-educated people were two to three times more likely than high school graduates to say they supported the Communist Party. White-collar professional workers were likewise two to three times more supportive of communist ideology, relative to farm laborers and semi-skilled workers.
Educational divides within the US today are consistent with these historical patterns. The Democratic political analyst David Shor has observed that, “Highly educated people tend to have more ideologically coherent and extreme views than working-class ones. We see this in issue polling and ideological self-identification. College-educated voters are way less likely to identify as moderate.”
This concludes my foray into ridiculousness, with many side trips along my journey. This is similar to other postings of mine, but perhaps some information will be transferred. It was useful for me in any case to research this somewhat. Thanks for reading.
172nd Posting, February 28, 2024.