Belief Polerization: A possible reason JWs are more convinced when facing critical information.

by bohm 25 Replies latest jw friends

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  bohm

  Hadit: The situation with Alice and Bob was crafted such that mind control was not involved - thats my point; things that look extremely strange from Bobs POW (note the situation would be just as strange from Alices!) need not involve mind-control.

  I will give you the situation is somewhat artifiical - in reality Alice would likely have gone after bob, "what do you want to accomplish from showing me this?", and not allowed her to reason at all about the information; that would have been mind control. I will also easily admit the secular/non-secular worldview might not be adaquate to describe the situation. I mainly choose Alice and Bob because of the familarity.

  The article i referenced contain more realistic situations, and the one i gave Blondie a study that seem to provide emperical evidence for the phenomona. I think its a fascinating topic how people reason!

  quietlyleaving: oh dear, that sound like bees nest! In the highly idealized and artificial example of alice and bob, i assumed the only difference between the two was that alices prior belief - perhaps because of her upbringing or things Bob did not know - was that she came into the situation with a relative high degree of beief in a non-secular world view (the devil tries to persecute christians), whereas Bob had an equal degree of disbelief in that scenario, ie. a secular world-view. I did not mean to imply anything by their sexes, and the similarity between "Alice" and AIW was initially by accident (but i couldnt resist it ;-) ).
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  bohm

  Mary -

  In the post i argue (like many others, there is absolutely nothing new in my post save the somewhat contrieved Alice/Bob example i threw in for fun) that Belief polerization can be found even when both subjects are perfectly rational, have the same model of the world, just slightly different prior belief (here in the secular/non-secular world view).

  Jonestown is properly *not* very well explained by that phenomona, because i would guess the average member of Jonestown was not a very rational person due to the brainwashing and mind-control.

  BluesBrother: Lets look at a more trivial example: leagalising marihuannah. Suppose we have mr. A and C. Initially mr. A and C are 90% for. Now lets suppose they all watch Glen Becks program and they have different degrees of trust in Glen Beck, and everyone of them agree that Glen Beck is heavily biased towards saying marihuannah is not safe, say A trust Glen Beck and C Does not trust Glen Beck. (one may be republican, the other democrat).

  Say glen beck goes on the show and say "Marihuannah is bad". Its easy to show that C will practically not change his oppinion, while A will change his oppinion a lot.

  This example is a lot more trivial (no "world view"), and the effect not as drastic. But if you let them watch "the daily show" after glen Beck and John Stewart says its safe, you can easily end up with having them both believe marihuannah is 99% safe and 1% safe, respectively.

  Then, after you add in one or more "hidden variables" like the world view and it suddenly begin to look very complicated. After they have formed their oppinions on medical marihuannah, that might in turn polerize their oppinion on other media..
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  quietlyleaving

  bohm, I wasn't thinking of AIW at all, I was simply using the example from you opening post. The differences between the sexes is only one of the many difference causing mechanisms between how people react to the same evidence. There are loads of other difference generating mechanisms at work in people too.

  But I think the example, that of the difference between the sexes is very pertinent to your topic.
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  Hadit

  But I think the example, that of the difference between the sexes is very pertinent to your topic.

  I completely agree. Again it goes back to our environment and conditioning. We have completely different conditioning as differing sexes and completely different experiences from that conditioning. As QL said there are also loads of other differences involved.

  Hadit: The situation with Alice and Bob was crafted such that mind control was not involved - thats my point; things that look extremely strange from Bobs POW (note the situation would be just as strange from Alices!) need not involve mind-control.

  Bohm - I'm not sure my point came across either. That conversation does not exist in a vacuum. They come into that conversation with all their preexisting programming and biases (and as quietlyleaving pointed out that conditioning involves the difference between the sexes as well). There is a huge interplay going on between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. We hang onto things we are programmed to believe and it also involves a certain comfort level we do not want to disturb by entertaining a different view. The brain seeks familiar ground, therefore, no matter what is heard they stick to how it affirms their own reality.

  Very interesting topic Bohm - it certainly makes one think!
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  nextdoorgirl

  Thank you for a very interesting discussion to read Bohm, Ding, Mary, and others. Very thought-provoking.

  My mind was expanded. And I ENJOY that!
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  quietlyleaving

  nice points hadit

  It seems to me that studies like the one Bohm mentions in his OP (and even in their highly idealized form) testify to multplicity generating mechanisms within us. But at the same time people can reach a general consesus as in a democracy.