Tribal thinking isn’t thinking
Last month in part I and part II I suggested that our reasoning surrounding the issue of gender transition for young people has become inconsistent at best and incoherent at worst. I’m turning now to the question underneath that inconsistency: Why do we so easily betray our own values, morals, and convictions (not to mention verifiable facts) when it appears to be politically expedient?
For me this question became salient in 1998 when Bill Clinton was impeached after the Monica Lewinsky affair. I studied feminist theory in graduate school and became convinced of two things: Gender inequality persists, and when a man in a position of power over a woman has an affair with her, it is inherently abusive. I remain convinced of both. At that time, I remember shouting out loud while watching the impeachment proceedings: Where are the feminists?! I found a feminist scholar quoted in Time, a quotation I will never forget because it was the moment that I lost my political innocence: “I’d give him a blowjob too just for keeping abortion legal.”
That’s a clear betrayal of conviction. It is either true that taking advantage of a power differential such as president and intern is abusive or it is not. It doesn’t matter that the abuser is a card-carrying feminist. The conservatives I knew who were in favor of impeachment made it all about Clinton’s character, especially his facility for lying under oath. They were not wrong. The Monica Lewinsky affair was a slimy thing for the president to do followed by an even slimier lawyer-like dissembling on the stand. Integrity of character is essential for the president of the United States, they said, and I agreed.
Fast forward to 2016, when these same people betrayed their own convictions in precisely the same way the feminists had in 1998. They might as well have been saying “I’d let Donald Trump lie to me every single day just for the chance that abortion be made illegal.” “Wait,” I found myself shouting, “I thought we cared about integrity and character?” It is either true that regularly lying to the public makes one unfit to be president of the United States or it is not. And in 2020 some of these same people wanted to believe Trump’s lies so badly that no amount of evidence disproving the idea of a stolen election could convince them otherwise, even though the issue had been decisively settled in multiple court cases with judges from both political parties.
So let’s puzzle together. What do these examples have in common? Why do we act against our own values and convictions when faced with evidence that catches us in an obvious inconsistency? There is no doubt that the answer is complex, so I will boil my attempt down to two thoughts. I believe overwhelming evidence reveals that our judgments about everything, especially political questions, are led primarily by tribally-generated intuition—not reason. We’ve known that for a while. But what’s different now is that everything is amped up to eleven. Because the stakes appear to us to be higher than ever (e.g., “this is the most important election in our lifetime”), rampant fear is leading us to entrench in those tribes rather than challenge ideology or acknowledge inconsistencies. I’m certainly not the first person to suggest either idea. I’m just trying to shout it from whatever rooftop I can reach so that we learn to recognize this fear in ourselves and work against it.
A great deal of non-partisan research from the social sciences is clarifying exactly how intuition leads the way when we make judgments. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt explains that intuition (nonconscious cognition mixed with emotion) is like an elephant, and our reason is like a very weak rider. We all make snap judgments based on deeply held moral foundations such as care/harm, fairness/cheating, and sanctity/degradation—in short, the elephant leans heavily before the rider is even aware of it. Haidt’s research reveals that although most societies share these foundations, individuals emphasize them differently depending on our tribal affiliations. For example, in the U.S., progressives overwhelmingly emphasize the care/harm dyad, and conservatives are more likely to emphasize the sanctity/degradation one.
Haidt’s point is clear. When individuals make political judgments, reasoning always comes afterwards and is used to justify judgments already made. Worse still, smarter people don’t think better. They just find more sophisticated reasons for what they’ve already decided. As Haidt puts it, “we can believe almost anything that supports our team.” This means tribal thinking is not thinking at all, and certainly not thinking for yourself. Stop and take a moment to reflect on this, because this is not some random academic insight. It explains why itching ears hear what they want to hear.
Now add another variable: fear. Politics plays on fear, and fearmongering is easier than ever in a climate where we perceive the stakes to be high and we feel threatened. Consider what sociologists call the “hostile media effect.” Joshua Greene points out that groups of Arabs and Israelis who watched the exact same television coverage of the 1982 Beirut massacre each concluded that the coverage was biased in favor of the other side. When we are convinced that the media is hostile, we retreat into our own tribal sources of information. When we feel pushed into the corner, fight or flight systems are activated, and the amygdala prevents communication with the prefrontal cortex. The veracity of the facts or the solidity of the reasoning just doesn’t matter.
The insight that we defend what we have already decided in fear is crucial if we are to make any progress. Fear almost always has to do with perceived loss of control. (Our sense of control is illusory anyway, an important point that requires more space to develop than I have here). The feminists did not rise to defend Lewinsky because to do so meant to attack their tribal leader and, even worse, agreeing with “Them” that Clinton was a slimy misogynist. Conservatives were so afraid of “Them” making abortion legal that they preferred to believe Trump’s lies about election theft. In both cases, individuals shut off their brains and became entrenched in their tribes. Circling the wagons is easier than ever today, as social media creates echo chambers where the opposing view is not engaged for debate. The opposing view, long ago simplified and denigrated, has now been almost completely silenced.
Where can we go from here? First, all of us must work hard to recognize this fear as fear. Fear leads to angry zero-sum thinking. As Skylar Adleta eloquently put it, “zero-sum thinking is indicative of a nation of cowards.” It is only after we recognize our fears and repent of zero-sum thinking that we can return to truth, justice, and especially love, as our highest motivating principles.
If I am led by truth and justice instead of fear, I can be the feminist who stands up for Lewinsky and acknowledges that Clinton needs to be held accountable. If I am led by truth and justice instead of fear, I can be the conservative who stands up and says that promoting election fraud and other unproven conspiracies is corrosive to democracy. Even better, if I am led by love instead of fear, I can be the one that looks at the real evidence and argumentation presented by the other side and admit that they just might have a point. With real humility, I might be able to get us to agree that the goal should always be to support women and lower the number of abortions. Or that not all immigrants are eating our pets. Or that border control and immigration reform must be a high priority. Or that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is profoundly complex, leading to the murders of innocent people on both sides. Or that children today are experiencing crushing social anxiety and are crying out to be loved with a love that goes beyond medical solutions.
With real humility, I can seek out others who disagree with me, listen to them, repent when necessary, and work together to create new solutions. It is time.
Christina Bieber Lake is the author of Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of Materialism. She is a Contributing Editor for Current.
Just the sensitive, challenging, inspiring read I needed this morning! Thank-you!