Put the human team above your partisan “team”
This piece was originally published on June 21, 2023 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Department of Justice indictment of former president Donald Trump has dominated headlines, social media, and the 2024 GOP primary race. The one thing it didn’t do was change America’s political calculus.
That’s because most people already know what they think about Trump, Biden, and the political system. The indictment was either the last shot to throw a law-breaking politician in jail or a corrupt system going after a political enemy. And in our increasingly “team” mentality, nothing the other “side” said mattered because our conclusions were already baked.
Confirmation bias, or the tendency to only see evidence that agrees with our pre-existing opinions, is everywhere. So is the tendency to double down on it. Something bad about our political opponents comes across our screen, and we share it. Something good about our political opponents, or bad about our own, comes across our screen, and we hesitate. Research shows this is true regardless of how “smart” you are.
This human challenge goes well beyond politics. Social psychology studies show that our minds go for information that supports our beliefs the way 19th-century speculators panned for gold. We sift through the statistics and stories, searching for glimmers that show we are right. And when we find them, we hold them up for everyone to see, unaware that what we see as gold may well be the rocks everyone else would throw aside.
Confirmation bias can be helpful, such as when happy spouses assume the best about each other during tough times. It allows them to have difficult conversations, even full-blown fights, and still come out united. But it’s mostly bad, which is why overconfidence can lead to surprise losses, depressed or self-critical people can be stuck in negative self-worth cycles — “I’m a terrible person, and that’s why I’m not successful — and people who are invested in their political “team” often ignore evidence that is critical of their own “side” and favorable towards the other.
Thankfully, confirmation bias can be overcome. One way to do it is a straightforward process called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. In one study, a team of researchers gave liberals the same kind of CBT used to treat psychotic delusional thinking, where the key ingredient is to “plant the seeds of doubt” about the absolute correctness of one’s own view. Participants were given a list of facts about the Republican Party’s beliefs or a chance to guess what percentage of Republicans hold a stereotypically conservative belief and estimate their confidence in their guess.
Participants who only read the list of facts remained hostile to the other “team.” Those who guessed about Republican beliefs were often wrong. They became less hostile towards the other “team” when they learned that Republicans aren’t as extreme or crazy or “out there” as they thought.
Other researchers have replicated this finding in partisan conflicts in nearly 26 countries. The outcomes are the same, regardless of nation, race, political perspective or party, and geographic location.
Genuine curiosity is another way to fix confirmation bias. Being open to another person’s or group’s point of view removes negative emotions and preconceptions when receiving information. Curious people have an easier time updating their beliefs compared to those whose curiosity is low or insincere. Perhaps best of all, curiosity allows people to retain what’s still true about their own beliefs while incorporating what they learn along the way.
We’ve previously written for the Post-Gazette that a great way to be happier and mentally healthier is to step away from our computer and phone — away from what we can’t control, and the click-bait designed to anger us — and focus on what’s right in front of us. The neighbor with a DeSantis 2024 yard sign is also the person who jump-started your car when you were almost late for work, and the Biden/Harris supporter is also the grocery store clerk who put a smiley-face on your kid’s receipt.
They are neighbors, friends, and family. Not the other political “team,” but rather part of your neighborhood “team” . . . the human “team” to which we all belong.
Kurt Gray is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dustin Siggins is founder of Proven Media Solutions. Their previous article was “What to do when there’s nothing you can do.”
