Birthers are like Camping Followers: Even When Shown Wrong, They Believe This Means They Are Right

Festinger, Riecken and Schachter describe Martin’s reaction as a response to the cognitive dissonance created by the disagreement between her prediction and reality. She proclaimed the end was near; it wasn’t. In order to reduce the dissonance, she—like all failed prophets—reconciled the conflict by contriving an ad hoc and after-the-fact explanation.

Such mental and emotional gymnastics are described as motivated reasoning or motivated cognition. Stony Brook University political scientist Charles Taber says our immediate emotional response to an idea makes us “…retrieve thoughts that are consistent with our previous beliefs”, even before our analytical faculties kick in. In the minds of zealots like Camping and Martin, their emotions, pre-existing beliefs—even their sense of self—overpower facts and logic in steering them to their conclusions.

And while it’s easy to be mock individuals like Camping and Martin, we all employ motivated reasoning—for example, when we’re told our precious child is behaving badly in school, or when a loved one falls critically ill, or when we ignore good advice. We see it in arenas you might think would be ruled by rational minds and scientific evidence. For example, many global-warming deniers are motivated, not by scientific evidence but by their political and economic ideologies. According to the Pew Research Center, 79% of Democrats believe there is “solid evidence” for global warming, compared to 38% of Republicans. And 53% of Democrats accept that human activity is the cause, compared to 16% of Republicans. In this case, an abhorrence of government-imposed restrictions on free enterprise overpowers evidence. (Of course, a lack of scientific literacy is another pillar of global warming denialism—but that’s another post.)

Case studies in motivated reasoning are plentiful. In fact, I began this post when Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate in response to “birthers” like Donald Trump who claim the president wasn’t born in the U.S. and therefore should not occupy the Oval Office. Then, a mere four days later, another example appeared with the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

[link to chrissasaki.wordpress.com]