An essay I wrote for On Risk and Reason about prior belief and the difficulty of changing prior belief.
I feel like this essay does not make claims that are verified by reality. Instead, this essay offers more of a way of post hoc reasoning rather than an explanation of the self fulfilling nature of prior belief.
A large body of research has documented that reasoning and decision-making follow a set of automatic processes. While these patterns are efficient and often good enough for the relatively simple decisions we make each day, they tend to work less well for more complex situations. We will review some key readings that describe some of these cognitive processes and the pitfalls they are associated with. Readings will include pieces by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two psychologists who are credited with founding behavioral economics, Cass Sunstein a prominent scholar of law and policy, and Jonathan St. B.T. Evans and Aidan Feeney who are psychologists who study the role of belief in reasoning. Your task for essay 2 is to use this research to make predictions about how a person might reason through a difficult decision regarding their health. Consider the scenarios below and ask yourself what might a person decide and why? What cognitive heuristics and biases might drive one decision or another? You will need to weigh the evidence and take a position about what decision the person might make. What choices do these cognitive patterns make more likely? What aspects of a person’s situation enact these heuristics and biases, how do these heuristics and biases interact with one another?
Scenario I. Audrey is a hypochondriac who is a strong believer that vitamins lead to improved health. She takes them every day and attributes her good health to her daily natural vitamin regimen. However, she recently read an article that a large scale epidemiological study found that taking high doses of vitamins were associated with increase risk of death. Her friend, who also takes vitamins regularly, says the findings are worthless and warns Audrey not to take the study seriously.
Scenario II. Patrick is a 20-year old college student and his diet is less than healthy. Most days he lives on pepperoni pizza and soda, but once and a while he includes some French-fries and jokingly says he’s adding vegetables to the mix. In his class on public health, he learns of a study that suggests that eating poorly as a young adult puts a person at higher risk for heart problems later in life. His father recently had a heart attack after years of struggling with heart problems such as high blood pressure, but Patrick himself is an athlete and in good health.
Will Audrey’s desire for health lead her to continue taking the vitamins? Will Patrick improve his diet? Neither of these questions can be addressed with a simple yes or no, however, the information in these scenarios gives us clues about which cognitive heuristics and biases may be relevant as each person thinks through their possible options. Choose one of the scenarios and, using the readings listed below, discuss the heuristics and reasoning biases that come into play and explain how. The goal is to come up with a hypothesis about the thought process the individual will go through and what short term decision s/he is likely to make using the concepts from the three readings.
Remember, heuristics are short cuts; they tend to simplify complex information. The scenarios above are intentionally sparse to simulate the limited data that heuristics often rely on. Therefore, don’t “go beyond the data”, use only the information in the scenarios to base your decision on. Your inferences can be astute by justifying your analysis in the information provided without having to make further assumptions about either person’s knowledge or experience.
As evidenced by debates over cancer-causing cell phones and autism-causing vaccines, people may cling to their deeply rooted beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. There exist mental barriers that prevent people from changing their illogically reasoned views. These unfounded conclusions are the result of biases that are caused by systematic errors made while using heuristics, or mental shortcuts, in cases of doubt and uncertainty (Tversky & Kahneman 1982). Though humans can typically reason logically, people tend to be biased when analyzing their prior beliefs. The convoluted nature of these rapid mental processes makes it difficult to analyze the biases that affect people’s decisions. However, by examining the hypothetical case of Audrey, a vitamin-taking hypochondriac who is presented with a study that contradicts her beliefs, it is possible to illustrate the interaction between Audrey’s presuppositions and the heuristics she uses in her reasoning. From this, it is evident that Audrey’s prior beliefs affect the heuristics she employs, causing biases that reinforce her original opinions, creating a fallacious circular argument. This circular logic causes Audrey to reject the study and continue taking vitamins in a powerful demonstration of the self-reinforcing nature of prior belief.
When Audrey learns of a study that shows that taking large doses of vitamins leads to an increased risk of death, there is an opportunity for Audrey to revise her beliefs about vitamins. Though she believes that her vitamin regimen has helped lead to her good health, the study concludes that high doses of vitamins may pose a danger to her health. Because these two conclusions have an essential contradiction, they form the basis for potential belief revision. In their illustration of the components necessary for belief revision, Evans and Feeney have provided a framework with which Audrey’s circumstances can be examined (2004). In their model, there are two premises that lead to a logical conclusion, then a statement contradicting it.
If the contradictory statement is accepted as truth, then doubt will casted upon the conditional premise and minor premise (Evans & Feeney 2004). Audrey’s beliefs can be framed in a similar fashion.
Because the study suggests the possibility that Audrey’s health is at risk, her mental heuristics operate to determine the validity of the study. In order to determine the amount of mental energy needed to scrutinize a new claim, people are likely to compare the new claim with prior beliefs (Evans & Feeney 2004). The belief bias effect suggests that people readily accept claims that are believable, even if the claims have logical errors ( Evans & Feeney 2004). Moreover, if a claim is unbelievable or at odds with current belief, then there is a general response leading to the suppression of acceptance, regardless of the logic or validity of the claim. Furthermore, the Selective Scrutiny Model proposes that people will examine the argument more carefully when they disagree with the conclusion (Evans & Feeney 2004). In Audrey’s scenario, the study’s claim is contrary to Audrey’s belief. Because of this, the bias-belief effect will cause Audrey to suppress any acceptance of the study’s findings and to scrutinize the claims. Evans and Feeney explain that when scrutinizing contradictory information, people tend to base their conclusions on the first model that comes to mind (2004). Thus, Audrey’s conclusions will be based on the first mental model she is able to formulate about vitamins.
Audrey will further employ heuristics in order to simplify the creation of this mental model. The availability heuristic is used to make models by recalling memories (Tversky & Kahneman 1982). Easily recalled events are associated with higher rates of probability because it is assumed that the more or quicker an event can be recalled, the higher the rate of probability an event has. It is in this line of reasoning that errors can be made. For instance, Tversky and Kahneman demonstrate that when asked whether there are more words beginning with R or words with R as the third letter, people typically believe that there are more words beginning with the letter R (1982). Though this is not true, people believe it is true because words beginning with the letter R are more easily recalled. The idea that recalled events are determined by factors other than actual probability and statistical likeliness is relevant to Audrey because she attempts to recall cases of vitamins. Several factors will bias her recall. Aspects such as context and emotions influence the availability of events. Emotionally compelling or highly publicized events are more likely to be recalled (Sunstein 2002). Similarly, even imagined events that evoke strong emotions such as love are likely to be recalled. Audrey will use these types of events to create her mental model.
Because emotionally compelling events are more available, when Audrey searches for events, the most emotionally compelling events will help form the basis for her mental model. Because Audrey is a hypochondriac, events that promote her good health will be associated with strong positive emotion. Sunstein describes a method people use to weigh risk and benefits, called the affect heuristic (2002). Sunstein proposes that if people see high benefits in an activity, they perceive low risks. Additionally, if people believe that there are low risks, they see high benefits. Furthermore, if people like an activity, they see high benefits and low risks (2002). Since Audrey sees high benefits in taking vitamins, as she attributes much of her good health to her vitamin regimen, Audrey is likely to attribute vitamins with low risks. Because her health is of utmost importance to Audrey and because she does not like to risk her health, Audrey’s association of vitamins with both of these components means that Audrey’s own health is an event that evokes strong positive emotions. This event is the most likely event for Audrey to recall and it will help form the basis of Audrey’s mental model.
There is an important distinction to be clarified regarding the affect heuristic. Sunstein argues that upon learning of the high risks of an activity, people are likely to attribute low benefits with that activity (2002). However, Audrey has not yet accepted the validity of the high risks associated with vitamins. If Audrey had accepted the validity of the study, then the contradictory statement of the belief revision model would be accepted. Audrey would then associate vitamins with low benefit and high risk. However, at this point in Audrey’s mental processes, Audrey is still looking for model to make conclusions on. Therefore, Audrey’s previous memories are not affected and Audrey still can recall events with vitamins that have high benefits and low risk. Because Audrey has strong positive emotions attached to vitamins, Audrey will most likely recall events of vitamins leading to good health.
Other heuristics operate at the same time as the affect heuristic. The confirmation bias occurs when subjects are asked to find evidence to make a judgment on a particular conclusion. Subjects are most likely to search for evidence that proves, rather than disproves the conclusion (Tversky & Kahneman 1982). Because Audrey is affected by belief bias, which primes her to suppress approval of the study, she will be further biased towards looking only for evidence that supports her belief. As demonstrated, the affect heuristic makes Audrey select herself as evidence that vitamins are healthy. Both the confirmation bias and the representative heuristic, paired with the affect heuristic, cause Audrey to use herself as evidence for her mental model.
While Audrey is searching her mind for confirming examples or events, additional external factors will also factor into her decision. Her friend has argued that the study is invalid. To process this new information, Audrey will once again use heuristics to evaluate it. Because this piece of information is believable to Audrey, as it matches her original belief, she will not scrutinize it because of the belief bias effect. Audrey accepts her friend’s statement despite her friend not offering any new rationale or logic in the argument. Since Audrey accepts this piece of new information, it becomes available for her to recall. Furthermore, because her friend’s argument confirms Audrey’s belief, the argument is more likely to be recalled because Audrey uses the confirmation bias to search for evidence. Thus, in addition to using herself as evidence for her model, Audrey will use her friend’s remark as evidence for her mental model. Gaps in this circular mental logic support Sunstein’s belief that this type of social interaction causes group polarization. Group polarization is an effect that describes how a group of people in agreement about a subject will have more extreme beliefs after having a discussion (2002). Audrey’s scenario perfectly illustrates the interaction between heuristics and biases. The result is very similar to the effect that Sunstein describes. Because her friend provides additional evidence for Audrey’s mental model, Audrey is likely to form a conclusion that is more extreme than the one she initially began with. Thus, the group polarization effect predicts that she will even more firmly believe in the beneficial nature of vitamins than she previously did.
Now that Audrey has found evidence for the Selective Scrutiny Model, she is able to draw a conclusion. The mental model that she creates uses the evidence she is able to retrieve. Due to the representative heuristic and the confirmation bias, she recalls herself and her friend as representative examples of taking vitamins. This model, suggesting that taking vitamins leads to good health, will lead Audrey to conclude that the study’s conclusions are invalid. Since Audrey does not arrive at the same conclusions that the study does, she does not revise her beliefs according to the belief revision model. The result is that Audrey continues to believe that taking vitamins is good for her. Evident in this heuristic chain is the circular nature of Audrey’s mental logic. As a result of analyzing Audrey’s mindset before applying heuristics using the belief revision model, Audrey’s prior belief, or the conditional hypothesis, and the role it plays can be tracked. Audrey evaluates the conditional hypothesis, which says that vitamins are beneficial, by using the conditional hypothesis as the basis of her mental model. This feedback loop, in which the conditional hypothesis upholds itself through a chain of heuristics and biases, demonstrates the immense inertia that deeply held beliefs have. Because these heuristics chain together to form a complex self-reinforcing cycle, it is not immediately obvious to the subject or outsiders that there is a logical fallacy.
This cyclical, logical argument is responsible for Audrey’s decision to continue taking vitamins. Furthermore, the role that Audrey’s friend plays, serving to reinforce Audrey’s belief, demonstrates that these self-fulfilling arguments often can be driven towards more extreme stances. The specific interaction between the belief bias effect and the confirmation bias serves to illustrate the mental logic that is at the heart of many rationally illogical but mentally accepted conclusions. This type of cyclic loop can be identified in various cases involving confirmation bias and groupthink. But the identification of these rapid mental decisions, such as the ones that Audrey make, can help identify areas that the cycle could be interfered and can lead to more comprehensive models of belief revision.
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