Few people saw Donald Trump’s victory coming, including Donald Trump. There are easy culprits to blame for the surprise win (skewed polls and fake news come to mind), but the biggest enemy might be our own egos. It’s natural to ignore everything we disagree with, and many of us don’t realize that we’re biased until we’re shocked into noticing that things are not like we expected. That’s true regardless of who you ultimately voted for.
Maybe you feel like you’re the only sane one in a world gone crazy. Unfortunately, everyone thinks that, says Lee Ross, a social psychologist at Stanford University who studies bias. Political beliefs aren’t just emotionally charged because of patriotism — they also tie us to our social circles and help establish our personal identity, even if we don’t know exactly how long a senate term lasts. Sure, sometimes people believe wrong things because we’re lazy and uninformed — but the social factor plays a very large role. Changing our minds could change how we see ourselves and alienate us from our friends. Because we want badly to feel good and accepted, we resist challenging information, often without realizing it.
Our political beliefs can even affect our ability to do math
These inherent, human biases are part of why even a little fake news is a big problem. It’s easy to believe because it tells us what we want to hear. Meanwhile, a lot of correct information might not do much good if it contradicts our existing beliefs. It’s not true that misinformation only happens because of a lack of knowledge, says Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College political scientist. Sometimes knowledgeable people are better at cherry-picking information so that it supports their beliefs. So, many of us don’t look for contradictory information in the first place, and we might not believe it when we do actually find it. “We do this because it is so uncomfortable to be presented with the new and to be challenged that we actively avoid this information,” says Ross. The flip side is true too: it is so tempting to believe anything that supports our position that we become vulnerable to being tricked.
There are several ways we fool ourselves, and they’re predictable. The best-known is “confirmation bias,” when people look for information that confirms what they already believe and ignore everything else. It’s easy to do this because most of our friends agree with us and are doing the same thing, too. And when we do see information from “the other side,” we think it’s bad information; Ross calls this the “hostile media effect.” Basically, regardless of whether you lean right or left, you always think the other side is biased. Think about how people feel about outlets like The National Review and Mother Jones.