A group of about 470 whales stranded themselves this week in a sandbank outside of Tasmania. Wildlife biologist Kris Carlyon, the expert leading the rescue mission, speculates that they may have become distracted feeding too close to shore as they were following an ailing leader. Scientists agree that the central issue influencing the mass stranding and deaths of all but 108 whales is the power of their tight social bonds and loyalty to the pod.
Be Clear about your Loyalties: The tight bonds in the whale pod create a loyalty similar to partisanship. Partisanship is not only about politics or politicians. Partisanship is the strong and sometimes blind loyalty to a particular party, group, cause or person. It is an emotional and perceptual state that can impact anyone’s beliefs and behaviors across a wide range of issues. We can have “partisan” opinions about COVID19, racism, climate change, sexism, public education, organizational decisions, child care and much more. It’s not just our legislators who are partisan about the decision of when to appoint the justice who will replace RBG. We are all partisan when emotion takes priority over critical thinking.
The Power of Identity: We don’t need an authoritarian state to ignore our own eyes and ears. The potential for blindness to what is really going on around us exists inside of each of us because of the strength of our identity needs. In a 2018 article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Van Bavel and Pereira propose an identity-based model for understanding the influence of partisanship on cognitive processes. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, their review of neuroscientific research asserts that powerful emotions are activated in relation to social identity.
The Influence of Emotion: Perceptual and emotional experiences are more influential than data and facts. We become attached to the perceptions and beliefs of groups we belong to (political, religious, professional, family, friendship and more) because doing so enables us to be more comfortable in our skin, to have a distinct sense of purpose, and to feel that we are not alone. Identity is crucial. We want to belong, and to make sense of our experience, and our brains ignore, forget or are unaware of contradictory information as we do so.
The Power of Bias: Research in behavioral economics speaks about this same issue a little differently, and asserts that our “biases” often lead to bad financial decisions. These biases or themes of human irrationality, well-described in Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, detail the many ways careful analysis is overridden by quick thinking, intuition and emotion. To read more, consider Bergstrom and West’s new book, Calling Bull Shit, to learn about how we are distracted, confused and mislead by the emotionally focused advertising and information in social media.
The Solution: Loyalty to a leader or point of view must be paired with pausing, researching multiple points of view, and considering alternative perspectives with awareness of the emotional states and identities that influence us. This is our responsibility in voting, and in all important personal and professional decisions. It’s a moral imperative. We will go the wrong direction or worse yet, lead others in the wrong direction if we don’t make that effort.
