Author: Tan Hoang
Today, our beloved America finds herself rooted in political polarization. Polarization dominates the political landscape. Within this year, there is no doubt the upcoming presiden-
tial elections—influenced by biased mass media campaigning and fieryrhetoric across political ideologies—will intensify tensions, deepen divisions, and foster greater misunderstanding among Americans.
While it is tempting to place blame solely on our na- tion’s politicians and attribute our nation’s polarization to their age, eccentric personalities, and disagreeable politics, it is much more challenging to recognize that perhaps our opinions are shaped by what our media networks and social circles choose to inform us of. Ultimately, it is important to realize the significant role that our inherent cognitive biases play in heightening social division.
To gain a better understanding of the impact of cogni- tive biases play in politics, let’s consider the following scenario:
Ask yourself, which scenario for political candidate A, 1 or 2, seems more plausible?
Candidate A is a supporter of social justice reforms. Candidate A is a supporter of social justice reforms and advo- cates for abortion rights.
In today’s charged political environment, voters often assume that supporting social justice reforms also indicates
an endorsement of abortion rights. In other words, because Candidate A supports seemingly “progressive” social reform, it seems plausible to voters that Candidate A also supports passing encoding “liberal” abortion rights into laws.
However, the probability that Candidate A supports social justice reforms and abortion rights is much less than that Candidate A supports social justice reforms alone. This misattri- bution can be attributed to a cognitive bias known in psychology as the conjunction fallacy.
This cognitive bias occurs when there is a mistaken overestimation of the likelihood of a combination of events manifesting compared to the probability of each event occurring separately. Our vulnerability to the conjunction fallacy under- scores how we resort to stereotypes and assumptions in our social perceptions rather than adhering to probability.
The stereotypes and assumptions that can hold us back from social harmony could derive from our immediate family, our social circle, or potentially the sources which we learn cur- rent events from. Therefore, monitoring our cognitive biases not only allows us to think critically and conduct accurate assess- ments of situations but also enables us to transcend incorrect and limiting social prejudices.
Conforming to conjunction fallacies in politics has the potential to lead to the oversimplification of candidates’ posi- tions and the formation of false perceptions based on one’s ste- reotypes, contributing to misinformation, biased decision-mak- ing, and polarization in the political environment. Falling victim to cognitive biases, such as the conjunction fallacy, prevents us as voters from making well-informed political decisions and degrades our value as free-minded voters in a liberal democracy. The failure to make well-informed political decisions has major implications. As voters, we could blindly follow a candidate, be- lieving that since they support Policy A, they also support Policy B. This only leads to disappointment and abandonment of our democratic participation when these candidates are elected and fail to deliver on their promises.
Additionally, the conjunction fallacy not only leads
to a failure to make well-informed political decisions but also reinforces our confirmation bias, which is our tendency to favor information that affirms our own beliefs. Confirmation bias, therefore, strengthens our ideological echo chambers through
a positive feedback loop. Being surrounded by our own echo chamber fosters greater polarization within the political climate because we limit our exposure to opinions outside of our accept- ed perspective.
We see the existence of echo chambers today when extremists from both the far left and far right fail to see beyond their existence and mindset. To the world, these individuals are extremists, but they view themselves as activists because they are confined to their echo chambers and unable to see the world through others’ perspectives. This stifles ideological flexibility and increases tensions. Limiting ourselves to self-created “echo chambers” fosters a black-and-white perspective on the world, further dividing our communities along arguably misplaced ideological lines.
Today, politicians, mass media, and the communities we surround ourselves in dictate that many ideological lines seem irrational to cross. Our society dictates that we must either be conservative and environmentalists; that we cannot be liberal and pro-life; that we cannot be conservative yet believe in systemic racism. We have fallen into the traps of our ideological mindsets, indicated by the inability to believe that conservatism and liberalism can be big “tents” for various approaches to poli- tics and human belief.
Instead, our society encourages the manifestation of the conjunction fallacy. This is a clear phenomenon during election campaigning. It suggests that if we are minorities, we should support liberal policies; if we are religious, we should support conservative ones; and similar to earlier, if we are conservative voters, we shouldn’t support Candidate A because since they support social reforms, they should also support environmental protectionism.
Breaking down cognitive biases and facilitating nu- anced discussions requires us to acknowledge that crossing these ideological lines is the solution. This acknowledgment opens the door to more nuanced, informed, and enhances the collaborative diversity of political thought. Most importantly, we must humble ourselves with the knowledge that sometimes, we may be wrong. If we cannot strike down our echo chambers, we cannot begin to learn and engage with others through collaborative discourse to build a future enriched by the diversity of political thought.
Opening our minds and hearts to begin thinking across ideological lines prevents the entrenchment of dichotomous “black-and-white” political beliefs that dominate the mainstream today. However, this journey begins with intentionality. We must push ourselves to move past our cognitive biases, prevent assumptions and stereotypes from dominating our perceptions, and leave behind our echo chambers. Only then can we foster a deeper understanding of ideological complexities and begin to rebuild bridges that can mend our nation’s political polarization.