Leonard Pitts: We Believe What We Want - Facts Be Damned

[ConservativeDemocrat]

...are you guilty of double standards and outright bias?
I'll save you the trouble: Yes.

Maybe you already knew this intuitively. Now you can know it to a scientific certainty. Drew Westen ... a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta and author of a new and still-unpublished study test whether people make decisions based on bias or fact. Bias won hands down.

In a key scenario, respondents were led to believe a soldier was accused of torturing people at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The fictional soldier claimed to have been following orders from superiors who told him the Geneva Convention had been suspended. He supposedly wanted to subpoena President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to prove his case. Respondents were asked if he should have that right.

Some were presented with strong "evidence" corroborating the soldier's story. Others had only his word to go on.

But the strength or weakness of the evidence turned out to be immaterial. Researchers were able to predict people's opinion more than 80 percent of the time based simply on their opinions of the Bush administration, the GOP, the military and human rights groups. Those who had less affection for the president sided with the soldier even when the evidence was weak. And fans of the president tended to side with him even when the evidence was overwhelming.

We believe what we want, facts be damned.
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The full article is here. Read it.

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This article is particularly important to me, because it shows the ineffectiveness of the approach many people take on the Democratic Underground. Invective may make you feel good, but it doesn't work to change voters' minds. In fact, because it gets people's back up, it can often be counterproductive.

To argue effectively, you need to sound reasonable. You need to give weight to other people's feelings. If somebody likes Bush, you need to ask why, and when they tell you, gently, almost apologetically, point out facts that show that he hasn't really met those goals.

Or, if you prefer, you can keep attacking your fellow Democrats that don't scream loud enough for your taste, and remain happily frustrated at losing elections.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community