What Psychology Tells Us About Dispelling Worldviews

Apparently it's difficult. This piece by David Ignatius on why facts don't seem to matter for Trump supporters is apt for my own research on contrasting views between peace activists and policymakers. In fact, trying to persuade the other and convincing them why they're wrong (or you're right) seems particularly onerous if the research of this 1979 study, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence" stands correct. It appears that attempts to debunk myths even has the potential opposite effect of reinforcing myths.

So applied to the politics of peace, activists are socialized at an early stage to hold particular views about nukes, bases, drones etc...As they interact with policymakers, who themselves are socialized into viewing peace through a different lens (i.e. realist, liberal international etc...), neither side cedes ground in trying to understand the facts. The result is polarization of views.

I'm going to need to find some collaborators in psychology and sociology to help me out here.

What Psychology Tells Us About Dispelling Worldviews

Apparently it's difficult. This piece by David Ignatius on why facts don't seem to matter for Trump supporters is apt for my own research on contrasting views between peace activists and policymakers. In fact, trying to persuade the other and convincing them why they're wrong (or you're right) seems particularly onerous if the research of this 1979 study, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects ofPrior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence" stands correct. It appears that attempts to debunk myths even has the potential opposite effect of reinforcing myths.

So applied to the politics of peace, activists are socialized at an early stage to hold particular views about nukes, bases, drones etc...As they interact with policymakers, who themselves are socialized into viewing peace through a different lens (i.e. realist, liberal international etc...), neither side cedes ground in trying to understand the facts. The result is polarization of views.

I'm going to need to find some collaborators in psychology and sociology to help me out here.

Worldviews, Beliefs, and Psychology

So apparently, neither Trump nor Clinton supporters will change their minds according to this study. More relevant to my research is the reasoning outlined below:

As much as we like to think that we use reason to evaluate evidence and come to conclusions, “It really goes back assward, a lot of times,” said Peter Ditto, a psychologist at University of California, Irvine. “People already have a firm opinion, and that shapes the way they process information.” We hold beliefs about how the world works and tend to force new information to fit within these pre-existing narratives. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning, and it means that once people have thrown their support behind Trump or Clinton, they will tend to downplay or ignore things that paint their candidate in a bad light.

In a similar vein, once activists (i.e. anti-war groups) adopt a particular position about nukes, drones, bases etc....they rarely change minds and adopt the alternative view often represented by government officials.

Donald Trump's Foreign Policy Views

I almost never sign on-line petitions, but recently put my name on an open letter penned by Ali Wyn. I rest my case with this recent interview between Donald Trump and the New York Times.

I've pasted part of the transcript below, and two things strike me which are worth bringing up the next time I teach Intro to Int'l Relations, and also for research on the politics of peace. First, Trump fails to realize that maintaining alliances and troops abroad are in our own interest, not just that of allies. Even if allies aren't paying their full share in dollar terms, by hosting U.S. troops, they are contributing to the liberal international order advanced by all previous U.S. administrations since WWII. It's the free-rider problem that Trump is concerned with, but even then, we permit a degree of free-riding b/c to not supply military power in certain parts of the world would in the long-run hurt our interests.

Second, his comments on Korea evokes arguments raised by the political left: reunification may have happened without U.S. presence. He also questions notions of peace. For instance, we claim that U.S. presence brought about peace, yet we see a hostile, nuclear North. Maybe Trump is right. But this is all counterfactual thinking, and we could equally plausibly argue that the absence of U.S. forces may have resulted in a second Korean War (started by either the North or South), or have led to greater provocations from North Korea.

Here's a portion of the transcript with relevant parts highlights.

SANGER: So what we want to do is pick up where we left off in March

. We were listening to Speaker Ryan last night, and he presented a much more traditional Republican, engaged internationalist view of the world. One in which he said that the United States would never lead from behind. In our conversation a few months ago, you were discussing pulling back from commitments we can no longer afford unless others pay for them. You were discussing a set of alliances that you were happy to participate in.

TRUMP:

And I think, by the way, David, I think they will be able to afford them.

SANGER:

They may be.

TRUMP:

We can't.

SANGER: But I guess the question is, If we can't, do you think that your presidency, let's assume for a moment that they contribute what they are contributing today, or what they have contributed historically, your presidency would be one of pulling back and saying, "You know, we're not going to invest in these alliances with NATO

, we are not going to invest as much as we have in Asia since the end of the Korean War because we can't afford it and it's really not in our interest to do so."

TRUMP:

If we cannot be properly reimbursed for the tremendous cost of our military protecting other countries, and in many cases the countries I'm talking about are extremely rich. Then if we cannot make a deal, which I believe we will be able to, and which I would prefer being able to, but if we cannot make a deal, I would like you to say, I would prefer being able to, some people, the one thing they took out of your last story, you know, some people, the fools and the haters, they said, "Oh, Trump doesn't want to protect you." I would prefer that we be able to continue, but if we are not going to be reasonably reimbursed for the tremendous cost of protecting these massive nations with tremendous wealth - you have the tape going on?

SANGER:

We do.

HABERMAN:

We both do.

TRUMP:

With massive wealth. Massive wealth. We're talking about countries that are doing very well. Then yes, I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, "Congratulations, you will be defending yourself."

SANGER:

That suggests that our forward deployments around the world are based on their interests - they're not really based on our interests. And yet I think many in your party would say that the reason that we have troops in Europe, the reason that we keep 60,000 troops in Asia, is that it's in our interest to keep open trading lines, it's in our interest to keep the North Koreans in check, you do that much better out away from the United States.

TRUMP:

I think it's a mutual interest, but we're being reimbursed like it's only in our interest. I think it's a mutual interest. ...

SANGER:

We were talking about alliances, and the fundamental problem that you hear many Republicans, traditional Republicans, have with the statement that you've made is that it would seem to them that you would believe that the interests of the United States being out with both our troops and our diplomacy abroad is less than our economic interests in having somebody else support that. In other words, even if they didn't pay a cent toward it, many have believed that the way we've kept our postwar leadership since World War II has been our ability to project power around the world. That's why we got this many diplomats --

TRUMP:

How is it helping us? How has it helped us? We have massive trade deficits. I could see that, if instead of having a trade deficit worldwide of $800 billion, we had a trade positive of $100 billion, $200 billion, $800 billion. So how has it helped us?

SANGER:

Well, keeping the peace. We didn't have a presence in places like Korea in 1950, or not as great a presence, and you saw what happened.

TRUMP:

There's no guarantee that we'll have peace in Korea.

SANGER:

Even with our troops, no, there's no guarantee.

TRUMP:

No, there's no guarantee. We have 28,000 soldiers on the line.

SANGER:

But we've had them there since 1953 and --

TRUMP:

Sure, but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be something going on right now. Maybe you would have had a unified Korea. Who knows what would have happened? In the meantime, what have we done? So we've kept peace, but in the meantime we've let North Korea get stronger and stronger and more nuclear and more nuclear, and you are really saying, "Well, how is that a good thing?" You understand? North Korea now is almost like a boiler. You say we've had peace, but that part of Korea, North Korea, is getting more and more crazy. And more and more nuclear. And they are testing missiles all the time.

SANGER:

They are.

TRUMP:

And we've got our soldiers sitting there watching missiles go up. And you say to yourself, "Oh, that's interesting." Now we're protecting Japan because Japan is a natural location for North Korea. So we are protecting them, and you say to yourself, "Well, what are we getting out of this?"

SANGER:

Well, we keep our missile defenses out there. And those missile defenses help prevent the day when North Korea can reach the United States with one of its missiles. It's a lot easier to shoot down from there --

TRUMP:

We've had them there for a long time, and now they're practically obsolete, in all fairness.

SANGER:

Relatively new missile defenses would allow us --

Politics of Peace and Nuclear Weapons

As a reminder for what to read for research on the politics of peace and nuclear weapons, I've added a a couple books to my reading list. The first is Dan Zak's Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age. The book opens with the story of three activists - a nun, Vietnam vet, and housepainter - breaking  into a nuclear security complex in Oak Ridge, TN as a launching point for investigating America's history, horror, and fascination with nuclear weapons. Richard Rhodes who penned a four volume set on nuclear history, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb provided a good review in the WaPo.  Rhodes highlights an important passage from the book detailing the hypocrisy of non-proliferation from the nuclear five. Excerpted from the review:

 The most important single idea in “Almighty” emerges in the assertion of an exasperated South African ambassador to the United Nations, Abdul Samad Minty: “If for security reasons the [five original nuclear powers] feel that they must be armed with nuclear weapons, what about other countries in similar situations? Do we think that the global situation is such that no other country would ever aspire to nuclear weapons . . . when the five tell us that it is absolutely correct to possess nuclear weapons for their security?”

The second book I learned about at a book launch event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for Brad Roberts's  The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century. As the title suggests, Roberts cautions against our haste in promulgating (unilateral) nuclear disarmament. Existing international realities (particularly in relation to China and Russia) make it very difficult for the U.S. to give up its nuclear weapons. Roberts told me after the event that there's a fairly wide consensus among U.S. policymakers on nuclear policy - which I assume to believe that maintaining a limited supply of nukes is still in our national interest. How do policymakers and the activists highlighted by Zak come to different logical conclusions about nuclear policy and the utility of nuclear weapons.

Autocrats Unite...and the Deep Divide to Global Peace

Saw this op-ed by David Sanger from someone's Facebook post about the rise of autocrats and the threat of U.S. global under-reach (i.e. how the world might face doom if no leader is willing to tend to the international garden "so that small problems didn’t turn into big ones." Sanger cites Bob Kagan's piece which places this argument in historical context. The arguments are all reasonable, but his conclusion that the U.S. at times must act as an enforcer and be a forceful menace is sure to raise eyebrows. Take for instance, this quote from an activist in Hawaii I know commenting on Obama's recent West Point speech:

What makes us "exceptional" is the fact that WE LIVE IN THE MOST HATED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD AND ARE CONSIDERED THE NUMBER ONE OBSTACLE TO ACHIEVING WORLD PEACE. And that is NOTHING to be proud of. And about "America must always lead on the world stage..." Too easily said when America builds the stage wherever it wants, imposes the props, writes the script, and dupes the American audience (that would be the taxpayers whose money funds American terrorism) into swallowing the idea it was an honorable, must-do, performance.

Again, struck by the vast chasm in thought about achieving global peace and stability between (conservative) policymakers and (liberal) activists.

Update: I cited Kagan's piece, not b/c I necessarily support the argument, but b/c it seemed central to part of Sanger's op-ed. Here's Dan Nexon shredding Kagan to pieces.