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Human beings form social groups at the drop of a hat and on the thinnest of pretexts, with consequences both good and bad. On the one hand, being part of a group provides a sense of belonging and security (Allport, 1979; Correll & Park, 2005) and promotes cooperation and altruism within the group (Bernhard, Fischbacher, & Fehr, 2006). On the other hand, group membership can also result in prejudice and stereotyping of outgroup members (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), and sometimes even outright hostility and conflict (Struch & Schwartz, 1989). In their chapter, Victoria Lee and Lasana Harris (L&H) argue that the human tendency toward “groupishness” (Haidt, 2012) has another negative consequence : It may act as a limit on the very possibility of free will. Cheekily, L&H illustrate their proposal by asking whether academics have free will in choosing their position on the issue of free will. Academics, being people too, are strongly motivated by social rewards and seek contact with and approval from their ingroup. For an academic interested in free will, the ingroup consists of other academics who have the same position on the issue of free will. Being part of such a group, L&H argue, will likely affect how the academic thinks about free will. For example, group polarization may cause the academic to adopt an opinion that is more extreme than his or her initial position (Isenberg, 1986; Myers & Lamm, 1976). Similarly, ingroup positivity biases may result in favorable evaluations of ingroup members (Brewer, 1979) that are not justified by the quality of their arguments. Interactions with outgroup members—those who have a different opinion about free will—may also be affected, becoming less open and collaborative . L&H suggest that the net effect of these types of intergroup processes is to impose a constraint on the academic’s freedom to arrive at their own conclusions about free will. In other words, the powerful human drive for belonging comes with a set of biases that may function to limit free will. 10.1 Social Groups: Both Our Destruction and Our Salvation? Hanah A. Chapman and William A. Cunningham 398 Hanah A. Chapman and William A. Cunningham The great majority of academics aspire to be impartial seekers of truth. As such, the message that our social nature as human beings may limit our ability to achieve this goal will come as a disappointment to many. Adding to the bad news, we believe there is another threat to free will inherent in the very nature of human decision making. In particular, the need to arrive at a single conclusion in the face of ambiguous and conflicting evidence may lead us to discount information that disagrees with our ultimate decision , and also to feel unduly confident in our choices (Holyoak & Simon, 1999; Kunda & Thagard, 1996; Thagard, 1989). To understand why this might be so, we must first consider the nature of complex decision making. An intuitive view is that like members of a jury, we first assemble the relevant facts or evidence and then integrate the evidence to arrive at a conclusion. However, this simple metaphor belies the complexity of what it is that juries and decision makers are doing. Specifically, the so-called “evidence” that is available is often more like an inference. Consider someone who is deciding whether or not to accept a job offer at a new company (Holyoak & Simon, 1999; Simon, Krawczyk, & Holyoak, 2004). In making this decision, the job candidate may consider whether the company is likely to continue growing, whether promises of rapid promotion are truthful, and whether their prospective colleagues are likely to be agreeable. These facts can only be inferred, and the inferences are uncertain (Holyoak & Simon, 1999). Moreover, different inferences can conflict with one another: For example, the job candidate might believe that the company will continue its upward trajectory, but that the coworkers are likely to be a pack of ruthless jackals. At the end of the day, however, this person must make a binary decision to take the job or leave it. How can people make a coherent decision in the face of such ambiguous and conflicting information? One proposal is that decisions arise from a dynamic process of constraint satisfaction that ultimately results in coherence between the decision and how the inferences are evaluated (Holyoak & Simon, 1999; Thagard, 1989). Although we normally think of inferences as affecting decisions in a forward direction, coherence models suggest that emerging decisions can also work backward to alter the strength of inferences (Simon, Pham, Le, & Holyoak, 2001). In other words, the connection between inferences and...

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