Usable Social Science

2. Some Dynamics of Cognition, Judgment, and Bias

53 in this chapter we present a view of the mind as embedded in its personal history and its contemporary—including its social—situation. our account yields a special perspective on human nature. Not all its ingredients are new; many echo ancient philosophical traditions that still inform our worldviews. The view we represent derives primarily from systematic, often experimental, scientific traditions in many disciplines, all from their recent histories. We describe our depiction of human behavior as neither rational (as in some philosophies and some social-science accounts in economics, political science, and law) nor irrational (as in some philosophical works [Nietzsche], some psychological traditions [freudian psychology], and in some social-science traditions [“italian irrationalism” in political theory]). What emerges is a human being who is largely nonrational but purposeful in orientation, that is, perceiving, thinking, and behaving outside the principles and strictures implied in both rational and irrational approaches. This means that individuals sometimes act rationally and sometimes irrationally, but most often nonirrationally—a term that permits or implies purpose and adaptation , but is independent of and not captured by the logics of true-false, rightwrong , pessimistic-optimistic, or rational-irrational. We hope to avoid both the passion for neatness that characterizes rationalist approaches and the passion for chaos that frequently characterizes irrationalist ones. We regard this nonrational view as the most realistic, and certainly the most viable, with respect to the use of knowledge in decision-making, problem-solving, and policy-making. 2 Some Dynamics of Cognition, Judgment, and Bias 54 Arenas of Usability iNtelleCtUal DyNaMiCS aND tHe QUality of KNoWleDGe Running through this chapter—and elaborated in chapter 10—are two instructive themes in the accumulation of knowledge. one theme is negative polemicism: a certain scholar, group of scholars, or nascent school is typically driven in part by the discovery or the assertion that other, “received” knowledge is oversimplified, limited, or wrong. Such observations are the foil against which some new line of scientific endeavor is carried out and often justified. Sometimes the negative polemic stereotypes the received position under attack, highlighting its most vulnerable aspects. Moreover, negative polemics gain notice and electricity because they are directed against a scientific position that some group of “established” scientists defend; this often imparts a personal- or group-conflict dimension to the polemic. Here is a sample of received views that have been reacted against during the past century in psychology: • Perception is a mirror or photograph of objective reality. • Memory is an accurate reproduction and preservation of experience. • learning occurs by acquiring knowledge through repeated exposure (conditioning) in the experience of individuals. • The actor in a social context is knowledgeable, intelligent, rational, and basically free from error and from nonrational or irrational impulses. The two most conspicuous arenas in which this principle held sway were (1) classical economic analysis, portraying actors as rational choosers in a market context; and (2) some strands of democratic thought, portraying the political actor as informed, enlightened, attentive to political issues, deliberative, aware of his/ her political interests, and not swayed by irrational appeals. • Thinking processes of individuals are inferentially and logically sound. • emotions and reason are opposed. The former are private, perhaps bodily based experiences, foreign to and disruptive of rational thought. emotion is a source of error, superstition, and mischief; reason is the source of truth, proper action, and moral virtue. Scientists of all types, long having identified themselves as among the rational classes in society, have been partially responsible for perpetuating this view, partly, no doubt, in the interest of enhancing themselves and their pursuits. to acknowledge that all these views have been challenged, reformulated, and rejected and that new ways of thinking have triumphed is not to say that they have disappeared. in fact, the tensions, disagreements, and disputes between the presumably discredited and the presumably more accurate and adequate formulations are the bases for ongoing and recurrent controversies over the nature of the world and the best ways to describe, interpret, and act in it. Cognition, Judgment, and Bias 55 as a result of these repeated cycles of criticism of received knowledge  reformulation  new bursts of theory and research  refinement  new criticism (see chapter 10), views of the world become both more realistic and more complicated. Simplistic worldviews become more qualified and contingent. More emphasis is placed on connections between previously isolated processes—fusions between the psychological and social aspects of emotions; fusions between affect and cognition...