BIAS: Grist for the POMO Mill?

One of the reasons I got interested in writing a blog was the over-heated and crazed partisanship of virtually all political discussion on the Web. It is, sadly, merely reflective of the times we live in. By nature and nurture it disgusts me, not least because I have always felt that strong partisanship in politics, as in religion, simply short circuits your brain's ability to process information. In short, you do not believe things because you see them; you see them because you believe them. Anything else is ignored or explained away.

Now there is scientific proof! In an article in today's Washington Post;

Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains.

Unvaryingly, partisans also believe that partisans on the other side are far more ideologically extreme than they actually are, said Stanford University psychologist Mark Lepper, who has studied how people watch presidential debates.

As a conclusion of the studies:

people routinely discount information that threatens their preexisting beliefs, said Emory University psychologist Drew Westen, who has conducted brain-scan experiments that show partisans swiftly spot hypocrisy and inconsistencies -- but only in the opposing candidate.

I love it when scientific studies confirms my biases!

You should read the whole article for yourself. It explains a lot about our public discourse, and thus a lot about the world we live in.